Originally posted by nakuma

Originally posted by Orthedos

Originally posted by jimbo833

back on topic..

i like f2p, yes most of them are poor quality but you noly wasted some time playing no money.

 

and i still have not found a p2p game to get my attention. and i bought WAR for £35 and only played for 20 hours max :S

 

the truth is F2P suit's my life style  (my current MMO of choice is RF:online) i  only play now and again due to work / college and i don't feel scammed out of money (which i would if i played a F2P)

 

 

For the unlucky few, time is more valuable than a $15 monthly sub.

To enjoy F2P, you need to find the one.  The OP in his 2 articles have clearly told us he spent time going thru the many F2Ps in the market.  Problem is, it takes a bit of downloading and configuration to set up a new game, and most likely than not, you will be uninstalling it soon.  It is not unknown that some F2Ps uninstallers leave behind something in your harddisk.  That is an added unpleasant feature of F2Ps.  You have to know what your are installing, and how to remove them all.

It is also noted that many games simply make it unplayable after some levels if you choose not to pay.  While paying is not a bad or unethical thing in itself, uncertainly as to how much I need to pay to maintain gamability, is a less than desirable features.  In WoW, say, its $15, period.  That is simple mathematics, for a consumer.  Whether I play 24/7, or an hour a week, is my choice.

Multiple expansions is another issue I hate.  EQ killed itself with endless boxes.  A major expansion every 2 years is good, and $50 every 2 years, with really good content, is justified.  But $50 every half a year?  Come on.  EQ really alienates me with both sub and endless new boxes.  GWs, with its many boxes, is not appealing either.  Even tho its free to play, the box sets ends up just as costly.

i gotta disagree with u on the timing of expansions. although I work I have enough time to almost all the expansion content whether its on my free time, with my family that plays with me, or when i want to just relax, and guild chat or talk on global. for me I cant stand waiting 2 years bouncing around on the same content for 2years, that what pissed me off and bores me to death with WOW, not enough content, yeah granted there is little mini content patches, e.g. 3.1 uldaur, but by themselves they aren't much.

for me EQ2 did it good, i loved the content, every 6 months I pay $30-40 every 6 months. but i did it smart id buy the entire package that came with it if i could, you gotta figure initially theyd have e.g ROK Rise of kunark by itself, but I eventually bought the entire set, why? cause I had the original Discs, EOF, and ROK, and then i said fugg it, might as well upgrade, so next time i install its faster on DVD's, and think about it, you update faster, and its an easier process to patch. Your never paying more than $40 for everything. Never had pay more than $40 for entire package+ expansions. only when I initially bought the game did I spend $50+

I been playing for over 1460+ days since nov 2004 off and on.I have every expansion and almost every adventure pack e.g. split paw saga, blood chronicles etc, minus TSO (the shadow oddessey) broke for now lol bills and rent come first. :P but anyhoo, i can understand your perspective on overkill on  content, but for me i dont agree, for me its a god send, im never really doing the same thing twice, im always progressing, leveling, getting new epic gear, defeating new raid bosses, going to new lands. I find it fun, engaging. this is why I always go back to EQ2. you'll never get this level of content in any F2P MMO. but thats just me.

I am the unlucky few, I do not have long stretch of hours online for gaming.

I can chat here, because on and off I am distracted.  If I go afk in a game, I will die soloing or be kicked in a group.  That is why I sometimes hop online here to read.  I can go afk there, alt-tab out and not be killed/kicked.

So it does take me 2 years to go thru most of the content.  Oh yes, I do not go online first thing when I got spare time.  Its more like last resort, like 1 hour before bed, when weather is bad, or when there is no one around to interact with in life.

I have come to enjoy a few F2P games in the past but have found many to lack the proper support a P2P game has. One of which is Silkroad... I have tried to log in to this game off and on for the last 2 years and have yet to do so because the servers (Troy, in my case) are always overloaded when I have time to try, but if I were to purchase something like a Gold Membership from their Item Mall, that will allow me to log in whenever I want... hmm... so it's an F2P game if you have enough time on your hands to repeat the log in process for hours.

