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So, after 10 years of F2P/B2P instead of Subscription, are we better off?
Quesa
Member UncommonPosts: 1,432
I posed this question to reddit users and ended up having a decent conversation regarding this topic. What do you think? Reddit link: https://www.reddit.com/r/MMORPG/comments/3z590r/so_after_10_years_of_f2pb2p_instead_of/
So it’s been nearly a decade since we started to see the proliferation of F2P and B2P business models and maybe the last five years where those models started to take a major foothold in the MMORPG market replacing the long time standard subscription based MMO.
I’ve noticed recently (within the last 2-3 years) a drastic increase in the amount of posts/threads/articles which touch on the topic of freemium or P2W games. After my latest run in with a new MMORPG that I am watching (Black Desert Online) there have been numerous threads that crop up on many sites that I frequent in addition to reddit and the games official website. These threads usually have the tone of a pleading 8 year old begging the publisher not to introduce RMT or P2W items on the cash-shop. (Essentially, those items that can be bought for real money and sold on the in-game market for in-game currency or those items that offer the highest or competitive gear for real money)
I remember thinking, oh so many years ago, about how the F2P/B2P business would allow these practices to fester and metastasize within the MMO genre for the simple fact that these publishers need to make money in one form or the other.
We’ve all witnessed, recently, the utter destruction that Trion perpetrated upon ArcheAge that, from all reports (and my own personal experience with the Alpha), was looking to be one of that year’s top games. I can’t help but wonder if after many years of people begging for more games to go with the F2P/B2P business models are now regretting their, possibly, ill-advised advocacy for the switch from the subscription model.
If you believe that the F2P/B2P models have been, in the end, harmful to the genre then do you also believe that we need and should see a return to the subscription model? Or is it that game publishers are too hopeful that they will be able to wrangle the MMO community by putting out the next big white Unicorn of a game and rake in the dough only to find out it’s not working as they hoped, so they swap to a more aggressive mode of obtaining revenue?
Comments
For me, I am better off. There are so many games to play, and can sample them at zero cost is really a great thing. I probably will never sub any game, mmo or not, again.
For example most sub based games now contain micro transactions. Most of the AAA Titles that have gone F2P/B2P have not ended up as P2W. Furthermore since P2W seems to be wildly subjective it is hard to quantify which titles are actually P2W.
Bottom line, you can post about the pros and cons of all the different payment models, it won't actually change anything. My advice is to stick with titles that work for you and skip the ones that do not.
-Atziluth-
- Never underestimate the predictability of stupidity.
atziluth said: I've been having a fairly good discussion on Reddit and one other game-specific forum, but maybe this forum is still as toxic as ever. Post your thoughts, that's what I asked, if not then so be it.
It has got so bad that i finally just give up,i have returned to playing single player games and imo they are big time superior as the mmorpg's have been nothing but cheap games with a login screen.
Bottom line is i am having fun gaming again by ignoring all these crap mmorpg's.Sure it is a sad sort of LONER state to be gaming alone,but why would i support crap games,i'll support the better games until someone actually makes a mmorpg worthy of an ongoing sub or cash shop.
Cash shops could NEVER exist without a login screen and that has been the sad gimmick behind this crap.They are all releasing 1/2 of a game with mass promises and NOBODY is delivering on those promises.All this new business strategy is doing is allowing developers to release unfinished work,something that would have never happened 10 years ago.You tried this shit 10 years ago your game would be flamed,your studio flamed and few would have supported it.
Never forget 3 mile Island and never trust a government official or company spokesman.
Don't be terrorized! You're more likely to die of a car accident, drowning, fire, or murder! More people die every year from prescription drugs than terrorism LOL!
All of these trash F2P games on the market now are hardly a good thing. The market would be much better off going back to the subscription model. By doing so not only would game communities improve and the prospect of P2W business models decrease, but the reduced number of games on the market would ensure healthier game populations for longer sustained periods of time with fewer trash games flooding the market. The only argument people who like F2P games can validly make is that the games are free thereby allowing them to play them without committing to them but that is hardly a benefit when they are all nothing but P2W trash not worthy of patronizing for more than a few weeks.
