With only 22% of a games players using the official forums it is no wonder they hardly bother with community managers these days as they can ignore the community. I wonder what the reaction on social media was like, clearly even if it was very adverse that did not matter either.
I rarely use the official forum since I like this forum better, I only check the official forum for bugfixes and that has been a while.
I wonder how the statistic would be if you counted all forums dedicated to the specific game? It is of course really hard to get useful information about that.
I'm sure securing this patent in a market where the masses have already accepted this being the overwhelming default will change things substantially.
Funny enough, with this new patent, Activision could sue the other companies for doing the same now... (and depending how the others did it, win). So it might actually cause change, as in only Activision will be legally allowed to do it.
I don't know the law well enough to comment on whether trying to apply the patent to previously existing situations is possible, nor do I know that the patent is so broad that it could be applied in that manner going forward.
Consider this if you will...an example being WoW. You pat $19 for World of Warcraft, then spend $15/month say for 4 yrs. Let's not forget the expansion every 2 yrs, which usually costs $50. BAMM! you have just paid $820.00 for a game. go on, drive on down to Walmart and fork out $820.00 for a game, the wife will divorce you, not to mention having to take out a 2nd mortgage on the house to buy the game at that price. F2p may try to gank you with an item mall, but that is by choice.
This is an incredibly bad explanation.
4 years of being entertained for thousands of hours for only $820 is a steal.
You pay $40 just to see a movie that lasts measly a hour and half.
I can pay my $20 for a game and get 8 hours of entertainment in the first day, and then 20+ hours of entertainment for $15 for the rest of the month.
you bring up a very good point and it's one of the reason i play mmos even when most of the genre is really boring. i dont think there is any hobby or form of entertainment that can compare to the hours i get just from a small amount of dollars or even no money.
I have a sneaking suspicion that it's going to get so bad one day, that Miniature Wargaming will be cheaper by comparison and I'll just quit this hobby altogether.
I started PC gaming because overall it was a much cheaper hobby that I could play with friends, but as the pendulum swings and gaming becomes more expensive, I'll just look elsewhere for entertainment.
I was one of no-MMO-newbs who spoke strongly for F2P
I still think it could have been good idea. But not in the way it eventually developed.
My problem with SUB was the fact that you had to pay, even if you didnt actively play. So even if you played one day in a month you had to play whole month.
When first AA F2P MMO happened - it was DDO. And it had simple premise : some parts of the game are open , enough to level up - but the rest of the game is locked and the content can be unlocked trough purchase.
This made lot of logic:
1. If you didnt SUB, you could still be in game and meet friends or partake in activities.
2. You payed for what and how much you play.
But F2P system that we have now happened not using GAMBLING principles, not logic and player benefit.
It is directly aimed in squeezing much more money from player than sub.
This is today F2P logic:
1. Sub is fixed price, F2P rice is flexible and much higher ( unlimited )
2. If you dont pay, we make playing the game terrible chore
3. Success in game is created trough buying, not playing
4. Add element of gambling for full success
Sad thing is that this type of gamble F2P is much more profitable than SUB ever was. And its very hard to return to previous system...
I was one of no-MMO-newbs who spoke strongly for F2P
I still think it could have been good idea. But not in the way it eventually developed.
My problem with SUB was the fact that you had to pay, even if you didnt actively play. So even if you played one day in a month you had to play whole month.
When first AA F2P MMO happened - it was DDO. And it had simple premise : some parts of the game are open , enough to level up - but the rest of the game is locked and the content can be unlocked trough purchase.
This made lot of logic:
1. If you didnt SUB, you could still be in game and meet friends or partake in activities.
2. You payed for what and how much you play.
But F2P system that we have now happened not using GAMBLING principles, not logic and player benefit.
It is directly aimed in squeezing much more money from player than sub.
