115 replies to this topic

[Kell Pryde]

Although I do not think the WoT model for F2P is all that bad I can see how people would disagree. Things that I don't mind seeing in a F2P game are;

-Extra XP gains for paying customers
-The ability to buy C-Bills to get more ammo, repairs, etc (but not allowing you to get the best tech in the game immediately)
-Any kind of aesthetic upgrades you want including armor variations on your mech

All these are seen in WoT, and it really isn't that bad.

[Pvt Dancer]

Sylow, on 03 April 2012 - 05:08 AM, said:

Facts instead of guesses, please.

All we can do is guess at this point. Hopefully you have read all of the Dev blogs and other info here to get up to speed on the few things the Devs /have/ said on the subject. To stress this, since it seems to need to be pounded through skulls, is that the Devs are adamant that you will not be able to buy your way to win.

Sylow, on 03 April 2012 - 05:08 AM, said:

So anyways, returning to your assumption that only a subscription can bring in enough income to keep the game up and running, i'd really like to answer that with the question: how can currently existing games, like the ones mentioned above, be more profitable and depend on F2P to survive, if only subscriptions can bring in enough money to stay operational?

All of the games you listed, besides LoL, started out as Pay to Play games. I haven't played LoL, nor do I have any desire to play it. I have to /assume/ it was a designed F2P game as well. If that is not the case, then LoL, like those other games you listed, are /BAD/ examples. No one knows if they made their money back in the short time they were Pay to Play to warrent their continued existance. City of Heroes and Dungeons and Dragons Online were P2P for a good 4-5 years before they went free, while a game like Champions Online didn't last 2 years as a P2P game and I don't even know if Champs is still up. I remember playing TF2 while Counter Strike still was a force for FPSs, and it sure as hell wasn't free then... that game has to be a good 10 years old, so Valve and Steam got their money's worth out of it.

WoTs on the other hand was designed to be a F2P game from the start, and has been /successful/ at it, successful enough to promote the 2nd Generation of F2P games, MWO being in that Generation...

[Sylow]

Pvt Dancer, on 03 April 2012 - 10:16 PM, said:

All we can do is guess at this point. Hopefully you have read all of the Dev blogs and other info here to get up to speed on the few things the Devs /have/ said on the subject. To stress this, since it seems to need to be pounded through skulls, is that the Devs are adamant that you will not be able to buy your way to win.

Guessing is the part about how MWO is planing to do things. That i asked for facts is on existing F2P models, where your concept is, let's just say, outdated. On the point that the Devs state that there will be no pay to win, i very much rely on that, i've hit the "now pay to win" wall in some other games so hard that i by now first of all evaluate the item shop of F2P games and only start playing if i don't find indications of such stuff. (Which is why i never started WoT. Gold ammo is pure pay to win. )

Pvt Dancer, on 03 April 2012 - 10:16 PM, said:

All of the games you listed, besides LoL, started out as Pay to Play games. I haven't played LoL, nor do I have any desire to play it. I have to /assume/ it was a designed F2P game as well. If that is not the case, then LoL, like those other games you listed, are /BAD/ examples. No one knows if they made their money back in the short time they were Pay to Play to warrent their continued existance. City of Heroes and Dungeons and Dragons Online were P2P for a good 4-5 years before they went free, while a game like Champions Online didn't last 2 years as a P2P game and I don't even know if Champs is still up. I remember playing TF2 while Counter Strike still was a force for FPSs, and it sure as hell wasn't free then... that game has to be a good 10 years old, so Valve and Steam got their money's worth out of it.

On LoL, that one was designed F2P from the start. On the rest, you can even find in my text why they are good examples.

You now guess they made their money while being P2P, which with the exception of TF2 simply is wrong. LotRO is the very best example of them all. After being out on the market for not even two years, the game turned out to be of "limited profitability", to say it nicely. So, in September 2010 they went F2P, in October 2010 they reported that simply going F2P doubled their revenue and by Janurary 2011 they reported that their revenues trippled.

Mind you they reported that their >revenues< doubled and trippled! Going F2P by itself doesn't increase operative costs but "only" requires a fixed investment for installing the new shop, so the real question is on how their >profits< changed if their revenues doubled within 1 month and even trippled within 4 months.

