Originally posted by VengeSunsoar

One more time for all the f2p haters.

f2p with a cs has been here longer than p2p.  It has allready shown it's longevity.  It is not going anywhere.

 

Is this a joke?   Until a company actually proves with some financial statements that current cash shop based games can "shoulder the load" it isn't much more than a gimmick that will run it's course.

 

Take a look at the poster child Zynga.  How much longer before they disappear?  

 

I think cash shops can have a place in games, but the current implementation is not the way of the future.

No matter what your financial model MMO's are now a dog eat dog market where any sort of success is extremely hard to achieve. I do think F2P is not based on a solid revenue foundation so that can hardly help, subscription is better.

Games which were originally subscription games also last years longer or are still going compared to their F2P at launch counterparts. But nearly all of them now have a hybrid revenue model with F2P elements.

The writing is on the wall for all MMO’s, F2P once touted as the solution to MMO problems is a dead end.

Well, i played Luvinia, it was very entertaining and surprisingly polished for a free game, BUT i found extremely annoying, that from level ~40 (with max of 150) you basically had to use cashshop currency for crafting (ON TOP of normal mats) and dungeon crawling...

Probably good that this kind of business is curbed, but sad for the game, which was good...

Flame on!

:)

The MMORPG market is becoming more competitive in the US. The only thing these Asian MMOs had going for them was their f2p model. Now that western developers are pushing forward with f2p, there are going to be shifts in the market. Companies like Perfect World are adapting by purchasing and publishing games from western developers like Cryptic.

Originally posted by thinktank001

Originally posted by VengeSunsoar

One more time for all the f2p haters.

f2p with a cs has been here longer than p2p.  It has allready shown it's longevity.  It is not going anywhere.

 

Is this a joke?   Until a company actually proves with some financial statements that current cash shop based games can "shoulder the load" it isn't much more than a gimmick that will run it's course.

 

Take a look at the poster child Zynga.  How much longer before they disappear?  

 

I think cash shops can have a place in games, but the current implementation is not the way of the future.

 A joke?  Once again f2p games have been around since BEFORE p2p games and are still running.  Furcadia is one of them, a f2p game with a cs since before UO.  This proves longevity of the model, more so than p2p.

F2p will not save a bad game or bad a bad companybut the model itself is very stable.  One company or even a few is not indicative of the model, just look at wolfpack studios. 

Originally posted by GwapoJosh
I hope they all shut down.. F2P costs more that B2P and P2P.. 

Only if you're idiot enough to actually spend money.  I have never spent money in a F2P game and never will.

Originally posted by Isturi

Originally posted by Loktofeit

Originally posted by Isturi

Good advise for posting is doing research. I did and the link is all that is said on the closing of Outspark. So not much to go on for research by all means if you find more feel free to post.

These games change hands a lot more often than you think. Aeria picked up IJJI's titles not that long ago. K2 Networks (Gamers1st) built an empire on buying up games in their entirety or just to localize for a region.

 No Domino effect?? OK if that is not then I dont know what is??

I shutter to think just how often they do change hands, Kind of reminds me of a defaulted student loan or a bad debt go figure.

I shutter to keep out the wind and rain. Sometimes to adjust exposure.

 

I am pro the f2p model.  It distresses me that Nexon shut down Mabinogi in Europe but they seem to be happy with those of us in Korean and the USA.  Translate:  happy with how much we spend on the game.

 

 

I blame the lack of communication between companies and the public they are selling their product to.  There are to many middle men and the owners are to busy screwing around and not paying attention to their investments.  This applies to pay as well as free.

 

 

Fiesta had potential and I was on their forums telling them over and over and over - until my posts got shut down and I was finally IP blocked - that their money model was faulty.  Here is what they did wrong.  By the way, Fiesta was a pay to win game and I do not have a problem with that.  Their beginner zone was fun, not glitchy, fast paced, and relatively cheap to purchase weapons and armor in irl cash - shop item upgrades.  But as you increased in level you had to spend more in real life cash to get better upgrades while the game got harder and more glitchy.  This was scaled wrong.  It should have gotten cheaper and cheaper the higher level you went in real life cash - shop item upgrades and more reliant on game money.  It was a simple solution to fix their game yet they would not listen to me.  Greed and the misconception that all gamers have lots of money to spend.

 

Note that f2p does not really mean free to play.  It means Share to Play.  Nothing is free.  N o t h i ng.

Originally posted by GwapoJosh
[mod edit]

Yes, f2p is popular because it costs more.....I'm not sure you've thought this post through.

