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F2P is Future - Micro-Transactions are Not
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Justify the sub prices with constant content? LOL
Dude they pay for servers, upkeep, bandwidth, employee salaries, and much more.
Older MMO's we didnt need the devs to provide constant content.... we made our own and thats what mmorpg's are about. Not that garbage single player mentality always needing your hands held in these newer games.
50 cents a day for a good mmo 24/7 entertainment is too much? Where else can you find that much entertainment for that low?
F2P mmorpg's suck, simple as that. Have not seen a decent F2P one yet. Minus Aion i heard had a good F2P model. Cash shops are a way to suck every penny out of you charging you 5-20$ just for a hat, mount, weapon, upgrade, or less. I will never play a F2P game because they are cheap. You think you get constant content in those? LOL. They make new additions so they can enhance their cash shop. Notice every other week a new mount or costume is in the cash shop
Thats not content thats BS!
So?
COD, Battlefield, Diablo 3, Starcraft 2, ... and a huge list of games have servers, upkeep, bandwidth, and so on ... none chrage a sub fee.
As stated above^^^ B2P.
And you think those dont have ways to suck money out of you? LOL
Majority of the servers are rented by the player base that pay a large monthly fee. COD, BF, and others have cash shop, dlc's, and other ways to get money.
BF3 for example 60$, rent server 30-50 month, the 4-5 new dlc/expansions that have came out and are coming out cost 15$ each, then the premium package is another 40$. Not including the starter packs for each class run 10$ each. Total if you want to play BF3 with all the options can cost you $300+
GW2 for example costs 60-80$, and has a cash shop as well for mounts, extras, etc......
Nothing is free in this world, not unless you want 2nd rate content. When im paying a 15$ month few (which is dirt cheap in todays economy) i dont need to buy extras, i dont need to worry about being charged to enter a dungeon, and so much more.
The big issue for freemium games is that it becomes a catch 22 situation. i.e. you have to add value to these shops to keep people paying to support the game, but how do you do that without resentment?
People have said that paid for expansions are key, but that is a serious investment funds/talent wise and really cannot support a game month to month. You need these, 'extras', to keep a game profitable in this model. But were is the line drawn? Selling gear and gold in these shops leads to players quickly resenting a, pay to win approach, and abandoning the game. On the other hand just offer vanity items or convienence items and players either buy them once or twice, or if the game becomes an incredible grind, resent being forced to buy xp upgrades and leave.
If you take a look at the GW2 model I would suggest that their cash shop isn't doing too well at the moment as the gems to gold model has been resented, (which was ANET's own fault really), and by the fact that there trying to cox sales from the cash shop with big discounts at the moment.
It's why I've always felt the subscription model works well as it's a better deal for a player and developer long term. As a player all content is avaliable to you for the sub and as a developer you don't have the need to change principle or milk the playerbase when money gets tight.
The reason really for so many of these conversations though it that many MMOs have converted to a variation of the F2P becasue they failed as sub games. Thus it's the games fault not really the pricing model. I don't believe that so many players are that put off by the concept of subscribing, it's just a lot of the releases over the last four years haven't been worth subing for long term.
It be interesting to hear if at this conference any mention or ideas were given to how a successful and more sustainable F2P model would work...
This looks like a job for....The Riviera Kid!
there is a world of difference between running a server cluster that maintains an MMO persistent world, and running a 'matchmaking' service for players
That doesn't make a lick of fucking sense. I can't believe people actually go to school for this... Look... a shitty game is a shitty game price model aside. Whether it's a freemium game or a MT game, the developer still needs to produce value in the game or no one will play it. No one plays these games just to shop. I don't know how much you paid for this conference but I would be demanding a refund.
Also, the current cash shops have nothing to do with the cookie cutter designs of mmo's. You can blame the money that WoW made on that. Blizzard made a FUUUUCCCCKKK TON of money and everyone wanted in on it. Hence the era of games that followed.
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