It really is amazing how much Blizzard changed the game with WoW. I mean, if you don't have an IP like Star Wars it's nearly impossible to compete with them. The game is just too good and polished. I played the TOR beta, and fully intend on consuming the game, but if it wasn't a Bioware/Star Wars game and it was just some new IP doing what they're doing, I wouldn't give it a second thought, and it's far more polished than most MMOs are at launch.
Guild Wars 2 looks like it could further evolve the genre if they prove you can have a full featured MMO without charging monthly fees, but that remains to be seen.
As much as I'd like to think otherwise, TOR will likely end up ground up and spat out by WoW, and GW2 will end up with the same level of following as the first GW (as in, everyone knows about it, and has probably played it and liked it, but it won't really effect the MMO landscape at all).
Honestly I think I'm just going to have to wait for WoW to die from sheer bloat before anyone has a shot at breaking it up.
I think SWTOR can do fairly well if they continue to develop the class storylines (I really liked the start of the smuggler storyline that I played through), since WoW's one weak point is LOLORE.
Jephery on
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"Orkses never lose a battle. If we win we win, if we die we die fightin so it don't count. If we runs for it we don't die neither, cos we can come back for annuver go, see!".
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CorehealerThe ApothecaryThe softer edge of the universe.Registered Userregular
WoW's story is good. It's just had relatively weak presentation outside certain questlines and cutscenes, which have gradually gotten better at presenting the story in a more interesting light outside of quest text and static environments.
I think WoW burnout is high, so both TOR and GW2 will enjoy quite a bit of success.
I do think that ArenaNet will be more aggressive with their microtransactions than they were with the first title. Not the typical F2P temporary buff potions or anything like that, but I foresee quite a bit more pay content than what was in the first game.
The thing about Turbine/LOTRO is that it was a subscription game already that ran for many years before going F2P. So they had a lot of content already created to slice up for item shop, etc. A situation like that is going to be inherently different from the approach a company uses that is producing a game strictly for F2P from the start. The item store tends to affect the design decisions/how they are made/play.
My 2 cents:
I don't like paying a monthly fee (which quickly adds up to far more than I ever pay for any other game for a similar length of time), and I'd rather just pay a la carte for the few pieces of content I'll actually use. So... what is wrong with paying for the content that you actually use?
The wall of text no one will read:
I've quite enjoyed my time with DDO, and I threw down 50 bucks to buy more content on it. That's no more than I would spend on another, non-MMO game. It could have bought a 3 month subscription for me, I guess... but how much of all that content would I actually use? And would I actually get any enjoyment out of my play time, knowing I should "use it or lose it"? I think some people might, but it's definitely not for me. Monthly fees seem like "another bill to pay", and it's something I try to avoid in my gaming.
The model that I've had the best experience with was Anarchy Online. They gave you the entire base game without expansions to play with for free, and that's a lot of content. There are some billboards with ads on them, and to get higher than the 200 level cap (200! That takes hundreds of hours to achieve!), you have to subscribe. But I never felt limited in the things I wanted to do, and they actively fostered their froob community.
The thing that I ask myself about Microtransactions is "How does this impact how I play the game?" The answer in the vast majority of cases is "Nothing. In the slightest." It only bothers me if I let it bother me. I don't care if you can buy a really cool mount in shop for real money, or even the "best weapon in the game", if the game experience is mostly PvE and I get items in-game that work just fine.
I have a pretty simplistic view towards it. Any game with the $15/month price plan is not going to get any more money from me for microtransactions, and if those microtransaction break gameplay, I'm just not going to play that game anymore. 180 dollars/year is three new games worth of material a year, and just a metric fuckton of games for sale on steam a year. I'll pay it for the uniqueness of a MMO, but at that amount of money per person, going for any more is purely pushing it to me. Anything north of 500K subscribers, and you're bringing home upwards of 90 mil per year at that point.
Rift, god bless 'em, has been attempting to put out tons of free content and put on sales where you could get 10 dollar a month rates. Their game just doesn't appeal enough to change the industry that much. Would they have gone with that strategy if they had been bringing in people like WoW was in their first few months? I kind of doubt it.
The GW2 guys said at one point that the monthly fee thing was a big ol' pile of bullshit, so if they can deliver something way kinder to players and have that game snowball into something huge, it might be able to positively affect that aspect of the industry.
