Why hardcore gamers hate freemium

[Zeus]

Pretty good article

http://ca.ign.com/articles/2013/07/29/w ... ee-to-play

[kali o.]

It was OK, but I think there is a simpler truth: Microtransactions change the development focus of a game (from "fun" to making that extras "valuable"). It's almost 100% inevitable -- very few devs have the freedom or income to do a freemium game justice (ie: parcel it up and/or simply design extra optional content). Maybe Valve is one of them - dunno, I don't bother with DOTA.

That's not a trust thing -- it's just reality.

[Shrinweck]

F2P games like DOTA and LoL can be monetized without constant incentives to give them money. They provide 100% access and you aren't constantly stumbling upon locked chests that require $1 keys to open and shit. DOTA heroes are all free and you pay for custom shit. LoL gives free champions that change on a weekly basis which works to give people a chance to try new champions without potentially overwhelming them.

The problem with F2P games tends to be MMOs and the like where every turn the devs have given you an incentive to give them money. Development isn't entirely focused in this case on new content and it's hard not to see every small thing they do as an excuse to ask you to give them more money. The only F2P MMO I've ever played that was monetized well and didn't feel like they were nickel and diming me is DC Universe Online. Unfortunately, it just isn't that great of a game.

DLC isn't a big deal. I like the idea of giving them another $10 for getting to load up the game a couple months later as opposed to having to wait 9+ months like the old days and buying some $35+ expansion. Zero day DLC is pretty money grubbing but there's only like 1-2 games a year that I'd consider good enough to ever pay attention to zero day DLC.

Also part of this article is horrible from a journalistic point of view - you want a gamer reaction? Twitter quotes from unknown people is as stupid as pulling from comment sections. Social media as a tool for getting quotes is so god damned lazy. You might as well bring up the points they brought up yourself.

Even if you ignore real money functions, they intrude into your mind and can ruin immersion.

That's right on the money though about stuff like Diabalo 3's RMAH.

[Don]

Nobody would have a problem if a $60 game sells for 3 installments of $20, or even $25 to account for the fact that people might realize they don't like the game after the first installment. It doesn't work because they want to sell you $25 X 10 for the same game that used to be $60. You're not going to be competitive in LoL without spending an obscene amount of hours getting all the champions without spending money, and it's likely you'll end up spending more on a game like LoL if you actually want to be competitive. Yes you spend less money if you turn out to not like the game, but honestly it's not that hard to figure out what kind of game you wouldn't like. I'd never play a game like LoL if it was on shelf for $60, so the fact that it's F2P to confirm the fact that I don't like it doesn't really mean much. The game could easily have a demo and it'd have accomplished the same thing from my point of view.

[Zeus]

Kali, I'm not sure it's even really trust. It's the perception of that trust that's the issue. Even if we are 100% that they ain't gonna do it we still don't wanna think of ourselves as believing that because we don't think we should be trusting of that. The fact that it's even possible even though very likely improbable makes the hardcores uncomfortable

[Don]

People pay $15/month in a MMORPG on the assumption that this money is going to be used to develop new content and MMORPG works just fine. I mean maybe 10 years ago people actually believed that money was needed to pay for the bandwidth but I'm sure people now know that the infrastructure cost is pretty much trivial in a MMORPG compared to other expenses.

It's got nothing to do with trust. It's because invariably you see they try to sell a game that's $60 for $250 in 10 parts of $25. It takes literally 2 minutes to create a new civilization in Civ 5 and you need to pay $5 for each DLC. Okay you won't have the voice narration or the unique icons compared to what you get in a DLC if you made your own civilization. If a new civilization in Civ 5 is 50 cents instead of $5 which reflects the amount of work is needed to create it, people would be more trusting of DLCs.

