Free to play model - your opinions

(.FROST.) #21

Have you ever payed for cosmetic stuff? Really? The mere thought is just ridiculous. I mean I really! love Brink’s option to build your own individual char, but paying for it? never. Paying for maps and DLC, yes.

(.FROST.) #22

But that would only happen if you do not pay. If you do…no back to back, no playing till 5 o’clock in the morning. It’s like a item demo. Like a striptease with weapon attachements and abilities. If you really wanna own em you have to spend some money; otherwise the other guy gets the lap dance/monster kill. That’s real life; nothing is for free, not even F2P:wink:

(rookie1) #23

I wont mind something like that… things reset if i dont pay …and stay if you had paid the full Game.
But ingame I wish all equal …until they leaved and get reseted :wink:

(Thundermuffin) #24

VALVe said that they actually made more money when they switched to F2P and sold cosmetic items and crates. People buy them and there’s no reason not to sell them (and sell the ability to turn them off), because there is no gameplay advantage at all.

I hate the idea of paying for maps and certain DLC with a passion; do not under any circumstance split up the playerbase between those who have maps or special DLC and those who do not. That will end up killing a PC game, because some PC gamers aren’t going to willingly going to fork out money for what we used to get for free. Sell DLC for fun cosmetic items, reskins, whatever else you want, but don’t sell my enemy a great gun that gives him an advantage over me or not let me play with my friends because I didn’t give you $15. It really irks me when I’m willing to flat out buy your game, but you won’t let me and instead nickle and dime me for money.

(rookie1) #25

agreed on the DLC …its a problem for servers also some have new maps and gamers that havent bought them cant joined ,like Tmuffin saying its spliting the players base
Better doing a new whole chapter of the game…in DB case …like DB:Paris

(Rex) #26

He doesn’t mean that he will buy it, but more that it doesn’t affect the gameplay itself :wink:

(stealth6) #27

Nope, but it’s the only F2P model that exists that I like. Other F2P models are a scam in my eyes. Here have this “free” game, except you have to pay to unlock 75% of the game or grind for hundreds or even thousands of hours to unlock the full game. It turns the game into a chore, since you have to have those unlocks.

(.FROST.) #28

Ok, fine with me, cause that would mean I won’t have to pay anything. Well, maybe one setup of cool clothes(thinking about a shirt with a pink unicorn on it; shouldn’t take me more than 10 bucks). I honestly doubt though, that Warchest would come out even with something like that. I mean they are not Mother Theressa for the gaming community are they? But maybe I’m really underestimating the amount of cosmetic crazy gamers(actually scares me a little).

(rookie1) #29

what if you had paid for it you have all the cosmetics and for F2P an $ option

(.FROST.) #30

Yeah but nobody forces you to either play the game nor to buy ingame stuff. Youd pay 50 bucks for a retail game, why not spend 50bucks on solid ingame items wich are tailor made for your playing style? Why nobody seems to understand, that those guys and gals put a huge amount of effort in this and they are not doing it to provide us all with a nice little shooter present for christmas eve. They are working real work and they should get real money for that. I dont know what you are working, but would you really put all your hopes on cosmetic unlocks to get your bills paid. Come on, be honest you’d $hit your pants if your family would only depend on the virtual dressing behaviors of fps gamer.

(SockDog) #31

How about this. You don’t play the game because of a BS F2P system that makes it appear more of a chore than a fun pass time.

Then consider that you can convert those people from lost customers into paying ones by giving them an option to avoid the chore.

And dropping $50 on in game items only to then decide you want to play a different class or a new weapon is released. Well then you start feeling like you’ve been nickel and dimed.

(stealth6) #32

I’d prefer if they didn’t use the F2P model at all. Then you’d be “forced” to buy the game in the first place.
I haven’t seen an F2P model yet that offered a “buy all” button. That would work for me too (as long as the price is reasonable).

As for not forcing you, if it’s just cosmetic stuff then I agree. But most of the time it’s weapons, maps, XP booster etc… Paying for maps isn’t that bad, but it’s kind of ****ty to have to pay for something we used to get for free, or make ourselves and the game tends to get repetitive very fast since the maps trickle in to eventually amount to a game with 20-30 maps if you’re lucky (and you most likely won’t even like them all - but you have to take it, what are you going to do? Not buy the DLC and be excluded from servers?). Old games had hundreds of maps so there was always something fresh to tryout.

I guess you’re right it’s kind of stupid that I would pay 50e for a retail version, but not in a F2P game. I guess that’s just my rebellion against the F2P system. (why pay when you can get it for free? Also it’s called “Free to play”, which I like to take literally) I don’t think I’m the only one who thinks this way either. I think my opinion amounts to “just be straight with me, ask me for a price instead of using psychological tricks to get a sale out of me.”

(.FROST.) #33

[QUOTE=SockDog;409897]How about this. You don’t play the game because of a BS F2P system that makes it appear more of a chore than a fun pass time.

Then consider that you can convert those people from lost customers into paying ones by giving them an option to avoid the chore.

And dropping $50 on in game items only to then decide you want to play a different class or a new weapon is released. Well then you start feeling like you’ve been nickel and dimed.[/QUOTE]

But maybe(if they are wise) they let you change your gear for what it is worth. Your soldier is worth 200xp, you don’t like him, change to medic and buy medic stuff worth 200xp, or maybe a jack of all trades for 200xp. Everything without inflation. Maybe they are that wise. And maybe you can change around like crazy as often as you want, as long as it doesn’t exceed 200xp.

(shirosae) #34

Here’s the thing; every bloody time SD releases a game, some stuff goes wrong, and I talk about it, and then someone replies with BUT CASUAL PLAYERS MAKE UP MOST PEOPLE AND THEREFORE MOST $$$ SO YOU COMP PPL DON’T MATTER LOLZ, even though I’m not even a comp player.

Here’s what I’d like:

Offer the straightforward casual BD for free, and let people shortcut playtime currency with money currency to buy hats and guns and stuff if they like. This is basically ‘Arcade mode’.

Also offer a ‘VIP’ subscription that basically gives you access to the free game, and also the modified game that we want which wouldn’t suit the casuals, where the gunplay and stuff is more ET. You get a bit more in the way of modding tools (slippery slope, I know), you get servers that aren’t full of freeware cheaters, you get better server tools, clan stuff. Every six months or so, SD releases an update pack that gives you this stuff with a bunch of maps and fixes bugs and tweaks stuff, and you spend your £10 or however much to get access to it all.

This way, casuals can casual their way with pink hats, because apparently that works for reasons I can’t begin to understand. The more serious players who want a bit of depth can support SD in making stuff that they really want and will use, rather than spending it on stuff that doesn’t interest them or spending it on splitting the community with maps. Adjust the frequency of the VIP stuff to make sense with however much money it brings in, so it works almost like a repeated kickstarter.

(SockDog) #35

So now we’re back to Brink where people are investing in a single class and then refuse to change from it? I believe it’s confirmed you’ll select all 5 class builds before joining a server, I would hope unlocks would apply across all 5 classes too. So that you are NEVER in a position where you are investing more into one class than over another.

This is besides the point though. I don’t want to be grinding or messing with stuff all the time, I want to, shockingly, play an FPS and I’m prepared to pay through a different model to bypass all that stuff so that I can do so.

(tokamak) #36

@Shirosae: Yeah now you’re just venting. W:ET uses to be right below the original Counter Strike as the most played multiplayer shooter. If SD has any sense of self-worth then that that ought to be the goal they’re setting again. That means including both the competitive players as well as the casual players within the same game. Trying to split the game in two different sections is just a cop out.

If you truly understood the casual gamer then you’d know that they love to play a game with at least the possibility that they one day may get better at it and ascend to professional status. That’s how Counterstrike works, that’s how Call of Duty works and that’s how Star-craft works. All players play the same game, the big star players inspire the big base to keep on playing.

The point is, one coherent game for all skill brackets can be done, and the games that show that it can be done also happen to be the biggest and most successful ones.

(mortis) #37

the immense success of W:ET was due at least in part to the rare combination of awesome gameplay and free, opening the game up to jillions of people who were able to forgive its early wonkiness in exchange for free fun. FTP can work so long as all of the basic functions of the game are available to cheapos, and the vanity features or a few extra unlocks that don’t grossly unbalance the game (one extra land mine, one extra clip of ammo, etc). The FTP players can exist peacefully with the “Premium” players, just like in DDO and other massively multiplayer games. Minor extra goodies that mean a lot to hardcore players may be worth their cash. In any case, there needs to be some way of leveling out all players for the purpose of competition, be it all-premium players, or else everybody stripped down to FTP player capabilities…

In short, FTP can work fine if things are kept in reasonable balance…

(.FROST.) #38

[QUOTE=tokamak;409904]@Shirosae: Yeah now you’re just venting. W:ET uses to be right below the original Counter Strike as the most played multiplayer shooter. If SD has any sense of self-worth then that that ought to be the goal they’re setting again. That means including both the competitive players as well as the casual players within the same game. Trying to split the game in two different sections is just a cop out.

If you truly understood the casual gamer then you’d know that they love to play a game with at least the possibility that they one day may get better at it and ascend to professional status. That’s how Counterstrike works, that’s how Call of Duty works and that’s how Star-craft works. All players play the same game, the big star players inspire the big base to keep on playing.

The point is, one coherent game for all skill brackets can be done, and the games that show that it can be done also happen to be the biggest and most successful ones.[/QUOTE]

Yeah and chess is also for all skill brackets, but it’s not F2P either, nor is that CS, SC, or COD. And Warchest has the free to play in its name, so there is not much to argue against it.

(tokamak) #39

I used to have an idea for monetising a F2P game if it was like Quake Wars or W:ET. But now the classes are fixed things the whole thing no longer flies.

So yeah the most obvious route would be:

  • Free: All the basic classes.

  • Temporary stuff: You buy individual class alternatives for a week or so on the cheap, just to test them out. Ocassional events like free weekens give you tokens to freely test more classes.

  • First degree of payment: You get to permanently chose one alternative specialisation for each class

  • Second degree of payment: You get to permanently chose one more specialisation

  • Third degree: And so forth, you can basically keep adding payable DLC packets this way.

  • Vanity bull****: You can pay extra to have designer turrets, Drone Strikes your personalised colour of explosions and all that crap. Needs to be flashy and impressive, just right for inflated egos that want to stand out.

(shirosae) #40

What? No I’m not.

It used to be the case that casual players were willing to play games with a skill ceiling like CS and WET with fast movement and QCJs and tight spread and no DLC. If that doesn’t happen any more - if we can’t have QCJs and faster movement because it doesn’t suit the casual players, okay, fine. Give them a game that suits.

I want a game that does what I want. Other people want this too. Splash Damage, please, here, take our monies. Make it happen.

Do the casuals want to play that game too? Great, let’s get to it.

Do they not want to play that game? Do they want a more casual game? Okay, give them a game they like, but for the love of $deity please make the game I want to give you money to make. To save costs, make both of those games share 99% of their development cost and throw in a couple of tweaks to suit both regions.

If letting me pay SD allows them to add an extra 1% tweaking to make the game they’re already making for casuals also do the stuff I want, I will happily pay full price up front, and keep paying them regularly.

[QUOTE=tokamak;409904]If you truly understood the casual gamer then you’d know that they love to play a game with at least the possibility that they one day may get better at it and ascend to professional status. That’s how Counterstrike works, that’s how Call of Duty works and that’s how Star-craft works. All players play the same game, the big star players inspire the big base to keep on playing.

The point is, one coherent game for all skill brackets can be done, and the games that show that it can be done also happen to be the biggest and most successful ones.[/QUOTE]

So offering two different game modes that people can swap between as suits those tastes is splitting the community and beneath SD, but splitting the community into permanent class configurations and specialisations is awesome.

The question is this:

You have a bunch of people who might want to give SD money in exchange for stuff. SD are releasing BD for free, and are hoping to sell stuff using BD as a platform.

The answer (I propose), is this: The people who might be willing to give you money are split largely into two camps.

The first camp are the people who really want an ET game on a smooth engine. They’re willing to accept new stuff, but they’re frustrated by removals which happen for the sake of people who aren’t familiar with ET. They want to support SD, they want a game they’ll be playing for years, and they want to support SD without spending money on token items that don’t interest them.

The second camp is everyone else, the people who aren’t familiar with ET, maybe who can’t track so well or just aren’t used to it, and would find QCJ and tracking and dancing difficult or frustrating. It appears that a successful business model for F2P is selling hats and cosmetic stuff and DLC.

Here’s a radical idea: It is possible to offer a product which is attractive to both camps. This ‘ET mode’ BD and the arcade F2P BD are almost identical. Both groups get what they want. Both groups can play both game modes. The popularity of both games modes benefits the other game mode. Casuals playing arcade mode can graduate to ET mode if they want, or play arcade mode with custom maps, or whatever they want.