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Free to Play Gamers Movement
Interesting
Member UncommonPosts: 973
I figure this might interest a lot of people here.
The change is comming.
Spread the word.
Keep it bumped.
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Comments
"Free to play" is a lie, and anybody with half a brain knows it. The game costs money to create. The game costs money to run. These costs will be paid for by hook or by crook, or the game will close. I prefer the costs to be up front and known.
"Free to play" is not a lie, quit stretching things. You *can* play for free, all of em. The question is if it's "free to enjoy", and seeing how most people get butthurt over anything being held back for a price, I'd say it's not likely for any of em.
I for one have *played* tons of F2Ps for free, yet only truly enjoyed a handful. Only spent money on two, and that amount is still under 30$ in total. I for one am happy to see a movement going on, but they have to battle the whole anti-movement that's full of players that get a twist in their scrotums over a free sample having a cost if you want more.
Writer / Musician / Game Designer
Now Playing: Skyrim, Wurm Online, Tropico 4
Waiting On: GW2, TSW, Archeage, The Rapture
I also prefer my mmos like I do amusement parks. Pay the entrance fee and do all the rides as much as I want instead of paying a fee for each and every ride where each added entertainment has a price tag.
This "movement" will come crumbling down once there is an over saturation of F2P games and not enough players that are willing to put up with them to go around.
I prefer the State Fair type, where you buy a stack of one-time-use tickets to ride each ride. This is because the food is both better and cheaper though, so it balances out. Except the rides are rickety at best. Maybe that's a really good comparison in general.
Think about the subbed games that do the CS thing now as well. That's not gonna change.
Writer / Musician / Game Designer
Now Playing: Skyrim, Wurm Online, Tropico 4
Waiting On: GW2, TSW, Archeage, The Rapture
Well, I prefer buying a season card myself, B2P is the third alternative.
F2P is the worst in my book, particularly if you do it like in EQ2X and LOTRO now. But P2P is starting to smell also since many P2P games add cash shops, i rather have them rising the monthly fees instead of doing that.
I totally agree with you...
I even don't mind buying the game and then the rest of the content is completely free, I'd rather have that option, because at least I knew the company made there money and I knew I was not getting screwed down the road.
I think F2P Game Companies need to be upfront with us consumers, at let us known the break down of what where looking at of the real cost of playing, because for me when I see F2P, I usually don't even bother.
Wildstar (2013) & Elder Scroll Online (2013)
Playing: Diablo 3, WOW, Far Cry 3 & X-Com.
Enjoyed: WOW 5 1/2 yrs, LOTRO 3yrs, GW 1/2yr, DFO 1yr, EVE Online 3yrs, and Huxley (Beta).
Failed to impress: GW2 3months, Tera Online 6 months (best combat system in any MMO I've played) STO 1/4yr, Aion 1/2yr, AoC 1yr, CO, Fallen Earth, DDO, EQ2 1/2yr, WAR 1/2yr, Lineage 2 and FF XI 1/2yr, FF XIV.
F2P is definitely the future. It might not ever be 100% of the market (particularly since it's a better fit with some types of games than others) but it's clearly a great fit for MMOs, which rely heavily on social connections between gamers, and those connections are much much easier when you can play with your friends without paying.
"What is truly revealing is his implication that believing something to be true is the same as it being true. [continue]" -John Oliver
I cant stand that Click to Move movement in most F2P mmorpgs. Allod did well with their movement.
Philosophy of MMO Game Design
"free to play" means "free to play". nothing more. i can download any f2p game and play for free. anybody with half a brain knows that. well, they should. >.>
Getting the cash shop right is tricky business for a F2P. It can easily make a game unbalanced and remove the fun of everyone involved, even the people who spent a lot on the cash shop. (They get bored)
I'd rather see a mix of business models mixed with a variety of play styles.
My money is on a big culling within a few years. Sooner or later, the audience as a whole is going to be drained of their easy money, and you'll start seeing recurring themes on non-MMO boards "tried the game for free, but was a waste of money". At that point they'll either leave the market again, or start raising their standards at that point. If we can reach that point, we'll start seeing how sustainable the F2P market really is. Selling computers used to be a license to print money - these days the margins are cut-throat.
This movement isn't a bad idea in principle, but I'll take it seriously when they have the balls to actually trash some bad games - which is frankly more than this site (and many others) can arsed to do.
A Modest Proposal for MMORPGs:
That the means of progression would not be mutually exclusive from the means of enjoyment.
As long as people will be willing to pay top dollar for top quality games that dont "create the itch and then sell you the scratch", there will always be a market for p2p games.
I dont want to pay for inventory expansions because you didnt give me a reasonable amount to begin with, then mailed me tons of item mall freebies to clogg it all up, since they become very valuable later on in the game.
I dont want to pay extra for an XP boost to overcome your designed leveling wall, where you condition me for 40 levels with fast and fun leveling, then take it away drastically for the remainder of the game.
I dont want to have to pay $30 for a damn mount, or even worse rent one.
I shouldnt have to worry about breaking equipment when upgrading or crafting, just so you can sell me a protection scroll that isnt even guanteed to work.
These are all issues and problems created for the sole purpose of creating the situation where you always need to be spending, and it always adds up to way more than a p2p costs per month.
These f2p "movement" threads are cute however.
