Excellent conclusion to the first article; well-done.
I guess the question for new developers to tackle, beyond the marketing money I mentioned in response to your last article on this topic, is how to build a cohesive community that is policed, whether by the game company, or by volunteers within the community.
MechWarrior Online is actually an excellent example of a community policing itself. PGI has chosen folks and asked them to join the team, volunteering their time to aid in policing the community and, from all I saw, it was being used to great effect. The BattleTech/ MechWarrior community is, of course, vociferous and extremely passionate, but it's always been a fairly decent community to begin with; MWO just helped re-establish my faith in the community, in general. Anyway, kudos to PGI; perhaps this can be a new model for other communities, as well?
I won't say that I completely hate non-sub games since I like GW2, but I have not really enjoyed F2P or former P2P that become F2P.
I really tried hard in EQ2 to enjoy the Extended version before the rest of the game was changed as well. I didn't enjoy the nickle and diming. I didn't like the community and the fact that it seemed like people did not ever get caught out by GMs if acting badly. I didn't like how payers subsidized free players or that there was a two tier community between those who paid and had more powerful characters and those were were free and were rather weak in comparison.
Also, customer support seemed much better on the Live servers.
Even so, I really fault SOE and any other dev that hosts a cash shop in a sub game that is really in your face. Even though SOE does not advertize in EQ2 as ruthessly as some companies (Turbine for example with its glowing gold coin icons over NPCs in LotRO), just the xp potions alone were enough to try to put pressure on players to pay more than their sub. Certainly, a few times when I went leveling with my guildies, they were all outleveling me while we were grouped up. I wondered why, and asked them, well it was because they bought xp potions in the cash shop. Just great!
To me that really breaks the spirit of gaming: worrying about what is new in the cash shop and spending time browsing that rather than playing the game, or being forced to go to the cash shop to unlock new material, seeing icons related to the cash shop in the game or in its UI, being forced to have a two tiered player base just based on how much they are willing to spend... etc.
Sure, I know my primary game, WoW, has a cash shop too, but the thing is that it is so exterior to the game itself it does not break immersion and to be honest, I have never ever visited and do not feel compelled to. I still find it reprehensible that it exists at all, but at least it is barely there.
I agree with what you're saying but at some point I have to draw the line. Star Trek Online, my current haunt is F2P and the community seems stable. I'm even in a very active Fleet (guild) with friends I've had since launch... these are the closest freinds I've had in an online game since Ultima Online or the first version of Star Wars Galaxies.
F2P is just another evolution in the gaming world. Before F2P there was just Subscription. Before Subscription there was just SInge Player or Multiplayer/LAN. Before that it was Pen and Paper games. In another 5 or 10 years you'll be complaining about the next big evolution in gaming. If you want a community you need to build it. As you said there are always going to be trolls, ragers, and flamers. Build your social walls, type /ignore, and have some fun meeting people like yourself who want to enjoy their favorite game (be it F2P or P2P).
The better title to your article would be, Greed is killing Gaming.
I agree with what you're saying but at some point I have to draw the line. Star Trek Online, my current haunt is F2P and the community seems stable. I'm even in a very active Fleet (guild) with friends I've had since launch... these are the closest freinds I've had in an online game since Ultima Online or the first version of Star Wars Galaxies.
F2P is just another evolution in the gaming world. Before F2P there was just Subscription. Before Subscription there was just SInge Player or Multiplayer/LAN. Before that it was Pen and Paper games. In another 5 or 10 years you'll be complaining about the next big evolution in gaming. If you want a community you need to build it. As you said there are always going to be trolls, ragers, and flamers. Build your social walls, type /ignore, and have some fun meeting people like yourself who want to enjoy their favorite game (be it F2P or P2P).
The better title to your article would be, Greed is killing Gaming.
In my opinion, greed and free-to-play go hand-in-hand. As others said, there's no such thing as "free", no matter how well it's designed.
F2P "evolved" in my mind because developers said to themselves "Why get $12.95 a month from 200,000 people when we could snatch up anywhere from $5-100 a month from MILLIONS of players?"
Waiting for something fresh to arrive on the MMO scene...
I agree with what you're saying but at some point I have to draw the line. Star Trek Online, my current haunt is F2P and the community seems stable. I'm even in a very active Fleet (guild) with friends I've had since launch... these are the closest freinds I've had in an online game since Ultima Online or the first version of Star Wars Galaxies.
F2P is just another evolution in the gaming world. Before F2P there was just Subscription. Before Subscription there was just SInge Player or Multiplayer/LAN. Before that it was Pen and Paper games. In another 5 or 10 years you'll be complaining about the next big evolution in gaming. If you want a community you need to build it. As you said there are always going to be trolls, ragers, and flamers. Build your social walls, type /ignore, and have some fun meeting people like yourself who want to enjoy their favorite game (be it F2P or P2P).
The better title to your article would be, Greed is killing Gaming.
In my opinion, greed and free-to-play go hand-in-hand. As others said, there's no such thing as "free", no matter how well it's designed.
F2P "evolved" in my mind because developers said to themselves "Why get $12.95 a month from 200,000 people when we could snatch up anywhere from $5-100 a month from MILLIONS of players?"
Greed, really?
They dont expect to get millions of people paying money. They expect a small % to pay money with the majority playing for free. Of course they hope more will spend, but they know in reality many wont because being free is what draws them tot he game.
On the other hand we have WoW. Lets see at $15 a month x approx 10m subs = Thats $150m per month. $1.8 billion per year, just sin subs alone. That not even account for their own cash shop as well as the cost of expansions (likely another couple hundred million per year average, bringing them to around $2 billion or more per year). Theyre making piles of money, yet are still charging the same fee as they did when the game was brand new. They could easily get by and make a shitload of money at half that cost, yet you dont see that happening after all these years. Id consider that to be greed more than anything else.
I'm sure someone else cleared it up, but I need to point out a factual error in the article.
