Yes, God save the subscription. Those were the golden ages. Though I had loads of fun in Mabinogi,, Cosmic break, Wizardry online, Vindictus and Guild Wars 1. Didn't spend anything in Vindictus and played when Guild Wars 1 was alive and didn't have a cash shop (Until a year after the final expansion). In Mabinogi I had a subscription, though it was optional and I rebirthed.
I think F2P is akin to socialism but it's oddly accepted. The payers subsidize the game for people who don't want to, or refuse to pay. However, the profit potential for F2P games is higher because there's no cap on profit from the player, which is probably why companies moved from Sub to "F2P". Along with the fact that "Nobody" pays. Someone somewhere has to pay, and when they do, they pay an insane amount in some games. People spent hundreds on gambling in Cosmic Break for a chance at the cute/sexy character you could get.
You have the socio-economic comparisons backwards. Cash shops are illustrative of capitalism as those with more money get more things. The publisher offering "free" stuff as an enticement to participate isn't a socialist mechanism. It is a capitalist marketing scheme.
P2P subscriptions aren't really socialist either as there is no enforced wealth redistribution (not necessarily a socialist requirement though), but the fact that everyone pays the same no matter their economic resources and those with more money can't buy their way, is much more socialist in philosophy. I see you're using socialism as a trigger word in a negative context but the ideals behind it, tend to appeal to social gamers. They take refuge in the idea that they are on the same level as everyone else for the same expenditure. That's all an illusion though because we know those with more time (and time has a monetary value) have a distinct advantage over those who do not.
~~~~~~~~
I don't care about P2W. If I like the payment scheme I'll play and pay. If I don't, then I won't. Others perception of P2W is mostly irrelevant to me.
Interesting subject. If you look at fees as taxes, where do these comparisons fall?
"If the Damned gave you a roadmap, then you'd know just where to go"
There should never be in any MMO a connection between the Real and the Virtual in regards to Money / Currency. It should be IMPOSSIBLE for any real world money to influence or enhance any MMO gameplay experience.
ANY MMO were there is a way to transfer Real Money into the Virtual world of the MMO and/or back again, I consider a bad thing, I would make it illegal if I could.
Take a guess how many MMOs I consider to be designed wrong, and that should be shut down by Real World Governments...
MMOs are supposed to be games without real world influence for financial benefit, not a paycheck, nor a slot machine.
"they should"... "are supposed".... "designed wrong"... who ever set those rules? First time I hear of it. MMORPG can be whatever developers what it to be.
And can someone explain who is winning and what? Because the only reward I see for transfering real money into game is that those people reach end, and stop playing faster. They skip the journey part and go to the end, which in mmo's doesn't mean anything.. horray for them.. now, how does that influence me? Because I have yet to notice any quality drop in gameplay for me because of them.
In real life people aren't always in equal circumstances. In an mmo everyone can start equally and have the same opportunities. This means the game is fair. Introducing real world currency element makes it unfair to compete with other players in either pvp or pve. I don't like this kind of design because it cheapens the experience of playing without spending real currency. What's the point of the game if you can bypass everything with money? Would you buy a game that is already completed? lol
I probably wouldn't play the game either. One aspect of coercive monetization is making the game play boring enough that playing through 8 months isn't actually fun.
yup, this.
"There are at least two kinds of games. One could be called finite, the other infinite. A finite game is played for the purpose of winning, an infinite game for the purpose of continuing play." Finite and Infinite Games, James Carse
The user and all related content has been deleted.
Somebody, somewhere has better skills as you have, more experience as you have, is smarter than you, has more friends as you do and can stay online longer. Just pray he's not out to get you.
Do we need a new term for this type of design, that seems to be becoming standard fare?
Yeah, it's P2W. But then, EVERY MMO is P2W to some degree or another.
In your scenario, it's not a 7.5 mo lead gap. Since the spender is also continuing to advance (at a faster rate), it's a moving target that would in fact continue to widen as time goes on. So in essence, it's not about time. It's just that the free player or those who spend less, will just never catch up.
