There is .. and its ridiculous , either put up or shut up .... if you arent paying , you arent entitled to open your mouth ...
And if you need to go on game forums and piss and moan about bag space and the devs want 3.00$ more for , you really need to focus on other parts of your life rather than wasting time crying about an investment in a leisure activity ....
I think that exactly the role they're playing. Make developers decide before all the free games go back to p2p when the market stops growing.
Which is simply never going to happen, sorry. The market is bigger than it ever has been before and it's still growing, there are more games available today than in the entire history of MMOs and it's still growing. Much of that is because of F2P.
Originally posted by Kyleran No matter what F2P model a game uses, if you really are playing it totally free you are doing it wrong.
How are you doing it wrong? I've never paid a dime in any F2P game, I've gotten whatever enjoyment out of the game I wanted and moved on. I did just fine. Who died and named you dictator of right and wrong?
It's not the f2p players who are getting screwed but the paying players who are not getting enough in return will subsidizing the freeloaders.........
If they don't think they're getting enough return, they'll stop playing and the whole model will collapse. Is that happening? Nope. Try again.
No they'll start paying more as they are expected.
Nobody is holding a gun to their head and forcing them to play. They play because they want to. They can walk away any time they want. If they are foolish enough to pay thousands of dollars a month for pixels, they get what they deserve.
My last thought is that people who play f2p games are not "evil" and in the end I'm sure we all want things for free. I want a free Condo and free food and free everything.
But in the end we have a thing called money and it's rather important to obtaining some sort of decent livelyhood.
If these "f2p" games charge money for ridiculous things, such as SWToR's "intial" hotbars, then that's a huge issue.
But if they put up soft roadblocks such as only allowing housing to subscribers or having players pay for it or having limits on bag space or slow the leveling unless you pay then I think that's fine.
These aren't charities they are companies and I highly doubt those who never pay anything and are proud of it would feel just as happy if they worked for free or if their employer decided on a daily basis to pay them or not, or if the commodity that their companies created/offered were based on whether their customers "felt like" paying. "Thanks for the flat screen, it's not perfect so I won't pay you but it will do just fine until I find what I want!"
In the end the costs for these games are going to go up because people can't let go of the "omg, those graphics are so 2000" and game companies are either going to have to just be happy with small player bases (fine with me) for smaller games or continue to put out expensive games and try to think of every way under the sun to pay for them. In some cases selling off the experience of game play.
If people are never, ever willing to pay anything I question the value of the experience in the first place.
Like Skyrim? Need more content? Try my Skyrim mod "Godfred's Tomb."
Atlantica Online, still running after 7 years. At its peak was making NDoors 60 million in profits a year and the game is till going strong with around 2 million players. Or Runes of Magic, still going strong..........oh wait you are still arguing that freemium games are F2P right? Yeah, Freemium games suck balls and don't make a lot of money. Or you are not and clearly don't know a damn thing about the F2P industry like most people that argue against it.
well then if it is such a great system then why wouldn't Elder Scrolls Online incorporate it? Obviously you feel that it's amazing and superior to sub so they must be stupid to not make their game freemium.
For the same reason they are making a game around an outdated 13 year old model and providing no innovation at all? Or perhaps its due to the corporation behind it seeing it as the only hope for a larger cash grab. They did say no to a DaoC 2 but instead wanted a more popular IP to be used in its place instead didn't they.........
Oh wait, I know how about lets use how many different sub based games released over the last 5 years that ended up as F2P as another example of how subscriptions are no longer viable but somehow F2P is seeing as how many of those games are still around?
Better yet lets use the ONLY TWO GAMES RELEASED IN THE LAST 5 YEARS TO TOP 2 MILLION PLAYERS AS AN EXAMPLE? GW2, a non subscription based game and Neverwinter, a F2P game.
Oh wait even BETTER lets look at Nexon Inc and how they are the third largest (monetary wise) gaming company on the planet with almost all of their income coming via F2P games. The only two gaming companies with a larger revenue than them are EA and Blizzard/Activision and that is due to their massive amounts of games they make.
Where are your subscription Gods now?
"People who tell you youre awesome are useless. No, dangerous.
They are worse than useless because you want to believe them. They will defend you against critiques that are valid. They will seduce you into believing you are done learning, or into thinking that your work is better than it actually is." ~Raph Koster http://www.raphkoster.com/2013/10/14/on-getting-criticism/
There is .. and its ridiculous , either put up or shut up .... if you arent paying , you arent entitled to open your mouth ...