While i lack the numbers to calculate the change in their profits, it is possible to do some educated guessing. The game was not reported as "struggling" (unlike the later examples), so it's save to assume that their income covered their operative costs and was over it by at least 10%. (Being below 10% already is "struggling" in terms of economy, although in the MMO landscape it usually describes being unable to cover your operative costs. ) Thus, even if we are very optimistic and say, the game was actually doing well and 25% of its revenue was profit before the change, their had +600% profit within 4 months. (Would we speak of a "struggling" game, we'd be somewhere between "+2000%" and "turning a loss into a huge profit". ) While this is just a guessing game, it's at least an educated guess, and we're still looking at a game which was profitable when going F2P.

If you now look at DDO, DC Universe, Champions Online or City of Heroes you will find the very similar stories. While only Turbine (the owners of LotRO) openly speak about their margins, the signs are all over the place. Several of them were at the verge of closing down (speak: not profitable any more, unlike LotRO), didn't see a expansions over their whole pay to play duration. For some of them you cold also go to their forums and go back to that time period to find thread after thread reporting the very same bug / exploit which nobody was around to take care of. The very same games, after going F2P, suddenly were able to afford the manpower to fix problems, usually rather quick, and most of them started getting new content after being F2P.

So your point basically only is true for TF2, which indeed already made its money long before it switched to its current concept. Still you have to admit, the current concept still brings in money, while any subscription system would have killed it a long time ago.

That's why i contradict the whole "need some kind of subscription" idea. This idea is old fashioned, it thinks that you have to make money from every player logged in. Modern F2P games have understood that every player is capital, no matter if he pays or not. If you manage to maintain a sufficient size of user base, those who pay will more than make up for those not paying. (In case of doubt, look up some interviews done with the bosses of Zynga. Somebody who can make $600 million revenue per year [numbers of 2010] by making only F2P games could eventually have an idea of what they are talking about when they explain that only a fraction of their userbase ever payed for anything in their games but they consider the non-paying customers their most valuable captial, as they keep the games alive and vibrant, making the paying customers stay. )

Pvt Dancer, on 03 April 2012 - 10:16 PM, said:

WoTs on the other hand was designed to be a F2P game from the start, and has been /successful/ at it, successful enough to promote the 2nd Generation of F2P games, MWO being in that Generation...

And it's a rather bad example of it. For me it's in the same Cathegory as Shajya or Allods: pay 2 win. The premium example on how to do it was mentioned many times already: LoL. No subscription, no advantage to be bought. Sure, you can buy additional heroes, but you still play one at a time. Heroes are not gold ammo. Any hero has not only advantages but also disadvantages, and you still have to choose which one you play. I could write another 5 pages to fully explain it, but that'd be out of place here. You can simply accept my statement or look up the LoL forums and find out there, what players think about new heroes and their balance. For of course, "PvP is unbalanced", {if players stop moaning about balance, you know that the game is dead... *g* } but since every hero is by far overpowered and at the same time badly inferior to every other hero there, i guess that's allright...

So, while we sure play the guessing game here, how MWO will do it, i still can say, i hope they take a good look at the LoL example. No power, all cosmetics, and that game sure makes its money.

Edited by Sylow, 04 April 2012 - 02:52 AM.

[Rambo Calrissian]

Carebear, on 02 April 2012 - 11:41 PM, said:

WoT may sounds like lame but trust me its quaranteed way to get money out of customers. Usually if we're lucky we get free demo, f2p games actually let us play/test is as long we want. For me it comes down to money simple as that, 10-20 euros for devs should be enough per month, if I play 3-4 month they get full game price, if 4 month longer they get double.

Well ... as soon as I get the feeling, that I have to pay "per month", I'm out.
I wouldn't even put one cent in such a game.

I'm perfectly fine with paying up to 60€ for a game and up to 20€ for an expansion (as long as both offer enough and good content), but I would never "invest" in something, if I >had< to keep paying as long as I want to play it.

LoL is indeed a perfect example of a good f2p model.
It doesn't require any premium bs, and even if you only play like one or two hours a day you can still get a new hero once in a while. You have to make decisions, but it's not like it would take ages to unlock something new.

I think this game has the right balance in those regards. It's motivating to pay (especially in the beginning), but you never have the feeling, that you had to.

And still it's one of the most successful f2p games out there.

[Strumtruppen]

i being 15 and no money myself will have a hard time conviceing my parents to spend their money on a god-sent game like this. So i really,really want this to be free. please.

[Mindlink]

Strumtruppen,

They're going through a lot of trouble to make MWO a free-to-play game, not pay-to-win. You won't have to pay a dime to dive into the carnage with the rest of us.

[DarkBazerker]

Rambo Calrissian, on 04 April 2012 - 01:01 PM, said:

Well ... as soon as I get the feeling, that I have to pay "per month", I'm out.
I wouldn't even put one cent in such a game.

