it depends if the game's good or not. good games work under any payment model. bad games don't work under any payment model.
Yeah and umm Warhammer is gone.
Fact of the matter is F2P or B2P is how the industry is headed, with cosmetic shops added to generate continuous cash flow afterwards.
For alot of new gamers the F2P model gets them in the door, the B2P model gets players in the door with some investment added. Yes these models tend to bring in the game some very immature players, but in the end your games population is what will drive it going forward.
I think its is very shortsighted by the devs to think they can change how the industry is moving towards. ESO should be B2P with a decent cosmetic cash shop.
Content is king, if ESO cannot produce overwhelming amounts of content to provide incentive for the player base to accept the 14.99 a month, we will see a huge exodus in about 3-4 months after release like we did in SWTOR. Of course the one thing that ESO has going for it that SWTOR didnt was an actual decent PvP component.
I am almost always an early adopter for new releases in MMO's but for some reason i have felt meh about ESO, i really can't place my finger on it right now but i think it has more to do with my recent sandbox yearnings i have been satisfying.
Originally posted by Waldoe The day it goes F2P or B2P is the day myself and many friends stop playing.
Why? It would be the same idea just altered.
why? because it will turn into a micro transaction, pay gated piece of dung like all F2P games are..dont get me started on gold farmers, bots ,and a terrible player community . so im with Waldoe, the day this game goes F2P is the day i stop playing it.
You should swallow your stupid pride and check out RIFT and Tera or the north american Aion or Gw2 or TSW. Then you can come back and say shit like what you just said. In the games I listed there is not a single paywall. None! All of you cocky subscription whiteknights are spewing crap about F2P games without playing a single good one.
I can give you endless example of utterly bad P2P games. Should we blame all P2P for it? No? Double standards?
And as I said above, there is terrible community at EVE Online, at WoW, at FFXIV AND at DFUW. All of them having subscription. Again....double standards much?
Don't let me even start on the botting issue since I've botted in every MMO to day with the exception of Gw2, I just felt like playing in it
Saying the post that you did, given the examples that I just gave, pretty much turns you into a hypocrite.
Originally posted by Waldoe The day it goes F2P or B2P is the day myself and many friends stop playing.
Why? It would be the same idea just altered.
why? because it will turn into a micro transaction, pay gated piece of dung like all F2P games are..dont get me started on gold farmers, bots ,and a terrible player community . so im with Waldoe, the day this game goes F2P is the day i stop playing it.
You should swallow your stupid pride and check out RIFT and Tera or the north american Aion or Gw2 or TSW. Then you can come back and say shit like what you just said. In the games I listed there is not a single paywall. None! All of you cocky subscription whiteknights are spewing crap about F2P games without playing a single good one.
I can give you endless example of utterly bad P2P games. Should we blame all P2P for it? No? Double standards?
And as I said above, there is terrible community at EVE Online, at WoW, at FFXIV AND at DFUW. All of them having subscription. Again....double standards much?
Don't let me even start on the botting issue since I've botted in every MMO to day with the exception of Gw2, I just felt like playing in it
Saying the post that you did, given the examples that I just gave, pretty much turns you into a hypocrite.
I have to totally agree with you, P2P does not = great game, neither does F2P/B2P = bad game.
What people need to do is see the developers of those bad F2P/B2P models and stay away from those games.
Hate GW2 all you want when it comes to the gameplay, but Anet has one of the best cash shops for any game i have played that has cash shops. Its not needed in anyway to play the game, but what it offers is actual value if your inclined to buy gems.
The day when crap F2P games are the only F2P games you can find is over. Thinking that all F2P or B2P are like Rappelz, or some other Perfect World crap fests is very small minded.
Go and download Rift and play it, that is one of the best F2P games out there.
Originally posted by Waldoe The day it goes F2P or B2P is the day myself and many friends stop playing.
Why? It would be the same idea just altered.
why? because it will turn into a micro transaction, pay gated piece of dung like all F2P games are..dont get me started on gold farmers, bots ,and a terrible player community . so im with Waldoe, the day this game goes F2P is the day i stop playing it.
it depends if the game's good or not. good games work under any payment model. bad games don't work under any payment model.
Yeah and umm Warhammer is gone.
Fact of the matter is F2P or B2P is how the industry is headed, with cosmetic shops added to generate continuous cash flow afterwards.
For alot of new gamers the F2P model gets them in the door, the B2P model gets players in the door with some investment added. Yes these models tend to bring in the game some very immature players, but in the end your games population is what will drive it going forward.
I think its is very shortsighted by the devs to think they can change how the industry is moving towards. ESO should be B2P with a decent cosmetic cash shop.
Content is king, if ESO cannot produce overwhelming amounts of content to provide incentive for the player base to accept the 14.99 a month, we will see a huge exodus in about 3-4 months after release like we did in SWTOR. Of course the one thing that ESO has going for it that SWTOR didnt was an actual decent PvP component.
I am almost always an early adopter for new releases in MMO's but for some reason i have felt meh about ESO, i really can't place my finger on it right now but i think it has more to do with my recent sandbox yearnings i have been satisfying.