And if you need to go on game forums and piss and moan about bag space and the devs want 3.00$ more for , you really need to focus on other parts of your life rather than wasting time crying about an investment in a leisure activity ....
I think that exactly the role they're playing. Make developers decide before all the free games go back to p2p when the market stops growing.
Which is simply never going to happen, sorry. The market is bigger than it ever has been before and it's still growing, there are more games available today than in the entire history of MMOs and it's still growing. Much of that is because of F2P.
The market will never go back.
We'll see. The kids are in love with minecraft, maybe eqn and trove can get them, and The cod hardcore players don't pay subs or shops, so the hardcore that were told to F off aren't being replaced. There is Diablo that was supposed to make money not hardcore gamers.
I don't think plans have worked out, but I have no idea why they are changing things around now.
Who will people follow to be monetized?
"If the Damned gave you a roadmap, then you'd know just where to go"
Are those 2 million gw2 players still playing? Otherwise you are talking about box sales and as we know, box sales don't mean a thing. I know I log in for 15 to 30 minutes from time to time but that's it. I'm sure I can't be alone.
Do you have links for current gw2 players or Neverwinter players? Let's see how they do a few years down the road as they both "just came out" and let's see how well both games fare. If they are both robust and have evolved into great games for their players then sure there is something to be said about that. But that's a wait and see thing. We'll see how they weather. I can tell you LOTRO hasn't weathered very well for all it's freemium conversion.
As far as sub games going f2p, yes, it's true they have but I feel that is squarely on the shoulders of the developers for not continually updating and creating compelling reasons to keep a sub. Subs don't work for large expensive games if there aren't enough players over time.
A sub keeps a rather steady amount of players/income but only if the game is worth it. What many developers seem to have done is either create a game that just wasn't viable for long term (SWToR) or sat on their laurels and had large spans of activity where there really wasn't a compelling reason to play (LOTRO).
Heck, I'm for a sub opening up all the content there is and I believe companies should make money. But even I unsubbed serveral times over the years becasue nothing was really happening in lotro.
They would then release an expansion, people would content locust all over it and then leave again.
But then again, as I've mentioned above, I'm sure you are ok with your employer only paying you if they feel like it or leaving it up to their customers to pay you or not depending on their whims.
So why should a game company be different.
Like Skyrim? Need more content? Try my Skyrim mod "Godfred's Tomb."
But then again, as I've mentioned above, I'm sure you are ok with your employer only paying you if they feel like it or leaving it up to their customers to pay you or not depending on their whims.
So why should a game company be different.
I wont work for a company with their head in the sand going into a market half-assed like Freemium games have done. instead, will work for a Nexus that has made so much money off of doing F2P right that they buy half assed companies out because they have enough to throw away......somewhere along the lines of 400 million in buyouts in the last 2 years not including the partial purchases like NCSoft.
But, you go on and feel all safe and secure feeling that the world is black and white with no greys in-between.
"People who tell you youre awesome are useless. No, dangerous.
They are worse than useless because you want to believe them. They will defend you against critiques that are valid. They will seduce you into believing you are done learning, or into thinking that your work is better than it actually is." ~Raph Koster http://www.raphkoster.com/2013/10/14/on-getting-criticism/
Atlantica Online, still running after 7 years. At its peak was making NDoors 60 million in profits a year and the game is till going strong with around 2 million players. Or Runes of Magic, still going strong..........oh wait you are still arguing that freemium games are F2P right? Yeah, Freemium games suck balls and don't make a lot of money. Or you are not and clearly don't know a damn thing about the F2P industry like most people that argue against it.
well then if it is such a great system then why wouldn't Elder Scrolls Online incorporate it? Obviously you feel that it's amazing and superior to sub so they must be stupid to not make their game freemium.
For the same reason they are making a game around an outdated 13 year old model and providing no innovation at all? Or perhaps its due to the corporation behind it seeing it as the only hope for a larger cash grab. They did say no to a DaoC 2 but instead wanted a more popular IP to be used in its place instead didn't they.........
Oh wait, I know how about lets use how many different sub based games released over the last 5 years that ended up as F2P as another example of how subscriptions are no longer viable but somehow F2P is seeing as how many of those games are still around?
