Originally posted by VengeSunsoar
They actually started with a pay per hour if I recall. 

Yes. I was playing Kingdom of Drakkar as late as 1994. It is a 2D tile based "MMO" RPG .. (more like online RPG because you can only have hundreds of players).

It costs $2 per HOUR. It has bosses and 'raids". I remember going with some online friends to kill a boss and get a "chipper staff". It is just a little icon, but i suppose a raid is a raid.

And I also remember that you can use "telnet" to connect to the game server ..

A recurring comment around here is that the "whales" - the 10% of the 10% - pay exorbitant amounts of money and that's what allows the game to succeed. That is partially true. There is a small percentage of players that pay a lot, that part is true. The part that three price barriers of subscription games are removed.

• - box fee
• - monthly fee
• - expansion fee

This allows far more people to enter the game and stay inthe game. That's the other side of the equation. The 10% that pay $5, $50, $500 etc are what pay for the game. It seems the impression here is that you have 90% that pay nothing and 10% that pay thousand each per month. That's simply not true and not how the model works.

The math for all of this is pretty simple.

It looks something like this

P2P

1k Users Paying $15 a month

F2P

9k Users Paying $0

900 Users Paying $15 (on average)

$100 Users Paying $150 (on average)

Total is more than P2P, and most comes from the 'whales'.

The 9K users dont care about P2Win. They are not planning on paying any money, and dont care about those that do.

The 900 Users are extremely virolent about P2Win, as they are putting in money, but not as much as others.

The 100 Users dont care about P2Win, as they are putting in enough money to be on top.

Originally posted by XAPGames

Originally posted by nariusseldon

Also works perfectly for the shrewd players. Aren't you happy that whales are paying for your games?

 

That's pretty much how I see it also.

 

One aspect I very much enjoy is I can download and evaluate for free with no financial obligation.  If I had to buy the box, I wouldn't have that unless there was a free trial.

 

        THis is the appeal for me also...In the old days we literally had to buy the game to even know what it was about....We found some great games to be sure, but there were also alot of duds....I remember buying a couple games that literally did not load at all and often companies bac kthen didn't give any kind of refund once you opened software.....If ever ysingle game charged full box price and a sub before we can even see the game, where would the industry be now?

It's the games' fault.

The games became linear monster killing with some story. If the story is very good, like lotro imo, then you can repeat it a few times before it grinds. If it's just ok, like swtor imo, then you can do it maybe once per faction. If the game has a bunch of distinctive races, classes and starting locations then you can potentially go through half a dozen times maybe. And if the story part isn't any good and it's just linear mob killing then it gets really dull really fast no matter how polished the actual mob-killing part is.

So F2P came along because most games focused too much on linear mob-killing rather than the magic ingredient that makes people want to hang out in a virtual world. However F2P doesn't fix that problem. F2P is simply a revenue model that better suits the problem. I know i won't want to play the game for long if it's just linear mob-killing so what am i going to buy in the cash shop? For me personally it's either cosmetic items or content unlocks which is like paying for a mini-expansion.

Now because a lot of these games weren't set up to make money like that they have a tendency to start selling p2win gear or really stupid and annoying things like the unlock stuff in swtor or weird mounts and outfits that don't fit the game.

I think this is particularly so in originally AAA games that copied wow's way of dropping random gear from random mobs so they already had a lot of different good looking armor and gear graphics. If they had a small set of quite bland default skins and some much better looking ones you could buy that would work better.

Similarly if a game has been designed in a modular fashion initially it would be easier to plug in new content modules.

I don't plan on paying. Suck it, Trebek.

Originally posted by Enerzeal
You made this happen.

 

stopped reading there.

consumers didn't make it happen. corporate greed did.

i'd rather spend 60 bucks on a game rather then a f2p game. your argument is fail.

how about this OP:

you continue to spend money in F2P games, and i'll continue to play for free?.....sounds good to me (have not spent 1 dime in PS2).

Originally posted by kaungst

I for one completely agree with you. The games I play have  F2P option but i chose to pay monthly sub. For seeral reasons, 1 it helps further development and longjevity if the game. 2 I get my DLC powers and whatever cosmeticly appealing items I was wanting, 

Lets face it, if they make no money then the lifespan of the game is limmited at best. F2P is killing the industry.

The next time you cry because you can't get the gear or game mode or whatever you want because you didnt pay a sub or make a micro-transaction, Just be thankful that they allow you to mooch of the generosity of the game company. I for one wish that F2P never came to be. I pay my subs and am happy to do so!  

 

R.I.P.  City of Heroes 

We miss our adventures through the streets of paragon City

Actually its more wow-clones that is killing the indistry, since wow has come out name one AAA mmo that hasn't just copy and pasted most of its gameplay from wow. Only one I can name is FF14. WoW was only as successful as it was due to a classic case of perfect timing on its release. If the gameplay was all that good and how the game flows, then all these wow-clones wouldn't be crashing and burning in less than 6 months. They do poorly because people who aren't playing wow anymore and are looking for a mmo, aren't interested in bascally play the exact same game with a new skin (rift, tsw, swtor etc all suffer from this).

Now back onto the topic. I won't buy anything in a f2p games cash shop unless I feel the stuff is priced fairly, I'm sorry but 15-25 US dollars for 1 virtual item, is in no way in hell going to get a purchaise from me, if it was 3-5 dollars though on the other hand I would be much more likely to buy it. Many of these f2p games do not seem to grasp that if they would lower the prices of stuff, more people would be tempted to spend. Rappelz is a prime example, a stamina saver which gives double exp for 1 hour, cost 2 dollars EACH. I'd never buy those, but if they were like, 25 cents each or something I could see me buying a ton of them. A cape is like 20 bucks or something, the prices are way to high that barely anyone buys. I've talked to alot of players in these types of games, and almost all of them said they would buy cash shop items if the prices were alot more resonable, but because these hosters want some pretty obscene amounts for alot or most of the items, people are more reluctant to spend.

