I hope the game isn't delayed too long. A lot of games I've wanted in the past few years usually get delayed for about a year. I understand it's necessary sometimes but it hurts!
As for pricing, I strongly prefer a monthly sub, that way I know where my money goes and I wont have to sit and consider paying for a key to open a special chest, or buy that double xp potion, or increase my weekly raid attempts.
As for pricing, I strongly prefer a monthly sub, that way I know where my money goes and I wont have to sit and consider paying for a key to open a special chest, or buy that double xp potion, or increase my weekly raid attempts.
This will honestly be my deciding factor. I seriously hope this isn't a "F2P" mechanic. I want to pay for a subscription and have all of my content upfront. If I'm having to pay for exp/drop boosts and the such or if the team is more focused on creating yet another novelty pet/mount/fx than providing solid content, I can't imagine I'll stick around long. The only MMOs that have ever gotten their hooks deep were the ones that offered a subscription and regularly updated playable content while providing an expansion. The F2P models keep me for a few weeks, maybe a few months, but ultimately lose my interest because they're deep in my wallet.
This will honestly be my deciding factor. I seriously hope this isn't a "F2P" mechanic. I want to pay for a subscription and have all of my content upfront. If I'm having to pay for exp/drop boosts and the such or if the team is more focused on creating yet another novelty pet/mount/fx than providing solid content, I can't imagine I'll stick around long. The only MMOs that have ever gotten their hooks deep were the ones that offered a subscription and regularly updated playable content while providing an expansion. The F2P models keep me for a few weeks, maybe a few months, but ultimately lose my interest because they're deep in my wallet.
They have already said multiple times that it will be subscription based for the very reasons you guys are concerned.
You would have to dig on Youtube for some dev interviews that are our there, but I am positive it's a subscription.
If you signed up for the beta and said you were in the game industry, you probably won't be allowed to do beta testing.
Man, signed up aaages ago, several times. And my friend who signed up two weeks ago got a beta invite, maaaaaaaaaaaaan. Ah well, I'll wait.
Also why would they not invite people who have worked in the industry? or do you mean people who are currently working in it? I'm neither of which but the former makes no sense :P
They have already said multiple times that it will be subscription based for the very reasons you guys are concerned.
You would have to dig on Youtube for some dev interviews that are our there, but I am positive it's a subscription.
God help them if they launch like that then. Its a lovely looking game but eh... I can't see it lasting long before swapping to a f2p model. The climate just doesn't seem to support one nowadays.
F2P games tell my brain that they are not worth investing long amounts of time in. If someone can buy their way to greatness, then it discourages me from investing time into the game because I may as well buy my way to greatness like others.
I do not agree that a F2P model is good for all games & genres.
F2P games tell my brain that they are not worth investing long amounts of time in. If someone can buy their way to greatness, then it discourages me from investing time into the game because I may as well buy my way to greatness like others.
I do not agree that a F2P model is good for all games & genres.
to be fair, it really depends how it's handled.. I mean, look at Dota 2 and LoL. TF2 now as well. All of those are worth investing tons of time into and are really rewarding games. I think it just depends how the developer approaches it. Personally I will never drop a buck down on just about any of the stuff out there now... I see how it makes money but to me most of them are simply manipulative.. not to mention shitty games to begin with. They just rely on cycles of rewards/mental stimulation and 'feel good' moments often enough for you to pony up some dough, but in the end aren't nearly as rewarding experiences.
to be fair, it really depends how it's handled.. I mean, look at Dota 2 and LoL. TF2 now as well. All of those are worth investing tons of time into and are really rewarding games. I think it just depends how the developer approaches it. Personally I will never drop a buck down on just about any of the stuff out there now... I see how it makes money but to me most of them are simply manipulative.. not to mention shitty games to begin with. They just rely on cycles of rewards/mental stimulation and 'feel good' moments often enough for you to pony up some dough, but in the end aren't nearly as rewarding experiences.
You're actually quite incorrect with your comparison of MMOs and games like Dota 2, LoL, and TF2.
In all three of those games, your "character" is already at maximum potential immediately. The only things that blocks you from winning is your skill (ignoring team here).
In an MMO, you are not at full potential. You are in fact the complete opposite; your character is the weakest it will ever be. In order to gain power to conquer greater feats, you must invest time.
