Instead of telling us how hugely sucessful or how bad those cash shop mmo are doing can something please provide data supporting their claims? Talks are cheap you need to show real data for people to judge. Donald Trump always said he had lots and lots of money but then when he was busted he said "I lied but who didn't?"

To me f2p cash shop games will continue to come and go. They come for a couple of years, make some profits, get forgotten or shut down then get remade into similar games. Rinse and repeat. However, I think developers of such cash shop f2p are facing  a serious problem of diminishing returns as more and more people rush to make crappy products just to realise some monetary gains in the first year or 2. There are still the similiar amount of fish in the ponds but just more and more fishermen. Eventually there will be no fish left and the fishermen have to go home.

On the other hand it is a mood point whether the p2p games are better, or how much better than then cash shop ones. I thing I definitely think is they don't worth $15 a month. As LoTRO tried out their $10 a month plan I think many dying p2p may consider the similiar kind of "promotional offers" soon.

 The thing with DDO is that its very easy to earn money to buy good weapons and armor off brokers in the game or the auction.  They sell +1 to +3 weapons and armor in the DDO Store.  These are easily obtainable in game as quest rewards.  They don't sell anything thats better then what you'd get normally from doing quests.  Certain quests also reward favor / points that you can use in the DDO store.

Compare that to say Freerealms.  You can buy fancy flaming weapons & armor that are better then anything you get from drops which can be used at level 1.  It totally defeats the purpose of progression and makes the game quite boring and a grind.  

Originally posted by Nyast

I find this thread, and all the "omg, companies are greedy !" thing.. incredible. It's almost if some players _demand_ that developers make games for fun only, and if they can feed their family, well that's good luck, a nice superflous extra !

Meanwhile, I wonder how many of them are posting on other forums about shops such as Walmarts making outrageous margins on food.. and the 1001 other companies that they pay every day without questions asked..

You. Need. To. Revise. Your. Priorities.

And you need to quit telling people what they should like and what they shouldn't. I don't like item shop games because I feel after that point you no longer are playing a game. Instead what you have is a virtual store at that point. To me it goes against everything that PC rpg games are. Buying virtual items with real life cash removes you from the rpg world you are in into the real world which ruins immersion. Not only that buying items for cash is everything a PC rpg game isn't.

Items obtained in games are obtained through gameplay means. Why buy items? That isn't gaming that is playing dress up. Anyhow thanks for spewing out your garbage of a post and assuming you know why people don't want item shops. I would pay more of a sub fee before I played a game with an item shop. Yah poor devs can't feed their families, I think WoW has reported record profits and it added an item shop. They are really hurting.

Only we can determine how much a company can milk out of of us. I don't support item shops because I don't feel they belong in video games, I could care less what you think about it. I vote with my money.

I got an idea; quit playing F2P games.

If you can't deal with how these people try to pay their wages and keep the game going, then don't play. Too many people are content to jump on F2P out of being cheep... cheep enough to complain about what they get for free as being a disadvantage to those that pay. I admit some CS things are atrocious, namely the time limits on these items, but you people are absolutely jaded about something you get without paying a dime on.

yes kids say no to cash shops

Oh and Just say no to Blow!

LOL! Honestly I;ve never seen a cash shop mmo that wasn't totally thrown out of balanced by it.

So yeah they suck.

Cash Shops need to die.

Dont need to waste words on arguments, just bump the thread so atleast the title is read.

The effect adds up overtime.

Originally posted by qombi

Originally posted by Nyast

I find this thread, and all the "omg, companies are greedy !" thing.. incredible. It's almost if some players _demand_ that developers make games for fun only, and if they can feed their family, well that's good luck, a nice superflous extra !

Meanwhile, I wonder how many of them are posting on other forums about shops such as Walmarts making outrageous margins on food.. and the 1001 other companies that they pay every day without questions asked..

You. Need. To. Revise. Your. Priorities.

And you need to quit telling people what they should like and what they shouldn't. I don't like item shop games because I feel after that point you no longer are playing a game. Instead what you have is a virtual store at that point. To me it goes against everything that PC rpg games are. Buying virtual items with real life cash removes you from the rpg world you are in into the real world which ruins immersion. Not only that buying items for cash is everything a PC rpg game isn't.

Items obtained in games are obtained through gameplay means. Why buy items? That isn't gaming that is playing dress up. Anyhow thanks for spewing out your garbage of a post and assuming you know why people don't want item shops. I would pay more of a sub fee before I played a game with an item shop. Yah poor devs can't feed their families, I think WoW has reported record profits and it added an item shop. They are really hurting.