This is today F2P logic:
1. Sub is fixed price, F2P rice is flexible and much higher ( unlimited )
2. If you dont pay, we make playing the game terrible chore
3. Success in game is created trough buying, not playing
4. Add element of gambling for full success
Sad thing is that this type of gamble F2P is much more profitable than SUB ever was. And its very hard to return to previous system...
What I saw back then, was that subscription was a defined cost, with expansions. Expansions were new content, with the same defined cost. F2P was the unknown and realising nothing is ever truly free it had to be too good to be true. And it was.
We had the cosmetic versus gameplay argument for years (we still do!!!!????). But as soon as I found out what happened to F2P MMOs in Japan/Korea I realised they had opened Pandora's box. They started cosmetic but only a year later were game breaking. And that's what happened here, and has again, and again and again. Yet we still get players going on about the cosmetic cash shop at launch...barking!
More recently they don't even bother to disguise what they are doing, its game breaking from the get go.
So I started to say, play your MMOs now because they will only be worse in a couple of years time and even today, even with the crap loot boxes are, remember, they will get worse.
For me nearly all MMOs are now of my list of games I would play, but as long as there Is a good one left I will continue to play even though on a hiatus currently.
I remember reading an article a long time ago about how when SOE came up with the idea to sell subscriptions for EQ they just pulled a price per month fee out of their a$$, then when SWG launched they did the same thing, the $14.99 price model just kinda stuck from there. They were not the first to charge a subscription for a game, they were the first to charge $14.99 per month with SWG.
While I don't disagree with the idea of the sub based model, I do disagree with ever paying $14.99 per month for it. If that ever came back I can guarantee that there would still be micro-transactions for a AAA since the idea has been found to be quit lucrative. Us complaining about micro-transactions isn't going to change anything, and wanting a sub based model is only going to make things worse for us because the greed is real.
I remember reading an article a long time ago about how when SOE came up with the idea to sell subscriptions for EQ they just pulled a price per month fee out of their a$$, then when SWG launched they did the same thing, the $14.99 price model just kinda stuck from there. They were not the first to charge a subscription for a game, they were the first to charge $14.99 per month with SWG.
While I don't disagree with the idea of the sub based model, I do disagree with ever paying $14.99 per month for it. If that ever came back I can guarantee that there would still be micro-transactions for a AAA since the idea has been found to be quit lucrative. Us complaining about micro-transactions isn't going to change anything, and wanting a sub based model is only going to make things worse for us because the greed is real.
The goal would be to replace micro-transactions with a sub, but that will never happen. Companies learned that even if they offer both, players will participate in both.
The thing that bothers me the most is that players will bitch and moan about cash shops but continue to play games that offer them, usually posturing to the rest of the community that they don't use them, when in reality they do. I guarantee if every player stopped playing a game with micro-transactions, that game would stop offering them in a heartbeat and either only offer a sub or replace the MT with a sub. Again, that will never happen...because...of players.
My 2 main games atm are Free to Play in which you can get pretty far without spending a dime. The 2nd game I play I only spent 2 bucks total even though I'm at end game just to see how well it worked but my luck proved to stay pure f2p. It's a pretty simple concept that some people have a hard time understanding.
If the game is fun, play it, support it. If game isn't fun, don't. If you are too envious to play with whales then it's a good idea to play during events where f2pers can get lots of goodies for very little effort and free.
If you people wanted a 2nd WoW then you should have supported all the WoW clones that came and went. You can blame F2P gamers all you want but you're no better if you bought an MMO and stopped after the first month. An MMO needs support in money and numbers. Easier to get numbers without a pay wall and give players a CHOICE to pay.
Consider this if you will...an example being WoW. You pat $19 for World of Warcraft, then spend $15/month say for 4 yrs. Let's not forget the expansion every 2 yrs, which usually costs $50. BAMM! you have just paid $820.00 for a game. go on, drive on down to Walmart and fork out $820.00 for a game, the wife will divorce you, not to mention having to take out a 2nd mortgage on the house to buy the game at that price. F2p may try to gank you with an item mall, but that is by choice.