Especially when they cite lotro, war, or any other p2p game with a free trial on restricted content. They are not f2p games, no matter how much you want them to be.
I'd love that - something like $18 monthly fee and "no in-game item sales forever" as their main line. Pretty much like that marketing line "free to play forever" though the implications are much more extensive.
Anyway, my hopes are deposited on GW2's success - maybe shifting the trend towards B2P titles, that will depend on what is going to be for sale in their store though. If they did the same way as GW1 with no costumes it would be pure value win for the gamers in my book but with the costumes they started selling lately, not that much... but they're still vanity and non-functional, and with no monthly fees it's still very appealing to us.
LOTRO/DDO/EQ2X are just a new P2P hybrid that adapted a bit so it could fit the "free" word and a rebirth in the eyes of the press and going full scale with the "consumable/other functional items to avoid gameplay or improve your character" money sink galore that anyone paying a monthly sub would abhor.
MMO games is like relation ships , they require some investments to trive.
a subscribtion game you are either married to or divorced from. And chances are you are not going back to your ex after a divorce.
F2P allows you to date a new girl, but if you not paying for dinner when dating , don't exspect the date to go well.
No, it's free to play for you, the freeloader. At the end of the day, someone still pays for it (usually the guys who spend big bucks in the cash shop.
These games don't exist to give you free entertainment.
It's kind of like free health care and free food stamps. Sure it's all free to the moochers who choose not to provide for themselves, but someone ultimately pays for it (the taxpayers) because goods and services are not free.
In an ideal plane, if the servers open, everyone downloads and play for free and noone donates or spend anything on the cash shop it is free to play, because that is the risk. What happens? They close the service, everyone lose their time and effort spent and the game is remade and remarketted as something new.
Off course they prevent that from happening by designing their cash shops so that players feel compelled to buy the infinite demmand items on it for power, convenience or whatever.
Its a lie in the sense that to experience the game in an "ideal plane", you have to spend money.
The problems lies with the expectative advertised and created by the company on what consists the "IDEAL PLANE" of "experiencing the game".
There is a gap between what players expect and what the game delivers.
A gap between what is designed on the game mechanics and sold on the cash shops and what is advertised.
The free to play gamers movement intends to REMOVE THOSE GAPS. So what the player expectatives are not different from what is advertised and what is advertised is not different from what was designed in the game mechanics.
The games will remain free to play. Since its the best model, by its own natural characteristics.
What the free to play gamers movement intend to do is PREVENTING game companies from being unethical, imoral.
That site will be filled with 12 year olds who don't have any money and adults who act like 12 year olds.
Most reasonable mature gamers realize how just plain stupid a "f2p movement" is.
There is NOTHING wrong with free loading, as long as the people have the choice for paying or not.
I play DDO & LOTRO f2p for a while. If others want to buy virtual stuff to subsidize my gaming fun, i would say LET THEM. Sometimes i may even buy one or two things when i like to.
They will never make good games f2p and I hope they won't. Quality games take significant amount of time and money to be made and kept alive with updates. If they design them by cash shops then those cash shops will be greatly imbalanced and players will almost feel forced to buy things off them, way worse even that the most horrible f2p cash shops right now, because they have to make more money than those.
Why should I pay for anything? I want the best and I want it for free. In a utopia all our wants would be catered for, our every whim the command of the AI robots that fed, clothed and wiped our bottoms. They would make us the games we wanted and we would want for nothing.
In the real world good stuff costs money and people have to sit down and develop our games taking hundreds to thousands of hours. That’s why I am happy to pay, I still live in the real world, do you?
I have a lot of respect for the OP who has done some great posts in the past but here he needs to think about how and why games are financed.
In the real world, as research has shown, MOST MMORPG players do not pay.
http://www.gamasutra.com/view/news/27581/Study_US_Gamers_Spent_38_Billion_On_MMOs_in_2009.php
In fact, and i quote "Consumer data from Today's Gamers MMO Focus Report by Gamesindustry.com and TNS indicates that the number of MMO players in the U.S. has reached 46 million, 46 percent (21 million) of which paid to play online games; the rest, around 25 million gamers, play MMOs without spending any money."
Are you saying those 25M gamers are not living in the real world?
You just proved his point. With cash shops the companies aren't going to make enough money for their hard work.
There is no thing like F2P its P2W (pay to win) so please quit missleading with the term of F2P in fact its a marketing lie nothing more.
Followed the closed F2P games during the last months? Cashshop games are always poor quality ones (newest examples Rom, Allods and all the EA crap) plus having minor to zero customer support which means no 24/7 gm service.
So they aren't the future they are a current evil that will kill itself very soon.
We need a MMORPG Cataclysm asap, finish the dark age of MMORPGS now!
"Everything you're bitching about is wrong. People don't have the time to invest in corpse runs, impossible zones, or long winded quests. Sometimes, they just want to pop on and play."
"Then maybe MMORPGs aren't for you."
Is there a "Freedom from FTP Crap" movement?
Now with 57.3% more flames!
Whenever I see the terms "always" and "never" used in an argument, it makes the text of the argument suspect. It's like saying there is never life outside of our planet.
If a person can obtain the game for $0, can log in for $0, and participate with other players in the virtual world for $0, then it's free to play, nothing more. It may not be Free To Win but it is certainly Free To Play.