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F2P implementation?
BaneShade
Member Posts: 33
I've been thinking a bit and would love to see if anyone can help me understand this in advance..
In what ways will the F2P service be implemented?
From reading official announcements it seems a dedicated player will be able to achieve everything a paying / VIP player is able to, except it'll take longer and more effort.
Now that can be interpreted in a couple of ways...
1. A free player will have to do more quests and exploration. Actually having fun playing the game.
(and hopefully become motivated to pay to get more out of the game, like maybe more experience or loot drops)
or
2. A free player will have to grind, and grind and grind and get sick and tired of the game, doing the same grind all the time.
(and thus hopefully spend loads of cash in the CS to get his l33t on and go on to grinding bigger things, requiring more CS)
Can anyone clarify which it will be?
Perfect World, for example, is a great example of no.2. It's an eternal grind to get ingredients, or pay for them in the CS, and then watch as they fail to produce what you wanted, after your high crafting skills fail over and over again. It's also absolutely necessary to buy more inventory space as the elaborate crafting system forces you to carry dozens upon dozens of various ingredients.
Apparently Runes of Magic works along the same lines. You pay to get a "chance" that your weapons might be improved, and more often than not it fails.
In my opinion, that kind of F2P is awful and not conducive for a long term experience.
I don't have any examples of the first kind, the good kind, because I haven't seen it done anywhere. Where they actually encourage free players to play and explore and have fun, without restricting them in all kinds of silly ways. F2P players should be encouraged to spend on a game, not forced to do so.
Comments
Its going to be a lot of number 2, and by a lot i mean devious amounts of grinding that involves re-rolling characters possibly hundreds of times on all of the servers. The way that Turbine has implemented their store so far is genious in how its more than just fluff and flaming zeebralions on acid. Free accounts will have roughly the equilevant amount of content as the game had during the initial launch, and thats where the grind comes in. It is possible, and rather easy to level up even with the "sigil" system in place, but you will run out of content very soon, and that means no end game raids or high level instances for you.
The run down on grindable content is as follows:
1. Pretty much all of the raid instances/popular loot runs and end game content from level 10 upwards.
2. Leveling sigils, which can be optained as end rewards from finishing adventures. Basically this means youre going to level up in cycles of 4 until you get your hands on a new sigil that will raise your cap for the time being.
3. A few classes and races, that may not be that game altering, but add a little depth into the menial task of rolling yet another character.
4. Charcater slots. As it is, you only get two slots per server, and assuming that youre going to tough it out as a free player for eternity, youre going to be deleting a loooooooooot of characters over the course of a month, not to mention a year.
While i personally dont see how this is going to create more subscribers into the already dying and angry user base, i do have to give credit when its due; this is pure evil genious. I dare any other MMO to try the approach Turbine is taking, not only with how they treat their existing customers, but with how they shit on their future customers.
That does sound rather awful. :-/
Can you explain why you'd have to reroll characters over and over again?
I usually pick one, maybe two characters, and stick with them. You're saying that's not an option?
Also, again according to official announcements, it's possible to earn turbine points to purchase access to higher level content and also the sigils for raising level caps. What kind of commitment is a potential player looking at to accrue enough points to purchase that kind of content?
Option one becomes boring a lot sooner than people seem to think. Most people can only delete and reroll a new character so many times on the exact same content before it becomes insanely boring. Make no mistake it will take a lot of rerolls to get enough Turbine points to but everything a paying subscriber will get. Of course Turbine says they encourage you to do that because if you are busy with that you will not notice how light end game is in a game going on year 4. Not to mention doing all that with only 2 character slots will mean lots of deleting characters you may like or spending the points you get for favor, favor is limited so its not like you can level one character and pay for it all, on character slots.
DDO has not real crafting the only crafting type grinds are Dragon Touched armor and the SHroud but what you can build is very limited but the best stuff DDO has for gear.