A level 1 character will always die in 1 hit by a max level enemy in MMOs. The time investment directly correlates to an increase in character power in MMOs. In games like DOTA, LoL, and TF2, the time investment directly correlates to an increase in player skill, not character power.
F2P micro transactions work better in an environment where the playing field is even during a large percentage of the time, like the games you mentioned.
This is why I believe F2P MMOs with microts are not worth my time, because my time is made trivial via in-game purchases.
I hope they have more options besides Subscription only, that's the tough thing about MMO's, they started development when subscriptions still sounded like a good idea but that market has dried up in the interim. Designing a game around F2P is more consumer friendly than trying to Frankenstein it into a F2P game afterwords.
F2P micro transactions work better in an environment where the playing field is even during a large percentage of the time, like the games you mentioned.
This is why I believe F2P MMOs with microts are not worth my time, because my time is made trivial via in-game purchases.
That doesn't really make sense. You have games like Rift where there is no subscription, and everyone is on an equal leveling field. Everyone starts out just as weak, and everyone has to level up just the same. So what difference does it make?
Then you have Guild Wars 2 that just has the box sale. Not to mention pretty much every other one. I think WoW and EVE are the only major ones left with a subscription.
Now, you could say that it's not fair that you could buy xp-boost items. But unless those end up being more than $15 a month, then really it's saving you money. If you're willing to spend that $15 a month, then I don't see why a micro-transaction model should bother you if you end up spending the same or less.
You're imagining a worst-case scenario, but it doesn't have to be that way.
I think BigJohn's comment proves the point that only disaster stories are reported, never the good ones.
Plenty of games made a transition to F2P and made it well, barely with a peep. Games like Vindictus for example, during the beta had loads of horrible limitations that for the Western open release, got curbed or taken back, and it became MUCH more friendly then before.
Just because SOE and EA decided to make some of the worst decisions for their games when they went F2P doesn't mean every other publisher/dev has the same grace of a swan dieing in their own fecal matter.
You're actually quite incorrect with your comparison of MMOs and games like Dota 2, LoL, and TF2.
...
This is why I believe F2P MMOs with microts are not worth my time, because my time is made trivial via in-game purchases.
Very good points. I wrote my post without taking into account the genre differences themselves and was speaking much more broadly on F2P games as a whole. I agree with you though, it's how they seem to be making money right now, you're literally paying to save time in a lot of cases.
The only issue I have with subscription based MMOs is that I can't bring myself to pay for more than one at a time. Being that I'll already be paying for one, if this goes subscription based, I'll probably be holding out on it for a bit.
I'm going to chime in and say the best possible Sub idea an MMO I've played had was APB's.
There you could pay $5 for 30 hours of gametime that month, all features available to you but you got 30 hours. Then you could pay $10 USD for the full 30 days or if you paid $5 more that same month, totalling it off to $10, you got the full month.
It let players pay what they wanted in regards to how much time they had allotted to the game, not to mention the ingame currency you could get from doing missions or selling your designs could be used to buy gametime.
Unfortunately the idiotic gaming media mostly reported it as "APB CHARGES YOU BY THE HOUR".
I love everything I see about this game. I'm signing up for beta every week with a different email in the hope I'll be lucky enough to get a key...though I'm running out of email addresses
The art and animation is fantastic, and the gameplay feels like it has depth and some staying-power to it.
That doesn't really make sense. You have games like Rift where there is no subscription, and everyone is on an equal leveling field. Everyone starts out just as weak, and everyone has to level up just the same. So what difference does it make?
Then you have Guild Wars 2 that just has the box sale. Not to mention pretty much every other one. I think WoW and EVE are the only major ones left with a subscription.
Now, you could say that it's not fair that you could buy xp-boost items. But unless those end up being more than $15 a month, then really it's saving you money. If you're willing to spend that $15 a month, then I don't see why a micro-transaction model should bother you if you end up spending the same or less.
You're imagining a worst-case scenario, but it doesn't have to be that way.
I'm not saying subscriptions are the only way to go. I myself am tired with that. I'm saying that an MMO that allows pay-to-win is inherently broken and completely deters me from wanting to play it.
I liked GW2's payment model too. Buy the box, no more mandatory charges! It's just too bad GW2's gameplay was kind of... sloppy/slow/off.
