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.
Opinions on your part of course. The sad truth is F2P seems to be the way of the future. Just as communities and sense of a living world have been disappearing from MMOs way before F2P became prevalent. Casual players seem to be the majority right now so developers cater to them.
A man is his own easiest dupe, for what he wishes to be true he generally believes to be true...
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.
Having money to pay for a Sub does not mean they aren't trash.
On allot of the MMO's I play on are sub based and have an overabundance of trash.
I think this is a poor argument. 80%-90% of the FTP MMO's out their are Garbage. Not all of them. I think they should be judge on an individual Basis.
In those cases it is probably the pvp aspect that brings out the others bad apples in a game.I usually try not to read chat ever in a game ,it is seldom good for the game,usually players spamming nonsense or spamming their wares in chat because ,well i guess they figure their wares are too good for the AH and everyone should know it.
When FFXI had no trial and most of the new breed of gamer were in WOW, it was the most amazing community ever.I watched chat all the time back then and it was a lot of people trying to help each other.
The obvious answer to Why,is that F2p is a model the developer believes is in his/her best interest.Do not believe any PR guy that tells you they are going f2p for YOUR benefit,actually a good idea to stay away from that game,it says they like to feed you BS.EVERY single choice a developer makes is for their own benefit,they would never stay in business if they listen to millions of separate people and their individual wants/needs.
Never forget 3 mile Island and never trust a government official or company spokesman.
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.
Rose tinted glasses huh? WOW, but there was never games before SWG huh? SWG brought it a small amount of masses by a poorly run MMO... it had the BEST concept that never delivered then a company that just took a huge elephant you know what and stuck it into the player base like it was for fun. Yeah i wouldnt use SWG as a great example of a great game. You had games like daoc, Asheron's call which had pvp and pve... had great communities... and when you had a loud mouth in the crowd... literally were ridiculed off the game. Pay to play had great customer service. I can remember when one guy was ruining the game for a small group of people and customer service was contacted.. IN GAME.. the guy came in and warned the player. If he continued he would be banned for a short period. That is a game with pay to play. It is services that made the money worth it. IN GAME events ran by game masters in some of the older games that made the pay to play model worth it. Huge storylines that involved you and the world your character lived in. A lot of the games today are just plain dead worlds with crappy AI.. same story line from point a to point b... and so on.
These companies are basically taking your money, anyway that can at super low quality service and gaming as possible. Their events now consist of stupid little quests that give you little immersion or thought behind it. I remember going to a live event in Asheron's Call where Asheron fought his nemesis. And there was this big storyline of quests that followed it with some nice stuff if you completed it. Everybody gathered to watch Asheron win. but of course you didnt know what was going ot happen but he did win as his nemisis escaped. Either way, taht was quality gaming with some nice quests that werent just go here and kill 10 rabbits.
These kind of games got you addicted. teh community was different back then. Yes WOW brought in the masses of people into the MMO gaming. And they were the big reason that all these otehr companies only saw $$$ rather then any quality being attached to it. They figured just copy what WOW did. WOW rode its popularity on its famous RTS games. Heck even in China they still play Warcraft 3. Whats even funnier they even have a TV show that shows 2 guys playing Warcraft 3. China also has about 3x the amount of servers then the north american servers. So yeah i can see why so many wanted to copy WOW.
But problem is, when you start giving less quality like that, the crowd playing those games dont care much anymore either. When you have a quality game with quality service and quality devs... the players find it worthwhile to pay for a game. And your loyal fanbase literally fight for the game. ONE thing that will always give a loyal fanbase is when the developers listen to its customers and is communicative. One being... NEVER NERF... Only improve the weaker classes. Nerfing is a failed concept.
Bottom line is.. if the game is quality.. pay to play is a very good concept and pays for good live events, customer service, and a good community who are there to play because they paid for it. Too often free players dont care about the game they play. You still have a good following like all other games. TO me, MY OPINION, that ruins the game for me.
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...
Well your one sentence post which doesn't go into any details about the points I made or which p2p and f2p MMO's you played and why you thought certain ones were better obviously makes your point crystal clear....
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.
They do affect the gameplay. Or at least for me, they completely ruin immersion.
Why would I want to buy bigger bag with RL money? I want to craft it or fight for it inside game world and rather pay subscription which is just charged from my account in the most subtle way imaginable.
F2P and its omnipresent cashshop ruin my gameplay. I want Repopulation P2P rather than F2P.
It is my subjective opinion. I realize that some people do not mind being confronted with cash shops and real money transactions in their MMOs if they are in return allowed to play game for free. I realize it, but I dont understand it.
Perhaps you don't understand basic economics. If a game can't get enough critical mass to make money on a subscription method only they can either: 1) go f2p with the graduated payment options this entails; or 2) go broke and cease operating their game.
It seems most people here who dislike f2p would rather the games do not exist at all. A classic case of "my way or no way" mentality.
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.
They do affect the gameplay. Or at least for me, they completely ruin immersion.
Why would I want to buy bigger bag with RL money? I want to craft it or fight for it inside game world and rather pay subscription which is just charged from my account in the most subtle way imaginable.
