I've observed, over the last several years, the "casinofication" of MMOs.

I hesitate to say that MMOs have become gambling houses, but they are using the techniques of casinos to prey on the segment of the population that can become addicted to casinos.

"Free to Play," if we are to call it that, is simply a method of enticing an individual to spend more money.  Notice, you never spend "cash" in the casino...or in the FtP item shops.  You use what ammounts to casino tokens, a level of abstraction one step removed from the cash, so you'll part with it easier.

It's not just F2P .. most games now are just looking at WoW and basing around that :-(  

Which means we beta test it and the community is great, we hit the headstart and it has slightly declined as people start with the comments about game being like WoW, insults to those speaking other languages etc etc

And so the community starts to spinter, I remember when i started playing mmo's .. back when it was just a choice of Meridian 59 or UO :-)

Now that back then had a GREAT community, if you got killed by a red, then you could head back to town and others would get together and go lynch him/them.

SWG .. first time I played that players banded together to go out and fight, year or two later it had changed but still ok, decent community, great if you liked trade as well as do combat.     Unfortunately  after the NGE it started to decline more as players left due to more than just the change of the game.  They found that friends and guild members had left and it killed the community as they left to be with their friends.

Then game hoping began to grow as we'd try a new title hoping it would bring back the feeling of one of the oldfer games, then find get dissapointed and try another and another etc

Some titles are still going .. UO despite the changes made to it :-(

AO which had a marvellous community but has whittled down, I have a Sub & F2P account to that due to the cost of the sub

EvE online which has been dumbed down since I first played but there's always a good amount playing

P2P / F2P .. if the game doesn't have a good community then it's going to decline, F2P has an advantage in that you can put it down and pick it up and there's no cost, P2P then you check to see the game state before parting with your cash and people post negatives more than positives.

Anyone remember when people used Noob as an insult, not to also describe a new player needing help (Newb)

Originally posted by Dihoru

"Who can blame gamers, after titles like Final Fantasy XIV, Star Wars Galaxies, Dragon Age II, Call of Duty: Black Ops"

So let me get this straight you're saying Star Wars The Old Wallet Rape is better than Star Wars Galaxies (even post-NGE) ? Dear God Sir remove your cranium from your boss's rectal orifice,  your site is losing more credibility by the day defending the TORtanic.

I'm still reading through comments, but you seem to mis-read my post.

Let me clarify for everyone in this thread: I DID mean to say Star Wars Galaxies.

Let me explain this. SW:toR, to me, was nothing epic or revolutionary. I only ever played it a handful of times in beta and at friends' houses before I decided I hated the game. SWG, on the other hand, despite all it's flaws, was fun for me. The community was absolutely AMAZING, because it consisted of dedicated MMORPG players, and Star Wars Fanatics who, no matter how bad the game was, were determined to enjoy it. For anyone who ever hated on SWG, you never went to a lively cantina, you never stumbled across a campsite where you made friends out on foreign planets, you never got to be a part of the limitless planet exploration. For all the things that SWG did wrong (see: just about everything) the game did succeed in one aspect; it had a soul. People interacted, talked, role-played even. There was a community of players who, despite the boundaries of inferior programming, bug-testing, and optimizing, managed to make an atmosphere that was still tolerable.

If you're one to disagree with the notion that SWG did do some things well, that's fine, as I stated that in the article. However, please don't read my article, and then bring in totally unrelated, irrelevant hatred of SW:toR.

I'll continue posting as I read through this :)

Originally posted by Gruug

I agree with the article up to a point. Not quite 100% but close. I think that F2P is the worst thing for gaming and in the end will kill most quality titles from ever reaching any kind of audience. Why? Because F2P is meant to be marketed to "everyone" and not be great for anyone. Companies want to get as many people to come play so that they can get a FEW to pay. I would rather have a good quality game that I pay for up front rather then a ho-hum game that is diluted for the masses.

Of course, f2p is a lie. It is not free.....someone HAS TO PAY for it to survive. And if some pays, it can't be free.

 

 

This is a really good example, in my mind, of my thoughts on this subject.

Let's compare gaming to fire. In my opinion, F2P games burn like wildfires; they have no real direction, eat up as much area as possible in a short time, and blanket whole areas. There's no real direction or focus, it picks up with the wind, carries it in different directions towards different people, and after awhile, it becomes contained. P2P games burn like controlled fires; they can start off small, and their direction and size can be dictated and directly influenced via interaction. It's easier to limit damages and direction of the fire, and similar to a bonfire, you can pick who is involved (to a degree) and how many people get to see it.