I do respect your opinion, largely because nothing extreme about it.
I do however have something to say.
It is about sand boxes.
Not long ago most of the people hated very idea of sand box.
Now everyone likes it.
I do believe that some of sand box features could be attractive, most of the time because they are new.
But it is not for long. On my humble opinion, sand boxes (at least recent ones) will have quite short Life span. Just because players creativity is largely overstated (and this is what real sand box is based on).
To think, that players are more smart, or creative than game design professionals (developers) is just silly.
I would suggest you not to rush with final conclusion about ESO. If you have read smart threads about it, you would notice that it usually grows very slowly on you. And you might need to devote more time for this game before you going to be completely under its charm. It works differently than other games.
And again, it is all up to you. This game has a potential to become The Game for you, if you give it a chance.
This is a very easy subject. we as customers will decide what the final outcome will be. If they are striving as a buisness on a subscription bases. It will remain that way. If there not making any money, it will go free to play. If it still makes no money....it closes down. WE have the final say as MMO players.
Originally posted by Waldoe The day it goes F2P or B2P is the day myself and many friends stop playing.
Why? It would be the same idea just altered.
why? because it will turn into a micro transaction, pay gated piece of dung like all F2P games are..dont get me started on gold farmers, bots ,and a terrible player community . so im with Waldoe, the day this game goes F2P is the day i stop playing it.
You should swallow your stupid pride and check out RIFT and Tera or the north american Aion or Gw2 or TSW. Then you can come back and say shit like what you just said. In the games I listed there is not a single paywall. None! All of you cocky subscription whiteknights are spewing crap about F2P games without playing a single good one.
I can give you endless example of utterly bad P2P games. Should we blame all P2P for it? No? Double standards?
And as I said above, there is terrible community at EVE Online, at WoW, at FFXIV AND at DFUW. All of them having subscription. Again....double standards much?
Don't let me even start on the botting issue since I've botted in every MMO to day with the exception of Gw2, I just felt like playing in it
Saying the post that you did, given the examples that I just gave, pretty much turns you into a hypocrite.
I have to totally agree with you, P2P does not = great game, neither does F2P/B2P = bad game.
What people need to do is see the developers of those bad F2P/B2P models and stay away from those games.
Hate GW2 all you want when it comes to the gameplay, but Anet has one of the best cash shops for any game i have played that has cash shops. Its not needed in anyway to play the game, but what it offers is actual value if your inclined to buy gems.
The day when crap F2P games are the only F2P games you can find is over. Thinking that all F2P or B2P are like Rappelz, or some other Perfect World crap fests is very small minded.
Go and download Rift and play it, that is one of the best F2P games out there.
Lets not get overly emotional, and completely illogical here. If game is bad as you are trying to present it here, nobody will pay a subscription. That simple. This is a market after all. Or are you disputing market power?
If people pay subscription, they like game enough to do so. If it is not so, game will have no choice but become F2P.
If as you saying there are some good games, which are F2P, I wonder what are bad businessmen those in distributing companies. They could have more money, but for some unexplained reason they decided not to.
I think you are wrong. They cannot have more money, because game is not good enough to keep people on subscriptions.
If not you, then some other people here on this forum cried that ESO is not GOOD ENOUGH to pay subscription.
So, it means that only good enough games can be kept successfully on subscriptions.
If you do not get this, well there is no hope for you in getting to the bottom of this question. I mean real bottom, not imaginary one.
P.S. it is not about your personal preferences at all!
A lot of people, so I've seen/heard from, believe that ESO will turn into what SWTOR once did. TERA switched, The Secret World switched, Rift...etc.
Do you think dishing $15/mo will be a bit much to some players? I mean even ArcheAge in RU Beta is $9/mo for premium.
ESO is more than a good enough game to hold onto a sub for sometime. Having said that if they do or not is going to depend not only on the state of the game when it launches but also the kinds of support Zenimax provides post launch and what their expectations for the game are. I think a lot of people seem to forget that SWTOR had a significant subscriber base when it went F2P. Yea it wasn't WoW sizes but I think if a game like Rift or TSW had those kinds of numbers they would have never gone F2P/B2P. SWTOR was a just as much a victim of the EA earnings expectations as it was any flaws in the game itself. Also Bioware wasn't ever really given the opportunity to really follow up on launch and keep releasing things to give people a reason to hold their subs open. Hopefully Zenimax as a private company can avoid these kinds of mistakes but it's way to early to tell right now.
I guess what I'm saying is that it's in Zenimax's hands if this game goes F2P or not as their actions post 4/4 will determine that more than anything else.
Originally posted by Waldoe The day it goes F2P or B2P is the day myself and many friends stop playing.
Why? It would be the same idea just altered.
why? because it will turn into a micro transaction, pay gated piece of dung like all F2P games are..dont get me started on gold farmers, bots ,and a terrible player community . so im with Waldoe, the day this game goes F2P is the day i stop playing it.
