You could approach F2P in some other way besides having a cash shop, for example have a free portion of the game in the same way as runescape, and then a subscriber's area. Heck you could even make expansion packs and sell those.
Cash shop in any shape or form is harmful for a game's reputation, especially after games like neverwinter. Many people simply don't trust cash shop games anymore and (myself included) have a hard time making a commitment to such games.
Call me oldschool but I find the act of exchanging real money for virtual items distasteful and in my opinion it lessens the reliability/credibility (was this the word I was looking for) of any game that does it.
You could approach F2P in some other way besides having a cash shop, for example have a free portion of the game in the same way as runescape, and then a subscriber's area. Heck you could even make expansion packs and sell those.
Cash shop in any shape or form is harmful for a game's reputation, especially after games like neverwinter. Many people simply don't trust cash shop games anymore and (myself included) have a hard time making a commitment to such games.
Call me oldschool but I find the act of exchanging real money for virtual items distasteful and in my opinion it lessens the reliability/credibility (was this the word I was looking for) of any game that does it.
Except this is a Sandbox. That kind of system RuneScape uses is tough to do in a game that relies on players making the content.
Help get Camelot Unchained made, a old-school MMORPG, with no hand holding!
Originally posted by GwapoJosh F2p is the only thing I hate about The Ropop.. It is a game that will need a great community and f2p brings so much trash.
You're right F2P can bring trash but it also lets people check out the game. I wish they would just let people check out mmo's these days for a month then let them sub. Would be such a smart move and show that they have faith in the game.
while i do agree with your wish that P2P MMO's would be great if they allowed people to play for a month before opting to buy into them, the one thing i have noticed, about F2P games, and the P2P games that went F2P, is that while there is an increase in the number of players, there is also an increase/appearance of trashy players too, whose sole mission seems to be to spoil the game in question for as many as possible before they get admin kicked.. which is probably why PWE have the automated system that censures bad players once a certain level of player complaint is reached, after seeing some of the behaviour in these games i can't say i blame them. This in a way will be a hurdle that the Repop will have to overcome, and not something i particularly envy them for, because if they adopt a similar system to PWE, then there are bound to be repercussions, particularly from the affected players, regardless of how deserved the action is, as was seen in Neverwinter. And its not like they can safely ignore bad player behaviour either. F2P does after all have more than a few weaknesses, this is just one of them.
Originally posted by CyclopsSlayer F2P is the death of Community. Players seem to feel much more dedicated to a P2P world, when it comes to things like Guilds and group activities. In every F2P game I have played so far guilds and such groups seem to fail time and time again as people feel little need to log on and work together. RP seems to be in need of a strong group and coordinated activity, F@P does not support such.
Aside from EVE and WoW name two communities of P2P games which are dedicated to their game more than the best F2P communities, until such a time keep your opinions under the format of opinions not facts.
F2P is death to a community, Ive played dozens of them.
DAOC is still got a great community, so does EQ. That's two communities, check mate!
Originally posted by CyclopsSlayer F2P is the death of Community. Players seem to feel much more dedicated to a P2P world, when it comes to things like Guilds and group activities. In every F2P game I have played so far guilds and such groups seem to fail time and time again as people feel little need to log on and work together. RP seems to be in need of a strong group and coordinated activity, F@P does not support such.
Aside from EVE and WoW name two communities of P2P games which are dedicated to their game more than the best F2P communities, until such a time keep your opinions under the format of opinions not facts.
F2P is death to a community, Ive played dozens of them.
DAOC is still got a great community, so does EQ. That's two communities, check mate!
Final Fantasy XI has the best community of any MMORPG. It's P2P, and has 300,000 subscribers. Not bad for a game that came out in 2002. Such helpful people I met in that game I will never forget.
Help get Camelot Unchained made, a old-school MMORPG, with no hand holding!
Originally posted by CyclopsSlayer F2P is the death of Community. Players seem to feel much more dedicated to a P2P world, when it comes to things like Guilds and group activities. In every F2P game I have played so far guilds and such groups seem to fail time and time again as people feel little need to log on and work together. RP seems to be in need of a strong group and coordinated activity, F@P does not support such.