F2P and its omnipresent cashshop ruin my gameplay. I want Repopulation P2P rather than F2P.
It is my subjective opinion. I realize that some people do not mind being confronted with cash shops and real money transactions in their MMOs if they are in return allowed to play game for free. I realize it, but I dont understand it.
Perhaps you don't understand basic economics. If a game can't get enough critical mass to make money on a subscription method only they can either: 1) go f2p with the graduated payment options this entails; or 2) go broke and cease operating their game.
It seems most people here who dislike f2p would rather the games do not exist at all. A classic case of "my way or no way" mentality.
it doesnt require that much money nowadays to keep a game running. 200k to 300k is more then enough to make money off a game. It use to be a great game with those numbers. Problem is companies see that as a failure when you put it up to a company like Blizzard. Thats like saying the mom and pop store that makes money is not good because they arent like Walmart. Its just wrong thinking.
Originally posted by codifier No matter how much people hates F2P model, F2P is the next generation these days. Deal with it.
funny thing.. same thing was said about sandbox. Look whats happening.. sandbox games are making a comeback. EQ Next is goign to be a sandbox... this game repopulation is a sandbox. So yeah.. i wouldnt follow by your example. I have heard all the arguments about Theme Park games being the "next generation" these days and need to deal with it.
So no we dont have to deal with it. Enough of us fought for sandbox games and its back. Now on to the next crusade. A quality p2p.
Originally posted by codifier No matter how much people hates F2P model, F2P is the next generation these days. Deal with it.
funny thing.. same thing was said about sandbox. Look whats happening.. sandbox games are making a comeback. EQ Next is goign to be a sandbox... this game repopulation is a sandbox. So yeah.. i wouldnt follow by your example. I have heard all the arguments about Theme Park games being the "next generation" these days and need to deal with it.
So no we dont have to deal with it. Enough of us fought for sandbox games and its back. Now on to the next crusade. A quality p2p.
Errr, short of EvE name me one truly successful pure sandbox MMO out there? I mean, the closes we have is a bunch of sandpark type games and a bunch of games that haven't released yet...
A man is his own easiest dupe, for what he wishes to be true he generally believes to be true...
Originally posted by codifier No matter how much people hates F2P model, F2P is the next generation these days. Deal with it.
funny thing.. same thing was said about sandbox. Look whats happening.. sandbox games are making a comeback. EQ Next is goign to be a sandbox... this game repopulation is a sandbox. So yeah.. i wouldnt follow by your example. I have heard all the arguments about Theme Park games being the "next generation" these days and need to deal with it.
So no we dont have to deal with it. Enough of us fought for sandbox games and its back. Now on to the next crusade. A quality p2p.
Errr, short of EvE name me one truly successful pure sandbox MMO out there? I mean, the closes we have is a bunch of sandpark type games and a bunch of games that haven't released yet...
why are you saying sandpark games.. there is no such thing... because of the invention of theme park games by EQ and WOW doesnt mean that sandbox games didnt have quests. thats like a saying poop doesnt stink. Sandbox have very good quests. its just an open world with anything you want to do... from questing to hunting to crafting etc. theme park games put you on a rail and with not many other choices available.
Asheron's Call was a great game and still exists today. Some will tell you UO was a great game till trammel or somethign along those lines. DAOC took a different spin from the traditional sandbox and made it more pvp centric. Shadowbane was good except that it took them so long to make the game that the graphics outdated itself before it even released. But that was more of a hardcore sandbox. SWG could of been great, but again SOE's shortcomings killed it. They stopped their live events taht were ACTs 1, 2 and 3... and geared all their time into making Jedi. But they fell short on the questing as well.
Problem is.. WOW came into the scene in 2004 and that was the end of the sandbox era. It literally killed it off. So there wasnt many years for sandboxes to really continue on. Most companies only wanted Money to copy WOW.
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.
Damn , and this was looking great if it isn't sub based it's not worth playing.
I was looking forward to all the crafting but now this will just turn into a cess pit of time syncs, forcing you to buy speed ups for crafting. Degrading also fits a micro transaction hell.
I just hope they offer a subscription option where you get everything. And its a level playing field I just can't afford the micro transaction piece it just end up costing a fortune.
________________________________________________________ Sorcery must persist, the future is the Citadel
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.
Damn , and this was looking great if it isn't sub based it's not worth playing.
I was looking forward to all the crafting but now this will just turn into a cess pit of time syncs, forcing you to buy speed ups for crafting. Degrading also fits a micro transaction hell.
I just hope they offer a subscription option where you get everything. And its a level playing field I just can't afford the micro transaction piece it just end up costing a fortune.
Could be, but maybe save your conclusion until you have some evidence? Just a thought.
It's quite funny to read some of the earlier posts in the first 1/3 of the thread. So many people wisely pronouncing that "a subscription model is no longer viable in this day and age" and "all the major upcoming releases will be F2P"...
If they want a lower barrier to entry, sell the game for $20 with a $5 sub, if they think $60/$15 is the problem.
I just can't see F2P w/ cash shop working well for this type of game.
This game is often cited as a spiritual successor to old time SWG, and that game would have been totally changed had it been run as a F2P.