You should swallow your stupid pride and check out RIFT and Tera or the north american Aion or Gw2 or TSW. Then you can come back and say shit like what you just said. In the games I listed there is not a single paywall. None! All of you cocky subscription whiteknights are spewing crap about F2P games without playing a single good one.
I can give you endless example of utterly bad P2P games. Should we blame all P2P for it? No? Double standards?
And as I said above, there is terrible community at EVE Online, at WoW, at FFXIV AND at DFUW. All of them having subscription. Again....double standards much?
Don't let me even start on the botting issue since I've botted in every MMO to day with the exception of Gw2, I just felt like playing in it
Saying the post that you did, given the examples that I just gave, pretty much turns you into a hypocrite.
I disagree. I used to support Rift and Trion. Their game was solid and their customer service was top notch. After it went F2P their customer service was so bad I uninstalled the game and will never play another Trion game again (including ArcheAge which i was previously looking forward to). I can't speak much for Tera because I couldn't get very far into it. Wasn't my game. I never played Aion, either but GW2 and TSW are not F2P so don't even belong in your list. B2P is not the same as F2P. In my view B2P is the best compromise between P2P and F2P and GW2 has a pretty good model despite the fact that their end game is pretty terrible IMO. I don't necessarily blame their pay model for that fact as much as their design philosophy. Some like it I guess so that's why I just moved on. Outside of their end game and lack of trinity I really liked what GW2 had going on.
I hear EQ2 has made some positive changes to improve it's horrible F2P model and that may be great for a game in it's twilight years but the fact remains that there just aren't many new F2P games that actually release as F2P and are any good. Path of Exile is the only example I can come up with. The rest are financially failed games going F2P because they are desperate to survive. That's not much of a ringing endorsement for F2P and justifies the F2P criticism IMO.
Originally posted by Waldoe The day it goes F2P or B2P is the day myself and many friends stop playing.
Why? It would be the same idea just altered.
why? because it will turn into a micro transaction, pay gated piece of dung like all F2P games are..dont get me started on gold farmers, bots ,and a terrible player community . so im with Waldoe, the day this game goes F2P is the day i stop playing it.
You should swallow your stupid pride and check out RIFT and Tera or the north american Aion or Gw2 or TSW. Then you can come back and say shit like what you just said. In the games I listed there is not a single paywall. None! All of you cocky subscription whiteknights are spewing crap about F2P games without playing a single good one.
I can give you endless example of utterly bad P2P games. Should we blame all P2P for it? No? Double standards?
And as I said above, there is terrible community at EVE Online, at WoW, at FFXIV AND at DFUW. All of them having subscription. Again....double standards much?
Don't let me even start on the botting issue since I've botted in every MMO to day with the exception of Gw2, I just felt like playing in it
Saying the post that you did, given the examples that I just gave, pretty much turns you into a hypocrite.
I disagree. I used to support Rift and Trion. Their game was solid and their customer service was top notch. After it went F2P their customer service was so bad I uninstalled the game and will never play another Trion game again (including ArcheAge which i was previously looking forward to). I can't speak much for Tera because I couldn't get very far into it. Wasn't my game. I never played Aion, either but GW2 and TSW are not F2P so don't even belong in your list. B2P is not the same as F2P. In my view B2P is the best compromise between P2P and F2P and GW2 has a pretty good model despite the fact that their end game is pretty terrible IMO. I don't necessarily blame their pay model for that fact as much as their design philosophy. Some like it I guess so that's why I just moved on. Outside of their end game and lack of trinity I really liked what GW2 had going on.
I hear EQ2 has made some positive changes to improve it's horrible F2P model and that may be great for a game in it's twilight years but the fact remains that there just aren't many new F2P games that actually release as F2P and are any good. Path of Exile is the only example I can come up with. The rest are financially failed games going F2P because they are desperate to survive. That's not much of a ringing endorsement for F2P and justifies the F2P criticism IMO.
So ... what, you have a date with customer support each week? I went playing RIFT after it went F2P. Before that it really looked just like WoW to me (given they share almost the same interface) but regardless, once i started playing it, I never felt the urge to contact customer support. Didn't encounter game braking bug, they took my money when I wanted to use the cash shop. Its all cool.
TERA failed financially because they couldn't push content out fast enough. We all know how bitchy subscribers get when they don't get their new shiny. They were promising stuff and rarely delivered. Obviously the customers punished them for that, but that doesn't make the base game bad. EQNext is to launch as F2P from the get go, is it already a failed game?
But yeah, I really support with my both hands the B2P model. I like the idea of going back to a game whenever I want and I like the idea of not feeling pressured to "cash-in" that subscription fee. Or have all of my gaming habbits around only one game. I did that as a kid, now I have to think how much free time i have and what could I achieve in my limitted time. Hell, i love MMOs, but if you check out my Raptr profile, you'll see that lately I play more and more Battlefield 3 in 30 minute sessions
Like most MMORPGs these days, it'll launch as a B2P game, where people cash out a lot of money for a preorder (maybe even some sort of deluxe edition) and a subscription. Once the hyper is over, the number of playing users will drop. Then it'll go F2P. I might also get an expansion between launch and the F2P thing, to get the users who stopped playing pay subscription again for a while.