In Eve's model, it's a different kind of P2W. The commodity is time. You are buying time with real money, or you are converting in game money to time and selling that. The "Win" factor doesn't go to the buyer but to the seller. So it's those who are able to turn in lots of in game money to sell PLEX who get the advantages. So if you buy PLEX in eve, you are paying for someone else to win.
In GW2's Model, it's not really P2W from player to player, But IMO, that model sets up an adversarial relationship between the player and the game. The ridiculous need fro grinding, the diminished values on in game resources, the heavily taxed auctions, the "over the top" use of RNG. It is there to encourage spending.
There is Anarchy Online's model where you pay your monthly fee (Full AAA fee for an out dated dying game is ridiculous) And on top of that, you have a Cash Shop disguised as a non-P2W but it really is fully P2W since you can convert real money to game currency and there are mechanics in place for you to be able to use game money to buy loot rights and thus have access to any item in the game.
WoW's version. Where you can go buy the TCG cards until you get something that is redeemable and sell the code for gold. I've also seen people in open trade channel selling game time codes for gold. There is also ilicit gold trading that goes on in this and most MMORPGs that hurt these games.
The original P2W model: To buy I-Win consumable buffs that you can buy from openly P2W games.
And then of course there is the RNG modifier P2W models.
What we need is a definition on "winning"!!! (probably already been said here I hope)
Because my guess is that it is only the regular forum complainers, you know, the people that aren't playing any MMO's at the moment, because ...well.... they just can't find anything worth "winning", are the only ones that care about this in the slightest.
FFA Nonconsentual Full Loot PvP ...You know you want it!!
What we need is a definition on "winning"!!! (probably already been said here I hope)
Because my guess is that it is only the regular forum complainers, you know, the people that aren't playing any MMO's at the moment, because ...well.... they just can't find anything worth "winning", are the only ones that care about this in the slightest.
Well we made it pretty far without someone using the noob tube.
"If the Damned gave you a roadmap, then you'd know just where to go"
I'm not afraid to tell trolls what they [need] to hear, even if that means for me to have an forced absence afterwards.
P2P LOGIC = If it's P2P it means longevity, overall better game, and THE BEST SUPPORT EVER!!!!!(Which has been rinsed and repeated about a thousand times)
Common Sense Logic = P2P logic is no better than F2P Logic.
If we're talking about leveling faster, then it depends.
In older MMO's, leveling faster meant you could monopolize content, materials, and crafting. Being the first player or group at high levels meant you could make bank off of slower levelers and control the market.
In newer MMO's, none of this really exists so i don't think leveling faster matters. Typically crafting and in game currency don't really matter.
Generally time in an MMO is a huge advantage in and of itself. If we take games like WoW, RIFT, SWTOR and some others as examples. If someone could buy the BiS raid gear in WoW and it took 8 months for someone else to get it legitimately is that not an advantage over the standard player. Mainly because of how content works in MMO's. You generally don't have 8 month periods where new content isn't being introduced.
So player A that bought the gear is now a full tier ahead and can get into new content faster and faster and in the end will leave player B behind because they are still working on the initial tier that Player A bought. Not to mention other advantages of allowing his Raid team get geared faster because Player A is doing their job to the fullest in the better gear.
Sorry but no matter how you slice it. When you can buy things in a shop that converts to a large time advantage over other players it is Pay2Win.
"In the immediate future, we have this one, and then weve got another one that is actually going to be so were going to have, what we want to do, is in January, what were targeting to do, this may or may not happen, so you cant hold me to it. But what were targeting to do, is have a fun anniversary to the Ilum shenanigans that happened. An alien race might invade, and they might crash into Ilum and there might be some new activities that happen on the planet." ~Gabe Amatangelo
Generally time in an MMO is a huge advantage in and of itself. If we take games like WoW, RIFT, SWTOR and some others as examples. If someone could buy the BiS raid gear in WoW and it took 8 months for someone else to get it legitimately is that not an advantage over the standard player. Mainly because of how content works in MMO's. You generally don't have 8 month periods where new content isn't being introduced.