Only we can determine how much a company can milk out of of us. I don't support item shops because I don't feel they belong in video games, I could care less what you think about it. I vote with my money.

Huh ? Where did I tell people what they're supposed to like or not ? Have you read my post at all ?

All I'm saying is that if you're going on a crusade against capitalism and companies greed, there are much better targets than a video game.

I never said that item shops were good, and I certainly never said that I knew why people wanted item shops. In fact, your reply makes no sense to me, to be honest..

Originally posted by GTwander

I got an idea; quit playing F2P games.

If you can't deal with how these people try to pay their wages and keep the game going, then don't play. Too many people are content to jump on F2P out of being cheep... cheep enough to complain about what they get for free as being a disadvantage to those that pay. I admit some CS things are atrocious, namely the time limits on these items, but you people are absolutely jaded about something you get without paying a dime on.

It's not just the F2P games, anymore.

That's the problem.

Champions online

Star Trek online

perhaps SWTOR

WoW, now.

Apparently, most of SOE's games have some form of cash shop.

It's an epidemic.

Well I consider a CS on top of the standard sub fee insulting, but in the case of most of them being F2P and subsisting on CS funding, what is there to complain about?

I am always bemused when people talk about F2P being wrong or evil.  They developed in a different culture in response to different needs.  Take Korea for example (only because of what I've observed there).  The vast majority of gaming is done in PC bangs (literally PC rooms).  There are even 'couple chairs' set up in some of the fancier PC rooms.

There are anumber of reasons for this.

  In Korean culture teens and young adults usually do not socialize at home in fact the  concept of a dinner party at home is pretty unusual, you would usually take someone out to dinner if you were entertaining friends.

  Most adults live at home until they are married.

  Koreans tend to do things in groups more so than in Western culture.

The second factor is Koreans go for 'cute' a lot more than Westerners do.  Even the level of cute in my Korean friend's cars would be too much if I were not actually in Korea and knew the Korean love of 'cute'.  This also extends to some gambling sites in Korea.  GoStop is a popular gambling game in Korea and many popular sites allow you to buy items to dress up your avatar either from your winnings or through the item shop.  (Because of Korean law you cannot gamble actual money but you are allowed to 'win prizes')

Now most P2P games require you to purchase the game and load it onto your computer, but if you're playing at a PC room that is not really an option .  If you want to play something other than WOW  and a select few other games, you might get lucky and the PC room will have your game of choice on the machines, if not your out of luck.  Whereas for F2P games the computers are set up to enter game hubs for popular F2P games where you can start playing even without downloading the game.  Korean broadband is fast enough to support this with no problem.

This is just a snapshot of what I have seen in Korea.  This is the environment where many F2P games are developed.  They will continue to be developed to meet the market.  They are not a cynical plan aimed at your hard earned , they are catering to their desired market base and work well for MMO players in that ORIGINAL market.

Runes of Magic 2.5 million Subs

Peefect World supposely 30 million Subs

Runescape 5 million active users

Guild Wars- 2 million active users

etc,etc.Clearly their is market for those games.Do know what is the one complaint AoC and War.It is the game is dying and people are leaving.Item shops mmo solve the biggest problem for mmo.MMO are social machine the more people the more better off the game is.I guarantee if Vanguard was to go free to play it would be become one of top mmos on the market.Not ever mmo was meant to 14.99 a month.Item shops have their place.I will put this it this

What happens in the future if you to play ToR,Darkfall,WoW,EvE and DC online at the same time.It would be smart that some games go to free to play model of some sort.I know i can play Guild Wars,DDO,Atlanica and WOW at the same time. Companies need to realize you won't beat WoW,You won't beat a good star Wars game,You will not beat a good Final Fantasy game.So why compete against them?Why not use a model that lets you play their game and your game.Not once would i have even consider playing DDO with fee because they are games i like way better now that is free i will play it,If i like it enough i will spend some money.

DDO went from bottom middle of pack P2P game to the everybody second to play MMO.

Everyone has different things that they say "breaks immersion". For some people it's zoning. Zoning doesn't break my immersion one bit.

For me, it's spending real money in a game. If I'm playing a game, the very last thing I want to do is worry about a budget, how much real life money I'm spending, if an item is worth the amount of real life money I'm spending on it, how much money i spent this month, converting game currency to real life money, lets see I paid 5 dollars for 375 klurgs, and this potion is 97 klurgs, that means if I buy it I'm paying in real life dollars... Ok, I quit, that sucks.

I really, really, dont' want to keep up with spending 50 cents here, and a 1.75 there.