I mean, it already starts with a cash shop like system (not sure if it has an actual cash shop implemented on launch). People who pay more get more. The times when everyone paid the same for a game and had the same chances are over.
Being as the devs have now confirmed they are no longer making the game for MMORPG players OR Elder Scrolls fans then yes, the game will move to freemium model and cash shop economy extremely quickly IMO.
You do not understand whole market thing very well, do you?
“Market” is not a magical word, which works miracles. Prices go up and down. And it all depends on concurrency. Quality games do not add free options, only failing ones do. And they present very little concurrency to games, which are not failing yet. I do not want to repeat whole my thread again.
You need to read it all, not a little piece of it. And maybe, just maybe you will see whole picture. If you do have open mind and appropriate education of course.
You're redefining the word quality to support your weak argument. Under your logic that quality games don't add free options, almost all of the "quality" MMOs would be games with currently tiny player bases that make almost no money, while several massive moneymakers would be considered "not quality." Hell, even WoW has a 20 level free option, are you saying WoW is a failure?
The fact is, when the average quality level of games you can play for free in 2014 is substantially higher than the average quality level of games you had to pay a sub for was as recently as three or four years ago, the standards people apply to determine what is "worthy" of a sub increase. A lot of people simply aren't willing to pay more than the market standard, so if the market standard fee goes down, companies that insist on sticking with the old prices are going to see some degradation in their market share vs. where they would have been if the industry was still universally subscription based.
ESO is a quality game, no matter how long it takes it to switch to Freemium. So is Wildstar. Neither game is going to be to every individual's taste, and the dynamics of the market may have changed too much to allow them to stay sub only as long as they would like, but both are very well made versions of the concepts their developers were trying to implement. It is not a requirement of being "quality" that a game be able to defy market trends.
Peace is a lie, there is only passion. Through passion, I gain strength. Through strength, I gain power. Through power, I gain victory. Through victory, my chains are broken. The Force shall free me.
I don't get this "only Elder Scrolls players will buy ESO" mentality. I've never played Skyrim or other elder scrolls games because I have no interest in single player games but I'm buying ESO.
Also, I hope this game never converts to F2P, I hate F2P games where I have to play with people that can't afford 14 euros a month. I consider 12-15 euro a month money well spent if I enjoy playing it.
Originally posted by Waldoe The day it goes F2P or B2P is the day myself and many friends stop playing.
Why? It would be the same idea just altered.
why? because it will turn into a micro transaction, pay gated piece of dung like all F2P games are..dont get me started on gold farmers, bots ,and a terrible player community . so im with Waldoe, the day this game goes F2P is the day i stop playing it.
You should swallow your stupid pride and check out RIFT and Tera or the north american Aion or Gw2 or TSW. Then you can come back and say shit like what you just said. In the games I listed there is not a single paywall. None! All of you cocky subscription whiteknights are spewing crap about F2P games without playing a single good one.
I can give you endless example of utterly bad P2P games. Should we blame all P2P for it? No? Double standards?
And as I said above, there is terrible community at EVE Online, at WoW, at FFXIV AND at DFUW. All of them having subscription. Again....double standards much?
Don't let me even start on the botting issue since I've botted in every MMO to day with the exception of Gw2, I just felt like playing in it
Saying the post that you did, given the examples that I just gave, pretty much turns you into a hypocrite.
I disagree. I used to support Rift and Trion. Their game was solid and their customer service was top notch. After it went F2P their customer service was so bad I uninstalled the game and will never play another Trion game again (including ArcheAge which i was previously looking forward to). I can't speak much for Tera because I couldn't get very far into it. Wasn't my game. I never played Aion, either but GW2 and TSW are not F2P so don't even belong in your list. B2P is not the same as F2P. In my view B2P is the best compromise between P2P and F2P and GW2 has a pretty good model despite the fact that their end game is pretty terrible IMO. I don't necessarily blame their pay model for that fact as much as their design philosophy. Some like it I guess so that's why I just moved on. Outside of their end game and lack of trinity I really liked what GW2 had going on.
I hear EQ2 has made some positive changes to improve it's horrible F2P model and that may be great for a game in it's twilight years but the fact remains that there just aren't many new F2P games that actually release as F2P and are any good. Path of Exile is the only example I can come up with. The rest are financially failed games going F2P because they are desperate to survive. That's not much of a ringing endorsement for F2P and justifies the F2P criticism IMO.
So ... what, you have a date with customer support each week? I went playing RIFT after it went F2P. Before that it really looked just like WoW to me (given they share almost the same interface) but regardless, once i started playing it, I never felt the urge to contact customer support. Didn't encounter game braking bug, they took my money when I wanted to use the cash shop. Its all cool.
TERA failed financially because they couldn't push content out fast enough. We all know how bitchy subscribers get when they don't get their new shiny. They were promising stuff and rarely delivered. Obviously the customers punished them for that, but that doesn't make the base game bad. EQNext is to launch as F2P from the get go, is it already a failed game?