Yes, but I don't believe anyone has suggested Pay to Win. I don't think anyone has ever suggested that on any game ever. It would be silly to assume the Wildstar team will choose to go that route. I'm actually not familiar with any major MMO that has a pay-to-win model. Of course I haven't played tons and tons of them, but I played quite a few, f2p and subscription, and never seen a pay-to-win one.
So it doesn't make sense to imagine that the Wildstar team will do this.
I don't think anyone has ever suggested that on any game ever.
Where are you pulling your data? How you played any games in the past 3 years?
There are in fact several pay-to-win games out there.
Diablo 3 is pay-to-win. World of Warcraft has just started to offer leveling bonuses to people that pay for it, that is also pay-to-win.
Both of these games trivialize your time by showing the player they can pay real dollars to expedite their climb to power.
Planetside 2 is also pay-to-win. The guns you buy with $$$ are more powerful than the starting equipment you get.
You can just Google "pay-to-win games" and you'll start seeing tons of forum threads with lists of games.
Anyways, this all gets off point of Wildstar. I personally do not like subscription payment methods, nor do I like games that offer pay-to-win microts.
I prefer the good ol' one time fee when I buy the game.
Research does wonders when making blanket statements.
There are in fact quite a several pay-to-win games out there, even big name AAA titles.
I didn't say there wasn't. I'm just saying no fan/player/user has ever suggested that they'd like a game to be pay-to-win. That's probably too much of a blanket statement as well, but I just mean in general. You wouldn't find fans say "Oh how I wish Wildstar was pay-to-win", that's all I'm trying to say.
Diablo 3 is pay-to-win. World of Warcraft has just started to offer leveling bonuses to people that pay for it, that is also pay-to-win.
That doesn't quite add up. That a game requires you to pay money for it doesn't make it pay-to-win. The whole argument is free-to-play vs. subscription. If the game makes you buy items to level, but then doesn't have a subscription, then that's really the same thing. You still end up either paying $X to level up faster, or $15 a month to play the game at all.
The Diablo3/WoW thing is more of an example of double-dipping than anything else. But still, in Diablo3 you're not really going up against anyone else. So there is no "win", which is a crucial part of the pay-to-win equation.
accusing a game of being "pay to win" is just a typical gamer knee-jerk reaction. Pay to win is specifically what most developers actively avoid because the western market hates it so much.
the subscription method is a total fail unless if you are blizzard and have a great fanbase of players, and i imagine it won't be a success for them considering other great games are now f2p (previously with monthly fees). And more when the mmo market is heavily saturated of f2p games.
I prefer the guild wars method, pay once for the game, and put a cash shop for pets, and cosmetical things.
Too many developers don't avoid the pay to win model, they are focused on it. Diablo 3 is a great example, and warframe another one if you don't want to stay decades playing and killing the same mobs on the same map . At the end, the gameplay seems designed like for retard people, and most users abandon the game in less than 1 week.
Another thing i don't understand, is why the heck, they still copy/paste the korean grinding method of the "field of potatoes". "Come on lads, we know you don't know what to do, so why don't you kill 50 angry potatoes in this field?".
accusing a game of being "pay to win" is just a typical gamer knee-jerk reaction. Pay to win is specifically what most developers actively avoid because the western market hates it so much.
How is a real-money auction house not a form of pay-to-win? There is no knee-jerk reaction there. Dollar = item = progression = win. Pay $$$ = win. Pay-to-win.
Anyways, this is not the Diablo thread.
I am still foaming at the mouth waiting to try Wild-Star! Maybe if the line isn't insanely long at PAX I will try it out.
I love the creatures and animation! Even the cute little thing napping in the snow is amazingly animated.
Pay to win is exclusive items & perks you can only buy through a cash shop. Pay to win is actually popular in China, it's a form of conspicuous consumption, instead of buying a sports car you pay to have a fancy sword or unique clothes to flaunt your wealth.
Pay to win is exclusive items & perks you can only buy through a cash shop. Pay to win is actually popular in China, it's a form of conspicuous consumption, instead of buying a sports car you pay to have a fancy sword or unique clothes to flaunt your wealth.
It's only OK when Valve does it, I guess :-P
I don't get it though, in the case of Valve, that include Grinding Gears and Digital Extremes following suit, of putting out cosmetic items (or stuff that speeds up XP gain, etc) that has not true consequence for large margins is bad? Or did I misunderstand something?