14.95 for the month, forget about money and play the game? That's a deal.

Originally posted by Ihmotepp

Everyone has different things that they say "breaks immersion". For some people it's zoning. Zoning doesn't break my immersion one bit.

For me, it's spending real money in a game. If I'm playing a game, the very last thing I want to do is worry about a budget, how much real life money I'm spending, if an item is worth the amount of real life money I'm spending on it, how much money i spent this month, converting game currency to real life money, lets see I paid 5 dollars for 375 klurgs, and this potion is 97 klurgs, that means if I buy it I'm paying in real life dollars... Ok, I quit, that sucks.

I really, really, dont' want to keep up with spending 50 cents here, and a 1.75 there.

14.95 for the month, forget about money and play the game? That's a deal.

Just have question to ask if an MMO had sub plan where 14.99 a month would get mostly every thing you need from a item shop would you play it ? Cash shop would have fluff stuff like pets,mounts and costumes but the important items like xp potions or crafting items have a monthly limit that everybody was on the same level.Would you play it?

Originally posted by luckturtz

Runes of Magic 2.5 million Subs

Peefect World supposely 30 million Subs

Runescape 5 million active users

Guild Wars- 2 million active users

 

etc,etc.Clearly their is market for those games.Do know what is the one complaint AoC and War.It is the game is dying and people are leaving.Item shops mmo solve the biggest problem for mmo.MMO are social machine the more people the more better off the game is.I guarantee if Vanguard was to go free to play it would be become one of top mmos on the market.Not ever mmo was meant to 14.99 a month.Item shops have their place.I will put this it this

What happens in the future if you to play ToR,Darkfall,WoW,EvE and DC online at the same time.It would be smart that some games go to free to play model of some sort.I know i can play Guild Wars,DDO,Atlanica and WOW at the same time. Companies need to realize you won't beat WoW,You won't beat a good star Wars game,You will not beat a good Final Fantasy game.So why compete against them?Why not use a model that lets you play their game and your game.Not once would i have even consider playing DDO with fee because they are games i like way better now that is free i will play it,If i like it enough i will spend some money.

DDO went from bottom middle of pack P2P game to the everybody second to play MMO.

Sub counts have no relevance in free to play games. If people can create as many multiple free accounts as they like and not play any of them they still count to the total. Also every account people create to logon and see the game a few mins count to the total as well. Those numbers are garbage.

Originally posted by luckturtz

Originally posted by Ihmotepp

Everyone has different things that they say "breaks immersion". For some people it's zoning. Zoning doesn't break my immersion one bit.

For me, it's spending real money in a game. If I'm playing a game, the very last thing I want to do is worry about a budget, how much real life money I'm spending, if an item is worth the amount of real life money I'm spending on it, how much money i spent this month, converting game currency to real life money, lets see I paid 5 dollars for 375 klurgs, and this potion is 97 klurgs, that means if I buy it I'm paying in real life dollars... Ok, I quit, that sucks.

I really, really, dont' want to keep up with spending 50 cents here, and a 1.75 there.

14.95 for the month, forget about money and play the game? That's a deal.

 

Just have question to ask if an MMO had sub plan where 14.99 a month would get mostly every thing you need from a item shop would you play it ? Cash shop would have fluff stuff like pets,mounts and costumes but the important items like xp potions or crafting items have a monthly limit that everybody was on the same level.Would you play it?

No I would not. Buying items for real life money removes you from the game world and ruins immersion. PC RPG games are meant to be played to obtain items, buying an item is only playing dress up .. not gaming. It ruins what games are. When I a game has an item shop, it is no longer a PC rpg game, it is now a digital store.

Originally posted by qombi

No I would not. Buying items for real life money removes you from the game world and ruins immersion. PC RPG games are meant to be played to obtain items, buying an item is only playing dress up .. not gaming. It ruins what games are. When I a game has an item shop, it is no longer a PC rpg game, it is now a digital store.

How did you feel about Dragon Age advertising DL content on day one at the campsite then?

Originally posted by luckturtz

Runes of Magic 2.5 million Subs

Peefect World supposely 30 million Subs

Runescape 5 million active users

Guild Wars- 2 million active users

 

etc,etc.Clearly their is market for those games.Do know what is the one complaint AoC and War.It is the game is dying and people are leaving.Item shops mmo solve the biggest problem for mmo.MMO are social machine the more people the more better off the game is.I guarantee if Vanguard was to go free to play it would be become one of top mmos on the market.Not ever mmo was meant to 14.99 a month.Item shops have their place.I will put this it this

What happens in the future if you to play ToR,Darkfall,WoW,EvE and DC online at the same time.It would be smart that some games go to free to play model of some sort.I know i can play Guild Wars,DDO,Atlanica and WOW at the same time. Companies need to realize you won't beat WoW,You won't beat a good star Wars game,You will not beat a good Final Fantasy game.So why compete against them?Why not use a model that lets you play their game and your game.Not once would i have even consider playing DDO with fee because they are games i like way better now that is free i will play it,If i like it enough i will spend some money.

