Poll: I don't like F2P MMOs

[Paladin Anderson]

Recently, the mmo that has consumed my life for more years than I'd like to think about, City of Heroes, has become free to play.

When it made the transition, I took my leave.

The "Free to play" label is quite deceptive. Yes, you can play, but to access higher end content, or to pvp you usually have to dump some cash. And, normally, the people with the most cash to dump perform the best. This sets up a situation where you're constantly being baited to spend money and I HATE it. The last thing I want to be on my mind while I'm playing a video game is how much I wish I had more money. Escaping the sad facts of my dirt poor existence is a big reason WHY I play video games.

Sure, with the monthly subscription, you have to spend 15 bucks a month. But it's ONLY 15 dollars a month. F2P models can bait you into dropping several times that much if you wish to stay competitive. This is why so many MMOs are making the switch to F2P. They make a LOT more money with it.

They milk their player base for FAR more than 15 dollars a month each. The transition to F2P increases an MMO's revenue to three times that of a subscription based.

 

[Fappy]

Look at League of Legends' business model (not an MMO, but F2P all the same). They are rolling in dough. It's genius really.

 

[Hop-along Nussbaum]

World of Warcraft has gone F2P up to level 20. They get their hooks into new players and then the wallets open up.

 

[KyuubiNoKitsune-Hime]

I'll take monthly if it's the only option, but free to play is actually a really good business model. Especially when paired the correct way with micro payment. I have to pay for it to be more convenient to get certain items or perks? Okay, I might just.

The best example of a good way to do F2P is what Star Trek Online is doing. You can still subscribe to get some nice extras, and you can buy things for the game with real world money if you wish to, but it doesn't break the balance.

 

[Vegosiux]

Well, if falls down to whether it's F2P or P2W.

 

[Paladin Anderson]

F2P is about a thousand times better because you can choose what you want to pay for. You really need an extra bag in LoTRO? Then buy, you really want an extra skin in LoL? Then buy it.

If it remained aesthetic, that would be fine. But it never does. It'll start out with small stat bonuses. Then those bonuses will increase higher and higher as the developers push to get more and more money until it gets to the point you don't set foot in high end content or pvp without dropping some serious dough. Go onto any Korean F2P MMO and see for yourself.

 

[Vegosiux]

F2P is about a thousand times better because you can choose what you want to pay for. You really need an extra bag in LoTRO? Then buy, you really want an extra skin in LoL? Then buy it.

If it remained aesthetic, that would be fine. But it never does. It'll start out with small stat bonuses. Then those bonuses will increase higher and higher as the developers push to get more and more money until it gets to the point you don't set foot in high end content or pvp without dropping some serious dough.

You know why Diablo 3 auction house got an outrage? Because it was most definetly a pay2win, which is not what F2P is. Sure there are some shitty F2P here and there which are basically P2W, but some of them, like LoTRO and LoL, you can't pay to be better in cobat than everyone else.

And that is the crux of the matter. As long as the "premium" services are merely cosmetic (skins, non-combat pets, etc), the game is F2P and equal for everyone, paying or not.

The moment it strays into P2W, paying real money to gain a game advantage over those who do not pay real money, I quit.

 

[DioWallachia]

If the P2W is focused on items that are actually quite easy to access or are items that focus on decoration and make no impact in the gameplay at all (sort of like the Realm of The Mad God items) then i guess it kinda fair. Then again you may point out if this simple idea could be the worst thing ever for players and businessman who need to keep the game up to date with bug fixes, server cost AND food on their tables

 

[Sixcess]

City of Heroes was working the micro-transaction angle for a couple of years before it went F2P - with virtually every new costume piece introduced after I13 having to be purchased in addition to the monthly fee.

I prefer F2P. Since I have 3 or 4 MMOs that I drop in and out of I rarely spend a great deal of time in any particular one in a single month. If I do and if I'm enjoying the game particularly, I'll drop some cash into it. If I don't, no loss.

