Read my post again and tell me where I said F2P is buying2win?
The reason why Free To Play MMO's are destroying the Genre
- Thread starter LateX'Dog
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Read my post again and tell me where I said F2P is buying2win?
I can see a significant number of those in RF Online. The cash shop had it all, weapons with strong mods that would take an exceptional amount of luck/money to get normally, healing pots, better damage/defence buffs, potions to remove the exp penalty of death, items that lowered the requirement of gear, conveniently balanced so that lvl55 gear was infinitely more powerful than lvl50 gear and you had to buy 5 of the items, mining tools so you didn't have to be there, the list goes on.
P2P MMOs are mostly all dead except for WoW and Aion. No other P2P MMO currently even has 500k subscribers.
What do people like so much about P2P games being so limited to such a tiny niche of video gamers when this means that hardly anyone will actually play them unless its WoW?
BTW, Aion's subscriber base is a flawed total because the game can be played with a similar payment plan to FTP games in China where subscription fees are actually illegal for video games.
Blame the developers for not listening to what people actually want from the FTP model rather than simply trying to cash in on as much money as possible to the point of ruining their own game.
I find it laughable that in any such discussion on FTP games, no one uses Guild Wars as an example, which is only the second best selling MMO of all time after WoW
What do people like so much about P2P games being so limited to such a tiny niche of video gamers when this means that hardly anyone will actually play them unless its WoW?
BTW, Aion's subscriber base is a flawed total because the game can be played with a similar payment plan to FTP games in China where subscription fees are actually illegal for video games.
Blame the developers for not listening to what people actually want from the FTP model rather than simply trying to cash in on as much money as possible to the point of ruining their own game.
I find it laughable that in any such discussion on FTP games, no one uses Guild Wars as an example, which is only the second best selling MMO of all time after WoW
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Free to play games = cash shops. Thats what the FTP genre does.
FTP game + cash shop with optional purchases. The cash shops in the majority of these games do not have a 'buying2win' method.
Anyone that thinks that 'cashshop = buying2win' is a highly misinformed individual.
No they dont. You've never even played a F2P game have you?
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lol
I am special because I am right?
You gave up because you are clearly wrong more like it.
Feel free to get this FTP (or is it BTP, make one purchase, play forever?) game and play it for 6 years:
http://store.steampowered.com/app/29620/
Then come back and tell me exactly how you had to buy2win, or got conned into spending as much money as possible.
MOST people that play GW only ever paid the initial purchase price, then enjoyed the game completely free forever. EVERYTHING in the cash store is 100% optional and doesnt affect anything you do in game other than maybe putting a pink wedding dress or a tuxedo on your characters (gee, I wonder how exactly people can be conned out of all their money by buying silly pointless costumes).
You gave up because you are clearly wrong more like it.
Feel free to get this FTP (or is it BTP, make one purchase, play forever?) game and play it for 6 years:
http://store.steampowered.com/app/29620/
Then come back and tell me exactly how you had to buy2win, or got conned into spending as much money as possible.
MOST people that play GW only ever paid the initial purchase price, then enjoyed the game completely free forever. EVERYTHING in the cash store is 100% optional and doesnt affect anything you do in game other than maybe putting a pink wedding dress or a tuxedo on your characters (gee, I wonder how exactly people can be conned out of all their money by buying silly pointless costumes).
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Soldato
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the only type of free to play games allowed should be ones like battlfield multipayer, cod etc... f2p mmo's are ruining the industry.
hmmm lets see..
If I'm spending a truckload of money on getting more powerful items, take a game for instance Perfect World, I can upgrade my weapon to +12 which can take upto £500+ real money to achieve. I am more powerful and essentially buying2win.
What part of that isn't buying2win? That's essentially what this whole article is about.
If I'm spending a truckload of money on getting more powerful items, take a game for instance Perfect World, I can upgrade my weapon to +12 which can take upto £500+ real money to achieve. I am more powerful and essentially buying2win.
What part of that isn't buying2win? That's essentially what this whole article is about.
No they are saving the industry. Those MMOs wouldnt exist if they werent free to play, funny that, its actually the P2P method that was ruining the industry because no one was paying for the games. FTP actually saved them.
Thats perfectworld, thats one game and its one cash store model.
Also I played Perfect world for a few months and never paid a single penny, so I have no idea how exactly you ended up paying so much money.
P2P games are actually Pay to win, seeing as you cant actually win them without paying, OMG how evil!