Final Fantasy XIV's subscriptions were frozen for over a year while SE worked out how they wanted to proceed with the game. They knew the game wasn't ready, they knew it wasn't complete, and they felt it was wrong to ask people to pay a subscription for it. So, while they got their crap together, shuffled around their staff and created a new road-map for where they would take the game, SE halted all subscriptions for anyone who owned the game.
When they successfully achieved all of what they set out to, and they felt the game had been satisfactorily patched and improved to represent the "base" of what a MMORPG should offer to its players, they resumed subscriptions - and at a reduced rate.
It's really irresponsible and reckless to throw out information as "facts" that haven't been properly researched.
As for the topic of F2P... Personally, I wouldn't lose a wink of sleep if F2P/Cash Shops - or virtual Cash Shops went away tomorrow. But that's neither here nor there.
It isn't even about "which is better", in any subjective way. The fact is, for each model to work, the developer needs to make money. Otherwise, the game goes offline, the developer closes shop, and no one gets to play it. Anyone who thinks developers are being "kind" or "generous" to their players by making a game F2P, they're incredibly naive. They don't go F2P because they want less money. They do it because they want more money, and they know Cash Shops are the way to achieve that. History has already proven that out.
What it boils down to for me is the way a game designed for each model earns its revenue.
For a subscription based game, the developer has to earn my sub money every month. That means they have to provide me an experience that is entertaining, engaging and lasting enough for me to want to keep playing. And I want it to last. My hopes and expectations going into a new MMO is measured in years, not weeks or months. If I play a MMO for a month or two and then feel bored and burned out on it, then it's failed (for me) as a MMORPG.
Cash Shops, on the other hand, are all about getting people to buy items as frequently as possible, for as much as possible. The entire game is designed around that requirement. Saying "but all those items are optional" is a very disingenuous statement that completely misses the point. It's not whether or not people have to buy those items that Cash Shops succeed or fail on. It's that people will spend money on those items. Developers don't just dream up stuff they "think people will like". They're stocking their cash shops with stuff they already know people will buy, and they design the game very specifically around making sure people do.
For me, it's subscriptions all the way. I would much rather know my money is going toward developers and designers creating new and interesting content to engage and interest me in their worlds, than to know that my money is going toward designers finding new ways to "monetize me" through cash shop sales.
I play MMORPGs to be engaged, entertained and immersed in a virtual world. I don't play them to go shopping for virtual items in an online mal. It also irks me to know that such items are deliberately kept out of my reach - even though they're already stored on my hard drive.
On the other hand we have WoW. Lets see at $15 a month x approx 10m subs = Thats $150m per month. $1.8 billion per year, just sin subs alone. That not even account for their own cash shop as well as the cost of expansions (likely another couple hundred million per year average, bringing them to around $2 billion or more per year). Theyre making piles of money, yet are still charging the same fee as they did when the game was brand new. They could easily get by and make a shitload of money at half that cost, yet you dont see that happening after all these years. Id consider that to be greed more than anything else.
To be fair, Blizzard is a part of Activision now. Activision is run by one of the biggest tyrants in the industry.
I totally agree with this article nice to see that at least some see the ftp push for what it is nothing but a nickel and diming money grab. I also agree about the communities in most games now for every decent person I run into it's 10 that have absolutely no social skills whatsoever and will do anything to run you over or just use you as a tool on the path to their epicness. God forbid if you make a mistake while in a group or if you havn't already run this dungeon 100 times and don't have each mob's ai memorized. You'll either get flamed till you quit or get kicked out of the group or guild.
Console gaming is no better. The average game is less then 10 hours of gameplay for $60 but for $10 here and another $10 there you can download all the rest of the content that should have been in the game from the begining.
How all the people have fallen for the ftp scam and the "downloadable extras" console scam is beyond me. I just vote with my wallet and avoid all of it.
I do see the future of games turning into nothing but stuff like plant vs zombies and angry birds if this trend continues.
I'm sorry but the whole article is lacking anything close to resembling a scientific method for coming up with any conclusions. The opinion piece at hand preys upon an already developed dislike of a genre and attempts to make connections that were not there. You could have switched poor community to poor crop growth in the mid west and you would still have basically the same thing with the same "evidence".
The article completely lets the culture of gaming and how its developed over the past decade completely off the hook and instead places something the writer is trying to preach against to come to the fore front.
F2P model articles should focus on the concept of addiction spending, and other issues that arrise from F2P. Trying to take a major complaint of mmo players and pin it on something irrelevent, seems a waste of time in my opinion.
To pander to playerbase dislikes you can follow up this article with
"How F2P has destroyed the sandbox genre" This will fire up those passionate for sandbox games.
"How F2P has kept open world PvP from being a priority of developers" would fire up pvp'ers.
Hell, If you wanted to create an article to really fire up people that are already angry you should have gone with
"How EA invented F2P so they could steal your money" That would combine your F2P crowd, with the EA crowd, and would definitely get some forum flames burning.
Ask the question in forums, "what destroyed community's in mmo's" and you will not get F2P as an answer, you will get gear treadmills, auction houses, pvp, and a hundred other answers. When developers made games a rat race the playerbase evolved, or devolved(whichever suits your opinion), hell even threads follow the same rules "FIRST".
Last community I experienced was in Asherons Call (AC1) and before the EQ, even a little in EQ2.
The real problem is the cheap internet , cheap and badly designed games, for people who generally pay less than in the old days, when you needed a bank loan to play n the net. The cheapness has opened the doors for the masses/ unemployed and those with a lower I.Q based solely on the maths of the masses.
In the good old days , people who didn't work couldn't afford the internet connections. So you still had idiots but educated/Working ones, who wanted more than a button mash out of the games.
Insta win features and automation are what have killed the genre for what it should be. And turned it into mindless trash with no depth or longevity.
________________________________________________________ Sorcery must persist, the future is the Citadel
Originally posted by Cymdai F2P "evolved" in my mind because developers said to themselves "Why get $12.95 a month from 200,000 people when we could snatch up anywhere from $5-100 a month from MILLIONS of players?"