Another I have played is Voyage Century Online... I have played since Beta, and to be honest, the game has never left Beta because it is still so full of bugs that it had while still officially in Beta. The game is fun, for what it is , and I have enjoyed playing it for a few years. Then there comes a point, once you get a little higher in your leveling and you arrive at a point when things become a bit more competitive. Item Mall... the true bane of this game. Voyage Century is purely an Item Mall driven game to the degree that, that will be the only updates you will see. New items, events involving these items, etc., that's it... becoming a Pay-to-win game attracting the oddest gamer type I have ever witnessed: the ego-maniacal, god-complexed freak that truly takes a game to heart and soul where every action against that player becomes a personal offense, LOL!

Well... these have been my experiences as well as my opinions. I'm sure there are many folks that would disagree with me and/or love these games that I have mentioned. But, they are no longer for me... ;-)

Originally posted by Khalathwyr

Originally posted by Mrbloodworth

Originally posted by Khalathwyr

Add to that things such as multiple content "boxes" you purchase where you have a certain percentage chance to get the item(s) you want and it's very easy to spend $200-300 or more in a week trying to get items that facilitate gameplay.

Wow, that's again, YOUR CHOICE. Is there something about video games that removes common money Sense from people?

Your blaming developers, because people are dumb? Looks to me like they gave that person just what they wanted.

 

If you'd get off your own defensive kick and actually read what I wrote (instead of cherry-picking that why don't you quote the whole thing so that it can be read in the way I meant it), and also put out of your mind our past disagreements in another thread, you'd see that I was speaking solely for moi. Not anyone else. I gave the reason why I don't won't play them. I'd offer that there is something about forums that removes reading comprehension...

I'm pretty sure I didn't "blame" anyone. They decided to make their game that way (F2P) and I'm deciding not to play it because I see the, in my eyes, trick. Playing on the impulse buying habits of your typical human being and their ego to be better than the next guy. As for the example I gave, which came from Atlantica Online, no, they didn't give the person what they wanted. That person never got the item from the random box they bought and were complaining about it on the forums. Personally, I don't care. I see the system for what it is and didn't buy Item Mall crap, though I did go have a look to verify the items there and see what impact they had on gameplay. That impact was significant enough to sucker people who already don't have fiscal control of their real lives to continue it in their virtual lives.

All that said, I have not attacked nor proclaimed your precious F2P games "suck". You can continue to feel good about playing them. Carry on.

First, don't even know who you are. Second, "you" was not meant as YOU. Third, blame perhaps was not the right world, how about "hold responsible".

Its fine if that's your opinion, however, if you end up spending 200$ in a week, yeah, you got what you asked for, they played the random box game, payed for it even.

That's like saying "Bob and tom are scamers, i played a game of poker with them, and lost money". I think the term is: Rube.

Originally posted by Quizzical

Nice strawman argument there.  It might help if the author were to address the actual argument of why the "free to lose"/item mall games get such negative reactions from so many players.

If you get an e-mail from someone claiming to have $10 million US in Sierra Leone and wanting your help to get it out of the country and promising you a substantial portion of it, do you have to follow through to know it's a scam? If you follow through on a few such e-mails and get scammed, do you then know that the next such spam e-mail you get is also a scam, or do you have to try that one, too?

The reason why a game being completely free gives it such a bad reputation is simple economic reality.  Companies that make games in pursuit of a profit aren't charities that merely want to give you a good game to play.  They're trying to make money, and they have to get money from you somehow.  The question is how they get money from you, and it's best if their source of revenue is obvious.

For a subscription game, they get substantial revenue from everyone who plays, so they have no need to nickel and dime you for additional revenue.  (That may not stop SOE from doing so, but I digress.)  If you have to buy a box before you can play the game, as with most single-player games, then again, the revenue source is obvious, and there's no need to worry that they'll try to impose additional charges on you later.

There can even be some genuinely free games where the "revenue" source is still obvious.  A flash game that some geek coded by himself in his free time doesn't have enormous expenses to meet, and a bit of advertising on the site with the game, or even having the game distributed for free by other sites, could well meet the game's expenses.  Some games are themselves advertisements, most commonly cheaply done things on a corporate web site where the premise of the game is that the corporations products are really wonderful.  Occasionally there can even be larger budget such advertising games, such as America's Army, which was basically an advertisement for the United States Armed Forces.  NASA is apparently working on such a game, too.

