Amazing. A game released around half a year ago with one of the largest IPs as well as budget, managed to screw up big time and is now struggling to survive. I don't care about this game at all, but this is laughable.
If you make the same old same old, then yeah...there's nothing to set it apart from other games which have gone f2p. Therefore SWTOR should go f2p.
Subscriptions for the current batch of mmo is not worth it as the linear themepark style of game can be experienced within the first month which comes with your box purchase.
Amazing. A game released around half a year ago with one of the largest IPs as well as budget, managed to screw up big time and is now struggling to survive. I don't care about this game at all, but this is laughable.
^ Which is the main "story".
With 2.5+ million units sold and 200-500K (est) people left in game, this conversation should be on how the gaming community (players) were had with the marketing and promotion of SWTOR as well as players "rights" to be fed a fair game. Some paid top dollar for a game looking at going free to play after 7 months.
Where are the customers and players rights?
But any conversation that goes down this road is frowned upon here.
This shouldn't have a subscription fee in the first place. It's a glorified singleplayer game with a build in chat box and a few co-op missions. It should have been a buy to play game like Guild Wars. Going free to play and adding micro transactions ain't gonna rekindle my interest in this game. Those kind of business models just aren't viable in this economy. These developers and publishers are completely out of touch with the world. These arrogant assholes won't even listen to constructive criticism, anymore. The closed beta tests that they held from 2010 until its release were a fucking joke. It took them two years just to fix their shitty netcode during that testing period. This joke of a game cost over $200 million yet all they could come up with is a half assed online RPG.
The subscription model will not go away facebook games just adopted it. Fact is they left us with a poor product which is a lame copy cat theme park at best.
I am a fan of hybrid models done right like in city of heroes. There is a careful balance to be struck and I fear companies like EA who have in my opinion done a bad job with swtor will try to milk the cows that are left, known in the trade as double dipping your consumers.
They should just wave the sub fee. Buy the game and you can play as long as you want. Turning it into a F2P game where you have to pay some to unlock more of the story might work too.
Originally posted by maplestone I do not understand the logic of this article and am concerned with the aggressiveness with which this site is promoting this buisness model.
they promote games that pay them to promote games.
LFD tools are great for cramming people into content, but quality > quantity. I am, usually on the sandbox .. more "hardcore" side of things, but I also do just want to have fun. So lighten up already
The big problem in a nutshell - FTP and cash shops.
Cash shops inevitably start out as just for "fluff" items. But as companies begin to mine their possibilities, they become Pay-To-Win.
It is difficult to understate how corrosive Cash Shops/P2W are to MMO's. Gone is the joyful aspects of imagination and meaningful player achievement. Instead, they become slick and relentless vehicles for marketing and profits. Every game system becomes subservient to the cash shop. That is the direction we are heading with FTP/Cash shops - a melding of Madison Avenue and Wall Street, like any other business. Maybe it was inevitable.
There's only one reason to switch from subscription to F2P and that's to make the game more profitable. I would return to SWTOR if it was F2P, but they'd be hard pressed to get money from me on anything other than expansions or massive multiplayer space combat.
Free to play with a "freemium" sub option seems to be the right way to go for SW:TOR, but who knows if they'll embrace the idea sooner rather than later.
Personally, the freemium option works best for me, I can keep a sub and not be gated from any content or deal with the nickel and diming that runs alongside any F2P model.
I'm not sure how it would work in SW:TOR because it doesn't feel like it was designed with a conversion in mind...pay to unlock your ship? Pay to unlock each planet? Pay to unlock species? Pay to unlock FPs and Ops? Pay real money for Biometric Crystal Alloys? I'm curious about how they would work it.
I have no issue with F2P bringing the masses to a game, I know how /ignore works and I have no problem with turning off general chat. Anything that keeps the money coming in and the servers live is pretty much ok by me.
I prefer subscription. It baffles me that people are so cheap regarding what is esentially a hobby. I don't know average income in other countries than mine but the fee here roughly translates into a pc/car magazine and a bag of chips, no big deal. If it is then you have problems and gaming should take a backseat.
Another way to think about it; compare it to a Netflix subscription. For roughly double the price of unlimited Netflix streaming, which gives access to thousands of tv shows and movies, you get access to... exactly one game. How is that a good deal? How many people would use Netflix if it cost twice as much and only gave access to one tv show? Why should we accept less value for our dollar from games than we do from other entertainment?