So player A that bought the gear is now a full tier ahead and can get into new content faster and faster and in the end will leave player B behind because they are still working on the initial tier that Player A bought. Not to mention other advantages of allowing his Raid team get geared faster because Player A is doing their job to the fullest in the better gear.
Sorry but no matter how you slice it. When you can buy things in a shop that converts to a large time advantage over other players it is Pay2Win.
Not at all.
There will always be people ahead of me in an MMO. Therefore I cannot consider getting ahead of me to be p2w. When I am that level can they do anything I cannot. If there answer is no, it's not p2w.
Just because you don't like it doesn't mean it is bad.
It depends on what the blanks are and if it's PvP based. I never understood how people call things Pay to Win, if it's a PvE game or the things they bought only help in PvE. In PvE you really never win. There is no endgame, there is no end, there is nothing to win.
Do we need a new term for this type of design, that seems to be becoming standard fare?
It's obviously Pay to get something. If that something is winning or not depends on how you define winning in a MMO. Is winning getting to a goal first or is there more to it than that in a MMO?
Personally I think there is more to a MMO than achieving some goal faster than everyone else so I really wouldn't call it winning but that's me.
Do we need a new term for this type of design, that seems to be becoming standard fare?
It depends on what the blanked item is. If its something that offers a significant power difference, then yes, I would consider that P2W. If there was an equivalent item that could be obtained in a reasonable time frame, that had similar power levels, then no, that would not be pay to win.
I don't mind grind or treadmills that can be lessened by payment in F2P titles, but when it offers a significant power imbalance, especially in PvP, that's when it becomes a problem. I would say 2 weeks would be the reasonable time frame for grinding before it became P2W and unreasonable for the competition. After that point its just bad design and likely to drive players away.
What we need is a definition on "winning"!!! (probably already been said here I hope)
Because my guess is that it is only the regular forum complainers, you know, the people that aren't playing any MMO's at the moment, because ...well.... they just can't find anything worth "winning", are the only ones that care about this in the slightest.
Well we made it pretty far without someone using the noob tube.
I am sorry, I just fail to understand your reply.
FFA Nonconsentual Full Loot PvP ...You know you want it!!
The term Pay to Win is a very subjective matter. It all depends on each individuals idea of winning in an MMO. Aside from the obvious p2w type deals (buying overpowered weapons/ships/armor in the cash shop and they're only available in the cash shop) you could say that doing things quicker is p2w, especially during the launch of an mmo. If your goal is to get completely pvp geared and you constantly buy currency boosts to get it 10x faster, you're going to be stronger than everyone for a good amount of time that didn't purchase the boosts.
Take Runescape for instance. They've introduced bonds (PLEX) to the game essentially meaning it is p2w but only because your only goal in runescape is to become rich and get maxed out skills. I think EVE does a good job of skirting around this P2W model by focusing more on skirmishes(and enormous wars) with guaranteed losses effectively taking money out of the game where as Runescape it is just almost exclusively about attaining as much wealth as possible as efficiently as possible.
In the end it all comes down to your goal. Chances are if you want to be the best, or get maxed out the quickest, you'll find a lot more games falling into the 'p2w region'. Where as someone who is just there for the ride won't really consider it to be that OP.
If you are looking to add someone to your group, who would you pick?
1) the guy who played for months, and really knows how to play his character, or
2) the guy who just paid cash, but has little or no real experience playing his character?
I would take the person who would perform the best, and if that paid item / trait / skill offered more power, then I would take that person. You are also assuming that one person hasn't played the character at all, and the other is an expert. Where its more likely that both played just as much, but one had the money to get the boost 8 months earlier.
