Since there is a discussion going on in the forum, I would like to bring this topic in here as well.
So what’s your opinion towards the free to play model?
Here is mine in reference to DB:
I don’t like the f2p model, because you pay in one or another way anyway. Especially if it’s going to be “pay-to-win” as in many games nowadays.
Actually I would like to pay for games I like and play regularly. Not only to gain the online access, but also to support the developer. If they have done a good job, they also deserve my money.
And yes, for a good game I would even pay 100€ or more.
My personal best example would be ETQW which I had 5 years of fun for 60€! Imgagine that today, where you put the game away after some months, because you already know the next clone title is coming soon anyway.
I got no idea how SDs model would look like, that’s why I can’t judge at the moment. But as we know it is all about the money. So the question which bothers me all the time is, how will they finance their project?
One thing is sure, I won’t pay for pink suits with unicorn labels on 
Joke aside, I’m not the person who would pay for looks or any other style elements.
Free to play model - your opinions
[QUOTE=Rex;409831]One thing is sure, I won’t pay for pink suits with unicorn labels on
Joke aside, I’m not the person who would pay for looks or any other style elements.[/QUOTE]
I’d like to know that too, since I wouldn’t pay a cent just for the look of my char. Only thing that makes sense to me is everything armor and armory, but that would lead to “pay to win”. Veeeery difficult. Or maybe you can buy (only!)online time, wich would be the fairest. Like in a gaming arcade. “Drop 2 bucks play ten minutes”, something like that.
But you’d need something to make the players come back. I’d suggest, they can unlock weapon attachements for free(and only for free; based on XP), but to keep the attachements you’d have to play a certain amount of hrs a week(for wich you have to pay). If you don’t play you’d loose one attachement after another(the last one first, then the one before that, and so on). So when your subscription runs out, you can still play, but you’d loose an attachement after a certain time.
Just an example:
1 month cost 10€
3(3 1/2*) months cost 30€ and you’d get extra ingame hrs worth 5€ for free
6(8*) months cost 60€ and you’d get extra ingame hrs worth 20€ one DLC/mappack for free
12(15*) months cost 100€ and you’d get extra ingame hrs worth 30€ and every DLC/mappack that
comes out for free
*extra hrs included.
And if you pay 150 or 200, or whatever you can play forever and wouldn’t have to pay for further map packs and everything related to the game.
Well a decent way to do F2P would be looking at money as a currency for time. A player could play the game for 100hrs and unlock something or just pay 10€. Might be too pay2win in the beginning, but should balance itself out in the long run.
The game already deals with xp so I guess it’s going to be a booster system.
But here’s another way to go about it:
I would make it a full priced game and reserve two special characters for the free players. An engineer class and a medic class. The engineer class is specialised around completing objectives and the medic class has weak offensive capabilities but excels at keeping the team up. These two classes are still to be considered 100% valuable assets to the team and should be attractive enough for other players to switch to them once in a while.
What this does is that the game keeps a healthy playerbase due to the cheapskates having found a new free game. But due to two limited classes that although they’re fun to play, never really allow them to kick ass. They either are the weakling objective-doer (which is of course a very honourable spot still) or they’re the medpack caddy that keeps the team alive. Two places anyone could enjoy playing but it wouldn’t scratch the same itch of flooring an entire team with your heavy weapon or calling down drones and artillery or other fun stuff.
In other words, you’re integrating the free demo version into the free game. Players can keep playing it indefinitely but their personal experience will mostly be limited to the paying players doing the cool stuff.
Well I guess the first point is what is going to be paid for? Weapons/Upgrades/Abilities, Cosmetic Items, Game features or a combination of those.
Then comes the question of exchange rate. You can earn coins in game so I’m assuming you can buy these items with your earned coins. However, SD is clearly going to want actual money so I feel these things are a red herring, if a majority of players could just grind everything they need then SD would have failed in their revenue model. So exchange rate will be high and in so being there will be an advantage to paying.
As I mentioned in the other thread you could offer some options.
Sell items or take a percentage from the sale of other people’s items.
Sell the game for a one off fee and unlock all items.
Sell a subscription to unlock all items for a certain time period.
I think these three could coexist although whether one would cannibalise the others would probably require some research and real numbers. However it works I just hope SD is placing a lot of consideration on being profitable but not exploitative. Offering options to avoid the F2P model would be a way to do that.
[QUOTE=tokamak;409842]I would make it a full priced game and reserve two special characters for the free players. An engineer class and a medic class.
In other words, you’re integrating the free demo version into the free game. Players can keep playing it indefinitely but their personal experience will mostly be limited to the paying players doing the cool stuff.[/QUOTE]
Interesting idea but I think it would impact team composition and affect the paying customers the most. I think it better to remove the barrier to entry totally, let the cheapskates build up the player numbers and keep the game viable.
The game features thing keeps coming back to me. Getting people to pay for a PRO upgrade which maybe gives indepth stats, heatmaps, better demo recording etc. Likewise for Clan/competitive features (beyond the basics), offer them at a price and I can’t see much arguing about putting down £10 for access to a Ladder system and clan tags/gfx etc.
I actually dislike the F2P model because soon or later it will turn into “pay-to-win” I saw this happened with different games.
This is how it works in almost all the F2P games:
- If you pay you will get access to better weapons, armor etc. with a ingame currency it takes forever to gain these items
- You can’t sell items you need to pay again for new stuff
- Stuff bought with ingame currency are not permanent
- You get a XP boost if you have a premium subscription or something (XP = unlocks/perks)
You don’t have to pay for time or power, you can also pay for flexibility. But for that to truly work the game would need to be played in campaign sessions and I’m not sure what SD is planning to do right now. The unique class characters seem to rule out campaign progression.
[U]I had a really long post written out but after reviewing it all boiled down to:
I think they probably already have a revenue system set in stone at this point in time and I just hope it is one that keeps the playerbase high and profitable for sd’s bank account. I really want this game to be a hit, this is the only style of fps that appeals to me. [/U]
Man even that didn’t add anything to the convo. I do like sockdog’s last paragraph though. That would be one way to get revenue from “comp” players.
[QUOTE=SockDog;409852]Interesting idea but I think it would impact team composition and affect the paying customers the most. I think it better to remove the barrier to entry totally, let the cheapskates build up the player numbers and keep the game viable.
The game features thing keeps coming back to me. Getting people to pay for a PRO upgrade which maybe gives indepth stats, heatmaps, better demo recording etc. Likewise for Clan/competitive features (beyond the basics), offer them at a price and I can’t see much arguing about putting down £10 for access to a Ladder system and clan tags/gfx etc.[/QUOTE]
I would like everyone equal when playing (weapons and abilities before Xp)
If F2P is an option included.
The thing is if the game is Know as good and ppl like it they will buy .
Game is know as Good ok now how to reach gamers and get $ to pay the Mcdo to the SD staff 
I would say there is few class of gamers:
- Fans they will buy (…if good) option 1
-Casual (will play once a while and go back to their Fav games) option 1&2
-New Gamers ( shopping new fun first games) option 2&3 potential for 1
-money restricted gamers (cant afford new games prices) option 2&3
options
1: retailbox =you have everything and more (lifetime)
2: year subscription = full game for one year (no monthly)
3: F2P =all options but only few maps playable
that way everyone will be equal when playing
and devs will be sure to have some revenue for the game
[QUOTE=SockDog;409852]Interesting idea but I think it would impact team composition and affect the paying customers the most. I think it better to remove the barrier to entry totally, let the cheapskates build up the player numbers and keep the game viable.
The game features thing keeps coming back to me. Getting people to pay for a PRO upgrade which maybe gives indepth stats, heatmaps, better demo recording etc. Likewise for Clan/competitive features (beyond the basics), offer them at a price and I can’t see much arguing about putting down £10 for access to a Ladder system and clan tags/gfx etc.[/QUOTE]
And which unlocks ET mode with less casual gameplay. Shut up and take my moneys.
Yup, there indeed could be an actual PRO mode that offers different setups in regards to weapons and movement. Although with things like limiting maps and modes I’m always cautious about splitting the community yet it’s better to have 5 communities playing DB than only having 1 and the other 4 play a different game.
This also creeps into the area of how servers are going to be run and by who? Options such as paying for the user’s ability to launch and mutate existing modes isn’t going to work if everyone runs their own servers.
Probably getting ahead of myself here with some niche wants for the game smuggled under the banner of “We’d pay for those”. 
Ultimately I just don’t want a great game sullied by the method it uses to turn a profit.
I hope that whatever type of model SD uses, they offer a $15 ~ $30 option to pay and unlock what would be considered the “full” game. I don’t have time to grind through a lot of ranks to get what would have been starting gear/equips a few years ago. Plus they could throw in some of the things that SockDock talked about, but I just hope it doesn’t turn into Quake Live’s “pro” subscription where it’s a joke, useless, and just angered the community.
Thing is, many people don’t care for stats, especially if they have to pay for them. And it’s not only about, for what we’d like to pay, but what will actually pay the bills of the devs. I mean getting back what you’ve invested, plus a bit more is not greedy; as long as you don’t plug the players on a milking machine. And to be sure to get something back from a shooter game that you’ve self funded, it has, directly, or inderectly be connected to weapons or abilities. And there are many options to avoid the “pay to win” trap. But stats and pro leagues, I don’t know. Would you really pay for that, or do you think that enough people would? If you would produced a game what would you do to get something back from your investment?
And take into account that the final game will be much bigger than we’ve seen so far. And after it’s initial release they will produce maps and extra contend; expensive stuff.
[QUOTE=light_sh4v0r;409872]Hide the K/D on the statspage
unlock it for €20,-.
profit.[/QUOTE]
Hahahaha Made my day. I think there would be still some specialists who would buy it.
Also keep in mind that Have to play hours to get Xp to be at same level to others will just not play.
my case !
I dont usualy play long games
The only F2P model I like is where you only pay for cosmetic stuff. A different skin for your weapon, etc.
I’d prefer if the costs were shifted off the players and onto people who really want to support the game. For instance have a tax on the price to run a server, 5-10$ per month to host a server. Or 30$ to get the SDK kit. I like SockDog’s idea too that you pay for extra stuff that doesn’t really effect the game in anyway.
[QUOTE=rookie1;409878]Also keep in mind that Have to play hours to get Xp to be at same level to others will just not play.
my case !
I dont usualy play long games[/QUOTE]
Sure, but regardless what kind of F2P model, players wich play long and frequently will have an advantage. And to some degree it’s only fair; especially if they are not paying for it. F2P was never meant for casual gamers wich play two matches a week. But if you want to be on par with frequent players even without playing 24/7, than you have the option to pay; that’s the whole trick with F2P. Otherwise it would make no sense. It might be not entirely fair, but there are many other games wich are not F2P. Those are for casual gamers wich like to play just a few hours a week.
I mean more …playing back to back games to unlock certain things like more speed or stuff like that. Things that will be reset if you leave and rejoin later on