And the fact that F2P games are overrun with bots, hackers, spammers, and D-bag players of every stripe AND in F2P games they can not be gotten rid of, even temporarily is a big minus. At least with a sub/client game, they'd have to buy that again after a ban.
Anyway, my interest has fallen a lot since the F2P announcement, and it is frankly a large hurdle to overcome, both to get me to play, and in terms of making a good sandbox/open world type game.
And the fact that F2P games are overrun with bots, hackers, spammers, and D-bag players of every stripe AND in F2P games they can not be gotten rid of, even temporarily is a big minus. At least with a sub/client game, they'd have to buy that again after a ban.
Not sure how much F2P gaming you've done in recent years, but while those things really plagued the early games, I don't see much if any difference between F2P and P2P as far as community is concerned these days. There are automated forms of spam protection now. In the early titles you had starter areas filled with nonstop spam and spam emails. That's seldom the case in modern F2P titles.
Bots are a problem in each, because it generally takes longer to find a bot, and for gold farming companies they will gladly pay the price of another subscription. If a game has just launched, chances are it will be F2P within a year, and your just out of a box price. If it has been out a while, then there is likely a form of free trial which you can upgrade with a subscription. Bots though are about detection.
What you are left with is the random griefer. The person who just creates a new account to run around being a jerk, and then is willing to create a new one after being banned and do it again. You can't prevent that, but you can minimize the damage they can do. This type of player is always a newbie character, which concentrates their hunting locations to a small number of areas. Players don't do this sort of thing with characters they have been developing for weeks or months, generally. Because getting your character banned after playing them for a month is a loss of time that can't be recouped. If you monitor the newbie areas for problem children, minimize the damage they can do, and ban offenders, those types of players will move on.
The notion that players will be less friendly because a game is F2P though is a fallacy. Players have been acting less friendly in F2P and P2P games as the games became more soloable. The less you rely on your fellow player, the easier it is to be a jerk. There's less repercussions. Where in an older school game (which were all P2P simply because that's what there was at the time) players were generally nicer, because they needed one another. If they lost their corpse, they may need help dragging it out. If they wanted to progress, they needed a group. That doesn't change in an F2P game, if your a jerk, sure you can create a new account, but then your losing all the time you put in to that character. And nobody likes to waste their time.
I've played many F2P titles over the years, and many of the concerns that players raise, are of things that you almost never see any more.
Lowering the price to $20 with a $5 sub, just lowers your profit margin, it isn't going to significantly increase your exposure. If players were going to pay $20, they'd pay $50. If they were willing to pay a subscription, I doubt the difference between $5-15 makes much of a difference to most players, unless they were finding many other titles offering the same thing. You still have the problem of getting players to try your game, and of retaining them in the months following a new subscription games launch (when some players are going to cancel one subscription when they start the next).
Free trials are helpful, but as I said on page 1, free players are also a valuable part of your community. The bulk of them are worthy additions to the community. F2P detractors will point to the 1% of bad seeds as a means of representing the F2P community, but the bulk of F2P players are players on a budget, kids who don't have a credit card, or someone who was on the fence as to whether or not a game was worth paying for. Some of those players can be converted into paying customers, and those who don't, so long as they are playing within the EULA, are still good additions to a game. They might be friends, family members, or groupmates of paying customers, and having them playing keeps the other players happy. MMOs are about massive numbers of players, it's more fun to play in a game that has a healthy population. And how many P2P games still have that?
When a game is F2P, you remove the barrier of entry and your essentially saying, "This is our game. If you like it feel free to pay, if not move on, risk free." If players don't enjoy your game, it doesn't cost them a penny. That will get large number of players to play your game, and then its up to the developer to retain those players by putting out a good product. There are plenty of F2P titles out there, if players don't like your game they will move on quickly. There's no barrier of entry here though, at all. Just the time to download the game and register an account. If your confident that your game can retain players, this is the route to go. If your looking to quickly recoup a large investment budget, box sales make sense, when you know you can always go F2P down the road. The only barrier of entry right now with F2P titles, is the prejiduce that many players have against the notion of F2P not being willing to give a game a try, at all. That is however, far less than the barrier of entry created by a box or subscription price.
That's nice and all, but none of that stops a "bad" F2P player, whether that be Spammer/Bot/Hacker/whatever from coming right back on another free acct, immediately.
At least with a ban on a game requiring a new client or a new sub fee for an upgraded acct, that adds to the cost and nuisance for that player to come back. It is at least something.
With an F2P game, there is nothing. Any banned player can be right back.
And as to playing a recent F2P game, I have. AoW is or was overrun with spammers and bots, and that is a "modern" F2P game. So, I am not sure what you are saying, the spam I saw there was 10x worse than in the last 3 P2P MMOs I have played.
It was terrible in NWO as well.
One of the things cited about this game being F2P from launch was "barrier to entry". I do not agree that a $20 vs $60 client represent the same barrier to entry, nor a $5 vs $15 sub fee. If initial cost is the perceived barrier to entry, lower the box price. If having a sub at all is a problem, that have a fee for the client and go the GW route. At least those can go some way to keep the community from tuning into a zoo. Or have payment with a game card, or a paypal acct, if having a CC is the issue in having a sub at any price.