The term Pay to Win is a very subjective matter. It all depends on each individuals idea of winning in an MMO. Aside from the obvious p2w type deals (buying overpowered weapons/ships/armor in the cash shop and they're only available in the cash shop) you could say that doing things quicker is p2w, especially during the launch of an mmo. If your goal is to get completely pvp geared and you constantly buy currency boosts to get it 10x faster, you're going to be stronger than everyone for a good amount of time that didn't purchase the boosts.
Take Runescape for instance. They've introduced bonds (PLEX) to the game essentially meaning it is p2w but only because your only goal in runescape is to become rich and get maxed out skills. I think EVE does a good job of skirting around this P2W model by focusing more on skirmishes(and enormous wars) with guaranteed losses effectively taking money out of the game where as Runescape it is just almost exclusively about attaining as much wealth as possible as efficiently as possible.
In the end it all comes down to your goal. Chances are if you want to be the best, or get maxed out the quickest, you'll find a lot more games falling into the 'p2w region'. Where as someone who is just there for the ride won't really consider it to be that OP.
The only way I can justify the term "winning " in an MMO is if there is some kind of ranking system.
In other words if the game does not provide some system of scoring players, be it financial or combat oriented, then the term "winning" does not apply to that MMO and the term is moot. If it is a competitive game , say something like World of Tanks or LoL, then I think the term applies, if players can buy an advantage that a regular player can not achieve without financial means.
Even in these cases, I still completely disagree with "time " advantages being considered play to win. If a player has more free time to play then this would be an advantage to win also. Since players are never going to have absolutely equal amounts of time to play, any MMO will not start off with an even advantage. This is unlike gear or player stats, where each player begins equally.
Hence "Getting there first" is in no way, a pay to win scenario.
FFA Nonconsentual Full Loot PvP ...You know you want it!!
I consider that disturbing, call it pay to win/achieve/advance, whatever you wish. If you looked at my situation you would think I would favor it, as I make good money, and I have limited time to play, so I could be the 2 week guy, but I find it wrong/shallow to play a mmo like that, and it bothers me if I am playing one and people are doing it. I like everyone being on equal footing with their in-game time (not personal real life time as that is not something a game can really regulate well imo, or probably should).
I try to avoid f2p as much as possible, I don't like money exchanges...I know people buy gold in a p2p game, even if it had no cash shop or a cosmetic only, as I prefer, but it is against the rules and they can be banned for it also. If a game cost $60 and a sub, with a smart trial, if they have trial accounts, someone will lose a good amount of money if they keep getting banned and you have a good system to catch them (trial accounts cannot trade/drop/mail also). If something is f2p, the barrier to misdeeds is much lower imo.
I know I am not the norm here, but it the xp potions, buying gear, exchanging rl money and such bothers me and I try to avoid it....Also it probably wouldn't matter too much, most newer mmos I find them too shallow if they had no cash shop and were f2p for me to bother with. A good example is TOR, I bought, played the free month, and was done. I got my money worth, but it wasn't worth playing any longer for me, the sub it had at release played 0 part in me stopping my play. I would not of kept playing it if it was f2p without a cash shop or any means to take more money from me.
I would like to see f2p or b2p ditch the cash shops, unless it is for cosmetic or content. I would much rather see cosmetic/content as what you buy, but that is not the best money maker, it is better for them to not restrict those that do not pay, and entice those that will, it is also more unfair to the players imo. If no one feels the need to buy anything in a f2p/b2p game, it is quickly out of business. So they have to make things people will want to part with their cash for. Cosmetic/content would be my preferred way.
I want a developer making money, if I find a mmo that I really like and think it has depth, because I will want to keep playing it, so I am not against them making money, just certain ways that they accomplish this.
Do we need a new term for this type of design, that seems to be becoming standard fare?
Yes, but they've already termed it. its called Pay4Conveience.
They let you buy items from their stores with real life cash, and then put them on the Auction House/GTN/Merchant/whatever and sell them for in game currency, which in turn allows you to purchase most of the stronger to strongest items in game. Sure, you can't buy anything better than the guy who invested his time has, but you can get whatever he has earned in game on the strength of your wallet.