[SineSwiper]

The problem with F2P games tends to be MMOs and the like where every turn the devs have given you an incentive to give them money. Development isn't entirely focused in this case on new content and it's hard not to see every small thing they do as an excuse to ask you to give them more money. The only F2P MMO I've ever played that was monetized well and didn't feel like they were nickel and diming me is DC Universe Online. Unfortunately, it just isn't that great of a game.

RIFT isn't too bad about that. Many things that cost real money can be acquired through efforts elsewhere. They seem to really reward you for paying the monthly fee as well.

Most of the monetized items are stuff that are handy, but not something that you really need. Although, that's tends to make the game a bit easier, too.

[Shrinweck]

Oh I forgot Rift went F2P recently. I glanced at it but I can't stand that game any more. It was great for the four or so months I played though. I tried to go back recently and just could not stand the game play

[SineSwiper]

Oh I forgot Rift went F2P recently. I glanced at it but I can't stand that game any more. It was great for the four or so months I played though. I tried to go back recently and just could not stand the game play

Errr... what's wrong with it?

[Eric]

Oh I forgot Rift went F2P recently. I glanced at it but I can't stand that game any more. It was great for the four or so months I played though. I tried to go back recently and just could not stand the game play

Errr... what's wrong with it?

The style of click mob, click ability, is ancient.

Try playing some of the more modern MMOs. Blade & Soul for instance plays amazing, it's almost at the level of an action/platformer.

[Shrinweck]

It's old and I've already dropped all the hours I care to into it. I played that game at launch. Nothing particularly wrong with it other than it's the exact same game I left. SWTOR ruined me on MMORPGs in some ways - it destroys Rift in storytelling and the skills are just boring for me now.

And yeah the click mob click ability thing just bored me. SWTOR didn't revolutionize anything in this case but it certainly gave it a fluidity that Rift lacks. It just feels rigid. GW2 and TERA's combat was a lot about placement and Rift basically has none of that.

Here are a couple ways Wildstar is going to change the ever loving fuck out of some of these systems:


What Rift does extraordinarily right are the skill trees for the classes. Cool shit. That I've basically already completely explored to my hearts content. Bard is probably one of my all time favorite (sub)classes ever in a MMORPG.

[Eric]

Asian MMOs have been doing that for a while, check out TERA or Blade & Soul videos.

[Don]

I think these games are poorly designed. If people wanted to play action games they can play Secret of Mana or Megaman. The whole point of a RPG is supposed to be a game that focuses more on resource management.

[Shrinweck]

Asian MMOs have been doing that for a while, check out TERA or Blade & Soul videos.

I have - I played TERA at launch and have no interest in Blade & Soul (looks exactly like TERA and Age of Wushu combined and I have no interest in playing that game) at the moment. Wildstar seems to be the first MMO that blends combat that's fun and active with bearable MMORPG mechanics and a fun story. I need a story and it just can't be terribly translated stuff that I just cannot summon up a single emotion about. Wildstar has these fun mechanics in addition to a cool looking setting. I can't see getting excited for an Asian MMORPG ever again unless it comes with RAVE reviews. Everything I've read about B&S makes it sound like more of the same schtick as TERA and Age of Wushu

Also, the movement and aiming mechanics are presumably deeper in Wildstar, at least from what I can see in the videos.

And I disagree - resource management is not what a RPG should be about. It should be getting to be someone else that can do cooler shit than you can IRL and exploring the world you're in. God dammit am I tired of playing MMORPGs where it feels like all I'm ever doing is glancing at cooldowns and my mana/whatever while using the exact same 5-8 skills over and over. While I agree that these Asian MMORPGs are basically shitty action games, Wildstar is clearly promising a lot more than that. The combat should be something I have to get through to get to more cool shit. The combat itself shouldn't be the cool shit. Combat in a RPG should certainly be more about strategically using what resources you have than paying attention to some ludicrous active combat system, but the monotony of what people have been doing lately calls for games to shake things up. Wildstar looks like it has found a decent balance of action and situational strategy.

