Black Desert will be B2P in the West.

observer

http://black-desert.com/news/press-release-black-desert-west-will-be-b2p/

"Black Desert Online will be released in early 2016 and will not be free to play or use a subscription model. Instead players will buy the game once and can purchase vanity and convenience items."

Mikeha

Thats great news. 

Buccaneer

I agree with the above.  It's great to hear they're going with the B2P model.

Kajidourden

Is there even a place to sign up for the future beta yet? 
with an early 2016 release you would think a western beta would be right around the corner.

filmoret

Kajidourden said:

Is there even a place to sign up for the future beta yet? 
with an early 2016 release you would think a western beta would be right around the corner.

You can play the Russian version and patch it to English if you want.  I need a faster computer in order to play it correctly.

Loktofeit

"Black Desert Online will be released in early 2016 and will not be free to play or use a subscription model. Instead players will buy the game once and can purchase vanity and convenience items."

Pointing out again, like I did with GW2, that it's all about how the business model is positioned.  

If these guys didn't charge an up front fee and said it's free to play, that would have positioned it against subscription, and this thread would have been ripping "convenience items" pay-to-win, cash grab, rawr evil bad bad megacorpco!

 Instead, they position against free-to-play by charging you for the client, and no one says a damn thing about the item mall.  

Thupli

This was not on my radar, but now I am interested.

Thupli

ttDMKano said:

Robokapp said:

ah, the death of F2P.

Delicious.

It still has a cash shop - so the only difference between this and F2P it will have an upfront cost and the cash shop.

After a while they'll go F2P and ramp up the cash shop more.

They say cosmetic Cash Shop, makes me think of gw2... Not great, but not game breaking

Homura235

Great news...especially considering I will be subbed to Blade & Soul for 3 months (with the Master Founder Pack) and my guess has always been that these 2 games would launch within 30 days of each other, just like ESO and Wildstar did, vying for my MMO attention (and money). But Black Desert going B2P is perfect cuz I can just buy the game and then play it at my convenience, without having to worry about "wasting" sub money if I am not playing. Also, GW2 has the best payment model of any MMO (IMHO) and I am very happy to see that Black Desert is using a similar model. Can't wait for Q1 !!!

lodestone90

Of course it is for them to make more money. But I would prefer a B2P vs a F2P because it creates a barrier to entry. It will help keep out some people that want to do nothing but spam or yell in chat.

Black-Magic

B2P will also keep a lot of those stupid trolls out of the game (well here is to hoping).

rojoArcueid

DMKano said:

Robokapp said:

ah, the death of F2P.

Delicious.

So B2P+ cash shop is better because it has an upfront cost?

Yes. If the company is not a greedy trash then B2P will ensure the game has a small and decent cash shop, and the game still is profitable. GW2 showed that is possible, TSW and ESO did it too (TSW isnt very successful for other reasons, going B2P helped them a lot).

F2P is way too risky, too dependant on whales, and the chances to become P2W or shutting down and wasting peoples money are way too high. B2P does not have that problem or has a very low chance of failing if done right (again, if the company is not a greedy piece of trash).

dplcaf

I hope it's a good B2P game and that they stick to the cosmetic only, paid expansions whatever. But please do not nickle and dime me. The game is great, I have been playing on the RU server and loving every minute of it. Will no doubt buy the game, I just hope they don't try screwing the business model up.

Wizardry

Cash shop...nope
Vanity?For how long ,can we trust that never changes?Vanity but is it really?

After a game releases it only lasts about a month then almost all sales diminish,so those so called vanity items are their only profits thereafter aside from some cheap xpack.This is what happened from day 1,it was only vanity then look where we are now.

To me if a game doesn't want a sub fee,they know in their minds you will not get any updates or content until the next xpack and that the game is lacking in total content.

I don't like the unknown of cash shops nor do i like a developer making content that i can't have unless i pay extra.SOE now DB does this and it is a total joke,they just add in assets that are already made for the game and say here if you want them pay us extra,it is not like they put in a single effort to the cash shop.

I rather a developer confident in their product and team AFTER the release that it warrants a sub fee but i also want a free trial,i don't like paying for the unknown.The last 2 unknown were H1z1/Skyforge and man was i disappointed in both.Geesh before that i bought Skyrim on a whim and i did not like that game either.

orionblack

DMKano said:

Robokapp said:

ah, the death of F2P.

Delicious.

It still has a cash shop - so the only difference between this and F2P it will have an upfront cost and the cash shop.

After a while they'll go F2P and ramp up the cash shop more.

This is obviously a smart way to make the most profit - but I fail to see how this is better for the players.

F2P - free game with cash shop
B2P - pay upfront with cash shop

So B2P+ cash shop is better because it has an upfront cost?

No...the main difference is you won't have every tom , dick , and harry downloading the game with multiple accounts.....or bots...or free drifters. 

Krypty

Wizardry said:

To me if a game doesn't want a sub fee,they know in their minds you will not get any updates or content until the next xpack and that the game is lacking in total content.

