Free to Play vs. Pay to Play

(neverplayseriou) #21

@Lumi cod and bf have dlc :stuck_out_tongue_winking_eye:

(Aazhyd) #22

If DB was P2P, I would probably never have played it.

(Runeforce) #23

The point of it being F2P is to attract more players and a steady revenue for continued development. If you had to pay up front it would only be the usual suspects playing it, with long term support from the devs being out of the question.

(Lumi) #24

True, but the base game is something that gives you a lot of content that takes time to unlock. So what’s your point?

(god1) #25

The game would’ve never taken off with a standard retail model, people still remember Brink.
Unless your company logo says Valve or Blizzard, you just simply cannot make a niche shooter and expect it to be a commercial success, it just doesn’t happen anymore.

(Hibbsan) #26

Yeah because thats stopping people from cheating in CS:GO and all other Counter strike games? Even when TF2 was Pay to play there was hackers. This doesn’t solve much at all.

(sentimentalDime) #27

@DMaster2
Wait… Did you just use Hearthstone and good F2P model in the same sentence?
(I think that game’s business model sucks and it’s basically P2W)

(SirMurder) #28

F2P because if Dirty Bomb wasnt F2P i wouldnt be here.
And Dirty bomb would lose alot of its playerbase

(blisteringOwlNest) #29

Yeah, hearthstone is a victim of power creep, but luckily I think dirty bomb is pretty immune to it so far.

(Lumi) #30

[quote=“SirMurder;109122”]F2P because if Dirty Bomb wasnt F2P i wouldnt be here.
And Dirty bomb would lose alot of its playerbase[/quote]

So you day one thing and vote the opposite? Interesting choice of action…

(DMaster2) #31

@DMaster2
Wait… Did you just use Hearthstone and good F2P model in the same sentence?
(I think that game’s business model sucks and it’s basically P2W)
[/quote]
Well nothing stop you from getting everything (except alternate hero potraits, but that’s cosmetic so who cares) you need with gold. Sure it’s not that easy to catch up if you start now, but it’s doable. I’m f2p in Hearthstone and i can’t really complain.

(MarsRover) #32

@DMaster2
Wait… Did you just use Hearthstone and good F2P model in the same sentence?
(I think that game’s business model sucks and it’s basically P2W)
[/quote]
Well nothing stop you from getting everything (except alternate hero potraits, but that’s cosmetic so who cares) you need with gold. Sure it’s not that easy to catch up if you start now, but it’s doable. I’m f2p in Hearthstone and i can’t really complain.[/quote]

I started playing HS a few months after release and still a few months before the first expansion. For me it’s relatively easy to stay on top without paying money. Recently I bought 60 packs just because I wanted to craft a few of the more fun legendaries, but I could’ve easily go on without them. They’re not even that good, just fun.

But starting now as a F2P player is a pain. You have 3 adventures with 14 wings, each costs 700 gold. You need at least half of them, if not more. But you also need gold to buy packs. And how do you get gold? By doing daily quests, which in ~70% are “win X games (with class Y)”. Winning with a basic card deck is not that easy, since even in the lowest ranks you encounter every netdeck possible. You need a lot of strong will to find fun in that.

TLDR:
Hearthstone model - may look good, but is not
Dirty Bomb model - looks good, is good

(Amerika) #33

DB is the first game that I’ve played that was F2P that I am OK with. I still hate the whale pricing on all the cosmetic stuff with the RNG on top of RNG on top of RNG that you have to pay a ton for. But since it’s cosmetics only I’m good. I kind of like the idea of having to work for things you want as you can play, have fun, and eventually be rewarded with something new (either a new merc or loadout with a different gun).

As long as DB never goes down the road that Payday 2 is currently traveling I will be completely fine with the model.

(SirMurder) #34

[quote=“Lumi;109150”][quote=“SirMurder;109122”]F2P because if Dirty Bomb wasnt F2P i wouldnt be here.
And Dirty bomb would lose alot of its playerbase[/quote]

So you day one thing and vote the opposite? Interesting choice of action…[/quote]

@Lumi Oops my bad
Didnt vote what i wanted

(Yes) #35

Payday 2 has been a horrid mess for months now and I really doubt it’s possible for anyone to fuck up as much and as consistently as Overkill.

(sentimentalDime) #36

@Clown
What happened to PD2?

(Yes) #37

[quote=“sentimentalDime;110192”]@Clown
What happened to PD2?[/quote]

So much. I had 24 friends that played it, now I have 1.

[spoiler]

DLCfest, there’s like $120 worth of DLC

  • DLC lost quality and value over time. Weapon packs started having less weapons, heists were poorly made with loads of bugs (or outsourced to other studios outright) and they introduced character packs, a way for them to make $5 by selling minimal content.