Like Gruug said, F2P caters to EVERYONE. As a result, it saps any sense of originality or unique aspects right out of a title, because anything I might like, someone else might NOT like. It butchers creativity and innovation, because if the companies take a risk that people don't like, their customers leave in droves for the next best thing. F2P reminds me, in a sense, of a blue-chip stock. Nothing new, stay-with-what-works, little gains here and there but nothing substantial.

P2P can be catered towards very specific niches in the market. Eve Online is a great example; the community is essentially player-run, and has a very set and established group of players who have been around for YEARS! I'd dare to say it has one of the most established communities ever created in an MMORPG. It's tried multiple new things, but it stays true to it's loyal and dedicated fans, relying on the product to sell itself, moreso than a cash shop to fund it's development.

These factors are reasons why I'm not a fan of F2P. I like feeling cared about and special in my games! Hahaha. I don't like being "Oh, well, there's another number....". When I'm paying for my game monthly, I know that I'm not only paying for it, but I'm funding the contiual development of a game I enjoy, a team that I feel is on the right track, and an atmosphere I want to be a part of. It's like a cover charge at a club, really. In a sense, just by slapping "P2P" on a title, you're weeding out a lot of players off the bat (the ones who won't pay to play, who can't for whatever reason, etc)

Also, a key point I didn't touch on specifically has been mentioned by a few of you. It's the attitude of developers that does have a lot to do with this as well. For any of you who want a glimpse into what kind  of person some of the gaming industry's largest CEO's are like, I recommend this read: http://www.teamliquid.net/forum/viewmessage.php?topic_id=128252

yeah the tokens vs money issue has been brought up in several places and in my own community.. PW is a prime example of that with thier Eden Crystal wheel of torture.. "you can win 20k Eden Crystals" yeah as far as Ive heard noone has yet... and some have spent upwards of 8k Eden Crystals in trying.. Thier forums are filled with complaints and its not getting any more popular. 

oh and if youre in the dark about the wheel of torture for Eden Crystals its Perfect Worlds Eden Eternal gambling system, you have to have 99 Eden Crystals just to attempt it.. then once you are in game you can use thos eden crystals to gamble some more on the "Crystal Altar" its friggin rediculous.. and the Eden Crystals can be won with the loot chest via thier ignite launcher (has never happened for me.. gained a crap load of useless scrolls, a few charms and one bag enlarger scroll but no crystals or you can order them from the in game store @ 10 for 499 Aria points or  50 for 2450 Aria points.

Aria point cost =  1 dollar per 101 AP

so 10 Eden Crystals 5 bucks...

50 Eden Crystals 25 bucks

99 Eden Crystals 50 bucks..

if you consider the number of eden crystals needed to gamble on the wheel of torture and the Crystal alter it adds up to hundreds of dollars very easily...

So I'm supposed to pay for something I think is garbage, just to satisfy "the community?" I played WoW since launch and saw it transform from a dar fantasy to a cheap Wal-Mart kiddie game. No thanks. Itried Secret World. The interface was a killer for me. I'm not spending 15 bucks a month on something I have to contnuously put up with.

SWTOR and Rift. Both just wow clones, But at least they understood how important a GUI is in an MMO.

Right now I'm playing Xcom and GW2. Show me a MMO thats worth 15 beans a month and I'll play it.

Originally posted by Cymdai

Originally posted by Dihoru

"Who can blame gamers, after titles like Final Fantasy XIV, Star Wars Galaxies, Dragon Age II, Call of Duty: Black Ops"

So let me get this straight you're saying Star Wars The Old Wallet Rape is better than Star Wars Galaxies (even post-NGE) ? Dear God Sir remove your cranium from your boss's rectal orifice,  your site is losing more credibility by the day defending the TORtanic.

I'm still reading through comments, but you seem to mis-read my post.

Let me clarify for everyone in this thread: I DID mean to say Star Wars Galaxies.

Let me explain this. SW:toR, to me, was nothing epic or revolutionary. I only ever played it a handful of times in beta and at friends' houses before I decided I hated the game. SWG, on the other hand, despite all it's flaws, was fun for me. The community was absolutely AMAZING, because it consisted of dedicated MMORPG players, and Star Wars Fanatics who, no matter how bad the game was, were determined to enjoy it. For anyone who ever hated on SWG, you never went to a lively cantina, you never stumbled across a campsite where you made friends out on foreign planets, you never got to be a part of the limitless planet exploration. For all the things that SWG did wrong (see: just about everything) the game did succeed in one aspect; it had a soul. People interacted, talked, role-played even. There was a community of players who, despite the boundaries of inferior programming, bug-testing, and optimizing, managed to make an atmosphere that was still tolerable.