The fact remains DDO has limited content and grinding the same few quests at high level has long ago become tiresome to many vets. A new player will have lots of quests, but if questing is not what you or other players like DDO offers no other diversions. There are reasons DDO has a small but dedicated fan base and so far not much they are doing with the F2P is going to make it appeal to a broader audience. I am sure tons of people will try it and play the early levels but I honestly wonder if a large % will ever see high level and in doing so encourage Turbine to add more things for players like me who have rolled tons of characters over the years and want to play my favorite characters in new high level quests.
You have to reroll over and over in order to earn enough Turbine points to not have to spend money. Favor is a limited thing and Turbine is not giving you tons of points for favor or other accomplishments because it defeats the purpose of charging money for a shop.
You can stick to one or two but you will need to spend real money to get all the content then as there is no way one character or two will earn that kind of Turbine points over its life.
So you can reroll for months on end to accrue enough points and in the meantime never see high level allowing Turbine to slowly add to the game if at all, sorry but their history is to get slower each year not speed up, or you can spend money and have more character slots, more content and see end game sooner. The choice will be yours but do not expect Turbine to make it easy to earn Turbine points since their new business model for the game is the cash shop. If they were adding advertising in game or other ways to make money it might be that way, but the cash shop is going to make or break then as it has been proven this game is not a money maker on subscriptions alone so expecting tons of the F2P to become subscribers is wishful thinking and not smart business planning since 3 1/2 years have shown not many people want to pay $15 s month for DDO.
The way that the Turbine Points are distributed at the moment not only encourages for new players to re-roll (which i think is good, this way those not familiar with D&D mechanics and especially the 3.5 rules that DDO enforces become more familiar with the core mechanics of character "builds") but basically forces them to re-roll. As it is, youre given 25 TP for every 100 favor you get, if i remember correctly. Favor is gathered by finishing adventures and it does stack up quite quickly once you get the hang of things such as the different difficulty settings and such. BUT, once again, free accounts are limited in content, so realistically speaking youre going to have to work hard to even unlock ONE of the end game raids for you to enjoy.
Of course you can roll a couple of characters and play with them, but like i said in my first post, theres not much to do after you hit level 10 unless you buy adventure packs, and even then youre missing out on some of the popular and generally liked low-mid level content. So if we assume that its possible to unlock the 32 point builds with 1750 favor on free accounts, that would mean youd be able to amass around 440 TP per character. This is roughly half of the current price of one end game raid. You have two character slots per server, so gathering around 15 000 TP for all the races/classes and most of the adventure packs would propably take you years, if youre a casual gamer who doesnt have 10 hours a day to burn on running the same old quests and re-rolling characters.
And this is where this whole thing fails, because i cant for the life of me see how the new marketbase is going to move onto subscribers, or VIP as were now called, when they are most likely going to be apalled by the D&D mechanics, and later on by the current implementation of "free" playing.
The way that the Turbine Points are distributed at the moment not only encourages for new players to re-roll (which i think is good, this way those not familiar with D&D mechanics and especially the 3.5 rules that DDO enforces become more familiar with the core mechanics of character "builds") but basically forces them to re-roll. As it is, youre given 25 TP for every 100 favor you get, if i remember correctly. Favor is gathered by finishing adventures and it does stack up quite quickly once you get the hang of things such as the different difficulty settings and such. BUT, once again, free accounts are limited in content, so realistically speaking youre going to have to work hard to even unlock ONE of the end game raids for you to enjoy.
Of course you can roll a couple of characters and play with them, but like i said in my first post, theres not much to do after you hit level 10 unless you buy adventure packs, and even then youre missing out on some of the popular and generally liked low-mid level content. So if we assume that its possible to unlock the 32 point builds with 1750 favor on free accounts, that would mean youd be able to amass around 440 TP per character. This is roughly half of the current price of one end game raid. You have two character slots per server, so gathering around 15 000 TP for all the races/classes and most of the adventure packs would propably take you years, if youre a casual gamer who doesnt have 10 hours a day to burn on running the same old quests and re-rolling characters.