Maybe I'm wrong, but this is what I ment when wrote that they only following the demand. They can make this transition only because the playerbase are widening, and the priorities among the players are shifting towards easy access and microtransactions.
And also that's why I wrote f2p is a quite logical step from the publishers: why chasing the actual mmo players, who already have their well-known games, their routines, guilds, etc., when there's a much larger group, which is easily accessible - and as a side-effect, focusing them brings in a sh**load of money... What we see in the last 1-1.5 years is simply more and more companies slowly adjusting their focus onto this people. The companies didn't created this group (they mostly came from portable devices, consoles, flash games or facebook), the companies only realised that they can lure them in to the mmo market as well. And it seems working, few years ago f2p ment crappy failure, nowadays most games are starting as f2p... Of course, maybe I'm totally wrong with this. Just my 2 cents.
Originally posted by Cymdai
P2P can be catered towards very specific niches in the market. Eve Online is a great example; the community is essentially player-run, and has a very set and established group of players who have been around for YEARS! I'd dare to say it has one of the most established communities ever created in an MMORPG. It's tried multiple new things, but it stays true to it's loyal and dedicated fans, relying on the product to sell itself, moreso than a cash shop to fund it's development.
Funny you mention Eve, one of the rare truly f2p games Not in the meaning as we using f2p generally, but plex gives you free play, without any restriction (since you are the same paying customer, just you got your month via playing). Of course it's not the same as f2p games, someone has to buy plex in the first place, so CCP won't lose money by it. But it could've affected the playerbase, like it happened with other games. I guess what's kept it fairly intact, is that Eve don't have easy access, one of the main attribute of f2p's. Eve's beginning is hard, slow, and need some learning, not some "tutorial, talk to npc, lvl2, go kill some mob, lvl3," etc
Originally posted by Cymdai F2P "evolved" in my mind because developers said to themselves "Why get $12.95 a month from 200,000 people when we could snatch up anywhere from $5-100 a month from MILLIONS of players?"
Maybe I'm wrong, but this is what I ment when wrote that they only following the demand. They can make this transition only because the playerbase are widening, and the priorities among the players are shifting towards easy access and microtransactions.
And also that's why I wrote f2p is a quite logical step from the publishers: why chasing the actual mmo players, who already have their well-known games, their routines, guilds, etc., when there's a much larger group, which is easily accessible - and as a side-effect, focusing them brings in a sh**load of money... What we see in the last 1-1.5 years is simply more and more companies slowly adjusting their focus onto this people. The companies didn't created this group (they mostly came from portable devices, consoles, flash games or facebook), the companies only realised that they can lure them in to the mmo market as well. And it seems working, few years ago f2p ment crappy failure, nowadays most games are starting as f2p... Of course, maybe I'm totally wrong with this. Just my 2 cents.
Originally posted by Cymdai
P2P can be catered towards very specific niches in the market. Eve Online is a great example; the community is essentially player-run, and has a very set and established group of players who have been around for YEARS! I'd dare to say it has one of the most established communities ever created in an MMORPG. It's tried multiple new things, but it stays true to it's loyal and dedicated fans, relying on the product to sell itself, moreso than a cash shop to fund it's development.
Funny you mention Eve, one of the rare truly f2p games Not in the meaning as we using f2p generally, but plex gives you free play, without any restriction (since you are the same paying customer, just you got your month via playing). Of course it's not the same as f2p games, someone has to buy plex in the first place, so CCP won't lose money by it. But it could've affected the playerbase, like it happened with other games. I guess what's kept it fairly intact, is that Eve don't have easy access, one of the main attribute of f2p's. Eve's beginning is hard, slow, and need some learning, not some "tutorial, talk to npc, lvl2, go kill some mob, lvl3," etc
Funny you mention EVE in the context of F2P, because for me EVE is a truly P2W game.
The longer (more) you pay, the better you get, with no input required whatsoever.
It makes me sad that people are blaming a financial structure rather than themselves for an apparent (in their minds) loss of some non-existent golden days of community'.
Community is not based on an echelon of people with money willing to pay a monthly. Not to mention you site the failures of games a that are not even MMOs or are based on a completely different financial metric.
Community sculpts itself outside of the realm of finance. Community building has NOTHING to do with a financial model. A community fails because it doesn't have support. A community succeeds when it has support.
Fr00bs do not kill a game with trollish interactions in a game. WoW has the most trollish community ever and those people pay a monthly. In fact the opposite is true now that some games are F2P. Those who pay a monthly have some perverse need to feel superior and become trollish in some sad attempt to distinguish themselves.
Subscription models by and large have the MOST ignorant cast of players in the realm of MMOs. It is player's inflated sense of self worth that ruins a community. It is flame wars on forum threads and blow-hards with too much time complaining on every board they can find trying to force companies to sculpt an existing game into what they want to get out of it. Companies that cave to these people on the forums generally fail and those that stick to their guns and put out the best game they know how to without trying to nerf everything under the sun do the best.
The problem is people who post self referential comments stating that so and so said the same thing they are saying on X forum when it was themselves who made Y posts on forums A-Z. Game producers lurk in all these forums and often don't see through the trickery and often make bad decisions based on false evidence which then ruins a game. Then the players who were making that community great get disenfranchised with pointless changes and make an exodus from the game leaving behind only the trolls to whine and dine.
The fact is community is not something you can force into your little box of personal preference.
"Ask yourself “Hmmm… when was the last time I played a game where I didn’t enjoy just the game, but the community as well?”. I suspect you’ll be hard-pressed to come up with an answer."
This just goes to show you are not interacting well with others. You can create any kind of community you want through your interactions with others. It also goes to show that you are playing games to squeeze the most out of them ignoring the potential to make new relationships based on your preconceived notions of the community base.
Customer service is also a company to company thing and has ZERO again to do with the financial structure of revenue. It has EVERYTHING to do with how much stake a company has in a specific title. The fact is that the micro transaction model makes a lot of money. Sometimes companies don't have good support regardless of how much money a title makes.
