There was a report that said around 95 percent of free-to-play consumers will never make any monetary transactions
Now thats all F2P gaming not just PC but it's pretty common knowledge that the vast majority of people in F2P games never pay a cent and that the small percentage of whales make up most of the revenue.
I'd like to see the details going into how much the 95% of F2P consumers are unique connections and how often they are actually playing the game. Am I considered part of the 95% of non-paying fortnite players because I downloaded the game but never even played through a full match? This is why I specified 'people who are relatively serious about playing,' because the numbers of players in free games are massively inflated compared. In terms of free MMO games is it really fair to include people who spend a grand total of 10 minutes ingame? (not even including the amount of singular people multi-accounting or botting in F2P games)
Judging from standard games that have things like tutorial completion achievements publically presented (I use steam but I think PSN and Xbox have a similar function) you can clearly see that many games aren't even booted up or launched by large portions of people who are technically players of the game via point of sale.
I think that amount has reduced but it is still in the 85%+ area (F2P and never paid a penny) if I remember right from the last one of those I have seen.
I think that amount has reduced but it is still in the 85%+ area (F2P and never paid a penny) if I remember right from the last one of those I have seen.
I seem to recall years back Blizzard released a similar sort of statement, something like 75% of new players quitting before they even got to level 10. I'm sure all of these accounts are added into marketing number totals ("WoW has 50 million players" stickered on every box) though for all intents are purposes they didn't really play the game.
I wonder if similar wordplay is present whenever F2P companies say the vast majority of players don't pay. We look at reports like this and think "Wow, what a great deal this is for the masses! I'll be a smart and frugal gamer and join in. I'll never be dumb enough to spend my hard earned cash on imaginary digital costumes," but reality is that the actual real and active players all sit in the 14% of occasional purchasers.
I also think it's a bit disingenuous
to include metrics from ALL free to play in an MMO specific discussion
considering most F2P non-mmo games aren't locking key gameplay
experiences behind paywalls in the same way MMO's are. Fall Guys, CSGO and GW2
are all considered 'free to play' with cosmetic shops but GW2 is
blocking main gameplay features like classes, raids, mounts, story
content, etc. As far as I've seen in Fall Guys and CSGO 100% of the actual
gameplay loop is playable without payment granted the exception of giving
your characters funny costumes.
If I were to rank my preferred monetization models,
Very good tier Buy to play only no micro transactions (like GW1, GW2 mostly)
Umm... not only does GW2 have microtransactions it also has a built-in loot box mechanic via the chests that need a key to open them. Yes, you do get some freebie keys (very similar to how all loot box and gacha games give you freebies to get you started) but you get many more locked chest drops than free keys.
That makes me think you're talking about theories and not first-hand experience since playing GW2 for even one day you'd know that yes, they do have microtransactions and loot box mechanics.
"Social media gives legions of idiots the right to speak when they once only spoke at a bar after a glass of wine, without harming the community ... but now they have the same right to speak as a Nobel Prize winner. It's the invasion of the idiots”
― Umberto Eco
“Microtransactions? In a single player role-playing game? Are you nuts?” ― CD PROJEKT RED
You could be happy hiking and doing low cost things. That's always good too. But if you want to play video games (or go to a sporting event, or theater or "whatever") then you are going to have to open your wallet to some level.
Well technically today you can play this huge chunk of games and pay zero. Just freeload in a F2P game. Seems that is what the vast majority of folks do today. It's also a major driver in the crap we have today.
Anyone who is anything more than extremely casual about playing any free game is going to end up paying money for it, though. The amount of non-casual players who refuse to spend a cent on a free game is likely very small because anyone with that amount of self discipline/moral obligation is probably not going to freetoplay cashshop games to begin with. (not including the vast swathes of children who don't have credit cards playing these games)
This is sort of why I think the example of hiking is a bad comparison. Sure, going for a walk in a well kept public park in clothes you already have is free but anyone whose relatively serious about hiking as a hobby is spending large sums of money on gear/travel in the same way that anyone relatively serious about playing a F2P game is going to need to spend money at some point or another.
This question goes out to the community as a whole - how many people do you know who are actually sinking MMORPG amounts of time into F2P games and NOT spending a single cent?
There was a report that said around 95 percent of free-to-play consumers will never make any monetary transactions
Now thats all F2P gaming not just PC but it's pretty common knowledge that the vast majority of people in F2P games never pay a cent and that the small percentage of whales make up most of the revenue.
So is it any surprise games are designed to attract and cater to the 5% who pay?
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 I were to rank my preferred monetization models,
Very good tier Buy to play only no micro transactions (like GW1, GW2 mostly)
Umm... not only does GW2 have microtransactions it also has a built-in loot box mechanic via the chests that need a key to open them. Yes, you do get some freebie keys (very similar to how all loot box and gacha games give you freebies to get you started) but you get many more locked chest drops than free keys.