[SineSwiper]

I think these games are poorly designed. If people wanted to play action games they can play Secret of Mana or Megaman. The whole point of a RPG is supposed to be a game that focuses more on resource management.

If any genre needs more innovation, it's MMOs.

[Don]

I think these games are poorly designed. If people wanted to play action games they can play Secret of Mana or Megaman. The whole point of a RPG is supposed to be a game that focuses more on resource management.

If any genre needs more innovation, it's MMOs.

Making MMORPGs play more like Megaman isn't exactly innovation. I know ever since WoW discovered the 'don't stand in fire' mechanism people think they're stumbling onto something new, but you don't want to stand in fire when you play Megaman or Super Mario Brothers too.

[Flip]

I feel like freemium taps into the human trait that almost everyone wants to cheat. That is essentially what these games are selling, ways to cheat/make the game easier, so of course the hardcore would mostly reject that.

[Eric]

This thread is now about MMOs. ;p

Everquest Next abandoned the holy trinity(DPS/Tank/Healer), and is adding some Minecraft flavor to it. x_x

Few other details:

Rewriting of the lore.
Day/Night cycles.
Generic looking races.
Can vault small obstacles.
Multi-classing - Eight different classes at the start. Acquire more classes as you play the game (40 more classes). Can mix and match abilities.
Class defining weapons. Each class can only use certain weapons like Guild Wars 2.
Abilities are dependant on weapons like Guild Wars 2.
Mix and match weapons
Voxel based world to allow destructibility. The world will repair itself slowly over time though this isn't true for rallying calls.
Certain abilities change parts of the terrain e.g. destroying bridges
Emergent AI - No fixed spawn points. Monsters spawn based upon a "tagging" system and everything is tagged and tracked. Events happen based on tagging as well.
Tiered World - Procedural generation to make environments. You can mine through the world to find stuff. Dynamic areas are procedurally created to be found by mining through the world.
"Permanent change" through "rallying calls". As you work through the content it changes the world. For example, everyone in the game is on the same quest and to build a city. Lot's of little quests that you can take part in to make the city. Events of the "rallying call" change based upon what you do through the "tagging" system. This means the quest will change dependant upon your server. If you don't do parts of the quest the quest will change e.g. not building a stone wall for the city will make the goblin army attack.
The point is that the "rallying call" event will be different for each server, dependant on what does and does not get done. These "rallying calls" also chain and therefore each server becomes very different to each other so in a few years the worlds will be different depending on the server you're on. Each server has it's own different history as a result.
Everything is made out of voxels. You can build stuff in "Everquest Next Landmark" and sell it in an economy where you get some of the profits that is real money.
If you build really good stuff it can be added to the actual world of Norath.
"The round table". Open development you can see what they're making and being able to vote on what you like and don't like. You can make stuff and add it to the game. Promising a lot more developer interaction in making the game.

[Don]

Well, the most well-known freemium tend to be MMOs.

I saw EverQuest Next but it's definitely not enough to make anything out of it.

[Shrinweck]

There's some interesting stuff in there but like EQ2 nothing that actually sparks any real motivation for me to play the game. Nothing in there about an interesting story-driven experience, it looks like the real draw here is those rallying calls and whatnot in order to build a metagame that never ends as its form of endgame content. While I actually enjoy a make your own fun approach to things, I don't think this is a method that's going to draw me in.

In the grand scheme of things I didn't like GW2's approach to weapons and their attached skills. It meant that you could unlock all the skills attached to a weapon in under thirty minutes (and if you were high enough in level in literally one kill, you could unlock all the skills), meaning the game was more about experimentation then unlocking cool shit. Which is appealing in its own way, but really unlocking cool shit is the main motivation I really feel for running a level treadmill. Obviously I can't tell how much of that is carrying over into this new game but it doesn't bode well for my future interests that they're so similar. Leveling should mean more than numbers incrementally increasing.

Sony definitely knows their shit when it comes to constructing F2P games that don't nickel and dime you, so I'll probably check it out at some point.

