"Paying a monthly Fee is stupid" - No..no it's not.

[Caligulove]

Being in University, I can understand how the idea of monthly payments turns people off from a game- I mean, I already pay for other utilities, not to mention rent and my goddamn loans every month, would like to keep other costs as low as possible.

That said, I get the feeling a lot of the crowd that's diametrically opposed to paying for anything, even the game itself is just cheap or has some weird entitlement issues, that or they believe to be fighting some kind of a system for "better games"

 

[Mallefunction]

You do the same thing over and over in pretty much every game. Find a guy, kill the guy, repeat.

Dunno what kind of games you are playing, but that's never been my experience outside of online multi-player.

 

[Dastardly]

Oh I agree that mmos have gotten worse, but if we accept that and go with the free to play model for everything, they'll never get better. They'll just turn into facebook games and gimmicks.

I agree completely. I'm simply saying that, with the current state, F2P makes more sense. I'm talking value here. For what you're getting, it's not an experience that's worth re-upping every month. Premium content a-la-carte, that's fine.

I'd much rather we tell MMO companies to stop removing features and charging the same amount. That would lead to us getting games that are worthy of a subscription. But if they're not going to do that, I'm not going to pay the sub and hope. That's like pitching pennies down a wishing well.

 

[DasDestroyer]

It may not be stupid, but a good game can give you hundreds of hours of gameplay for its money.

 

[Darkauthor81]

I don't think it's stupid to have a subscription system for MMOs. From a business perspective, at least, it makes perfect sense. However, I don't like it simply as a consumer. I much prefer the F2P/micro-transaction system, because then everyone gets to play the game as normal after buying it once (assuming it's a game like WoW that could, potentially, switch to F2P), then the subscription fees are replaced by micro-transactions in-game for extra content, ideally things like extra levels/missions, new exclusive locations, new character skins, things like that. And it does work, games like DoD Online and LOTRO are testament to that. Nobody loses out, the customers least of all as they're still able to play the game and then support it even more financially if they feel it's worth it. It still promotes the creation of an actually good game, and the financial model is sound. Of course, while people continue to subscribe to things like WoW for no good reason other than it making Blizzard lots of money, we're unlikely to see much more widescale change anytime soon, which to me is something of a shame...

I don't agree. Micro transactions kill late game content and pvp. Those that shell out the real money get a visible advantage over the people that don't. If you want to be competitive you end up spending far more than a 15 dollars a month subscription fee.

Even maple story, where the pay content is only clothing options, you get shunned by people from raids if you don't have these re-skins that don't impact game play or stats at all. So even if there isn't a game mechanics pressure there's a social one to shell out money.

 

[lord.jeff]

My problem I don't mind the fifteen dollars monthly, they are making regular updates to the game. Paying for the orginal game I can live with that, I guess. My problem is with WOW charging $50 for expansion packs, I'm already paying you one fee to keep the game up to date, I should not have to pay this.

 

[Dastardly]

snip

snip

That's not entirely true. My sister is a WoW big shot. She has lead teams, several times, into challenges not yet overcome on her server. And the first people to overcome these challenges get permanent statues erected of their character.

So she has permanent statues of her character all over her server.

And then no one else can get them. Not exactly "massive," is it? There's a balance to be struck--persistence, but it should be accessible to all of your players. After all, they're all paying the same fee, right?

 

[SnipErlite]

It's not worth it if you play games occasionally. The way I game is, I'll play a title for about 10 or 20 hours, then move on to a new game.

Now that's not to say I don't still love the first game, I'll go back and play it in a few months time. But the whole system of playing it for a bit and moving on to a new one means a monthly payment MMO isn't worth it for me. *Shrug*

 

[gmaverick019_v1legacy]

i understand the math behind it, and i understand why they do it, but that doesn't change the fact that i hate paying for time, when i buy a game i want it to be mine whenever i want, so its mine forever, plus playing one mmo for months upon end is boring as hell to me rather than getting a few games and switching between them for a few months, putting that much time into a single game, let alone an mmo, is not worth it to me.

 

[BENZOOKA]

That is some fanboyism and inaccurate assumptions.

I just don't want to pay a monthly fee for a game. Even that is enough for me to not to play an MMO.

And where the monthly fee gives the developers a steady flow of resources to spare in improving and changing the game, it does not mean you can't get endless amount of gameplay out of a game that you only need to buy once:

I've played Counter-Strike and Counter-Strike: Source combined for about ten years and since that Steam's counter for the game started rolling, I've played CS:S for nearly 1000 hours. Well worth the 50 ? I bought Half-Life 2 and the CS:S included.

I bet, or know in fact, that there are plenty of users here who've got well over their money's worth of gaming out of titles like Mass Effect 2, Fallout 3, The Elder Scrolls III and IV: Morrowind and Oblivion, and so on, without paying a monthly fee...

