The dirty tricks of Free-To-Play

[Windcaler]

Thats fair I just didnt think it was fair to paint all games with the same brush when there are certainly quite a few that dont fall within the usual problems of pay to win games.

Just as a side note for games published by Perfect world entertainment (that would include Blacklight retribution, Raiderz, and Neverwinter to name a few) they actually have a system in place where you can earn the real money currency without spending money. It involves answering some surveys that can take some time but you can earn real money currency to spend in their various games if you want to spend time doing that instead of spending your hard earned money.

I actually don't think too many games are "Pay to Win". They flirt around the margins, but it's still a pretty dirty term. They're just "pay to not grind".

The definition of grinding varies from person to person. Most people refer to it as just doing the same thing over and over again. I define it as doing the same thing over and over again that isn't fun. For me, multiplayer matches and interesting quest lines most certainly are fun. To take raiderz and neverwinter as examples, theres a whole game with many interesting stories to experience. That by both definitions is not a grind.

 

[nexus]

I hate F2P people. They've ruined MMO's by demanding the "Free to Play" model. Completely rubbish, turned a respectable past time into some grubby, incomplete money-grabbing nonsense.

I am not at all surprised that F2P people are complaining that they don't get everything they want. "I'm *outraged*, I expect everything for free!" MMOs are the most expensive to develop and operate. You wanted it to be "free" somehow, well congratulations you get exactly what you asked for...

Most F2P players will brag about "not ever paying", as if to proclaim the game has some value and that they don't "submit" to giving the company any money. Well guess what! Someone has to buy stuff, otherwise your precious game wouldn't exist!

 

[Caiphus]

There are plenty of games that are truly free to play. The way they make money is through cosmetic hoopla, which is perfectly fine in my eyes.

Well, I mean. It's a distinction sort of without a difference. It's been mentioned and done to death, myself contributing, that no game is really free to play. Someone has to pay for it.

Now, the distinction is whether the player, who chooses to play for free, is treated more or less like scum.

The games that realise that free players actually add content for paying players are the ones that are more likely to succeed. MMOs have inertia after all. People want to play the most popular ones. Those that desperately try to make everyone pay through pay walls, forced tedium, or locking everything fun away are not.

I hate F2P people. They've ruined MMO's by demanding the "Free to Play" model. Completely rubbish, turned a respectable past time into some grubby, incomplete money-grabbing nonsense.

EDIT:

Well, MMOs haven't really helped themselves by being mostly WoW clones for the past 5 years.

 

[piinyouri]

I'd say Neverwinter is pretty close to free.
Level cap is 60, I'm level 42 and I haven't noticed any kind of pressure or observed any tedium gates. I mean enchanting can get a bit] pricey in later levels, but if you do your daily's, you should have enough to keep that in line. daily pvp, dungeons, skirmishes and foundry quests all give between 2000-3000 astral diamonds, which really isn't bad.)

Once I reach the level cap, I'm going to start hoarding my AD so I can buy some zen and get a couple more character slots.
All without sinking a dime into the game. : D

 

[IWCAS]

I think League of Legends does a great job of staying Free to Play. As long as F2P games are actually pay to win, I'm fine with them. As mentioned before Blacklight does a wonderful job of staying 100 percent free. Warframe does a decent job, but when you do go to pay for something, they anally rape you. The game is so much fun though, even if it is a giant grind fest with horribly repetitive enemies. Warframe has tons of problems but that is for another thread. DoTA 2 isn't what I'd consider free. I'm pretty sure I paid 30 bucks for it, and if you haven't played Digital: A Love Story, you are missing out. There are quite a lot of legitimately 100 percent free to play games out there.

 

[WindKnight]

I've often wondered if it would be feasible to give ever user the exact same experience, don't lock anything or hide it behind a tedium wall and them simply ask for a donation of the users choice, if they feel its warranted. There have been a few cases where the generosity of the fan base has far out numbered what was expected even if the media was sold in retail. I mean, look at StarCitizen as an example of what people will cough up.

They have to get their development costs back somehow. For games that often cost upwards of 50 million to make, I'm not sure if "by donation" would get it done. Especially since a vast majority of gamers appear to feel that any amount of money is too much money to pay.

But we're seeing the opposite of this in other area's. I mean, people contribute vast sums of money to games that don't exist yet on Kickstarter.
If the game is good, people will contribute.

And we've seen people steal a huge game bundle where you get to choose how much you want to pay, a game pretty much die because pirates who ran afoul of its copy protection spread bad word of mouth far and wide and wouldn't admit their piracy when called on it, and more.

 

[A-D.]

However i once did some math on that, all regions till 30, not spending a single turbine point and doing it on 2 characters

You do realize that it's possible to purchase more character slots for TP? So, the more characters you run through each additional quest pack purchased only further increases the amount of TP it's possible to earn.

Your math is incomplete and you should feel bad.

nobody could ever grind enough points to get it truly free,

I did, and had ~15k TP last time I played

My math is wrong because i explicitly avoided factoring in other purchases which would require you to grind even more? Alright. A additional slot costs if i am not mistaken, havent checked recently, about 200-300 points, thats at least 2 zones worth of grind, if not 3. The fact that you admit to having that amount of TP last time you played disproves your argument that my math is off. Because you had to re-grind every point spent.

But yes, kudos to you for wasting the equivalent of 2 months on the game to grind enough points to buy stuff. You can invest time rather than money, but not everyone has that time, so please do not assume that just because it can be done, everyone could do it. But lets assume your argument is correct, do me a solid, do the math on 2 characters, on one server, all zones till level 30 without actually paying anything and then tell me whether you can actually buy a questpack and in fact if you could even buy more than one without having to literally start another character on another server.

 

[5ilver]

Not all F2P games are actually F2P. Sadly, most people are very willing to defend a "f2p" model that is realistically forcing you to pay to play.