And this is where this whole thing fails, because i cant for the life of me see how the new marketbase is going to move onto subscribers, or VIP as were now called, when they are most likely going to be apalled by the D&D mechanics, and later on by the current implementation of "free" playing.
I think Turbine would be much happier if the store works then adding a few subscriptions. I honestly believe DDO is the test bed for future games for Turbine using this model. It was just cheaper and easier to use a borderline failing game as a test rather then making an entire new game to test this idea. DDOs future will hinge on this, but I am not so sure that Turbine really cares how DDO does in the long run. Sure if this makes it a huge hit Turbine most likely develops it further, but if it fails Turbine learns from this and works on the store for future games.
Of course. And while i understand that its nice to have those mnemonic pots avaivable at a whip of a credit card while trying to slay Abbott, i still doubt the sales are going to be as huge as expected. At this point im not even sure if Turbine actually expects the store to rake in cash, seeing how the store didnt even bother working half the time i tinkered with it during the beta.
I still think DDO is the test bed for this technology and not really the game built to use it. I think they are building a game(Harry Potter MMO) that will use the store extensively, but since they had the perfect test bed(A failing DDO with no buzz since release and nearly no players) they decided to roll it out and see if it could work and if they get lucky revive DDO. I think DDO surviving might be a secondary consideration considering how the Paiz family acts and treats it and the fact that they seem not to know the game as well as they should. Then again DDO has had a history of people in charge not knowing the game as well as you would hope.
I guess as a D&D fan, as I would think most of the long time players are, this is all we have as an MMO. Maybe just maybe another company makes a DDO2 in a better world and truly crafts the game to be all that D&D can be.
I think DDO:Unlimited is genius and the best thing that could happen DDO and a very smart move by Turbine and its great that they are willing to invest so much time and money to bring a dying game back to life! This is what alot of people have been asking for the last 3 years and nor Turbine delivers and the way they are doing it is awesome!
But if you enjoy the game, dont expect not to pay anything at all. Playing completly free will be very boring and grindy.
I think maybe 1/3 of the game is Free which actually is alot when thihnking about the amont of game you get with out paying anything. If you have fun and want more fun then you pay for it, nothing wierd about it.
If WoW = The Beatles
and WAR = Led Zeppelin
Then LotrO = Pink Floyd
I was getting really gung-ho to hunker down and do some real dungeoning, but with all that has come to light here, DDO seems even worse than some of the other F2P games. It's a real shame, as I truly enjoyed the game a while back on a free trial.
It's very sad that you have to create and trash characters non-stop just to accrue turbine points. I know for a fact that's something I won't like. I'm a veteran D&D player so I don't need an artificial learning curve either.
Dang. What now. If that's truly how they're going to run the game, I guess they really don't care about participation at all.
I don't care if a free player has to work very hard at getting, say, awesome epic sets.. or he'll have to save up for a looong time to buy a mount in game. That's all cool. But this model seems designed to push players away in disgust.
Sad
-----------------------------------------------
Edit: I'm not trying to be a complete freeloader either, though Free2Play does indicate it should be possible.
How much would it cost in $ total, using only the CS, to raise two characters to max level as well as get access to all the various parts of the game?
Eh no its designed so people who enjoy the game should pay money for it, did you really expect them to run a charity? You dont have to create new character and farm TP but its probably the fastest way if you are not going to pay.
this is not a korean f2p grinder...
If WoW = The Beatles
and WAR = Led Zeppelin
Then LotrO = Pink Floyd
Interesting view you have there. From what ive gathered, the only place Turbine has invested lots of time and money to is some far out parties that have lead to irresponsible delays, which have been sweeped under the rug, because apparently Turbine is above all common courtesy. And what comes to three years of wishes.... Well, lets just say that im not having high hopes for half-orcs or half-elves making it into the game even by mod. 15. Not that there ever was much of communication going on, but it seems that these days its non-existant as something as crucial as tech support doesnt exist on Turbines side, that task has been forwarded to other end users who help out of pure kindness. I dont see nothing awesome in this. Turbine delivers? Theyre not only almost 12 months late with mod 9, but it lacks about 50% of the content we were supposed to get. But hey, lets add 30 low level quests, double the amount of public instances and add that cash shop, because you know the penniless kids and Brazilians are going to rush this like it was thanksgiving.