 

[StriderShinryu]

Overall, I simply prefer a good MMO. That said, with GW and LOTRO, amongst others, proving that you can have a great MMO with all of the regular bells and whistles but without a monthly fee it's going to take a lot to make me want to pay a monthly fee for an MMO again. Secret World just might do it, at least for a few months, but it's going to have to do a lot to impress me enough to make it worth that monthly output.

While it's generally true that F2P MMOs exist via convincing players to possibly spend more than their regular sub fee would have been on store products it's not really about every player doing that. For every player willing to put down $100 a month on the cash shop, there's probably 10 or more who just play with little or no expense. If you find yourself drawn to the store items then the developer is doing thier job (within reason of course, I'm no more a fan or pay to win than anyone else), but it's still your choice to make those purchases or not. Don't want to buy that stuff, don't.

 

[Hero in a half shell]

F2P is about a thousand times better because you can choose what you want to pay for. You really need an extra bag in LoTRO? Then buy, you really want an extra skin in LoL? Then buy it.

If it remained aesthetic, that would be fine. But it never does. It'll start out with small stat bonuses. Then those bonuses will increase higher and higher as the developers push to get more and more money until it gets to the point you don't set foot in high end content or pvp without dropping some serious dough. Go onto any Korean F2P MMO and see for yourself.

This is actually exactly what is happening to Battlefield Play4free as we speak, about a year ago the microtransaction options it ran on were rather limited (mainly cosmetic, with some options to get better guns and more experience) If you wanted to be a sniper then you had to pay because the free sniper rifle was atrociously bad, but apart from that you could still remain perfectly competitive without shelling out some dosh.

Recently they shook the game way up, injecting microtransactions into everything: new incredibly overpowered guns for every class that you can only get by paying for, (they changed the way gun stats are shown, almost certainly to hide just how rediculously powerful the new guns were) each gun recieved about half a dozen small upgrades you could pay for to improve them even more, and they even took away some of the free content and made it pay to use.

The problem with F2P MMO's is that the company has to make a profit, and it must do that by making you constantly want to buy new items. That means selling items that give one person a competitive edge over another, and then they have to sell a better item that gives an advantage over the thing you already bought. The process continues until a pure F2P person stands no chance against someone who has bought the upgrades. This inevitably happens to all competitive F2PMMOs.

 

[KyuubiNoKitsune-Hime]

This is actually exactly what is happening to Battlefield Play4free as we speak, about a year ago the microtransaction options it ran on were rather limited (mainly cosmetic, with some options to get better guns and more experience) If you wanted to be a sniper then you had to pay because the free sniper rifle was atrociously bad, but apart from that you could still remain perfectly competitive without shelling out some dosh.

Recently they shook the game way up, injecting microtransactions into everything: new incredibly overpowered guns for every class that you can only get by paying for, (they changed the way gun stats are shown, almost certainly to hide just how rediculously powerful the new guns were) each gun recieved about half a dozen small upgrades you could pay for to improve them even more, and they even took away some of the free content and made it pay to use.

The problem with F2P MMO's is that the company has to make a profit, and it must do that by making you constantly want to buy new items. That means selling items that give one person a competitive edge over another, and then they have to sell a better item that gives an advantage over the thing you already bought. The process continues until a pure F2P person stands no chance against someone who has bought the upgrades. This inevitably happens to all competitive F2PMMOs.

Star Trek Online is actually a good counter to this problem. They offer two paid services that are both going to keep them competitive as an MMO and keep their profits up with out pulling that sort of trickery. Especially because they are going free to play. There you can pay for some account extras, or play for free with a little less. There is also their C-Store where you can get unique goods. Most of them are cosmetic, a few are better ships, or weapons or tribbles, but they're not totally necessary.

The other thing that makes their whole C-points thing good is that you could sell C-Points for Dilitihium. Which gave you the option of buying more rare and powerful equipment, but since there are missions that pay dilithium you could avoid it. The real beautiful part is that you can also hoard Dilithium and sell it for C-points to get the unique goods without paying a penny. Truly the right way to do things in the F2P enviroment.

