Ragnar_Lodbrok wrote: »

Sturmwaffel wrote: »

Ragnar_Lodbrok wrote: »

I dont know isnt Lotro making money6 now that its gone to f2p? Btw I have a lifetime sub, andthe game isnt toxic at all. Quit railing against reality, this game IS going to go f2p, I doubt they have 100k subs left.

Anybody read that poll on dislike buttons? Yeah now it would be more useful than ever.

Trollbait, by the way.

Trollbait for speaking on topic in a thread on the topic? You need to look up the definition of troll

Imagine having to shave that.

I like the P2P model and think it provides the best opportunity for sustained creative design.

But let's not pretend the P2P model does not have the exact same "suits" who are trying to figure out the best way to milk you for every dollar. The only difference is they are trying to figure out how to keep you subbed for as long as possible, instead of getting you to spend money in a store.

Let's think of the various ways the game aims, artificially, to keep you subbed:

1. Feed your horse (20 hour lockout)
2. Crafting Research (4h - 3 day lockouts)
3. Raising of levels (VR10-12 only 1 month after release)

That's just off the top of my head. Again I still think the P2P model is the best way to get fresh constant content but let's not pretend it's all rainbows and sunshine.

In the 2 months here I have spent the exact same amount of money as I did over at GW2 ($30 to buy 3 more character slots), and ESO has a loooong way to go before it can match the amount of content I got from that game before I ultimately, like all mmo's, got tired of the game.

Vis wrote: »

Anyone who has played Lotro in the last 3 years know how toxic the f2p model can truly become.

Aye, no one need explanation why F2P is bad, you only need to try one and see yourself

Everyone loves paying 20 bucks to use anything above green gear right or paying for keys to open chests?

<blockquote class="Quote" rel="danno816_ESO">I like the P2P model and think it provides the best opportunity for sustained creative design.<br />
<br />
But let's not pretend the P2P model does not have the exact same "suits" who are trying to figure out the best way to milk you for every dollar. The only difference is they are trying to figure out how to keep you subbed for as long as possible, instead of getting you to spend money in a store.<br />
</blockquote>

And if their numbers start showing big sub losses they won't hesitate in instructing the hired help to do something about it. If I was one of the L2P types i'd probably try and keep that in mind between all the chest-beating.

sevcik.miroslaveb17_ESO wrote: »

As for free to play... Well some free to play games works, but I am still convinced that pay2play works better towards customers.

Sure. But no business decision is made on that basis. It's what gives the best return on investment.

Personally I'd rather pay a higher sub for a better game.

I used to play SWOTR as sub...

Until endgame raiding (in guilds), f2p were EVERYWHERE.

- part of them wasn't even playing, they were just standing around in their pink colored armors,spamming Gay propaganda on all channels, and when someone finally snapped and told them to stop shoving it down his throat, he was instantly shunned as an extremist homophobe..

- small part was f2p while still playing actively, and managed to buy all unlocks for ingame currency so they functioned pretty much like subs

- majority of f2p had no interest in taking care of their character. They were just killstealing and trolling wherever you've crossed paths with them. In addition to open world calamity, 99% people you've met with Group Finder were f2p. Now let's see.. imagine you are a guy who takes care of his character, learn how to play and keep your gear updated to ~current level and blue quality. Most of those free players wear random selection of gear that's not even for their class in some cases, mostly of white or green quality. Now imagine the dungeon. Let's say you are a mercenary healer. "Tank" is trolling around in light armor without a shield generator in dps spec, actual DPS players are so low that you as a healer deal more damage than all 3 other people combined. Tank doesn't care about aggro, and he can't hold boss on him even if he tried, so as a healer, you have to TANK, HEAL and dps it all by yourself.

Now try not to be angry and disgusted by f2p community.. it's just horrible, horrible thing to happen to a game.

Vis wrote: »

Anyone who has played Lotro in the last 3 years know how toxic the f2p model can truly become.

Just an example of "non-toxic" p2p community: http://forums.elderscrollsonline.com/discussion/114087/your-patch-is-plain-horrible

Actually - the LOTRO community isn't toxic at all. They've simply banned everyone and anyone critical of their complete rewriting of the game and class mechanics to make it a completely different game.

They to all intents and purposes told their old customers to take a hike if they didn't like the new LOTRO-EZ-MODE.

A community is bound to be non-toxic when people know that expressing even a mild, polite disagreement can land a permanent ban.

