The Free-To-Play Knee Jerk

[AlbertoDeSanta]

So, recently, I saw someone basically have a knee jerk reaction to someone mentioning "Free-To-Play" games as a good idea. Now, I am curious, why do people hate F2P? It works, at least in the cases that I've mostly seen it. The two most notable cases that I've experienced are:

Dungeons and Dragons Online - It's a mediocre MMO, but it actually works. You get a really large chunk of quests to start playing with, and you could buy what is essentially expansion packs. There's a tonne of content in the game, you can get pretty sweet loot, and it's pretty fun with a few pals. It's also Free-To-Play.

Team Fortress 2 - I've played this game for roughly 600 hours, and have had immense fun with it. EVERY update is free and there's a nice variety of maps. Community content is supported and allowed and it's just fun as hell. It's also Free-To-Play.

So, why do you hate F2P?

 

[Caiphus]

I don't hate F2P, in fact it can provide a much needed boost to player levels, but it does tend to come with a few drawbacks, including:

People are liable to become less invested in a game if they aren't paying a subscription. They may care less about the community, about being polite, etc etc.

Customer service tends to take a hit. Although this could be due to the fact that many games are failing financially before they switch to F2P so there's a correlation/causation element here.

Gold/credit/whatever spammers generally see a marked increase after the move to F2P.

Some F2P models are less consumer friendly than others. A comparison between, say, SWToR and RIFT will give you an idea of how that can look.

 

[Neverhoodian]

I don't hate F2P. If implemented well, it can be a great business model. Some of my favorite games are F2P, such as Team Fortress 2 and World of Tanks.

The problem is that many developers use the F2P model to fleece customers of their money through dishonest means. The most notorious of these is making the game pay-to-win, allowing the player to buy upgrades that guarantees a leg up on free players. Other methods include overpricing, overly restricting content for free players, an over-reliance on "Skinner Box" style game progression, and invasive advertizing to name a few.

 

[Dirty Hipsters]

Free to play is something that very few games do right unfortunately. It tends to boil down to "pay to win" where the only way to stay competitive at the game is to buy the newest items as they come out, rather then spend the time to earn them, which ends up completely destroying any PvP balance and favoring the players who are spending money by such a large margin that the developers are essentially telling people "pay us or get out."

Then of course there's usually the elitism from players who do spend money on the game and who look down on the people playing for free as parasites, and this happens regardless of what the pay items are, it's just a symptom of the free to play market in general.

And obviously another thing is how much the developers push players to purchase content. A lot of free to play games will have so many in-game ads, and so many minor annoyances where the devs push the pay items and features on you that many people just feel insulted or annoyed all the time when in the game, and stop playing it.

So yeah, not all free to play games are bad or anything, but a lot of them have problems and stigmas attached to them, and they are notoriously difficult to balance properly while making both the free players and the pay players happy.

 

[Strazdas]

I dont hate fre to play. However the reaction i cain understand. this is because most (and for good reason) think that Free to play means Pay to Win. Almot every free to play game had this, even the ones i actually liked and played for many years.
Another thing is that on average, free to play ends up costing more. they get more money from average paying costumer (bought something at least once) than they would by subscription model from same amount of people. there is of course some base that never ever buys anything. i never buy cosmetic stuff for example, looks dont matter to me.

 

[ShinyCharizard]

I hate Free to Play because bar a few particular games, it's not free to play. More like free to start playing but you have to pay 10 times more than you would for the same amount of content compared to a traditional game. It's almost always a bullshit rip-off.

 

[Smooth Operator]

Well if you add all the groups of:
- people who never really tried the games
- those who can't manage their budget
- those who got screwed
- and the usual internet extremist tone
It really isn't hard to see why a significant number of people would believe everything F2P is evil.

But at the same time we do need to address the fact that the F2P market produces the same amount of garbage as everyone else, even the top games have plenty of problems that need to be addressed and most shy away from it because it's such a touchy subject.
The TF2 model of buying cats in a box I consider complete bullshit, they damn well know people will get tempted and screwed with that system almost on every single occasion.

 

[Battenberg]

I like free to play. I hate pay to win (or pay to progress).

Unfortunately the two aren't mutually exclusive and often seem to go hand in hand which always makes me wary of a free to play game although the fact that they cost me nothing means that any half interesting game will definitely get me to play for half an hour or so, something that 'regular' games can't guarantee.

Most recently the new Plants vs. Zombies game did this in quite an irritating way, allowing progress but at the cost of either dozens of hours of replays of levels (which gets tedious quickly) or at the cost of £x per level. Dust 514 on the other hand is a F2P that I would say manages to pull it off well. There's nothing stopping you playing/ winning without spending a penny but if you do like the game there's a variety of extra guns/ outfits you can get to keep the game fresh for longer. If only it was a more interesting game I expect it would be one of the very few F2Ps I have ever put a penny into.

