What do you think about F2P model?

F2P games as has been noted grossly suffer from either.

1. Pay 2 Win.
Many games start off relatively innocent (my example is combat arms, where at the start payed guns were a little bit fancier but later newer became outrageous beasts, although its nature as an FPS means even the free guns are deadly in a skilled players hand) and eventually newer and newer payed items are released, with each new item obviously being stronger than the last until the advantage a player gains from a payed item vs free is insurmountable.

2. 'Demo Mode'
Severely gimped free gameplay, to the point where it is just a hook to get people commited. Im looking at you, Runescape! In this case the free serves as a demo, with the Payed parts functioning as an unlocking system for the complete games. Sometimes it is not this severe, but many games reduce to a total grindfest if you wish to progress using only free items, whereas paying for the superior items removes a lot of difficulty from the game and makes its a breeze.

Some problems i find with the F2P model with payed benefits are.
- The value u invested in the game remain attached to your account only. So if said account gets banned or abandoned for whatever reason, the value is lost. Also the ensured quality of such games is often questionable, as they don't 'owe' the free players anything but have to maintain good standings with the paying players.
- Game often feels incomplete, but if you are willing to pay, a simple tallying of money would lead you to realise just spending the money on a one time purchase of a full game is often better.
- Skill is often replaced by money. This just does not feel right.

All in all, F2P games are played by those who often cannot afford a full game or who want to play a game with large communities. I have found that many F2P games are not worth my time and I would gladly pay for a superior overall experience, not just an artificially generated advantage (Pay2Win)

Thanks for reading my reply.

THEY ARE CRAP

I find it difficult to understand why people get sucked into F2P. The most important aspect of a game is "fun". How can you implement "pain" and then give them an option to opt out of this "pain" by paying money. Don't people realize that, the reason they started playing in the first place was because it was "fun"? It should be obvious...

I guess current F2P market is just evidence that pain is a stronger sensation than pleasure, and a market has sprawled to take advantage of this.

It's not very difficult to understand at all. F2P - free to play - free. FREE. People *will* jump on that shit.

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Originally Posted by Gare

It's not very difficult to understand at all. F2P - free to play - free. FREE. People *will* jump on that shit.

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There's a few that aren't complete shit, only one I bother with is TF2 though.

I think we can all agree that most of the F2P's out there were designed with the single goal of ripping you off.
However, I've played a good number of F2P games and I think we can also agree this definitely isn't the case with all of them.

Someone mentioned Path of Exile earlier and I can't endorse that game enough. Great gameplay, cash stuff is mostly cosmetic, they're constantly adding to the story (Like we need one in a Diablo game though amirite?), and constantly adding other content/bug fixes etc.

Someone else mentioned Tribes Ascend, which I don't think is a ripoff, but a friend of the poster felt it was a grind. I can see that, its probably a more subjective opinion situation than other games though.

It does take awhile to unlock different classes and some alternate main weapons.
In their defense they lowered the costs for both real and virtual currency based on feedback.
The grenades, sub weapons, and perks don't take too long though and the weapons you use level up as you go.
I don't think the game is intended for you to spread your credits across all classes at first, you should specialize.
I'm not really a stealth/sniper type guy or a tank guy (a la heavy from TF2), so I ignored 6 of 9 classes for the first couple months and was able to unlock most of my classes upgrades AND some of other classes if I wanted them.
Most of the "better" weapons, aren't better. It's a style choice, more accurate/less damage or bigger explosion radius/smaller clip etc.
If it feels like a grind, stop playing or switch game types/classes. You get a first win bonus every day, if you stop after you get that, you'll earn credits quick without burning out.
Naturally these are just my opinions on the game. I've been able to play it for hours on end like good old Doom/Halo/UT/Gears/etc
Probably went a litte overboard on that one, apologies.

I think Super Monday Night Combat is another example of F2P done right. All the items are cosmetic except for the weapons used in cooperative Horde mode which you randomly find like TF2. Sadly both this game and Tribes have dwindling player numbers.

Another good one is first person mech game Hawken. Not as great as my previous listees due to high virtual cost for other mechs and some items, but they do let you try each one for free, and I happen to prefer the basic mech anyway haha.

I'll add the obvious TF2 to this list as I have mentioned it a few times already.

If you havn't said TLDR and abandoned thread by now, I'll wrap up with a super abridged list.

Warframe = Also good, but an obvious WIP ][ Blacklight Retribution = Good as well.
Tera = Meh, but I'm not a fan of MMOs ][ Dofus = Severely limiting when free ][ Runescape = See Dofus
Dust 514 = Debatable since you lose your equipment when you die, but still skill based
Neverwinter = I plan to try ][ Wakfu = Plan to try ][ PSO2 = Plan to try
DCUO = Seemed like a fair deal, but I found the actual game boring
Mechwarrior and Mechwarrior Tactics = Plan to Try
Realm of the Mad God = Alright ][ Brawl Busters = Gets stale but I never felt like I was getting ripped

Mobile phone F2P games are waaaay worse imo
Some exceptions being Major Mayhem, Tetris Blitz, Words with Friends (with ads they mean), and the Zenonia series (Bit Grindy though)


In Conclusion I havn't spent a single cent on any of these games and don't plan to. I still play Super Monday Night Combat, Tribes, Path of Exile, Warframe, Team Fortress 2 and probably others that I'm forgetting. Thanks to OP for the good read! And to everyone else for sharing their opinions! And super thanks to those who read the whole thing! And perhaps apologies for making it so long.