See: SOE for example. Sony has had rubbish customer support in every game they have ever run, no matter what financial model they used. Why is this? Because Sony has many revenue streams outside of videogames. Videogames are just more icing on their already giant market share in electronics and media.
Next time you write an article painting entire communities into your preconceived corner do some research. Bias arguments like this are just ignorant and inflammatory.
I love the talk of communities getting worse then i see all the "old school" people on this site and others treating each other with hate and venom. Makes me think nothing has changed if the "old schoolers" are from the supposed golden age of mmo communities.
It makes me sad that people are blaming a financial structure rather than themselves for an apparent (in their minds) loss of some non-existent golden days of community'.
Community is not based on an echelon of people with money willing to pay a monthly. Not to mention you site the failures of games a that are not even MMOs or are based on a completely different financial metric.
Community sculpts itself outside of the realm of finance. Community building has NOTHING to do with a financial model. A community fails because it doesn't have support. A community succeeds when it has support.
Fr00bs do not kill a game with trollish interactions in a game. WoW has the most trollish community ever and those people pay a monthly. In fact the opposite is true now that some games are F2P. Those who pay a monthly have some perverse need to feel superior and become trollish in some sad attempt to distinguish themselves.
Subscription models by and large have the MOST ignorant cast of players in the realm of MMOs. It is player's inflated sense of self worth that ruins a community. It is flame wars on forum threads and blow-hards with too much time complaining on every board they can find trying to force companies to sculpt an existing game into what they want to get out of it. Companies that cave to these people on the forums generally fail and those that stick to their guns and put out the best game they know how to without trying to nerf everything under the sun do the best.
The problem is people who post self referential comments stating that so and so said the same thing they are saying on X forum when it was themselves who made Y posts on forums A-Z. Game producers lurk in all these forums and often don't see through the trickery and often make bad decisions based on false evidence which then ruins a game. Then the players who were making that community great get disenfranchised with pointless changes and make an exodus from the game leaving behind only the trolls to whine and dine.
The fact is community is not something you can force into your little box of personal preference.
"Ask yourself “Hmmm… when was the last time I played a game where I didn’t enjoy just the game, but the community as well?”. I suspect you’ll be hard-pressed to come up with an answer."
This just goes to show you are not interacting well with others. You can create any kind of community you want through your interactions with others. It also goes to show that you are playing games to squeeze the most out of them ignoring the potential to make new relationships based on your preconceived notions of the community base.
Customer service is also a company to company thing and has ZERO again to do with the financial structure of revenue. It has EVERYTHING to do with how much stake a company has in a specific title. The fact is that the micro transaction model makes a lot of money. Sometimes companies don't have good support regardless of how much money a title makes.
See: SOE for example. Sony has had rubbish customer support in every game they have ever run, no matter what financial model they used. Why is this? Because Sony has many revenue streams outside of videogames. Videogames are just more icing on their already giant market share in electronics and media.
Next time you write an article painting entire communities into your preconceived corner do some research. Bias arguments like this are just ignorant and inflammatory.
Originally posted by Purutzil The main reason G2P is hurting gaming isn't that they exist as much as the fact there are SO MANY F2P games out there.The over-abundance of them is what is driving down games. This is only made worst by many of them being cash grabs that in some aspects work.
GW2 is not hurting the industry LOL, many, many people aren't not playing the game and already have quit like they have every other game after release... SO you GW2 fanboi's can get off your high horse , WOW has been on top fo years and they have a sub fee....
GW2 also has microtrans stores so its NOT b2p game, you have to spend money to get things, I rarher pay 15 bucks which is nothing than have this so called B2P , and if you didn't spend money then you didn't get everything out of the game that you would with a game with a sub.
F2P is killing the market, I'm in the field of gaming and worked for companys that have done F2P and P2P, I hear more crying in the office with F2P because they have to think of ways to make money, sub costs , its because of the gamers today and way to many games , they want everything for free and in the end if they don't get it for free they get upset aka SOny way of F2P is NOT free..
No F2P is free you would spend more money with F2P than sub in the end if you got the same things, I still sub to games I wanna play to get what I want when I want , I don't want to be stopped because I have to pay for this and that and it costs more in the end of the year...
Last community I experienced was in Asherons Call (AC1) and before the EQ, even a little in EQ2.
The real problem is the cheap internet , cheap and badly designed games, for people who generally pay less than in the old days, when you needed a bank loan to play n the net. The cheapness has opened the doors for the masses/ unemployed and those with a lower I.Q based solely on the maths of the masses.
In the good old days , people who didn't work couldn't afford the internet connections. So you still had idiots but educated/Working ones, who wanted more than a button mash out of the games.
Insta win features and automation are what have killed the genre for what it should be. And turned it into mindless trash with no depth or longevity.
I to play AC1 for 7 years since beta, but what killing is that people do not look for indie mmo's most of them are great buggy, yes, but great ideas and players do not support them like they should if they did more, we would get more games, by gamers, for gamers, so its the gamers fault.
Big comanys want money , indies want good games, so to fix this start supporting indies more and using kickstarter more if you people want better games,
So many gamers are trying to design games and have great ideas and have the experince to do so, but its tough to get what you want done unless you have a ton of money, so if we support more indies we will see , if not then you people can keep getting these so called clones, and complain more.
I went to school, and been doing game design for a reason to help make better games for us because I to was sick of what we see in MMO's, also hate to say it mobile apps are gonna take over...
For me it is microtransactions, cash shops, gold selling, gazzilion of DLC's and things like rmah's that are ruining experience. Does not have to be f2p or freemium.
Blaming the growth of free to play games to a weak community is like blaming the growth of low income housing to the death of your inner city community.
No the real killer for the community is the growth of the industry period. When there was a community it was because the industry was so niche that maybe only a million or two were actually doing it. Now you're looking at an industry of 50-100M people. When your population booms the specialness of small numbers vanishes.
It has nothing at all to do with the free to play model. The fact that the free to play model has increased the size of the community total by trying to get people to play their games means THEIR communities are probably bad.