 

[Atmos Duality]

When a game is multi-player only, F2P can be a fine model.
It lets the player try before getting invested.

On the other hand, most of those games are grind-centric, like their subscription based cousins.
It's a necessary trade-off since the game aims to make money, and they're offering the core game for free.
So the best way to make money is to inconvenience the player, and peddle conveniences from behind a pay-wall.

Done properly, the grind doesn't become much of an issue and especially dedicated players will pay out big time; several times of what a normal "full fledged game" would cost, which makes up for all the "freeloaders*".

(*who aren't actually just free-loading, because their presence makes multiplayer-centric games more appealing. This is what made League of Legends the overwhelming success it is).

Done improperly...well, there's tons of ways to fuck over the player.
Striking a good balance between play and pay is harder than establishing needlessly oppressive features.

 

[Zukabazuka]

I know I'm going to get some hate for it but for me I believe Planet Side 2 is somewhat pay to win in it. Some of the few points would be

1. Those weapons you can buy, they cost around 250-1000CC and you never get discount for these with CC.
2. Paying users can buy those weapons with SC and often they are at discount daily or every third day. With that they get more points over to spend on upgrades, Something that is pretty good to have in the game. Upgrades cost from 1CC up to 1000. and it increase every time, something along the line 1 20 40 100 250 500 1000.
3. F2P users get around 12CC every day you log in, a paying user can get up to 48CC daily when logging in. That is a massive boost for paying users.
4. They can also get increased resource gain by 200% and being able to buy tanks or jeeps sooner than other.

So while they can't buy upgrades with cash, they can get increased gain and use their cash to buy other stuff and spend CC on upgrades only.

There is a lot of stuff to upgrade if you wanna be able to stand up to some of the players in the server. Fully upgraded person can deal a lot more of damage than some rookie in the game. So for a F2P player you really have to grind the game to dust and then grind it some more just to get a character with good upgrades.

 

[madwarper]

There's good F2P and bad F2P.

I'd list Turbine's F2P model (both DDO and LotRO) as good F2P, since the free sections are a demo of the game, and allow you an opportunity to earn currency in their store to purchase more content. As far as bad F2P, I'd name all those "free" app games marketed towards kids with micro-transactions that end up cost their parents thousands of dollars before they realize what their kids are doing.

 

[babinro]

I'm completely in favor of free to play gaming but it's easily abused.

Free to play does not = pay to win
Free to play does not = pay to remove grind
Free to play does not = slow progression

Path of Exile is an example of a F2P game done well. I'm not personally a fan of the games mechanics but that's not important here. The game feels like it could have been sold on Steam like Torchlight 2. It feels and plays like an actual game but happens to be free. They make money (assuming players are supporting them enough to earn a profit) from aesthetic sales. It gives you a generous amount of stash space and character slots right off the bat.

Having said all of the above...even 'bad' free to play is good for the industry. It's nice that less fortunate gamers can enjoy gaming entirely free even if their experience is poor due to an abusive free to play model. I'd rather people have the option to play a game then not at all.

 

[Techno Squidgy]

I have no problem with the F2P model, but I do have a problem with the Pay To Win model (i.e. badly done free to play/"freemium").
TF2 went through a strange period during it's transition to F2P, but ultimately I think it did more good than harm.

 

[Gethsemani_v1legacy]

I still consider All Points Bulletin: Reloaded the best F2P game I've played so far. Going "premium" gives you more customization options as well as a modest XP and money boost and you can choose to "rent" premium weapons for a month at a time. The difference between premium weapons and the regular versions in game? None, apart from aesthetics and that the premium weapons come with some attachments that usually require you to be pretty far into the unlock trees before you get them the normal way. Considering that attachments in ABP aren't game breakers but rather reinforce a specific play style (get more zoom but loose accuracy on the move or get less recoil on the move but smaller magazine, for example) it all works out rater nicely.

On the other hand, just reading about games like Star Trek Online where paying to get viable ships is pretty much a must always makes me not want to play those games.

 

[Erttheking]

The same reason a lot of people hate DLC. It's a good concept and it has been done well before, but then a bunch of greedy corporate scumbags came along and abused the idea so much that now a lot of people think it's guilty until proven innocent.

 

[Tayh]

Transitioning to Free-to-Play tends to turn the focus from large, content-filled updates over to a cashshop-focused model, where everything will require real money, and it will cost you 10-100x times more to unlock all the content that used to be freely available for ~15$/month.

Also, grinds.
Most often, the primary reason for subscribing to a FTP game is to alleviate some of the superfluous and needless grinding which the developers introduced in order to sell subscriptions to the free playerbase - and even then, a subscription often isn't enough to reduce the grind to pre-FTP levels.

I still consider All Points Bulletin: Reloaded the best F2P game I've played so far.

I still think the Scout is bullshit.
Cash-only sniper rifle that allows you to sprint as well as shooting with sniper accuracy while running and jumping.