Until Titan comes out and they release their new, more awesome than ever, monthly price point at 20 dollars/month because they're committed to delivering the yadda yadda PR Talk bullshit.
GW2 will have two, maybe even three teams working on content at the same time. One is the standard expansion content, the other is bite-sized DLC-like content and a third would be somewhere inbetween. As long as the prices are reasonable, I'd be more than willing to pay for what I think will be worth it.
I'm actually curious if they'll put in free content updates as well, did ANet do that with the original?
GW2 will have two, maybe even three teams working on content at the same time. One is the standard expansion content, the other is bite-sized DLC-like content and a third would be somewhere inbetween. As long as the prices are reasonable, I'd be more than willing to pay for what I think will be worth it.
I'm actually curious if they'll put in free content updates as well, did ANet do that with the original?
Quite a lot, actually. I believe dungeons were all added post-release for the various campaigns, along with some heroes. Lately they've added in post-game campaigns 'War in Kryta', 'Hearts of the North' and 'Winds of Change' scotch-free, each of which has lasting effects on the world for your character when you finish them. Holiday events are pretty fun, too; last one I saw them add was a commando quest line for April Fools day. A couple of months ago they added in a fleshed out hub for daily quests. Hell, they even threw some bones out to the OCD folks who maxed their level before the first mission of the original campaign via death leveling. Lots of PvP stuff strewn about as well, new rewards and means of increasing faction, though I haven't played much into there. All that for the price of entry.
They've done paid DLC as well, though the missions were more historically oriented and had little to do with the game itself aside from fleshing out some character's backstories.
I've gotten the feeling from what Blizz reps have said that Titan is going to end up an ultra-casual "COD Online" type MMO. I'm sure it will be successful, but I'm really doubting it will be my kind of game. I want something challenging, and max profits lay in something mind-numbingly easy...
I dunno if they can pull an FPS off, much less an MMOFPS. Their closest venture into the genre was a 3rd person, and developed by a separate team. Everything else has been either a top down strategy game/RPG, old as fuck, or WoW.
Maybe they'll make a game that features accurate collision detection for a change. Or, dare I say it, a physics engine.
Or maybe they bummed off the unreal engine and the last 6 years was figuring out how it worked
There's a quick mention of Free-to-Play from Damion Schubert at Austin GDC. Massively gives a good recap of what he talks about here.
Conversely, developers need to be careful not to introduce pain early on in the game experience before an investment takes root. One element of pain that's receiving a lot of focus lately is the up-front cost of box sales, as players are asked to make a substantial financial investment before they're able to experience the game. While it is a barrier, Schubert notes that players who do get past it are already invested somewhat in the game and more likely to give it a better chance. Free-to-play eliminate that pain at the cost of a much lower sense of initial investment by players.
And it's accurate. It's interesting how box costs, subscriptions, and microtransactions can be mixed.
Three of these titles are F2P or have a microtransaction model. One of them does not.
Two of them have been out for more than five years.
Micro-transactions are evil my foot. They are only as evil as your desire to buy things makes them. I enjoyed Jade dynasty all the way into post game without spending a single dollar. I still have vindictus and Dragon Nest installed on my PC and can play any time I want, without needing to worry about any payments. Their transactions are simply cosmetic or some temp buff stuff, with the occasional mystery box for a sweet looking weapon (Which is cool by me.)
Just randomly, I spent all the money on GW on expansions and bonus missions. Vindictus was for a swim suit and a few mystery boxes. Dragon Nest was for a pair of wings and some rings/earrings.
Pay $15 monthly fee for access to all the content: "Yeah, alright, this seems pretty fair given what I'm given access to in this huge world."
Pay $15 in microtransactions in a freemium game to get access to all the content: "WHAT THE FUCK IS THIS SHIT? THEY WANT TO NICKEL AND DIME ME TO EXPERIENCE THE GAME?!"
MMOs are still "rich, breathing worlds" with tons of opportunities. Some of the immersion is gone (you're no longer stuck sitting on a dock for literally a half an hour for a boat like in Everquest), but more than anything It's the players that have changed. NerfNow did a comic on this that was kind of depressing with how dead-on it is.
But that's just the nature of things. An activity can seem wondrous, mysterious, and full of limitless potential when you first get into it. As you explore, poke around, and gain familiarity, you begin to learn the boundaries of what is and isn't possible. You begin to see the scripted mechanics behind your actions, and some of the wonder falls away. This is, in a way, lamentable; but it's not anyone's fault any more than it is life's fault for the world seeming less amazing the more you grow up.