It saddens me to agree with some posters above who cite Turbine and Lotro as an example for "how not to do f2p".

I would go as far as to say its not directly Turbines fault.. as I think the "problems" started when they got taken over by Warner Brothers... But the end result is all the same.. apparently Warner Bros. ordered them to squeeze more money out of the gamers.. and then to squeeze eve more...

It was turbine that boasted in 2007: "we charge a 13€ monthly fee. because we support it with regular content updates.. every two months" (does that sound familiar to any of you?

Thes started off 2007 largely sticking to this 2-month update plan... then time between updates grew ever longer... 2008 Mines of Moria expansion was a blast.. and already missed out some content that was originally promised to be delivered with the expansion.. They delivered that missing content in spring 2009 - declaring it to be the promised "quarterly" update.

Rest of 2009: nothing mentionable happend.. until november when they announced the Mirkwood expansion.

after expansion was released. players found out it not only contained only 5 levels.. but just enough Copy&paste 'content' to last you an entire weekend of gameplay - at the price of a full expansion. But still Mirkwood expansion rendered ALL old 'legendary items' useless - thus breaking the earlier promise of the Devs.. who stated in 2008: "Legendary items will level along with the player".

Is anyone surprised that players cancelled their subscriptions back then and there in droves?

This is, what i called the "lazyness hazard" in one of my posts above... you can ask players paying a monthly sub only for so long.. while increasing time between updates and letting players idle around... or disappointing them with close to zero new content on paid expansions... the subscription model is not going to help you then.

2010 they announced the F2P model - which in my eyes Turbine had brought to themselves for being so lazy with free updates and the paid expansion in 2009.

All the while they wer taking features out of the game "relics were given back to the player when he reforged his legendary item"... after the change.. relics were NOT removable and had to be destroyed together with a weapon.

What a coincidence that right there and then they introduced a "scroll of relic removal" in the ingame store that allowed you to do, what you did before the patch... but for 4€ per use.

2007 Devs stated "we hate Grind" - and they didnt implement any that was mandatory or overly visible.

2010 they introduced raids where you had to farm ~300 Tokens to be able to buy ONE set piece - just to keep players busy farming for months.. or grind reputation points for weeks to be able to buy equipment from NPC. While selling "reputation gain scrolls" in the ingame store. (that was the time when I decided to take my hat ... skip the grind altogether and go looking for another game.)

reggielee wrote: »

f2p models use a formula of increasing inconvenience, aggravation and grind in order to push transactions of convenience to customers. They have a model of just how far to push customers.. and its a huge amount .. that they can do before the customer leaves out of frustration. They actually said this in a meeting, (lotr) smugly stating that they can push and push and still players wont leave out of loyalty to their in game personas some of which a person may have worked on for years.

basically you are right.. but rephrasing this.. it also can be made true for P2P models:

"they use a formula for decreasing expenses. they have a model of just how far you can push customers with the little devs you have (long bugfixing times, long waits between new content, long delays until you get a reply from customer support) until the customer cancels his subscription out of frustration. And yes. also P2P companies can push and push.. and still some players wont leave out of loyality to their in game personas..."

Putting it in a sarcastic way:
Why have 500 Devs on your payroll and deliver new content every 4 weeks, while patching vital bugs within 1 week. when you can get away with paying only 100 Devs... and push out new content every 6 weeks, and fix vital bugs in 2 weeks, while introducing double the amount of new bugs once a week..."

Im not implying any bad motives for Zenimax here.. but you see its "possible" for them to make bad decisions as well - a P2P busines model does not protect them from bad decisions (from a players perspective)

You see. Its not a matter of what business model you use... its a matter of "how greedy the suits in a company are"*. And its a slippery road to follow down.

If you cross the red line, pushing things a little too far - and a customer finally decided to leave the game / or cancel his sub - there is usually only little chance to win him back.

Much of this discussion is purely subjective, personally I haven't seen a correlation between the payment model and a game's quality. If anything, of the games I have played, the f2p/b2p get more updates and run better.

However, one thing that is not subjective is the average cost of the game to a user. Some people claim f2p games are actually more expensive than sub-games. This is simply not true. Here is a "real" article on the issue of mmo costing (not just a random someone's rant on a game forum like the OP posts as some kind of validation to his/her opinion):

http://www.superdataresearch.com/blog/mmo-arpu/