Another practice that is becoming more common is where they begin to design the way to achieve specific in game items to be extremely time consuming. In turn, they put the item on the game store as well. Its designed explicitly to make you decide between spending a large amount of time in game (say, 5 hours) doing something that is generally accepted to be not fun to earn an item, or spending 1 hour at work to get the money to buy the items you need/want. The idea is to make the way to acquire them in game so time consuming that it makes more sense to spend 10 bucks than it does to spend 5+ hours grinding at it the legit way.
Comments
Interesting subject. If you look at fees as taxes, where do these comparisons fall?
"If the Damned gave you a roadmap, then you'd know just where to go"
"they should"... "are supposed".... "designed wrong"... who ever set those rules? First time I hear of it. MMORPG can be whatever developers what it to be.
And can someone explain who is winning and what? Because the only reward I see for transfering real money into game is that those people reach end, and stop playing faster. They skip the journey part and go to the end, which in mmo's doesn't mean anything.. horray for them.. now, how does that influence me? Because I have yet to notice any quality drop in gameplay for me because of them.
Who won what by paying?
yup, this.
"There are at least two kinds of games.
One could be called finite, the other infinite.
A finite game is played for the purpose of winning,
an infinite game for the purpose of continuing play."
Finite and Infinite Games, James Carse
Somebody, somewhere has better skills as you have, more experience as you have, is smarter than you, has more friends as you do and can stay online longer. Just pray he's not out to get you.
Yeah, it's P2W. But then, EVERY MMO is P2W to some degree or another.
In your scenario, it's not a 7.5 mo lead gap. Since the spender is also continuing to advance (at a faster rate), it's a moving target that would in fact continue to widen as time goes on. So in essence, it's not about time. It's just that the free player or those who spend less, will just never catch up.
In Eve's model, it's a different kind of P2W. The commodity is time. You are buying time with real money, or you are converting in game money to time and selling that. The "Win" factor doesn't go to the buyer but to the seller. So it's those who are able to turn in lots of in game money to sell PLEX who get the advantages. So if you buy PLEX in eve, you are paying for someone else to win.
In GW2's Model, it's not really P2W from player to player, But IMO, that model sets up an adversarial relationship between the player and the game. The ridiculous need fro grinding, the diminished values on in game resources, the heavily taxed auctions, the "over the top" use of RNG. It is there to encourage spending.
There is Anarchy Online's model where you pay your monthly fee (Full AAA fee for an out dated dying game is ridiculous) And on top of that, you have a Cash Shop disguised as a non-P2W but it really is fully P2W since you can convert real money to game currency and there are mechanics in place for you to be able to use game money to buy loot rights and thus have access to any item in the game.
WoW's version. Where you can go buy the TCG cards until you get something that is redeemable and sell the code for gold. I've also seen people in open trade channel selling game time codes for gold. There is also ilicit gold trading that goes on in this and most MMORPGs that hurt these games.
The original P2W model: To buy I-Win consumable buffs that you can buy from openly P2W games.
And then of course there is the RNG modifier P2W models.
They are ALL p2w. Did I miss one?
"Happiness is not a destination. It is a method of life."
-------------------------------
If you are looking to add someone to your group, who would you pick?
1) the guy who played for months, and really knows how to play his character, or
2) the guy who just paid cash, but has little or no real experience playing his character?
------------
2024: 47 years on the Net.
"Everything the light touches is our kingdom" -- Mufasa
---
What we need is a definition on "winning"!!! (probably already been said here I hope)
Because my guess is that it is only the regular forum complainers, you know, the people that aren't playing any MMO's at the moment, because ...well.... they just can't find anything worth "winning", are the only ones that care about this in the slightest.
FFA Nonconsentual Full Loot PvP ...You know you want it!!
Well we made it pretty far without someone using the noob tube.
"If the Damned gave you a roadmap, then you'd know just where to go"
I might get banned for this. - Rizel Star.
