f2p misconceptions

JoffyToffy69

There is a negative stigma around f2p. It's almost taboo to discuss it.
I think maybe people think that f2p is all about cash shops for vanity crap and pay to win items.
I think that if ESO goes f2p on console, it will be more like DLC options.

I loved the DLC for Skyrim. It was optional and didn't negatively affect your gameplay if you chose not to get it.
Having a sub makes it not optional to play the base game without the extras.
Having certain sections as DLC such as joining the Dark Brotherhood, I think is acceptable if done right.

Is DLC more acceptable than the f2p mindset?

Samadhi

Not familiar with the DLC model for an MMORPG, could you explain further?

DLC for Dark Brotherhood for example would open up new content and skills for those that pay while other players would have no access to them?

How does PvP or grouping work in those scenarios? Does the use of such skills crash the game of a person who is not patched to support them, or does everyone receive patches to support them but must pay to experience more of the game and receive skills, gears and passives on par with other players?

Khami

Please don't compare a single player game and it's DLC to a MMO.

They are not remotely the same. A single player games has DLC added at most until18 months after launch. After that, the developers move on to the next single player game in the franchise. Franchises like Assassin Creed are releasing a new title very October since Assassin Creed 2 was released in 2009.

MMO must always add new content. It's not optional, it's mandatory in order for the game to survive longer than a year or two.

This game lacks end-game content in a serious way. The next update won't add anything new. Which means it will be close to 6 months before there is any new added. One dungeon in Nov doesn't remotely cut it. Nor creating dailies for dungeons. That just made doing the dungeons relevant.

F2P games tend to worry about pushing items in a cash shop vs releasing actually playable content. SW:TOR is very guilty of this. They added a new expansion last month and it's not enough for some of my friends to come back and play.

If this game doesn't add more soon, I'll leave again and chances are, if I leave a second time, I'm gone for good.

Korah_Eaglecry

JoffyToffy69 wrote: »

There is a negative stigma around f2p. It's almost taboo to discuss it.
I think maybe people think that f2p is all about cash shops for vanity crap and pay to win items.
I think that if ESO goes f2p on console, it will be more like DLC options.

I loved the DLC for Skyrim. It was optional and didn't negatively affect your gameplay if you chose not to get it.
Having a sub makes it not optional to play the base game without the extras.
Having certain sections as DLC such as joining the Dark Brotherhood, I think is acceptable if done right.

Is DLC more acceptable than the f2p mindset?

The stigma is rightly earned in this case.

The demographic of the game changes from one that plays the game for what it is to a demographic that plays for a short period of time before moving on.

The demographic that is sought after by the Developers are no longer those that will pay a sub (while in some cases F2P games continue to maintain a sub, rarely are sub holders benefiting from this as the true target are those without a sub). But instead players known as 'whales'. These are players dropping upwards to a few hundred dollars a month on the game for gambling mechanics and the latest weapon/object that could be loosely defined as P2W.

The average player of F2P games will play the game for a short period of time before moving on to the next game. So they have no investment or interest in 'new' content because what they play now is 'new' to them and they could careless once theyre gone.

The next group of players are players that come back once and a while to experience whatever new content that has been added. But since this content is typically small in size and mostly infused with grindy new mechanics. They dont stay for long before going on to other things.

The core players of the game are typically those who are loyal to the brand and will sub up along with spending money (sometimes as much as the whales) separately to 'support' their favorite game. This is usually the smallest group within the game as most others who were once loyal have moved on due to the changes or the perceived lack of living up to the brand it represents.

The Developers will add in mechanics that will allow you to exchange real life money for in-game money. In-game objects will sell for far less at vendors then before. And the in-game money will suddenly be tied to all sorts of grindy mechanics that will require you to take part in to get some of the better/ best gear in the game outside of the MicroTransaction Store. In-game money will be hard to come by with so many sinks and youll either have to spend hours upon hours a day grinding for in-game money. Or give in and buy in-game money with RL money. Everything you do will be easily overcome with opening your wallet. And eventually itll be a case of haves and have nots. Those who can afford to make it rain on the Developers will find themselves with everything their hearts could desire. While the rest are left trudging along never ever making it to where their goal.