You want to see Turbine in action? Have a look at this ad campaign right here. Its all good on paper and all that jazz, but seriously, how many people are going to leave cursing because they feel like theyve been cheated? They could at least mention that the content you get for free is good till level 10-12, that way nobody should feel like theyve been cheated out of time and bandwith. Ill be glad for the first two or three weeks when i can roll a new character and actually enjoy playing through the harbor and marketplace instances with some fresh blood, but that fun isnt going to last long, because its obvious that people who play F2P MMOs arent the type to shell out 50$ just to be able to have a peek at the end game content.
Ugh. Whatever, just make Abbott doable and ill buy 2 years worth of subs damn it.
I'll repost my edit here:
I'm not trying to be a complete freeloader either, though Free2Play does indicate it should be possible.
How much would it cost in $ total, using only the CS, to raise two characters to max level as well as get access to all the various parts of the game?
Id say somewhere around 200 $ US would be realistic. Of course this is a figure that im just throwing out there based on what i remember from the beta, and thats prone to changes, because not even Turbine would go with the insane exchange rates they had during beta. If you ask my opinion, id say subscribe for a month. That way you can play through some of the premier modules and end game raids and maybe make mental notes as to what you should acquire on a free account. That is if you absolutely dont want to pay the monthly fee, or dont afford to.
I'm wondering what will net more worth in the long run.
From what I understand, what you buy in the CS sticks with you permanently, but what you get as a VIP won't be accessible if you don't pay suddenly.
What about VIPs? How much CS content is necessary for VIPs to purchase in order to fully access the game?
VIP is nothing more than Turbines new stupid gimmick for subscribers. Maybe to add some shine into the act of paying monthly fees in the eyes of all the hungry F2Pers? I dont know, but i personally still think its silly.
And the reason im suggesting that you go VIP for a month is the sole reason that not all the premium modules that are for sale are worth it in the long run. In a month you will be able to get more than a good look at at least the mid level stuff come mod. 9, as theyve added more exp bonuses and what not.
Wow..i can not belive what a loads of lies the this guy is posting!
He is clearly on agenda to turn you away from playing DDO. Dont listen to a word he says
Reality and answer to your question is simple:
Every 4 levels (of 20) you will need leveling sigil. Its either bought (costs 2$) , or gained as random drop.
And its really random. I got it on one character at lvl 3 while doing random mission. On other I bought it.
Thats about only thing you NEED.
All else is purely optional.
Additional missions , additional classes and races. Extra character slots ...
You dont need that to play, neither will you be gimped in any way if you dont have it.
But if you are serious about the game. You will want to invest few bucks.
And i calculated that you can have all the benefits for 6$ , and even that not every month.
And you still have normal subscription, if thats your style.
So you see
DDO is all about choice. Something other MMOs dont give you
Of course not. Im just stating the facts as they are, the last thing id want is potential puggies to turn away. The current state of affairs is just that; nothing pretty. You wont be gimped, true, but you wont be taking part in any of the popular runs either. How far did you make it as far as level ups are conserned, if i may ask? Im asking this out of curiosity, as i myself tried the beta as a free player as well as a subscriber, and im not going to lie when it comes to something Turbine themselves like to talk soft about.
Its the fact that some of old subscribers are pissed - they payed subscription so long, and now Turbine are giving the game for free. Its envy.
You are saying that you will not be there with top competitive players if you dont pay.
What do you expect ?
If you are casual player , you will be able to fully enjoy the game - for free or with minimum investment.