 

Originally posted by Zorgo

Originally posted by GwapoJosh
[mod edit]

Yes, f2p is popular because it costs more.....I'm not sure you've thought this post through.

 

Well what is funny is he/she is right in his thinking, just you actualy got it wrong as you are thinking popular with players since it cost more, when he/she is saying popular with companies for it higher potentional returrns (The fact that one player could spend sevral times the normal box/sub cost of a standard mmo in the cash shop, making up for the many non-paying players.). So f2p games are both popular with companies as they have a lower requirement to start playing (no box, or sub fee) with the fact of potentially having higher or equal returns on investments, and yet also popular with players for their ability to play the game free or at their own determined cost by buying items in the shop.  So in truth you jumped to the conclusion of Gwapo speaking about iot being popular with players for it's higher cost, without actually thinking through the other people that it could be popular with an so actually making your own post guilty of what you tried to pin on Him/her. 

 

Myself i hate p2w games in the f2p demographic of the mmo market, and yet cash shops to me (even in sub-games, or hybrid sub/b2p games) are fine as they allow you to further support the game/company while also getting somethign in game for your support. I just hope if we still see f2p games coming out at the same pace, or higher that they are much fewer in the p2w veriety, and much more the vanity/convience shop veriety. 

Originally posted by Jemcrystal

 

I am pro the f2p model.  It distresses me that Nexon shut down Mabinogi in Europe but they seem to be happy with those of us in Korean and the USA.  Translate:  happy with how much we spend on the game.

 I blame the lack of communication between companies and the public they are selling their product to.  There are to many middle men and the owners are to busy screwing around and not paying attention to their investments.  This applies to pay as well as free.

 Fiesta had potential and I was on their forums telling them over and over and over - until my posts got shut down and I was finally IP blocked - that their money model was faulty.  Here is what they did wrong.  By the way, Fiesta was a pay to win game and I do not have a problem with that.  Their beginner zone was fun, not glitchy, fast paced, and relatively cheap to purchase weapons and armor in irl cash - shop item upgrades.  But as you increased in level you had to spend more in real life cash to get better upgrades while the game got harder and more glitchy.  This was scaled wrong.  It should have gotten cheaper and cheaper the higher level you went in real life cash - shop item upgrades and more reliant on game money.  It was a simple solution to fix their game yet they would not listen to me.  Greed and the misconception that all gamers have lots of money to spend.

 

Note that f2p does not really mean free to play.  It means Share to Play.  Nothing is free.  N o t h i ng.

Trust me Fiesta was not the only one and sadly you reflect a large number of gamers who expierience this kind of behavior from bad publishers.

The Scale was and is wrong. Thankfuly more and more players are not buying into this greed.

Share to play is a good point. I also like to think it as a extended demo.

Originally posted by Asuran24

Originally posted by Zorgo

Originally posted by GwapoJosh
I hope they all shut down.. F2P costs more that B2P and P2P.. Why do you think it's so popular?

Yes, f2p is popular because it costs more.....I'm not sure you've thought this post through.

 

Well what is funny is he/she is right in his thinking, just you actualy got it wrong as you are thinking popular with players since it cost more, when he/she is saying popular with companies for it higher potentional returrns (The fact that one player could spend sevral times the normal box/sub cost of a standard mmo in the cash shop, making up for the many non-paying players.). So f2p games are both popular with companies as they have a lower requirement to start playing (no box, or sub fee) with the fact of potentially having higher or equal returns on investments, and yet also popular with players for their ability to play the game free or at their own determined cost by buying items in the shop.  So in truth you jumped to the conclusion of Gwapo speaking about iot being popular with players for it's higher cost, without actually thinking through the other people that it could be popular with an so actually making your own post guilty of what you tried to pin on Him/her. 

 

Myself i hate p2w games in the f2p demographic of the mmo market, and yet cash shops to me (even in sub-games, or hybrid sub/b2p games) are fine as they allow you to further support the game/company while also getting somethign in game for your support. I just hope if we still see f2p games coming out at the same pace, or higher that they are much fewer in the p2w veriety, and much more the vanity/convience shop veriety. 

What you say here is 100 percent true. I feel more and more REAL gamers are taking notice of this. No big secret I hate the demographic of the mmo market just as well. That is why im holding my breath on Defiance and WildStar I hope they choose a B2P payment system over F2P I truly feel that if they use the F2P system it could mean a very short lived MMO for both of the games.

I also agree that yes you made a very good point about they hybrid model for games.

Originally posted by GwapoJosh
I hope they all shut down.. F2P costs more that B2P and P2P.. Why do you think it's so popular?