You must remember, you can't Pay to Win in a game that doesn't include competitive playstyle. For instance, P2W can only be associated with games that include focused PvP. With that being said, here are some games that offer either focused PvE or both PvE and PvP.

LOTRO

SWTOR

AoC

Hell, even PS2 is close to being a decent game despite being very competitive and focused on PvP with a F2P model. Yes, you can get better weapons and upgrades faster with station cash, but like most F2P games, it isn't necessary.

Originally posted by Jakdstripper

how about this OP:

you continue to spend money in F2P games, and i'll continue to play for free?.....sounds good to me (have not spent 1 dime in PS2).

I vote for this too.

Incidentally i am also playing PS2 for free.

Originally posted by daltanious
Agree in full with OP. I really HATE F2P games and cheap people that are cause for this, they are destroyers of quality gaming. No money, no quality. Simple as that. You can not run quality restaurant and feeding for free everyone that have few minutes to spare to eat for free. GW2 is so far only exception but is also B2P. Any game that have in time maybe switched to f2p model will only play again if they have also sub model. For me is - reluctantly - acceptable to have shops with STRICTLY vanity objects.

Why don't you become a whale and pump lots of money into the genre?

BTW, you don't have to accept anything, reluctant or not .. you can always quit and do something else.

And hatred is really getting you no where, since you really can't force "cheap" people to pay.

Originally posted by Siveria

Actually its more wow-clones that is killing the indistry, since wow has come out name one AAA mmo that hasn't just copy and pasted most of its gameplay from wow. Only one I can name is FF14. WoW was only as successful as it was due to a classic case of perfect timing on its release. If the gameplay was all that good and how the game flows, then all these wow-clones wouldn't be crashing and burning in less than 6 months. They do poorly because people who aren't playing wow anymore and are looking for a mmo, aren't interested in bascally play the exact same game with a new skin (rift, tsw, swtor etc all suffer from this).

Why name-drop FFXIV as a counter-example, then turn around and immediately say that WoW clones crash and burn in less than 6 months? XIV crashed faster and harder than any of the WoW clones. DC Universe Online is another example of a AAA MMO that was pretty substantially different than WoW but suffered a mass exodus shortly after launch and went F2P in 10 months.

You can't say that AAA WoW clones are doing terrible because they copied WoW. AAA MMOs that are not named World of Warcraft are doing bad in general, and the ones doing especially bad are the ones that were major departures from the WoW formula.

Originally posted by Superman0X

The math for all of this is pretty simple.

It looks something like this

P2P

1k Users Paying $15 a month

F2P

9k Users Paying $0

900 Users Paying $15 (on average)

$100 Users Paying $150 (on average)

Total is more than P2P, and most comes from the 'whales'.

 

The 9K users dont care about P2Win. They are not planning on paying any money, and dont care about those that do.

The 900 Users are extremely virolent about P2Win, as they are putting in money, but not as much as others.

The 100 Users dont care about P2Win, as they are putting in enough money to be on top.

 

That pretty much sums it up. The kicker is the 900 and the 100 don't spend without the other 9k present. 

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Originally posted by nariusseldon

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Originally posted by daltanious Agree in full with OP. I really HATE F2P games and cheap people that are cause for this, they are destroyers of quality gaming. No money, no quality. Simple as that. You can not run quality restaurant and feeding for free everyone that have few minutes to spare to eat for free. GW2 is so far only exception but is also B2P. Any game that have in time maybe switched to f2p model will only play again if they have also sub model. For me is - reluctantly - acceptable to have shops with STRICTLY vanity objects.

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Why don't you become a whale and pump lots of money into the genre?

BTW, you don't have to accept anything, reluctant or not .. you can always quit and do something else.

And hatred is really getting you no where, since you really can't force "cheap" people to pay.

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Originally posted by Loktofeit

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Originally posted by Superman0X
The math for all of this is pretty simple.

It looks something like this

P2P

1k Users Paying $15 a month

F2P

9k Users Paying $0

900 Users Paying $15 (on average)

$100 Users Paying $150 (on average)

Total is more than P2P, and most comes from the 'whales'.

The 9K users dont care about P2Win. They are not planning on paying any money, and dont care about those that do.

The 900 Users are extremely virolent about P2Win, as they are putting in money, but not as much as others.

The 100 Users dont care about P2Win, as they are putting in enough money to be on top.

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That pretty much sums it up. The kicker is the 900 and the 100 don't spend without the other 9k present. 
 

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Umm OP.....

There has always been a pay to win scenario  from buying aimbots  to RMT so you can pay top dollar for the best items in game without earning them.

I might also add that even if many players are stupid enough to over pay via cash shop and i am one of them that have done that,it still does not make it right or mean it is a good system.

Cash shops are 100% a terrible system,it does nothing to make a game better as in the end you get what you pay for.Most of the time ,especially of late f2p is an after thought because nobody wants to pay to play your game.That means less profit than forecasted ,that means content updates will be cheap content that takes a small staff to pull off.

Nothing like seeing an xpack pop up for sale when the game is missing tons of obvious content that SHOULD have been there from release.You can't simply add it in later as an xpack,that is like selling the players the otehr half the game but now they paid twice to get the whole game.