I'm perfectly fine with paying up to 60€ for a game and up to 20€ for an expansion (as long as both offer enough and good content), but I would never "invest" in something, if I >had< to keep paying as long as I want to play it.

LoL is indeed a perfect example of a good f2p model.
It doesn't require any premium bs, and even if you only play like one or two hours a day you can still get a new hero once in a while. You have to make decisions, but it's not like it would take ages to unlock something new.

I think this game has the right balance in those regards. It's motivating to pay (especially in the beginning), but you never have the feeling, that you had to.

And still it's one of the most successful f2p games out there.

I couldn't have said it any better myself. Now i understand why a pay to play game charges x amount per month but i also know that people can't be online 24/7 and somtimes you may have such events in life which would keep you from playing for lets say months at a time. If you stop pay the month feed most pay to play games even though they have a grace peroid will delete your account and or gaming data, and your sit at your desk wounder what was it all for.

Free to play games started out being free to pay ackully, but uselly is was because it was made by 1 or 2 people and was pretty much a bare boned game with outdated graphics, somtimes they where even college projects. Then came the pay to win free to play games these are what most people think about. What these are is a working game that the developer choped up and made almost unplay able with out cash items, which at the very basic just restores the game back to its orginal fuctionality.

In the end pay to play games charge you a set rate more or less just to store your games data on there server. Free to play games charge you for everything. Both games cost money and both games need money.

Personly I like what guild wars did they sold you a game with you had to buy lets say $60 and from there on out it was free. They charge you for extra slots for charactors, expasion packs, and pretty much stuff that looked nice but didn't have anything to do with gamplay Play to win is what i would like to call this

I have no idea what MWO is going to turn in to but i hope that is fallows the play to win idea since not only would this please me and alot of people but it would sell.

[Grimm Gunn]

I agree with the "free play,, but some $$$ is involved" concept. BUT.... I've seen in my freinds online games that are "free" that after you get to a certain point.. They paid $500.00 for a one time "game upgrade".
Nickle and Dimes here and there are fine for some of us on fixed incomes ( DAV here...) but if it get to be too much ,, I dont know those of us without alot of free cash to toss into the game are going to keep up..

[Grimm Gunn]

Sylow, on 03 April 2012 - 05:08 AM, said:

Facts instead of guesses, please. There are good and bad examples on how to do F2P out there and i've taken a look at plenty of them over the years. WoT, due to the criterias mentioned, is a bad example. Granted, it's not as bad as Allods or Shajya, stating the worst examples i ever played, but it's still far from being "good".

League of Legends is one of the best positive example, but others were also mentioned in this thread. Team Fortress 2 was mentioned several times and i also played several others with very sensible cash shop designs.

They do fine without any "premium" nonsense, don't sell power and don't give any technical advantaged to the paying player. At the same time, they make profit, even more than many subscription based games. I personally for example also spent some money on DC Universe and Star Treck Online. After they went F2P. And they are just two examples of a long list of games, which were about to die due to low subscription numbers and not only became very profitable after going F2P but even got more new content and upgrades after being F2P than while running on subscriptions? (DCU currently has the third expansion in development, that's three more than it had during its subscription-only time. And STO right now is successfully and profitably relaunching into markets where it formerly already died. )
[Although i also have to say, DCU is only a mediocre example. While you don't hit a hard "pay now or leave" wall, you will get to a point where spending at least some money is essential to keep it enjoyable. But paying for additional classes and more content feels allright, as long as you can also compete with other players without having to pay. ]


So anyways, returning to your assumption that only a subscription can bring in enough income to keep the game up and running, i'd really like to answer that with the question: how can currently existing games, like the ones mentioned above, be more profitable and depend on F2P to survive, if only subscriptions can bring in enough money to stay operational?

After this all being said, i wouldn't mind some kind of subscription, which would look like this:

- When being F2P you can buy XP boosters for a decent price. (Say, 25 cent per hour, as a wild guess. )
- When being subscriped, you have the same XP boosts active permanently.
- When being F2P, you need to buy a "mech repaint kit" for like 2€ to give your new mech the paintjob you want.
- When being subscribed, you can repaint your mech as much as you like to.
- When being F2P, you start out with 2 to 4 slots for mechs. Want to store any more mechs, you buy additional storage slots for 2€ each.
- Each month of subscription gives you another 2 mech slots.