That makes me think you're talking about theories and not first-hand experience since playing GW2 for even one day you'd know that yes, they do have microtransactions and loot box mechanics.
Yeah, that is why I said mostly Technically they are there but feel so inconsequential they might as well not exist.
Really there is a spectrum to all of these models,
Hypothetically there could be a model I hate on paper, like gatcha, but is designed in such a way that you never feel pressured or limited by it so you never need to engage with it.
GW2 and ESO both have similar models, but GW2 it feels like you get 99% of the game just by buying it and never need to spend money on microtransactions, or at least I never felt like I did.
ESO by comparison I thought was very limited by just buying the game and it strongly pushed you toward the shop.
How burdensome or limiting a monetization system is, is kind of hard to quantify, but you can feel it.
If I were to rank my preferred monetization models,
Very good tier Buy to play only no micro transactions (like GW1, GW2 mostly)
Umm... not only does GW2 have microtransactions it also has a built-in loot box mechanic via the chests that need a key to open them. Yes, you do get some freebie keys (very similar to how all loot box and gacha games give you freebies to get you started) but you get many more locked chest drops than free keys.
That makes me think you're talking about theories and not first-hand experience since playing GW2 for even one day you'd know that yes, they do have microtransactions and loot box mechanics.
Yeah, that is why I said mostly Technically they are there but feel so inconsequential they might as well not exist.
Really there is a spectrum to all of these models,
Hypothetically there could be a model I hate on paper, like gatcha, but is designed in such a way that you never feel pressured or limited by it so you never need to engage with it.
GW2 and ESO both have similar models, but GW2 it feels like you get 99% of the game just by buying it and never need to spend money on microtransactions, or at least I never felt like I did.
ESO by comparison I thought was very limited by just buying the game and it strongly pushed you toward the shop.
How burdensome or limiting a monetization system is, is kind of hard to quantify, but you can feel it.
I agree about ESO. Their "optional" sub, which is anything but for any serious player due to inadequate, basic inventory management, paid DLC which is included with the sub, but not when they decide to change the name of one DLC per year to Chapter and make even those who sub, pay extra (also can't be bought with the premium game currency,) loot boxes, a pushy way to advertise the cash shop in the game, sale of skill lines and riding training... It boggles my mind how that game can be ranked anywhere near the top of player-friendly monetization when they essentially took all the monetization models imaginable and bundled them into one game. It wouldn't surprise me in the least if they switch to a blockchain database and start selling NFTs
There is only one player-friendly model that preserves the competitive integrity of games while providing a cheap deal and that's the all-inclusive sub with no cash shop and expansions every couple of years or so... like most of them were 20 years ago before gaming became a bigger thing than movies and attracted all the non-gaming investors to buy all the studios.
Someone needs to write an American Pie song about gaming
"Social media gives legions of idiots the right to speak when they once only spoke at a bar after a glass of wine, without harming the community ... but now they have the same right to speak as a Nobel Prize winner. It's the invasion of the idiots”
― Umberto Eco
“Microtransactions? In a single player role-playing game? Are you nuts?” ― CD PROJEKT RED
Kinda feel like some people don't understand why subscriptions existed.
Subscriptions were required to pay for server infrastructure, something that was a significant cost when games like EQ were rolling around.
Content was paid for through expansions.
It's how games like GW2 seem to "surprise" players by not having a subscription: the dirty secret is, they don't need one because the reason it was needed no longer exists.
Of course this doesn't apply to games that use subscription models to generate content like say, Runescape or somesuch.
That could have been true but there was an article a loooong time ago where the devs for Guild Wars pretty much stated that their model was not financially sustainable. It was in an article talking about their upcoming guild wars 2.
When people say there are no costs for servers I tend to doubt that. There are some costs for servers. They are perhaps not what they used to be but I have a hard time accepting that server usage is free.
Unless someone in the business can definitively say there isn't.
It's not that there's "no costs", it's that the costs are relatively low. We can actually infer this from looking at SWG Legends, a private server that gets thousands of daily users and has a very, very old codebase for its servers that doesn't scale and can't easily be adapted to the cloud. Their monthly server costs are still something like <$1500 last I checked, and they're very public about it. They're able to host their server on hardware that is massively more powerful and costs significantly less than what was available for retail SWG.
The cost of infrastructure for this sort of thing is a tiny fraction of what it used to be. Everquest devs, and for about the next 10 years after, were maintaining their own physical server hardware. This is definitely not the norm anymore, you can even see rather (relatively) outdated MMOs like SWTOR publicly advertising that their server infrastructure is moving to the cloud. You end up paying significantly less because comparatively, you're doing very little computing. What used to be unused CPU time is now used by another customer who subsidizes your costs.