If anything you might be able to attribute the death of the community in cities instead on the increase in low income housing but instead on the decrease of high income housing. There are TONES of communities in my city... you just have to go to the suburbs which are technically outside of city limits to get to it. Beyond those burbs the rest of the city is immigrants... new arrivals.
If you need further proof look to World of Warcraft, which isn't free to play. This game is huge and barely has a community, not a free to play game. On the other hand Eve's community is so small that they work with the developers to help develop the game.
I think the author has confused correlation with causation.
Next up why having high self esteem doesn't cause high performance in school.
I believe you've nailed it.
In the beginning, the amount of MMO players was small (compared to today) and all lived in "villages" (i.e. Meridian 59, UO, early EQ). Everyone knew everyone else, and there was a real sense of community. There wasn't much mobility, you tended to stay in your village for years, because there wasn't another one that suited you as well.
But as the population of MMO'ers grew, so did the amount of villages (new games). People started moving from their place of birth to other villages. Soon some cities formed (WoW ?).
In cities there is no single community. Almost everyone you see on the street every day is a total stranger. Only in your neighborhood (i.e. guild) do you actually know people.
Nowadays, new villages are formed often, but they are instantly populated by visitors from many big cities, who all want to live there because it's new and trendy and exciting. But they leave after a month or two, either because a newer village opened up, or they missed the comforts of their big city...
Originally posted by Purutzil The main reason G2P is hurting gaming isn't that they exist as much as the fact there are SO MANY F2P games out there.The over-abundance of them is what is driving down games. This is only made worst by many of them being cash grabs that in some aspects work.
GW2 is not hurting the industry LOL, many, many people aren't not playing the game and already have quit like they have every other game after release... SO you GW2 fanboi's can get off your high horse , WOW has been on top fo years and they have a sub fee....
GW2 also has microtrans stores so its NOT b2p game, you have to spend money to get things, I rarher pay 15 bucks which is nothing than have this so called B2P , and if you didn't spend money then you didn't get everything out of the game that you would with a game with a sub.
F2P is killing the market, I'm in the field of gaming and worked for companys that have done F2P and P2P, I hear more crying in the office with F2P because they have to think of ways to make money, sub costs , its because of the gamers today and way to many games , they want everything for free and in the end if they don't get it for free they get upset aka SOny way of F2P is NOT free..
No F2P is free you would spend more money with F2P than sub in the end if you got the same things, I still sub to games I wanna play to get what I want when I want , I don't want to be stopped because I have to pay for this and that and it costs more in the end of the year...
1) He didnt say ANYTHING about GW2. He accidentally typed G instead of F for F2P. Also, it says G2P not GW2 anyway. Nice blind childish rage over absolutely nothing because you somehow interpret any acronym that starts with a G to = GW2.
2) You do NOT need to buy anything in GW2. You can get every single thing in the shop for free through in game gold. FFS you can even buy the upgraded version of the game with its perks via farming money in game and exchanging for gems.
3) The idea that F2P costs more than P2P only applies if youre some dimwitted tool who has no self control that whips out their credit card every time they see some flashy ad. Nobody is forcing you to buy those things. The people that do buy it, buy it because they feel it is a fair exchange of money for a service / item. Ive played dozens of F2P games over several years. Ive spent money in maybe 5 or 6 of them that I felt were worthwhile. Playing dozens of P2P games over 5 or so years would have cost me several thousand dollars in box costs + subs.The entire premise of F2P games is getting lots of players wh dont pay along with some who do pay. Being free draws in players who might not play the game otherwise, and the paying players wouldnt pay if there was no population. Having more free players gives players with $ more reason to spend it. The fact that you dont know these things raises doubts that youre in the gaming field at all.
BTW, you say you dont want to be stopped because you have to pay for this and that. What exactly do you call your subscription? If you didnt pay your sub, you would be stopped and completely cut off from the game.
It's more than the F2P model it's the I want everything for FREE generation that is killing it. How many times do you see "I think this game should be free" or I don't want to explore, I want to reach the end as fast as I can". That is today's gamer. F2P fills both those needs better than a P2P game.
The industry sees that so they want to get in on all those people playing games. The more they can get playing the better chance someone will buy something. If you really want to blame someone, just look in the mirror and ask yourself if your not part of the problem.
It all boils down to this "Coporate greed and todays gamer". Vote with your walle.
I'm not an IT Specialist, Game Developer, or Clairvoyant in real life, but like others on here, I play one on the internet.
There are some really good, well-thought-out posts here.
However, I'd just like to say, to the particularly angry, aggressive, hostile posters in the thread. This is an editorial. It's my perception of things. I realize that we're obviously blessed to have so many video game historians, as evident by this thread, however, this is not a scientific feature. I'm not here to do an in-depth, empirically-sound article. If that's what you're looking for, you're going to drive yourself into a frenzy.
Opinion piece, people!
I just wanted to chime in because I could actually feel some people's blood pressure elevating in this thread!
Waiting for something fresh to arrive on the MMO scene...
Comments
Excellent conclusion to the first article; well-done.
I guess the question for new developers to tackle, beyond the marketing money I mentioned in response to your last article on this topic, is how to build a cohesive community that is policed, whether by the game company, or by volunteers within the community.
MechWarrior Online is actually an excellent example of a community policing itself. PGI has chosen folks and asked them to join the team, volunteering their time to aid in policing the community and, from all I saw, it was being used to great effect. The BattleTech/ MechWarrior community is, of course, vociferous and extremely passionate, but it's always been a fairly decent community to begin with; MWO just helped re-establish my faith in the community, in general. Anyway, kudos to PGI; perhaps this can be a new model for other communities, as well?
I won't say that I completely hate non-sub games since I like GW2, but I have not really enjoyed F2P or former P2P that become F2P.
I really tried hard in EQ2 to enjoy the Extended version before the rest of the game was changed as well. I didn't enjoy the nickle and diming. I didn't like the community and the fact that it seemed like people did not ever get caught out by GMs if acting badly. I didn't like how payers subsidized free players or that there was a two tier community between those who paid and had more powerful characters and those were were free and were rather weak in comparison.