I mean paying 5 bucks for a color scheme might be steep for many people, but at least if I join 1 year after it's been out, I will have a fighting chance of getting in some part of the game I can enjoy with other people on the same level.
To be honest I´m glad they went with a standard subscription + a variation of the PLEX system EVE online uses.
F2P has started to piss me off to no end..
Its great if you just want to check a game or have a game to fool around in for an hour or two per week, but for a game you play alot... Its downright terrible.
I would much rather pay a solid subscription and get ALL the damn content they have in there up front. Get access to everything available in an unlimited fashion.
Having to pay to get keys to open random drop chests to get tokens to buy stuff you fancy?
To hell with that crap :P
Hell I cant even buy ingamem stuff in Guild Wars 2 since they came out of beta since NCsoft seems to think I´m some sort of fraud and wont accept any type of payment from my account or my credit card.
It seems to stem from the fact that I have, like a muppet, bought and registered 4 or more different games from NCsoft in the past, so they marked my account "highly suspect" or something.
Shows me for being a loyal patron of theirs in the past!
I had to get a 48 hour "temporary" lift of some sort to be able to buy ingame points.
Total spendature on GW2 in the end.. about 400 $ including box price.
And the game has no endgame other than the sad zerg that is World vs World or the Battlegrounds.
PvE dungeons were rubbish overall, and theres nothing for larger guilds to do in the game other than PVP or throw your self at the constantly laggy and buggy outdoor events.
No thank you. Guild Wars 2 is a very nice game to fool around in, but a long lasting PVE friendly MMO it is not.
Same goes for Neverwinter sadly.
Tera was just terrible, and their implementation of the cash shop horrifyingly bad and expensive.
Give me subscription with solid support and solid updates any day of the week over that stuff.
As for subs not working.. What a load of faff :P
DaoC is still chugging along on subs and paying the bills with less than 50k people playing.
Star Wars: The Old Republic is still doing well enough on subs to stay a float. The F2P was not something they HAD to do, it was something they tried to boost numbers up even further, and it works in bringing in people which then end up Subbing because its a much better deal in the long run if you plan to play more than a 1-3 hours a week.
I think BigJohn's comment proves the point that only disaster stories are reported, never the good ones.
Plenty of games made a transition to F2P and made it well, barely with a peep. Games like Vindictus for example, during the beta had loads of horrible limitations that for the Western open release, got curbed or taken back, and it became MUCH more friendly then before.
I laugh at this comment because I don't know anyone that has ever played Vindictus. That's probably why it barely made a peep, because there isn't a huge amount of people playing the game.
I just looked it up online to see if it still existed. IGN rated it best free to play in 2010? Crazy...
I'm so glad they went with subscription based. I'm tired of F2P games always having their hand in my wallet, whilst being forced to put up with far too many trolls that are only playing it for a week because it's free or a bunch of kids because they can't afford the sub. I feel as though WildStar is premium content and as such, I have no issue paying a premium for it.
So very stoked for WildStar. You hear me devs? Stoked. Lemme play. Lemme in. Come on...
Planetside 2 is also pay-to-win. The guns you buy with $$$ are more powerful than the starting equipment you get.
They are not. Besides, you can buy all guns with cert points.
Either way. If your name is not World Of Warcraft you have exactly 0 chances of surviving on sub-model. Especially if target wide audiency, like it seem Wildstar do.
Yet another, themepark mmo, that adds nothing new to the genere. Are you out of your minds, or you just counting that box-sales + 6 moths of subs will be enough to make profit and then layoff 80% of staff to stay profitable ?
Only subscription games that can survive and make devent money are those who are target and very narrow specified niche (like EVE Online). And that's because people will pay more than you want, because they got game they wanted.
"Yeah, Warhammer Online is still subs too, they only had to lay off the majority of the development staff and halt all content updates.
sorry guys, you've got to ship a subscription MMO that isn't called World of Warcraft before you can truly understand."
Dont forget that most studios do this with quite alot of their big AAA games.
Hire as much as you can to shorten the original dev period, then "re-organize" and lay off a majority of the non-core staff.
Its somewhat standard practice these days.