This is an incredibly bad explanation.
4 years of being entertained for thousands of hours for only $820 is a steal.
You pay $40 just to see a movie that lasts measly a hour and half.
I can pay my $20 for a game and get 8 hours of entertainment in the first day, and then 20+ hours of entertainment for $15 for the rest of the month.
How about this.....Pay us all one cent an hour for the rest of your life...thats an incredible deal right? Dj is right though, in the end you pay thousands for something you think you are getting cheap.
A subscription fee, even with a box price, is one of the cheapest forms of entertainment available. DJ isn't right; even over 4 years, and with a $50 expansion in his example, it's not "thousands". By his own admission, it's less than $1000 over 4 years.
This assumes the player doesn't use the cash shop. That same assumption can be made for b2p or f2p games though. So they could cost "very little" in the same way that sub based games may cost thousands.
Neither extreme is likely. Especially when you consider that most people change games frequently - whether they have a sub or not a month or three and people move on. Possibly why some subs are not for 30 days - FFXIV, DQ etc.
At the end of the day companies are out to recover their costs and make a profit. They may adopt "different" approaches for different games. They may even use different approaches for the same game in different countries!
Which means its not about the game its about the revenue model.
Companies choose whether to have an upfront cost (barrier to entry) or not: remember a sub based game is usually b2p as well but not always. And they also decide whether the game has an on-going cost or not.
In that sense games are no different to shops - get people through the door and offer them goods. Or amusement parks perhaps - do you charge for entry. charge per ride, sell people wrist bands etc. Same deal with games. We just have to remember this is the goal and treat each game as we feel best.
I don't think it will. It's been here for a very long time and it's only growing. At this point there is no major MMO I can think even (Even significant indie titles) that people can't find a way to level the pay-to-win accusation at anymore. The only games that have manages to completely escape pay-to-win in terms of there is no way to use money to get any legitimate advantage is games that lack power progression. For instance LoL, SMITE, etc.
For them they have a cash shop but there are no advantages to be sold so it's purely cosmetic or just the option to play characters balanced with the free-to-play characters.
In order for pay-to-win to be contested, you would need a major successful MMO that is stealing customers away from other MMOs due to it's refusal to sell advantages. I see no such title on the market or the horizon.
Consider this if you will...an example being WoW. You pat $19 for World of Warcraft, then spend $15/month say for 4 yrs. Let's not forget the expansion every 2 yrs, which usually costs $50. BAMM! you have just paid $820.00 for a game. go on, drive on down to Walmart and fork out $820.00 for a game, the wife will divorce you, not to mention having to take out a 2nd mortgage on the house to buy the game at that price. F2p may try to gank you with an item mall, but that is by choice.
That is not even the issue. The sub is something you know about and expect, and it does not remove you from the level playing field others are on if you were willing to somehow pay more then others.
The issue is back in the late 90s/early 2000s everyone paid 15$ a month for a "level playing field."
But was it really level?
Not if you started later than other people. Not if you had less time to devote to the game than other people. Not if you spent your in-game time on activities other than grinding levels as efficiently as possible.
And most players decided "Well... this is crap." and moved on to other genres.
So within the last decade companies were like "We are losing people hand over fist. What do we do?"
Their solution was simple. Giving the advantage to older players, or no lifers, or the ones most dedicated to grinding doesn't pay the bills. Selling that advantage to people with jobs does.
Hence the dawn of pay to win.
The only way to bring it down would be to flatten out the stat gap that has become the corner stone of this dying genre. Bring it more in line with games like MOBAs that don't have to sell advantages because their skill based system you can just pick up and play attracts a huge number of players.
Just lay down the consumer law. If you dont like it dont play it. If everyone did that, it will FORCE them to change back to either B2P or Subscription model. Yes Subscription model i know many of you will go bah no way, too expensive. Why, if you total these so called F2P games you would work out that in any month all people who are succeeding in those are putting in several times what a monthly sub was. Those that are failing are putting minimal into it or nothing at all.