Better yet lets use the ONLY TWO GAMES RELEASED IN THE LAST 5 YEARS TO TOP 2 MILLION PLAYERS AS AN EXAMPLE? GW2, a non subscription based game and Neverwinter, a F2P game.
Oh wait even BETTER lets look at Nexon Inc and how they are the third largest (monetary wise) gaming company on the planet with almost all of their income coming via F2P games. The only two gaming companies with a larger revenue than them are EA and Blizzard/Activision and that is due to their massive amounts of games they make.
Where are your subscription Gods now?
I think the Sub gods are sitting in lawn chairs drinking beer.
"If the Damned gave you a roadmap, then you'd know just where to go"
I think the Sub gods are sitting in lawn chairs drinking beer.
Indeed, along with the vast majority of Funcom employee's fired for yet another failure, the former Turbine heads fired when WB bought them out when their investors fled from lack of revenue, the former CEO of EA that couldn't recover from SWTOR (along with 2 design teams)....the list goes on and on.
Remove WoW and the subscription field loses almost its entire revenue.
"People who tell you youre awesome are useless. No, dangerous.
They are worse than useless because you want to believe them. They will defend you against critiques that are valid. They will seduce you into believing you are done learning, or into thinking that your work is better than it actually is." ~Raph Koster http://www.raphkoster.com/2013/10/14/on-getting-criticism/
I think the Sub gods are sitting in lawn chairs drinking beer.
Indeed, along with the vast majority of Funcom employee's fired for yet another failure, the former Turbine heads fired when WB bought them out when their investors fled from lack of revenue, the former CEO of EA that couldn't recover from SWTOR (along with 2 design teams)....the list goes on and on.
Remove WoW and the subscription field loses almost its entire revenue.
Remove WoW and SWG becomes the one everyone clones:)
"If the Damned gave you a roadmap, then you'd know just where to go"
Originally posted by Kyleran No matter what F2P model a game uses, if you really are playing it totally free you are doing it wrong.
How are you doing it wrong? I've never paid a dime in any F2P game, I've gotten whatever enjoyment out of the game I wanted and moved on. I did just fine. Who died and named you dictator of right and wrong?
If you can't see how a proper buyer / seller relationship should work where the seller receives fair market value for services rendered, then there's no discussing it with you.
No one should ever receive anything for free, (well, except children) even if others are willing to pay for it you should not be willing to accept it, you should want to pull your own weight.
It's a pride thing, not everyone has it however.
And yes, I do judge people, and find them frequently wanting.
Just trying to live long enough to play a new, released MMORPG, playing New Worlds atm
Fools find no pleasure in understanding but delight in airing their own opinions. Pvbs 18:2, NIV
Don't just play games, inhabit virtual worlds™
"This is the most intelligent, well qualified and articulate response to a post I have ever seen on these forums. It's a shame most people here won't have the attention span to read past the second line." - Anon
If you can't see how a proper buyer / seller relationship should work where the seller receives fair market value for services rendered, then there's no discussing it with you.
No one should ever receive anything for free, (well, except children) even if others are willing to pay for it you should not be willing to accept it, you should want to pull your own weight.
It's a pride thing, not everyone has it however.
And yes, I do judge people, and find them frequently wanting.
Which is fine unless a business offers something for free and then there are a million catches to getting it. I expect to pay for my groceries but if the grocery store says "Come to our store and we'll give you tons of groceries free!" and then it turns out they won't or I have to buy something more expensive to get the free groceries I feel treated like a sucker and that pisses me off way more than just paying for them would. Some F2P games are like that.
Originally posted by KyleranNo matter what F2P model a game uses, if you really are playing it totally free you are doing it wrong.
How are you doing it wrong? I've never paid a dime in any F2P game, I've gotten whatever enjoyment out of the game I wanted and moved on. I did just fine. Who died and named you dictator of right and wrong?
If you can't see how a proper buyer / seller relationship should work where the seller receives fair market value for services rendered, then there's no discussing it with you.
No one should ever receive anything for free, (well, except children) even if others are willing to pay for it you should not be willing to accept it, you should want to pull your own weight.
It's a pride thing, not everyone has it however.
And yes, I do judge people, and find them frequently wanting.