And that is all not addressing the cash shop in a sandbox game issue, which is hard for me to swallow. And if it is, it is because I have never seen a single cash shop implemented well, let alone in a game where sandbox play and player economy are supposed to be big elements.
So, like many, I am at best skeptical and at worse moderately pessimistic, and with the recent track record of F2P games these last few years, I don't think that is an unreasonable attitude to take.
Actually, it completely addresses those. Your going to have those whether your P2P or F2P. Not having a barrier of entry certainly makes it easier for them to create a new account, but those types of players are there for two one of two things:
a) To make money, often hired by a gold reseller. Those guys are just as bad on P2P as F2P. It's nothing for the parent company to buy a sub. They write that off as part of the cost of operation. Sub or no sub, it doesn't matter. Modern approaches to these are detection and ban for botters, and auto-detection for spammers. If someone is a gold farmer, they absolutely do not want to get caught because it takes time to skill up to be able to do the upper tier harvestables. Getting banned costs them money even in a F2P game because they need to skill up again.
or
b) To grief. They are playing to ruin the fun of others, because to them that is the fun. The mechanics there are in minimizing their effectiveness in being able to do so. If it's spamming people, then its in anti-flood and ignore techniques. If it's in dropping a train on someone, then the issue is the ability to do so. You repair the mechanic and remove their ability to grief other players. If they are stealing kills, then again it's a mechanical issue that you can repair. If a player is playing solely to grief they will get bored and move on quickly if they have no way to do so. And if they are a normal player, who just happens to be a jerk, they will still think twice about getting banned, because they don't want to lose the time.
With regards to economy, that's a whole different can of worms, and it is tied into pay to win or not. I agree with you in that the majority of F2P games on the market have attempted to squeeze players,as they try to find the optimal values for profit. We've also see a lot of them slowly move away from that over time. Many of the titles which started off with F2P being just an avenue to try to get subscribers, eventually opened just about everything up to F2P players. While some titles definitely allow players to buy their way to power, there are others which are purely cosmetic, or which only allow things like +25-33% exp potions maximum (which is often less than the 100% bonus from vitality/rest exp). It really depends on the approach taken. If you are allowing players to buy items of power, or harvestable resources, then your game has become pay to win and that is a very strong argument against F2P. However, not all games take that route, and Repop will not.
The opposite of that approach is to value free and paying players alike. And to instead try to use volume of players to make up for what is lost revenue per player. That's the route we are taking. We want every MMO player out there to try the game. It's not going to be for everyone, it's a sandbox. Some players are going to love it, some will hate it. If they hate it, we aren't trying to trick them into buying it. Try it out free of charge. If you like it, maybe you buy a one time membership to unlock some account perks, or maybe you buy a couple things piecemail. Maybe you play forever without ever spending a dime, or maybe it's not for you and you move on. I guess I just don't get how players could see that as a bad thing. You have nothing to lose other than the time it takes to download and register.
As far as $20 not being a barrier of entry, it could be $1 and still be a barrier of entry. In order to pay $1 players need to have a credit card, and to fill out forms for it. They need to wonder if they are going to charged per month automatically, etc. Many players may not have that information available at the time, or want to be hassled with it, especially if they are playing on a public computer.
A lot of games with similar concepts have failed miserably; I'm sure they're taking the route they see the most success from although I wish the new model was just Buy 2 Play.
I am interested in this game and I am going to play. But if it wasn't F2P my friends would not.
That was the first thing they asked me when I started telling them about the game, because they are tired of buying crap that they stop playing after two months.
I am interested in this game and I am going to play. But if it wasn't F2P my friends would not.
That was the first thing they asked me when I started telling them about the game, because they are tired of buying crap that they stop playing after two months.
I don't mean to mock your friends but getting 2 months life out of a game that cost 40-50 bucks is really good these days... Think they release 60$ ... (65 after taxes) games that have a 4-10 hour story line.
There's a lot of gamers out there who have been burned one too many times by bad developers making bad games. They would never consider paying for a game based on promises or advertised features.
From a personal perspective, while I can recognize the potential in the features Repop aims towards, I certainly won't donate or pay for something I haven't tried and decided it's worth my money. I share the "burned one too many times" story with a lot of gamers out there.
How does this relate to the OP? Quite simply, if the game is good it will attract the "undesireable fauna" anyway. If the game is bad, then it'll simply be just another indy sandbox with 20-30 diehard fanboys deluding themselves about potential and hordes of players that will come play right after XYZ feature is finished and polished. F2P only serves as means to increase the number of players trying the game out.
I think the ideal model for a substantial MMORPG is a subscription based one: it gives a sense of exclusivity to the gamer, very especially when a particular MMORPG looks oriented to a niche public that looks for a long-term gaming experience. In addition to this, I think the subscription model in certain way ensures customer’s tranquility with regards to maintenance, missions updates, dev run events and the so. No need to mention that, in my opinion, a subscription model discourages undesirable MMO fauna (trolls, kids, MMO tourists…).