If you're one to disagree with the notion that SWG did do some things well, that's fine, as I stated that in the article. However, please don't read my article, and then bring in totally unrelated, irrelevant hatred of SW:toR.

I'll continue posting as I read through this :)

Yep.  I was warned away from SWG before release by friends who were on the dev team.   People enjoyed it in spite of its many many problems.  But many left because of those very problems. 

No one in game development has managed (apparently) to figure out and replicate the aspects that made it enjoyable.   But taking it for a competantly built game is a mistake.

A lot of what you mention hs no relation to free-to-play at all. World of Warcraft was polluted with all the negative behaviors you associate with F2P well before F2P was even remotely viable. Gold farmers and bots leave their mark on every game, it's the games responsibility to deal with them. Many Pay 2 Play games are over run, or were at one point, with bots and gold spammers. Heck, after six years of playing WoW (I'm not purposly picking on WoW, it's just my longest played MMO and therefore the source of most of my examples) gold spam actually got worse, not better. And that had nothing to do with the introduction of free trials. You try farming enough gold to sell on a pre-level 20 character, and get back to me on that one.

In all honestly, what's killing the MMO market is the same thing that's wrong with everything else, people today have no patience for anything. They expect perfection from everyone but themselves, and expect everyone to cater to their every whim. Just yesterday I was reading on the GW2 forums that being "forced" to PVP to get 100% map completion was "ridiculous" and the player had a "right" to the achievement. This mindset is killing games. You don't have a "right" to anything in a game. You have the "right" to use your access to the game to experience different parts of it, but not all those parts will be for you, and the ones that aren't aren't. Remember when we used to accept that doing everything wasn't possible for everyone?

I can remmeber playing single player games, and not being quite skilled enough to get some of the harder objectives (fighting Bass's final form in some of the Megaman Battle Network games for instance, never could S rank all the other bosses to get 100% chip completion) but I certainly never dreamed of complaining to Capcom that the game was too hard and because I paid for it I had a "right" to that part of the game. I accepted my own shortcomings and used the experience to forge myself into a better gamer.

Anyway I'm getting ranty. F2P is not what's killing the genre, the people that are playing the games are. Until developers stop catering to every vocal minority that can construct a forum post, the decline will continue, and there's nothing we can do about it except smarten up.

Excellent conclusion to the first article; well-done.

I guess the question for new developers to tackle, beyond the marketing money I mentioned in response to your last article on this topic, is how to build a cohesive community that is policed, whether by the game company, or by volunteers within the community.

MechWarrior Online is actually an excellent example of a community policing itself.  PGI has chosen folks and asked them to join the team, volunteering their time to aid in policing the community and, from all I saw, it was being used to great effect.  The BattleTech/ MechWarrior community is, of course, vociferous and extremely passionate, but it's always been a fairly decent community to begin with; MWO just helped re-establish my faith in the community, in general.  Anyway, kudos to PGI; perhaps this can be a new model for other communities, as well?

I won't say that I completely hate non-sub games since I like GW2, but I have not really enjoyed F2P or former P2P that become F2P.

I really tried hard in EQ2 to enjoy the Extended version before the rest of the game was changed as well. I didn't enjoy the nickle and diming. I didn't like the community and the fact that it seemed like people did not ever get caught out by GMs if acting badly. I didn't like how payers subsidized free players or that there was a two tier community between those who paid and had more powerful characters and those were were free and were rather weak in comparison.

Also, customer support seemed much better on the Live servers.

Even so, I really fault SOE and any other dev that hosts a cash shop in a sub game that is really in your face. Even though SOE does not advertize in EQ2 as ruthessly as some companies (Turbine for example with its glowing gold coin icons over NPCs in LotRO), just the xp potions alone were enough to try to put pressure on players to pay more than their sub. Certainly, a few times when I went leveling with my guildies, they were all outleveling me while we were grouped up. I wondered why, and asked them, well it was because they bought xp potions in the cash shop. Just great!

To me that really breaks the spirit of gaming: worrying about what is new in the cash shop and spending time browsing that rather than playing the game, or being forced to go to the cash shop to unlock new material, seeing icons related to the cash shop in the game or in its UI, being forced to have a two tiered player base just based on how much they are willing to spend... etc.

Sure, I know my primary game, WoW, has a cash shop too, but the thing is that it is so exterior to the game itself it does not break immersion and to be honest, I have never ever visited and do not feel compelled to. I still find it reprehensible that it exists at all, but at least it is barely there.