Let's not be silly here. EA isn't giving game play away for free to be generous. It's in their own best interest to do so because they make more money by giving game play away for free. Even if many people never pay a dime, and many people play for years never paying a dime EA still generates more revenue and more profits.
Economically, there is no down side here. EA derives more benefits from the system, and so do players, many of whom get to play for free. There is a great deal of price discrimination where people can afford to spend more money and who want to spend more money can do so, while people who either cannot afford to spend more money or who simply don't want to don't have to in order to continue playing. In addition to this, consumers can make the decision to pay or not after they've sampled the game play.
**
I thought this was another thread, so I focused on EA. It doesn't have to be EA though.
I can not remember winning or losing a single debate on the internet.
I see f2p games running themselves into the ground not because of money but because they were made overseas and there are not any specialist fixing their game's gltiches on this side of the continent. They just keep adding more and more content as it was originally released but no one fixes the game of update glitchness. They cross their fingers and hope the patch will cover it.
So yeah, you hear us F2P complaining constantly on the forums. We kinda hoped the game would actually WORK. To tell us all a sudden we have to start paying money for their borked program kinda adds insult to injury. Especially when they say shiz like, "It will stop the goldsellers if we start charging for this aspect of our game." Omg, plz.
The question of entitlement in F2P games is a tricky one because it's all a matter of degrees. F2P games, obviously, aren't 100% free. As a developer making this monetization model work becomes a matter of what parts of the game should be free (to hook players in) and what parts should be paid (to make money). There is a balance that needs to be met somewhere between "logging in is free but making a character will cost you," and, "Ah screw it, we don't need to make money, have the whole game for free!" The games that make the most money do the best job finding this balance point.
This means that when F2P players complain about there not being enough free content we need to ask if these are whiney, entitled players or if they are players who haven't been hooked because the F2P content was too weak or was the wrong content. Both are possible answers and the only way to really know is to look at the games bottom line. If the game is making a good profit (hooking and selling enough people) then there is likely a bit of entitlement if people are still asking for more. If the game is in the red their hook might just have the wrong bait on it.
I think the Sub gods are sitting in lawn chairs drinking beer.
Indeed, along with the vast majority of Funcom employee's fired for yet another failure, the former Turbine heads fired when WB bought them out when their investors fled from lack of revenue, the former CEO of EA that couldn't recover from SWTOR (along with 2 design teams)....the list goes on and on.
Remove WoW and the subscription field loses almost its entire revenue.
Remove WoW and SWG becomes the one everyone clones:)
I wish
"People who tell you youre awesome are useless. No, dangerous.
They are worse than useless because you want to believe them. They will defend you against critiques that are valid. They will seduce you into believing you are done learning, or into thinking that your work is better than it actually is." ~Raph Koster http://www.raphkoster.com/2013/10/14/on-getting-criticism/
Originally posted by Torvaldr The entire world is full of entitlement. Some F2P cheapskates expect never to pay and feel entitled to that. Some P2P zealots fell like they should get everything for $15 a month and never have to pay more. Everyone else lives somewhere in the middle.
Guess I'm a "pay to pay zealot" by your definition. If I'm subbing to the game I should never have to pay more than the sub price to access the game except maybe expansions. Isn't that the whole point of a sub?
Originally posted by DamonVile There's an excessive amount of entitlement from forum posters in general. It doesn't really matter what side of the fence they sit on. Too many ppl expect things to be done their way, and that developers owe them something.
Instead, we should be force-fed whatever developers can conjure, regardless if it's actually what we want or enjoy. There's an incredible amount of occlusion in f2p games, whereas subscription games are nothing more than a virtual country club. I'd much rather pay a subscription fee and know that my money puts me on even footing with everyone else. I'm not playing games - and paying for them - to subsidize other player's gaming. I don't care if someone is poor, you're not entitled to gaming, and stop leading the MMO market into Farmville. Gaming shouldn't be free, nor should it be some constant manipulation session to buy the next boost or bag.
I keep reading threads and comments whereby F2P players feel aggrieved that they are not receiving enough free content.
In what other walk of life and with what other product would this be an acceptable stance to take? Many mmo's cost many millions to develop and that money has to be recouped somehow (and they need to turn a profit for their funders or they would not exist in the first place). Where, do you suggest, should this money be recovered from?
My view is simply this, a F2P player who makes no financial contribution to a game is in no position to complain about the free content they may or may not be receiving.