[Shrinweck]

In the grand scheme of things I didn't like GW2's approach to weapons and their attached skills. It meant that you could unlock all the skills attached to a weapon in under thirty minutes (and if you were high enough in level in literally one kill, you could unlock all the skills), meaning the game was more about experimentation then unlocking cool shit.

I say this and then two days later I'm playing GW2 again. I guess there's something to say about only having a few skills per weapon and fine tuning them to be as fun as possible and having them be useful. I still prefer the classic approach to unlocking shit as you level though.

[Eric]

In the grand scheme of things I didn't like GW2's approach to weapons and their attached skills. It meant that you could unlock all the skills attached to a weapon in under thirty minutes (and if you were high enough in level in literally one kill, you could unlock all the skills), meaning the game was more about experimentation then unlocking cool shit.

I say this and then two days later I'm playing GW2 again. I guess there's something to say about only having a few skills per weapon and fine tuning them to be as fun as possible and having them be useful. I still prefer the classic approach to unlocking shit as you level though.

You flip-flopper!

[Don]

The way I see on abilities is that if you need macros to make use of your abilities efficiently then you clearly have too many abilities. In RIFT you can basically have 3 Macros that use about 20 skills and just press 1 2 3 the whole time. That implies the game could've been better off just having 3 buttons. In a WoW like game you pretty much can category most actions into:

1. Normal DPS
2. MOAR DPS
3. Special Stuff

It doesn't really add any complexity whether it takes 1 or 100 buttons to do MOAR DPS especially if the game allows automation of any kind. In EverQuest 1 for a long time quite a few classes have exactly one button to do DPS and unbelievably there's still a difference between guys identically geared in their damage output.

At any rate Guild Wars 2 is hardly new. EQ1 you can only have 8 spells memmed at any time out of your spellbook and originally that was pretty much all the abilities you have available. Melees classes tend to have even less.

[Shrinweck]

Ohh right the macros. That's why I REALLY stopped playing Rift originally.

They're deal breakers for me. Once I got to the endgame and people using macros were wiping the floor with me DPS-wise, I quickly started losing interest. I don't want to play games that limit my interaction to the gaming equivalent of CTRL-V

[Don]

If Macros are usable in SWTOR someone using them will probably wipe the floor with you on DPS especially on a faceroll class like Marauders.

Most of the WoW era MMORPGs cannot be played competitively without macros no matter how good you are and that's probably why they all suck from a design point of view.

[SineSwiper]

Heh, I remember watching high-level WoW videos and being disgusted at the level of cheating people do with these "add-ons" that display critical details like hate level, timings, etc. That's almost as bad as that video driver that let you see through walls for FPSs.

[Eric]

Most of those mods were quality of life Sine, some classes that did damage didn't have a way to clear their threat so you just had to guess. Blizzard eventually put most of those things into the actual UI, or gave more obvious queues about timings as the game got older.

It would not have been possible to clear most dungeons/raids early in WoW's life without mods, you NEEDED timers lol.

[Don]

I remember seeing argument for how knowing where you are on the threat meter is a skill and one guy said does that mean you're supposed to use the Force to know your exact position? I mean sure it's easy to know if you're putting a lot of threat or a little bit of threat but when you talk about WoW raids where boss randomly wipes 70% aggro one MT, how do you possibly know that you have less than 30% of the MT's current aggro?

I always thought the timer stuff is pretty dumb because if you didn't have those add-ons you'd just use an egg timer or whatever. I remember back in EQ1 we'd have one guy running a timer yelling out when the instant kill AEs come out. They're not stuff you can avoid with skill because if you didn't get X distance away you just died. Of course you got to ask what's the point of a mechanism that requires automation to defeat it? It's essentially an arms race and it means the game is better off without either in the first place.

[Shrinweck]

Since this is now partially a thread about Wildstar they released a "State of the Beta" thing with some interesting stuff.