For the reasons given above, I have the sensation that FTP might not be the best model for The Repop. Anyway, this could be a personal prejudice or perhaps there’s something I’m not getting.
What is your opinion about this?
It is the underlined. Your paragraph above that has been proven wrong so many times its sickening to think some people still attempt to claim that a subscription means anything other than a company fleecing consumers.
The only wrong way to do F2P is to do it the western way, if they go the Asian route it will mean nothing other than larger profits than anything they could hope to get with another model, which is another thing that has been proven so many times its sickening that western companies just plain don't get it because they are so focused on the old ways.
I think the ideal model for a substantial MMORPG is a subscription based one: it gives a sense of exclusivity to the gamer, very especially when a particular MMORPG looks oriented to a niche public that looks for a long-term gaming experience. In addition to this, I think the subscription model in certain way ensures customer’s tranquility with regards to maintenance, missions updates, dev run events and the so. No need to mention that, in my opinion, a subscription model discourages undesirable MMO fauna (trolls, kids, MMO tourists…).
For the reasons given above, I have the sensation that FTP might not be the best model for The Repop. Anyway, this could be a personal prejudice or perhaps there’s something I’m not getting.
What is your opinion about this?
It is the underlined. Your paragraph above that has been proven wrong so many times its sickening to think some people still attempt to claim that a subscription means anything other than a company fleecing consumers.
The only wrong way to do F2P is to do it the western way, if they go the Asian route it will mean nothing other than larger profits than anything they could hope to get with another model, which is another thing that has been proven so many times its sickening that western companies just plain don't get it because they are so focused on the old ways.
Could you enlighten all of us westerner about the great eastern way please ? You mean the pay per minutes of game time ? I mean, you could tell all those helpless suits about that secret way to make huge amount of money. You make it sounds so plain and easy you certainly are a wealthy men.
As a person who has been involved with smaller studios before, F2P is still the way to go early on, especially in today's market.
Take a look at how Riot Games and League of Legends started. While the fears of community are certainly well-founded with that game, look at the success it has developed over the past 3 years. I don't believe the game would have EVER had that level of success were it not for the fact that it was free (which was actually the only reason I tried it originally)
The key to successful communities in a game, or in any venture for that matter, is the foundation. If you attract a mere 2000 players who are solid contributors, active players, friendly, helpful, and there for the long haul, more people WILL come. It's inevitable.
I think the bigger problem with this game as it stands is that no one knows about it. If I hadn't stumbled across the kickstarter a year ago (by accident, mind you) I wouldn't have been keeping tabs on this game. It's one thing to worry about managing your community; it's another thing to not even have a community in place because information about the game is so isolated.
Waiting for something fresh to arrive on the MMO scene...
Comments
Opinions on your part of course. The sad truth is F2P seems to be the way of the future. Just as communities and sense of a living world have been disappearing from MMOs way before F2P became prevalent. Casual players seem to be the majority right now so developers cater to them.
A man is his own easiest dupe, for what he wishes to be true he generally believes to be true...
In those cases it is probably the pvp aspect that brings out the others bad apples in a game.I usually try not to read chat ever in a game ,it is seldom good for the game,usually players spamming nonsense or spamming their wares in chat because ,well i guess they figure their wares are too good for the AH and everyone should know it.
When FFXI had no trial and most of the new breed of gamer were in WOW, it was the most amazing community ever.I watched chat all the time back then and it was a lot of people trying to help each other.
The obvious answer to Why,is that F2p is a model the developer believes is in his/her best interest.Do not believe any PR guy that tells you they are going f2p for YOUR benefit,actually a good idea to stay away from that game,it says they like to feed you BS.EVERY single choice a developer makes is for their own benefit,they would never stay in business if they listen to millions of separate people and their individual wants/needs.
Never forget 3 mile Island and never trust a government official or company spokesman.
Rose tinted glasses huh? WOW, but there was never games before SWG huh? SWG brought it a small amount of masses by a poorly run MMO... it had the BEST concept that never delivered then a company that just took a huge elephant you know what and stuck it into the player base like it was for fun. Yeah i wouldnt use SWG as a great example of a great game. You had games like daoc, Asheron's call which had pvp and pve... had great communities... and when you had a loud mouth in the crowd... literally were ridiculed off the game. Pay to play had great customer service. I can remember when one guy was ruining the game for a small group of people and customer service was contacted.. IN GAME.. the guy came in and warned the player. If he continued he would be banned for a short period. That is a game with pay to play. It is services that made the money worth it. IN GAME events ran by game masters in some of the older games that made the pay to play model worth it. Huge storylines that involved you and the world your character lived in. A lot of the games today are just plain dead worlds with crappy AI.. same story line from point a to point b... and so on.
These companies are basically taking your money, anyway that can at super low quality service and gaming as possible. Their events now consist of stupid little quests that give you little immersion or thought behind it. I remember going to a live event in Asheron's Call where Asheron fought his nemesis. And there was this big storyline of quests that followed it with some nice stuff if you completed it. Everybody gathered to watch Asheron win. but of course you didnt know what was going ot happen but he did win as his nemisis escaped. Either way, taht was quality gaming with some nice quests that werent just go here and kill 10 rabbits.