But when one gets to a game that advertises itself as free to play, but clearly cost quite a lot of money to develop, one has to be quite naive to think that the company isn't going to try very hard to get revenue out of you somehow.  If they say that their revenue source is an item mall, but you don't have to actually buy anything from it, alarm bells should go off that they're probably at best being intentionally deceptive.  If buying items from an item mall doesn't give any gameplay advantage, most players won't, and the company will get virtually no revenue.  A company can't allow that, and will have to give large gameplay advantages for buying things from the item mall.

And the economic situation is worse than that when one considers who is playing those games.  The author says that millions of people in "this region" play various "free to lose"/item mall games.  I'm not entirely sure what "this region" means, but even if it means the United States only, I find the claim quite believable.  Many of the people who play those games do so because they can't afford to play anything else.  Perhaps they are kids who can't afford $15/month for a game subscription, or whose parents won't allow them to use a credit card online.  If the reason they're playing an item mall game is that they can't pay a subscription, then they won't be able to buy anything from the item mall, either.  A company making a "free to lose"/item mall game thus gets no revenue from a large fraction of its players.

The company thus needs to get a lot of revenue to pay for the game, and needs to get it from a relatively small fraction of the playerbase.  The company thus usually needs to get quite a lot of revenue from the relative handful of players who do pay.  The only way to do that is to make it so that further payments give further gameplay advantages up to a pretty high threshold--much higher than the $15/month of a typical subscription game.  That means that either the "free to play" game is actually quite expensive, and far more so than a normal subscription game, or else that it's "free to lose" as I've been repeatedly saying here, as you'll be at a big gameplay disadvantage as compared to those who do pay a lot of money.

Indeed, economic reality dictates that if a "free to play"/item mall game has an item mall that doesn't really unbalance anything and doesn't get the company much revenue, they'll probably have to make the item mall more unbalancing in order to get more revenue in the future.  Losing money in the first few months after launch while attracting players, only to try to make it up later with a more unbalancing item mall, is quite a plausible business strategy, and indeed, has been done on quite a number of occasions.

Could there be exceptions?  While there could, if a company were making its marketing strategy one of telling players, we're not like those other "free to lose"/item mall games, and you can't gain any further gameplay advantage beyond $X/month, why wouldn't they display that prominently?  A lot of the item mall games won't even tell you what's in their item mall until you get into the game, for about the same reasons as the stereotypical drug dealer saying, "Try it.  You'll like it.  The first one is on me."

And so, a challenge to the author:  if you want anyone to believe that there are genuinely free to play item mall games that have considerable development costs, aren't in themselves more an advertisement than a game, and don't really mean "free to lose" unless you buy quite a bit from the item mall, then name one.  Just one.  It should be one that's been out for quite a while, so as to rule out the "lose money at first, but add a lot more to the item mall to make it up later" model.

Quoted in full for this response owns the original article.  MMORPG.com should remove the article by Richard Aihoshi which does little more than insult a large portion of MMORPG.com readers and replace it with this one.

Originally posted by Mrbloodworth

Originally posted by Khalathwyr

Originally posted by Mrbloodworth

Originally posted by Khalathwyr

Add to that things such as multiple content "boxes" you purchase where you have a certain percentage chance to get the item(s) you want and it's very easy to spend $200-300 or more in a week trying to get items that facilitate gameplay.

Wow, that's again, YOUR CHOICE. Is there something about video games that removes common money Sense from people?

Your blaming developers, because people are dumb? Looks to me like they gave that person just what they wanted.

 

If you'd get off your own defensive kick and actually read what I wrote (instead of cherry-picking that why don't you quote the whole thing so that it can be read in the way I meant it), and also put out of your mind our past disagreements in another thread, you'd see that I was speaking solely for moi. Not anyone else. I gave the reason why I don't won't play them. I'd offer that there is something about forums that removes reading comprehension...

I'm pretty sure I didn't "blame" anyone. They decided to make their game that way (F2P) and I'm deciding not to play it because I see the, in my eyes, trick. Playing on the impulse buying habits of your typical human being and their ego to be better than the next guy. As for the example I gave, which came from Atlantica Online, no, they didn't give the person what they wanted. That person never got the item from the random box they bought and were complaining about it on the forums. Personally, I don't care. I see the system for what it is and didn't buy Item Mall crap, though I did go have a look to verify the items there and see what impact they had on gameplay. That impact was significant enough to sucker people who already don't have fiscal control of their real lives to continue it in their virtual lives.