Also, customer support seemed much better on the Live servers.
Even so, I really fault SOE and any other dev that hosts a cash shop in a sub game that is really in your face. Even though SOE does not advertize in EQ2 as ruthessly as some companies (Turbine for example with its glowing gold coin icons over NPCs in LotRO), just the xp potions alone were enough to try to put pressure on players to pay more than their sub. Certainly, a few times when I went leveling with my guildies, they were all outleveling me while we were grouped up. I wondered why, and asked them, well it was because they bought xp potions in the cash shop. Just great!
To me that really breaks the spirit of gaming: worrying about what is new in the cash shop and spending time browsing that rather than playing the game, or being forced to go to the cash shop to unlock new material, seeing icons related to the cash shop in the game or in its UI, being forced to have a two tiered player base just based on how much they are willing to spend... etc.
Sure, I know my primary game, WoW, has a cash shop too, but the thing is that it is so exterior to the game itself it does not break immersion and to be honest, I have never ever visited and do not feel compelled to. I still find it reprehensible that it exists at all, but at least it is barely there.
Playing MUDs and MMOs since 1994.
I agree with what you're saying but at some point I have to draw the line. Star Trek Online, my current haunt is F2P and the community seems stable. I'm even in a very active Fleet (guild) with friends I've had since launch... these are the closest freinds I've had in an online game since Ultima Online or the first version of Star Wars Galaxies.
F2P is just another evolution in the gaming world. Before F2P there was just Subscription. Before Subscription there was just SInge Player or Multiplayer/LAN. Before that it was Pen and Paper games. In another 5 or 10 years you'll be complaining about the next big evolution in gaming. If you want a community you need to build it. As you said there are always going to be trolls, ragers, and flamers. Build your social walls, type /ignore, and have some fun meeting people like yourself who want to enjoy their favorite game (be it F2P or P2P).
The better title to your article would be, Greed is killing Gaming.
In my opinion, greed and free-to-play go hand-in-hand. As others said, there's no such thing as "free", no matter how well it's designed.
F2P "evolved" in my mind because developers said to themselves "Why get $12.95 a month from 200,000 people when we could snatch up anywhere from $5-100 a month from MILLIONS of players?"
Waiting for something fresh to arrive on the MMO scene...
Greed, really?
They dont expect to get millions of people paying money. They expect a small % to pay money with the majority playing for free. Of course they hope more will spend, but they know in reality many wont because being free is what draws them tot he game.
On the other hand we have WoW. Lets see at $15 a month x approx 10m subs = Thats $150m per month. $1.8 billion per year, just sin subs alone. That not even account for their own cash shop as well as the cost of expansions (likely another couple hundred million per year average, bringing them to around $2 billion or more per year). Theyre making piles of money, yet are still charging the same fee as they did when the game was brand new. They could easily get by and make a shitload of money at half that cost, yet you dont see that happening after all these years. Id consider that to be greed more than anything else.
I'm sure someone else cleared it up, but I need to point out a factual error in the article.
Final Fantasy XIV's subscriptions were frozen for over a year while SE worked out how they wanted to proceed with the game. They knew the game wasn't ready, they knew it wasn't complete, and they felt it was wrong to ask people to pay a subscription for it. So, while they got their crap together, shuffled around their staff and created a new road-map for where they would take the game, SE halted all subscriptions for anyone who owned the game.
When they successfully achieved all of what they set out to, and they felt the game had been satisfactorily patched and improved to represent the "base" of what a MMORPG should offer to its players, they resumed subscriptions - and at a reduced rate.
It's really irresponsible and reckless to throw out information as "facts" that haven't been properly researched.
As for the topic of F2P... Personally, I wouldn't lose a wink of sleep if F2P/Cash Shops - or virtual Cash Shops went away tomorrow. But that's neither here nor there.
It isn't even about "which is better", in any subjective way. The fact is, for each model to work, the developer needs to make money. Otherwise, the game goes offline, the developer closes shop, and no one gets to play it. Anyone who thinks developers are being "kind" or "generous" to their players by making a game F2P, they're incredibly naive. They don't go F2P because they want less money. They do it because they want more money, and they know Cash Shops are the way to achieve that. History has already proven that out.
What it boils down to for me is the way a game designed for each model earns its revenue.
For a subscription based game, the developer has to earn my sub money every month. That means they have to provide me an experience that is entertaining, engaging and lasting enough for me to want to keep playing. And I want it to last. My hopes and expectations going into a new MMO is measured in years, not weeks or months. If I play a MMO for a month or two and then feel bored and burned out on it, then it's failed (for me) as a MMORPG.
Cash Shops, on the other hand, are all about getting people to buy items as frequently as possible, for as much as possible. The entire game is designed around that requirement. Saying "but all those items are optional" is a very disingenuous statement that completely misses the point. It's not whether or not people have to buy those items that Cash Shops succeed or fail on. It's that people will spend money on those items. Developers don't just dream up stuff they "think people will like". They're stocking their cash shops with stuff they already know people will buy, and they design the game very specifically around making sure people do.
For me, it's subscriptions all the way. I would much rather know my money is going toward developers and designers creating new and interesting content to engage and interest me in their worlds, than to know that my money is going toward designers finding new ways to "monetize me" through cash shop sales.
I play MMORPGs to be engaged, entertained and immersed in a virtual world. I don't play them to go shopping for virtual items in an online mal. It also irks me to know that such items are deliberately kept out of my reach - even though they're already stored on my hard drive.
To be fair, Blizzard is a part of Activision now. Activision is run by one of the biggest tyrants in the industry.
Google "Robert Kotick". Read up on him. Or read here: http://www.teamliquid.net/forum/viewmessage.php?topic_id=128252
Waiting for something fresh to arrive on the MMO scene...