Aside from EVE and WoW name two communities of P2P games which are dedicated to their game more than the best F2P communities, until such a time keep your opinions under the format of opinions not facts.
see you are confusing what he means by community.. its not the gaming company.. its the player community. And yeah he is right. the player community is nowhere near as good as a pay to play community because they are dedicated by paying each month and are there to play. Lots of free to play players dont respect anybody as it is free.... they arent putting any money into it. So they technically dont care, as they can move to the next free 2 play game.
so no his "opinions" are quite right. Asheron's Call 1 and 2.. DAOC, SWG, all pay to play had the strongest communities of players. Heck if a person enjoyed dancing or playing an instrument in SWG just for fun because they got to socialize tells you a bit how a community was built.
Those examples you gave are all older titles in the forced grouping era of MMORPGs. During that era players generally behaved much better, because they needed one another. They were always grouping and if you got a bad reputation you weren't going to find groups. When grouping you were generally sociable and it made for much better communities in general.
The anti-social players started when games became completely soloable. Post-WoW it just became easier and easier for players to do that, and in many cases grouping slowed you down. Suddenly players are rejecting group invites when they are solo because they don't want to have to get slowed down. If they want group content they use group finders with cross server grouping. They may never see these other guys again. So suddenly you have a lot more Greed looters, and anti-social types. There are less repercussions for doing so.
That problem is both in the P2P and F2P games in this era.
Those examples you gave are all older titles in the forced grouping era of MMORPGs. During that era players generally behaved much better, because they needed one another. They were always grouping and if you got a bad reputation you weren't going to find groups. When grouping you were generally sociable and it made for much better communities in general.
The anti-social players started when games became completely soloable. Post-WoW it just became easier and easier for players to do that, and in many cases grouping slowed you down. Suddenly players are rejecting group invites when they are solo because they don't want to have to get slowed down. If they want group content they use group finders with cross server grouping. They may never see these other guys again. So suddenly you have a lot more Greed looters, and anti-social types. There are less repercussions for doing so.
That problem is both in the P2P and F2P games in this era.
umm and there are not that many p2p games today so your point is?
doesnt matter what era, games of the past were all p2p... games of today are mainly free2play. your whole argument you just posted up is exactly why those games in teh past did well. And why todays games dont do so well. Why games as old as Asheron's Call are still running till this day. Now companies are will to just shut them down. Now gaming companies are taking on the model of buy my game in p2p now.. then we will turn to free 2 play after we sucked you dry... the games are designed to be anti social. They dont have P2P anymore today. look at the chain of free 2 play games coming out. including this one, The Population. back then a quality pay to play model was that the developers did have game masters that made their game involved. today nope. its just a dead world. So yeah games back then were more quality. games may have started out as pay to play but they dont stay long. the quality of gaming is basically have affected the games of today. im sure yuo can name a couple of pay to play today but those games are most likely just aweful.
My point is that people are blaming the payment model for communities being worse today than they were 10-15 years ago. I agree with you that they are. But I think the primary blame for the community dropping off is the lack of need of other players.
Hey jc, you guys ever kick around the idea of releasing this game on PlayStation network? This pc mmo crowd grows more finicky by the day
I think you were saying that tongue in cheek but I did play Defiance for several months earlier this year. That had PS3, XBox360 and PC versions, which because of the console companies policies had to have separate servers for each platform. That must have had a severe impact on running costs for a start. Then of course, the game had to have numerous compromises to run on all three platforms. That resulted in a poor GUI, a poor text and voice chat system etc. etc. That's my only experience of an mmo running on multiple platforms but it had lots of problems caused by that.
Regarding P2P versus F2P, I think all this nostalgia for the "Golden days" of P2P mmo's is a case of "rose tinted glasses" distorting people views.