Basically they've been struggling with implementing a trait/talent system that allows people to make characters that grow to be different from each other, you know, a problemjust about every other MMORPG has ever had. Apparently they tried to do the kind of thing where traits unlock as your stats increase but it made the game entirely too gear dependent. They say they have something new in the works though. This is kind of worrying, but I guess they have 3-4 months of development left unless it gets delayed.. which some people have been saying it probably will since this is pretty late to have two of the classes not even be announced yet. I guess they made the beta post because they're in between beta phases at the moment though, so maybe all that stuff is right around the corner.

The cool thing they've announced is on the issue of 'monster tagging/shared xp'. They've removed "Kill X" type objectives and replaced it with a quest completion bar, which basically accomplishes the same thing. Based on how much damage you do to a monster, you will get a proportionate amount of experience, whose value will apply towards your completion bar. Meaning if you go out of your way to solo a big baddie by yourself and get all the xp, it isn't just counting for one. Guild Wars 2 kind of did this but a lot of the time it's either implemented terribly or not at all, i.e. killing a veteran should have a bigger effect on the completion bar, but a lot of the time doesn't. They're apparently tweaking it so people can't just run into a quest area, do a bunch of weak AoEs and complete it while other people do the lion-share of the work. Sounds good.

[Eric]

Wildstar announced they're going to be a subscription based MMO.

[Shrinweck]

Yeah I saw that.. additionally they're going with EVE Online's model where you can buy an in game item with real life money that can be used or sold to other players. The item grants a month of subscription time. I was hoping for something like The Secret World where it's buy to play and you get the whole game and then you can sub for content updates or buy the content updates manually. The cash shop in that game is purely cosmetic and convenience items and they don't dick you over by keeping game functionality away from you.

But really I don't know what I expected. What kind of idiots would give up the initial cash flow gotten from pre-orders and initial sales. I think the trick is immediately seeing when people are beginning to migrate away from your game and IMMEDIATELY switching to a more flexible pay model before you lose more players to other games.

[SineSwiper]

It depends on how the model works. Yes, I don't like cash for real and gaming changing items. But, if it's like an auction house model where that stuff devalues pretty quickly (ie: people stop playing or stop using those items), it could work where only the rich hardcore players would bother to shell out the cash for those. Other folks would either work towards those items without cash or wait until the price goes down.

[Shrinweck]

NCSoft is running the show there and if anyone knows how to manipulate digital economies by now it's probably them. They've had over a year with Guild Wars 2 and I've seen them struggle and eventually hit a certain kind of equilibrium with the value of their fake money with the value of real money. At launch when there was next to no gold in the system it was scarce and expensive, but they've hit a kind of steady equilibrium from what I can tell. Launch was kind of an economic cluster fuck but there's basically no way to have an economy launch smoothly unless you have a real launch in a kind of closed open beta with pre-order customers (where you don't delete characters at the end), and then you could 'softly' officially launch it at the honest to god release.

The trick from GW2's standpoint is to come up with money sinks that keep the average player from becoming way too rich, but at the same time letting them make enough money such that they don't feel like they're being heavily influenced to buy their fake currency. They've been playing with that a lot in Guild Wars 2 lately from what I can tell. There was just an election where the two candidates ran on different platforms, the winner reducing some of the money sinks being the winner. The latest content patch also released a temporary arena that all but throws money at players who are willing to grind content. It's interesting stuff. It'll be interesting to see how much fake money the in-game subscription item will end up being worth. I'm sure the first few players who get rich will be able to buy enough of them to last the game's lifetime. I was never good enough at EVE Online to get enough money to afford/have an idea of the time involved to get their in-game subscription item.

In the past, NCSoft has been pretty good about money stores in their games, meaning they won't sell game changing items. We're talking cosmetic and minor boosts. For all the "We're making this game right" talk that the devs for this project do, I don't see nickel and diming being an issue.