I agree with what you're saying but at some point I have to draw the line. Star Trek Online, my current haunt is F2P and the community seems stable. I'm even in a very active Fleet (guild) with friends I've had since launch... these are the closest freinds I've had in an online game since Ultima Online or the first version of Star Wars Galaxies.

F2P is just another evolution in the gaming world. Before F2P there was just Subscription. Before Subscription there was just SInge Player or Multiplayer/LAN. Before that it was Pen and Paper games. In another 5 or 10 years you'll be complaining about the next big evolution in gaming. If you want a community you need to build it. As you said there are always going to be trolls, ragers, and flamers. Build your social walls, type /ignore, and have some fun meeting people like yourself who want to enjoy their favorite game (be it F2P or P2P).

The better title to your article would be, Greed is killing Gaming.

Originally posted by Yavin_Prime

I agree with what you're saying but at some point I have to draw the line. Star Trek Online, my current haunt is F2P and the community seems stable. I'm even in a very active Fleet (guild) with friends I've had since launch... these are the closest freinds I've had in an online game since Ultima Online or the first version of Star Wars Galaxies.

 

F2P is just another evolution in the gaming world. Before F2P there was just Subscription. Before Subscription there was just SInge Player or Multiplayer/LAN. Before that it was Pen and Paper games. In another 5 or 10 years you'll be complaining about the next big evolution in gaming. If you want a community you need to build it. As you said there are always going to be trolls, ragers, and flamers. Build your social walls, type /ignore, and have some fun meeting people like yourself who want to enjoy their favorite game (be it F2P or P2P).

 

The better title to your article would be, Greed is killing Gaming.

 

In my opinion, greed and free-to-play go hand-in-hand. As others said, there's no such thing as "free", no matter how well it's designed.

F2P "evolved" in my mind because developers said to themselves "Why get $12.95 a month from 200,000 people when we could snatch up anywhere from $5-100 a month from MILLIONS of players?"

Originally posted by Cymdai

Originally posted by Yavin_Prime

I agree with what you're saying but at some point I have to draw the line. Star Trek Online, my current haunt is F2P and the community seems stable. I'm even in a very active Fleet (guild) with friends I've had since launch... these are the closest freinds I've had in an online game since Ultima Online or the first version of Star Wars Galaxies.

 

F2P is just another evolution in the gaming world. Before F2P there was just Subscription. Before Subscription there was just SInge Player or Multiplayer/LAN. Before that it was Pen and Paper games. In another 5 or 10 years you'll be complaining about the next big evolution in gaming. If you want a community you need to build it. As you said there are always going to be trolls, ragers, and flamers. Build your social walls, type /ignore, and have some fun meeting people like yourself who want to enjoy their favorite game (be it F2P or P2P).

 

The better title to your article would be, Greed is killing Gaming.

 

In my opinion, greed and free-to-play go hand-in-hand. As others said, there's no such thing as "free", no matter how well it's designed.

F2P "evolved" in my mind because developers said to themselves "Why get $12.95 a month from 200,000 people when we could snatch up anywhere from $5-100 a month from MILLIONS of players?"

Greed, really?

They dont expect to get millions of people paying money. They expect a small % to pay money with the majority playing for free. Of course they hope more will spend, but they know in reality many wont because being free is what draws them tot he game.

On the other hand we have WoW. Lets see at $15 a month x approx 10m subs = Thats $150m per month. $1.8 billion per year, just sin subs alone. That not even account for their own cash shop as well as the cost of expansions (likely another couple hundred million per year average, bringing them to around $2 billion or more per year). Theyre making piles of money, yet are still charging the same fee as they did when the game was brand new. They could easily get by and make a shitload of money at half that cost, yet you dont see that happening after all these years. Id consider that to be greed more than anything else.

I'm sure someone else cleared it up, but I need to point out a factual error in the article.

Final Fantasy XIV's subscriptions were frozen for over a year while SE worked out how they wanted to proceed with the game. They knew the game wasn't ready, they knew it wasn't complete, and they felt it was wrong to ask people to pay a subscription for it. So, while they got their crap together, shuffled around their staff and created a new road-map for where they would take the game, SE halted all subscriptions for anyone who owned the game.

When they successfully achieved all of what they set out to, and they felt the game had been satisfactorily patched and improved to represent the "base" of what a MMORPG should offer to its players, they resumed subscriptions - and at a reduced rate.

It's really irresponsible and reckless to throw out information as "facts" that haven't been properly researched.

As for the topic of F2P... Personally, I wouldn't lose a wink of sleep if F2P/Cash Shops - or virtual Cash Shops went away tomorrow. But that's neither here nor there.