A player who pays a subscription, as with all other walks of life, should experience a discernibly improved experience over a player who pays nothing.
Now don't get me wrong, if a monetization model allows a game to sell aesthetic items only, then great. But if it does not then a free player should quit complaining and move on.
As it stands the free content received by F2P players is paid for by a few whales who use the cash shop. Free players should be thankful that there are items in the cash shop other players are prepared to buy or there would be no game and no content for them to experience at all.
They are my thoughts on the subject, what do you think?
I don't agree. If F2P were still a niche I would agree, but that's not the case anymore. F2P is becoming the standard model, and so I think the game and content needs to be provided for optimal enjoyability in order to convince players that the game is worth some of their money. This should be the job of the developers. The developers are making a game for profit first, but secondly they ARE making a "game", which the intended affect of the game (user end) is for people to enjoy.
If F2P is going to take over the standard model, then players are inclined to take out their concerns on this "developing and growing model". If the enjoyability and overall content is poorer than that of the old model of P2P, then yes go ahead and complain. Why would you pay into a cash grab that is just that, a superficial, low quality cash grab.
Bottom line for me as the consumer. I will support the game and pay some money towards it if I enjoy it. If it's not enjoyable and there's not a lot of content, then the game deserves criticism, and the end result of being less profitable. If I developed a crappy F2P game with a cash shop and I wasn't making the money I expect, I'd like to know why the players aren't taking the bait, and then improve from there.
Originally posted by Sovrath My last thought is that people who play f2p games are not "evil" and in the end I'm sure we all want things for free. I want a free Condo and free food and free everything.But in the end we have a thing called money and it's rather important to obtaining some sort of decent livelyhood.If these "f2p" games charge money for ridiculous things, such as SWToR's "intial" hotbars, then that's a huge issue.But if they put up soft roadblocks such as only allowing housing to subscribers or having players pay for it or having limits on bag space or slow the leveling unless you pay then I think that's fine.These aren't charities they are companies and I highly doubt those who never pay anything and are proud of it would feel just as happy if they worked for free or if their employer decided on a daily basis to pay them or not, or if the commodity that their companies created/offered were based on whether their customers "felt like" paying. "Thanks for the flat screen, it's not perfect so I won't pay you but it will do just fine until I find what I want!"In the end the costs for these games are going to go up because people can't let go of the "omg, those graphics are so 2000" and game companies are either going to have to just be happy with small player bases (fine with me) for smaller games or continue to put out expensive games and try to think of every way under the sun to pay for them. In some cases selling off the experience of game play.If people are never, ever willing to pay anything I question the value of the experience in the first place.
Beautifully stated! Quoted for emphasis
- Al
Personally the only modern MMORPG trend that annoys me is the idea that MMOs need to be designed in a way to attract people who don't actually like MMOs. Which to me makes about as much sense as someone trying to figure out a way to get vegetarians to eat at their steakhouse. - FARGIN_WAR
Comments
If they don't think they're getting enough return, they'll stop playing and the whole model will collapse. Is that happening? Nope. Try again.
Played: UO, EQ, WoW, DDO, SWG, AO, CoH, EvE, TR, AoC, GW, GA, Aion, Allods, lots more
Relatively Recently (Re)Played: HL2 (all), Halo (PC, all), Batman:AA; AC, ME, BS, DA, FO3, DS, Doom (all), LFD1&2, KOTOR, Portal 1&2, Blink, Elder Scrolls (all), lots more
Now Playing: None
Hope: None
No they'll start paying more as they are expected.
"If the Damned gave you a roadmap, then you'd know just where to go"
Which is simply never going to happen, sorry. The market is bigger than it ever has been before and it's still growing, there are more games available today than in the entire history of MMOs and it's still growing. Much of that is because of F2P.
The market will never go back.
Played: UO, EQ, WoW, DDO, SWG, AO, CoH, EvE, TR, AoC, GW, GA, Aion, Allods, lots more
Relatively Recently (Re)Played: HL2 (all), Halo (PC, all), Batman:AA; AC, ME, BS, DA, FO3, DS, Doom (all), LFD1&2, KOTOR, Portal 1&2, Blink, Elder Scrolls (all), lots more
Now Playing: None
Hope: None
How are you doing it wrong? I've never paid a dime in any F2P game, I've gotten whatever enjoyment out of the game I wanted and moved on. I did just fine. Who died and named you dictator of right and wrong?