I also strongly feel that these are the same ones creating the toxic communities we tend to find in MMO's today. None of them are real MMO players, they're just here coz it's free. It's the same leet speekin, smack talkin FPS crowd that make FPS games such toxic, hacked, cheat infested sewers.
Finding a solution isn't an easy thing though. I dunno, some sort of hybrid sub/CS mix but the sub would have to drop to a much lower amount and the CS would have to be completely P2W free, fluff items only. Something like that might work.
How far would a sub have to drop before you would start paying again, with a shop selling pure fluff items? $7.50 a month? $5.00 a month? How low can you afford to go and still discourage the idiots? The most important thing to do is to stamp out any kind of pay to win items, I think that alone would satisfy most people regardless of what else happens.
While I personally prefer the subscription model trying to blame the low quality of games over the last 10 years on F2P is ridiculous.
Personally I don't think it is worse or better. Regardless it is the players which have caused the industry to be the way it is now. If people would stop making those micro-transactions then the industry will stop having them.
I'm not suggesting that a big budget guarentees a hit, we know that's not the case, but a low budget game is going to struggle to be good. I think the target for most F2P games is "good enough", or "it'll do". Look at eastern MMO's. Ok they may look good but that's easy, just license Unreal or Cryengine. They're very generic, gender locked, grindy and the end game is all PvP. All of which adds up to a huge saving on development costs.
Western developers made a different mistake. They tried to emulate WoW, there was even that quote from someone from EA saying that any MMO that didn't follow the WoW formula was doomed to fail. Idiot.
I think most people prefer the f2p model considering how many companies have abandoned month to month. The problem with month to month is that the developer is rewarded for using time sinks. F2P does not benefit from time sinks. They can also lose the customer if they are foolish with pay to win. Buy the Box is definitely the preferable route, but support will grow lax as time goes on.
Most hackers are thwarted from properly implementing MVC principles. The problem a lot of mmo companies have is that they use and engine like Unreal and monkey it to work for an MMO. They do stuff like movement client side then use some 3rd party add-on to hopefully prevent cheating.
Sinister Savant MMORPG Community
The first big(ger) converted title was DDO in 2009, before that there was only a small batch of lame titles in the east. And I wouldn't even say 2009 as a turning point, more like 2011 when f2p / b2p was already something you had to face with.
So as others wrote above already, tone that 10 years down to 4 or 5
For the other part of the OP, I'm with observer or Torval, a payment model has barely anything to do with a game's quality and fun factor. So
"you believe that the F2P/B2P models have been, in the end, harmful to the genre" - nope, I don't think so.
"then do you also believe that we need and should see a return to the subscription model" - don't care much personally, I still sub occasionally, but also like the flexibility of the freemium / f2p / b2p models. And also, as observer writes, if sub was so good, it'd still be the main thing... and it's not. I guess that tells a lot.
edit: it went up at the same time
My main (one of them mains
But at the risk of derailing this thread I feel there's a different business model that's doing more damage to peoples wallets and the industry.
I think a bigger issue is the early release access that many (I have myself so not judging) paid into at least once in their life recently. The pricing model is getting absurd. The incentive to finish a game that would be considered by many a quality product has diminished. Companies are getting a large return on investment by not finishing a game. Sometimes it's easier to look at how much you still have to finish and just throw in the towel. Slow down production and ride the thing out for a couple of years until the majority of your early adapters have moved on to the next game. It's basic economics and its destroying the genre frankly. I don't blame MMORPG for expanding their outlook to other forms of gaming. The term MMORPG is becoming known in gaming as a huge waste of time. And huge waste of time is not something that is entertaining or makes money. Drives the people away, interest wanes and all you're left with is a Kickstarter wasteland.