Peace is a lie, there is only passion. Through passion, I gain strength. Through strength, I gain power. Through power, I gain victory. Through victory, my chains are broken. The Force shall free me.
I prefer subscription. It baffles me that people are so cheap regarding what is esentially a hobby. I don't know average income in other countries than mine but the fee here roughly translates into a pc/car magazine and a bag of chips, no big deal. If it is then you have problems and gaming should take a backseat.
Another way to think about it; compare it to a Netflix subscription. For roughly double the price of unlimited Netflix streaming, which gives access to thousands of tv shows and movies, you get access to... exactly one game. How is that a good deal? How many people would use Netflix if it cost twice as much and only gave access to one tv show? Why should we accept less value for our dollar from games than we do from other entertainment?
Depends is that show interactive? Does it have many new eps every year? If so sure. But thats not netflix. Netflix and hulu basicly just rent you movies and shows you could have already seen for cheap. Just like steam and gamespot sell old games for cheap.
Your problem (and many of the P2W supporters) don't get is that MMO should and has been move then just a game it was a world till the attack of the wow clones happened.
I will not play a game with a cash shop ever again. A dev job should be to make the game better not make me pay so it sucks less.
I prefer subscription. It baffles me that people are so cheap regarding what is esentially a hobby. I don't know average income in other countries than mine but the fee here roughly translates into a pc/car magazine and a bag of chips, no big deal. If it is then you have problems and gaming should take a backseat.
Another way to think about it; compare it to a Netflix subscription. For roughly double the price of unlimited Netflix streaming, which gives access to thousands of tv shows and movies, you get access to... exactly one game. How is that a good deal? How many people would use Netflix if it cost twice as much and only gave access to one tv show? Why should we accept less value for our dollar from games than we do from other entertainment?
Your argument makes no sense. It would if each game had only 1.5 hours of content, but that's not the case. With Netflix you're paying for hours and hours of non-interactive entertainment. With a game you're paying for hours and hours of interactive entertainment. Netflix F2P would be like you can hear the sound for free, but you'd need to buy a visual of each character from an item shop.
F2P is a joke and personally I am tired of people trying to push it. Those who like the game can pay and those who dont want to play go somewhere else. its that simple.
The majority of MMO players might want F2P but that's only because the term MMO has been expanded to include every shallow piece of crap with a chat room. The sample of "MMO Gamers" that you use include the "I don't have enough time to play" whiners or are the 13th ribbon "award me because I showed up" type of "gamer." If you look at the original games, the virtual worlds and sandboxes and use the fans of those games as your sample, I think you'd find that the majority would prefer a deep game full of challenge and achievement and a community of like minded gamers all willing to commit to a subscription.
Seriously - this is all a perfect example of what happens when a group loses their label. MMORPG means nothing - it's an empty marketing term at this point. If you pick up a box labeled MMORPG you have exactly 0 clue what it is you're looking at. It could be Archeage or it could be a lobby shooter.
In order to get decent games again, the virtual world/ sandbox genera needs a label completely seperate and distanced from MMORPG. This way, this "majority" you're talking about can keep their F2P garbage clones and developers will see - yes there is a market for Virtual Worlds. We can handle a challenge, don't need giant green arrows and ADD satisfying explosions everywhere and are willing to pony up $20-$30 per month to maintain a closed gameworld.
Two of the 4 reasons had NOTHING to do with SWTOR. Might as well title this "50% why all games should be F2P and 50% why SWTOR should be free to play!"
That being said I agree, SWTOR is a Buy2Play game. Maybe offer DLC? Pay 5-10 bucks and get a few new flashpoints and such. But paying after 3 months you've spent 45 dollars and after 3 months they have not offered TWO full games worth of content beyond the initial investment.
I prefer subscription. It baffles me that people are so cheap regarding what is esentially a hobby. I don't know average income in other countries than mine but the fee here roughly translates into a pc/car magazine and a bag of chips, no big deal. If it is then you have problems and gaming should take a backseat.
Another way to think about it; compare it to a Netflix subscription. For roughly double the price of unlimited Netflix streaming, which gives access to thousands of tv shows and movies, you get access to... exactly one game. How is that a good deal? How many people would use Netflix if it cost twice as much and only gave access to one tv show? Why should we accept less value for our dollar from games than we do from other entertainment?