As you explore, poke around, and gain familiarity, you begin to learn the boundaries of what is and isn't possible. You begin to see the scripted mechanics behind your actions, and some of the wonder falls away. This is, in a way, lamentable; but it's not anyone's fault any more than it is life's fault for the world seeming less amazing the more you grow up.
I partially agree. Nostalgia is powerful after all. At the same time I really miss stupid things like GMs interacting with the player base and doing things which, you know, aren't scripted. Matrix Online was one of the last games to really explore that side of things in any decent fashion (but I didn't play it). So I'm not quite entirely sold all the magic is from nostalgia-goggles, I think the developers are also very hesitant to personalize the experience these days for whatever reason. Usually along those lines requests for things like "housing," and vaguery such as "leaving a mark" on the world.
I had been going to write up how I had some amazing experiences as a clueless newbie that I will never be able to replicate in an EQ or WoW style game again, but I think I should just sum up instead. The reason I am pretty much done with your standard WoW-style MMO has nothing to do with cash shops or micro-transactions, I simply have done everything I want to do in that style of game. Sure some bosses will have new tricks up their sleeve, but in essence the gameplay still consists of the tank classes taking the beating, the healers keeping people alive and the DPS making things dead. I no longer have an interest in that style of play. WoW could go completely free to play right now, with absolutely no way to generate any income off its players, and I would still not log back in.
If micro-transactions are your reason for getting off the MMO train that is fine. I don't agree that the practice is inherently evil, but certainly it has been implemented poorly many times. There are also games that do it right. I look forward to Planetside 2 in the hopes that they implement their F2P model in a non-evil way, and if they do I think I would play that game a good amount.
Pay $15 monthly fee for access to all the content: "Yeah, alright, this seems pretty fair given what I'm given access to in this huge world."
Pay $15 in microtransactions in a freemium game to get access to all the content: "WHAT THE FUCK IS THIS SHIT? THEY WANT TO NICKEL AND DIME ME TO EXPERIENCE THE GAME?!"
There are a few freemium games where you can continue paying $15 a month for complete access to the game. I don't have a problem with those.
They're in the minority, though. Most freemium titles require way more than $15 a month for complete and total access to everything.
Pay $15 monthly fee for access to all the content: "Yeah, alright, this seems pretty fair given what I'm given access to in this huge world."
Pay $15 in microtransactions in a freemium game to get access to all the content: "WHAT THE FUCK IS THIS SHIT? THEY WANT TO NICKEL AND DIME ME TO EXPERIENCE THE GAME?!"
There are a few freemium games where you can continue paying $15 a month for complete access to the game. I don't have a problem with those.
They're in the minority, though. Most freemium titles require way more than $15 a month for complete and total access to everything.
The question I ask here is: Are these actually good games though? The ones I've enjoyed, such as Dragon Nest/Vindictus/LoL have required no investment past what I desire to spend to experience everything. The cost is merely convenience really. Then there are games that are fun, like Spiral Knights, which requires either a decent original investment or just a slow building of resources and patience. This is a slightly more severe mode wherein you lose access to being able to play without the energy investment, IE buying energy with in game money or real money. Of course, its a more casual, instanced style game so I never really spent ages grinding in it, so the limited playtime wasn't ever a horrible bother to me as a player, but to others it probably was.
I played Eden Eternal for about 2 weeks, but I quickly became tired of the misery built into the game and the sloppy UI and gameplay mechanics. Dragon's Nest I attempted to play, but couldn't get the controls to my liking since their were limits on mapping them. And for some reason when trying to use my PS3 controller the camera tied to the analog stick wouldn't work properly and kept looking up and to the right despite no calibration issues. =\
And on the "COD Online" comment. I didn't even mean FPS style necessarily. Maybe something similar to how Tabula Rasa handled it. I just meant it will most likely be more in the vein of frat-boy couch entertainment ala COD and Madden.
The question I ask here is: Are these actually good games though? The ones I've enjoyed, such as Dragon Nest/Vindictus/LoL have required no investment past what I desire to spend to experience everything. The cost is merely convenience really. Then there are games that are fun, like Spiral Knights, which requires either a decent original investment or just a slow building of resources and patience. This is a slightly more severe mode wherein you lose access to being able to play without the energy investment, IE buying energy with in game money or real money. Of course, its a more casual, instanced style game so I never really spent ages grinding in it, so the limited playtime wasn't ever a horrible bother to me as a player, but to others it probably was.