It isn't even about "which is better", in any subjective way. The fact is, for each model to work, the developer needs to make money. Otherwise, the game goes offline, the developer closes shop, and no one gets to play it. Anyone who thinks developers are being "kind" or "generous" to their players by making a game F2P, they're incredibly naive. They don't go F2P because they want less money. They do it because they want more money, and they know Cash Shops are the way to achieve that. History has already proven that out.

What it boils down to for me is the way a game designed for each model earns its revenue.

For a subscription based game, the developer has to earn my sub money every month. That means they have to provide me an experience that is entertaining, engaging and lasting enough for me to want to keep playing. And I want it to last. My hopes and expectations going into a new MMO is measured in years, not weeks or months. If I play a MMO for a month or two and then feel bored and burned out on it, then it's failed (for me) as a MMORPG. 

Cash Shops, on the other hand, are all about getting people to buy items as frequently as possible, for as much as possible. The entire game is designed around that requirement. Saying "but all those items are optional" is a very disingenuous statement that completely misses the point. It's not whether or not people have to buy those items that Cash Shops succeed or fail on. It's that people will spend money on those items. Developers don't just dream up stuff they "think people will like". They're stocking their cash shops with stuff they already know people will buy, and they design the game very specifically around making sure people do.

For me, it's subscriptions all the way. I would much rather know my money is going toward developers and designers creating new and interesting content to engage and interest me in their worlds, than to know that my money is going toward designers finding new ways to "monetize me" through cash shop sales.

I play MMORPGs to be engaged, entertained and immersed in a virtual world. I don't play them to go shopping for virtual items in an online mal. It also irks me to know that such items are deliberately kept out of my reach - even though they're already stored on my hard drive.

Originally posted by kaiser3282

On the other hand we have WoW. Lets see at $15 a month x approx 10m subs = Thats $150m per month. $1.8 billion per year, just sin subs alone. That not even account for their own cash shop as well as the cost of expansions (likely another couple hundred million per year average, bringing them to around $2 billion or more per year). Theyre making piles of money, yet are still charging the same fee as they did when the game was brand new. They could easily get by and make a shitload of money at half that cost, yet you dont see that happening after all these years. Id consider that to be greed more than anything else.

To be fair, Blizzard is a part of Activision now. Activision is run by one of the biggest tyrants in the industry.

Google "Robert Kotick". Read up on him. Or read here: http://www.teamliquid.net/forum/viewmessage.php?topic_id=128252

 I totally agree with this article nice to see that at least some see the ftp push for what it is nothing but a nickel and diming money grab. I also agree about the communities in most games now for every decent person I run into it's 10 that have absolutely no social skills whatsoever and will do anything to run you over or just use you as a tool on the path to their epicness. God forbid if you make a mistake while in a group or if you havn't already run this dungeon 100 times and don't have each mob's ai memorized. You'll either get flamed till you quit or get kicked out of the group or guild.

 Console gaming is no better. The average game is less then 10 hours of gameplay for $60 but for $10 here and another $10 there you can download all the rest of the content that should have been in the game from the begining.

 How all the people have fallen for the ftp scam and the "downloadable extras" console scam is beyond me. I just vote with my wallet and avoid all of it.

I do see the future of games turning into nothing but stuff like plant vs zombies and angry birds if this trend continues.

I'm sorry but the whole article is lacking anything close to resembling a scientific method for coming up with any conclusions. The opinion piece at hand preys upon an already developed dislike of a genre and attempts to make connections that were not there. You could have switched poor community to poor crop growth in the mid west and you would still have basically the same thing with the same "evidence".

The article completely lets the culture of gaming and how its developed over the past decade completely off the hook and instead places something the writer is trying to preach against to come to the fore front.

F2P model articles should focus on the concept of addiction spending, and other issues that arrise from F2P. Trying to take a major complaint of mmo players and pin it on something irrelevent, seems a waste of time in my opinion.

To pander to playerbase dislikes you can follow up this article with

"How F2P has destroyed the sandbox genre" This will fire up those passionate for sandbox games.

"How F2P has kept open world PvP from being a priority of developers" would fire up pvp'ers.

Hell, If you wanted to create an article to really fire up people that are already angry you should have gone with

"How EA invented F2P so they could steal your money" That would combine your F2P crowd, with the EA crowd, and would definitely get some forum flames burning.

Ask the question in forums, "what destroyed community's in mmo's" and you will not get F2P as an answer, you will get gear treadmills, auction houses, pvp, and a hundred other answers. When developers made games a rat race the playerbase evolved, or devolved(whichever suits your opinion), hell even threads follow the same rules "FIRST".