Computing is just much cheaper now. People who feel like they have to pay a subscription to get a 'fair' deal: well, you don't. You really don't. Many of these companies are just plain greedy, and I don't mean in the typical profit-seeking fashion which I have no real issue with.
Cactus_LFRez said: GW2 and ESO both have similar models, but GW2 it feels like you get 99% of the game just by buying it and never need to spend money on microtransactions, or at least I never felt like I did.
I used to go pretty hard into GW2 and would buy microtransaction stuff here and there, mostly bag slots, character expansion but sometimes cosmetics, too. I think it was the best premium shop for me because I personally thought almost all of the cosmetics for sale were really ugly which made it easy to not be tempted to spend.
Lootboxes are always garbage but in GW2 case at least most of the items are generic and obtainable through other means, usually only 1 skin would be unique to the box for long periods of time and it was always real forgettable to me. In ESO I'm pretty sure every lootbox I ever looked at was full of great and amazing looking stuff that I definitely wanted.
caalem said: The cost of infrastructure for this sort of thing is a tiny fraction of what it used to be. Everquest devs, and for about the next 10 years after, were maintaining their own physical server hardware. This is definitely not the norm anymore, you can even see rather (relatively) outdated MMOs like SWTOR publicly advertising that their server infrastructure is moving to the cloud.
Not only server cost but It feels like a lot of the community facing sort of jobs are automated in these companies now. By that I mean in-game moderators, forum staff (so many games don't even have official forums anymore) tech/account support roles, etc.
So on on e hand you have loot boxes in a game (GW2) that has always been focused on horizontal progression relative to the vertical progression of wow where you can buy gold from Blizzard and pay people to run you through the content.
I mean I don't really see GW2 loot boxes as worse than WOW P2W
I think every one needs to ask themselves, if the money they pay for the game is worth it? I paid over $30 for FFXIV, including extra storage and the phone app (which came with extra storage). To me, it was worth the money. I felt I was getting a high quality experience. I even bought some things off the shop. I paid a monthly fee for SWTOR; but it barely felt like it was worth it. Every time I buy a WoW expack, and monthly sub, I wind up in the same feeling that it is the same boring crap. I got more worth, with my sub, from Classic WoW.
I tried earning from World of Warcraft by selling items but I didn't know there are other games we can use. Nowadays I try earning through online casinos, works pretty well considering its a casino. If you guys need trusted online casino, I can suggest some.
Comments
That makes me think you're talking about theories and not first-hand experience since playing GW2 for even one day you'd know that yes, they do have microtransactions and loot box mechanics.
“Microtransactions? In a single player role-playing game? Are you nuts?”
― CD PROJEKT RED
Freeloaders are just chaffe.
"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
Technically they are there but feel so inconsequential they might as well not exist.
Really there is a spectrum to all of these models,
Hypothetically there could be a model I hate on paper, like gatcha, but is designed in such a way that you never feel pressured or limited by it so you never need to engage with it.
GW2 and ESO both have similar models, but GW2 it feels like you get 99% of the game just by buying it and never need to spend money on microtransactions, or at least I never felt like I did.
ESO by comparison I thought was very limited by just buying the game and it strongly pushed you toward the shop.
How burdensome or limiting a monetization system is, is kind of hard to quantify, but you can feel it.
There is only one player-friendly model that preserves the competitive integrity of games while providing a cheap deal and that's the all-inclusive sub with no cash shop and expansions every couple of years or so... like most of them were 20 years ago before gaming became a bigger thing than movies and attracted all the non-gaming investors to buy all the studios.
Someone needs to write an American Pie song about gaming
“Microtransactions? In a single player role-playing game? Are you nuts?”
― CD PROJEKT RED
We can actually infer this from looking at SWG Legends, a private server that gets thousands of daily users and has a very, very old codebase for its servers that doesn't scale and can't easily be adapted to the cloud. Their monthly server costs are still something like <$1500 last I checked, and they're very public about it. They're able to host their server on hardware that is massively more powerful and costs significantly less than what was available for retail SWG.
The cost of infrastructure for this sort of thing is a tiny fraction of what it used to be. Everquest devs, and for about the next 10 years after, were maintaining their own physical server hardware. This is definitely not the norm anymore, you can even see rather (relatively) outdated MMOs like SWTOR publicly advertising that their server infrastructure is moving to the cloud. You end up paying significantly less because comparatively, you're doing very little computing. What used to be unused CPU time is now used by another customer who subsidizes your costs.
Computing is just much cheaper now. People who feel like they have to pay a subscription to get a 'fair' deal: well, you don't. You really don't. Many of these companies are just plain greedy, and I don't mean in the typical profit-seeking fashion which I have no real issue with.
I mean I don't really see GW2 loot boxes as worse than WOW P2W