These kind of games got you addicted. teh community was different back then. Yes WOW brought in the masses of people into the MMO gaming. And they were the big reason that all these otehr companies only saw $$$ rather then any quality being attached to it. They figured just copy what WOW did. WOW rode its popularity on its famous RTS games. Heck even in China they still play Warcraft 3. Whats even funnier they even have a TV show that shows 2 guys playing Warcraft 3. China also has about 3x the amount of servers then the north american servers. So yeah i can see why so many wanted to copy WOW.
But problem is, when you start giving less quality like that, the crowd playing those games dont care much anymore either. When you have a quality game with quality service and quality devs... the players find it worthwhile to pay for a game. And your loyal fanbase literally fight for the game. ONE thing that will always give a loyal fanbase is when the developers listen to its customers and is communicative. One being... NEVER NERF... Only improve the weaker classes. Nerfing is a failed concept.
Bottom line is.. if the game is quality.. pay to play is a very good concept and pays for good live events, customer service, and a good community who are there to play because they paid for it. Too often free players dont care about the game they play. You still have a good following like all other games. TO me, MY OPINION, that ruins the game for me.
Well your one sentence post which doesn't go into any details about the points I made or which p2p and f2p MMO's you played and why you thought certain ones were better obviously makes your point crystal clear....
Perhaps you don't understand basic economics. If a game can't get enough critical mass to make money on a subscription method only they can either: 1) go f2p with the graduated payment options this entails; or 2) go broke and cease operating their game.
It seems most people here who dislike f2p would rather the games do not exist at all. A classic case of "my way or no way" mentality.
it doesnt require that much money nowadays to keep a game running. 200k to 300k is more then enough to make money off a game. It use to be a great game with those numbers. Problem is companies see that as a failure when you put it up to a company like Blizzard. Thats like saying the mom and pop store that makes money is not good because they arent like Walmart. Its just wrong thinking.
funny thing.. same thing was said about sandbox. Look whats happening.. sandbox games are making a comeback. EQ Next is goign to be a sandbox... this game repopulation is a sandbox. So yeah.. i wouldnt follow by your example. I have heard all the arguments about Theme Park games being the "next generation" these days and need to deal with it.
So no we dont have to deal with it. Enough of us fought for sandbox games and its back. Now on to the next crusade. A quality p2p.
Errr, short of EvE name me one truly successful pure sandbox MMO out there? I mean, the closes we have is a bunch of sandpark type games and a bunch of games that haven't released yet...
A man is his own easiest dupe, for what he wishes to be true he generally believes to be true...
Why ask why? Try Bud Dry, ZOING!
That Guild Wars 2 login screen knocked up my wife. Must be the second coming!
why are you saying sandpark games.. there is no such thing... because of the invention of theme park games by EQ and WOW doesnt mean that sandbox games didnt have quests. thats like a saying poop doesnt stink. Sandbox have very good quests. its just an open world with anything you want to do... from questing to hunting to crafting etc. theme park games put you on a rail and with not many other choices available.
Asheron's Call was a great game and still exists today. Some will tell you UO was a great game till trammel or somethign along those lines. DAOC took a different spin from the traditional sandbox and made it more pvp centric. Shadowbane was good except that it took them so long to make the game that the graphics outdated itself before it even released. But that was more of a hardcore sandbox. SWG could of been great, but again SOE's shortcomings killed it. They stopped their live events taht were ACTs 1, 2 and 3... and geared all their time into making Jedi. But they fell short on the questing as well.
Problem is.. WOW came into the scene in 2004 and that was the end of the sandbox era. It literally killed it off. So there wasnt many years for sandboxes to really continue on. Most companies only wanted Money to copy WOW.
Damn , and this was looking great if it isn't sub based it's not worth playing.
I was looking forward to all the crafting but now this will just turn into a cess pit of time syncs, forcing you to buy speed ups for crafting. Degrading also fits a micro transaction hell.
I just hope they offer a subscription option where you get everything. And its a level playing field I just can't afford the micro transaction piece it just end up costing a fortune.
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Sorcery must persist, the future is the Citadel
Could be, but maybe save your conclusion until you have some evidence? Just a thought.
This thread is very entertaining
It's quite funny to read some of the earlier posts in the first 1/3 of the thread. So many people wisely pronouncing that "a subscription model is no longer viable in this day and age" and "all the major upcoming releases will be F2P"...
The future was so clear back in April, eh ?
If they want a lower barrier to entry, sell the game for $20 with a $5 sub, if they think $60/$15 is the problem.
I just can't see F2P w/ cash shop working well for this type of game.
This game is often cited as a spiritual successor to old time SWG, and that game would have been totally changed had it been run as a F2P.
And the fact that F2P games are overrun with bots, hackers, spammers, and D-bag players of every stripe AND in F2P games they can not be gotten rid of, even temporarily is a big minus. At least with a sub/client game, they'd have to buy that again after a ban.
Anyway, my interest has fallen a lot since the F2P announcement, and it is frankly a large hurdle to overcome, both to get me to play, and in terms of making a good sandbox/open world type game.
