The Trend Towards Microtransactions and F2P games

[synaesthetic]

If the game industry shifts entirely to a microtransaction model, then gaming can go fuck itself. I'll read more books instead.

[felix]

It can't shift entirely just as any industry can't simply shift entirely towards a certain demographic. Demand will simply skyrocket and it will shift back.

[Sassarai]

Originally Posted by Kaisos Erranon

So, awful people?

From my experience, a majority of them were just plain terrible. You have to be super over geared and mic'ed up before they allow you to raid with them. They didn't play their roles well and a majority of them play dps class probably because it's the easiest (or maybe it's the most fun).

[ArchmageXin]

Originally Posted by Sassarai

From my experience, a majority of them were just plain terrible. You have to be super over geared and mic'ed up before they allow you to raid with them. They didn't play their roles well and a majority of them play dps class probably because it's the easiest (or maybe it's the most fun).

That apply to any game, not one with a F2P model.

WoW don't have a F2P model and people still expect you to overgear and Mic'ed. No one want to play a healer or tank class, and only doing dmg is fun.

[willx]

Originally Posted by ArchmageXin

That apply to any game, not one with a F2P model.

WoW don't have a F2P model and people still expect you to overgear and Mic'ed. No one want to play a healer or tank class, and only doing dmg is fun.

Truth. I played main-tank and healadin on WoW and I was never in short supply of potential groups or raids. I also played a healer in SWTOR for a short while .. my problem with subscription based games is the games are designed to be long and, well, I don't have that much discretionary time ..

[Tyabann]

Originally Posted by felix

It can't shift entirely just as any industry can't simply shift entirely towards a certain demographic. Demand will simply skyrocket and it will shift back.

I'm not totally sure that's true anymore.

[felix]

@Kaisos Erranon I think it's safe to say the drought has to end at some point. But I don't disagree with you, since the current costs (not just financial, but in man hours and man power) are just so high the likelihood of someone tacking a big risk is extremely unlikely; and this is not a industry where you can just get average joes off the street and put them to work. Good news for lovers of brown and military shooters I guess.

On the subject of subs...

Technically a subscription model is fine, if not desirable for a "service" style game, where the mechanics of the game require a high volume of players at the same time, and hence running the game involves a lot of money. Or simply there is some maintenance cost associated with such a game existing; regardless of if it's a MMO or something else; though typically it's mostly grand simulation games.

The money / time ratio is also very favorable even if you go into some high subscription costs. Just don't think of it as ONE game, but rather in time and money invested. For someone who has cupious amounts of disposable time it's a very good investment (I'm not that someone btw), since you may be spending hours in the order of the hundreds per month, yet still only pay much much less then what you would if you were playing several single purchase games in that time. Mind you this heavily depends on the types of games you like, because a game with high replay value or that spans hours upon hours of gameplay will tip the balance down, but $60 5-10h titles will tip the balance way up.

IMO the main problem with the subscribtion model is that the people selling it to you don't really see it the way I just described, they just see it (as most consumers do too) as "just another payment plan", partly because the technicalities escape them, but mostly because they're morons. So if you see a sub model MMO, you see the highest price they can get away with, or you see them use the model for something that is hosted for the most part on the user's machines (ie. regular non-MMO game), or you see them combine it with micro-transactions, DLC, etc, or you having to pay full price for the game at the start (particularly awful when the game has no offline features to speak of).

When you do that it's no longer a pro-consumer feature "that saves you money if you play a lot," but just a way to nikle and dime you; hence the stigma.

[synaesthetic]

I don't care. I want a game with a sub fee and no item mall. I know I'm not the only person who wants this.

I would be willing to pay more than the traditional $15. I'd be perfectly content paying double, even triple the traditional subscription fee for an MMORPG--if I could get what I wanted.

But no. Microtransactions everywhere. Mediocrity everywhere. Short-term, instant-gratification gaming everywhere.

I originally started playing FFXI back in 2003, shortly after it was released in North America. I played until the Warcraft launch at the end of 2004, where I quit XI and started WoW.

Four years later I decided to pick FFXI back up, and you know what? It was still there--still going strong, with tons of new content and new features and new updates. I was gone for four goddamn years and the game was still chugging along.

I miss that. I miss knowing that any effort and energy I put into an MMO will last for years, that I can meet people and make friendships that persist outside of the game, that I can really get into the lore and the world--roleplaying, collaborative storytelling, all of that fun stuff.

How the hell am I supposed to do that in a F2P game covered up with idiots wearing stupid anachronistic anime-referenced costumes from the cash shop spamming sexual deviancy in public channels?

[Dark Faith]

Originally Posted by synaesthetic

How the hell am I supposed to do that in a F2P game covered up with idiots wearing stupid anachronistic anime-referenced costumes from the cash shop spamming sexual deviancy in public channels?