But yeah, I really support with my both hands the B2P model. I like the idea of going back to a game whenever I want and I like the idea of not feeling pressured to "cash-in" that subscription fee. Or have all of my gaming habbits around only one game. I did that as a kid, now I have to think how much free time i have and what could I achieve in my limitted time. Hell, i love MMOs, but if you check out my Raptr profile, you'll see that lately I play more and more Battlefield 3 in 30 minute sessions
That's one of the reasons I'll never touch TESO.
No I didn't have a date with customer support. I had a billing dispute and they refused to address the issue. They said they would have refunded me the money if I had contacted them sooner but the only way I knew there was an issue was looking at my next credit card bill. How was I supposed to contact them sooner than seeing my bill? They told me in no uncertain terms they were keeping my money regardless. I have contacted their customer support in the past and had good service but I guess now that they are F2P they are so desperate for money they have to grab as much of it as they can by any means possible which is a terrible sign of the state of Trion IMO and why I won't be giving them any more money..ever.
Maybe Tera couldn't push out enough content because it's F2P and they didn't have the resources to do so? Sounds very similar to NW. It's also one of the general complaints with F2P so is a valid complaint with regard to Tera. In contrast, look at how much content ESO is launching with. There looks to be about 10 times as much leveling content and variety in ESO over say Neverwinter. Not to mention there is actually a functioning and deep end game FROM LAUNCH not a year down the road from launch. There is a deep and viable crafting system. They have also announced some fairly major content releasing relatively soon after launch. ESO will have a metric fuckton of things to do at launch. Neverwinter for all intents and purposes died as soon as you hit max level. The end game was/is laughable. The leveling variety is nil regardless of your race/class choices. The game is about as shallow as they come and this is a typical complaint with F2P games. You may not like ESO and you may not like the P2P model but at least there is actual content.
I think some companies have made a lot of money with item shops, and with their success, many other companies have either embraced this or incorporated it, in some way, into their gaming model. I believe a subscription based model is the most cost effective, for what you get, for the consumer. You can spend 10 dollars easily going to a movie that lasts 2 hours, making it approx 5 dollars an hour in entertainment. For 5 dollars more, I can get many hours and have 100% access to what everyone else in the game has access to. So call me selfish, but I really hope Elder Scrolls Online sticks with a premium subscription model. I tried a free to play game that had an item shop and said I will only spend $15 a month in the item shop and see where it gets me...I ended up spending $25.
Overall, perhaps it is a good thing that there are so many games on the market to address the playing needs of the diverse variety of people out there called gamers. My answer to the original question? I hope not.
A lot of people, so I've seen/heard from, believe that ESO will turn into what SWTOR once did. TERA switched, The Secret World switched, Rift...etc.
Do you think dishing $15/mo will be a bit much to some players? I mean even ArcheAge in RU Beta is $9/mo for premium.
I think the game will not go into F2P if Zeni keeps this current cycle of listening to their player base. I honestly think Trion did the best as far as listening. Such a great company, but their game was doomed to F2P it was just boring to look at and listen to. Everything else was great as far as any tab target game can do.
Originally posted by Waldoe The day it goes F2P or B2P is the day myself and many friends stop playing.
Why? It would be the same idea just altered.
why? because it will turn into a micro transaction, pay gated piece of dung like all F2P games are..dont get me started on gold farmers, bots ,and a terrible player community . so im with Waldoe, the day this game goes F2P is the day i stop playing it.
You should swallow your stupid pride and check out RIFT and Tera or the north american Aion or Gw2 or TSW. Then you can come back and say shit like what you just said. In the games I listed there is not a single paywall. None! All of you cocky subscription whiteknights are spewing crap about F2P games without playing a single good one.
I can give you endless example of utterly bad P2P games. Should we blame all P2P for it? No? Double standards?
And as I said above, there is terrible community at EVE Online, at WoW, at FFXIV AND at DFUW. All of them having subscription. Again....double standards much?
Don't let me even start on the botting issue since I've botted in every MMO to day with the exception of Gw2, I just felt like playing in it
Saying the post that you did, given the examples that I just gave, pretty much turns you into a hypocrite.
I disagree. I used to support Rift and Trion. Their game was solid and their customer service was top notch. After it went F2P their customer service was so bad I uninstalled the game and will never play another Trion game again (including ArcheAge which i was previously looking forward to). I can't speak much for Tera because I couldn't get very far into it. Wasn't my game. I never played Aion, either but GW2 and TSW are not F2P so don't even belong in your list. B2P is not the same as F2P. In my view B2P is the best compromise between P2P and F2P and GW2 has a pretty good model despite the fact that their end game is pretty terrible IMO. I don't necessarily blame their pay model for that fact as much as their design philosophy. Some like it I guess so that's why I just moved on. Outside of their end game and lack of trinity I really liked what GW2 had going on.