Guild Wars 2 would be the immediate, incredibly successful example of why your statement isn't necessarily true. If this game follows GW2's path, it's a great thing for gamers.

holdenhamlet

DMKano said:

lodestone90 said:

Of course it is for them to make more money. But I would prefer a B2P vs a F2P because it creates a barrier to entry. It will help keep out some people that want to do nothing but spam or yell in chat.

You mean like the barrier that $150 Alpha Archeage had where they were banning over 10K accounts (bought via stolen credit cards) a day?

Yeah, those gold sellers sure were kept away...... ehem


Even if the game cost $1,000 it would be full of gold spammers - because on the black market the stolen CC numbers are traded in 10K lots for dirt cheap

Don't assume every game is going to fail like your favorite game Archeage.  Thankfully Trion is in no way involved with this one.

As for the OP, I'm super psyched about this news!

Loktofeit

DMKano said:

Robokapp said:

Stolen CCs are law enforcement issues not gaming company issues.

If you only knew how absolutely wrong that statement is.....

This is one of the areas where it's clear a lot of 'indies' have no clue how screwed they're going to be the first time a major exploit or credit fraud slaps them in the face. 

saurus123

rojoArcueid said:

DMKano said:

Robokapp said:

ah, the death of F2P.

Delicious.

So B2P+ cash shop is better because it has an upfront cost?

Yes. If the company is not a greedy trash then B2P will ensure the game has a small and decent cash shop, and the game still is profitable. GW2 showed that is possible, TSW and ESO did it too (TSW isnt very successful for other reasons, going B2P helped them a lot).

F2P is way too risky, too dependant on whales, and the chances to become P2W or shutting down and wasting peoples money are way too high. B2P does not have that problem or has a very low chance of failing if done right (again, if the company is not a greedy piece of trash).

cash shop is p2w in korea and same in russia (with have f2p and subscription)

so same will be here, but they just ask you to pay $$ before you try it out

zaberfangx

gameguy369 said:

Wizardry said:

To me if a game doesn't want a sub fee,they know in their minds you will not get any updates or content until the next xpack and that the game is lacking in total content.

Guild Wars 2 would be the immediate, incredibly successful example of why your statement isn't necessarily true. If this game follows GW2's path, it's a great thing for gamers.

Would not want it to follow gw2 path to much, one can still buy gold with real money in gw2 but gear not so much important as when I played it for months ago, but it's where alot money came from in gw2 grind or just pay real money for gold that people end up doing so. But with BD gear count more and gold is more important as it can end make it very p2w if they end up very close to gw2 in how they make alot there money. And but the only part that I'm not sure where other part money going come from they cosmetic only can game them so far and the box cost.

simplius

smart move, they know that they cant duplicate trions strategy

now, they will get a decent pile of cash from a lot of disgruntled AA players

and the circle of life continues..

psiic

I played the russian english patch and the game is actually much worse than I expected and I expected archeage. I have been drooling over this game for 2 years and now having played it , it is totally off my radar. 

Ideabox

Just want this game on xbox one  
Ever since Eso I kinda got a thing for mmo's on them :pleased: 

holdenhamlet

psiic said:

I played the russian english patch and the game is actually much worse than I expected and I expected archeage. I have been drooling over this game for 2 years and now having played it , it is totally off my radar. 

Weird cause I just started and it's even better than I expected.

The character creator alone is amazing.  After fiddling with the settings it runs great and looks amazing.  The combat is ridiculously amazing for an MMO.  

The amount of detail and customization available is outrageous!

Just one example- When you go to take a screenshot of your character, his or her head follows the cursor around... WTF!

I think I may just hunker down and live on the RU server.  Screw waiting for like 6 months for an NA translation.  Plus it's free lol.  Why wait 6 months to pay money for a game I can play free right now?

Oxtrom

DMKano said:

Robokapp said:

Stolen CCs are law enforcement issues not gaming company issues.

If you only knew how absolutely wrong that statement is.....

When a CC owner realizes that they have erroneous charges they contact their bank, the bank contacts the game company to ask for the money back PLUS the chargeback fee.

Those chargeback fees add up to a lot when dealing with 10s of thousands of compromised CCs.

So this is a HUGE issue for game companies - they have to credit all the money back to those CCs before they get called by the bank otherwise it ends up costing the game companies money.

Every MMO company has a special team that deals exclusively with CC fraud, and their entire purpose is to reverse these charges immediately and flag the card as compromised.

And guess what those gold sellers are never found so they just buy another lot of 10K stolen CCs and do it again the next day.

US law enforcement has no jurisdiction in China

Why do you think gold sellers are so incessant during game launches eventhough they are getting banned by the thousands every day - it has no effect on their operations

Dont worry worry DMKano not every company is trion, pretty sad for you tho, with the release of blade and soul and black desert your favourite game Archeage will be dead, if it isn't already

Malabooga

Great news, as i said, both single player and MMOs are converging to this model of B2P+pay for content (aka DLCs) with convenience shop.

Its best compromise between players and publishers/devs.