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Post by dysmetria on Jan 31, 2011 18:38:48 GMT -5
I never understood the F2P mentality. To me, without wanting to offend anyone) it seems to be the same as walking into a restaurant and expecting the food and drinks to be for free and only having to pay for extra-seasoning and the way the food is arranged on the plate. The mentality you are referring to seems easy to understand to me. People want as much as they can get for as little as they have to pay. From a developer standpoint it is different, they can use F2P to draw in people who do not like to subscribe and try to get money out of them, either piecemeal or by convincing them to subscribe.
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Post by Admin on Jan 31, 2011 19:02:36 GMT -5
I never understood the F2P mentality. To me, without wanting to offend anyone) it seems to be the same as walking into a restaurant and expecting the food and drinks to be for free and only having to pay for extra-seasoning and the way the food is arranged on the plate. Hey, if that restaurant can make more money that way, why not? massively.joystiq.com/2011/01/06/turbine-lotro-revenue-tripled-since-going-f2p/At the end of the day all they really care about is the profit. And rightly so; they are a business after all, and people's jobs depend on it.
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Post by stuffinator on Feb 1, 2011 3:44:20 GMT -5
I'm quite happy with the f2p system how it is. It's better than not being able to play the game with friends. Yes, I already invested money in 2 character slots and the various items customizing set, but thats what I wanted and I don't blame them for being money greedy or something.
Everyone needs money to survive.
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Post by KenpoJuJitsu3 on Feb 1, 2011 8:52:57 GMT -5
I never understood the F2P mentality. To me, without wanting to offend anyone) it seems to be the same as walking into a restaurant and expecting the food and drinks to be for free and only having to pay for extra-seasoning and the way the food is arranged on the plate. 100% this^. I'll never understand the ceaseless issues with what's offered for free and what isn't and people posting/acting as if they have a sense of entitlement for free stuff. Also, there's the commentary about having paid for a subscription and losing what you "bought" if you stop subscribing. You actually don't. You paid a subscription to a service. When you stop subcribing you lose the service and every perk that comes with it just like numerous non-entertainment related services. Assuming this is addressing adults...stop paying for your internet service, your electric service, your telephone service, your car insurance, and if you live in an apartment stop paying your rent. Now tell those companies that you're still entitled to bandwidth, power, phone calls, collision coverage and a place to stay because you "bought" it. You wouldn't and you can't. Because CO is a game doesn't make the fact that it's a service special compared to other services. Same rules apply. Stop paying, lose the service...all of it.
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Post by zansatsu on Feb 2, 2011 11:47:55 GMT -5
I never understood the F2P mentality. To me, without wanting to offend anyone) it seems to be the same as walking into a restaurant and expecting the food and drinks to be for free and only having to pay for extra-seasoning and the way the food is arranged on the plate. Hey, if that restaurant can make more money that way, why not? massively.joystiq.com/2011/01/06/turbine-lotro-revenue-tripled-since-going-f2p/At the end of the day all they really care about is the profit. And rightly so; they are a business after all, and people's jobs depend on it. Yeah, the only thing they go for is profit, I actually bought LoTR when it was first released, and now, when it's f2p, I have to buy all the content I payed for again, and I mean all of it. I checked it out after it went f2p and I've never had a letdown like it. You have to pay for quest packs, if you don't you'll have to grind since you can't do either quests, instances or pvp. The biggest issue here is that game companies that ONLY goes for the profit will eventually see the game die out because of private servers where everything is enabled from the beginning until the end, most people doesn't really care if there's a few skills that are bugged, as long as they get the content, which is sad in a way but I fully understand it. And I kind of feel the same way about Champions Online, think about it, if you could actually customize your character to the max (including powers and all) there would be more people playing it as they could be playing the way they'd want to, when they get tired of questing they will want to try out the adventure packs, buying them or actually start subscribing to be able to play them if they like it enough they might even get lifetime. However when seeing that they can't even play their own character, only something similar to it, they will lose the interest factor and eventually stop playing. Now to me, f2p is like a demo and a demo ONLY. "I can play up to max level, yay. I can play with my friends and even create a guild with them, yay. I can grind quests like a moron and never even get to actually play the character I want to play the most.... WTF." The game is made for the player, why doesn't the game companies get that and make the game for the player instead for themseleves and only to profit. Make a good game and get a good reputation for handling it well, when you make the next one, more people will get it..... I miss the good old days when games weren't meant for the companies profit alone.
