Howdy, Stranger!
It looks like you're new here. If you want to get involved, click one of these buttons!
Quick Links
STO to go F2p if CO is successful.
Rockgod99
Member Posts: 4,640
According to Cryptics Twitter STO will go F2p if we support COs conversion.
Cryptic is impressed with Turbines offerings and wants a piece of the pie.
What do you guys think of that? Would you make an a free account for CO just so STO could go f2p also?
I think I would. The more Pay as you go options the better.
Comments
To answer you....No.
I prefer sub games, so I have no interest in f2p conversions.
Wow, people follow Cryptics twitter?
But seriously, I see the writing on the wall, and have slowly converted to be for these f2p models. I think games getting a cash injection to improve/fix some broken/underwhelming games can't be considered all bad. I'd rather see games get more development cash to 'repair' than to see games shut down.
Roses are red
Violets are blue
The reviewer has a mishapen head
Which means his opinion is skewed
...Aldous.MF'n.Huxley
This...
Also no interest in CO in space with ST graphics.
LOL! I follow a couple mmo news sites. I believe it was mmosite.com's twitter that linked me to an interview on cryptics twitter lol.
Playing: Rift, LotRO
Waiting on: GW2, BP
it is like every day now, a new mmo is going F2P lol.
if they do CO right then it well probably do well.
March on! - Lets Invade Pekopon
Honestly imo due to the quality of this genre i only consider maybe two games good enough to warrant a long term subscription. Might as well turn everything into a pay as you go model bro.
Playing: Rift, LotRO
Waiting on: GW2, BP
I don't like STO and won't support it. Therefore, I will not support CO!
I wouldnt play another game from cryptic if you paid me
From what I've heard regarding the model they're using, I suspect I'll be using F2P CO as a costume builder for the Champs PnP game. Not much else.
If they use the same model for STO, I'm pretty certain I won't be interested. But hey, I understand why they might go that route.
In both games, they lack too much content to give F2P accounts enough to enjoy while giving the subbed players a reason to stick to paying monthly. It takes 60-ish hours to get through the current content. Would 15 hours(with other built in artificial limitations) worth be enough for f2p?
AoC's trial has more than that.
Well it's wrong to insinuate that creating a free subscription will influence their decision to make STO go free.
They're going to look at the success. Success as in money. As in creating a bunch of free accounts that never generate revenue isn't going to influence it.
That said, I fully expect CO to make substantially more money as a result of this move. It's still not that great of a game, but it'll certainly make more money F2P (nearly all MMORPGs do.)
"What is truly revealing is his implication that believing something to be true is the same as it being true. [continue]" -John Oliver
Lots of copies of STO and CO were standing on shelves in the SPECIAL OFFER area of a large book/media and electronic store. STO was about 10 bucks and the seller told me they weren't being bought since the offer started 1,5 weeks before... It proved to me again the popularity of Cryptic's games and their future, and I've little faith that F2P will help a lot. Well maybe just enough to keep it going. I'm no expert, but this is how it seems to me.
"You don't have much choice when trouble's riding your back so tight it makes the leather squeak. Sometimes you outsmart it, sometimes you outfight it, and sometimes you just have to outrun it... full throttle."
Depends on how they implement the cash shop. F2P is not a guarantee for success but it does bring in a larger portion of people to try out your game and possibly spend small amounts of money that become quite significant if a large portion of players are doing so.
Hard to say whether it will be successful for Cryptic or not. Big difference in the amount of content and gameplay available between Cryptic's games and Turbine's and SOE's.
I'm not entirely sure CO has been around long enough and has the content and depth to keep a large portion of people subbing or dropping money into their game on a continual basis. Guess we'll find out though.
1. For god's sake mmo gamers, enough with the analogies. They're unnecessary and your comparisons are terrible, dissimilar, and illogical.
2. To posters feeling the need to state how f2p really isn't f2p: Players understand the concept. You aren't privy to some secret the rest are missing. You're embarrassing yourself.
3. Yes, Cpt. Obvious, we're not industry experts. Now run along and let the big people use the forums for their purpose.
No MMO really warrents a Sub. It's just an extremely overpriced system that encourages Devs to make things grindier and doesn't deliver your money's worth in any game.
It sounds like that lifetime sub beta access gambit they pulled for CO/STO.