I hear EQ2 has made some positive changes to improve it's horrible F2P model and that may be great for a game in it's twilight years but the fact remains that there just aren't many new F2P games that actually release as F2P and are any good. Path of Exile is the only example I can come up with. The rest are financially failed games going F2P because they are desperate to survive. That's not much of a ringing endorsement for F2P and justifies the F2P criticism IMO.
So ... what, you have a date with customer support each week? I went playing RIFT after it went F2P. Before that it really looked just like WoW to me (given they share almost the same interface) but regardless, once i started playing it, I never felt the urge to contact customer support. Didn't encounter game braking bug, they took my money when I wanted to use the cash shop. Its all cool.
TERA failed financially because they couldn't push content out fast enough. We all know how bitchy subscribers get when they don't get their new shiny. They were promising stuff and rarely delivered. Obviously the customers punished them for that, but that doesn't make the base game bad. EQNext is to launch as F2P from the get go, is it already a failed game?
But yeah, I really support with my both hands the B2P model. I like the idea of going back to a game whenever I want and I like the idea of not feeling pressured to "cash-in" that subscription fee. Or have all of my gaming habbits around only one game. I did that as a kid, now I have to think how much free time i have and what could I achieve in my limitted time. Hell, i love MMOs, but if you check out my Raptr profile, you'll see that lately I play more and more Battlefield 3 in 30 minute sessions
That's one of the reasons I'll never touch TESO.
No I didn't have a date with customer support. I had a billing dispute and they refused to address the issue. They said they would have refunded me the money if I had contacted them sooner but the only way I knew there was an issue was looking at my next credit card bill. How was I supposed to contact them sooner than seeing my bill? They told me in no uncertain terms they were keeping my money regardless. I have contacted their customer support in the past and had good service but I guess now that they are F2P they are so desperate for money they have to grab as much of it as they can by any means possible which is a terrible sign of the state of Trion IMO and why I won't be giving them any more money..ever.
Maybe Tera couldn't push out enough content because it's F2P and they didn't have the resources to do so? Sounds very similar to NW. It's also one of the general complaints with F2P so is a valid complaint with regard to Tera. In contrast, look at how much content ESO is launching with. There looks to be about 10 times as much leveling content and variety in ESO over say Neverwinter. Not to mention there is actually a functioning and deep end game FROM LAUNCH not a year down the road from launch. There is a deep and viable crafting system. They have also announced some fairly major content releasing relatively soon after launch. ESO will have a metric fuckton of things to do at launch. Neverwinter for all intents and purposes died as soon as you hit max level. The end game was/is laughable. The leveling variety is nil regardless of your race/class choices. The game is about as shallow as they come and this is a typical complaint with F2P games. You may not like ESO and you may not like the P2P model but at least there is actual content.
Tera used to be subscription based mate, for over a year
I guess it depends on how stubborn the developers are and how they feel about their sub numbers. Some MMOs still haven't gone f2p to this day even though they can't have more than 20k subs, like DAoC, Ultima Online.
Although maybe they just couldn't adopt those games to f2p. I think games today are probably developed with the idea that they may end up going f2p.
Definitely will. Just like Wildstar they will bank on the initial box sales and high sub counts knowing they will switch to F2P when sub counts drop. Business plan.
Comments
Yeah and umm Warhammer is gone.
Fact of the matter is F2P or B2P is how the industry is headed, with cosmetic shops added to generate continuous cash flow afterwards.
For alot of new gamers the F2P model gets them in the door, the B2P model gets players in the door with some investment added. Yes these models tend to bring in the game some very immature players, but in the end your games population is what will drive it going forward.
I think its is very shortsighted by the devs to think they can change how the industry is moving towards. ESO should be B2P with a decent cosmetic cash shop.
Content is king, if ESO cannot produce overwhelming amounts of content to provide incentive for the player base to accept the 14.99 a month, we will see a huge exodus in about 3-4 months after release like we did in SWTOR. Of course the one thing that ESO has going for it that SWTOR didnt was an actual decent PvP component.
I am almost always an early adopter for new releases in MMO's but for some reason i have felt meh about ESO, i really can't place my finger on it right now but i think it has more to do with my recent sandbox yearnings i have been satisfying.
Lolipops !
You should swallow your stupid pride and check out RIFT and Tera or the north american Aion or Gw2 or TSW. Then you can come back and say shit like what you just said. In the games I listed there is not a single paywall. None! All of you cocky subscription whiteknights are spewing crap about F2P games without playing a single good one.
I can give you endless example of utterly bad P2P games. Should we blame all P2P for it? No? Double standards?
And as I said above, there is terrible community at EVE Online, at WoW, at FFXIV AND at DFUW. All of them having subscription. Again....double standards much?
Don't let me even start on the botting issue since I've botted in every MMO to day with the exception of Gw2, I just felt like playing in it
Saying the post that you did, given the examples that I just gave, pretty much turns you into a hypocrite.
I have to totally agree with you, P2P does not = great game, neither does F2P/B2P = bad game.
What people need to do is see the developers of those bad F2P/B2P models and stay away from those games.
Hate GW2 all you want when it comes to the gameplay, but Anet has one of the best cash shops for any game i have played that has cash shops. Its not needed in anyway to play the game, but what it offers is actual value if your inclined to buy gems.