Your argument makes no sense. It would if each game had only 1.5 hours of content, but that's not the case. With Netflix you're paying for hours and hours of non-interactive entertainment. With a game you're paying for hours and hours of interactive entertainment. Netflix F2P would be like you can hear the sound for free, but you'd need to buy a visual of each character from an item shop.
Netflix offers thousands of hours of unique content, with no necessary repetition. Even the MMO with the most content offers maybe a couple hundred hours of unique content, if you stretch the definition of "unique" to it's breaking point, with most of your time spent on repeating content you have already experienced. Every single person who pays fifteen dollars a month, and then spends 50% or more of that time repeating content he has already experienced, is getting ripped off. He may not care enough about that money to be bothered by getting ripped off, but the reality is still there.
I mean, seriously, think about it for a second. Someone , let's call him Bob, only has ten hours a week to spend on gaming and has a choice to make; Skyrim or TOR. Assume that Bob would find both equally enjoyable. Assume that there are 600 hours of value for him in each game. If he buys Skyrim, he pays 60 dollars, one time, and gets ten hours of value for every dollar spent, no matter how long it takes him to put that time in. If he buys TOR, and plays at the pace of ten hours a week, he ends up spending 60 for the box, then another 200 for the fourteen months of subscription time he needs in order to achieve 600 hours of playtime. TOR ends up costing him more than four times what Skyrim costs, for the same value received.
In what reality would it make sense for anyone who has a job, school, or any other kind of life which prevents dumping a massive number of hours into gaming every week, to jump on the subscription bandwagon? The only people who actually receive a decent value are the ones who burn through the entire game in one or two months and then quit until an expansion comes out. Which is exactly the trend we see in pretty much every sub-based game that isn't WoW, massive population spikes followed by almost everybody leaving, half the people because they burned through all the content, and the other half because they don't have enough time to devote to one game to make it worth the obscene price of access.
Peace is a lie, there is only passion. Through passion, I gain strength. Through strength, I gain power. Through power, I gain victory. Through victory, my chains are broken. The Force shall free me.
I hope that if they do go down the F2P route that they open up other options inbetween the "premium sub" & F2P pure cash-shop, such as a hybrid lower sub tiers e.g. $5, $10, $15 each with it's own perks.
F2P is a joke and personally I am tired of people trying to push it. Those who like the game can pay and those who dont want to play go somewhere else. its that simple.
P2P is a joke and personally I am tired of people trying to push it. Those who like to pay can pay for a quick death because those who dont want to pay already left which is why the game is hurting so bad. Its that simple.
Ooh, that IS an easy way not to actually refute anything directly.
$5.00 pcm = 1 Char slot on each faction on one server, $10.00 pcm 2 char slots on each faction on 1 server, $15.00 8 char slots on any faction per server.
Tried: EQ2 - AC - EU - HZ - TR - MxO - TTO - WURM - SL - VG:SoH - PotBS - PS - AoC - WAR - DDO - SWTOR Played: UO - EQ1 - AO - DAoC - NC - CoH/CoV - SWG - WoW - EVE - AA - LotRO - DFO - STO - FE - MO - RIFT Playing: Skyrim Following: The Repopulation I want a Virtual World, not just a Game. ITS TOO HARD! - Matt Firor (ZeniMax)
Comments
Amazing. A game released around half a year ago with one of the largest IPs as well as budget, managed to screw up big time and is now struggling to survive. I don't care about this game at all, but this is laughable.
If you make the same old same old, then yeah...there's nothing to set it apart from other games which have gone f2p. Therefore SWTOR should go f2p.
Subscriptions for the current batch of mmo is not worth it as the linear themepark style of game can be experienced within the first month which comes with your box purchase.
^ Which is the main "story".
With 2.5+ million units sold and 200-500K (est) people left in game, this conversation should be on how the gaming community (players) were had with the marketing and promotion of SWTOR as well as players "rights" to be fed a fair game. Some paid top dollar for a game looking at going free to play after 7 months.
Where are the customers and players rights?
But any conversation that goes down this road is frowned upon here.
I do not understand the logic of this article and am concerned with the aggressiveness with which this site is promoting this buisness model.