The thing is, most people seem to think that a sub based MMO needs 1 mill or more subs to stay profitable, which is just lunacy.
EvE Online for instance, took 4 years of pre-release dev time with a mid sized team. Original calculations were that the game needed between 50 to 100k subs to stay close to the profit line.
SW-TOR is making positive income off its now limited subs.
Warhammer was making positive income for a year, but their slow reaction to the problems within the game is what killed that venture.
The lag, the bugs, the imbalance and the bad class designs for most classes.
Had they fixed those issues fast enough they would have had a long term (4-6 year) game on their hands for the core fans.
You dont need the insane numbers that WoW has to be profitable.
But if you aim for those numbers and think you will get there, you will fail, every time to meet those goals.
WoW is a freak accident in the MMO space.. A pop culture phenomenon that will not be repeated any time soon.
WoW was the game that even grandmas were willing to play, and it was the first MMO to get to that status.
Everquest was the prior leader, and in comparison to WoW´s numbers and household popularity, Everquest is a total and utter failure that by today´s standards would be F2P within a week.
Its almost like people aren´t even thinking straight anymore.
"If its not a WoW killer its a failure".. I mean seriously.. what the actual intercourse :P
They were in a very bad position after release, not because of the game only, but because they set the lofty goal of compeating with WoW.
They also sold over a million boxes in the first month of Warhammer Online, which skyrocketed the managements expectations for the game.
When people got to the late game, and found the horde of bugs that awaited there, they left fairly fast, because for some internal reason the Mythic/Bioware" merger was in full swing and things were for some reason not getting attended to fast enough in the game.
Sieges, classes, the City events.. All were full of problems that took them forever and a day to even try to fix.
And usually they broke more than they fixed.
Warhammers failure was not in any way due to it being sub based, it was bad development management and planing, pure and simple.
I felt sorry for the dev team there because you could see from blog posts and forum reply´s that they really wanted to do some good stuff for the game, but it just came too slow or too late.
F2P game in the long run as a model, benefit only the super casuals that throw in 50$ a year into a game they like just to buy some vanity item they think it cute.
Beyond that, F2P is not a model that is any better for the consumer, but much better for the developer as they can sucker you for much more cash in the long haul.
Currently I think SWTOR´s F2P system is a nice middle ground.
You can play for free and get most of the content.
You have limited access to the auction house, the crafting, the PVP, the PVE dungeons, the PVE raiding... well limited to just about everything unless you buy a weekly "PASS" on the online store for that certain thing.
Which is nice for those that are just trying the game out again, or for the first time, or just to play an hour or two with a friend.
For those that play the game quite a bit and want to run dungeons, pvp or raids, they buy the 14$ a month sub because its cheaper by a long mile in the end.
edit: wrong friggin quote at the start.. sorry man :P
You are aware that EQ & EQII are currently F2P and I'm sure SOE has no plans to launch any more subscription based games.
I was there at Mythic, the Bioware "merger" was simply a logo change.
But I'll bow out, I'm speaking from a MMO devs perspective and I don't want to argue with MMO fan emotions. I know a lot of good people at Carbine & Zenimax Online, I hope it works out for them.
Replies
Probably Chua because evil space brit hamsters.
Plus I get to kill furries (Aurin) if I play Dominion
- BoBo
I have free time now hook it up homies!
Also those pale guys are pretty much prometheus space jockeys. Not sure if like it or not. Still love the game though.
Well yeah. It's called appealing to your customers. They want something, and they get it.
QFT.
Game wise the style is looking great and loving the idea of the movement/attacking. Think its very fresh to the MMO scene.
To be blunt, I cannot imagine doing the $15/month thing anymore these days with so many f2p MMOs.
As for pricing, I strongly prefer a monthly sub, that way I know where my money goes and I wont have to sit and consider paying for a key to open a special chest, or buy that double xp potion, or increase my weekly raid attempts.
What about you guys. Any luck?
No luck at all and I am jelly!
This will honestly be my deciding factor. I seriously hope this isn't a "F2P" mechanic. I want to pay for a subscription and have all of my content upfront. If I'm having to pay for exp/drop boosts and the such or if the team is more focused on creating yet another novelty pet/mount/fx than providing solid content, I can't imagine I'll stick around long. The only MMOs that have ever gotten their hooks deep were the ones that offered a subscription and regularly updated playable content while providing an expansion. The F2P models keep me for a few weeks, maybe a few months, but ultimately lose my interest because they're deep in my wallet.