All that said, I have not attacked nor proclaimed your precious F2P games "suck". You can continue to feel good about playing them. Carry on.

First, don't even know who you are. Second, "you" was not meant as YOU. Third, blame perhaps was not the right world, how about "hold responsible".

Its fine if that's your opinion, however, if you end up spending 200$ in a week, yeah, you got what you asked for, they played the random box game, payed for it even.

That's like saying "Bob and tom are scamers, i played a game of poker with them, and lost money". I think the term is: Rube.

 

Wow, if you can't remember who you debate with 2-3 pages worth less than a week ago, then you must either really pick alot of arguments with people or your memory is terrible. Ginseng, it helps.

Anyway, why wouldn't I hold them responsible for their game. They made it. They made the rules. They knew their plan was to play on fiscal irresponsible people. I never judged them evil, like you're trying to make out. That said, I don't have to like the practice. I can see it for what it is and make the statement in a discussion about said games and bring it to the attention of others who may not have thought about it in such terms. If those companies don't want people talking about such things then they need to change their model. Plain and simple. It's like saying the sky is blue, or the grass is green. It is what it is.

And I'll take your "you end up spending $200 in a week" as a general "you" as if you understood what I wrote you'd know that I was talking about the AO forums (which you can visit and read for yourself should you not believe me) and I believe I also stated that personally I really didn't care on an individual level that these folks were too stupid to figure out what was being done to them.

Originally posted by Khalathwyr

Wow, if you can't remember who you debate with 2-3 pages worth less than a week ago, then you must either really pick alot of arguments with people or your memory is terrible. Ginseng, it helps.

Meh, i was making the point, i don't do grudges, we disagreed, you didn't run off with my wife. :)

Also, i think i said: "Looks to me like they gave that person just what they wanted."

Let's not lose sight of what the author's original point was.  He wasn't merely claiming that F2P games are a good choice for some players, even if other players ought to dismiss them out of hand.  They are a good choice for some players:  those who cannot pay, those who have a lot of money and not much free time and want "winning" to be based on the former, and perhaps those who like very heavy grinding and don't care if they're competitive.

The author's claim was that all MMORPG players ought to seriously consider playing some "free to lose"/item mall games, and that it is not fair to simply dismiss them out of hand.  That is a far stronger claim, and one that is much easier to refute.  Even the pro-F2P people here haven't taken much interest in defending that claim.

Originally posted by Mrbloodworth

Originally posted by Khalathwyr

Wow, if you can't remember who you debate with 2-3 pages worth less than a week ago, then you must either really pick alot of arguments with people or your memory is terrible. Ginseng, it helps.

 

Meh, i was making the point, i don't do grudges, we disagreed, you didn't run off with my wife. :)

 

Also, i think i said: "Looks to me like they gave that person just what they wanted."

I didn't expect you to hold a grudge, I just wanted to be remembered so I can feel special, lol! And if I ran off with your wife, you wouldn't be my first worry. My wife would because I know exactly what she'd do to me. You'd come in second place.

Well, I'd still disagree that they gave the person what they wanted. They gave them a chance at what they wanted, sure. I guess that's another part I personally have issue with. In a P2P I'm guaranteed to get what I want with an investment of time. In situations like the above, it's an investment of money. While I have no issue paying $15, $30 or $45 a month for accounts...wait, even better. I prefer paying those amounts and all the virtual item I want and will never touch than paying $200-$300 for a single virtual item I will never touch.

No, I admit I had fun playing Atlantica Online up until the point where having a mount became a heavily preferred position due to the bonuses they offered. At that point I stopped playing. *shrug*

My main issue with F2P games is that they su..uhm, they don't seem to be on par with subscription based games when it comes to quality of gameplay and funfactor. They are mostly grindathons with average mobs, very little variety and ai in mobs and hardly any deep and unique environments that roleplayers can enjoy.

This.

Item malls dont bother me really, the ones that moan are the ones that have no money

I have money. Thats why I play P2P games. My "moaning" is due to lack of content, depth and support. If you have to spend a fortune in the item malls to compete in them, whats the point?

I love the game although many will say "it sucks". It hasn't cost me one cent and probably never will and I have been playing close to a year now.

Maybe your standards are just a lot lower than everyone else's. Maybe the crapulent content and support doesnt bother you. If so, thats great. F2P has its place, but it sucks compared to P2P when it comes to quality, content and support. Thats all I'm saying.

And when people say F2P "sucks", I think thats what they mean. It sucks relative to P2P...if I had no money, I would probably play F2P games. Well, in theory at least. Hopefully it'll never come to that.

"Free" isnt always good enough. You can play Tetris for free too.

I think it makes for a much better community ingame because more people are playing for fun (it's free)

Um, no, not everyone is playing for free. Some of them are purchasing advancement by buying crap at the item malls.

The author's claim was that all MMORPG players ought to seriously consider playing some "free to lose"/item mall games, and that it is not fair to simply dismiss them out of hand.

In agree that was his point. But I dont agree with his point. He didnt give me a reason to change my opinion of F2P. After listening to his argument, I still think F2P sucks.

In my relatively short life, I've been kicked in the nuts probably less than a dozen times. I admit I don't have a lot of experience with being kicked in the nuts. But if somebody were to tell me that getting kicked in the nuts can be a wonderful experience, I'd politely ask that person to stay the hell away from me before I call the goddamn police. He could be an enlightened guru who has learned to transcend the pain and find ecstasy, or he could be a lucky person who stumbled upon the right combination of shoe type and kicking speed, but he's probably just batshit insane.

I've also played maybe less than a dozen F2P MMORPGs.  They all sucked. While I won't outright deny the possibility that fun F2P MMOs may exist, I haven't found any and I don't feel like digging through more crappy games just because somebody says there might be a good one out there somewhere. How many F2P games to I have to play before I get to the good ones? If every one I've tried so far has sucked, why should I keep looking?

 To Richard: be aware that many of the people that say that they have tried a few have indeed tried maybe 2-5. Evenm then, they have not experienced enough of them in all the ways there are to experience them like using the cash shops (if it applies) or by feeling out all areas of  the game.

 Of course, I don't have to hear an entire body of work by a musician to know I don't like his/her music, (as someone pointed out) but we are not talking about a single artist here, we are talking about an entire genre.

 I used to meet people that say they hate "country music" or "hip hop." Usually this opinion is based on a few songs or artists.

 Also keep in mind that you might be hearing from just a few people and letting it get to you a bit, even though I do it myself all the time. While we are having these discussions (I'm sure you know this much better than me) millions of players (Nexon alone has claimed they have 2 million US players) are simply playing their game.

 Anyway, I'm glad to say that I think these arguments will all fade within a few years. F2P is not going anywhere.

 Beau

The sad fact of the matter is that many of the things people dislike F2P games for ( poor quality, liner game, nothing to do, endless grind ) is also a problem with P2P.  I actually wish more of the games I've played over the years would have been F2P so that I wouldn't have been stuck shelling out cash for a retail box or wasting my time with a 7 day free trial that doesn't give you a good look at the game.  Oh, I'm sorry, grinding linear gameplay in a P2P game means that you're a hardcore player.  Hell, I wish WoW had an item mall just so that I could have just bought that last piece of my armor set instead of having to go through yet another mindless instance run to pray to get a chance at rolling on it.

Seriously.

The only difference between P2P and F2P is that one grants you more of a reason to bitch about it because you're actually paying for the game.  If you ask me, half the P2P games out there should just go the F2P route, especially the older ones that still try to get $15 out of you a month when they're 3+ years out of date with no real major content expansions.  Poor client stability, poor gameplay, sub-par graphics... I could be describing any number of F2P or P2P games.  What's it matter if you pay for it or not when you're still getting a terrible game?

Actualy with most f2p's its like this :

sheeps play for free , a sheep wanna become a wolf needs  to pay (and way more as ina p2p )

 Free to play is a LIE

It's misleading to think ANY company would spend cash on developing a game and not try to make a profit. I will never play into this format because it's dishonest right off the bat.

I would much rather a game company be open up front and honest with me.

Originally posted by thenedain

... I actually wish more of the games I've played over the years would have been F2P so that I wouldn't have been stuck shelling out cash for a retail box or wasting my time with a 7 day free trial that doesn't give you a good look at the game. ...

... If you ask me, half the P2P games out there should just go the F2P route, especially the older ones that still try to get $15 out of you a month when they're 3+ years out of date with no real major content expansions.  Poor client stability, poor gameplay, sub-par graphics... I could be describing any number of F2P or P2P games.  What's it matter if you pay for it or not when you're still getting a terrible game?

These are some good points.

I recently also tried a few free trials of P2P games (I was looking for a new game to sink my money in) and found that most of the trial systems were horrible. To mention a few:

LOTRO would not let you try the crafting system. To produce anything worthwhile you need materials from other crafts, but are unable to get those because trial player can not trade, mail or use auction house.

In WAR you get some idea of how the RvR works, but can only test a limited amount of PvE content because of level and area restrictions.

Housing, mails, auctions, LFG - these seem to be the most common features to be restricted for trial users. For me these feature would matter alot on my decision about paying for a game.

In most F2P it is easier to get a good overview of the game before you are "asked" to spend any real money / to make any real commitment.

However so far, i have yet to try a F2P game that would lure me to grind past the first few weeks. I'm sure a large portion of the F2P games i have tried actually havea fun end/mid-level gameplay, but most of the time the low-level game just isnt inspireing enough to make me want to reach the higher levels.

Originally posted by Quizzical

Let's not lose sight of what the author's original point was.  He wasn't merely claiming that F2P games are a good choice for some players, even if other players ought to dismiss them out of hand.  They are a good choice for some players:  those who cannot pay, those who have a lot of money and not much free time and want "winning" to be based on the former, and perhaps those who like very heavy grinding and don't care if they're competitive.

The author's claim was that all MMORPG players ought to seriously consider playing some "free to lose"/item mall games, and that it is not fair to simply dismiss them out of hand.  That is a far stronger claim, and one that is much easier to refute.  Even the pro-F2P people here haven't taken much interest in defending that claim.

Please list the F2P game you have played and those that you played and ripped you off, also how they ripped you off?

sure P2P games are fun and enjoyable. Their playerbase, content and community are (most of the time) heaps better than F2P ones. But I agree though, you cannot judge F2P MMOs when you have only played like what? 1 or 2, 2 hours apiece? That's just not right. 

And so what if it's F2P? If you actually searched hard enough, I'm pretty sure you could find some pretty unique games in the market. The reason some people continue to play F2P games is that once in a while, a unique gem quietly slides into the MMO scene, let's say Atlantica Online with its turn-based battle system, or maybe Shin Megami Tensei: Imagine's (though I wished it was hosted by someone else) demon partner system, and much more.

Another thing that comes into question is the item malls. The companies/hosters aren't lying to their audience when they bold the words "FREE TO PLAY" next to their games. It is the gamers CHOICE to spend his/her money on the items to make the game more enjoyable.

Last of all, I want to address free trials, most wouldn't consider them F2P, however if you actually searched hard enough, you could find some indie or underground P2P MMOs that offer something special. I only brought this up because I'm still playing Wurm Online till this date - free.

Originally posted by Brain-dead

Here is an easy way to shut up all the naysayers: Give us a single example of a F2P that doesnt suck.

Not saying there isnt a place for F2P, but I have yet to see a single game I would want to play. Thats all. You get what you pay for.

 

 

I can name a few i have played.The "GAME" it self is ok fun,but the F2P part of it offers problems to these games,that is where the problem lies.I liked playing SRO,i thought it was fun and i don't  even like PVP games.I liked playing Shaiya by Aeria games,but it gets boring after a while as IMO all games do.Last Chaos also by Aeria is also a decent game with a fair bit more content than Shaiya.

F2p offers the chance for ANYONE to play that normally could not,i like that idea,but it also encourages massive cheating and botting,because it is free,you have nothing to lose.Now if you had to pay for a game box and a monthly fee,then all of a sudden get banned for cheating or botting,that would strike a nail in the coffin.

Oh god, people are complaining again because they cant have everything for free.

I thought the article was well done.  Thank You.