Played: UO, EQ, WoW, DDO, SWG, AO, CoH, EvE, TR, AoC, GW, GA, Aion, Allods, lots more
Relatively Recently (Re)Played: HL2 (all), Halo (PC, all), Batman:AA; AC, ME, BS, DA, FO3, DS, Doom (all), LFD1&2, KOTOR, Portal 1&2, Blink, Elder Scrolls (all), lots more
Now Playing: None
Hope: None
Nobody is holding a gun to their head and forcing them to play. They play because they want to. They can walk away any time they want. If they are foolish enough to pay thousands of dollars a month for pixels, they get what they deserve.
Played: UO, EQ, WoW, DDO, SWG, AO, CoH, EvE, TR, AoC, GW, GA, Aion, Allods, lots more
Relatively Recently (Re)Played: HL2 (all), Halo (PC, all), Batman:AA; AC, ME, BS, DA, FO3, DS, Doom (all), LFD1&2, KOTOR, Portal 1&2, Blink, Elder Scrolls (all), lots more
Now Playing: None
Hope: None
My last thought is that people who play f2p games are not "evil" and in the end I'm sure we all want things for free. I want a free Condo and free food and free everything.
But in the end we have a thing called money and it's rather important to obtaining some sort of decent livelyhood.
If these "f2p" games charge money for ridiculous things, such as SWToR's "intial" hotbars, then that's a huge issue.
But if they put up soft roadblocks such as only allowing housing to subscribers or having players pay for it or having limits on bag space or slow the leveling unless you pay then I think that's fine.
These aren't charities they are companies and I highly doubt those who never pay anything and are proud of it would feel just as happy if they worked for free or if their employer decided on a daily basis to pay them or not, or if the commodity that their companies created/offered were based on whether their customers "felt like" paying. "Thanks for the flat screen, it's not perfect so I won't pay you but it will do just fine until I find what I want!"
In the end the costs for these games are going to go up because people can't let go of the "omg, those graphics are so 2000" and game companies are either going to have to just be happy with small player bases (fine with me) for smaller games or continue to put out expensive games and try to think of every way under the sun to pay for them. In some cases selling off the experience of game play.
If people are never, ever willing to pay anything I question the value of the experience in the first place.
Godfred's Tomb Trailer: https://youtu.be/-nsXGddj_4w
Original Skyrim: https://www.nexusmods.com/skyrim/mods/109547
Serph toze kindly has started a walk-through. https://youtu.be/UIelCK-lldo
For the same reason they are making a game around an outdated 13 year old model and providing no innovation at all? Or perhaps its due to the corporation behind it seeing it as the only hope for a larger cash grab. They did say no to a DaoC 2 but instead wanted a more popular IP to be used in its place instead didn't they.........
Oh wait, I know how about lets use how many different sub based games released over the last 5 years that ended up as F2P as another example of how subscriptions are no longer viable but somehow F2P is seeing as how many of those games are still around?
Better yet lets use the ONLY TWO GAMES RELEASED IN THE LAST 5 YEARS TO TOP 2 MILLION PLAYERS AS AN EXAMPLE? GW2, a non subscription based game and Neverwinter, a F2P game.
Oh wait even BETTER lets look at Nexon Inc and how they are the third largest (monetary wise) gaming company on the planet with almost all of their income coming via F2P games. The only two gaming companies with a larger revenue than them are EA and Blizzard/Activision and that is due to their massive amounts of games they make.
Where are your subscription Gods now?
"People who tell you youre awesome are useless. No, dangerous.
They are worse than useless because you want to believe them. They will defend you against critiques that are valid. They will seduce you into believing you are done learning, or into thinking that your work is better than it actually is." ~Raph Koster
http://www.raphkoster.com/2013/10/14/on-getting-criticism/
We'll see. The kids are in love with minecraft, maybe eqn and trove can get them, and The cod hardcore players don't pay subs or shops, so the hardcore that were told to F off aren't being replaced. There is Diablo that was supposed to make money not hardcore gamers.
I don't think plans have worked out, but I have no idea why they are changing things around now.
Who will people follow to be monetized?