 You're not even close buddy.....I spent over 1k in 5 years of EQ...I've spent about 100 bucks on f2p games in the last 9 years.....I'm sure the majority of us have spent way more in b2p or p2p than we have in f2p.

Originally posted by boxsnd

Never heard of those MMOs. Maybe that's why they failed? 

 

Face it, P2P fans, P2P is dying a quick death. F2P and B2P is the present and future.

 

It's just a cycle that will also die eventually. That's a natural market behavior.

 

Btw there are no P2P "fans" there are, however, P2W haters. I personally hate cash-shops because it doesn't make any sense in the kind of game I'm willing to play. Since there are zero MMORPGs that scratch that itch it doesn't bother me if F2P became the norm, more games for me to play (and pay nothing for) till that one game comes up (probably by an indie developer) which I will gladly pay a subscription fee to play.

 

Cheers!

 

Paying for small items online is something the teen generation is far more used to. This is one of the main factors that have brushed aside gamers insistence on a fair playing field.

What has happened is not unlike amateur and professional sport. Amateur sport was slowly pushed out by the money and the willingness of younger players not to play by the ethos of the old guys.

With gaming it is the players who pay though, you would think we would have more sense, but clearly not.

Originally posted by Loktofeit

Originally posted by jusomdude

Well there's only so many players to support f2p games, and only a real small percentage actually buy anything... The market is saturated as all hell...Someone's gotta go down.

You know that the games didn't close down, right?

 

 

Yeah, no doubt the company shut down because they were making so much money from their games that they all just thought, well screw coming in to work on Monday, we're all so rich we just don't need to.

Whats all this ' oh that company fails, so the trade they are in fails too' nonsense? That is some poor reasoning.

Originally posted by Scot

Paying for small items online is something the teen generation is far more used to. This is one of the main factors that have brushed aside gamers insistence on a fair playing field.

What has happened is not unlike amateur and professional sport. Amateur sport was slowly pushed out by the money and the willingness of younger players not to play by the ethos of the old guys.

With gaming it is the players who pay though, you would think we would have more sense, but clearly not.

I don't even think it started in this gaming segment either.

For years blood glucose monitors were given away because they made money from people buying the testing equipment that matched the product.

Clarian Health has tons of lab machines worth more than 1/2 million dollars each that are free to them only because the company makes money selling the reagents and maintenance plans.

Medicine has done it for a long time.

Cell phones are considered free with contracts.

It's not uncommon to give something away to sell something else, especially if what you give away is the gateway to the "actual" product. Those that are wise have realized that the actual product of these games is the shop, that's why so many of them don't innovate. It's like a franchise, you don't fix what isn't broken. If someone paid for an xp boost in game y, they will in game x too. It's part of the franchise component - experience.

The gradual tightening of the customer to the product is evidenced when people say games are pay to win. It's that moment to them when the smoke clears but they don't see that the intention was there all along. They really believe the free hype preferring not to examine the reason why someone is giving them something free, it isn't charity but the happy, peppy, positive Penny's really do think free things are real and will be free indefinitely. They are the same people that probably answered the Nigerians with that old scam about moving money out of the country.

If they aren't satisfied and hit a glass wall, they may change games or give in. Eventually they have to run out of free games to run to so the only thing aiding them right now is that all these companies know what sells, they are just trying to pin down the fantasy setting you want the most. A little tweak here and there in the next game, nothing cutting edge and keep slapping together what sticks in the third iteration. The amount of free games out there with only slight changes signal to me that they are trying every possible scenario and narrowing down the most profitable. Once they find the golden goose, they won't make games every year.

 

 

OMG ITS PROOF F2P IS BAD!

Shall we list the names of every game company that closed its doors that didnt make F2P games now to PROVE F2P is better?

Originally posted by thinktank001

Originally posted by VengeSunsoar

One more time for all the f2p haters.

f2p with a cs has been here longer than p2p.  It has allready shown it's longevity.  It is not going anywhere.

 

Is this a joke?   Until a company actually proves with some financial statements that current cash shop based games can "shoulder the load" it isn't much more than a gimmick that will run it's course.

 I would like to introduce you to a company called Nexon co ltd that had 1.2 billion dollars of revenue for 2 years running and had the second largest opening in history for a tech stock on the Japanese stock exchange...a company that dished out over 400 million dollars last year in acquisitions. Ndoors for over 170 million and a stake in Gloops for over 300 million.

Deal with reality...the reality that shows P2P companies stating its over and F2P is the future...hell even the makers of TESO is stating that may be their pay model.