If the subscription then is like 10€ (a little below 14$, for the US people here, so well within the normal scope), players can make their choice. For any "regular" the subscription might be the better deal, but the very casual player is not being scared away. I could write quite an essay why the non-paying casual player is one of the most valuable assets a game can have, but i doubt anybody here would want to read that, so i leave it at the statement: for best success, a F2P game must offer casualy a way to play the game without them ever feeling forced to spend money. (No "now you have to pay" wall, please... )

\Bravo !!
well spoke !!! I dont mind spending SOME cash.. and I think alot of the paying features should be for bling,, more so than the items you need to play the game.

[DarkBazerker]

well since this game "is" foucing on urban warfair the devs could ask for some sponsers and post em up on buildings and what not like they do in real life like coke a cola, or pizzahut, or shell, texaco the list goes on.

[Fetladral]

Maybe certain planets to fight on? Who know and can really say. I would say most likely extra mech bays and some variants

[Pvt Dancer]

@Sylow

Where have I /ever/ said that Gold ammo or Gold tanks in WoTs are a good thing or be used here? I am talking about the Premium account system and how they use Gold in that game for that system. That system is simular to the Turbine point system (since you play LotRO) where your real money gives you X amount of 'points/Gold/Credits/Whatever' to make your purchases with. I just haven't seen a system that has a minimum of $7 like WoTs. Please don't put words in my mouth or twist what I say to mean something I have not said.

And Zynga are rip-off artists that never created a damn thing and have outright stolen most of their products. It is easy to make money when you don't spend any. They also wouldn't be anything if it wasn't for Facebook.
http://www.forbes.co...pycat-strategy/
http://www.escapistm...ontinue-To-Drop

I know all about LotRO as Turbine owns both LotRO and DDO. I have been with DDO since beta and DDO is older than LotRO by a couple of years. Same company and they cross over alot. For example the collectible and crafting systems are pretty much the same. That is still a poor example of 'this game made money', because they had multiple games. These games /still/ have a Premium account system and for example DDO has dropped it's price down to $100 for a year and $10 for 3 months ($30 bucks total).

So, in effect, my 'guess' is as good as your 'guess'. I actually do have a half-assed idea of what I am talking about, apparently as much as you do. You feel that Premium accounts are not needed and outdated, I think your wrong. I feel they should have and will have some form of Premium account that will give a boost to C-bills/XP.

The LoL example that people keep talking about, I have a question.... Skins have been trouted as an example on how the game makes money. But I have also been told that those skins are not permanent... so what do you actually get for spending that money? Articals I have read about this game have not been positive concerning the business/game model. It comes across as a glorified Zynga type game.

Edited by Pvt Dancer, 04 April 2012 - 10:53 PM.

[Wyzak]

I don't want to pay per month, at all. I'm glad they are not going down that road. I would rather pay $5 for each individual mech then pay monthly fees.

[Elizander]

I'm gonna buy stuff anyway even if I don't know what it is I'll be buying.

[CCC Dober]

Personally speaking, I'd drop 50-60 bucks on this game, like a regular title and expect no limitations as far as future content and gameplay go and then maybe some more on convenience/vanity/non-game related items. Things like tech crew training (to reduce repair costs permanently), skins, trophy Mechs/weapons, Solaris stable/bets, stocks and a couple more along these lines. None of that would affect actual combat.

[Carebear]

Strumtruppen, on 04 April 2012 - 01:17 PM, said:

i being 15 and no money myself will have a hard time conviceing my parents to spend their money on a god-sent game like this. So i really,really want this to be free. please.

Check Perfect World, G1, or Steam's F2P games, they are out there, not to mention half dozen EA F2P title, like Need for Speed World. mmohuts.com is full of f2p games.

Devs needs to get money so they can make content fast. I dont want to wait forever for a content. I epxect to see something really really nice within 3 month. Why I keep repeating WoT is that they started with staff size of 200, now after year and half their staff is 800. I'd love to see something similiar here.

Edited by Carebear, 05 April 2012 - 02:04 AM.

[Sylow]

Pvt Dancer, on 04 April 2012 - 10:22 PM, said:

@Sylow

Where have I /ever/ said that Gold ammo or Gold tanks in WoTs are a good thing or be used here? I am talking about the Premium account system and how they use Gold in that game for that system. That system is simular to the Turbine point system (since you play LotRO) where your real money gives you X amount of 'points/Gold/Credits/Whatever' to make your purchases with. I just haven't seen a system that has a minimum of $7 like WoTs. Please don't put words in my mouth or twist what I say to mean something I have not said.

