Curse

Xsiriss · Jul 22, 2009, 05:48 PM // 17:48

Quote:

Originally Posted by Fay Vert

But there is no point asking the players which is best, the business model is down to the game company, and in either model there are examples of good and bad games.

So its not the business model that makes a good game, that just determines viability.

And without the players where does the money come from? Whats thep oint in charging for a game that no one plays? Seriously,it's a game not a business and it's when companies put their business front before the game that problems occur.

Winterclaw · Jul 22, 2009, 05:50 PM // 17:50

P2P is better if you can afford it. You get things like patches and updates and events.

GW can't even get a regular skill tweak.

Apollo Smile · Jul 22, 2009, 05:51 PM // 17:51

I have found that products that are pay-to-play tend to have more updates and content. Guild Wars is a major exception as it has a MUCH higher quality than all these millions of other "free to play" games. As people in this thread have already stated, the freedom Guild Wars and GW2 will allow is great. My policy is to have 1 subscription game at a time. Guild Wars makes a great "sidekick game". Currently I play WoW and GW and will be doing Aion and GW in Spetember.

JR · Jul 22, 2009, 05:52 PM // 17:52

Quote:

Originally Posted by Xsiriss

P2P is just for the money hungry pigs,no matter how frequently they update it,it's not worth close to £100 a year.They only need £5/roughly $8 a month from players,it's much more manageable and there would be a ton more people playing these P2P MMO's.I was so dissappointed that aion was P2P after rumours of a one off fee,if they need the money microtransactions are the way to go as it provides the option (like the BMP and 'one millionth edition).

As has been said,only the addicts/people with mass munnehs play P2P.F2P with microtransactions is clearly superior as it attracts all the casual gamers as well as hardcore,giving them the option of how much they want to spend on the game.

I think you need to ditch the paper-route and get a real job. For an activity that keeps many people entertained for 20-40+ hours a week that $15 a month seems pretty insignificant.

Do they really need all that money? Maybe not, but we can't expect them to operate their business close to the edge of profitability either. A reduction in subscription from $15 to $10 might put $5 a month into your pocket, but it is taking tens of millions out of theirs.

Quote:

Originally Posted by Fay Vert

Free Play doesn't work. GW has proved this by starting off free play but has now moved to the micro-payments model, which is very popular in mmos.

Microtransactions or not, Guild Wars is still considered free to play. There are also dozens of other MMOs that use variations of F2P models. It works.

Bryant Again · Jul 22, 2009, 05:58 PM // 17:58

I prefer either/or. If the game is good enough I would indeed pay a monthly fee for it.

Buster · Jul 22, 2009, 06:02 PM // 18:02

Pay to play because you simply get more content and updates than free to play.

Bob Slydell · Jul 22, 2009, 06:06 PM // 18:06

Pay 2 Play games IMO have a higher rate of players that quit. Me being one of them. I bought EverQuest II in 2007 and quit roughly a month and a half ago. SOE as a company did fine for at least a year, but as my main character leveled I noticed the higher level content lacking ease to play, becoming less soloable, and just plain becoming totally un-realistic. (Being forced into groups wasn't my idea of enjoying the game, yeah i'm generally anti-social like that, deal with it). Then once their latest expansion TSO came out, the game went downhill for just about any casual player out in that, if we still wanted to be good at the game and be accepted into groups, we MUST grind hours away for raid gear to match the no-lifer 30 year olds livin in their parents basements. And besides they tried to force tanks to become little raid machines too at one point. Oh yeah I forgot about the EQ2 Game client. You needed at least 8 Gigs of RAM just to make the game run "ok" making that the worst MMO game client I have ever seen. Duct tape and glue isn't always going to hold your game client together, SOE.

Btw, there's evidence on certain websites showing just how "professional" SOE's staff is when it comes to respecting other people. And by professional I mean unprofessional.

So they can enjoy not receiving my monthly payment anymore and enjoy their player base of a degrading 300,000. My time is now going back into Guild Wars, my favorite MMO anyway for the past 3 and 1/2 years I've owned it.

Free 2 Play all the way.