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Post by Admin on Feb 2, 2011 11:51:20 GMT -5
The biggest issue here is that game companies that ONLY goes for the profit will eventually see the game die out because of private servers where everything is enabled from the beginning until the end, most people doesn't really care if there's a few skills that are bugged, as long as they get the content, which is sad in a way but I fully understand it. I cant really agree with that. Take SWG for instance; a ton of people got upset because of the NGE and left. But the official game still has more players(about 50k) than any of the private servers. Granted, SWG is not a F2P game, but the NGE was obviously an attempt to make more money(which is why your comment above made me think about it).
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Post by zansatsu on Feb 2, 2011 12:03:06 GMT -5
Yes the actual game itself might have more players that any private server, but if you comine the number of players from all the private servers there are more than in the actual game. The reason for the amount of private servers is that no player wants the same thing as another, some people want to play a high rate server som want to play the game with the original rates.
It's not hard or expensive to setup a private server, it does however demand alot of time to maintain, thus the reason people that owns private servers ask their players for help with donations and at most times offer some items only available via donation.
If a server does go down, the players will simply find a new one.
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Post by kingkilingin on Feb 2, 2011 13:17:54 GMT -5
I never understood the F2P mentality. To me, without wanting to offend anyone) it seems to be the same as walking into a restaurant and expecting the food and drinks to be for free and only having to pay for extra-seasoning and the way the food is arranged on the plate. I just want to share something from here in the Philippines in regards to the F2P mentality. When Flyff launched here, no one was really into the cash shop thing. however around its Version 10 or so, a good number of players was seriously like spending 500php (around $12 I think) every week/2weeks. The idea behind is that when they bought whatever thing they bought is that it is theirs already and they see more value in that. Now I am not contradicting you, just sharing what happened here. I for one believe that one should pay for services other people give you. But the idea why not all people are not into subbing regardless of the features is that they cannot/do not want to commit to the game. They want something that they "own" even though should the game like just die then those things would be gone.
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Post by Admin on Feb 2, 2011 16:08:04 GMT -5
Yes the actual game itself might have more players that any private server, but if you comine the number of players from all the private servers there are more than in the actual game. Sorry, but I have a very hard time believing there are more than 50,000 people playing SWG on privately hosted severs =p
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Post by zansatsu on Feb 2, 2011 18:27:48 GMT -5
Sorry, but I have a very hard time believing there are more than 50,000 people playing SWG on privately hosted severs =p Just take a look at the best examples out there, WoW and Ragnarok Online... Not sure how many players who are still on RO but there's over 2000 private servers out there with a few 100 players on them, some servers even have more than 1000 players logged in constantly. And WoW, blizzard have announced that they've got 12 million+ players. Go through the existing private servers and I'm sure you'll find around another million there, considering some servers have 20k players. What I'm saying is that if players don't get the chance to actually customize their own hero (Leaving out half of the customization progress), they'll most likely get a little bitter and take off, leaving their active account behind to play something more meaningful. Or they'll buy something, maybe even subscribe. But if you look at the statistics about inactive accounts, I'm sure you'll find that most "new" players only go at it for a day or two.
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Post by melkathi on Feb 2, 2011 19:00:25 GMT -5
Now to me, f2p is like a demo and a demo ONLY. "I can play up to max level, yay. I can play with my friends and even create a guild with them, yay. I can grind quests like a moron and never even get to actually play the character I want to play the most.... WTF." But all these options, you didn't have in any other game you played, right? You are getting pretty much the same thing you would get in any other F2P MMO (because they don't have the freeform character customization CO has at all) but because this game offers subscribers even more, you are no longer satiscfied with what you would have been. The norm has now become less. Let's say you were to play Allods, which I like quite a bit. You do not complain that they do not allow you to mix and match powers. There too you cannot customize your hero the way you want. The difference is that if you were to subscribe, here you could. I never understood the F2P mentality. To me, without wanting to offend anyone) it seems to be the same as walking into a restaurant and expecting the food and drinks to be for free and only having to pay for extra-seasoning and the way the food is arranged on the plate. I just want to share something from here in the Philippines in regards to the F2P mentality. When Flyff launched here, no one was really into the cash shop thing. however around its Version 10 or so, a good number of players was seriously like spending 500php (around $12 I think) every week/2weeks. The idea behind is that when they bought whatever thing they bought is that it is theirs already and they see more value in that. Now I am not contradicting you, just sharing what happened here. I for one believe that one should pay for services other people give you. But the idea why not all people are not into subbing regardless of the features is that they cannot/do not want to commit to the game. They want something that they "own" even though should the game like just die then those things would be gone. I was thinking of FlyFF. And the way I understand it is that customization in all the games like it, is very limited at first and you pay money for loads and loads of options. To make the same for CO, wouldn't the devs have to take out pretty much the whole character creator and put every choice up on the C-Store?
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Post by dysmetria on Feb 2, 2011 20:17:18 GMT -5
But if you look at the statistics about inactive accounts, I'm sure you'll find that most "new" players only go at it for a day or two. F2P games work on the 89/10/1 principle. They expect about 89% of their audience to never pay a thing, 10% to buy some things, and only 1% to buy a lot of things. I doubt CO has quite those percentages, because of it being subscription only till last week and the lifetime subscriptions, but even when that is what happens they are still profitable enough that dozens more are being made as I type this.
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Post by kingkilingin on Feb 2, 2011 21:21:31 GMT -5
You are correct Sir Melkathi. Basically Flyff survived F2P model because people were into costumes and a lot of them wanted the easy way of earning in-game money (They would trade cash items/cash points for in-game cash). Also, there were tons of scams that happened cause of it.
The other costumes could be sold, (I think they are, I am not sure as I haven't visited the C Store) since some people are really into those costume customization. Also, maybe give the silvers reason to buy those costumes. Like have a event where silvers would have those costume contest and have different players/gm judge and earn a FEW C store points; not enough to buy those good items but just to make them think that if they win some more events they might have enough C store points. Now one can argue that customizing costumes with those free stuff is going to be enough, I think a bit later on people would need the good gold costumes to win those events.
But as of now, all I can see is people asking for those Free Form Characters so I think trying to get those into a Cash Shop system would earn CO more money (or immediate money) at the moment.
Regarding the post regarding Ragnarok Online - let me share a bit as I have played a lot of private servers and the Philippine official server. The numbers from the official game when it was P2P was phenomenal that numbers from Private servers were virtually neglible (Most Filipinos that played private had a few official accounts as well). Private servers are for those who want a certain something from the game (either high drops, high exp, extra event). Private servers also rarely reach 500 at any time. They would peak during early stages/life of the server but would drop down soon to a few hundreds, or less. This is because there is no development happening. You can farm all items you want, get all the gold in the game, kill all the people in the game but without any game progression, one would just stop.
My point is that the money CO could make now, with their system currently set-up, could make the game even better content - wise. Ingame customization can only take you so far but without those contents - which needs money for development, then the game is doomed to be stale.
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Post by melkathi on Feb 3, 2011 6:32:04 GMT -5
Also, maybe give the silvers reason to buy those costumes. Like have a event where silvers would have those costume contest and have different players/gm judge I'll be hosting a series of Silver Costume Contests actually. We have been talking about it on the Contests channel and people seem to think it a good idea. I'll be making a thread about it in a bit. Though I am affraid, the rewards will be ingame currency and not absurdly high, as I will probably do 4 events with 6 winners each.
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Post by kingkilingin on Feb 3, 2011 10:26:51 GMT -5
Whatever rewards should be fine (no silver should ever complain about how small or whatever a reward might be). What matters is that the community is really embracing/accepting in the silvers. And for that I thank all the gold members Really really extremely nice community!
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