"If the Damned gave you a roadmap, then you'd know just where to go"
Are those 2 million gw2 players still playing? Otherwise you are talking about box sales and as we know, box sales don't mean a thing. I know I log in for 15 to 30 minutes from time to time but that's it. I'm sure I can't be alone.
Do you have links for current gw2 players or Neverwinter players? Let's see how they do a few years down the road as they both "just came out" and let's see how well both games fare. If they are both robust and have evolved into great games for their players then sure there is something to be said about that. But that's a wait and see thing. We'll see how they weather. I can tell you LOTRO hasn't weathered very well for all it's freemium conversion.
As far as sub games going f2p, yes, it's true they have but I feel that is squarely on the shoulders of the developers for not continually updating and creating compelling reasons to keep a sub. Subs don't work for large expensive games if there aren't enough players over time.
A sub keeps a rather steady amount of players/income but only if the game is worth it. What many developers seem to have done is either create a game that just wasn't viable for long term (SWToR) or sat on their laurels and had large spans of activity where there really wasn't a compelling reason to play (LOTRO).
Heck, I'm for a sub opening up all the content there is and I believe companies should make money. But even I unsubbed serveral times over the years becasue nothing was really happening in lotro.
They would then release an expansion, people would content locust all over it and then leave again.
But then again, as I've mentioned above, I'm sure you are ok with your employer only paying you if they feel like it or leaving it up to their customers to pay you or not depending on their whims.
So why should a game company be different.
Godfred's Tomb Trailer: https://youtu.be/-nsXGddj_4w
Original Skyrim: https://www.nexusmods.com/skyrim/mods/109547
Serph toze kindly has started a walk-through. https://youtu.be/UIelCK-lldo
I wont work for a company with their head in the sand going into a market half-assed like Freemium games have done. instead, will work for a Nexus that has made so much money off of doing F2P right that they buy half assed companies out because they have enough to throw away......somewhere along the lines of 400 million in buyouts in the last 2 years not including the partial purchases like NCSoft.
But, you go on and feel all safe and secure feeling that the world is black and white with no greys in-between.
"People who tell you youre awesome are useless. No, dangerous.
They are worse than useless because you want to believe them. They will defend you against critiques that are valid. They will seduce you into believing you are done learning, or into thinking that your work is better than it actually is." ~Raph Koster
http://www.raphkoster.com/2013/10/14/on-getting-criticism/
I think the Sub gods are sitting in lawn chairs drinking beer.
"If the Damned gave you a roadmap, then you'd know just where to go"
Indeed, along with the vast majority of Funcom employee's fired for yet another failure, the former Turbine heads fired when WB bought them out when their investors fled from lack of revenue, the former CEO of EA that couldn't recover from SWTOR (along with 2 design teams)....the list goes on and on.
Remove WoW and the subscription field loses almost its entire revenue.
"People who tell you youre awesome are useless. No, dangerous.
They are worse than useless because you want to believe them. They will defend you against critiques that are valid. They will seduce you into believing you are done learning, or into thinking that your work is better than it actually is." ~Raph Koster
http://www.raphkoster.com/2013/10/14/on-getting-criticism/
Remove WoW and SWG becomes the one everyone clones:)
"If the Damned gave you a roadmap, then you'd know just where to go"
If you can't see how a proper buyer / seller relationship should work where the seller receives fair market value for services rendered, then there's no discussing it with you.
No one should ever receive anything for free, (well, except children) even if others are willing to pay for it you should not be willing to accept it, you should want to pull your own weight.
It's a pride thing, not everyone has it however.
And yes, I do judge people, and find them frequently wanting.
"True friends stab you in the front." | Oscar Wilde
"I need to finish" - Christian Wolff: The Accountant
Just trying to live long enough to play a new, released MMORPG, playing New Worlds atm
Fools find no pleasure in understanding but delight in airing their own opinions. Pvbs 18:2, NIV
Don't just play games, inhabit virtual worlds™
"This is the most intelligent, well qualified and articulate response to a post I have ever seen on these forums. It's a shame most people here won't have the attention span to read past the second line." - Anon
Which is fine unless a business offers something for free and then there are a million catches to getting it. I expect to pay for my groceries but if the grocery store says "Come to our store and we'll give you tons of groceries free!" and then it turns out they won't or I have to buy something more expensive to get the free groceries I feel treated like a sucker and that pisses me off way more than just paying for them would. Some F2P games are like that.