Ec]-[oMaN · Jul 22, 2009, 06:06 PM // 18:06

Quote:

Originally Posted by JR

I think you need to ditch the paper-route and get a real job. For an activity that keeps many people entertained for 20-40+ hours a week that $15 a month seems pretty insignificant.

Do they really need all that money? Maybe not, but we can't expect them to operate their business close to the edge of profitability either. A reduction in subscription from $15 to $10 might put $5 a month into your pocket, but it is taking tens of millions out of theirs.

When you look at like this, that's the whole problem within making crappy quality MMO's, to you it's 15 or 10 or whatever number you'd like to state, to them it's millions. Pretty sure paying for the game+ a free month then having a million customers pay 10$ just for one more added month covers the cost and still nets profit. Who's the idiot? us for buying bad products? or them for making it?

Most of the games are garbage, but the few that are decent, I don't think anyone will deny paying per month is worth it, since those games are so few and far between.

Daesu · Jul 22, 2009, 06:16 PM // 18:16

I think F2P and P2P attracts different types of players. F2P tend to attract people like "Vork" in the guild:

http://www.watchtheguild.com/

He is quite the "cheapskate". But in terms of quality, F2P games would have to go for more micro-transactions to compete with the quality of P2P games.

Ctb · Jul 22, 2009, 06:19 PM // 18:19

Pay all the way. Pay to play games generally offer much more content and seem to be able to maintain more of a living and populated world feel.

Guild Wars is my only experience with free-play type online games. It was fun while it lasted, but I've never been able to shake the feeling of isolation, like I was playing a single-player game. On top of that, the game stopped being maintained in any meanginful sense after less than three years (after EotN, it pretty much stopped receiving any significant content updates).

The other two online games I've played, however: LOTRO and WoW, continue to maintain vibrant and active worlds after four years of uptime. They both are also much more polished and feel much more properly built.

On the other hand, WoW rather decisively proves that pay to play doesn't guarantee any of this. While WoW is undeniably large and offers much, MUCH more to do than Guild Wars, it's also horribly maintained and Blizzard seems aloof and spiteful of its own players. It's plagued by nearly constant patch bugs that leave the game broken and unplayable, or even entirely inaccessible (in one famous instance a text file containing just the stupid patch notes caused a checksum error because of a typo on one word. The checksum failure left the game unpatchable and required users to undergo an hours-long depatch and repatch process). In addition, customer service is awful and the game is often badly unbalanced, often leaving certain classes terribly disadvantaged in PvP, with little more than a "meh, whatever" response from Blizzard despite ample evidence of the issue.

So, I think if you're going to go for a game that you intend to keep active and alive for years, you pretty much need to go pay to play. But individual implementations of each scheme say more overall than the actual scheme implemented.

Arkantos · Jul 22, 2009, 06:25 PM // 18:25

Quote:

Originally Posted by Xsiriss

P2P is just for the money hungry pigs,no matter how frequently they update it,it's not worth close to £100 a year.They only need £5/roughly $8 a month from players,it's much more manageable and there would be a ton more people playing these P2P MMO's.I was so dissappointed that aion was P2P after rumours of a one off fee,if they need the money microtransactions are the way to go as it provides the option (like the BMP and 'one millionth edition).

As has been said,only the addicts/people with mass munnehs play P2P.F2P with microtransactions is clearly superior as it attracts all the casual gamers as well as hardcore,giving them the option of how much they want to spend on the game.

Why do you always have to be so ignorant when it comes to this?

It's not for the money hungry pigs. It's for the developers who want to have better support from the devs, and so they can give the players much more quality updates and content. Only need $8/month? Please, back this up. If you can't, please, don't pull numbers out of your ass and expect it to be a constructive argument.

You don't have to be an addict or have a lot of money to play P2P games. $15/month is 50 cents a day. You make more than enough money to pay for a month in 2 hours of work in a minimum wage job (where I am, anyways).

Anyways, I completely agree with JR. I'd much prefer a P2P game, simply because it's going to be a much better quality game. However, I'm (sort of) happy that Guild Wars doesn't have a monthly subscription, because you can simply stop and start playing whenever you please.