$15 or similar for a month isn't necessarily much. It's not a reason to whine if it's used to improve the game and you have time to play it. But at the same time it does not make a game all that much better and grander and it definitely does not automatically add hours to gameplay.

The trend for free-to-play games with optionally purchasable stuff is good, as long as you don't have to buy things that are quite necessary in the game. If they want all of the perks of a monthly subscriber, they better do just that; after all they've got the chance to play the game free. If the free-to-play-but-pay-for-stuff is done correctly, I can't see this bothering anyone, but elitists. These games actually suit OP's preferences most accurately as you're getting exactly what you pay for.

 

[Wolfram23]

I get the reason for it, believe me. It pays for the constant support and server upkeep. But also consider that most console games don't have montly fees and offer similar services. I know CoD no longer has dedicated servers, which saves them a lot of cash, but they still over patches and support. Whether playing WoW or CoD, you can acumulate hundreds and hundreds of online hours.

And there's offline games like Fallout that also offer at least a hundred hours and also have updates and support.

Seems like the only real difference is that MMOs have a huge amount of servers to run. But there's no way any individual's $15/month isn't covering more than their fair share of the server costs. There's a lot of inflation in that price. And they still charge you full price for expansions.

 

[Nemu]

Every time I see an "I ain't paying a monthly fee!" declaration, I ask myself "how much does that person pay for XBox Live stuff...?"

I played platform games for almost 20 years before I started playing online games exclusively. I tried to get into XBox, it is now collecting dust because EVERY game I've purchased bored me to tears. I think the longest I played an XBox game was when I played Dante's Inferno...which was about a week. Fallout, ME and every other "awesome game" I tried were just AWFUL and completely not worth my time

For every argument against paying for MMOs, there's someone like me who can't understand why people play console games. *shrugs* $70 bucks every 6 months for constantly changing content is definitely worth paying compared to stagnant console games, even cheap ones, every month or so.

 

[Sabiancym]

You do the same thing over and over in pretty much every game. Find a guy, kill the guy, repeat.

Dunno what kind of games you are playing, but that's never been my experience outside of online multi-player.

Name the games you play. I guarantee it's full of repetition.

 

[Verlander]

How people spend their money is their business

 

[N12]

it never really got to me. hell i pay more a month for smokes. 15 bucks is not bad, anyone who bought Mirrors Edge (that includes me) got more of a ripoff.

 

[Sabiancym]

That is some fanboyism and inaccurate assumptions.

I just don't want to pay a monthly fee for a game. Even that is enough for me to not to play an MMO.

And where the monthly fee gives the developers a steady flow of resources to spare in improving and changing the game, it does not mean you can't get endless amount of gameplay out of a game that you only need to buy once:

I've played Counter-Strike and Counter-Strike: Source combined for about ten years and since that Steam's counter for the game started rolling, I've played CS:S for nearly 1000 hours. Well worth the 50 ? I bought Half-Life 2 and the CS:S included.

I bet, or know in fact, that there are plenty of users here who've got well over their money's worth of gaming out of titles like Mass Effect 2, Fallout 3, The Elder Scrolls III and IV: Morrowind and Oblivion, and so on, without paying a monthly fee...

$15 or similar for a month isn't necessarily much. It's not a reason to whine if it's used to improve the game and you have time to play it. But at the same time it does not make a game all that much better and grander and it definitely does not automatically add hours to gameplay.

The trend for free-to-play games with optionally purchasable stuff is good, as long as you don't have to buy things that are quite necessary in the game. If they want all of the perks of a monthly subscriber, they better do just that; after all they've got the chance to play the game free. If the free-to-play-but-pay-for-stuff is done correctly, I can't see this bothering anyone, but elitists. These games actually suit OP's preferences most accurately as you're getting exactly what you pay for.

When I said gameplay hours, I didn't mean how long people will play the game. I meant how many hours of content there is. You can play the same 30 minute level of the same game 100 times. That doesn't mean there are 200 hours worth of gameplay, there is 30 minutes.

So mmos offer substantially more gameplay hours.

 

[Wapox]

Actually, I wonder why MMOs charge for the original game. They should treat it like they're dealing drugs. Sell the game at cost (or a free download), give them a free trial, hook them and start collecting a monthly fee.

They actually do that... they usually gives a 10-day free trial... And THEN charges you for the game

oh... well... the exception that proves the above... or something... just one more thing I don't like about dcuo
but they still charge $60 for DCU Online.

 

[2xDouble]

So I suggest you do the math correctly.

I did, and so did you. You weighted your experiences differently than I did because your experiences were different than mine. Logically, you came to a different conclusion than I (even though I never stated a conclusion in that section, nor did I relate the mathematics to my opinions directly other than by proximity). The math in the OP, on the other hand, was not weighted and is therefore incorrect, regardless of the fact its conclusions seemed to agree with yours.

Statistical analysis funny that way, isn't it?