Ahnastashia wrote: »lordrichter wrote: »
Well, I will have to do some research now, but I saw a post earlier claiming the person responsible for introducing the gambling crates to ESO, a blatantly F2P-style gimmick, is actually one of the industry veterans at F2P conversions.
I consider Zenimax to be a AAA company, mostly due to the Elder Scrolls and Fallout franchise.
But baring WoW you would be hard pressed to find a single MMO today that hasn't fallen prey to the fad of the moment F2P tactics, even if it is just creeping in a bit at a time into B2P or subscription games.
The market has a saturation point for this sort of shenanigans. Sooner or later MMO's will have to start focusing on quality content rather than cheap gimmicks as no one will fall for it anymore and they won't be able to turn a profit making entire games just for the handful of people that will throw obscene amounts of money at them as a charity just because they can.
And really, why would they? All the gimmicks and schemes of F2P games really aren't very much fun.
I really hope it's not true that they hired someone who is as you say, a veteran of the f2p ideology. That would be just a disaster for ESO. From my personal experience, f2p games are nothing but an eventual shake-down for "all you can get" from the player base. They all start out "ok" but just slide down into the gutter of players being nothing more than wallets to the game creators. For the love of the gods.. please ZOS do not do this!
It is true. We discussed the work of that particular person a lot in the past, in threads specifically about the Crown Crates. Generally, people avoid posting this person's name because when someone does it turns the thread into a witch hunt so we all sound like conspiracy theorists or Potterheads depending on if you call her "The Lady" or "You-Know-Who"
starkerealm wrote: »Stovahkiin wrote: »
Look at all those games that F2P saved... like... uh... oh.
driosketch wrote: »The game went B2P when they halted development to focus on the console launch. I would take F2P as a sign that development would be greatly slowing down.
Also that bot trains, like we saw at launch, would come flooding back.
Would rather it was still subscription based. F2P would just mean even more horrors like Crown Crates.
lordrichter wrote: »
Waffennacht wrote: »How could they? Console's mean Microsoft and Sony are involved and make a profit. I seriously doubt they'd allow it to go free to play.
lordrichter wrote: »
Oh no, free to play games have actually managed to come up with worse tactics than that. Like time limits on costumes so every 28 days or whatever you have to buy it again. Same for dyes, motifs etc.
Or exclusive best-in-slot items for the people who buy the most crown crates each month. Not in the crates, only awarded if you buy more crates than other people.
And this is on top of "standard" tactics like better equipment than you can ever get in game coming from crates and removing in-game style materials so you have to buy mimic stones.
"Free" to play MMOs do some incredibly nasty things which I really doubt anyone wants to see here.
I'm confused by all the people saying the game was so much better when it was subscription only.
As I remember it there was only 1 new release that year (Cranlorn) and people were forever complaining about lag and bugs.
I'm confused by all the people saying the game was so much better when it was subscription only.
As I remember it there was only 1 new release that year (Cranlorn) and people were forever complaining about lag and bugs.
Yep. They had to work on the console releases. Seems as though the sub only period was a paid beta for them to get the console versions ready to release. No way of knowing what would have been without the consoles involved.The most complaints were gold sellers and bots however. There was lag and there were bugs, but the gold sellers and bots were the worst.
The real question is, WHY ARE AAA COMPANIES HIRING THESE PEOPLE?
I think they do it for greater good. See, these people would not disappear if they were not hired by online casinos, they would go on and get jobs in power plants, water management companies, hospitals or agriculture. I do not even dare to imagine what could these people pull off there. And so videogaming companies decided to protect mankind by containing them and keeping them busy where they do relatively little harm.
It is basically the same reason they hire awful programmers. We can not have ZOS's programmers writing, say, updates for software controlling nuclear reactors, can we?
Stovahkiin wrote: »starkerealm wrote: »Stovahkiin wrote: »
Look at all those games that F2P saved... like... uh... oh.
Exactly, SWTOR went free to play and now charges non subs for ridiculous things, and despite being f2p it has a much much much smaller player base. When I left, it was barely able to fill one of its servers with people, when it used to have a good number of people in multiple servers.