Then you have greediness like Archage that wants you not only to Subscribe but also forced to use the item shop on a weekly basis as well. Thats why i dropped and stopped and uninstalled that game. 1 or the other but certainly dont force BOTH routes to be a must.
ESO has it nicely done, buy the game play for free, item shop is pure cosmetic. There are expansions that must be bought to play those and also crafting gear that can be purchased (or found, yes found in game) then the player AH that people have got those items and placed on the AH.
However if a game starts to fail on a subscription model i would lower that subscription, it could be a case of players getting bored, something new came out and they wanted to give that a whirl BUT cannot subscribe to 2 games in the same month. I for 1 would only subscribe to 1 game at a time.
Before i only had requirements that the graphics in games were adequate, game was fun, nice story and good longing to play it. With the prices of games thesedays however i have come to expect top notch graphics, excellent gameplay and storylines.
2 of the latest games i have bought (that are not Online MMO's) as i dont play many online games right now, i do jump in to secret World Legends and Elder Scrolls Online now and again, nothing else out there thats worth squat right now.
Anyways I Pre-Order both Battle Chasers: Nightwar (my rating for this if asked would be a solid 8.5/10) great game that does bring back many old style MMO aspects and is great fun play, its just not MMO or Multiplayer. The other is Elex (my rating 6/10). Just the controls and such are just not right and dont give a good feel about the game, I also feel that it is lacking something as well.
I have Seven:Days long gone and Vampyr on pre-order (carnt wait for those to come out next month) but i am also prepared to be dissapointed, i am however not prepared for it to be outstanding to play, that, sadly, is something rare thesedays.
ESO has it nicely done, buy the game play for free, item shop is pure cosmetic. There are expansions that must be bought to play those and also crafting gear that can be purchased (or found, yes found in game) then the player AH that people have got those items and placed on the AH.
The item shop is NOT purely cosmetic and you know it.
There are respec potions, riding skill improvements, experience buffs, assistants, bag upgrades, skill lines, not to mention the RNG boxes designed to suck people's money from them. None of those things are "cosmetic".
@madazz - Can you give some examples of ftp games you think contributed to the P2W issue.
Farmville
Farmville and shitty facebook
games is where this practice started gaining more traction. Farmville
was not
the first, but it was the most successful throw away cash shop game
that
appealed to a wider audience (boomers, Gen X). John Smedley admitted
that he saw the successes of Farmville as a obtainable goal within the
mainstream MMO world here in the West. Those early crappy cash shop
MMOs never did well here, it was the random loot crate and time
reduction buffs that seemed to appeal to western gamers.
Looks like Farmville may have been what inspired Smedley,as he started up the cash shops the very next year.Guess who else comes from Farmville,not telling,people should pay attention.
Habbo hotel goes way back and makes me sick to think people would actually spend money on such trivial things,but then i see people paying for a new Avatar picture in Hearthstone.Even the very crooked Hunted Cow studios did at least allow players to upload their own picture/Avatar.So Blizzard managed to one up a very crooked operation,where does that put Blizzard in the scheme of fair business practices?
Naturally and maybe the first,MTG,i am sure everyone knows how tcg's literally steal hundreds...thousands of dollars from their customers and the new wave is selling something you cannot touch>>VIRTUAL items lmao.Imagine that selling basically NOTHING,you NEVER own these virtual items,they are always the property of the developer,funny how that works,they sell you something but your not really buying it,only leasing it.
Never forget 3 mile Island and never trust a government official or company spokesman.
Comments
I wonder how the statistic would be if you counted all forums dedicated to the specific game? It is of course really hard to get useful information about that.
So, we'll see how it goes.
I started PC gaming because overall it was a much cheaper hobby that I could play with friends, but as the pendulum swings and gaming becomes more expensive, I'll just look elsewhere for entertainment.
I still think it could have been good idea. But not in the way it eventually developed.
My problem with SUB was the fact that you had to pay, even if you didnt actively play. So even if you played one day in a month you had to play whole month.
When first AA F2P MMO happened - it was DDO. And it had simple premise : some parts of the game are open , enough to level up - but the rest of the game is locked and the content can be unlocked trough purchase.
This made lot of logic:
1. If you didnt SUB, you could still be in game and meet friends or partake in activities.
2. You payed for what and how much you play.
But F2P system that we have now happened not using GAMBLING principles, not logic and player benefit.
It is directly aimed in squeezing much more money from player than sub.
This is today F2P logic:
1. Sub is fixed price, F2P rice is flexible and much higher ( unlimited )
2. If you dont pay, we make playing the game terrible chore
3. Success in game is created trough buying, not playing
4. Add element of gambling for full success
Sad thing is that this type of gamble F2P is much more profitable than SUB ever was.
And its very hard to return to previous system...
What I saw back then, was that subscription was a defined cost, with expansions. Expansions were new content, with the same defined cost. F2P was the unknown and realising nothing is ever truly free it had to be too good to be true. And it was.
We had the cosmetic versus gameplay argument for years (we still do!!!!????). But as soon as I found out what happened to F2P MMOs in Japan/Korea I realised they had opened Pandora's box. They started cosmetic but only a year later were game breaking. And that's what happened here, and has again, and again and again. Yet we still get players going on about the cosmetic cash shop at launch...barking!
More recently they don't even bother to disguise what they are doing, its game breaking from the get go.
So I started to say, play your MMOs now because they will only be worse in a couple of years time and even today, even with the crap loot boxes are, remember, they will get worse.
For me nearly all MMOs are now of my list of games I would play, but as long as there Is a good one left I will continue to play even though on a hiatus currently.
Once upon a time....
While I don't disagree with the idea of the sub based model, I do disagree with ever paying $14.99 per month for it. If that ever came back I can guarantee that there would still be micro-transactions for a AAA since the idea has been found to be quit lucrative. Us complaining about micro-transactions isn't going to change anything, and wanting a sub based model is only going to make things worse for us because the greed is real.
The thing that bothers me the most is that players will bitch and moan about cash shops but continue to play games that offer them, usually posturing to the rest of the community that they don't use them, when in reality they do. I guarantee if every player stopped playing a game with micro-transactions, that game would stop offering them in a heartbeat and either only offer a sub or replace the MT with a sub. Again, that will never happen...because...of players.
Most players are all talk and no action.
~~ postlarval ~~
If the game is fun, play it, support it.
If game isn't fun, don't.
If you are too envious to play with whales then it's a good idea to play during events where f2pers can get lots of goodies for very little effort and free.
If you people wanted a 2nd WoW then you should have supported all the WoW clones that came and went. You can blame F2P gamers all you want but you're no better if you bought an MMO and stopped after the first month. An MMO needs support in money and numbers. Easier to get numbers without a pay wall and give players a CHOICE to pay.
Neither extreme is likely. Especially when you consider that most people change games frequently - whether they have a sub or not a month or three and people move on. Possibly why some subs are not for 30 days - FFXIV, DQ etc.
At the end of the day companies are out to recover their costs and make a profit. They may adopt "different" approaches for different games. They may even use different approaches for the same game in different countries!
Which means its not about the game its about the revenue model.
Companies choose whether to have an upfront cost (barrier to entry) or not: remember a sub based game is usually b2p as well but not always. And they also decide whether the game has an on-going cost or not.
In that sense games are no different to shops - get people through the door and offer them goods. Or amusement parks perhaps - do you charge for entry. charge per ride, sell people wrist bands etc. Same deal with games. We just have to remember this is the goal and treat each game as we feel best.
For them they have a cash shop but there are no advantages to be sold so it's purely cosmetic or just the option to play characters balanced with the free-to-play characters.
In order for pay-to-win to be contested, you would need a major successful MMO that is stealing customers away from other MMOs due to it's refusal to sell advantages. I see no such title on the market or the horizon.
