Free To Play

[Dog Pants]

We're starting to see free-to-play games mature a little, offering a handful of games which are a genuinely good experience vs the masses of grindathons and play to wins. I just put my finger on the issue with the most common strategy at the moment - you can unlock *stuff* through playing, or if you have less time and more money, you can pay to boost yourself up. The problem is that the guys who play it a lot are more likely to spend money on getting even more of a boost, while the guys who hardly play it probably won't pay to boost themselves because they won't get their money's worth. So they're creating elitism - the casual players wallowing about with shit gear and slow levelling, and the hardcore ones with paid-for gear and fast levelling. Until companies work out how to balance it so that not paying doesn't put you at a disadvantage the model will be a negative for a game.

While I'm on the subject, these random crates. Terrible, cynical thing. Exploiting peoples' curiosity and optimism, like the Lottery crossed with Schrodinger's Cat. I don't like it. There are a few games coming out which I'm really interested in; Planetside 2 and the two Mechwarrior franchises (online, Tactics), which use the free model. I hope they don't fuck them up, but I don't feel much confidence. This post was prompted by the latter two doing both these things respectively. At least with MWT we can play amongst ourselves though.

[Grimmie]

I downloaded the free-to-play Microsoft Flight for my Dad to play on his home PC today. He's happy.

You can unlock extra islands and planes with DLC.

/tuppence

[FatherJack]

I downloaded the free-to-play Microsoft Flight for my Dad to play on his home PC today. He's happy.

You can unlock extra islands and planes with DLC.

/tuppence

My Dad enjoyed this too, must be a Dad thing. I thought it was a bit tedious.

My Dad has spent many of his pounds on previous MS FlightSim games, the hardware specifically to run them on and also lots of add-ons (mostly WWII fighter planes) and high-detail terrain packs so he can fly over his hometown of Portsmouth - which have consumed huge quantities of his hard drive space, but still look rather pants to my eyes as they're just 2D aerial photos which kind of hover over the actual 3D terrain.

He hasn't complained about the way you have to buy extra stuff, which hints more at that he doesn't really play it that much these days, as I ran out of free stuff fairly quickly when I had a go. With his flight-joystick setup, completing the objectives was fairly ponderous though - when I had a blast on my PC with the Xbox controller it was a piece of piss.

[Dog Pants]

I suppose for a free game with DLC you have more of an extended demo, as opposed to micro transactions in a multiplayer game. I can't think of anything particularly bad about that, you just pay for the bits you want. Cosmetic items seem to be okay too, they're not game balance affecting and appeal to the individuality. The xp boosts just seem to play on the MMO grind mechanic though, which is also bad. World of Tanks seemed okay despite it, which I think is how Mechwarrior Online will go, until I consider that I've not touched WoT since beta.

[Joose]

I think the best implementation of the F2P model is LoL. Its not pay to win, its not even pay to be slightly better. The purchasable stuff is either unlocking characters or purely decorative, and even then the characters can be unlocked (albeit slower) with money earned in game (although the cosmetic stuff cant be). Even that could be pay to win if the free characters were shit and the paid for ones were excellent, but they get around that by rotating the characters that are free. All paying means is that if you really like Teemo, you can always play as Teemo, and your Teemo can be wearing a silly outfit.

This model could easily be used by other games. The Mech games could have a handful of free Mechs you can play as that change on a regular basis, and you could pay to unlock one that you like permanently, or pay for alternative colour schemes etc.

[friznit]

Odd thing about WoT that. Everyone seems to burn out during beta. I wonder if they got even close to their expected ROI?

For many of the MMOs that have changed to F2P from sub (D&D, LoTRO, PotC etc), the move has merely been to eek out a few extra years from a dying game and in some cases has worked. But consequently they will put every dirty, cynical, money generating mechanic in the game to squeeze a little more margin. I find these games quickly become souless and having played LotRO now for less than a day, it already feels less immersive because it's constantly reminding me of ways to part with my cash.

[Anery]

I have tried quite a few F2P games now and there are some very different ways that it is being dealt with.
Most of them focus on boosts: XP, PvP XP, crafting, etc but some offer content as well. Some lock out certain types of character or play style, some offer cosmetic tweaks. Some are total shits and offer weapons and items, these are the total fails ones.
LotRo is a shit for begging, it feels like every second dialogue box is asking for cash, Fallen Earth had an annoying flash box every time you logged in - these things put me off and I will not buy from stores that do that. On the other hand the GW store is pretty subdued and I have bought from that, the Riot store is not subdued but it is part of the game (League) and you use it on such a regular basis (using other currency) that it is unobtrusive, and I think that had CoX gone F2P earlier in its life I might have bought stuff from there too.
The trick isn't forcing people to pay, it is making people WANT to pay - TF2 is a good example, they charge for silly things that people WANT (me? I'll take freebies in magazines and random drops and be damn happy about it) Too many games want to lock things out or make them ridiculously time consuming (crafting in FE I am looking right at you, cunty balls) in order to make you pay.

[Soonarmar]

I spent a lot of time playing League of Legends and All Points Bulletin. The former I felt was a good implementation of FtP - an unobtrusive store, no obnoxious pop-ups or reminders that I can buy things, and there aren't really any massive disadvantages if you never spend a penny on the game. Whereas in APB, the last time I played it, they had introduced a stupid pop-up after every mission telling you that you should go paid, as well as locking down a lot of the car customization options, which kind of sucked but was fair.

APB was great fun and I miss playing it but when you turn your FtP game into basically a walking advertisement to pay for your game, you're gonna piss off the fanbase. That said, I'm sure I did nothing but cost them nothing, so who cares.