Pretty much spot on.
F2P is a horrible model for the consumer; it is also FotM it seems so I'm sure we'll see a lot more of it until some of these games stops seeing a return, or find out they were better off prior to the switch. Good luck switching from F2P back. If these people would focus on making a good game and less on what business model to choose after they fail...
It makes you feel abit sorry for people who got suckered in to life time subs for CO and STO when games like this go F2P. Notice successful MMO's don't offer life subs.
Just different pricing mods.
Most people do not remember when internet got started. We had a few places (was very limited places that had any type of game) that charged by the hour to play text games:P
Up against an hourly (most were several dollars an hour) paying a sub is a very good deal.
Subs (IMO) are the best way to play. Get access to everything as long as you sub, and if you are not very careful, Buy as you play (What free to play games are mostly) can end up costing you much more than the sub price in the end.
That is the reason most games are going this route now. They make more in the end than they do with subs. People are stange, they balk at 15 bucks a month and the box price, but they will spend huge amounts of money over the same time frame, at 2-5 bucks a pop and not get that they are paying out more in the end.
At the end i think STO will go the same route. Switching pricing mods does absolutely nothing to improve the game, nor does it usually get the devs to put more money into developing the game more either. Just makes them more cash.
This is a widely believed misconception. It's like saying an American company (Coca-Cola, McDonalds, etc) that goes international must have been failing as an American only company. It's not true.
MMO's that go F2P, much like companies that go international, do it because there's so many potential new customers, and thus new money, outside their standard customer base. Coca-Cola, if it stayed in the US would hit a ceiling on how much they could make since they'd hit a point where everyone in America knows about Coke and either already buys it or isn't interested in it. While America provides Coke with a customer base of hundreds of millions, going international provides a new customer base of billions. If you want to make more money would you rather stick with a smaller base that isn't growing much because you're already selling to everyone who wants it, or do you expand to a much larger community who have never heard of, or tried, your product?
The number of mmo players (and computer gamers in general) out there willing to pay a monthly subscription is very limited...and most of them belong to WoW already. Every other subscription based mmo has to survive on a much smaller niche of gamers, and many of them are surviving well enough, but not having anything close to world-wide success. Now take a look at Zynga (Farmville, Mafiaville, etc) and those other free gaming providers. How is it that they (being pretty crappy games) can pull in 100+ Million players while the King of MMO's, WoW, is stuck at only 12 Million? It's because there is a huge amount of game players out there who either don't know about mmo's or don't want to pay a monthly subscription, but are perfectly willing to play for free and just pay chunks of cash here and there as they go for what they want.
Any current MMO company (besides Blizzard) keeping a subscription only system is intentionally settling for relatively unknown, niche status. If you want success in a WoW dominated genre you have to find your customers outside Blizzard's influence, and that means going to the free players.
Here's a thought: Both of Turbine's free-play mmo's had nearly identical numbers after going free...100% increase in subscriptions, 500% increase in revenue. I'm not sure what the numbers are for other recent free-play converts (such as EQ2) but if we apply those same numbers to Blizzard's own WoW if they went the free-play route, the numbers could be 24 million subscribers and 500% of whatever they already make each year. Just from the sale of their silly $25 in-game mount we've seen there is a demand in their game for F2P style microtransactions. It would not surprise me in the least if they could drop their subs and STILL make the same amount, or more, each month by selling other store items. Of course, since they're Top Dog they really don't need to.
The payment model does not change the content. And the content isn't enough to justify playing it for long, at least not for me (note personal opinion here). Though maybe free to play would revive this game somewhat, who knows.
Even if STO goes f2p, it still sucks and nobody is going to play it.
Let this be a lesson to all developers, if you release a product that isn't worth the money you want to charge for a monthly fee... well... that's dumb!
If Star Trek Online does go "free to play", it will only be the same system as Champions Online: still a subscription game, but with a more generous free trial than before. But people without a subscription will still be stuck with gimped characters, and paying for a bunch of things a la carte will only make them less gimped, and not on par with subscription characters.
As I said, horrible business model for consumers. Although cites would not hurt. And no more analogies, please, they're painful to read.
How is giving the consumers more power, choice and flexibility bad for us?
If WoW = The Beatles
and WAR = Led Zeppelin
Then LotrO = Pink Floyd