I've played some Spiral Knights and I enjoy it. It's a fairly casual game, easy to pick up and put down. Plus, it launched with a cash shop - there's no previously-existing game to unbalance, nor any pre-existing subscribers to jilt.
As for good games tarnished by RMT - I used to be a huge fan of Lord of the Rings Online. It's not a bad game, even these days, but the Turbine Store is out of control. It sells a wide variety of things that have no place in a well-balanced MMORPG. My three main gripes:
1. Deed buffs. For those who don't know, deeds in LotRO are challenges like "Defeat 100 orcs in Misty Mountains". When completed, you earn traits which you can equip to raise your character's stats. In low-level areas, slayer deeds are reasonable enough, but as you get into high-level content many slayer deeds ask you to kill unreasonable numbers of a certain mob - often 300 or more. Thank goodness you can buy a deed accelerator with real money which makes each kill count twice, cutting in half the amount of grinding you need to do.
2. Stat tomes. Upgrade your character's stats with real money!
3. Reputation mounts. Save yourself weeks of grinding reputation with a certain faction and just buy their mounts outright.
I have a major problem with developers creating massive grinds and then selling the cure in the cash shop for real money. It's like some shyster flooding a tunnel with molten lava and then setting up shop at the entrance, selling lava boots.
Yeah see Slickie, that's the kind of stuff I'm talking about that's a "pox" on games. #1 I'm iffy on ... they have to have some sort of incentive to actually earn revenue on the game. As long as those traits aren't game-breaking if you don't grind out a lot of them and makes it onerous. #2 and 3 shouldn't happen. If they want to have other vanity mounts fine, but rep rewards shouldn't be a cash shop item IMHO.
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reVerseAttack and Dethrone GodRegistered Userregular
edited October 2011
Monthly subscriptions are the true pox on games. They take your money and rarely give you anything in return. WoW's 4.2 patch was released four months ago. Assuming 4.3 comes out next month, it'll have been five months. That's $75 worth of monthly payments between 4.2 and 4.3, making the patch more expensive than full price retail games.
Buying power outright with money - power that can't be earned any other way - is pretty much a no-no on micro-transactions, as the EVE debacle showed. Everything a person can buy with real money in free games (minus vanity items) (also not a freemium game, which is a different model) SHOULD be earnable in-game - with the requisite effort.
Personally, I don't have a problem with making high-level benefits require more grinding. You've already shown that you like the game a lot, and are willing to commit a lot of your time to it, so why not plunk down a couple dollars to help the company that made the game you love so much? It's perfectly natural that these people should want to make some $$$ off of their investment. As long as you can be a leech and still accomplish everything in the game (again, minus vanity items), that should be fine.
The big pitfall in design of microtransaction games is when the gap gets too large. For example, requiring a free player to kill twice as many monsters to get a special merit badge than a paying player is pretty reasonable. Asking them to kill 10-20x more is not. Companies are still experimenting with different models, but a lot of the big successes in the microtransaction world have pretty reasonable effort-reward schemes.
As the saying goes, you get what you pay for. F2P games are generally much lower in budget, quality, content, and polish than subscription games. Basically every F2P game I've played felt like it was from 10 years ago, or had a lot of negligence in design. We'll see if GW2 changes that, but that is one of the rare examples of a company with their heart in the right place on using microtransactions and profit margins.
Subscriptions help pay for servers, customer support, ongoing development, etc. And if you are playing WoW long-term, why are you on a month-to-month subscription? If you paid in 3 or 6 month chunks you would be pushing the price down to like $12/mo.
Also consider how much game-time you get out of most new $60 games. The average FPS game is at best 20 hours long. Even most strategy games only log a total of like 100 hours with extensive play. How much time do most people spend in an MMO? $12-15/mo is what I pay for 2 meals eating out at fast food. One at a restaurant. The MMO sub easily saves me a lot more money than that from other activities.