Back in 2004, I was the mayor of a metropolis in SWG. I kept adding accounts until I had five in total. I had all the important characters the city needed under my control: Mayor, Architect, Guild Leader, Master Doc, even a Master Entertainer in the cantina running a looping macro almost 24 hrs per day via my backup PC. At the time, it seemed normal, when I look back now, I must have been crazy to take a game that seriously. The interesting thing is a number of people have claimed in this thread that P2P makes for better communities. Well, most people I came across in SWG were fine but there were some notorious exceptions. One person was famous on the Farstar server for parking his Bantha on the ticket inspector at Coronet starport so nobody could see him. Another pair went out of there way to ruin any community events being organised. These people basically played the game to grief and were happy to pay $15 per month to do so.
A while after leaving SWG, I tried WoW, a P2P game. Well that is still the worst community I have ever come across. The public chat channel was full of morons, the were griefers around every corner it seemed. I only lasted around six weeks in that game before I'd had enough. LotRO became my main game for many years after and was a total contrast to WoW. I have a lifetime sub for that, which made it B2P in effect. LotRO has always been known for its great community and when it went F2P (or freemium more accurately) there was a big surge in player numbers but the quality of the players didn't go down as far as I could see.
I've played lots of other games in recent years. Most had a sub to start with but I, along with nearly everyone else, played for a month or two until max level and then quit. I think every single one of them has gone F2P or B2P since. It should be clear to everyone by now that the P2P model is history but this site seems to have many deniers burying their heads like ostriches, while trying to avoid the obvious.
The only viable long term options for games companies going forward are B2P or F2P. If big budget titles like Rift, SWTOR and TSW can't make a monthly sub stick, a small indie publisher won't be able to either.
free to play is my biggest concern as well for this game.
If they deliver a solid product they can spin of that, more or less like what was done with Eve Online. Thing that would be much better for building a strong community and then work on growing.
Would the people who have it stuck up in their mind that F2P = bad kindly get it unstuck and out of their minds? The Repopulation would sink like a stone if it were P2P because the market's just not even remotely as friendly as it used to be back when EVE started out... to say nothing of the fact that if it were P2P its direct competition for the regular sandbox gamer (that is who doesn't care about aesthetics but does about the freedom in the game) would likely be a F2P game by the name of Archeage. B2P would also be very risky as well, far better for them to just go F2P with a non-intrusive cash shop (aesthetics stuff) and just for them to push some cash into their marketing department and encourage people to try their game and if they like it to tell a friend.
Hopefully the wowkiddies won't ruin the game with their demands for raids and global banks and global auction houses and being perfectly safe everywhere so nobody's e-feelings can get hurt.
Played WoW already, not interested in playing another even if its free.
It is 2013 people, I'm surprised the F2p model still has its doubters. F2p doesnt mean it is pay2win as the dev responding has already pointed out.
Many people will not pay a dollar to pay a game, so if it's subscription-only the company gets zero dollars from them which hurts the overall game. But if you offer optional services like bigger bank slots, cosmetics etc, then certain whale gamers will gladly spend 100 bucks+ on this type of stuff. Those things make your gaming experience more convenient and unique, but they dont affect things like PVE or PVP. In essence you have a smaller number of gamers subsidizing those who dont want to pay anything. But if this choice of deciding to pay is optional and self selecting then why not? The people who pay get custom features and those are f2p get a free game. In the end both parties win since without the payers the game would shut down, but without the f2pers there would be a smaller and less vibrant server population, something that is critical in games with player driven economics and in-depth crafting.
It is 2013 people, I'm surprised the F2p model still has its doubters. F2p doesnt mean it is pay2win as the dev responding has already pointed out.
Many people will not pay a dollar to pay a game, so if it's subscription-only the company gets zero dollars from them which hurts the overall game. But if you offer optional services like bigger bank slots, cosmetics etc, then certain whale gamers will gladly spend 100 bucks+ on this type of stuff. Those things make your gaming experience more convenient and unique, but they dont affect things like PVE or PVP. In essence you have a smaller number of gamers subsidizing those who dont want to pay anything. But if this choice of deciding to pay is optional and self selecting then why not? The people who pay get custom features and those are f2p get a free game. In the end both parties win since without the payers the game would shut down, but without the f2pers there would be a smaller and less vibrant server population, something that is critical in games with player driven economics and in-depth crafting.
