18 replies to this topic

[fatality39]

So, this year was the year that f2p was supposed to wipe the planet of sub games.  (so articles said pre gw2).  Now that GW2 has been out and we've seen how they entice people into buying gems via DR and gear grind/T6 grind. We also see Swtor version of f2p and PS2 is now out.  

In the end, is a sub model better for the mmo gamer?  Is 15 a month actually more bang for the buck with lots of depth and cheaper in the longer run v. pay2win and"f2p" models?

Guild wars 2 and SWTOR both deliver less and push people blatantly at every corner to go beyond 15 a month it seems like to me.
Discuss.

Edited by fatality39, 26 November 2012 - 01:31 AM.

[Corvindi]

The problem for me is, sub games also have the end game dungeon hamster grind for the best gear.  I'm just not interested in it.  Nor do I want to get my face smashed in PvP by overgeared hamsters fresh from their latest raid.

I guess I'm done with MMOs except for piddling around (and not spending money).  I like to level and explore and craft, but I hate grinding dungeons and I really hate raiding.  And whether it's free to play with cash shop or a monthly sub game, all of them seem to want to force feed us the same old same old.

At least I will get my $15/mo and then some out of GW2.  I spent $40 on bank and character slots.  So if I think of the first month as included in my $60, in less than a month I'll have gotten my money's worth by the standards of a sub game, and I'm sure I'll piddle around leveling alts for at least that much longer.

[Haishao]

Offer less than what?
Than a game that has been out for 8 years?

Edited by Haishao, 26 November 2012 - 02:26 AM.

[Raytla]

Elaborate will you.
What do you mean by deliver less...
Its been 3 months now and I am still at 52% map completion don't think it's going to get any higher than that to be honest I have so much left to do I don't know how people are able to get 100% map.
I haven't used cash to buy gems nor have I grind for any ascended gear.  The only grind that I do is for cosmetics.
I am still debating whether I want ascended items or not.
Stats on ascended are not game breaking for me.  If agony exists outside FotM then I will decide to get it until then I will remain in exotics.
Besides, I don't have time to play as much anymore since exams are coming up.

Edited by Catiine, 26 November 2012 - 02:57 AM.

[karekiz]

P2Play is a dying breed.  MMO's aren't new and super awesome anymore so less "new" blood will be enticed by it.

BTW - Everquest offers more content in a progression guild than WoW does at this very point.  Can't beat something like 14ish expansions worth of solo/group/raid content.  If you went from one expansion to the next (progression) thats a LOT of content.

And its free to play.

Edited by karekiz, 26 November 2012 - 03:12 AM.

[Wifflebottom]

Sub MMOs typically withold the bulk of the content  for when you hit the level cap which takes a while. GW2 lets you experience all parts of the game throughout the leveling curve. Free content updates. Not having to pay for a game you already spent 60 dollars for. All of these are good things. It's arguable that sub games provide more for the subscription fee, hell you can do more as a level 5 in GW2 than you can as a level 5 in WoW.

[Larsen]

F2P is not some kind of generous act of charity. It would be fine if developers didn't use it as a carte blanche to make bad games, but LoL aside, that has typically seemed to be the case. It's not an excuse to cut corners on design and production, releasing titles with low-quality content and missing crucial features. People won't play a bad game just because it's free, but they'll pay for a good game. Riot are probably making ridiculous amounts of money from League of Legends because it's a good game, and they did the right thing: make the best game you're able to make, not the most cost-effective discount product that you think you can get away with. If the goal of the F2P model is to lower the standard of the industry, it can f*** right off.

Quote

GW2 lets you experience all parts of the game throughout the leveling curve.

This is a horrible fallacy. People like to use that myth to suggest that GW2 has tons of awesome content available no matter what kind of player you are. In truth, it has no more leveling content than any other contemporary MMORPG (in fact it has less, containing almost no quests and providing so few dungeons along the way), but where it differs is that it has almost nothing waiting for you at the level cap. There's a few extra dungeons and that's it. It's easy to promise players the ability to "experience all parts of the game while leveling" if you offer no more than what any other game does at that stage. If WoW had no raid content, no rated PvP system, no heroic instances or most of its normal levelcap dungeons, it could also boast that you can "enjoy everything the game has to offer while leveling" because, well, the basic leveling content would be all there was. In GW2, it is all there is, pretty much. Oh yeah, they added a new 5-man dungeon system, but that's not exactly what the game was lacking -- it was all it ever had, and that was the problem.

If F2P has become an excuse to provide far less than one's competitors, it's a failure. Don't use the economic model as a scapegoat for the game's shortcomings. ANet skimped on content and quality, thinking that the lack of a subscription fee would let them get away with a discount product. It didn't. Maybe if the game had been completely free, like LoL or PS2, but it isn't. There are plenty of actually good games that don't require more than the initial purchase, it's not some kind of innovation, except that it's sort of new in the MMORPG business. The game still has to be good or people won't play it, free or not.

Edited by Larsen, 26 November 2012 - 03:52 AM.

[Bryant Again]

I feel that the biggest thing, at least for me, is the mentality of subscriptions: Due to the subscription and the feeling of trying to 'get the best bang for your buck' can make me feel like I'm wasting time. It can get to a point where when I feel like I'm being bored I get anxious, all in a vain attempt to justify the fee.



Not to mention how some things feel purposefully drawn out to milk your subscription.

Haishao, on 26 November 2012 - 02:23 AM, said:

Offer less than what?
Than a game that has been out for 8 years?

I think this would only be if you played it for those eight years. It's a bit tough finding people to run the old content, although the transmogging helped quite a bit

[Naginto]

fatality39, on 26 November 2012 - 01:27 AM, said:

So, this year was the year that f2p was supposed to wipe the planet of sub games.