Let's not be silly here. EA isn't giving game play away for free to be generous. It's in their own best interest to do so because they make more money by giving game play away for free. Even if many people never pay a dime, and many people play for years never paying a dime EA still generates more revenue and more profits.
Economically, there is no down side here. EA derives more benefits from the system, and so do players, many of whom get to play for free. There is a great deal of price discrimination where people can afford to spend more money and who want to spend more money can do so, while people who either cannot afford to spend more money or who simply don't want to don't have to in order to continue playing. In addition to this, consumers can make the decision to pay or not after they've sampled the game play.
**
I thought this was another thread, so I focused on EA. It doesn't have to be EA though.
I can not remember winning or losing a single debate on the internet.
I see f2p games running themselves into the ground not because of money but because they were made overseas and there are not any specialist fixing their game's gltiches on this side of the continent. They just keep adding more and more content as it was originally released but no one fixes the game of update glitchness. They cross their fingers and hope the patch will cover it.
So yeah, you hear us F2P complaining constantly on the forums. We kinda hoped the game would actually WORK. To tell us all a sudden we have to start paying money for their borked program kinda adds insult to injury. Especially when they say shiz like, "It will stop the goldsellers if we start charging for this aspect of our game." Omg, plz.
The question of entitlement in F2P games is a tricky one because it's all a matter of degrees. F2P games, obviously, aren't 100% free. As a developer making this monetization model work becomes a matter of what parts of the game should be free (to hook players in) and what parts should be paid (to make money). There is a balance that needs to be met somewhere between "logging in is free but making a character will cost you," and, "Ah screw it, we don't need to make money, have the whole game for free!" The games that make the most money do the best job finding this balance point.
This means that when F2P players complain about there not being enough free content we need to ask if these are whiney, entitled players or if they are players who haven't been hooked because the F2P content was too weak or was the wrong content. Both are possible answers and the only way to really know is to look at the games bottom line. If the game is making a good profit (hooking and selling enough people) then there is likely a bit of entitlement if people are still asking for more. If the game is in the red their hook might just have the wrong bait on it.
I wish
"People who tell you youre awesome are useless. No, dangerous.
They are worse than useless because you want to believe them. They will defend you against critiques that are valid. They will seduce you into believing you are done learning, or into thinking that your work is better than it actually is." ~Raph Koster
http://www.raphkoster.com/2013/10/14/on-getting-criticism/
Guess I'm a "pay to pay zealot" by your definition. If I'm subbing to the game I should never have to pay more than the sub price to access the game except maybe expansions. Isn't that the whole point of a sub?
Instead, we should be force-fed whatever developers can conjure, regardless if it's actually what we want or enjoy. There's an incredible amount of occlusion in f2p games, whereas subscription games are nothing more than a virtual country club. I'd much rather pay a subscription fee and know that my money puts me on even footing with everyone else. I'm not playing games - and paying for them - to subsidize other player's gaming. I don't care if someone is poor, you're not entitled to gaming, and stop leading the MMO market into Farmville. Gaming shouldn't be free, nor should it be some constant manipulation session to buy the next boost or bag.
I don't agree. If F2P were still a niche I would agree, but that's not the case anymore. F2P is becoming the standard model, and so I think the game and content needs to be provided for optimal enjoyability in order to convince players that the game is worth some of their money. This should be the job of the developers. The developers are making a game for profit first, but secondly they ARE making a "game", which the intended affect of the game (user end) is for people to enjoy.
If F2P is going to take over the standard model, then players are inclined to take out their concerns on this "developing and growing model". If the enjoyability and overall content is poorer than that of the old model of P2P, then yes go ahead and complain. Why would you pay into a cash grab that is just that, a superficial, low quality cash grab.
Bottom line for me as the consumer. I will support the game and pay some money towards it if I enjoy it. If it's not enjoyable and there's not a lot of content, then the game deserves criticism, and the end result of being less profitable. If I developed a crappy F2P game with a cash shop and I wasn't making the money I expect, I'd like to know why the players aren't taking the bait, and then improve from there.
- Al
Personally the only modern MMORPG trend that annoys me is the idea that MMOs need to be designed in a way to attract people who don't actually like MMOs. Which to me makes about as much sense as someone trying to figure out a way to get vegetarians to eat at their steakhouse.- FARGIN_WAR
This is along my line of thinking. Well stated.