[Don]

The attempts to be cute with digital economies invariably fail due to the inability to purchase game currency directly with real life money. Nobody wants to run through some hoops with your fake psuedocurrency that is only an intermediate step between real money and game currency. You basically need blind faith for this system to work. That is, suppose I bought 500 1-month credit things. I'm obviously not planning on playing the game for another 500 hours, so I have to have faith in that I can unload my 500 credit things into game currency. Given the state of MMORPGs that's asking for a lot. The only game I know which has this working is EVE and I'm convinced the whole game is just a pyramid scheme. If you look at a game like EQ2, you can easily verify there might be only 10 1-month credit things for sale at any given time, so even if I'm willing to spend thousands of dollars on EQ2, why would I buy these credit things when a minimal amount of research would indicate that it's going to be pretty hard to convert them to game currency?

If you want to go the RMT way it's got to be like Diablo 3 where you can just place an order for X gold for $Y.

[Shrinweck]

NCSoft works it so that you basically trade real money for their fake money for GW2 but it's too early to see how much Wildstar is actually taking from that game.

[Don]

NCSoft works it so that you basically trade real money for their fake money for GW2 but it's too early to see how much Wildstar is actually taking from that game.

The psuedocurrency method requires you to have a faith that this fake money is actually useful. Granted, the game currency can be considered as fake money too but if you've no faith the game currency can be used for anything useful then clearly we're talking about a game with no meaningful economy to begin with. There's just no reason for any individual to believe that there's a point to amass more than about $20 worth of fake currency without an assurance it can be converted to something else useful, and there usually isn't. You can buy cash shop stuff sure but what if you got no interest in it? Even if it can be paid for subscription why would you need significantly more than what's needed to pay one month of subscription?

[Shrinweck]

Yeah I've basically said that about needing in game money sinks while providing the idea that you're still getting enough money to do things you actually want. I think they've hit a decent equilibrium with GW2. You're constantly making money disappear by quick traveling and repairs on a extremely minor level. Also there are tons of in game money sinks that cost ~$40 worth of game currency and people actually seem to want them so there's tons of money constantly disappearing from the in game economy so things don't get devalued. At launch GW2 gold was like 2.5 gold per $10 and now it's something like 23-25 gold for $10, which is a decent amount of gold to get a character going even in the endgame, as opposed to 2.5 which even at launch barely did jack shit for you.

Edit: I just remembered I breezed through some of the latest Diablo 3 patch notes and they've further devalued the in game gold. $.25 is the cheapest you can sell anything on the RMAH and gold at whatever it was stacked at previously was valued way below that. It's crazy that it's taken so much time to address this issue and to 'fix' it by causing inflation is probably an error. I wouldn't use the Diablo 3 RMAH as an ideal example of anything but greed.

[Don]

Inflation isn't a big deal as long as there's something that can be meaningfully bought with gold itself. I sort of assume that as a prerequisite since if there's nothing worth buying with the game's currency then obviously you won't be seeing much demand for a psuedocurrency that acts as an intermediate between real money and game currency either. The problem is that psuedocurrency are still limited by their usefulness. In EQ2 there's plenty of good stuff you can buy with game currency. Plenty of people sell for slots to loot top end gear for plat. There's also a psuedocurrency good for one month of playing. If you look at their sales price it's pretty clear the guys playing a long time could easily buy a hundred month worth of this stuff, but what's the point? It's actually very hard to convert it back to in game currency because people certainly have no reason to carry a hundred of these things around so demand for that psuedocurrency is actually very low. In GW2, if you constantly need to spend hundreds or even thousands of gold, then why not just let people sell the gold directly? Why have your faith on this pseudocurrency when you know people most likely bought those only to convert it to game currency? I suspect it's because game companies don't want to worry about lawsuits or whatever but honestly this whole 'nothing on the game has any value, seriously' argument is going to fall apart spectcularly one of these days, so you might as well embrace the fact that virtual stuff definitely has value.

[Shrinweck]

More cool shit Wildstar is doing: