Originally posted by Theocritus
This isn't which do you think is best, but literally which have you spent the most money on?

F2P is fairly new to me so I would have to say P2P. However, I think I spend more often on F2P games and given the same time with F2P as I have had with P2P I think F2P will take a bit more from me. I am not disgruntled though, I enjoy supporting games that I think are making it worth while. Lately that has been Path of Exile, APB: Reloaded, and I sunk a little into Lord of the Rings Online a few months ago.

It has probably been a year and a half of F2P games for me and everything before that was P2P. I enjoy F2P more than I do P2P because I feel like I have more of a say about what goes into the game. F2P games, in my experience, react quickly to their consumers.

I am going to have to say, none and all of the above at the same time.

I would like to call it beta-format. I have dropped the most money on games before they come out hoping they are going to be awesome. Then I get into beta and they are fun until I realize they are exactly like the last 10 games I played with just a different skin, or theme, or what not.

P2P and I'm glad it's dying.

I haven't paid since 2010 and will never pay again unless they make an MMO with godlike open world PvP.

edit: To be more precise:

Since I started playing MMOs 12 years ago: P2P

in the last 5 years: B2P

Originally posted by olepi
Money is not really a concern for me, and I have a bad habit of paying a subscription for a game I support, but may not play all the time.

I knew someone in college who kept their WoW subscription on for a year while not playing and it was monthly. This was the same guy who borrowed money from me a few times inbetween checks. I have always wandered how many subscriptions for WoW are inactive players.

This poll is kind of pointless.  It's sqewed toward one buisness model.  FTP is just as sucessful a billing model as P2P or B2P.  But in FTP, your average gamer pays little to nothing, and then 10% of the people gaming pay insane ammounts of money.  This is why many FTP games are P2win.  Because those 10% of the people are in actuallity paying for the rest of the free players to play at all.

Where as P2P, everyone pays a flat fee per month.  But you don't get that 10% of the player base paying hunderds of dollars a month that support the other players.  This is why most P2P games are not condusive to P2Win mechanics.

Originally posted by ragz45

This poll is kind of pointless.  It's sqewed toward one buisness model.  FTP is just as sucessful a billing model as P2P or B2P.  But in FTP, your average gamer pays little to nothing, and then 10% of the people gaming pay insane ammounts of money.  This is why many FTP games are P2win.  Because those 10% of the people are in actuallity paying for the rest of the free players to play at all.

 

That isn't how f2p is desinged to work. f2p is supost to bring in way more players who will spend small amounts. They make more money because as a sub game the population would be way smaller. Small pop games also run the risk of losing people because there are so few people. When people decide a game is dead fun or not they leave.

f2p is all about volume.

P2P, no doubt about it... I think the only time I spent money on F2P was planetside 2, spent like $20.

I don't even want to think about how much money I've spent on P2P, gotta be a few grand... been playing 'em since about 1999.

I don't think for a second people that spend money in free games will be honest about it - even to themselves. They want to believe they are getting a better deal but basic mechanics are that small transactions are something people take lightly and don't consider adding up. The human brain holds about 5 pieces of short term memory. Unless they look at a consolidated  statement, I wouldn't trust their memory. Ask someone how much they pay for morning coffee, do they think of it as a paltry 6 bucks a day or do they really look at it by a years cost of near 1500 bucks a year drinking it only 5 days a week on work days. Banks make money on people not being aware of all those pennies they spend, it's the point of overdraft fees.

There's also the flaw in logic that some people never pay free games, they say they don't all the time. You can't play a sub game without paying so the comparison is going to have to be that you paid more to sub if you ever played even ONE sub game in your lifetime.

Sub games have also been the seed of games from the past so anyone that played games for over about 5 years, they only had the choice of sub. Again, making sub cost higher. Some people paid sub fees for years. There wasn't another option unless you wanted to do something kiddie like Habbo Hotel. Free western games used to either be total crap or totally for kids.

Next time, rephrase it - ask people about a certain time frame - when you ask for all of time, sub has to win simply because it was the only option for longer time. That isn't today though and my thought is you probably want to know where people are spending their money today.

F2P has had the most of my cash. Probably the equivalent to 1 year and 2 months of sub, but it was shared between various f2p games that i played couple years ago.

Right now the only sub based mmo that in my opinion gives the most bang for the monthly buck is WoW... and im not subbed because i dont like to be commited to a sub unless im playing that game 30 days a month which i wont do. I have too many games i enjoy playing to have to stick to only 1 just because of the sub.

Lately the only cash shop that has been fortunate of tasting my wallet is GW2´s but hey dont have enough cool stuff so i just got 3 bank slots, 2 character slots, couple of keys and the Quaggan backpack.

Swtor got like 20 bucks from me. Not giving them any more money to them because even if i buy tons of cartel coins i still cant be competitive (cant wear high tier gear unless i sub, which i wont) so no matter how much money i give them, ill always suck. No money for you EAware, learn from EnMasse´s model if you want to earn the money and the respect of your players.

P2P. The price of the box itself raises the amount I've spent on P2P MMOs significantly enough, so there's no surprise there.

However the amount I've spent on F2P is catching up, slowly but it's catching up. Haven't played for a P2P title since 2010 so, there's that.