It looks like you're new here. If you want to get involved, click one of these buttons!
Matt Higby has a new post on the PlanetSide 2 forum about the ongoing discussion about the membership model that will be offered to players. He begins the post with a long train of thought about what Pay to Win means and how he feels that the PlanetSide 2 membership model should not be considered as such.
In Planetside 2 we don’t restrict your character from any type of gameplay based on paying money. No weapon, vehicle, attachment, continent, class or certification is unavailable to you as a free player. Everything and anything that can affect gameplay is available to unlock through gameplay. This is a big deal. It would be extremely easy for us to make tanks and aircraft restricted to members only, it would be very easy for us to sell exclusive guns on the marketplace for Station Cash. We wouldn’t do those things because we have a commitment to ensuring that the game remains legitimately competitive.
Read the full post on the PlanetSide 2 forum.
Comments
I'm going to post this for those that aren't clicking on the link to learn what exactly their model is..
Taking the time to read it... this looks to be the best F2P implementation I've encountered. Or should I say the only one that feels fair. It is certainly not EQ2x or Vanguard's F2P model.
Well,
I would consider what he described, as far as I understand it, as a form of "Pay 2 Win" but at least a generaly tolerable one....
I can live with the idea that a "member" who pays X fixed amount has mechanical advantages (and there is no other way to describe faster resource, exp and certification rates in my mind) over a player that is playing nothing...
What I wouldn't consider tolerable is someone that spent 50X having a mechanical advantage over the "member" who spent X. For example if you could buy a grenade for $1 whenever you wanted.....the guy who had access to 50 grenades an hour has a clear advantage over the guy who has access to 5, and the guy who has access to 100 has an advantage over him. That kind of stuff just breaks a game, IMO. It sounds like at least they are avoiding that here.
Of course, the current "Membership Benefits" are a first draft. They will be changed and adjusted before launch.
In fact, they've already been adjusted. The original list of features has already been expanded based on player feedback.
And the idea of ONLY giving "passive certification point gain" to Members was dropped. ALL players will now get it, but Members will get 50% more than others. That might even be reduced to a lower % rate, given the ongoing player feedback.
It's really encouraging to see how many changes are made due to player feedback. I don't believe I've ever seen such an interactive development process in any other MMO beta. It's a TRUE beta, not a pre-launch demo...
You call it P2W but have you even been playing the game? 750 resources is more than enough to keep fielding vehicles for hours for a decent player. If you are terribly unskilled and constantly loosing vehicles and draining your resources the maybe you will get to keep pulling out tanks a bit longer as a member but it doesn't make you win. Skill > what you pay for hence not P2W.
Buy to play for the win I know these games have to make up there money from various percs but this doesn't sound like pay to win to me . Just more fastracking various parts of the game . I'm intending on buying the War Z and now this .
I'm tired of subscription based games that go free to play and I'm sure buy to plays a more viable buisness model for most mmos .
I am not sure if you know this, but Guild Wars 2's system allows a person with enough money to exchange Gems for enough gold to level a character to 80 and fully gear them in exalted gear. This process would only take a few hours at most and of course that person would end up spending several hundreds of dollars (US).
Because flying a Minmatar ship is like going down a flight of stairs on an office chair while firing an Uzi.
also they made weapons available permanently with SC only on Bullet Run and u can only rent them for a few days with ingame money ... i for one hate the rent option with ingame money and real money to get that weapon permanent ... it makes the game even boring
since the weapons bought with real currency most times, in most fps that did this, are usable since lvl 1 even if they are a high lvl weapon
i would be fine with the real currency option weapons that need no lvl to use and with the rent for a few days with ingame money if they had the option to be bought with ingame money permanently when u have the lvl and currency required
making the weapons rent only with ingame currency and permanently with SC only lowers the game quality, competitivity and removes the "achievement" to reach a lvl, get the currency needed to get the weapon u like permanently and this makes a game boring, only worth playing for a bit if u have nothing else to play or if u wait a few days for some other game afterwich the game like that is good for uninstalling and never think about it ever
i miss when the game was called Hedone
also Blacklight Retribution model is the best model ... u can buy with zen or ingame money everything except some decals, skins, but those are ok with zen only ... and they have the permanent option for ingame money 2 besides the cheap ingame currency rent for those weapons ... when they add new weapons for a timethey are zen only bought and after a month or so they add rent option with ingame money and after a few months they add permanent option with ingame money for those weapons also, but when that game lauched they already had a lot of weapons that could be bought with zen or ingame money, rented for 1,3,7 days and to rent a weapon for a day u needed to be good in one single game ... if u werent that good u still could do like 5-6 games and get the money for that weapon for a day ... but the best thing was that u would try to play your best to get as much currency and xp as u could in order to lvl up and get the weapons, items, armors, etc when u reached the needed lvl permanently ... adding a + to the game besides all the mods u can play and things u can accomplish
Play as your fav retro characters: cnd-online.net. My site: www.lysle.net. Blog: creatingaworld.blogspot.com.