The day when crap F2P games are the only F2P games you can find is over. Thinking that all F2P or B2P are like Rappelz, or some other Perfect World crap fests is very small minded.
Go and download Rift and play it, that is one of the best F2P games out there.
Lolipops !
*Cough* Imperial Edition *Cough*
I do respect your opinion, largely because nothing extreme about it.
I do however have something to say.
It is about sand boxes.
Not long ago most of the people hated very idea of sand box.
Now everyone likes it.
I do believe that some of sand box features could be attractive, most of the time because they are new.
But it is not for long. On my humble opinion, sand boxes (at least recent ones) will have quite short Life span. Just because players creativity is largely overstated (and this is what real sand box is based on).
To think, that players are more smart, or creative than game design professionals (developers) is just silly.
I would suggest you not to rush with final conclusion about ESO. If you have read smart threads about it, you would notice that it usually grows very slowly on you. And you might need to devote more time for this game before you going to be completely under its charm. It works differently than other games.
And again, it is all up to you. This game has a potential to become The Game for you, if you give it a chance.
Lets not get overly emotional, and completely illogical here. If game is bad as you are trying to present it here, nobody will pay a subscription. That simple. This is a market after all. Or are you disputing market power?
If people pay subscription, they like game enough to do so. If it is not so, game will have no choice but become F2P.
If as you saying there are some good games, which are F2P, I wonder what are bad businessmen those in distributing companies. They could have more money, but for some unexplained reason they decided not to.
I think you are wrong. They cannot have more money, because game is not good enough to keep people on subscriptions.
If not you, then some other people here on this forum cried that ESO is not GOOD ENOUGH to pay subscription.
So, it means that only good enough games can be kept successfully on subscriptions.
If you do not get this, well there is no hope for you in getting to the bottom of this question. I mean real bottom, not imaginary one.
P.S. it is not about your personal preferences at all!
ESO is more than a good enough game to hold onto a sub for sometime. Having said that if they do or not is going to depend not only on the state of the game when it launches but also the kinds of support Zenimax provides post launch and what their expectations for the game are. I think a lot of people seem to forget that SWTOR had a significant subscriber base when it went F2P. Yea it wasn't WoW sizes but I think if a game like Rift or TSW had those kinds of numbers they would have never gone F2P/B2P. SWTOR was a just as much a victim of the EA earnings expectations as it was any flaws in the game itself. Also Bioware wasn't ever really given the opportunity to really follow up on launch and keep releasing things to give people a reason to hold their subs open. Hopefully Zenimax as a private company can avoid these kinds of mistakes but it's way to early to tell right now.
I guess what I'm saying is that it's in Zenimax's hands if this game goes F2P or not as their actions post 4/4 will determine that more than anything else.
I disagree. I used to support Rift and Trion. Their game was solid and their customer service was top notch. After it went F2P their customer service was so bad I uninstalled the game and will never play another Trion game again (including ArcheAge which i was previously looking forward to). I can't speak much for Tera because I couldn't get very far into it. Wasn't my game. I never played Aion, either but GW2 and TSW are not F2P so don't even belong in your list. B2P is not the same as F2P. In my view B2P is the best compromise between P2P and F2P and GW2 has a pretty good model despite the fact that their end game is pretty terrible IMO. I don't necessarily blame their pay model for that fact as much as their design philosophy. Some like it I guess so that's why I just moved on. Outside of their end game and lack of trinity I really liked what GW2 had going on.
I hear EQ2 has made some positive changes to improve it's horrible F2P model and that may be great for a game in it's twilight years but the fact remains that there just aren't many new F2P games that actually release as F2P and are any good. Path of Exile is the only example I can come up with. The rest are financially failed games going F2P because they are desperate to survive. That's not much of a ringing endorsement for F2P and justifies the F2P criticism IMO.
So ... what, you have a date with customer support each week? I went playing RIFT after it went F2P. Before that it really looked just like WoW to me (given they share almost the same interface) but regardless, once i started playing it, I never felt the urge to contact customer support. Didn't encounter game braking bug, they took my money when I wanted to use the cash shop. Its all cool.
TERA failed financially because they couldn't push content out fast enough. We all know how bitchy subscribers get when they don't get their new shiny. They were promising stuff and rarely delivered. Obviously the customers punished them for that, but that doesn't make the base game bad. EQNext is to launch as F2P from the get go, is it already a failed game?
But yeah, I really support with my both hands the B2P model. I like the idea of going back to a game whenever I want and I like the idea of not feeling pressured to "cash-in" that subscription fee. Or have all of my gaming habbits around only one game. I did that as a kid, now I have to think how much free time i have and what could I achieve in my limitted time. Hell, i love MMOs, but if you check out my Raptr profile, you'll see that lately I play more and more Battlefield 3 in 30 minute sessions
That's one of the reasons I'll never touch TESO.
Of course it will.