DDO went from bottom middle of pack P2P game to the everybody second to play MMO.

It's funny how everyone in these forums say they need games to be easy and fast to leveling in and have little challenge like grouping because they are casual. Then we have post like these that state people would like free to play so they can play multiple MMOs at a time, thought people were casual? How do they have time to play multiple at a time when they can take any time in one to play? ADD crowd if you ask me.

Originally posted by luckturtz

Originally posted by Ihmotepp

Everyone has different things that they say "breaks immersion". For some people it's zoning. Zoning doesn't break my immersion one bit.

For me, it's spending real money in a game. If I'm playing a game, the very last thing I want to do is worry about a budget, how much real life money I'm spending, if an item is worth the amount of real life money I'm spending on it, how much money i spent this month, converting game currency to real life money, lets see I paid 5 dollars for 375 klurgs, and this potion is 97 klurgs, that means if I buy it I'm paying in real life dollars... Ok, I quit, that sucks.

I really, really, dont' want to keep up with spending 50 cents here, and a 1.75 there.

14.95 for the month, forget about money and play the game? That's a deal.

 

Just have question to ask if an MMO had sub plan where 14.99 a month would get mostly every thing you need from a item shop would you play it ? Cash shop would have fluff stuff like pets,mounts and costumes but the important items like xp potions or crafting items have a monthly limit that everybody was on the same level.Would you play it?

I wouldn't consider a mount "fluff". Travel is very important in an MMORPG. it determines the time spent to get to a quest or to a place to grind mobs, and everything in an MMORPG is based on time.

I want to earn my xp, so no potions that boost xp. If we're paying 14.99 then why would we buy xp potions?

I'd assume everyone would buy as many xp potions as the 14.99 would allow them, so why make them pay 14.99 then spend the in game money on xp potions?

Seems silly, wouldn't you just set it to a proper xp rate, since everyone is paying 14.99?

I also want to earn my gear, so no out of game cash to buy gear.

Again, if everyone is paying 14.99 why have me buy in game cash with real money, then use the in game cash to buy my gear? Wouldn't you just set the loot drop appropriately so as I play the game I get gear drops, or enough in game money to buy gear?

If you mean 14.99 sub, and cash shop for fluff like pets that do ZERO damage, and give ZERO buffs, in other words you can look at them and that's all they do, and costumes, then sure.

Costumes and pets that do nothing as far as game mechanics would not affect the game play.

But mounts in the cash shop? Definitley not, that affects game play.

Originally posted by GTwander

Originally posted by qombi

No I would not. Buying items for real life money removes you from the game world and ruins immersion. PC RPG games are meant to be played to obtain items, buying an item is only playing dress up .. not gaming. It ruins what games are. When I a game has an item shop, it is no longer a PC rpg game, it is now a digital store.

 

How did you feel about Dragon Age advertising DL content on day one at the campsite then?

I read about that and that made my decision to not pick up that game. How did I feel about it? I will tell you how I feel, greed is running through the PC gaming industry at this time. The greed is ruining the games. It started with The Sims in single player and SOE in P2P MMOs. You use to be able to buy a game and enjoy it for the price you pay. Now everyone wants to squeeze more out of their players. In capitalism companies will push as far as they can until the consumer says stop. I said stop already with my wallet, I quit buying any of these cash shop games and I didn't buy Dragon Age because of ads in game. That ruins my gaming right there, no thanks.

Unfortunately its the new business model and a way for companies to get a far more lucrative return on their investment. They are not going away anytime soon; matter of fact, they will continue to increase. In the end old school gamers like me and others are simply going to stop playing all together. Not one person can put a legitimate argument together in favor for MT's and clearly state that they are less costly than a monthly sub.

People I know that have played MT based games have spent far more monthly than they would have on a single monthly sub fee. Welcome to the future were console mechanics are being pushed over the edge to PC gaming. Hell, even Dragon Age had two DLC at release. I just saw on the PSN store last night that EA is selling a DLC for nudity for the game Saboteur. These companies are taking it to a all new low and the SHEEPIL are lining up in droves to be fed.