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Is SOE making a mistake designing EQN as Free to Play?
bcbully
Member EpicPosts: 11,843
I can't help but to feel they are making a mistake, a monumental mistake.
On this site over the past couple months we've seen posters say they've had enough of cash shops and cash to gold conversion systems. Even Bill Murphy while reviewing Arche Age asked why not have a premium server? Within the mmorpg genre, I think free to play has ran it's course.
What do you guys think? I'm really looking forward to EQN, but for me it already has 2 strikes against it with the art style and the free to play monetization model.
Comments
I'm with you.
Free trial to a certain progression point, I'd be ok with. But we all know gold sellers and all the other assholes would just fuck that all up.
"Be water my friend" - Bruce Lee
From a business standpoint SOE is not making a mistake. The amount of money people drop on F2P games is ridiculous. In Archeage as messed up as Trion has made it you still have people dropping hundreds or even a grand or 2 into the game. You have the same thing with other F2P games. I have seen claims of people spending 10grand or more in various games, and based on the gear/items/gold they had it was believeable.
The days of a WoW game are over. Ideally I wish 95% of the F2P games would just disappear, but thats not going to happen either. The market is over saturated, but companies just keep pumping game after game out. Games are not made to last long anymore. Part of that is the companies fault and part of it is the players fault. People jump into a game play it for 16 hours/day reach max level in a few days then get bored. Move onto the next game and rinse / repeat. I would love a good solid sub-only game come out, but I dont see it happening anytime soon.
They are, but they have already made bigger ones anyway.
Death is nothing to us, since when we are, Death has not come, and when death has come, we are not.
They will probably have a subscription with certain perks for subscribing and a f2p option. I think that's what many of their games have. I know EQ 2 had it and Vanguard had it.
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Even if SOE say they wont rob you of your money using f2p.
They ultimately will.. Look at SWTOR
You tell the mass the water will just be warm enough for you to swim in. Then they start cranking up the heat... And you get burned.
So ofcourse id like to se a subscription!!!
And we will see a massive cash shop eventually!!
The money is in cash shops.. And greedy companies see that.. Stocks go up!!
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I think a hybrid system would probably work best. Areas where ore spawn would be voxels / trees would be voxels / and only certain types of terrain , walls etc would be voxels.. 100% voxels is just plain ugly and you have to jump through to many hoops to get it looking halfway decent but you get tons of pop in.
Mistake?
From a buisiness standpoint. No. FTP makes more money per player AND has more players nowadays. People just love to fall for the FTP traps, but noone admits it. Statistics don't lie tho.
From a player standpoint? Hell yes! That is a mistake. But who cares for players nowadays? The companies that care for their player and don't only see the $$$ are very few and far between.
MMOs finally replaced social interaction, forced grouping and standing in a line while talking to eachother.
Now we have forced soloing, forced questing and everyone is the hero, without ever having to talk to anyone else. The evolution of multiplayer is here! We won,... right?
I would prefer P2P as it might show SOE is committed to the long term than a short term money grab. That they are making a game of substance than one made with eye candy for the marketing department. That they are designing the game for long term play with a good endgame rather than frontloading the game to grab as much money from the short term players before they leave.
All that being said I am not sure we have a playerbase that is willing to play MMOs any more. These new players do not seem to have the patience or maturity to actually play and stick with a MMO so maybe a quick money grad F2P game makes a lot more sense from a business standpoint. Until consumers change I do not see it happening. What us old term players need is an unpopular side genre which the masses will mostly avoid. It may mean crappy graphics and low budgets but IMO anything would be much preferrable to poorly made games we see today.
Are they making a big mistake? Yes, of course.
To design around F2P is to design around being as cheap as possible while possibly making as much as possible. At no point is quality THE focus to make as much as possible.
While I am still playing AA as a F2P game in Japan, I know that wont last long because of the F2P changes damaging what was a good subscription game. I will even be playing Landmark when it comes out, but I know it will be casual and only to do some building when I feel the urge...and that's it. F2P games don't hold me because of their DESIGN and implementation limitations.
On the flip side, I rarely play subscription MMOs anymore because far more often than not, they are not worth paying for, no, not even 5c a day let alone 50c a day. Bad is bad and I don't pay for bad no matter how cheap it is. If I wanted to play a WoW style MMO, I would just play WoW...and if I wanted a DaoC clone I would play DaoC instead.
The genre as a whole is in bad shape due to developers stuck in a small design box and by major corporations that only focus on numbers on spreadsheets to figure out how to maximize profits.
They need to get out of the tiny design box and stop rehashing old ideas and corporations need to remove the chains from developers and let them actually make the games fully as people are not going to stick around a game made half-assed for long.
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It probably depends on what kind of effort they will do to keep out the goldsellers and crazy players.
If nothing is done, it is gonna cost them a lot of players.
OP you say 'mistake' as if P2P MMOS are doing so great ? other than couple of exceptions P2P market isn't lucrative at all.
Mistake would be to release it as a pure P2P game. Future is for hybrid models, give players a choice how they want to pay.
AA despite its problems is still making Trion and XL a lot of money.
No it is not a mistake, FTP is the way of the future like it or not. Remember SOE have the All Acess subscription that gives you access to all SOE games and the perks to be a subscriber are big enough to make it worth it. If you play 2 SOE games it is certainly a good deal.
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I wanted EQ3 instead of what is coming but what can we do. If the game turns out to be a money maker, then they were correct with the direction they choose.Epic Music: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vAigCvelkhQ&list=PLo9FRw1AkDuQLEz7Gvvaz3ideB2NpFtT1
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Well said.
If EQN is a quality experience worth playing for years, doesn't have pay walls every step of the way, and a cash shop I "want" to buy things from instead of "need" to, I'll be there.
F2P is a vague term, just like Sandbox, Hardcore/Casual, Action, etc that can be done many different ways. Saying a game is better simply because it has a Sub or box price is silly.
Done right, SOE will make money and long time fans if the game is a honest F2P system and the quality is worth investing time/money into.
All those that think F2P is some how a cash grab seem to have a different history then myself. Buying a $50-60 "finished" game to realize it isn't a month or two in compared to not having to spend a dime until I want to have a different definition of "cash grab."
This completely. Only real right answer.