Zershar_Vemod

Oh, this topic again.

jaygraeb14a_ESO

The day this game goes F2P is the day they lose one F2P player.
Don't even get me started on the destruction F2P brings...

1. non-english speaking players...
2. people with 50x accounts farming/botting....
3. non stop trolls re-rolling new toons/locked accounts...
4. people running around with laser-beam jedi outfits on because the devs want more "cash shop" money and ran out of ideas...

I could go on for hours...just stop with this "F2P" garbage. the subs are up, deal with having to pay 15.00 dollars/month or go play LoTRo.

Ruben

jaygraeb14a_ESO wrote: »

1. non-english speaking players...

Yeah, the last thing we want is non americans playing this game. Right?

Lord_Kreegan

RE: DLC for MMORPG

There are several examples, although they don't call them DLC's...

Off the top of my head (where the hair is thinnest):

Both of the Turbine games, DDO and LotRO, have "expansions" that are not required to play the game. [This may have changed since I haven't played in a couple of years, but I doubt that they've changed their business model.] Not just F2P players, but also subscribers do not automatically get them.

AoC has expansions that are not required to play the game. Subscribers do not automatically get them.

In both cases, they are purchased, so it is possible for a F2P player to have them (if they purchased them) and a subscriber not have them.

Good, bad, or otherwise, it's a common business model.

VileIntent

Korah_Eaglecry wrote: »

JoffyToffy69 wrote: »

There is a negative stigma around f2p. It's almost taboo to discuss it.
I think maybe people think that f2p is all about cash shops for vanity crap and pay to win items.
I think that if ESO goes f2p on console, it will be more like DLC options.

I loved the DLC for Skyrim. It was optional and didn't negatively affect your gameplay if you chose not to get it.
Having a sub makes it not optional to play the base game without the extras.
Having certain sections as DLC such as joining the Dark Brotherhood, I think is acceptable if done right.

Is DLC more acceptable than the f2p mindset?

The stigma is rightly earned in this case.

The demographic of the game changes from one that plays the game for what it is to a demographic that plays for a short period of time before moving on.

The demographic that is sought after by the Developers are no longer those that will pay a sub (while in some cases F2P games continue to maintain a sub, rarely are sub holders benefiting from this as the true target are those without a sub). But instead players known as 'whales'. These are players dropping upwards to a few hundred dollars a month on the game for gambling mechanics and the latest weapon/object that could be loosely defined as P2W.

The average player of F2P games will play the game for a short period of time before moving on to the next game. So they have no investment or interest in 'new' content because what they play now is 'new' to them and they could careless once theyre gone.

The next group of players are players that come back once and a while to experience whatever new content that has been added. But since this content is typically small in size and mostly infused with grindy new mechanics. They dont stay for long before going on to other things.

The core players of the game are typically those who are loyal to the brand and will sub up along with spending money (sometimes as much as the whales) separately to 'support' their favorite game. This is usually the smallest group within the game as most others who were once loyal have moved on due to the changes or the perceived lack of living up to the brand it represents.

The Developers will add in mechanics that will allow you to exchange real life money for in-game money. In-game objects will sell for far less at vendors then before. And the in-game money will suddenly be tied to all sorts of grindy mechanics that will require you to take part in to get some of the better/ best gear in the game outside of the MicroTransaction Store. In-game money will be hard to come by with so many sinks and youll either have to spend hours upon hours a day grinding for in-game money. Or give in and buy in-game money with RL money. Everything you do will be easily overcome with opening your wallet. And eventually itll be a case of haves and have nots. Those who can afford to make it rain on the Developers will find themselves with everything their hearts could desire. While the rest are left trudging along never ever making it to where their goal.

You left out the fact that new content is few and far between. Mediocre at best when it does release.

Please, Awesome this guy or gals write up. This is truely the horror of F2P in a mmo setting.
+1 Awesome from me.

StaticWax

Subscription or quit. Those are the only 2 options in my mind.

someuser

Simply put, if this game went FTP, my wife and I would instantly quit.

VileIntent

StaticWax wrote: »

Subscription or quit. Those are the only 2 options in my mind.

I agree, I would even go to $19.99 US per month before staying for F2P nightmares.

JoffyToffy69

I think my basic point was missed.
I like the product. I like the game.
I would stay regardless of sub or f2p, because I like the product.

There is this idea that f2p automatically means RL shops, pay to win, blah blah.
If the game became f2p without the crap, or pay to advance.

Proper integration would be key. WoW with their MoP expansion for example.
It was not necessary to get it. It was possible to play as the Panda race, aswell as obtain items from the new expansion without purchasing it.
Yes there was an increase in max level if you bought the expansion, but no one was disadvantaged in regards to pvp. They have their leveling system.
So does ESO
Expansion pack can be similar to DLC...
(Maybe not the best example as WoW has a sub too...)

Console related, Destiny. Its an online semi mmo. They have DLC. It is optional. Items are obtainable without the DLC. No one is handicapped.

Remember ESO does not have to conform to any pre set what is and what isn't MMO. Nor do they have to conform to a set f2p sell out structure.

Why do we pay subs?
To ensure work continues aswell as updates and expansions.

Why DLC?
Add longevity to the game.

So one is paying in hope for a product. The other is paying for a completed product.

Look, I am happy with sub. I have been subbed since day one. Have never stopped.
I just don't believe in sticking my fingers in my ears and drowning out any discussion of payment model changes.

someuser

JoffyToffy69 wrote: »

...I just don't believe in sticking my fingers in my ears and drowning out any discussion of payment model changes.

I do.

Subs are like HOV lanes. They cut down on the rift raft. I prefer a quality player base over a quantity driven one (which is necessary for pretty much any f2p gimmick to work).

I personally just don't buy into any of the reasons people state in support of f2p models... atleast not in a rpg/mmo like ESO.

I say keep it a sub, continue with the free major updates every 6 - 8 weeks, and watch the game bloom into something awesome.

Mettaricana

worst example of a free to play business model was DC universe they pumped out paid to DLC content so frequently that a new player would have to take out a loan just to be caught up on accessible content. i really hope eso doesn't go Free to play if it has to atleast go buy 2 play to help nip the botters in the ass and stop the bad press flamers from opposing companies/fanbases( EX: wow, wildstar etc) from causing s*** storms by trying to mock the game at every turn. overall the game needs polish and more content but not a reason to go F2P. truth be told ZOS lack of denying the free to play rumors to calm us down doesnt seem to help the suspicion that we may be on to sumthing...

mightyshadeb16_ESO

It's late for me, but I will bite.

Three major points:

1. For TESO, this conversion means that a subscription based game would go subscription-free with a cash shop. TESO will never truly be a Free to Play title unless more dedication goes into this conversion than what we have seen in added content so far. If you want a good F2P game, it has to be designed as such from the ground up. TESO would more than likely quick-fix it. The result would likely annoy F2P fans and subscription fans alike.

2. A MMORPG cannot survive of DLCs only. DLCs are small additions to a game usually created along the game and released at a later date in order to milk money out of fans of the game/franchise. It's useful to keep a few developers working on the game to fix bugs and make some final improvements before releasing a "game of the year" version including all the DLCs for the original price of the game, but a year later.

MMORPG requires much more than DLCs, they need bug fixes and improvements all over the game, additional and meaningful content and many quality of life features. A team large enough to provide such work requires more than the price of a few optional DLCs.

Just use mathematics. One DLC for $5 up to $10 every three months versus $15 a month and still content over about three months. You just cannot make as much money with DLCs as with subscriptions for the same amount of work developer-wise, unless you can safely assume there would be about four times as many players if it was DLC-funded.

3. DLC-funded MMORPG means a game that can only go forward. Fixing past bugs doesn't generate money, neither does adding quality of life features, which make MMORPGs the special games they are. It's a waste of development time when the only thing that bring money to pay the developers is the additional content, which requires to be optional to the main game (otherwise, it's not a DLC). If it's mandatory, then the game stops being free and/or goes against itself, locking players who don't pay out of their game, removing what they once had access to or quite possibly, what they once paid for.