Really? this is news to me and I've been playing MMO's for 13 years.

F2P and sub set ups are a business choice. Please check this list to reinforce how wrong you are that 1- F2P is new, and 2- F2P is not sustainable. http://www.mmorpg.com/gamelist.cfm

Gaming companies want a return on their investment. The analysis goes like this:
Will a F2P model have enough players spending enough per month to offset the slackers that never pay for anything.

Thats it. The bottom line. Will that income stream be enough to maintain and grow the alleged "persistent" world.

[Ncyphe]

Before one can answer F2P (or B2P, for GW2) vs P2P, one must ask why?

With P2P, most people can only afford to play one mmo at a time.  This leads to massive competition between developers, especially since on a few games prove to be withstand against the long standing competition.

The solution was Free-2-Play.

Why?

Because, with F2P (or B2P), it give players a very low wall for entry.  With no fear of paying a constant subscription fee, it frees up the player to feel as though he can casually approach the game without worry of money.  The player can easily jump between games with no financial issues.

How does this work?

Cash-Shop.  Effectively, the cash-shop is what funds the developers.

What a lot of players fail to realize is that cash-shops generate more income than a subscription base that is trying to compete against WoW.  (Some players will spend more than $50 a month on a cas-shop.)

Small Barrier to Play + Fun Content + Cash-Shop == A Financially Successful MMO



This does not mean that all games should be quickly converted to F2P.

SWtOR, for one example, did a poor job converting to F2P.  I felt that a lot of the changes they made were detrimental to the players who used to sub.

D&DO did a great job going F2P.  They kept all the favorites unlocked, and only cash-shop locked the content for the hard core crowed that wanted to add onto their adventure.



One Final Note:
1) All Cash-Shop items must not promote Buy to Win gameplay
2) DO NOT Lock a key feature of the game in the cash shop (Dragon's nest selling skill resets), it causes players to walk away from the game (I did).

[Corsair]

This is entirely irrelevant. What should matter is if you, the end user, feel like you're getting your money's worth out of the game you have purchased, for whatever price. Value for money can only be determined by every person individually. Both will continue into the future.

[Merryham]

The only sub based game that's "worth it" (In MY opinion) is Rift due to the humongous and frequent updates. Else, I prefer B2P games.

Edited by Merryham, 26 November 2012 - 07:36 AM.

[Ritualist]

GW1 was the revolution GW2 should have been. Too bad nobody was paying attention.
With that in mind, I also don't see GW2 changing much in the MMO landscape - be it the question of the monthly fee or introducing the genre to non-MMO players.

[Heart Collector]

I still prefer GW2's system. 15 euro a month is not worth it for a videogame when I can play others without a ticking clock in the back of my mind trying to urge me to"not waste those 15 euro". And I don't really trust f2p stuff though I will try out Neverwinter.

[Dasryn]

Haishao, on 26 November 2012 - 02:23 AM, said:

Offer less than what?
Than a game that has been out for 8 years?

lulz.

@OP - swtor failed not only because of lack of content, but because that content was expected since we were being charged every month to play it.  its called, "the pressure to play".

GW2 doesnt have that man. . .

it doesnt, stop playing it like you would wow and you will find your happy median.

[Robsy128]

They're just business models.

What happens when a company throws millions of pounds at a game in the hopes that it will be the next king? You get Star Wars: The Old Republic. Is it good? It's all right. Is it better than everything else out there? No.

It's more about the company ethics than the business model at the end of the day. Arenanet set out to make a different game, whereas everyone else was using the same cookie-cutter which had been used by at least 5 other companies before. Do they still pump out new content? Yes. It's been 3 months since the game released and there's a lot of content there. Okay, they failed with the Lost Shores content patch, but I'm sure they'll learn from their mistakes and make something worthwhile.

The problem is people keep comparing games that have been out for years, that have had expansions, to brand new games. You're not comparing business models at all. You're just using those to say 'oh hey, I paid £10 a month and I got all of this!' Well, yes, you did because you've been playing the game for years - not months.

How about we make the competition fair and compare GW1, a B2P game that has been out for years, with another game that is P2P and has also been out for years. Which one had the most content? Did you really need to pay £10 a month just for those content patches in the P2P game? Personally, I don't think so. Like I said, it depends on the company and what they want to do. People are different, thus companies are different, thus you can't put B2P games and P2P games or even F2P games against one another.

[Milennin]

Both models have their good points and their bad points.

Subscription:
Good because you get everything that comes out for the game without paying more than your subscription. Although this is largely negated by games that sell expansions for major content updates. You'll end up paying monthly, and then also pay extra for the expansions.
Bad because the game is specifically designed in ways to keep you playing for a long time (through tons of grind, not actual content).

Free-to-play:
Good because you don't actually have to pay to play the game.
Bad because the free stuff is usually not enough to get the real fun out of the game. You'll be paying for more convenience, to spend less time grinding or for better (looking) items.

[raspberry jam]

fatality39, on 26 November 2012 - 01:27 AM, said:

In the end, is a sub model better for the mmo gamer?  Is 15 a month actually more bang for the buck with lots of depth and cheaper in the longer run v. pay2win and"f2p" models?

Yes and no. A sub model means that the developer have a profit interest in getting people hooked. On the other hand, it allows people to vote with their wallet, so that when the developers pull stupid shit like ascended gear, they can just quit their subscription.

[jirayasan]

Guild Wars 2 is doing great.

SWTOR is doing good, F2P get the story for free and you level slower and sprint at lvl 15 etc. You need to sub if you want more than the story and level normally, imo a subscription is worth it.