Also the only game that is actually destroying the Genre is WoW, and that is P2P. Thanks to WoW having taken almost everyone in the niche P2P market, hardly any other P2P game can be as successful because no one in WoW will commit to paying for another game on top of WoW. And also thanks to WoW having done this, we now have so many FTP MMOs. So thanks Blizzard, you inadvertently saved the MMO industry, but only after causing a destruction to all the other P2P games out there
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Oh forgive me, I forgot to add all these companies that do the exact same.. ... ... ..
http://www.ijji.com/
http://www.nexon.net/
http://gamescampus.com/
http://www.gpotato.com/
http://www.aeriagames.com/
http://www.ijji.com/
http://www.nexon.net/
http://gamescampus.com/
http://www.gpotato.com/
http://www.aeriagames.com/
Only one I've heard of on that list is Nexon, and I leveled a character in Maplestory all the way up to level 70 (the 'third job') without needing to pay for EXP boosters.
Those are also mostly asian MMOs, and the micro transaction prices in those actually are very 'micro' and barely cost anything.
The EXP boosters last for a daily time period for a whole 2-4 weeks, and cost less than paying a months subscription would.
They do not compare to western FTP MMOs either, especially not to GW, Lotro or DDO in which the only things you really need to pay for is (mini) expansions. And I see nothing wrong with paying for expansions, the developers made new content, you buy it.
Those are also mostly asian MMOs, and the micro transaction prices in those actually are very 'micro' and barely cost anything.
The EXP boosters last for a daily time period for a whole 2-4 weeks, and cost less than paying a months subscription would.
They do not compare to western FTP MMOs either, especially not to GW, Lotro or DDO in which the only things you really need to pay for is (mini) expansions. And I see nothing wrong with paying for expansions, the developers made new content, you buy it.
Typical "Asian mmo" tripe, I don't understand how people could play those.
Soldato
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That I remember
First there was the subscription model.. and it was good, you paid, you played, everyone was happy
Then there were the Koreans, they didn't like the subscription model, they thought it 'restrictive' (I think there were other issues too), so they developed games based around the cash shop idea. This can be seen especially well, in RF Online, where for the first few years of its life in Europe, it was subscription based, while in Korea was 'cash shop'. Eventually the Euro version was changed to tie in with the cash shop version.
If you look at MANY of the MMO's released in the mid 2000's, most of them were and are basically the same design and all coming from Korean design houses, after all, Korea is one of the worlds largest games markets.
Does f2p destroy mmo's? No, in a lot of cases, it brings new life to games. What destroys MMO's, is lazy development teams and greedy management. If you take a game like AoC for example, where a bag costs something like £20, that's greedy management, and the power creep of forcing people into buying bigger and better just to keep up, well that's lazy development (something companies like bigpoint, are very good at, to the extent that they ruined BSG-O)
To me, there are three games that stand out in terms of F2P, Anarchy Online, DDO, and LOTRO.
Anarchy Online went f2p at the end of 2004, while keeping its subscription model, and only recently implemented a 'cash shop'. However, with the exception of not having access to the expansion packs, free players have never been restricted.
DDO & LOTRO, both under Turbine, have probably the best F2P model that I have seen, where it is possible, to unlock all of the content in the game, without paying them a single penny, and where you don't really need to use the cash shop. The cash shop helps, but then, subscribers get free points each month, so that's all good. And the power creep isnt really THAT bad.
So in the end, I will stick to my belief, f2p is a good thing, its the greed of the publishers, that can ruin mmo's.
First there was the subscription model.. and it was good, you paid, you played, everyone was happy
Then there were the Koreans, they didn't like the subscription model, they thought it 'restrictive' (I think there were other issues too), so they developed games based around the cash shop idea. This can be seen especially well, in RF Online, where for the first few years of its life in Europe, it was subscription based, while in Korea was 'cash shop'. Eventually the Euro version was changed to tie in with the cash shop version.
If you look at MANY of the MMO's released in the mid 2000's, most of them were and are basically the same design and all coming from Korean design houses, after all, Korea is one of the worlds largest games markets.
Does f2p destroy mmo's? No, in a lot of cases, it brings new life to games. What destroys MMO's, is lazy development teams and greedy management. If you take a game like AoC for example, where a bag costs something like £20, that's greedy management, and the power creep of forcing people into buying bigger and better just to keep up, well that's lazy development (something companies like bigpoint, are very good at, to the extent that they ruined BSG-O)
To me, there are three games that stand out in terms of F2P, Anarchy Online, DDO, and LOTRO.
Anarchy Online went f2p at the end of 2004, while keeping its subscription model, and only recently implemented a 'cash shop'. However, with the exception of not having access to the expansion packs, free players have never been restricted.
DDO & LOTRO, both under Turbine, have probably the best F2P model that I have seen, where it is possible, to unlock all of the content in the game, without paying them a single penny, and where you don't really need to use the cash shop. The cash shop helps, but then, subscribers get free points each month, so that's all good. And the power creep isnt really THAT bad.