I will continue being happy with a subscription-based MMORPG, thank you.

WhiskyBob

Didnt Paul Sage once say he'd rather let ESO die than go F2P?

ers101284b14_ESO

WhiskyBob wrote: »

Didnt Paul Sage once say he'd rather let ESO die than go F2P?

No. And he does not have the power to make the decision anyway.

WhiskyBob

Leonid Melikhov: Ever since the game’s launch, Elder Scrolls Online has received a fair bit of criticism for monthly-subscription. Do you guys have plans to change that sometime in the future?

Paul D. Sage: No, we don’t have any plans that I am aware of to change it in the future. You know the business model is what the business model is and it allows us to deliver high level content on regular basis right now. So there are no plans that I am aware of.


Leonid Melikhov: The Elder Scrolls Online will be one of the few titles that will have subscription based service. Considering that games like Star Wars the Old Republic started out the same way but went free-to-play since subscription based model didn’t work, why not lean towards more of a free-to-play concept?

Paul D. Sage: You know again, we have no plans to change subscription plans.

Ouranos

I think the problem is the pricing per month. More recent market research seems to indicate people would be more willing to pay somewhere between 12-14 USD/month where ESO is stuck at 15 USD/month.

If they dropped that number by just a dollar or two, players of other sub-based MMOs would then have a choice between triple-A titles with different sub numbers. Not to mention there isn't as much overhead getting into ESO as long as your system can run it--since it's new, it doesn't have a million expansions you have to purchase to get up to the latest content--expansions whose content you will never play at level or at a challenging level.

kevlarto_ESO

f2p is like the biggest lie ever to cross a gamer, sure you can play the basic game for free but if you want any game experience you will end up paying far more than 14.99 a month, I have played a bunch of f2p games all were crap to me and not worth spending a penny on.

I see the new Camelot Unchained game is also going to have a sub, I guess it will be bashed into oblivion as well.

Lord_Kreegan

The following is tongue-in-cheek for those too thick (white knights, fanbois) to realize it...

Free-to-play or "freemium" will get us a new GUI. For everyone that hates the current GUI, just think: ZOS will have to add all sorts of "BUY ME NOW!" buttons on all the existing GUIs and such buttons have to be in your face to be effective marketing tools. So, instead of a bare bones GUI, we'll have all kinds of dialogs and information panels on screen, each with its own couple of "BUY ME NOW!" buttons.

This is the only way we're going to get a new GUI for this game, so all of you should be in favor of F2P. Start clamoring for it; start bugging the moderators for it; start using /feedback for it; insist on it; tell the world you're going to quit the game unless you get it!!!!

F2P = new GUI !!! We want it now!!!

[/sarcasm]

fromtesonlineb16_ESO

Khami wrote: »

Please don't compare a single player game and it's DLC to a MMO.

Runescape is patently an MMO for which there is no charge to play, and it's model is entirely DLC in the dictionary definition of that acronym .. the OP is perfectly justified in using this term.

fromtesonlineb16_ESO

I've played three games, each from the day of launch, through and beyond their transition to F2P: LoTRO, Rift and SW:TOR.

LoTRO shows how disastrous to the health of the game in term of development integrity F2P can be, within 12 months of it going F2P the entire thrust of feature additions and content additions was so clearly to 'drive' Store sales it was laughable.

Rift on the other hand has carried on largely un-changed. Yes, there are some items in the Store that would be better not being there, but nothing is the Store isn't available by in-game methods not too dissimilar from what it was before F2P. Of course there are those who will claim Rift is no different from LOTRO in this respectm, but then haters will blindly hate even in the fact of arguable facts.

SW:TOR is clearly Store-based, in some ways far more than LoTRO but since it went F2P so soon after launch unlike LoTRO, there wasn't a lot of development history to compare before-and-after.

