Gidorick wrote: »

DDuke wrote: »

I don't trust any of these companies or MMOs coming out. In fact, most of them share the same B2P/F2P payment model ESO will.


I think this describes how I'm feeling:

What was to be my home for years to come has been burned to cinders, and only hobos are going to populate it now.
I'm left in the middle of a desert of burning wreckages & creaking hovels that scream of danger, trying to find a new place to stay, but there is nothing in the horizon.

You could always try Darkfall Unholy Wars. It looks a lot like ESO in terms of design and its (still) subscription based.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GO-ubExGedw

But I completely feel you. For me it's not the MMO I wanted it was a living, growing, breathing Tamriel. Not a theme park with tickets, tokens and lines.

eisberg wrote: »

If CD projekt was to make an mmo i guarantee they would make it buy to play or free to play because those guys are smart and they would see the trend of subscription model failing. also I would bet they would make it something like Guild Wars 2 model. going for subscription model it's stupid and really makes no business sense at all.

Arato wrote: »

DDuke wrote: »

Arato wrote: »

DDuke wrote: »

B2P is a scam, just like F2P.
Why do you think they changed the model? It's to milk more money out of you & other players (especially the ones that play a lot).

I can see the only ones enjoying B2P being the so-called "gamers" that play a couple hours a week & purchase a fancy pony or costume, who don't care about frequent (and meaningful) content updates, because those don't fit their play schedule anyhow.

But I guess B2P is a cheaper version for them (you do belong in this category, right?), and now provides a cheaper experience for everyone (not only them).

This has already been proven by less frequent content deliveries (geared towards the ultra-casuals with scaling content, a la GW2), "shortcuts" in Cash Shop & overall dumbing down of the game.

It's like dining in a fine restaurant (subscription) to dining in some trashy kiosk (B2P/F2P). Sure, the other one might be cheaper, but so is the experience.


But hey, enjoy "Skyrim with friends".

You're full of it.

- snip -

You mean Guild Wars 1 & 2, with the amazing end game that keeps people playing?
You mean the games that add one 3-hour long quest every few weeks?
Or an expansion you finish in 2-3 days?
The ones that sell you everything from boosters to bank space in Cash Shop, and make it so grindy otherwise that it hurts your brain?

Those games?

As I said, scams.

People still play GW1 actually, which had high end PVE, and competitive PVP (though since the game is really old the status of PVP of course has declined)

In GW2, People do scale 50 fractals, Triple Trouble wurms, and Tequatl every day, and honestly the real endgame is WvW and PVP. Similar to here, WvW and Cyrodiil that is.

Arato wrote: »

A scam, is F2P, B2P is honest. You pay for content, not the service.

Sub is closer to a scam than B2P.

B2P they make content, and sell you content, you buy content, and you play it.

Arato wrote: »

Sub is like, racketeering really, it's like paying protection money to the mob. You're not buying a product they're selling you, you're paying for a service, and they can vary that service as they wish. If they want, they can string you along with promises of how good this service is going to be, with "roadmaps of the future" and promised content updates.

But they're not REALLY motivated to hurry up with content because you're already paying them on schedule anyway. As long as they can string you along to keep paying, that's all that matters.

But if their main form of revenue is selling you content.. they'll probably be quite motivated to make new content to sell to you. I saw at least 3 different areas they want to sell to us as DLC in the near future.

Arato wrote: »

Now F2P? That's the worst scam.

They tell you the rent at your apartment is free, and they even offer free protection services. But they send a goon to your house to break your legs, and then the doctor charges you money to fix your legs so you can walk again. The doctor is of course under the employ of the mob. Without analogy, they give you a crippled game and make you pay to uncripple it.

Arato wrote: »

It's like you guys don't understand subscriptions and why they became a popular business model for in the eyes of Game Developers in the first place.

See, for game developers outside of MMO's, they bust their butt making a game, they have all nighters and days when they're eating like a college student and sleeping in the office because of time and budget concerns. They finish their game, they sell it, it enjoys about 10 weeks of solid sales before they begin to drop off, maybe they do a bit of patching to fix missed bugs or whatever, and then you know what happens?

They go back to busting their butt to make another game, because the revenue from the last game is already drying up. They go back to sleeping in their clothes in the office and eating Ramen and cold pizza and warm beer.

Now go to an MMO developer, they think, surely there's a better way to continue getting revenue off this game, I mean, it took longer to make than your average game, but nobody will buy it if we charge 4x the cost up front. Aha, I got it, we'll charge them the same price as any other game, and then charge them a monthly subscription on top. We will update the game and explain that their subscription is to cover our server costs and for the updates. Now while this is true, it does not cost 25% of the game's price every month for server costs.

Arato wrote: »

Now an MMO developer busts their butt for a somewhat longer time to make their game (3-5 years or so vs the 1-3 years it might take for other games, with a few exceptions of some non MMO games may take 3-5 years of development as well, TES games for instance, Zelda games as another example, or other big RPG's), they sell the game, and for the first few months they're slammed because they're finishing content that didn't make it in time for launch or fixing major bugs.

Now once the worst of the bugs are squashed and all the content that was supposed to be there at launch is released? (this could be a few months, or it could be a year).. then what happens? Content patches slow down. The money from subscriptions is rolling in whether they release content or not. They can work a lot more leisurely at that point.

As I said, many subscription MMOs fulfill their goals admirably, as long as there's a good company behind them.

That's why it's attractive for developers. Because they want to get to that point where updating the game is done at a more leisurely pace yet they keep getting paid.

Updates for sub games also slow down after the first year typically.WoW went from a patch every other month to quarterly patches until TBC launched. LotRO went from patching every month or two to quarterly patches with yearly expansions which they continue to this day (it might be semi-annual patches now though, since they went F2P)

Arato wrote: »

DDuke wrote: »

In the end, depends a lot on the game & company behind it.

There are F2P games with "less scammy" models than some B2P games, but in the end they are all scams.

I have experience with many F2P, sub, and B2P games. Overall, I see B2P as the most honest model.

I have watched content patches slow down after the first year in sub games, meanwhile I'm still paying and not getting anything from it really

I have seen F2P games where they gave you a crippled product that's so restricted it's unplayable, and they offered for $5 you can unlock this functionality that allows you to have a slightly less crippled game! Then another $5, then another $5 then another $5... by the time you'd have a fully functional game as the subscribers used to have it, you've spent about $60-$70 or more. Hell, LotRO screwed over its Lifetime membership holders, by finding ways to make them buy from the cash shop too, constantly raising the level cap and then selling things like stat tomes and legendary relic removing scrolls so that you could use your BIS relics that were no longer attainable in the game They found ways to force you to pay there, even though you'd already paid them $200 at launch in good faith.

The B2P games I've played? Still released content, actually in those 2 cases they released content for free unless it was an expansion pack, which they sold, and which I was perfectly fine for paying for that content. GW2 may not have released a lot of new permanent content (a lot has been temporarily accessible and then removed), but what has been released has been free. if you weren't interested in buying cosmetic items like armor skins and weapon skins or mini pets or pvp finishers, you paid $60 total. Just the box, and the content that was released was free.

Now you're right in that case that content comes in slowly there. Why? Because they're not selling content, they're selling cosmetics in the store (which they do release frequently).

However ZoS seems to be focusing their store on selling CONTENT.

I think both of us should possibly look into the Secret World to see how much content they've gotten since launch, since TSW switched to a B2P model where the main money maker was content packs.

That'll probably give us the best idea of what to expect.

But in theory, it could result in content being released more frequently if that's their biggest money maker.