If you are hardcore player , and want to run with other hardcore players... than drop 15$ sub.
The choice is yours.
DDO is surely laying foundations of new buisness model for MMOs , and you will see more and more companies going this way.
Doing all the quests in the game on Elite gives a bit more than 2500 Favor. You get 25 TPs per 100 Favor.
So if you ran ALL the content in the game on Elite (including the premium stuff of course) you would earn 500 TPs. Quest packs cost 300-700 TPs. These contain 5 quests on average.
So, running EVERYTHING on the highest difficulty would buy you ONE quest pack...
I think it's save to say that "earning TPs" is just a publicity stunt. The amount of favor you need to generate to buy even 1 quest pack is HUGE. Now add to that that FtP players only have access to a tiny portion of the game's content and you understand why you would have to reroll your characters a couple of times to earn enough TPs to buy one quest pack. Let alone all, that is completely out of the question.
If you play a lot, the best approach is probably to subscribe for 3 months and then drop the game. If you play very little, buying quest packs can make sense i guess but you need to be aware that 3 quests cost $5 or so.
If you are concerned about the power level of your character, you will be weaker than a character who uses the shop. In the shop players can buy additional mana and temporary stats.
Mana is limited per quest in this game so buying Mana for casting classes makes a WORLD of a difference.
Buying the stat potions is less noticable and has the biggest effect on melee. You become stronger, quite a bit (+1 dmg, +2 AC, +20 HP, +1 to all saves) but not as much as unlimited Mana for casters.
For some classes you need a Monk splash (1 or 2 levels) which costs $$$ to not be gimped and for WIzards being WF (the $$$ race) is a huge boon.
I would say you are expected to buy something to make their business model viable, but you are at least getting an extended free play in a limited way, in which to decide if you want to buy more.
On that basis I would suggest give it a try and then decide if for you it is worth buying some content (some of the quest packs are better than others, and you don't need them all). For me DDO is about the journey, planning for end game is the best way to spoil that journey.
What do you have to lose, a bit of time, and not even that if you enjoy it.
So in the end people disagree, yet agree. I'll try the game of course. Nothing to lose but a bit of time
Just one thing about F2P vs P2P... People often think it's entirely justifiable that the free crowd, the poor and wretched ones, deserve to be locked out of most of the goodness in the game, and that - if they want to experience it - they have to cough up the dough, like everyone else, in the free2play game.
I challenge that notion. People who play for free may have the luxury of enjoying themselves, but they also serve another purpose. Life! A game devoid of players is a game that's dead and boring.
In that context, I guess it makes sense for Turbine to lock out all the scroogy noobs from the advanced content, so returning heroes can feel suitably overpowered.
I just wish they wouldn't call it free to play then. It should be something more like "Play as window dressing and stage props" or "Act the part as peasant while others who pay actually get to play the full game"
See, they could have just kept things the way they were, with a few very minor changes:
Isn't that actually what they've done? Everything is pretty much as it were, except now you can buy stuff for real money and the doors are opened for the peasants to wander in.
I firmly believe a good F2P game encourages people to pay rather than forces them. Let the game be open for everyone to reach the end without spending a dime. Yet, create incentives for people who wish to live larger than life in the game.
Let people have the option to buy things that you usually have to work hard for in the game. Like, mounts, weapons, recipes, etc.
Because they will buy. That has already been proven in many other F2P games. Many people love shortcuts.
However, when you make things unreasonably difficult or convoluted, many players simply quit. Casual and serious alike.
I played Perfect World for a while and got a decently high level character. I also spent real money on it. Buying things like mounts and ingredients. The game forced me to spend money on buying ingredients, as I practically got no drops anymore due to being too high level - unless I would farm with an alt, or pay others outrageous prices on the marketplace.
Okay, fair enough, after having done the grind for all my previous crafting, and begun to run out of options, I decided to escape the grind and buy enough ingredients to make several weapons.
