On free to play

[Thayl Ruttgar]

I have to say I still think DDO's model is working and you get the game for free and people even if it is once or every sale that pops up spend real cash for stuff but you can earn points through game play this would take a very long time but if you really love the game that much and do not have the money it works. but like I said before this is the change to come with MMO's and people will just have to get used to it.

[Black_wraith]

One of you spoke of Blacklight being paid to win, well its true, the amount of time a player would have to go to unblock everything would be incredible, and, yo will say no its not, well, they have disguised it well with the rentels. You rent something for a smal amout of time and for not motch but its just an "ilusion".
But my point here is that Blacklight as not persistence, you spend your time in a lobie. Its the same as playing counter strike. It just looks diferent because it give you an ilusion.

Defiance should go Buy to play, you buy the box and play. Then mabe have a store, do not mind about it, if its good i will spend money time to time. After that do paid expansions.


You guys speak of free to play but you dont now why its here and how it started.

If you have a country that as one third of the world population and every day you have a MMO that goes out and one that dies because they do not have many players interested. You have to invent a way to attract players so you make a game free and you put a store where you use real maney. And mabe some of games will have a sub model too. You make them also simple to keep player imfo so you dont spend to motch on servers, there you go you are making milions. And the estern mentality is very turned to gambling.

In the West, unless you are planing on "selling" your game to the chinise, free to play is a tuff choice to make. Western players do not have the habit to spend money in stores of free to play games.

Now, because of many estern companies are coming with there games to the west, you start to see some changes in the industry.
I am going to tell you of a game that sold a a lie. But before i need to tell you that i studied marketing in the university. So the game is FIREFALL, you did not saw that one coming. They say they are free to play, but then they say they are in beta, but IF you buy now the game you will get in beta now. WHAT!!! Then you have no NDA, so you have tone of videos on the web players whant to try it they will buy it now to play it now. Its the lie of you being parte of a privete exclusive club, that after a will every one is there. Its the perfect con.

To finish, F2P in many games it kills the game, you atract players that will "kill" the fans, (you atract the bad trolls), the ones that do spend money because they know nothing is Free and they like the game. Every one as to put food on the table. After a while the spenders will go. leaving no one to pay for the game. My last argument, you dont ask companys to make free solo games, do you, why should massive games that require tones of money to keep going to be free.

/thread


Brilliant!

[Plzbanme]

I will agree on the firefall stuff, they don't do anything in a logical manor. They were doing random balance before they had hit boxes set up.

[lycrates]

I have NEVER seen a non-sub game to be worthwhile in the long run. The reason B2P and F2P games sound too good to be true is because they ARE!!

The ultimate difference is that MMOs require a lot of constant new content updates in order to stay interesting not become stale and boring. I have never seen a company to be able to provide lots of new frequent content updates without a subscription model.

Even if you look at GW2, - a buy to play game, most people have stopped playing because there is not much to do at the end. And even then, GW2 is not a good game for comparison because it is mostly focused around PvP, while Defiance will have its focus towards cooperative PvE (from what I understand).

Games with a focus on PvE NEED frequent content updates. Yes, playing a game regularly and not having to pay for frequent content sounds awesome. Too bad no company has managed to pull it off yet (developers dont work for free you know).

Even games that have a dual model (either pay optional subscription or pay for DLCs individually) dont have good content updates. For example, The Secret World follows that model and its montly content updates are tiny, at best.

World of Warcraft on the other hand, is releasing a TON of content constantly. I dont even have time to go through everything and they are preparing to release yet another Raid with a ton of bosses. Not to mention many new zones, quests, etc. I dont particulatly like WoW, but with all the B2P and F2P mmo crap that is out there, i dont have many options.

[Nucleotides]

I am okay with b2p or even f2p if they do it right. You offer vanity items or boosts to farm faster. You do not give them a way to make easy gold or get gear just by paying money. Riot got this right and people spend all kinds of money just to look cooler. First, make a decent game, then add cool looking gear/armor that cost cash. Those that care will buy it, those that don't will not.

The only real plus to subs is the revenue is more constant. No matter what you do there will be crying kids that flood the game at launch causing more servers to be made and then leave when they get off the new toy high and leave servers in need or a merger.