Per se ESO going F2P doesn't scare me, it entirely depends on ZOS integrity, if they're like Trion this change would be the end for me .. however, if they follow Turbine's path they and I will part company pretty soon after that tendency becomes apparent.

That said, for a REAL RED BLOODIED F2P game you need to look at something like Runescape . .and none of the three examples I've mentioned here remotely approach that business model. I play Runescape a bit with an old friend and I find it's a lot of fun, but it's not the model I'd want to have for a long-term, long-played game like the others I play.

TL;DR: F2P isn't the problem, the integrity of the developer is where the flaw can lie.

Lorkhan

someuser wrote: »

Simply put, if this game went FTP, my wife and I would instantly quit.

i feel you, poor baby. can i have ur stuuf?

Korah_Eaglecry

fromtesonlineb16_ESO wrote: »

I've played three games, each from the day of launch, through and beyond their transition to F2P: LoTRO, Rift and SW:TOR.

LoTRO shows how disastrous to the health of the game in term of development integrity F2P can be, within 12 months of it going F2P the entire thrust of feature additions and content additions was so clearly to 'drive' Store sales it was laughable.

Rift on the other hand has carried on largely un-changed. Yes, there are some items in the Store that would be better not being there, but nothing is the Store isn't available by in-game methods not too dissimilar from what it was before F2P. Of course there are those who will claim Rift is no different from LOTRO in this respectm, but then haters will blindly hate even in the fact of arguable facts.

SW:TOR is clearly Store-based, in some ways far more than LoTRO but since it went F2P so soon after launch unlike LoTRO, there wasn't a lot of development history to compare before-and-after.

Per se ESO going F2P doesn't scare me, it entirely depends on ZOS integrity, if they're like Trion this change would be the end for me .. however, if they follow Turbine's path they and I will part company pretty soon after that tendency becomes apparent.

That said, for a REAL RED BLOODIED F2P game you need to look at something like Runescape . .and none of the three examples I've mentioned here remotely approach that business model. I play Runescape a bit with an old friend and I find it's a lot of fun, but it's not the model I'd want to have for a long-term, long-played game like the others I play.

TL;DR: F2P isn't the problem, the integrity of the developer is where the flaw can lie.

F2P is pandoras box. As you laid out examples. Its rare to get a company with a strong integrity that will not fold to pressure of greed.

Most companies going F2P already know ahead of time that the development of new content will be slowed to a trickle and be an empty shell compared to pre-F2P content. They know that the aim will be to get a strangle-hold on in-game money so they can tie it to RL money. They know to aim to build up a microtransaction store with everything from fluff to items with mild advantages over in-game items. They know F2P models are highly successful when theres a gambling mechanic with a ridiculously rare drop rate.

Its rare for a company thats primary focus is on making money, to just pass up such an opportunity to cash in. And since most of the subscriber types that would be chased off by this would be easily replaced by hordes of F2P types and 'whales'. Integrity quite often goes out the window. As the only ones sticking around are fanbois and whales. The first will defend the game even when their up to their necks in water as the ship goes down. The whales could careless because as long as the store is still churning out items they can acquire. All is fine for them.

Roechacca

F2P is a loading screen advertisement nightmare . It also lets in a flood of gold farmers , premade account sellers and craptastic buy to win people .

TX12001rwb17_ESO

Well looks like zenimax is killing there own game. people who play the game because it's free lack the heart to actually play the game seriously and are more likely to troll and annoy the serious gamer's, those who pay the subription are more likely to have their heart set into the game and are better to play alongside.

TX12001rwb17_ESO

Those of us who have paid the fee since it's release should at least get some compensation as well and a vanity pet aint gonna cut it.

someuser

Lorkhan wrote: »

someuser wrote: »

Simply put, if this game went FTP, my wife and I would instantly quit.

i feel you, poor baby. can i have ur stuuf?

Awe you're so sweet <hugzs>

Yes, I am emailing you all my stuff right now...


Wait for it....

JoffyToffy69

Well.....
I don't want to say I told you so, but.........

Let's hope the game maintains some sort of dignity.