Welcome to another episode of "Why my block/ignore list is always full".
Some games have a whole lotta idiots in them, not just F2P though...sadly they breed and they end up everywhere, though I suppose it's safe to say they're far more common in free titles.
Personally, I just blacklist idiots that spam public channels and keep a notepad document with names of people who suck enough to make me not want to party with them ever again.
But more importantly, once I manage to get an idiot-free guild, I simply turn off public channels. Pure bliss

[Sassarai]

Originally Posted by synaesthetic

I originally started playing FFXI back in 2003, shortly after it was released in North America. I played until the Warcraft launch at the end of 2004, where I quit XI and started WoW.

Do you think the skill level of ffxi'ers are higher than most mmos?

[synaesthetic]

Originally Posted by Sassarai

Do you think the skill level of ffxi'ers are higher than most mmos?

I don't know about now, but surely it was back then. That game was unrelenting and noob-unfriendly in the extreme.

[T-6000]

Speaking of F2P games, earlier today I received an E-Mail invite to the Warface Beta (Warface is Crytech's F2P title they are pushing as their main focus from here on out), so I downloaded it and gave it a try.

For a F2P game it's not bad, but there are a few downsides that I see. first off, the weapons sound and feel a bit generic. This surprised me, since the weapons in Crysis 2 & 3 look, sound, and feel better and more beefy than the weapons in Warface. Also, I noticed that any new weapons that you buy with the points you earn, they start to degrade as you use them. I bought an M16 with a 100 round drum (I forgot the name of the gun at the moment, but it works more as a light machinegun) and when I was done with a PVE match, it had degraded down to 99%. I figured I'd go ahead and repair it, but the repair had cost me 40 points. I can't help but wonder how much it would have cost me (in points) if it had degraded down to 80%. Thankfully this applies only to the weapons you buy, and the weapons you start out with don't suffer this problem. But it'll get annoying, trying to grind up points in order to repair your weapons and equipment.

As expected, I plainly sucked at PVP so I stuck with PVE. I did fairly good, but you are pressured to try to keep up with your team mates. This is why I prefer single player games, I prefer to go at my own pace and look around for a bit (to find hidden caches, items, or the occasional enemy I'll miss. And I ran into a few Blackgate scumbags that we missed and shot me in the back as I followed my teammates). *THANKFULLY* I didn't come across any jerks and would even occasionally give me some help (such as give me health and armor). But all in all, I prefer to go solo since I prefer to go at my pace and be self reliant instead of relying on others. But this is definitely not an option in Warface.

I'll probably use Warface to kill some time until I get my PC upgraded and buy & play some games I haven't been able to (since my PC is getting behind, tech wise). As a F2P game & a Multiplayer game, it's quite solid but it's a reminder why I such prefer Single Player games. And why I'll be crying out loud if the PC market abandons them in favor of Multiplayer focused F2P games.

[synaesthetic]

Yeah, that's where they get you. They introduce some mechanic that forces you to pay, and if you don't, you end up sucking terribly.

The problem is there's never an upper limit. The guy with huge amounts of disposable income can credit-card his way to victory... even though he's really terrible at the game.

Most F2P MMOs do this by giving out some equipment that needs to be "refined" or "enchanted" to be effective. In some you have to use the item mall to advance, and in others you advance so slowly without item mall reagents that it might as well be impossible.

They give you the illusion that you can do it without spending gobs of cash, but it's just not true.

At least F2P TERA has one nice thing from a business perspective--everything you buy on the item mall is tradeable in-game, and most of the best equipment is also tradeable. So if you're a bleeding-edge PvE player and you can farm the hardest dungeons in the game and sell all of your leftovers to the F2P kiddies for exorbitant fees.

Businesswise it's brilliant, but game-wise it makes things worse--and it's only a matter of time before the developers start designing content that requires bleeding-edge gear to complete in the first place, which will leave those very same tryhards buying from the item mall AND selling to casual gamers who also buy from the item mall.

Double- and triple-dipping is F2P modus operandi.

When will people wake up and realize this is not good for them? When will they realize that microtransaction models are corporate greed shot through and through--they ruin everything just so the CEO can have his third BMW.

[ArchmageXin]

Credit Card to victory? Sheesh. More like supporting the game. Think about it. The money he spent will go to maintaining the server, creating new content, and improve customer serivce.

@$15 a month (A price, I might mention, have not increased since the 1999 with EQ1) most MMOs can't even make money unless they have a SIGNIFICANT subscriber base.

So where will they can the dev fund to make new content, create new worlds, fix bugs, or EVEN KEEP THE SERVER UP?

They have to resort of item malls to get more funding to keep things UP.

So the guy who is popping his credit card for the +5 Sword is really paying for your chance to find that +5 Sword in a dungeon.

Get a clue.

[felix]

I think the problem is most cash shop implementations you see have cheap stuff everything so it feels like I'm at some garage sale. I see very few games that present a cash shop with actual "content" in store. Hell, I'm sick this "timed items" bullcrap.