I have yet to play a free to play MMO that is better than a pay to play mmo. I been playing 15+ years and played every single one to date on both sides of the fence... just saying...
"The King and the Pawn return to the same box at the end of the game"
Hopefully the wowkiddies won't ruin the game with their demands for raids and global banks and global auction houses and being perfectly safe everywhere so nobody's e-feelings can get hurt.
Played WoW already, not interested in playing another even if its free.
Don't us "wowkiddies" aren't interested in your game. Enjoy.
The vast majority of players aren't really interested in community, immersion or devotion to any one game. Players like me, who just want to have fun, without pressure, without commitment. You know, "players" - people playing games, not living in them.
I'm not going to play another P2P, ever. So if any company wants my money, it's B2P or F2P.
Fotunately, there are millions of us quite happy with F2P or B2P, which is why nearly every new mmo is going for one of those payment models. It's tough luck for those dinosaurs who don't like them and can't face up to the new reality, as they are going to be faced with fewer and fewer alternative options as time goes by.
Originally posted by NamelessC F2p or P2p, a good game will be a good game, a bad game will be a bad game. Stop this F2p vs P2p things, i am sick of hearing it.
The thing is it's not just good or bad you have generic moderate middle of the road stuff that isn't junk but also isn't top shelf that all goes free2play. Even F2P can be Marvel Heroes, cash grab, blatant milking with a founders price tag of $260 USD, limited bag space, bank space, gold limits, store ads on every loading screen. I'm sorry but not having an in-game real money store makes for a much better experience IMHO. Let's not delude ourselves and call EVE or WOW subscription models only because they sell mounts for $20 and the monocle for $70 thing.
Look here's the skinny: Almost every MMORPG has a cash shop there's no escaping it now.
I can only fondly remember the days when MMO's didn't have cash shops.
"You CAN'T buy ships for RL money." - MaxBacon
"classification of games into MMOs is not by rational reasoning" - nariusseldon
The vast majority of players aren't really interested in community, immersion or devotion to any one game. Players like me, who just want to have fun, without pressure, without commitment. You know, "players" - people playing games, not living in them.
I'm not going to play another P2P, ever. So if any company wants my money, it's B2P or F2P.
Apparently, a lot of them do want my money.
Everything that is wrong with the modern MMO is right here.
Help get Camelot Unchained made, a old-school MMORPG, with no hand holding!
The vast majority of players aren't really interested in community, immersion or devotion to any one game. Players like me, who just want to have fun, without pressure, without commitment. You know, "players" - people playing games, not living in them.
I'm not going to play another P2P, ever. So if any company wants my money, it's B2P or F2P.
Apparently, a lot of them do want my money.
Everything that is wrong with the modern MMO is right here.
+1
that guy is the downfall of good mmorpgs in one post.
Comments
You could approach F2P in some other way besides having a cash shop, for example have a free portion of the game in the same way as runescape, and then a subscriber's area. Heck you could even make expansion packs and sell those.
Cash shop in any shape or form is harmful for a game's reputation, especially after games like neverwinter. Many people simply don't trust cash shop games anymore and (myself included) have a hard time making a commitment to such games.
Call me oldschool but I find the act of exchanging real money for virtual items distasteful and in my opinion it lessens the reliability/credibility (was this the word I was looking for) of any game that does it.
Except this is a Sandbox. That kind of system RuneScape uses is tough to do in a game that relies on players making the content.
Help get Camelot Unchained made, a old-school MMORPG, with no hand holding!
http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/13861848/camelot-unchained
while i do agree with your wish that P2P MMO's would be great if they allowed people to play for a month before opting to buy into them, the one thing i have noticed, about F2P games, and the P2P games that went F2P, is that while there is an increase in the number of players, there is also an increase/appearance of trashy players too, whose sole mission seems to be to spoil the game in question for as many as possible before they get admin kicked.. which is probably why PWE have the automated system that censures bad players once a certain level of player complaint is reached, after seeing some of the behaviour in these games i can't say i blame them. This in a way will be a hurdle that the Repop will have to overcome, and not something i particularly envy them for, because if they adopt a similar system to PWE, then there are bound to be repercussions, particularly from the affected players, regardless of how deserved the action is, as was seen in Neverwinter. And its not like they can safely ignore bad player behaviour either. F2P does after all have more than a few weaknesses, this is just one of them.