I'm not afraid to tell trolls what they [need] to hear, even if that means for me to have an forced absence afterwards.
P2P LOGIC = If it's P2P it means longevity, overall better game, and THE BEST SUPPORT EVER!!!!!(Which has been rinsed and repeated about a thousand times)
Common Sense Logic = P2P logic is no better than F2P Logic.
If we're talking about leveling faster, then it depends.
In older MMO's, leveling faster meant you could monopolize content, materials, and crafting. Being the first player or group at high levels meant you could make bank off of slower levelers and control the market.
In newer MMO's, none of this really exists so i don't think leveling faster matters. Typically crafting and in game currency don't really matter.
Generally time in an MMO is a huge advantage in and of itself. If we take games like WoW, RIFT, SWTOR and some others as examples. If someone could buy the BiS raid gear in WoW and it took 8 months for someone else to get it legitimately is that not an advantage over the standard player. Mainly because of how content works in MMO's. You generally don't have 8 month periods where new content isn't being introduced.
So player A that bought the gear is now a full tier ahead and can get into new content faster and faster and in the end will leave player B behind because they are still working on the initial tier that Player A bought. Not to mention other advantages of allowing his Raid team get geared faster because Player A is doing their job to the fullest in the better gear.
Sorry but no matter how you slice it. When you can buy things in a shop that converts to a large time advantage over other players it is Pay2Win.
"In the immediate future, we have this one, and then weve got another one that is actually going to be so were going to have, what we want to do, is in January, what were targeting to do, this may or may not happen, so you cant hold me to it. But what were targeting to do, is have a fun anniversary to the Ilum shenanigans that happened. An alien race might invade, and they might crash into Ilum and there might be some new activities that happen on the planet." ~Gabe Amatangelo
Not at all.
There will always be people ahead of me in an MMO. Therefore I cannot consider getting ahead of me to be p2w. When I am that level can they do anything I cannot. If there answer is no, it's not p2w.
It depends on what the blanks are and if it's PvP based. I never understood how people call things Pay to Win, if it's a PvE game or the things they bought only help in PvE. In PvE you really never win. There is no endgame, there is no end, there is nothing to win.
PvP on the other hand is all about winning.
It's obviously Pay to get something. If that something is winning or not depends on how you define winning in a MMO. Is winning getting to a goal first or is there more to it than that in a MMO?
Personally I think there is more to a MMO than achieving some goal faster than everyone else so I really wouldn't call it winning but that's me.
It depends on what the blanked item is. If its something that offers a significant power difference, then yes, I would consider that P2W. If there was an equivalent item that could be obtained in a reasonable time frame, that had similar power levels, then no, that would not be pay to win.
I don't mind grind or treadmills that can be lessened by payment in F2P titles, but when it offers a significant power imbalance, especially in PvP, that's when it becomes a problem. I would say 2 weeks would be the reasonable time frame for grinding before it became P2W and unreasonable for the competition. After that point its just bad design and likely to drive players away.
I am sorry, I just fail to understand your reply.
FFA Nonconsentual Full Loot PvP ...You know you want it!!
The term Pay to Win is a very subjective matter. It all depends on each individuals idea of winning in an MMO. Aside from the obvious p2w type deals (buying overpowered weapons/ships/armor in the cash shop and they're only available in the cash shop) you could say that doing things quicker is p2w, especially during the launch of an mmo. If your goal is to get completely pvp geared and you constantly buy currency boosts to get it 10x faster, you're going to be stronger than everyone for a good amount of time that didn't purchase the boosts.
Take Runescape for instance. They've introduced bonds (PLEX) to the game essentially meaning it is p2w but only because your only goal in runescape is to become rich and get maxed out skills. I think EVE does a good job of skirting around this P2W model by focusing more on skirmishes(and enormous wars) with guaranteed losses effectively taking money out of the game where as Runescape it is just almost exclusively about attaining as much wealth as possible as efficiently as possible.