Play as your fav retro characters: cnd-online.net. My site: www.lysle.net. Blog: creatingaworld.blogspot.com.
Didn't seem like a P2W until I saw increased resource pool cap... oi vey. I don't think this will matter much for those that just want to shoot at players though.
Not as much as you'd think. Buying Gems, changing to Gold and then buying crafting mats is a super fast and efficient way to easily level.
Most people don't buy the "P2W" argument with GW2 because they think only WvW matters. Well if they think gold doensn't matter at all, they should look into how many mats you'd need to buy for that "cosmetic" Legendary gear.. because it's pretty sick.
Not sure is this is a typo or bad math, but 100% of 750(the current cap) is only 1500, not 15000.
As for the pay to win argument. This is the best F2P model I have ever seen. Yes you are going to have advantages if you spend money, that is really the entire point of the game. If there was no advantage ot spending money, no one would, and therefore, the game would die a fast death. However, I do not think anything is really pay to win in this game. If anything, its really just a pay to unlock faster, because anyone can win if they are skilled at FPS's.
Pay to win would be spending station cash and getting a lock on rocket launcher, and then making it unavialable to unlock with in game recources. But anyone can unlock the lock-on launchers with auraxium, but you can pay money to unlock it on day one. But, as a beta tester for a few months, (back when everyone had access to lock-on's from day one) if is not really that huge of advantage. People are just as deadly with dumb-fire launchers then when everyone had lock-on.
Joined - July 2004
Aye, but that is not P2W. For it to be P2W its has to be the only realistic way to get to lvl 80.
In short P2W is when you can gain an ingame advantage that can only realisticly be gained through the use of RL cash. (World of Tanks Gold Ammo is an example of this.)
Cosmetics, xp bonus, even income bonus to some degree is acceptable. All of those things can be gained by just playing the game.
Now mind you it is not enough to avoid the P2W label that it is theoreticly possible to gain it without paying RL cash. It has to be a viable alternative, usualy with a cost of time (that is grinding) instead of using RL cash.
Sound like a great system to me..
If your paying a sub for the game then you should get somthing for it over the people who are not paying..
My definition of "Pay 2 Win" is that anything which gives the paying player a direct mechanical advantage in gameplay is "Pay 2 Win". So what's described here definately falls into that category. I can't see how having access to more grenades and medpacks, etc in a given time-span and being able to use vehicles longer doesn't qualify as an advantage in play.
That being said, at least it's not an open-ended model..... that's the real scourge of the FTP model....where the more you pay, the more advantage you get with no upper limit. This sounds more like, either you pay for membership and you get all the advantages or you don't. So as long as you are willing to pay for membership, you are not at a mechanical disadvantage to anyone else in the game, no matter how much dough they are willing to cough up....I can live with that as a model.
Im really Curious on how people expect a companie to keep a game running after devlopment cost, server costs, etc with a Cash shop that would not even attract anyone remotely... you are GIVEN a game wich is Quite amazing, and you complain that on top of being given a game...you should not have any Drawbacks from someone who supports them monthly with some money ?
If its that big of an issue , Just pay the damn Fee and become a member also... If the game wasnt F2P , it would be a buy the box and pay monthly game.... Where would you win in that scenario ?
twitch.tv/boonmackle
This isn't GW2 though and this is SOE we are talking about....You know the company that used to try to get cash for just about everything......If this model is correct it would be the first f20 model that is actually fairly f2p friendly.....It hasn't worked very well (for the players) in their other games.