So in the end, I will stick to my belief, f2p is a good thing, its the greed of the publishers, that can ruin mmo's.
No harm in highlighting a few marketing tricks employed in F2P games (calling them F2P is obviously one of them). I don't agree with the headline "F2P are destroying the genre", but I think there's a very strong case that F2P games are trickier from a consumer protection perspective than subscription games.
The pricing of a subscription game is very transparent, whereas microtransactions are designed not to be. There is no barrier to entry (you can download the game and start playing for free) but there are a myriad of mini-pay walls and desirable items and services that carry an incremental cost. A seemingly cheap price that is beefed up by obscured add-on charges is of course a widespread trick (low-fare airlines come to mind where you apparently now have to pay extra for cabin luggage etc). That's not wrong per se; the purpose of a business is to turn as large a profit as possible. But in most industries there is some sort of regulation to protect consumers from the most abusive practices.
If an airline oversalted its food on long-haul flights and turned the temperature up with a view to charging £50 for a glass of water, you could also say "it's consumer choice; you're not forced to spend money". Yet, we'd call that extortion and expect it to be prohibited. What MMO cash shops do is a more subtle manipulation than exploiting a primary need like thirst, but it's fundamentally the same.
You don't need to pay real cash for a mount or bag, but who likes farming a mob that has a painfully slow respawn (and knowing that if not enough people buy the cash shop mounts and bags, it'll get even more painful)? You don't need to unlock quest packs, but who likes to abandon a character with dozens/hundreds of hours playtime only to start all over?
Again, I'm not saying F2P models are all negative, but I can see some issues. When I read about the successes of F2P LotRO I wonder how much of the increased revenue is due to an increased player base (undeniably a good thing for all players) and how much is due to players paying more for the same service. I used to play LotRO a little, before F2P. I have no doubt that, if I went back, I'd end up spending much more. E.g. I understand that you can now buy virtues for real money (please correct me if that's wrong); I wouldn't hesitate to do that for all my characters, because I always found grinding deeds hideously boring. Same with mounts, storage etc.
The pricing of a subscription game is very transparent, whereas microtransactions are designed not to be. There is no barrier to entry (you can download the game and start playing for free) but there are a myriad of mini-pay walls and desirable items and services that carry an incremental cost. A seemingly cheap price that is beefed up by obscured add-on charges is of course a widespread trick (low-fare airlines come to mind where you apparently now have to pay extra for cabin luggage etc). That's not wrong per se; the purpose of a business is to turn as large a profit as possible. But in most industries there is some sort of regulation to protect consumers from the most abusive practices.
If an airline oversalted its food on long-haul flights and turned the temperature up with a view to charging £50 for a glass of water, you could also say "it's consumer choice; you're not forced to spend money". Yet, we'd call that extortion and expect it to be prohibited. What MMO cash shops do is a more subtle manipulation than exploiting a primary need like thirst, but it's fundamentally the same.
You don't need to pay real cash for a mount or bag, but who likes farming a mob that has a painfully slow respawn (and knowing that if not enough people buy the cash shop mounts and bags, it'll get even more painful)? You don't need to unlock quest packs, but who likes to abandon a character with dozens/hundreds of hours playtime only to start all over?
Again, I'm not saying F2P models are all negative, but I can see some issues. When I read about the successes of F2P LotRO I wonder how much of the increased revenue is due to an increased player base (undeniably a good thing for all players) and how much is due to players paying more for the same service. I used to play LotRO a little, before F2P. I have no doubt that, if I went back, I'd end up spending much more. E.g. I understand that you can now buy virtues for real money (please correct me if that's wrong); I wouldn't hesitate to do that for all my characters, because I always found grinding deeds hideously boring. Same with mounts, storage etc.
Because they are more addictive than WoW, GW, Lotro, DDO, Crack and Heroin combined. People in Asia have actually died playing those games for too long without stopping for food + water.
One of the most unbelievably terrible terrible TERRIBLE comparisons I've heard in a long time. I'd sig that if I could, but its too long.
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lmao, you come here posting about free 2 play games and give me a list of games that used to be P2P games that have recently gone free2play.
The 5 websites I posted are companies with true cash shop games containing several items that are overpowered. That's what the article is directly pointing at. Go look at each website-game cash shop and you'll find atleast every game has 5-8 methods mentioned in the article.
Companies like Riot, Microsoft, S2Games and Turbine all have the finance to just keep the servers running and are mainly selling easier access to the game or cosmetics such as skins (LoL/HoN).
That's what the article is mainly aiming at, if you fail to see it.. You're special.