Not sure how much F2P gaming you've done in recent years, but while those things really plagued the early games, I don't see much if any difference between F2P and P2P as far as community is concerned these days. There are automated forms of spam protection now. In the early titles you had starter areas filled with nonstop spam and spam emails. That's seldom the case in modern F2P titles.
Bots are a problem in each, because it generally takes longer to find a bot, and for gold farming companies they will gladly pay the price of another subscription. If a game has just launched, chances are it will be F2P within a year, and your just out of a box price. If it has been out a while, then there is likely a form of free trial which you can upgrade with a subscription. Bots though are about detection.
What you are left with is the random griefer. The person who just creates a new account to run around being a jerk, and then is willing to create a new one after being banned and do it again. You can't prevent that, but you can minimize the damage they can do. This type of player is always a newbie character, which concentrates their hunting locations to a small number of areas. Players don't do this sort of thing with characters they have been developing for weeks or months, generally. Because getting your character banned after playing them for a month is a loss of time that can't be recouped. If you monitor the newbie areas for problem children, minimize the damage they can do, and ban offenders, those types of players will move on.
The notion that players will be less friendly because a game is F2P though is a fallacy. Players have been acting less friendly in F2P and P2P games as the games became more soloable. The less you rely on your fellow player, the easier it is to be a jerk. There's less repercussions. Where in an older school game (which were all P2P simply because that's what there was at the time) players were generally nicer, because they needed one another. If they lost their corpse, they may need help dragging it out. If they wanted to progress, they needed a group. That doesn't change in an F2P game, if your a jerk, sure you can create a new account, but then your losing all the time you put in to that character. And nobody likes to waste their time.
I've played many F2P titles over the years, and many of the concerns that players raise, are of things that you almost never see any more.
Lowering the price to $20 with a $5 sub, just lowers your profit margin, it isn't going to significantly increase your exposure. If players were going to pay $20, they'd pay $50. If they were willing to pay a subscription, I doubt the difference between $5-15 makes much of a difference to most players, unless they were finding many other titles offering the same thing. You still have the problem of getting players to try your game, and of retaining them in the months following a new subscription games launch (when some players are going to cancel one subscription when they start the next).
Free trials are helpful, but as I said on page 1, free players are also a valuable part of your community. The bulk of them are worthy additions to the community. F2P detractors will point to the 1% of bad seeds as a means of representing the F2P community, but the bulk of F2P players are players on a budget, kids who don't have a credit card, or someone who was on the fence as to whether or not a game was worth paying for. Some of those players can be converted into paying customers, and those who don't, so long as they are playing within the EULA, are still good additions to a game. They might be friends, family members, or groupmates of paying customers, and having them playing keeps the other players happy. MMOs are about massive numbers of players, it's more fun to play in a game that has a healthy population. And how many P2P games still have that?
When a game is F2P, you remove the barrier of entry and your essentially saying, "This is our game. If you like it feel free to pay, if not move on, risk free." If players don't enjoy your game, it doesn't cost them a penny. That will get large number of players to play your game, and then its up to the developer to retain those players by putting out a good product. There are plenty of F2P titles out there, if players don't like your game they will move on quickly. There's no barrier of entry here though, at all. Just the time to download the game and register an account. If your confident that your game can retain players, this is the route to go. If your looking to quickly recoup a large investment budget, box sales make sense, when you know you can always go F2P down the road. The only barrier of entry right now with F2P titles, is the prejiduce that many players have against the notion of F2P not being willing to give a game a try, at all. That is however, far less than the barrier of entry created by a box or subscription price.
https://www.therepopulation.com - Sci Fi Sandbox.
To JC:
That's nice and all, but none of that stops a "bad" F2P player, whether that be Spammer/Bot/Hacker/whatever from coming right back on another free acct, immediately.
At least with a ban on a game requiring a new client or a new sub fee for an upgraded acct, that adds to the cost and nuisance for that player to come back. It is at least something.
With an F2P game, there is nothing. Any banned player can be right back.
And as to playing a recent F2P game, I have. AoW is or was overrun with spammers and bots, and that is a "modern" F2P game. So, I am not sure what you are saying, the spam I saw there was 10x worse than in the last 3 P2P MMOs I have played.
It was terrible in NWO as well.
One of the things cited about this game being F2P from launch was "barrier to entry". I do not agree that a $20 vs $60 client represent the same barrier to entry, nor a $5 vs $15 sub fee. If initial cost is the perceived barrier to entry, lower the box price. If having a sub at all is a problem, that have a fee for the client and go the GW route. At least those can go some way to keep the community from tuning into a zoo. Or have payment with a game card, or a paypal acct, if having a CC is the issue in having a sub at any price.
And that is all not addressing the cash shop in a sandbox game issue, which is hard for me to swallow. And if it is, it is because I have never seen a single cash shop implemented well, let alone in a game where sandbox play and player economy are supposed to be big elements.