Here is where the game gets you. You pay for your life to be easier. It was okay. Sure, the server and client are programmed to snub you of the stuff you're looking for, to add incentive, but hacking away for 8 hours was still an option. I just didn't want to, and so the magic of buying digital products with real money happened.
Where the game immediatedly failed afterwards was with the utilization of those ingredients. Despite having maxed out crafting skill, all my weapons came out plain. Yet, with lower level skills, previously I've had (very incentive building) "miraculous" luck and gotten strong magical enchantments.
It was a total wake up call. It screamed: They're just snubbing you. They take your money and don't care about your gaming experience. An obvious multi stage ploy to wring as much money from you as possible. First by depriving you, artificially, of loot drops as you progress, and secondly by increasing your risk of crafting failure.
Quite honestly, even though you have the option of doing something, sometimes it's better left alone. In this case, the game should have been more fair. It would have kept me playing, spending more money and time on it. Instead, the ruthless "slot machine / lottery" mechanism ruined the game for me and made me quit the same day. It just wasn't worth it playing a game where the developers cared so little about the actual gaming experience.
So returning to DDO. If Turbine creates incentives for people to enjoy the game more easily - that would be great. But if they put artificial road blocks in the way, that are too obvious, and that hamper the feeling of being connected to the world lest the wallet is wide open all the time - then we have a situation similar in nature to that in Perfect World. The money trap becomes too obvious. Instead of incentivizing the player to spend money, they force the player.
Imagine a game situation where you have to cross a huge desert to reach a citadel, for example.
Instead of simply closing off this portion of the game to players, they could motivate people to spend money while playing it.
For example, the desert is full of nasty critters. If you have a fast mount you can run through and arrive relatively unharmed, ready for battle, at the citadel. If you don't have a mount, well you have to fight your way through, wasting time, wasting potions.
You could also let people brew their own potions.. but make the ingredients tricky, though not overly hard, to find. Enough to discourage most people from making it a regular habit. On the other hand, offer the potions for sale in the cash shop.
There are many ways of encouraging spending, without being too obvious about it. The worst is when a game makes it stand out like a sore pimple. This is in your way, and you have to spend to get rid of it.
Annoying.
But even worse is: Thank you for all your money, here are your things. They will probably fail, so you have to buy again.
I know Turbine are closing off certain parts of the game, and according to all the feedback in this thread - they're making it ridiculously hard for anyone to ever get there by simply playing hard enough.
That makes the money trap obvious. It's not an encouragement or an incentive. It's a stop sign, or a direct order. You want to have fun? Pay up! No money? Stay out!
They might end up being successful with it, but I still think encouraging people is the better way to go.
If they absolutely want to put in big road blocks to get paid, they shouldn't call the game "Free 2 Play," but rather "Free 2 Pay."
Hopefully this huge rant made sense. Thanks for reading if you made it this far.
Nice post Bane Shade, but you obviously have no clue about D&D or DDO
Your post adresses DDO as it was WOW, or some F2P game likes Runes of magic.
DDO is nothing like that.
I suggest you go and play DDO , learn how its mechanic differs from usual MMOs.
And than come back and post here...
Case closed
double post (damn browser error)
Im not going to quote that wall of text
The thing is that DDO is not designed like korean F2P games like perfect world (or maybe that one is chinese) and I dont think that Unlimited is meant for people who are used to the asian games.
Instead its designed so that people (casual players) have control over what they want to pay for instead of just letting everyone pay $15 no matter if they play 10 hours/month or 100 hours/month. Its a flexible buisnes model instead of a rigid one that gives us, the customers power over how much we want to spend and on what. They are giving you maybe 1/3 of the game completly free, then if you want more, you pay for what you want. The only thing you can do is to try the game and see what DDO:Unlimited is really like!
Personally I hope this is the future for MMOs and not the way Cryptic/SOE is doing with their buisness model..
If WoW = The Beatles
and WAR = Led Zeppelin
Then LotrO = Pink Floyd