I totally agree with this article nice to see that at least some see the ftp push for what it is nothing but a nickel and diming money grab. I also agree about the communities in most games now for every decent person I run into it's 10 that have absolutely no social skills whatsoever and will do anything to run you over or just use you as a tool on the path to their epicness. God forbid if you make a mistake while in a group or if you havn't already run this dungeon 100 times and don't have each mob's ai memorized. You'll either get flamed till you quit or get kicked out of the group or guild.
Console gaming is no better. The average game is less then 10 hours of gameplay for $60 but for $10 here and another $10 there you can download all the rest of the content that should have been in the game from the begining.
How all the people have fallen for the ftp scam and the "downloadable extras" console scam is beyond me. I just vote with my wallet and avoid all of it.
I do see the future of games turning into nothing but stuff like plant vs zombies and angry birds if this trend continues.
I'm sorry but the whole article is lacking anything close to resembling a scientific method for coming up with any conclusions. The opinion piece at hand preys upon an already developed dislike of a genre and attempts to make connections that were not there. You could have switched poor community to poor crop growth in the mid west and you would still have basically the same thing with the same "evidence".
The article completely lets the culture of gaming and how its developed over the past decade completely off the hook and instead places something the writer is trying to preach against to come to the fore front.
F2P model articles should focus on the concept of addiction spending, and other issues that arrise from F2P. Trying to take a major complaint of mmo players and pin it on something irrelevent, seems a waste of time in my opinion.
To pander to playerbase dislikes you can follow up this article with
"How F2P has destroyed the sandbox genre" This will fire up those passionate for sandbox games.
"How F2P has kept open world PvP from being a priority of developers" would fire up pvp'ers.
Hell, If you wanted to create an article to really fire up people that are already angry you should have gone with
"How EA invented F2P so they could steal your money" That would combine your F2P crowd, with the EA crowd, and would definitely get some forum flames burning.
Ask the question in forums, "what destroyed community's in mmo's" and you will not get F2P as an answer, you will get gear treadmills, auction houses, pvp, and a hundred other answers. When developers made games a rat race the playerbase evolved, or devolved(whichever suits your opinion), hell even threads follow the same rules "FIRST".
Last community I experienced was in Asherons Call (AC1) and before the EQ, even a little in EQ2.
The real problem is the cheap internet , cheap and badly designed games, for people who generally pay less than in the old days, when you needed a bank loan to play n the net. The cheapness has opened the doors for the masses/ unemployed and those with a lower I.Q based solely on the maths of the masses.
In the good old days , people who didn't work couldn't afford the internet connections. So you still had idiots but educated/Working ones, who wanted more than a button mash out of the games.
Insta win features and automation are what have killed the genre for what it should be. And turned it into mindless trash with no depth or longevity.
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Sorcery must persist, the future is the Citadel
Maybe I'm wrong, but this is what I ment when wrote that they only following the demand. They can make this transition only because the playerbase are widening, and the priorities among the players are shifting towards easy access and microtransactions.
And also that's why I wrote f2p is a quite logical step from the publishers: why chasing the actual mmo players, who already have their well-known games, their routines, guilds, etc., when there's a much larger group, which is easily accessible - and as a side-effect, focusing them brings in a sh**load of money... What we see in the last 1-1.5 years is simply more and more companies slowly adjusting their focus onto this people. The companies didn't created this group (they mostly came from portable devices, consoles, flash games or facebook), the companies only realised that they can lure them in to the mmo market as well. And it seems working, few years ago f2p ment crappy failure, nowadays most games are starting as f2p... Of course, maybe I'm totally wrong with this. Just my 2 cents.
Funny you mention Eve, one of the rare truly f2p games
Not in the meaning as we using f2p generally, but plex gives you free play, without any restriction (since you are the same paying customer, just you got your month via playing). Of course it's not the same as f2p games, someone has to buy plex in the first place, so CCP won't lose money by it. But it could've affected the playerbase, like it happened with other games. I guess what's kept it fairly intact, is that Eve don't have easy access, one of the main attribute of f2p's. Eve's beginning is hard, slow, and need some learning, not some "tutorial, talk to npc, lvl2, go kill some mob, lvl3," etc 
Funny you mention EVE in the context of F2P, because for me EVE is a truly P2W game.
The longer (more) you pay, the better you get, with no input required whatsoever.
Different perspectives I guess.
I thought SWG was a great game until they screwed it up with that last combat patch..
Speaking of F2P MMO's. I just purchased a Macbook a few weeks ago and am looking for a good f2p mmo to play on it? Any suggestions?
It makes me sad that people are blaming a financial structure rather than themselves for an apparent (in their minds) loss of some non-existent golden days of community'.
Community is not based on an echelon of people with money willing to pay a monthly. Not to mention you site the failures of games a that are not even MMOs or are based on a completely different financial metric.
Community sculpts itself outside of the realm of finance. Community building has NOTHING to do with a financial model. A community fails because it doesn't have support. A community succeeds when it has support.
Fr00bs do not kill a game with trollish interactions in a game. WoW has the most trollish community ever and those people pay a monthly. In fact the opposite is true now that some games are F2P. Those who pay a monthly have some perverse need to feel superior and become trollish in some sad attempt to distinguish themselves.
Subscription models by and large have the MOST ignorant cast of players in the realm of MMOs. It is player's inflated sense of self worth that ruins a community. It is flame wars on forum threads and blow-hards with too much time complaining on every board they can find trying to force companies to sculpt an existing game into what they want to get out of it. Companies that cave to these people on the forums generally fail and those that stick to their guns and put out the best game they know how to without trying to nerf everything under the sun do the best.
The problem is people who post self referential comments stating that so and so said the same thing they are saying on X forum when it was themselves who made Y posts on forums A-Z. Game producers lurk in all these forums and often don't see through the trickery and often make bad decisions based on false evidence which then ruins a game. Then the players who were making that community great get disenfranchised with pointless changes and make an exodus from the game leaving behind only the trolls to whine and dine.
The fact is community is not something you can force into your little box of personal preference.
"Ask yourself “Hmmm… when was the last time I played a game where I didn’t enjoy just the game, but the community as well?”. I suspect you’ll be hard-pressed to come up with an answer."