EDIT: If someone could remind me how to do the spoiler tag I'll organize this post into a bunch of those for each game when I'm on a break at work. Thanks in advance

Felt like this was worth a thread-revival. Pretty disturbing shit. And this is why the F2P model is thriving, because there will always be some mentally retarded addict that throws his life savings at random vanity items.

http://www.gamasutra.com/view/featur...e_.php?print=1
http://www.gamasutra.com/blogs/Ramin...130626/194933/

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By far the worst story I discovered was that of a mother who became addicted to Mafia Wars on Facebook, and ended up sinking tens of thousands of dollars into it. As her obsession grew, she began to withdraw into the game and care little about the life going on around her.

"The last time I can remember going over, her entire room was filled with just hundreds of pizza boxes and McDonalds bags," says an old friend of her son. "When you enter the house, the smell just smacks you in the face, even though she basically just stays in her room."

The friend even alleges that as a direct result of the mother succumbing to the allure of spending more and more on the game, her son ended up dealing drugs simply so he could afford to keep payments up on the house and keep food on the table.

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My research didn't just focus on triple-A PC games either -- many of Nexon's free-to-play titles came up numerous times. One player told me that he has spent around $3,000 on MapleStory, including dropping a whole $500 in an attempt to create a single weapon in the game. But he says that he is easily one of the lower-end players, and that he regularly talks to people who have spent upwards of $10,000 on the game.

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Seeing as I am much too lazy to read 20+ articles on the subject, I'll just stick to my own opinion on the matter. F2P games, if they are games that are designed to only force a person to buy something from a sort of cash shop in order to complete a portion of the game, are pretty rip-off ideas that only those who really do not have any better time on their hands would do. The "demo" format is just as bad, if not worse (runescape being the biggest example here) than that of the pay to win format. For a demo format, A player would have to play the game for a certain period of time before realizing that he/she cannot move much forward unless the necessarily BUY the game in question. Then, they get many new benefits and rewards and other crap and rise to be much greater in the game because they decided to make that upgrade to continue growing in the game. The only good f2p format I can really think of is when there are cash shops, but only for vanity and little trinkets that really don't add too much help in the game to the player. The only game that I played that did this though, was mabinogi, and mabinogi's community is dead at this point in time. Ironically though, f2ps tend to bring and attract the worst type of communities though, because when you aren't paying for a service to play on, then you really aren't serious to take as much time of it seriously as possible. You might just blow off a week to act stupid in a f2p format, while in a p2p format, you'd want to play as much as possible before the next paydate.

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Originally Posted by Gare

Felt like this was worth a thread-revival. Pretty disturbing shit. And this is why the F2P model is thriving, because there will always be some mentally retarded addict that throws his life savings at random vanity items.

http://www.gamasutra.com/view/featur...e_.php?print=1
http://www.gamasutra.com/blogs/Ramin...130626/194933/

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to be honest, I think it's pretty stupid to even waste any sort of cash on f2p games, but when you have the money, you're willing to waste it


it really is scary to think about though.


EDIT: and another thing, what truly defines a MMO game is its COMMUNITY and the people who make the game. The game can be all awesome in gameplay and whatnot but once you get used to the gameplay then you only go towards the community to help you stay even slightly active in the game.

I don't want it. I grew up with only access to games in arcades and I hated having to pay to play. The whole point of computers and consoles was to be able to pay once, play forever.

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Originally Posted by Ecolocon

I don't want it. I grew up with only access to games in arcades and I hated having to pay to play. The whole point of computers and consoles was to be able to pay once, play forever.

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Well P2P games are usually subscription based, Where you pay x amount per month/day/year like WoW and other games like that. With MMOs, I doubt anyone has ever seen or even heard of a game which wasn't F2P or P2P with one payment.

meh, not quite the same...or maybe it is but thats no more disturbing (probably less so in a good number of cases) than some of the stuff i've seen on youtube about people obsessed with WoW.

If it was a game I really liked (Such as Maplestory), I'd much rather see a P2P model used. I don't really care if its $100 a year; Its better than paying $20 a month on Cash Shop items to stay somewhat relevant/powerful. (Keyword: Somewhat. Not leading, not ultra-powerful, just 'somewhat')

I say abandon the idea all together if True F2P and Pay to Win don't have any balancing mechanics.
I say that usually because those types of games features PvP and getting your ass whipped royally even though you can slay almost any monster in the fucking game after a long haul of grinding is a cheap psychological incentive to drain my pockets and "agree" to pay.
*Fuck, I'm still getting my ass handed to me even after reaching lvl 100 with nearly all maxed stats, but that deal on the ubermegaexagod armor with +1000 Atk, 3000 Def and full immunity to all spells, effects, traps, and hexes is 10% off of 3600 coins which translates to 50 murica dollars. I can so afford that!*
Ripoffs.

F2P is a pox on gaming.
Developers stop thinking about content for the sake of content and instead focus on which content which extract the most money the most easily.
It also segregates what little was left of "community" inside of MMOs.

shit sux, yo