In the end it all comes down to your goal. Chances are if you want to be the best, or get maxed out the quickest, you'll find a lot more games falling into the 'p2w region'. Where as someone who is just there for the ride won't really consider it to be that OP.
I would take the person who would perform the best, and if that paid item / trait / skill offered more power, then I would take that person. You are also assuming that one person hasn't played the character at all, and the other is an expert. Where its more likely that both played just as much, but one had the money to get the boost 8 months earlier.
Wow that comparison is just completely wrong.
The only way I can justify the term "winning " in an MMO is if there is some kind of ranking system.
In other words if the game does not provide some system of scoring players, be it financial or combat oriented, then the term "winning" does not apply to that MMO and the term is moot. If it is a competitive game , say something like World of Tanks or LoL, then I think the term applies, if players can buy an advantage that a regular player can not achieve without financial means.
Even in these cases, I still completely disagree with "time " advantages being considered play to win. If a player has more free time to play then this would be an advantage to win also. Since players are never going to have absolutely equal amounts of time to play, any MMO will not start off with an even advantage. This is unlike gear or player stats, where each player begins equally.
Hence "Getting there first" is in no way, a pay to win scenario.
FFA Nonconsentual Full Loot PvP ...You know you want it!!
I consider that disturbing, call it pay to win/achieve/advance, whatever you wish. If you looked at my situation you would think I would favor it, as I make good money, and I have limited time to play, so I could be the 2 week guy, but I find it wrong/shallow to play a mmo like that, and it bothers me if I am playing one and people are doing it. I like everyone being on equal footing with their in-game time (not personal real life time as that is not something a game can really regulate well imo, or probably should).
I try to avoid f2p as much as possible, I don't like money exchanges...I know people buy gold in a p2p game, even if it had no cash shop or a cosmetic only, as I prefer, but it is against the rules and they can be banned for it also. If a game cost $60 and a sub, with a smart trial, if they have trial accounts, someone will lose a good amount of money if they keep getting banned and you have a good system to catch them (trial accounts cannot trade/drop/mail also). If something is f2p, the barrier to misdeeds is much lower imo.
I know I am not the norm here, but it the xp potions, buying gear, exchanging rl money and such bothers me and I try to avoid it....Also it probably wouldn't matter too much, most newer mmos I find them too shallow if they had no cash shop and were f2p for me to bother with. A good example is TOR, I bought, played the free month, and was done. I got my money worth, but it wasn't worth playing any longer for me, the sub it had at release played 0 part in me stopping my play. I would not of kept playing it if it was f2p without a cash shop or any means to take more money from me.
I would like to see f2p or b2p ditch the cash shops, unless it is for cosmetic or content. I would much rather see cosmetic/content as what you buy, but that is not the best money maker, it is better for them to not restrict those that do not pay, and entice those that will, it is also more unfair to the players imo. If no one feels the need to buy anything in a f2p/b2p game, it is quickly out of business. So they have to make things people will want to part with their cash for. Cosmetic/content would be my preferred way.
I want a developer making money, if I find a mmo that I really like and think it has depth, because I will want to keep playing it, so I am not against them making money, just certain ways that they accomplish this.
Yes, but they've already termed it. its called Pay4Conveience.
They let you buy items from their stores with real life cash, and then put them on the Auction House/GTN/Merchant/whatever and sell them for in game currency, which in turn allows you to purchase most of the stronger to strongest items in game. Sure, you can't buy anything better than the guy who invested his time has, but you can get whatever he has earned in game on the strength of your wallet.
Another practice that is becoming more common is where they begin to design the way to achieve specific in game items to be extremely time consuming. In turn, they put the item on the game store as well. Its designed explicitly to make you decide between spending a large amount of time in game (say, 5 hours) doing something that is generally accepted to be not fun to earn an item, or spending 1 hour at work to get the money to buy the items you need/want. The idea is to make the way to acquire them in game so time consuming that it makes more sense to spend 10 bucks than it does to spend 5+ hours grinding at it the legit way.