Diddy bow · Jul 22, 2009, 09:22 PM // 21:22

Freeplay for me, although i will confess i have never played a pay2play game because i don't think its worth the money, we pay for so many things, paying for a game would always be like a leash tugging you back to play and get your money's worth. I prefer the expansions GW released, you knew what you were getting.

Pistachio · Jul 22, 2009, 11:00 PM // 23:00

Free to play. I simply don't have the time to play a subscription game and feel like I'm getting my money's worth. I've been playing Guild Wars off and on since release, and that would never have happened if it was subscription based. Consequently, ANet has received more of my money from the in game store, new campaigns, etc. than any subscription game I used to play.

Wilhelm · Jul 23, 2009, 12:24 AM // 00:24

Even with an adequet income, I could never imagine paying a monthly fee again for a computer game. Not because of the price, but because the developers needs to have a great understanding of what they playerbase demands for their X amount of dollars, and I can't picture that happening.

Avarre · Jul 23, 2009, 12:50 AM // 00:50

Depends if the game is worth it.

I'm quite happy to only play one game if it interests me, and I'd pay for that since I'm not using money elsewhere.

Regulus X · Jul 23, 2009, 01:55 AM // 01:55

Quote:

Originally Posted by Winterclaw

P2P is better if you can afford it. You get things like patches and updates and events.

GW can't even get a regular skill tweak.

I feel the same way. P2P is for the hardcore gamers [mainly] while FP is for the casual "game today and gone tomorrow" players that probably either don't have too much time to game, or have their gaming feet grounded into too many games at once to really think "long-term" gaming.

It all boils down to Quality (content/updates) vs Quantity (money/time) essentially.

arcanemacabre · Jul 23, 2009, 06:02 AM // 06:02

BUYER'S REMORSE

I chose "freeplay," but I'm really only talking about Guild Wars "buy once, play free" model. Every P2P and free-play game I've ever played I always had buyer's remorse for. I always watch my money being flushed right down the toilet.

Most free-play games out there get their money from microtransactions, which I (like the idiot I am) am usually suckered into. The P2P games never have the quality and fun I expect from having to shell out a constant flow of cash. Guild Wars and Diablo 2 are the only online RPGs that I haven't had buyer's remorse from.

Now, that's not to say that I may one day find a P2P game that I feel is worth the monthly payment. I'm hoping I will, actually. I like the idea behind it - paying for a constantly fluid and improving service. I'm hoping Aion, Champions, or SW:ToR will be worth it. Either way, a P2P simply must have a free trial or starter area (like Spellborn), or I won't even consider it.

Ghost Omel · Jul 23, 2009, 12:12 PM // 12:12

Personally speaking, i would say Free-to-Play. I follow philosphy that most people follow, I pay for a game why would i pay to enjoy it. That being said, if the title of the Game is Epic in my opinion and deserves my attention adn my monetary support i would Pay for it monthly without any doubt. Being a fan of Star Wars series i will gladly pay for TOR game and will 90% sure to own once it hits the shelfs.

(Datura) · Jul 23, 2009, 04:46 PM // 16:46

Free to Play is for me but i see that advantages of both systems.

Arcanemacabre has it right. I'll also add that free to play is the future of most massive games. To get a subscription game player to try your new mmo can be...tough. So, developers came up with ways to give you some content for free. Wether its the online component, client, expansions or all(ad-based).

More modern business models make it easier for you to try many or be lured away from a game but once you settle down with the one you want they leave you room to spend more money if you would like to.

Vazze · Jul 23, 2009, 06:39 PM // 18:39

I voted P2P. In my opinion F2P has serious limitations on updates and new contents. But paying 15-20$/month is just ridiculous, I will never pay that money for any MMO no matter how polished it is and frankly...nobody should (when MMOs were new, this price was fine...but today, nah). Anets original model was to come up with a new chapter every year, which is ~50$/12month which is pretty good (4$/month) but I would be willing to pay more than that to have a game which has frequent and meaningful updates not just for PVE but for PvP as well.