But was it really level?
Not if you started later than other people.
Not if you had less time to devote to the game than other people.
Not if you spent your in-game time on activities other than grinding levels as efficiently as possible.
And most players decided "Well... this is crap." and moved on to other genres.
So within the last decade companies were like "We are losing people hand over fist. What do we do?"
Their solution was simple. Giving the advantage to older players, or no lifers, or the ones most dedicated to grinding doesn't pay the bills. Selling that advantage to people with jobs does.
Hence the dawn of pay to win.
The only way to bring it down would be to flatten out the stat gap that has become the corner stone of this dying genre. Bring it more in line with games like MOBAs that don't have to sell advantages because their skill based system you can just pick up and play attracts a huge number of players.
Why, if you total these so called F2P games you would work out that in any month all people who are succeeding in those are putting in several times what a monthly sub was. Those that are failing are putting minimal into it or nothing at all.
Then you have greediness like Archage that wants you not only to Subscribe but also forced to use the item shop on a weekly basis as well. Thats why i dropped and stopped and uninstalled that game. 1 or the other but certainly dont force BOTH routes to be a must.
ESO has it nicely done, buy the game play for free, item shop is pure cosmetic. There are expansions that must be bought to play those and also crafting gear that can be purchased (or found, yes found in game) then the player AH that people have got those items and placed on the AH.
However if a game starts to fail on a subscription model i would lower that subscription, it could be a case of players getting bored, something new came out and they wanted to give that a whirl BUT cannot subscribe to 2 games in the same month. I for 1 would only subscribe to 1 game at a time.
Before i only had requirements that the graphics in games were adequate, game was fun, nice story and good longing to play it. With the prices of games thesedays however i have come to expect top notch graphics, excellent gameplay and storylines.
2 of the latest games i have bought (that are not Online MMO's) as i dont play many online games right now, i do jump in to secret World Legends and Elder Scrolls Online now and again, nothing else out there thats worth squat right now.
Anyways I Pre-Order both Battle Chasers: Nightwar (my rating for this if asked would be a solid 8.5/10) great game that does bring back many old style MMO aspects and is great fun play, its just not MMO or Multiplayer.
The other is Elex (my rating 6/10). Just the controls and such are just not right and dont give a good feel about the game, I also feel that it is lacking something as well.
I have Seven:Days long gone and Vampyr on pre-order (carnt wait for those to come out next month) but i am also prepared to be dissapointed, i am however not prepared for it to be outstanding to play, that, sadly, is something rare thesedays.
There are respec potions, riding skill improvements, experience buffs, assistants, bag upgrades, skill lines, not to mention the RNG boxes designed to suck people's money from them. None of those things are "cosmetic".
~~ postlarval ~~
Farmville and shitty facebook games is where this practice started gaining more traction. Farmville was not the first, but it was the most successful throw away cash shop game that appealed to a wider audience (boomers, Gen X). John Smedley admitted that he saw the successes of Farmville as a obtainable goal within the mainstream MMO world here in the West. Those early crappy cash shop MMOs never did well here, it was the random loot crate and time reduction buffs that seemed to appeal to western gamers.
Habbo hotel goes way back and makes me sick to think people would actually spend money on such trivial things,but then i see people paying for a new Avatar picture in Hearthstone.Even the very crooked Hunted Cow studios did at least allow players to upload their own picture/Avatar.So Blizzard managed to one up a very crooked operation,where does that put Blizzard in the scheme of fair business practices?
Naturally and maybe the first,MTG,i am sure everyone knows how tcg's literally steal hundreds...thousands of dollars from their customers and the new wave is selling something you cannot touch>>VIRTUAL items lmao.Imagine that selling basically NOTHING,you NEVER own these virtual items,they are always the property of the developer,funny how that works,they sell you something but your not really buying it,only leasing it.
Never forget 3 mile Island and never trust a government official or company spokesman.