I have heard that there is no free to play option and I am a little concerned about this. I realize that some people see this as a cover charge that keeps out the trouble makers. Maybe that is true, however I wonder how many people will pay $15 without some way of trying the game out to see if they like it.
What if the free to play players were used in a way that strengthens the game? I do not know what the max player limit for a server is but lets say its a little over 3000. However, during some parts of the day the server will have less than 2000 players on it? CSE could allow free to play players to log in to any server that has less than 2000 currently playing on it. If the population goes over 2000 then no new free to play players can log on. If the server goes over 2500 then the game forces free to players on over 3 hours to log out.
This would help in two ways. It would give people a chance to try the game out for free to see if they like it. It would also help to prop up populations on any server that is currently below its desired player size.
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There's no way that a paying player will accept being unable to play because F2P players have filled the server during off-peak hours.
There's no way a F2P player is going to accept being summarily kicked if the server has filled and a new paying player is trying to join.
Additionally, if they have a cash shop they have to continually develop things for this cash shop to keep people paying.
Maybe they think that their player base would rather pay for game play than shop items.
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I just thought a game could actually use free to play players to keep the server numbers up. The free to play players would still have a reason to subscribe since they would be booted to make room for paying players if during primetime the server got too full.
Word of mouth sells. Period. A bad game sells badly, while a good game sells goodly. MJ and crew have said that they're not chasing WoW numbers, F2P numbers, or any type of larger population for the game.
They're never going to have a cash shop. Period. This is repeated nearly every stream that they've done as well as in some of the newsletters. Without a cash shop, they're not going to set up a F2P option because frankly it'll not benefit them with extra server stress/load without any revenue.
The business model is subscription. The game's digital/box version costs money to purchase before even being able to subscribe. There is even currently a $190 'Lifetime Sub' option in their backer section for dedicates that comes to covering 12.66 months at $15 each, then basically free after that for years (it is $1 a year after the first 3 years due to a legal set up with their original Kickstarter campaign).
Expect the game to shutdown before it ever goes "Free 2 Play".
even though i agree with your F2P view, other non sandbox type games are not doing the genre any better. it's all been done before just with a twist, that's the problem.
i am okay with free trials, the guest passes are good for that as well. making a game F2P means they have to make money some other way, which always includes spending loads of money in the cash shop to get stuff that should just come with the game.
unless you are okay with being a second rate citizen or spend a lot more money than you normally would on a simple sub, F2P is an absolute cancer to mmo's IMO
Since there is usually a huge surge of players when a game releases there will be no need to have a free trial early on. Once the initial rush of players into a new game subsides and the servers are not packed then it would probably make sense to have a free trial option for players who might want to check the game out before spending money.
To people who complain about the cost of a sub: Where is the logic? Even if the sub price is $15 a month, that's such an incredibly low amount of money for the number of hours of entertainment you can get out of an MMO. That's the part that I can never understand, how people complain about having to pay it. For the same price, you can go to a 1.5 hour movie or get fast food for a couple of people. Compare that to the number of hours the average MMO player spends in their game of choice over the course of the month. $15 is nothing. If you can't afford $15/month you shouldn't be spending your money on games in the first place.
There aint a lot of promising MMO's on their way, so CU will prolly have their share of players at release. Going F2P is only an alternative for this game I guess when its in its death wails and MJ decides to piss of his crowdfunders. Anyways not gonna happen before his paying players asks for it, and they wont unless a few years down the road after launch they want a bunch more players and spambots.
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The freeloader games...ugh I have just had enough of them, the endless spam, the morons taking over region chat, it's just too much. I know there will always be some of that but in a subscription game the stakes are a bit higher. Also, lets face it old school communities had a very low tolerance for this type of behavior and in a game where team work and being able to get a group is very important, being black-balled by a majority of the community can have a very detrimental affect on trollish behavior.
So bring on the subscription!
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15 years ago we were paying something like 10 to 15 dollars per month to play these games.. that price has for the most part has not adjusted with inflation at all and in my opinion needs to be raised to help fund the quality games that we are looking for and keep them away from the poison that is F2P and cash shops.
Look at what happened to EQ2, instead of raising the monthly subscription to support quality expansions they spent their resources on moving it to F2P and look at the game now.. total shit. The expansions have been terrible and are no where even close to the quality of the expansions of old.
The F2P/cash shop model is really, really, really bad for gaming. It's short term gains for the developer (which is why they do it) while sacrificing the long term viability of the game. I will not invest my time in any game that follows this model.. which is why I'm excited about Unchained.
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I hate the F2P crowd so much.