Oki, i admit when reading the conversation again, i've interpreted more into your postings than there was in mere words. While the "subscription required" hints towards stuff which is essentialy necessary for successful gameplay, you didn't elaborate further about it. So i am sorry if my conclusion was wrong.

Pvt Dancer, on 04 April 2012 - 10:22 PM, said:

And Zynga are rip-off artists that never created a damn thing and have outright stolen most of their products. It is easy to make money when you don't spend any. They also wouldn't be anything if it wasn't for Facebook.

True. And so is most of the present day gaming industry. Really new concepts are very rare, most of them is recycled from one or another source. That being said, i did not refer to the quality of their games, but their marketing concept, and that one is successful, which in terms of a games survivability is what matters most.

Pvt Dancer, on 04 April 2012 - 10:22 PM, said:

I know all about LotRO as Turbine owns both LotRO and DDO. I have been with DDO since beta and DDO is older than LotRO by a couple of years. Same company and they cross over alot. For example the collectible and crafting systems are pretty much the same. That is still a poor example of 'this game made money', because they had multiple games. These games /still/ have a Premium account system and for example DDO has dropped it's price down to $100 for a year and $10 for 3 months ($30 bucks total).

So, in effect, my 'guess' is as good as your 'guess'. I actually do have a half-assed idea of what I am talking about, apparently as much as you do. You feel that Premium accounts are not needed and outdated, I think your wrong. I feel they should have and will have some form of Premium account that will give a boost to C-bills/XP.

My statement about LotRO still stands valid in terms of profitability. Turbine was not speaking about revenue of the company but specifically of LotRO before and after going F2P. And yes, i know that the option of a subscription still is available, but unlike what you presented, it is not required in any way. While i don't play any more, i have been there for a while and at least among the people i played with, nobody went for the subscription. Also, if the subscription would've been the great money generator before F2P, why would revenue have trippled after leaving the model?

Next to that, i have presented my idea of "subscription" in my first answer, which is based on "absolutely optional", both for the player to take and for the company to offer.

Pvt Dancer, on 04 April 2012 - 10:22 PM, said:

The LoL example that people keep talking about, I have a question.... Skins have been trouted as an example on how the game makes money. But I have also been told that those skins are not permanent... so what do you actually get for spending that money? Articals I have read about this game have not been positive concerning the business/game model. It comes across as a glorified Zynga type game.

Yes, the skins are temporary, so from the "what do i get, what will i have" point of view, it's a bad investment. At the same time, i dare to say that investing into any online game is wrong from that point of view, as we all know that any online game at some time will shut down, be it in 6 months of 15 years, so nothing you get there ever is permanent. But alas, nobody lives forever and when you die, what can you take along?

Thus i'd like to just make a small comparison: you buy some icecream. You sure don't buy it for the sustainance (would be a bad deal) but for the fun of eating it. I yet have to find the icecream vendor who gives me stuff for lifetime just because i spent the money for one portion of icecream. (If you know one, let me know! ) Since it's fairly cheap, it can be afforded and people do so. Switching over to LoL, you pay the same money to make your hero, your avatar, in a game look more awesome than the average John Doe. After one month, you neither have the ice cream nor your heroes skin any more. But in either case, you had fun, and you're even more likely to remember how you owned when smaking people with your extra-cool avatar than still remembering how good that icecream was on that one friday evening when going home from work...

So, from a purely materialistic point of view, spending money for the skin is wrong, but in that case please also never buy icecream, since it's a much worse investment.

The sales concept of LoL works and is profitable. From a business point of view revenue and profit numbers tell the clearest message, and their message is that works. Sure the skins are only for a limited time, but hey, as long as the price is fine, people will buy it.

[Rambo Calrissian]

Pvt Dancer, on 04 April 2012 - 10:22 PM, said:

The LoL example that people keep talking about, I have a question.... Skins have been trouted as an example on how the game makes money. But I have also been told that those skins are not permanent... so what do you actually get for spending that money? Articals I have read about this game have not been positive concerning the business/game model. It comes across as a glorified Zynga type game.

Of course they're permanent.
Otherwise nobody would buy them.

[Sylow]

Rambo Calrissian, on 05 April 2012 - 04:26 AM, said:

Of course they're permanent.
Otherwise nobody would buy them.

They are now? Interesting. I haven't been in the game since about 2 years, but at that time a lot of stuff was on a timer. If they found that they had to make them permanent, then i guess the "temporary doesn't sell" is true.

[RedHairDave]

http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_detailpage&v=AWMBeLrZoyw

http://www.youtube.c...e&v=AWMBeLrZoyw

if they follow this, all will be well in the world