This shouldn't have a subscription fee in the first place. It's a glorified singleplayer game with a build in chat box and a few co-op missions. It should have been a buy to play game like Guild Wars. Going free to play and adding micro transactions ain't gonna rekindle my interest in this game. Those kind of business models just aren't viable in this economy. These developers and publishers are completely out of touch with the world. These arrogant assholes won't even listen to constructive criticism, anymore. The closed beta tests that they held from 2010 until its release were a fucking joke. It took them two years just to fix their shitty netcode during that testing period. This joke of a game cost over $200 million yet all they could come up with is a half assed online RPG.
The subscription model will not go away facebook games just adopted it. Fact is they left us with a poor product which is a lame copy cat theme park at best.
I am a fan of hybrid models done right like in city of heroes. There is a careful balance to be struck and I fear companies like EA who have in my opinion done a bad job with swtor will try to milk the cows that are left, known in the trade as double dipping your consumers.
They should just wave the sub fee. Buy the game and you can play as long as you want. Turning it into a F2P game where you have to pay some to unlock more of the story might work too.
I am not going back untill its free to play ..even then ..it is just to Theme Park for me and not enough MMO... in SWTOR.
LFD tools are great for cramming people into content, but quality > quantity.
I am, usually on the sandbox .. more "hardcore" side of things, but I also do just want to have fun. So lighten up already
The big problem in a nutshell - FTP and cash shops.
Cash shops inevitably start out as just for "fluff" items. But as companies begin to mine their possibilities, they become Pay-To-Win.
It is difficult to understate how corrosive Cash Shops/P2W are to MMO's. Gone is the joyful aspects of imagination and meaningful player achievement. Instead, they become slick and relentless vehicles for marketing and profits. Every game system becomes subservient to the cash shop. That is the direction we are heading with FTP/Cash shops - a melding of Madison Avenue and Wall Street, like any other business. Maybe it was inevitable.
I want to see it die, this game needs to serve as a lesson for the future .
There's only one reason to switch from subscription to F2P and that's to make the game more profitable. I would return to SWTOR if it was F2P, but they'd be hard pressed to get money from me on anything other than expansions or massive multiplayer space combat.
Free to play with a "freemium" sub option seems to be the right way to go for SW:TOR, but who knows if they'll embrace the idea sooner rather than later.
Personally, the freemium option works best for me, I can keep a sub and not be gated from any content or deal with the nickel and diming that runs alongside any F2P model.
I'm not sure how it would work in SW:TOR because it doesn't feel like it was designed with a conversion in mind...pay to unlock your ship? Pay to unlock each planet? Pay to unlock species? Pay to unlock FPs and Ops? Pay real money for Biometric Crystal Alloys? I'm curious about how they would work it.
I have no issue with F2P bringing the masses to a game, I know how /ignore works and I have no problem with turning off general chat. Anything that keeps the money coming in and the servers live is pretty much ok by me.
Another way to think about it; compare it to a Netflix subscription. For roughly double the price of unlimited Netflix streaming, which gives access to thousands of tv shows and movies, you get access to... exactly one game. How is that a good deal? How many people would use Netflix if it cost twice as much and only gave access to one tv show? Why should we accept less value for our dollar from games than we do from other entertainment?
Peace is a lie, there is only passion.
Through passion, I gain strength.
Through strength, I gain power.
Through power, I gain victory.
Through victory, my chains are broken.
The Force shall free me.
Depends is that show interactive? Does it have many new eps every year? If so sure. But thats not netflix. Netflix and hulu basicly just rent you movies and shows you could have already seen for cheap. Just like steam and gamespot sell old games for cheap.
Your problem (and many of the P2W supporters) don't get is that MMO should and has been move then just a game it was a world till the attack of the wow clones happened.
I will not play a game with a cash shop ever again. A dev job should be to make the game better not make me pay so it sucks less.
Your argument makes no sense. It would if each game had only 1.5 hours of content, but that's not the case. With Netflix you're paying for hours and hours of non-interactive entertainment. With a game you're paying for hours and hours of interactive entertainment. Netflix F2P would be like you can hear the sound for free, but you'd need to buy a visual of each character from an item shop.
F2P is a joke and personally I am tired of people trying to push it. Those who like the game can pay and those who dont want to play go somewhere else. its that simple.