Like most MMORPGs these days, it'll launch as a B2P game, where people cash out a lot of money for a preorder (maybe even some sort of deluxe edition) and a subscription. Once the hyper is over, the number of playing users will drop. Then it'll go F2P. I might also get an expansion between launch and the F2P thing, to get the users who stopped playing pay subscription again for a while.
I mean, it already starts with a cash shop like system (not sure if it has an actual cash shop implemented on launch). People who pay more get more. The times when everyone paid the same for a game and had the same chances are over.
Let's play Fallen Earth (blind, 300 episodes)
Let's play Guild Wars 2 (blind, 45 episodes)
Being as the devs have now confirmed they are no longer making the game for MMORPG players OR Elder Scrolls fans then yes, the game will move to freemium model and cash shop economy extremely quickly IMO.
So sad...
You're redefining the word quality to support your weak argument. Under your logic that quality games don't add free options, almost all of the "quality" MMOs would be games with currently tiny player bases that make almost no money, while several massive moneymakers would be considered "not quality." Hell, even WoW has a 20 level free option, are you saying WoW is a failure?
The fact is, when the average quality level of games you can play for free in 2014 is substantially higher than the average quality level of games you had to pay a sub for was as recently as three or four years ago, the standards people apply to determine what is "worthy" of a sub increase. A lot of people simply aren't willing to pay more than the market standard, so if the market standard fee goes down, companies that insist on sticking with the old prices are going to see some degradation in their market share vs. where they would have been if the industry was still universally subscription based.
ESO is a quality game, no matter how long it takes it to switch to Freemium. So is Wildstar. Neither game is going to be to every individual's taste, and the dynamics of the market may have changed too much to allow them to stay sub only as long as they would like, but both are very well made versions of the concepts their developers were trying to implement. It is not a requirement of being "quality" that a game be able to defy market trends.
Peace is a lie, there is only passion.
Through passion, I gain strength.
Through strength, I gain power.
Through power, I gain victory.
Through victory, my chains are broken.
The Force shall free me.
I don't get this "only Elder Scrolls players will buy ESO" mentality. I've never played Skyrim or other elder scrolls games because I have no interest in single player games but I'm buying ESO.
Also, I hope this game never converts to F2P, I hate F2P games where I have to play with people that can't afford 14 euros a month. I consider 12-15 euro a month money well spent if I enjoy playing it.
No I didn't have a date with customer support. I had a billing dispute and they refused to address the issue. They said they would have refunded me the money if I had contacted them sooner but the only way I knew there was an issue was looking at my next credit card bill. How was I supposed to contact them sooner than seeing my bill? They told me in no uncertain terms they were keeping my money regardless. I have contacted their customer support in the past and had good service but I guess now that they are F2P they are so desperate for money they have to grab as much of it as they can by any means possible which is a terrible sign of the state of Trion IMO and why I won't be giving them any more money..ever.
Maybe Tera couldn't push out enough content because it's F2P and they didn't have the resources to do so? Sounds very similar to NW. It's also one of the general complaints with F2P so is a valid complaint with regard to Tera. In contrast, look at how much content ESO is launching with. There looks to be about 10 times as much leveling content and variety in ESO over say Neverwinter. Not to mention there is actually a functioning and deep end game FROM LAUNCH not a year down the road from launch. There is a deep and viable crafting system. They have also announced some fairly major content releasing relatively soon after launch. ESO will have a metric fuckton of things to do at launch. Neverwinter for all intents and purposes died as soon as you hit max level. The end game was/is laughable. The leveling variety is nil regardless of your race/class choices. The game is about as shallow as they come and this is a typical complaint with F2P games. You may not like ESO and you may not like the P2P model but at least there is actual content.
I think some companies have made a lot of money with item shops, and with their success, many other companies have either embraced this or incorporated it, in some way, into their gaming model. I believe a subscription based model is the most cost effective, for what you get, for the consumer. You can spend 10 dollars easily going to a movie that lasts 2 hours, making it approx 5 dollars an hour in entertainment. For 5 dollars more, I can get many hours and have 100% access to what everyone else in the game has access to. So call me selfish, but I really hope Elder Scrolls Online sticks with a premium subscription model. I tried a free to play game that had an item shop and said I will only spend $15 a month in the item shop and see where it gets me...I ended up spending $25.
Overall, perhaps it is a good thing that there are so many games on the market to address the playing needs of the diverse variety of people out there called gamers. My answer to the original question? I hope not.
I think the game will not go into F2P if Zeni keeps this current cycle of listening to their player base. I honestly think Trion did the best as far as listening. Such a great company, but their game was doomed to F2P it was just boring to look at and listen to. Everything else was great as far as any tab target game can do.
Tera used to be subscription based mate, for over a year
Lol.
xoxo
I guess it depends on how stubborn the developers are and how they feel about their sub numbers. Some MMOs still haven't gone f2p to this day even though they can't have more than 20k subs, like DAoC, Ultima Online.
Although maybe they just couldn't adopt those games to f2p. I think games today are probably developed with the idea that they may end up going f2p.
there is so much shit with this game, i dont think money will be the only reason it fails hard.