They have already said multiple times that it will be subscription based for the very reasons you guys are concerned.
You would have to dig on Youtube for some dev interviews that are our there, but I am positive it's a subscription.
If you signed up for the beta and said you were in the game industry, you probably won't be allowed to do beta testing.
Also why would they not invite people who have worked in the industry? or do you mean people who are currently working in it? I'm neither of which but the former makes no sense :P
God help them if they launch like that then. Its a lovely looking game but eh... I can't see it lasting long before swapping to a f2p model. The climate just doesn't seem to support one nowadays.
I do not agree that a F2P model is good for all games & genres.
to be fair, it really depends how it's handled.. I mean, look at Dota 2 and LoL. TF2 now as well. All of those are worth investing tons of time into and are really rewarding games. I think it just depends how the developer approaches it. Personally I will never drop a buck down on just about any of the stuff out there now... I see how it makes money but to me most of them are simply manipulative.. not to mention shitty games to begin with. They just rely on cycles of rewards/mental stimulation and 'feel good' moments often enough for you to pony up some dough, but in the end aren't nearly as rewarding experiences.
You're actually quite incorrect with your comparison of MMOs and games like Dota 2, LoL, and TF2.
In all three of those games, your "character" is already at maximum potential immediately. The only things that blocks you from winning is your skill (ignoring team here).
In an MMO, you are not at full potential. You are in fact the complete opposite; your character is the weakest it will ever be. In order to gain power to conquer greater feats, you must invest time.
A level 1 character will always die in 1 hit by a max level enemy in MMOs. The time investment directly correlates to an increase in character power in MMOs. In games like DOTA, LoL, and TF2, the time investment directly correlates to an increase in player skill, not character power.
F2P micro transactions work better in an environment where the playing field is even during a large percentage of the time, like the games you mentioned.
This is why I believe F2P MMOs with microts are not worth my time, because my time is made trivial via in-game purchases.
That doesn't really make sense. You have games like Rift where there is no subscription, and everyone is on an equal leveling field. Everyone starts out just as weak, and everyone has to level up just the same. So what difference does it make?
Then you have Guild Wars 2 that just has the box sale. Not to mention pretty much every other one. I think WoW and EVE are the only major ones left with a subscription.
Now, you could say that it's not fair that you could buy xp-boost items. But unless those end up being more than $15 a month, then really it's saving you money. If you're willing to spend that $15 a month, then I don't see why a micro-transaction model should bother you if you end up spending the same or less.
You're imagining a worst-case scenario, but it doesn't have to be that way.
Plenty of games made a transition to F2P and made it well, barely with a peep. Games like Vindictus for example, during the beta had loads of horrible limitations that for the Western open release, got curbed or taken back, and it became MUCH more friendly then before.
Just because SOE and EA decided to make some of the worst decisions for their games when they went F2P doesn't mean every other publisher/dev has the same grace of a swan dieing in their own fecal matter.
Very good points. I wrote my post without taking into account the genre differences themselves and was speaking much more broadly on F2P games as a whole. I agree with you though, it's how they seem to be making money right now, you're literally paying to save time in a lot of cases.
There you could pay $5 for 30 hours of gametime that month, all features available to you but you got 30 hours. Then you could pay $10 USD for the full 30 days or if you paid $5 more that same month, totalling it off to $10, you got the full month.
It let players pay what they wanted in regards to how much time they had allotted to the game, not to mention the ingame currency you could get from doing missions or selling your designs could be used to buy gametime.
Unfortunately the idiotic gaming media mostly reported it as "APB CHARGES YOU BY THE HOUR".
But yeah a sub model like that would be great.
The art and animation is fantastic, and the gameplay feels like it has depth and some staying-power to it.
I'm not saying subscriptions are the only way to go. I myself am tired with that. I'm saying that an MMO that allows pay-to-win is inherently broken and completely deters me from wanting to play it.
I liked GW2's payment model too. Buy the box, no more mandatory charges! It's just too bad GW2's gameplay was kind of... sloppy/slow/off.
So it doesn't make sense to imagine that the Wildstar team will do this.
Where are you pulling your data? How you played any games in the past 3 years?