False advertising

  • This has been going on since before the game was launched. Less heists than what they said would be released, no safehouse customisation, they said no exclusive content, no microtransactions (I’ll say more on this later), secret content from a $20 DLC was supposed to be cosmetic only, but it gives stat boosts and boosts rewards at the end of the heist. Not to mention the producer constantly just flatout lies to everyone.

Microtransactions

  • They added goddamn microtransactions to a $20 game with a shit ton of DLC. The system is a copy of the case system from CS:GO/TF2, but wait there’s more! These skins also give stat boosts! Oh, and microtransactions were added to the game during a time where they said everything released would be free for everyone. You could also get a skin for a weapon you don’t own the DLC for. Oh! and the skins look like shit as well.

Constantly delaying fixing stuff for no reason

  • If you are familiar with the infamy system from Payday 2, they finally decided to finish it only 1 year and 2 months after the first release. The reason it took so long is because Overkill wanted to make something awesome for everyone! So, what do they release? 20 new infamy levels, the rewards? 8 half-assed masks that could have easily been made in an afternoon and XP boosts. So now you can reset yourself down to level 0 to be able to get back to 100 faster! They said they would look into it and discuss with the community what they want, it’s 8 months later and there’s been no word from them at all.
  • They released a new enemy called the “SWAT Van Turret”, it’s buggy and straight up unfair for new players and solo players alike. They released a list of changes they would implement to it. It took them 7 months to finally actually make those changes, most of them would have just involved changing a few numbers.
  • Stuff from the first crimefest event in October 2014 took 11 months to finally be released, after players completed tasks in order to unlock these. One of them was a new enemy type, which doesn’t really do much, it’s just a glorified shield that sits in one place. The other is a complete rip-off of pd2stats.com, a fanmade site, which they also strung the maker of along, saying things like “Oh don’t worry, we won’t copy you and you can help us make this bit of content”.

They suck at balancing their game

  • Every piece of DLC makes the game so much easier, to the point where the game is so easy it’s boring. The only way to get any bit of challenge is to apply self-imposed limits to yourself and even then, the game became so easy. I completed the hardest heist on the highest difficulty by myself with 0 skill points spent, the worst perk deck and the worst weapons and it was still so easy that I just stopped playing the game once I finished it.

They treat their most loyal customers like complete shit

  • They released an unfinished $20 DLC in February for pre-order. It was titled the “Completely OVERKILL Pack” and was supposed to be separate to the “OVERKILL Pack”, another DLC released at the same time, the COP was supposed to not contain anything from that DLC. They then revealed the missing content from it would be one random piece of 25 given out and it would be cosmetic only. When people started refunding the DLC due to this news, they made it a full release about a week earlier, despite being unfinished (this was also a few months before Steam updated the refund regulations). The DLC was only available for a limited time and were only selling 50,000. It was $13 more than the next most expensive DLC and yet it came with just four glowing versions of the original heister masks and the missing content, it was supposed to be for their most loyal fanbase, to show their support for the company. It took Overkill 9 months to finally finish their DLC, with no news about it until August, which was them claiming it would be released in October (yet it was still delayed to the 12th of November). So, what do these loyal players get? A special safe (case) and drill (key) which would contain 1 of 25 items, with different rarities! They also have stat boosts, which they said they wouldn’t. The skins look like shit, they are absolutely no different from the other cases, in fact I think they may be leftovers from the other cases because they look worse. Oh yeah and Overkill said 1 of 25, yet there is still different conditions to take into account, ranging from mint-condition to battle-worn. Really, there’s over 100 different items.
  • Here’s a screenshot of one of the skins that took 9 months for them to make! http://i.imgur.com/ChxeyfU.jpg

There’s still more, but I cbf writing about it. Here’s a link to my steam review that will have anything I missed.
http://steamcommunity.com/id/1442142/recommended/218620

[/spoiler]

(cordovanJive) #38

I don’t think this is true at all, all of the biggest fps games cost money (excluding tf2.) You can make anything work with the right business model.

CS is arm the biggest fps game- at least on steam. And it costs 15$ (admitadelly less than most games) The thing that makes it so popular is the skins. Paying for useless cosmetics (with a good trading system) is what makes games big now adays. At least valve games. XD

(yenku) #39

Playing CS after playing DB is like playing with pieces of wood.

Started because F2P, later, would have liked it to be P2P.
I bought some things, bundles, mercs. Developers need money to do their job, to live, to pay bills.
To survive, a game need to generate money.

A trial period of 2 month F2P could work, could not, I don’t know.