I'm hard pressed to think of some good cash shops of the top of my head. I'd say Dota2's implementation is pretty solid, PoE's is kind skimpy (at the moment anyway) but they had some stuff I though was worthwhile and the "pay us to implement an ingame feature" option is always a plus.

Hm. It's so much easier to think of all the crap they sell, like "clown hats" (instead of actually making costumes that fit the world), timed costumes (nothing like making you feel like it has less value then it has already), character customization options (when the game has like only barely 3 free ones), boosters (in particular exp ones; saw one game with a +600% ones). Probably the worst offenders though are all those ingame money items. Things like magic fairy poop to prevent your armor from breaking from wear and tear; because clearly threatening your customers as they walk though the door is the proper way to do business.

[hyl]

Exp boosts are IMO not much of a problem. The only thing you are doing is skipping the earlier content faster and it doesn't effect the balance of the game.

Worst offenders for me are the "money sinks" that people have to use to play the game competitively, like items that prevents a certain equipment from being broken when refining over the "safety cap"

[felix]

You have to consider if you're in a ladder environment. And often time you're in a ladder even if you're not directly aiming at one established by the game itself. If you are, exp boosts are very very bad.

If the game is just about the end game or some activity that doesn't involves something else like gear hunting, then exp boosts are not much of a problem (technically speaking), though some players will still hate them because it creates this effect where the players feels the time he/she is spending doesn't have value (ie. "No point in doing <stuff> with out an exp boost"), even though a lot of the time using some exp boost still involves a lot of work to get where you want to be, many people just become addicts to the exp or whatever boost.

IMO the whole demoralizing effect of exp boosts on players to do stuff with out it on is pretty good reason to never have it in a game, though I do vaguely recall a game where this whole negative was turned on it's head by having "party boosts," ie. it was incentivising players to party and socialize.

[hyl]

Originally Posted by felix

You have to consider if you're in a ladder environment. And often time you're in a ladder even if you're not directly aiming at one established by the game itself. If you are, exp boosts are very very bad.

If the game is just about the end game or some activity that doesn't involves something else like gear hunting, then exp boosts are not much of a problem (technically speaking), though some players will still hate them because it creates this effect where the players feels the time he/she is spending doesn't have value (ie. "No point in doing <stuff> with out an exp boost"), even though a lot of the time using some exp boost still involves a lot of work to get where you want to be, many people just become addicts to the exp or whatever boost.

IMO the whole demoralizing effect of exp boosts on players to do stuff with out it on is pretty good reason to never have it in a game, though I do vaguely recall a game where this whole negative was turned on it's head by having "party boosts," ie. it was incentivising players to party and socialize.

On the contrary, IMO it even increases the fun in playing in some games if your aim is the end game content, especially if you like the game so much (or have made some friends) that you would like to experiment with multiple characters/classes (and you probably have already seen the content of the early parts of the game) .
While it may be fun to some, not everyone has the time to spend on grinding to get experience, while they do have some money to spent to speed this proces up a bit. I can't see reaching the endgame content faster as game or balance breaking

[T-6000]

Originally Posted by synaesthetic

Yeah, that's where they get you. They introduce some mechanic that forces you to pay, and if you don't, you end up sucking terribly.

In this case, I can get most of the weapons and gear the game has, if I do alot of grinding. And do alot of grinding to keep them in tip top shape. Now some grinding I don't mind, but too much of it can feel too much like a choir and become more tedious than fun. It was the same in Arctic combat, (hell, just like in arctic combat, when I completed training in Warface I got a good amount of points as a reward. A good hook in for new players) where you had to do alot of points grinding in order to not only unlock alot of weapons but to keep them constantly repaired. But of course, you could avoid that if you put some money down to buy some points. And I think in Warface, you can buy some points too.

[felix]

Originally Posted by hyl

I can't see reaching the endgame content faster as game or balance breaking

As an example, in PoE progression (ie. the grind as you call it) is such a big part of the game there is an entire systems in the game (in the form of races and other activities) that focus on resetting the progression. It's a little hard to explain, especially if (a) you're heavily biased towards raiding (b) you don't play/like-playing hardcore (c) to some extent you're heaving biased towards trading. But lets just say there's this entire type of player for whom getting to point A to point B "in your own way" is "the game".

Being somewhat of that category, I can tell you that things like exp boosts are like say "free boss tickets" for raiding or "increased item quantity and quality drop." Yeah sure "you can choose not to use them" but it doesn't change the fact that it cheapens to outright disgrace what you play the game for. Frankly I'd rather they just do lvMAX servers, where you simply hop on and you're lvMAX, as in if you want to skip, you skip everything. Pretty sure everyone's happy that way, but I may be wrong.

Regarding going though the same content again, lets just say with time (and stupid deaths, assuming you learn from them) you typically go faster. Not two times faster, not three times faster but in some cases ten times faster. Going fast though the content, searching for optimal routes, learning what to ignore and what to value, is another way to play and have fun (in particular in RPGs and MMOs).