There are in fact several pay-to-win games out there.
Diablo 3 is pay-to-win. World of Warcraft has just started to offer leveling bonuses to people that pay for it, that is also pay-to-win.
Both of these games trivialize your time by showing the player they can pay real dollars to expedite their climb to power.
Planetside 2 is also pay-to-win. The guns you buy with $$$ are more powerful than the starting equipment you get.
You can just Google "pay-to-win games" and you'll start seeing tons of forum threads with lists of games.
Anyways, this all gets off point of Wildstar. I personally do not like subscription payment methods, nor do I like games that offer pay-to-win microts.
I prefer the good ol' one time fee when I buy the game.
That doesn't quite add up. That a game requires you to pay money for it doesn't make it pay-to-win. The whole argument is free-to-play vs. subscription. If the game makes you buy items to level, but then doesn't have a subscription, then that's really the same thing. You still end up either paying $X to level up faster, or $15 a month to play the game at all.
The Diablo3/WoW thing is more of an example of double-dipping than anything else. But still, in Diablo3 you're not really going up against anyone else. So there is no "win", which is a crucial part of the pay-to-win equation.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UH5DtEwYx4s#t=171
I prefer the guild wars method, pay once for the game, and put a cash shop for pets, and cosmetical things.
Too many developers don't avoid the pay to win model, they are focused on it. Diablo 3 is a great example, and warframe another one if you don't want to stay decades playing and killing the same mobs on the same map
Another thing i don't understand, is why the heck, they still copy/paste the korean grinding method of the "field of potatoes". "Come on lads, we know you don't know what to do, so why don't you kill 50 angry potatoes in this field?".
How is a real-money auction house not a form of pay-to-win? There is no knee-jerk reaction there. Dollar = item = progression = win. Pay $$$ = win. Pay-to-win.
Anyways, this is not the Diablo thread.
I am still foaming at the mouth waiting to try Wild-Star! Maybe if the line isn't insanely long at PAX I will try it out.
I love the creatures and animation! Even the cute little thing napping in the snow is amazingly animated.
It's only OK when Valve does it, I guess :-P
Anyways, I'm done derailing the thread now :P
I mean paying 5 bucks for a color scheme might be steep for many people, but at least if I join 1 year after it's been out, I will have a fighting chance of getting in some part of the game I can enjoy with other people on the same level.
F2P has started to piss me off to no end..
Its great if you just want to check a game or have a game to fool around in for an hour or two per week, but for a game you play alot... Its downright terrible.
I would much rather pay a solid subscription and get ALL the damn content they have in there up front. Get access to everything available in an unlimited fashion.
Having to pay to get keys to open random drop chests to get tokens to buy stuff you fancy?
To hell with that crap :P
Hell I cant even buy ingamem stuff in Guild Wars 2 since they came out of beta since NCsoft seems to think I´m some sort of fraud and wont accept any type of payment from my account or my credit card.
It seems to stem from the fact that I have, like a muppet, bought and registered 4 or more different games from NCsoft in the past, so they marked my account "highly suspect" or something.
Shows me for being a loyal patron of theirs in the past!
I had to get a 48 hour "temporary" lift of some sort to be able to buy ingame points.
Total spendature on GW2 in the end.. about 400 $ including box price.
And the game has no endgame other than the sad zerg that is World vs World or the Battlegrounds.
PvE dungeons were rubbish overall, and theres nothing for larger guilds to do in the game other than PVP or throw your self at the constantly laggy and buggy outdoor events.
No thank you. Guild Wars 2 is a very nice game to fool around in, but a long lasting PVE friendly MMO it is not.
Same goes for Neverwinter sadly.
Tera was just terrible, and their implementation of the cash shop horrifyingly bad and expensive.
Give me subscription with solid support and solid updates any day of the week over that stuff.
As for subs not working.. What a load of faff :P
DaoC is still chugging along on subs and paying the bills with less than 50k people playing.
Star Wars: The Old Republic is still doing well enough on subs to stay a float. The F2P was not something they HAD to do, it was something they tried to boost numbers up even further, and it works in bringing in people which then end up Subbing because its a much better deal in the long run if you plan to play more than a 1-3 hours a week.
I laugh at this comment because I don't know anyone that has ever played Vindictus. That's probably why it barely made a peep, because there isn't a huge amount of people playing the game.