 

[Paladin Anderson]

This is actually exactly what is happening to Battlefield Play4free as we speak, about a year ago the microtransaction options it ran on were rather limited (mainly cosmetic, with some options to get better guns and more experience) If you wanted to be a sniper then you had to pay because the free sniper rifle was atrociously bad, but apart from that you could still remain perfectly competitive without shelling out some dosh.

Recently they shook the game way up, injecting microtransactions into everything: new incredibly overpowered guns for every class that you can only get by paying for, (they changed the way gun stats are shown, almost certainly to hide just how rediculously powerful the new guns were) each gun recieved about half a dozen small upgrades you could pay for to improve them even more, and they even took away some of the free content and made it pay to use.

The problem with F2P MMO's is that the company has to make a profit, and it must do that by making you constantly want to buy new items. That means selling items that give one person a competitive edge over another, and then they have to sell a better item that gives an advantage over the thing you already bought. The process continues until a pure F2P person stands no chance against someone who has bought the upgrades. This inevitably happens to all competitive F2PMMOs.

Star Trek Online is actually a good counter to this problem. They offer two paid services that are both going to keep them competitive as an MMO and keep their profits up with out pulling that sort of trickery. Especially because they are going free to play. There you can pay for some account extras, or play for free with a little less. There is also their C-Store where you can get unique goods. Most of them are cosmetic, a few are better ships, or weapons or tribbles, but they're not totally necessary.

The other thing that makes their whole C-points thing good is that you could sell C-Points for Dilitihium. Which gave you the option of buying more rare and powerful equipment, but since there are missions that pay dilithium you could avoid it. The real beautiful part is that you can also hoard Dilithium and sell it for C-points to get the unique goods without paying a penny. Truly the right way to do things in the F2P enviroment.

That's actually a really good way of going about it. I'm impressed.

 

[Windcaler]

It depends really. Generally I like monthly more but only because I tend to get a better game for the money that I and everyone else puts into the game.

Free to play has its place but I dislike free to play models that seperate free players from paying players like City of heros. In that game a lot of your communications options are taken away with other players and you cant join its equivalent of guilds. Its just a bad system IMO

On the other hand League of legends has probably the best free to play model Ive seen even though its not an MMO. The only thing you pay money for that you cant buy with currency earned in game are skins and boosts. You can purchase runes and champions with the currency you earn in game and there's even a "try before you buy" system where champions are rotated every week which eventually gives you the chance to play them all without spending money blindly. So money is just for aesthetics or convienance. IMO this is the way to run a Free to play business model although I do wish I could buy skins with IP since I cant try before I buy those outside of looking at them in a youtube video

 

[Nalgas D. Lemur]

I won't even consider playing games with monthly fees. I also won't play F2P games that require huge amounts of grinding or that are miserably unbalanced in favor of "pay to win". DCUO seems to be handling it pretty well so far, though. Most stuff you can pay for is cosmetic or just for convenience, like costume items or more inventory or character slots. As far as I know, all the PVP stuff is open to everyone, so none of that is affected by what you spend on anything, and it's entirely based on just being good at the game. They do occasionally add new classes and high level areas in DLC, but it's only once every few months and $10 for each, and you can get them for half to two-thirds off semi-regularly. Beats the hell out of paying $15 every month.

 

[Yopaz]

Monthly subscriptions make me have to play a certain amount every month in order to get my money's worth. I would have to pay for a game that I wouldn't play enough to get good value for it. I like Guild Wars since then you pay to play it, but you only pay for it once.

 

[isometry]

I prefer paying monthly, I like to get deeply into one game at a time so for me F2P = costs way more then paying monthly.

Coupled with the fact that F2P lets in a bunch of children, hell no. I'd pay $15/month just to get rid of most of the kids.