F2P is death to a community, Ive played dozens of them.
DAOC is still got a great community, so does EQ. That's two communities, check mate!
Final Fantasy XI has the best community of any MMORPG. It's P2P, and has 300,000 subscribers. Not bad for a game that came out in 2002. Such helpful people I met in that game I will never forget.
Help get Camelot Unchained made, a old-school MMORPG, with no hand holding!
http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/13861848/camelot-unchained
see you are confusing what he means by community.. its not the gaming company.. its the player community. And yeah he is right. the player community is nowhere near as good as a pay to play community because they are dedicated by paying each month and are there to play. Lots of free to play players dont respect anybody as it is free.... they arent putting any money into it. So they technically dont care, as they can move to the next free 2 play game.
so no his "opinions" are quite right. Asheron's Call 1 and 2.. DAOC, SWG, all pay to play had the strongest communities of players. Heck if a person enjoyed dancing or playing an instrument in SWG just for fun because they got to socialize tells you a bit how a community was built.
Those examples you gave are all older titles in the forced grouping era of MMORPGs. During that era players generally behaved much better, because they needed one another. They were always grouping and if you got a bad reputation you weren't going to find groups. When grouping you were generally sociable and it made for much better communities in general.
The anti-social players started when games became completely soloable. Post-WoW it just became easier and easier for players to do that, and in many cases grouping slowed you down. Suddenly players are rejecting group invites when they are solo because they don't want to have to get slowed down. If they want group content they use group finders with cross server grouping. They may never see these other guys again. So suddenly you have a lot more Greed looters, and anti-social types. There are less repercussions for doing so.
That problem is both in the P2P and F2P games in this era.
https://www.therepopulation.com - Sci Fi Sandbox.
umm and there are not that many p2p games today so your point is?
doesnt matter what era, games of the past were all p2p... games of today are mainly free2play. your whole argument you just posted up is exactly why those games in teh past did well. And why todays games dont do so well. Why games as old as Asheron's Call are still running till this day. Now companies are will to just shut them down. Now gaming companies are taking on the model of buy my game in p2p now.. then we will turn to free 2 play after we sucked you dry... the games are designed to be anti social. They dont have P2P anymore today. look at the chain of free 2 play games coming out. including this one, The Population. back then a quality pay to play model was that the developers did have game masters that made their game involved. today nope. its just a dead world. So yeah games back then were more quality. games may have started out as pay to play but they dont stay long. the quality of gaming is basically have affected the games of today. im sure yuo can name a couple of pay to play today but those games are most likely just aweful.
https://www.therepopulation.com - Sci Fi Sandbox.
Hey jc, you guys ever kick around the idea of releasing this game on PlayStation network? This pc mmo crowd grows more finicky by the day
Doubtful. PS4 is around the corner. Moving to Consoles is expensive even for successful Indie Devs and they've got nothing to show so far.
Help get Camelot Unchained made, a old-school MMORPG, with no hand holding!
http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/13861848/camelot-unchained
I think you were saying that tongue in cheek but I did play Defiance for several months earlier this year. That had PS3, XBox360 and PC versions, which because of the console companies policies had to have separate servers for each platform. That must have had a severe impact on running costs for a start. Then of course, the game had to have numerous compromises to run on all three platforms. That resulted in a poor GUI, a poor text and voice chat system etc. etc. That's my only experience of an mmo running on multiple platforms but it had lots of problems caused by that.
Regarding P2P versus F2P, I think all this nostalgia for the "Golden days" of P2P mmo's is a case of "rose tinted glasses" distorting people views.
Back in 2004, I was the mayor of a metropolis in SWG. I kept adding accounts until I had five in total. I had all the important characters the city needed under my control: Mayor, Architect, Guild Leader, Master Doc, even a Master Entertainer in the cantina running a looping macro almost 24 hrs per day via my backup PC. At the time, it seemed normal, when I look back now, I must have been crazy to take a game that seriously. The interesting thing is a number of people have claimed in this thread that P2P makes for better communities. Well, most people I came across in SWG were fine but there were some notorious exceptions. One person was famous on the Farstar server for parking his Bantha on the ticket inspector at Coronet starport so nobody could see him. Another pair went out of there way to ruin any community events being organised. These people basically played the game to grief and were happy to pay $15 per month to do so.