I just looked it up online to see if it still existed. IGN rated it best free to play in 2010? Crazy...
So very stoked for WildStar. You hear me devs? Stoked. Lemme play. Lemme in. Come on...
Yeah, Warhammer Online is still subs too, they only had to lay off the majority of the development staff and halt all content updates.
sorry guys, you've got to ship a subscription MMO that isn't called World of Warcraft before you can truly understand.
Either way. If your name is not World Of Warcraft you have exactly 0 chances of surviving on sub-model. Especially if target wide audiency, like it seem Wildstar do.
Yet another, themepark mmo, that adds nothing new to the genere. Are you out of your minds, or you just counting that box-sales + 6 moths of subs will be enough to make profit and then layoff 80% of staff to stay profitable ?
Only subscription games that can survive and make devent money are those who are target and very narrow specified niche (like EVE Online). And that's because people will pay more than you want, because they got game they wanted.
sorry guys, you've got to ship a subscription MMO that isn't called World of Warcraft before you can truly understand."
Dont forget that most studios do this with quite alot of their big AAA games.
Hire as much as you can to shorten the original dev period, then "re-organize" and lay off a majority of the non-core staff.
Its somewhat standard practice these days.
The thing is, most people seem to think that a sub based MMO needs 1 mill or more subs to stay profitable, which is just lunacy.
EvE Online for instance, took 4 years of pre-release dev time with a mid sized team. Original calculations were that the game needed between 50 to 100k subs to stay close to the profit line.
SW-TOR is making positive income off its now limited subs.
Warhammer was making positive income for a year, but their slow reaction to the problems within the game is what killed that venture.
The lag, the bugs, the imbalance and the bad class designs for most classes.
Had they fixed those issues fast enough they would have had a long term (4-6 year) game on their hands for the core fans.
You dont need the insane numbers that WoW has to be profitable.
But if you aim for those numbers and think you will get there, you will fail, every time to meet those goals.
WoW is a freak accident in the MMO space.. A pop culture phenomenon that will not be repeated any time soon.
WoW was the game that even grandmas were willing to play, and it was the first MMO to get to that status.
Everquest was the prior leader, and in comparison to WoW´s numbers and household popularity, Everquest is a total and utter failure that by today´s standards would be F2P within a week.
Its almost like people aren´t even thinking straight anymore.
"If its not a WoW killer its a failure".. I mean seriously.. what the actual intercourse :P
They were in a very bad position after release, not because of the game only, but because they set the lofty goal of compeating with WoW.
They also sold over a million boxes in the first month of Warhammer Online, which skyrocketed the managements expectations for the game.
When people got to the late game, and found the horde of bugs that awaited there, they left fairly fast, because for some internal reason the Mythic/Bioware" merger was in full swing and things were for some reason not getting attended to fast enough in the game.
Sieges, classes, the City events.. All were full of problems that took them forever and a day to even try to fix.
And usually they broke more than they fixed.
Warhammers failure was not in any way due to it being sub based, it was bad development management and planing, pure and simple.
I felt sorry for the dev team there because you could see from blog posts and forum reply´s that they really wanted to do some good stuff for the game, but it just came too slow or too late.
F2P game in the long run as a model, benefit only the super casuals that throw in 50$ a year into a game they like just to buy some vanity item they think it cute.
Beyond that, F2P is not a model that is any better for the consumer, but much better for the developer as they can sucker you for much more cash in the long haul.
Currently I think SWTOR´s F2P system is a nice middle ground.
You can play for free and get most of the content.
You have limited access to the auction house, the crafting, the PVP, the PVE dungeons, the PVE raiding... well limited to just about everything unless you buy a weekly "PASS" on the online store for that certain thing.
Which is nice for those that are just trying the game out again, or for the first time, or just to play an hour or two with a friend.
For those that play the game quite a bit and want to run dungeons, pvp or raids, they buy the 14$ a month sub because its cheaper by a long mile in the end.
edit: wrong friggin quote at the start.. sorry man :P
I was there at Mythic, the Bioware "merger" was simply a logo change.
But I'll bow out, I'm speaking from a MMO devs perspective and I don't want to argue with MMO fan emotions. I know a lot of good people at Carbine & Zenimax Online, I hope it works out for them.
I'm spicy and passionate!