The majority of MMO players might want F2P but that's only because the term MMO has been expanded to include every shallow piece of crap with a chat room. The sample of "MMO Gamers" that you use include the "I don't have enough time to play" whiners or are the 13th ribbon "award me because I showed up" type of "gamer." If you look at the original games, the virtual worlds and sandboxes and use the fans of those games as your sample, I think you'd find that the majority would prefer a deep game full of challenge and achievement and a community of like minded gamers all willing to commit to a subscription.
Seriously - this is all a perfect example of what happens when a group loses their label. MMORPG means nothing - it's an empty marketing term at this point. If you pick up a box labeled MMORPG you have exactly 0 clue what it is you're looking at. It could be Archeage or it could be a lobby shooter.
In order to get decent games again, the virtual world/ sandbox genera needs a label completely seperate and distanced from MMORPG. This way, this "majority" you're talking about can keep their F2P garbage clones and developers will see - yes there is a market for Virtual Worlds. We can handle a challenge, don't need giant green arrows and ADD satisfying explosions everywhere and are willing to pony up $20-$30 per month to maintain a closed gameworld.
Did anyone else point this out yet?
Two of the 4 reasons had NOTHING to do with SWTOR. Might as well title this "50% why all games should be F2P and 50% why SWTOR should be free to play!"
That being said I agree, SWTOR is a Buy2Play game. Maybe offer DLC? Pay 5-10 bucks and get a few new flashpoints and such. But paying after 3 months you've spent 45 dollars and after 3 months they have not offered TWO full games worth of content beyond the initial investment.
Netflix offers thousands of hours of unique content, with no necessary repetition. Even the MMO with the most content offers maybe a couple hundred hours of unique content, if you stretch the definition of "unique" to it's breaking point, with most of your time spent on repeating content you have already experienced. Every single person who pays fifteen dollars a month, and then spends 50% or more of that time repeating content he has already experienced, is getting ripped off. He may not care enough about that money to be bothered by getting ripped off, but the reality is still there.
I mean, seriously, think about it for a second. Someone , let's call him Bob, only has ten hours a week to spend on gaming and has a choice to make; Skyrim or TOR. Assume that Bob would find both equally enjoyable. Assume that there are 600 hours of value for him in each game. If he buys Skyrim, he pays 60 dollars, one time, and gets ten hours of value for every dollar spent, no matter how long it takes him to put that time in. If he buys TOR, and plays at the pace of ten hours a week, he ends up spending 60 for the box, then another 200 for the fourteen months of subscription time he needs in order to achieve 600 hours of playtime. TOR ends up costing him more than four times what Skyrim costs, for the same value received.
In what reality would it make sense for anyone who has a job, school, or any other kind of life which prevents dumping a massive number of hours into gaming every week, to jump on the subscription bandwagon? The only people who actually receive a decent value are the ones who burn through the entire game in one or two months and then quit until an expansion comes out. Which is exactly the trend we see in pretty much every sub-based game that isn't WoW, massive population spikes followed by almost everybody leaving, half the people because they burned through all the content, and the other half because they don't have enough time to devote to one game to make it worth the obscene price of access.
Peace is a lie, there is only passion.
Through passion, I gain strength.
Through strength, I gain power.
Through power, I gain victory.
Through victory, my chains are broken.
The Force shall free me.
I hope that if they do go down the F2P route that they open up other options inbetween the "premium sub" & F2P pure cash-shop, such as a hybrid lower sub tiers e.g. $5, $10, $15 each with it's own perks.
P2P is a joke and personally I am tired of people trying to push it. Those who like to pay can pay for a quick death because those who dont want to pay already left which is why the game is hurting so bad. Its that simple.
Ooh, that IS an easy way not to actually refute anything directly.
I'll probably play if it is free...
Just a rough example:
$5.00 pcm = 1 Char slot on each faction on one server, $10.00 pcm 2 char slots on each faction on 1 server, $15.00 8 char slots on any faction per server.
I say keep it P2P
Pay the Players $15mo.
Tried: EQ2 - AC - EU - HZ - TR - MxO - TTO - WURM - SL - VG:SoH - PotBS - PS - AoC - WAR - DDO - SWTOR
Played: UO - EQ1 - AO - DAoC - NC - CoH/CoV - SWG - WoW - EVE - AA - LotRO - DFO - STO - FE - MO - RIFT
Playing: Skyrim
Following: The Repopulation
I want a Virtual World, not just a Game.
ITS TOO HARD! - Matt Firor (ZeniMax)