This just goes to show you are not interacting well with others. You can create any kind of community you want through your interactions with others. It also goes to show that you are playing games to squeeze the most out of them ignoring the potential to make new relationships based on your preconceived notions of the community base.
Customer service is also a company to company thing and has ZERO again to do with the financial structure of revenue. It has EVERYTHING to do with how much stake a company has in a specific title. The fact is that the micro transaction model makes a lot of money. Sometimes companies don't have good support regardless of how much money a title makes.
See: SOE for example. Sony has had rubbish customer support in every game they have ever run, no matter what financial model they used. Why is this? Because Sony has many revenue streams outside of videogames. Videogames are just more icing on their already giant market share in electronics and media.
Next time you write an article painting entire communities into your preconceived corner do some research. Bias arguments like this are just ignorant and inflammatory.
TSW....wasn't hard at all.
It is a well know fact (ask my bank) that I am a buyer, and I buy crap. Vanity stuff, I'm on it, Upgrades, that's for me...
I am torn about F2P, I like the initial flexability of F2P, but I enjoy playing with others that are willing to commit to playing something.
Don't know how I feel, Conflicted?
Life is Short, Read a Book.
GW2 is not hurting the industry LOL, many, many people aren't not playing the game and already have quit like they have every other game after release... SO you GW2 fanboi's can get off your high horse , WOW has been on top fo years and they have a sub fee....
GW2 also has microtrans stores so its NOT b2p game, you have to spend money to get things, I rarher pay 15 bucks which is nothing than have this so called B2P , and if you didn't spend money then you didn't get everything out of the game that you would with a game with a sub.
F2P is killing the market, I'm in the field of gaming and worked for companys that have done F2P and P2P, I hear more crying in the office with F2P because they have to think of ways to make money, sub costs , its because of the gamers today and way to many games , they want everything for free and in the end if they don't get it for free they get upset aka SOny way of F2P is NOT free..
No F2P is free you would spend more money with F2P than sub in the end if you got the same things, I still sub to games I wanna play to get what I want when I want , I don't want to be stopped because I have to pay for this and that and it costs more in the end of the year...
I to play AC1 for 7 years since beta, but what killing is that people do not look for indie mmo's most of them are great buggy, yes, but great ideas and players do not support them like they should if they did more, we would get more games, by gamers, for gamers, so its the gamers fault.
Big comanys want money , indies want good games, so to fix this start supporting indies more and using kickstarter more if you people want better games,
So many gamers are trying to design games and have great ideas and have the experince to do so, but its tough to get what you want done unless you have a ton of money, so if we support more indies we will see , if not then you people can keep getting these so called clones, and complain more.
I went to school, and been doing game design for a reason to help make better games for us because I to was sick of what we see in MMO's, also hate to say it mobile apps are gonna take over...
I believe you've nailed it.
In the beginning, the amount of MMO players was small (compared to today) and all lived in "villages" (i.e. Meridian 59, UO, early EQ). Everyone knew everyone else, and there was a real sense of community. There wasn't much mobility, you tended to stay in your village for years, because there wasn't another one that suited you as well.
But as the population of MMO'ers grew, so did the amount of villages (new games). People started moving from their place of birth to other villages. Soon some cities formed (WoW ?).
In cities there is no single community. Almost everyone you see on the street every day is a total stranger. Only in your neighborhood (i.e. guild) do you actually know people.
Nowadays, new villages are formed often, but they are instantly populated by visitors from many big cities, who all want to live there because it's new and trendy and exciting. But they leave after a month or two, either because a newer village opened up, or they missed the comforts of their big city...
1) He didnt say ANYTHING about GW2. He accidentally typed G instead of F for F2P. Also, it says G2P not GW2 anyway. Nice blind childish rage over absolutely nothing because you somehow interpret any acronym that starts with a G to = GW2.
2) You do NOT need to buy anything in GW2. You can get every single thing in the shop for free through in game gold. FFS you can even buy the upgraded version of the game with its perks via farming money in game and exchanging for gems.
3) The idea that F2P costs more than P2P only applies if youre some dimwitted tool who has no self control that whips out their credit card every time they see some flashy ad. Nobody is forcing you to buy those things. The people that do buy it, buy it because they feel it is a fair exchange of money for a service / item. Ive played dozens of F2P games over several years. Ive spent money in maybe 5 or 6 of them that I felt were worthwhile. Playing dozens of P2P games over 5 or so years would have cost me several thousand dollars in box costs + subs.The entire premise of F2P games is getting lots of players wh dont pay along with some who do pay. Being free draws in players who might not play the game otherwise, and the paying players wouldnt pay if there was no population. Having more free players gives players with $ more reason to spend it. The fact that you dont know these things raises doubts that youre in the gaming field at all.
BTW, you say you dont want to be stopped because you have to pay for this and that. What exactly do you call your subscription? If you didnt pay your sub, you would be stopped and completely cut off from the game.
It's more than the F2P model it's the I want everything for FREE generation that is killing it. How many times do you see "I think this game should be free" or I don't want to explore, I want to reach the end as fast as I can". That is today's gamer. F2P fills both those needs better than a P2P game.
The industry sees that so they want to get in on all those people playing games. The more they can get playing the better chance someone will buy something. If you really want to blame someone, just look in the mirror and ask yourself if your not part of the problem.
It all boils down to this "Coporate greed and todays gamer". Vote with your walle.
I'm not an IT Specialist, Game Developer, or Clairvoyant in real life, but like others on here, I play one on the internet.
There are some really good, well-thought-out posts here.
However, I'd just like to say, to the particularly angry, aggressive, hostile posters in the thread. This is an editorial. It's my perception of things. I realize that we're obviously blessed to have so many video game historians, as evident by this thread, however, this is not a scientific feature. I'm not here to do an in-depth, empirically-sound article. If that's what you're looking for, you're going to drive yourself into a frenzy.
Opinion piece, people!
I just wanted to chime in because I could actually feel some people's blood pressure elevating in this thread!
Waiting for something fresh to arrive on the MMO scene...