So, like many, I am at best skeptical and at worse moderately pessimistic, and with the recent track record of F2P games these last few years, I don't think that is an unreasonable attitude to take.
a) To make money, often hired by a gold reseller. Those guys are just as bad on P2P as F2P. It's nothing for the parent company to buy a sub. They write that off as part of the cost of operation. Sub or no sub, it doesn't matter. Modern approaches to these are detection and ban for botters, and auto-detection for spammers. If someone is a gold farmer, they absolutely do not want to get caught because it takes time to skill up to be able to do the upper tier harvestables. Getting banned costs them money even in a F2P game because they need to skill up again.
or
b) To grief. They are playing to ruin the fun of others, because to them that is the fun. The mechanics there are in minimizing their effectiveness in being able to do so. If it's spamming people, then its in anti-flood and ignore techniques. If it's in dropping a train on someone, then the issue is the ability to do so. You repair the mechanic and remove their ability to grief other players. If they are stealing kills, then again it's a mechanical issue that you can repair. If a player is playing solely to grief they will get bored and move on quickly if they have no way to do so. And if they are a normal player, who just happens to be a jerk, they will still think twice about getting banned, because they don't want to lose the time.
With regards to economy, that's a whole different can of worms, and it is tied into pay to win or not. I agree with you in that the majority of F2P games on the market have attempted to squeeze players,as they try to find the optimal values for profit. We've also see a lot of them slowly move away from that over time. Many of the titles which started off with F2P being just an avenue to try to get subscribers, eventually opened just about everything up to F2P players. While some titles definitely allow players to buy their way to power, there are others which are purely cosmetic, or which only allow things like +25-33% exp potions maximum (which is often less than the 100% bonus from vitality/rest exp). It really depends on the approach taken. If you are allowing players to buy items of power, or harvestable resources, then your game has become pay to win and that is a very strong argument against F2P. However, not all games take that route, and Repop will not.
The opposite of that approach is to value free and paying players alike. And to instead try to use volume of players to make up for what is lost revenue per player. That's the route we are taking. We want every MMO player out there to try the game. It's not going to be for everyone, it's a sandbox. Some players are going to love it, some will hate it. If they hate it, we aren't trying to trick them into buying it. Try it out free of charge. If you like it, maybe you buy a one time membership to unlock some account perks, or maybe you buy a couple things piecemail. Maybe you play forever without ever spending a dime, or maybe it's not for you and you move on. I guess I just don't get how players could see that as a bad thing. You have nothing to lose other than the time it takes to download and register.
As far as $20 not being a barrier of entry, it could be $1 and still be a barrier of entry. In order to pay $1 players need to have a credit card, and to fill out forms for it. They need to wonder if they are going to charged per month automatically, etc. Many players may not have that information available at the time, or want to be hassled with it, especially if they are playing on a public computer.
https://www.therepopulation.com - Sci Fi Sandbox.
I am interested in this game and I am going to play. But if it wasn't F2P my friends would not.
That was the first thing they asked me when I started telling them about the game, because they are tired of buying crap that they stop playing after two months.
Survivor of the great MMORPG Famine of 2011
I don't mean to mock your friends but getting 2 months life out of a game that cost 40-50 bucks is really good these days... Think they release 60$ ... (65 after taxes) games that have a 4-10 hour story line.
There's a lot of gamers out there who have been burned one too many times by bad developers making bad games. They would never consider paying for a game based on promises or advertised features.
From a personal perspective, while I can recognize the potential in the features Repop aims towards, I certainly won't donate or pay for something I haven't tried and decided it's worth my money. I share the "burned one too many times" story with a lot of gamers out there.
How does this relate to the OP? Quite simply, if the game is good it will attract the "undesireable fauna" anyway. If the game is bad, then it'll simply be just another indy sandbox with 20-30 diehard fanboys deluding themselves about potential and hordes of players that will come play right after XYZ feature is finished and polished. F2P only serves as means to increase the number of players trying the game out.
It is the underlined. Your paragraph above that has been proven wrong so many times its sickening to think some people still attempt to claim that a subscription means anything other than a company fleecing consumers.
The only wrong way to do F2P is to do it the western way, if they go the Asian route it will mean nothing other than larger profits than anything they could hope to get with another model, which is another thing that has been proven so many times its sickening that western companies just plain don't get it because they are so focused on the old ways.
Could you enlighten all of us westerner about the great eastern way please ? You mean the pay per minutes of game time ? I mean, you could tell all those helpless suits about that secret way to make huge amount of money. You make it sounds so plain and easy you certainly are a wealthy men.
As a person who has been involved with smaller studios before, F2P is still the way to go early on, especially in today's market.
Take a look at how Riot Games and League of Legends started. While the fears of community are certainly well-founded with that game, look at the success it has developed over the past 3 years. I don't believe the game would have EVER had that level of success were it not for the fact that it was free (which was actually the only reason I tried it originally)
The key to successful communities in a game, or in any venture for that matter, is the foundation. If you attract a mere 2000 players who are solid contributors, active players, friendly, helpful, and there for the long haul, more people WILL come. It's inevitable.
I think the bigger problem with this game as it stands is that no one knows about it. If I hadn't stumbled across the kickstarter a year ago (by accident, mind you) I wouldn't have been keeping tabs on this game. It's one thing to worry about managing your community; it's another thing to not even have a community in place because information about the game is so isolated.
Waiting for something fresh to arrive on the MMO scene...