A while after leaving SWG, I tried WoW, a P2P game. Well that is still the worst community I have ever come across. The public chat channel was full of morons, the were griefers around every corner it seemed. I only lasted around six weeks in that game before I'd had enough. LotRO became my main game for many years after and was a total contrast to WoW. I have a lifetime sub for that, which made it B2P in effect. LotRO has always been known for its great community and when it went F2P (or freemium more accurately) there was a big surge in player numbers but the quality of the players didn't go down as far as I could see.
I've played lots of other games in recent years. Most had a sub to start with but I, along with nearly everyone else, played for a month or two until max level and then quit. I think every single one of them has gone F2P or B2P since. It should be clear to everyone by now that the P2P model is history but this site seems to have many deniers burying their heads like ostriches, while trying to avoid the obvious.
The only viable long term options for games companies going forward are B2P or F2P. If big budget titles like Rift, SWTOR and TSW can't make a monthly sub stick, a small indie publisher won't be able to either.
free to play is my biggest concern as well for this game.
If they deliver a solid product they can spin of that, more or less like what was done with Eve Online. Thing that would be much better for building a strong community and then work on growing.
Hopefully the wowkiddies won't ruin the game with their demands for raids and global banks and global auction houses and being perfectly safe everywhere so nobody's e-feelings can get hurt.
Played WoW already, not interested in playing another even if its free.
It is 2013 people, I'm surprised the F2p model still has its doubters. F2p doesnt mean it is pay2win as the dev responding has already pointed out.
Many people will not pay a dollar to pay a game, so if it's subscription-only the company gets zero dollars from them which hurts the overall game. But if you offer optional services like bigger bank slots, cosmetics etc, then certain whale gamers will gladly spend 100 bucks+ on this type of stuff. Those things make your gaming experience more convenient and unique, but they dont affect things like PVE or PVP. In essence you have a smaller number of gamers subsidizing those who dont want to pay anything. But if this choice of deciding to pay is optional and self selecting then why not? The people who pay get custom features and those are f2p get a free game. In the end both parties win since without the payers the game would shut down, but without the f2pers there would be a smaller and less vibrant server population, something that is critical in games with player driven economics and in-depth crafting.
I have yet to play a free to play MMO that is better than a pay to play mmo. I been playing 15+ years and played every single one to date on both sides of the fence... just saying...
Don't us "wowkiddies" aren't interested in your game. Enjoy.
The vast majority of players aren't really interested in community, immersion or devotion to any one game. Players like me, who just want to have fun, without pressure, without commitment. You know, "players" - people playing games, not living in them.
I'm not going to play another P2P, ever. So if any company wants my money, it's B2P or F2P.
Apparently, a lot of them do want my money.
The thing is it's not just good or bad you have generic moderate middle of the road stuff that isn't junk but also isn't top shelf that all goes free2play. Even F2P can be Marvel Heroes, cash grab, blatant milking with a founders price tag of $260 USD, limited bag space, bank space, gold limits, store ads on every loading screen. I'm sorry but not having an in-game real money store makes for a much better experience IMHO. Let's not delude ourselves and call EVE or WOW subscription models only because they sell mounts for $20 and the monocle for $70 thing.
Look here's the skinny: Almost every MMORPG has a cash shop there's no escaping it now.
I can only fondly remember the days when MMO's didn't have cash shops.
"classification of games into MMOs is not by rational reasoning" - nariusseldon
Love Minecraft. And check out my Youtube channel OhCanadaGamer
Try a MUD today at http://www.mudconnect.com/Everything that is wrong with the modern MMO is right here.
Help get Camelot Unchained made, a old-school MMORPG, with no hand holding!
http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/13861848/camelot-unchained
+1
that guy is the downfall of good mmorpgs in one post.