I will say this about the Lotro stat tomes. They are in no way necessary and were made almost irrelevant by the stat cap removal and they are available as rare drops and sometimes they pop up on the AH. Can people buy +60 of every stat? Yes. Does it really matter, especially now? Not too much. I'd even venture it's less powerful then a bracelet because at 75 I've got +80 - +90 some odd pieces to choose from. I would have a problem with this if there was not a gate in place. If I could infinitely raise my abilities to the power of my wallet then it's an issue. but I cannot. I cannot even match current jewelry.
It's sort of a power gamer trap. Make money off the impulsive.
As for the rep mounts. . . even that doesn't bother me too much. you can work for it and get it free or buy it. What's the rub?
and deed buffs. . . so you don't use them and do your deeds the old way. I've never used one except for the free ones you get when you make a character. I have used a few skill deed buffs to bypass the daily limit for deeds on a really tough one to get.
They deserve to make money off their game and give you more than one option to do it with. I think that's more than fair.
Mostly just huntin' monsters.
XBL:Phenyhelm - 3DS:Phenyhelm
As the saying goes, you get what you pay for. F2P games are generally much lower in budget, quality, content, and polish than subscription games. Basically every F2P game I've played felt like it was from 10 years ago, or had a lot of negligence in design. We'll see if GW2 changes that, but that is one of the rare examples of a company with their heart in the right place on using microtransactions and profit margins.
Subscriptions help pay for servers, customer support, ongoing development, etc. And if you are playing WoW long-term, why are you on a month-to-month subscription? If you paid in 3 or 6 month chunks you would be pushing the price down to like $12/mo.
Also consider how much game-time you get out of most new $60 games. The average FPS game is at best 20 hours long. Even most strategy games only log a total of like 100 hours with extensive play. How much time do most people spend in an MMO? $12-15/mo is what I pay for 2 meals eating out at fast food. One at a restaurant. The MMO sub easily saves me a lot more money than that from other activities.
I suppose that means FPSes need to start stretching 20 hours worth of content over the span of 20 months, then.
As the saying goes, you get what you pay for. F2P games are generally much lower in budget, quality, content, and polish than subscription games. Basically every F2P game I've played felt like it was from 10 years ago, or had a lot of negligence in design. We'll see if GW2 changes that, but that is one of the rare examples of a company with their heart in the right place on using microtransactions and profit margins.
Subscriptions help pay for servers, customer support, ongoing development, etc. And if you are playing WoW long-term, why are you on a month-to-month subscription? If you paid in 3 or 6 month chunks you would be pushing the price down to like $12/mo.
Also consider how much game-time you get out of most new $60 games. The average FPS game is at best 20 hours long. Even most strategy games only log a total of like 100 hours with extensive play. How much time do most people spend in an MMO? $12-15/mo is what I pay for 2 meals eating out at fast food. One at a restaurant. The MMO sub easily saves me a lot more money than that from other activities.
Vindictus and Dragon Nest are actually both incredibly well produced and polished games. Say what you will about some F2P games, but there are others which are of noticeable quality. The same could be said regardless of payment type. Also, that 'It's only 15$/mo' argument doesn't really work when I've been playing Dragon nest for.. what 2 months now? Vindictus for a year, and I've spent less than 45$ total. Monetarily speaking I could grind in something like Jade Dynasty everyday forever and not spend a dime if I didn't want to. It's a pretty solid game as long as you realize its just a long grind. Most games are though. I mean, subscription wise... What games do we got? WoW, AION, FFXI, Rift.
Raid grind, superkoreandramagrind, desire-machine-hate grind, and raid grind.
I'm paying to grind or I'm not paying to grind. Choices, choices...
I think WoW burnout is high, so both TOR and GW2 will enjoy quite a bit of success.
I think they will be a success, but the thing to keep in mind is that people may end up being burned out on MMOs in general and not just WoW. I think that is a big part of why Rift hasn't been a runaway success -- people found out they were burned out on MMOs not just WoW and ended up quitting after a few months.
I personally am burned out on WoW style MMOs at the least, so I never tried Rift and won't be getting TOR. GW2 maybe I will give a try because hey, there isn't a subscription fee, so if I get 20+ hours out of it that would be roughly similar value to many other games.
I think WoW burnout is high, so both TOR and GW2 will enjoy quite a bit of success.
I think they will be a success, but the thing to keep in mind is that people may end up being burned out on MMOs in general and not just WoW. I think that is a big part of why Rift hasn't been a runaway success -- people found out they were burned out on MMOs not just WoW and ended up quitting after a few months.
I think it's more likely that people tried Rift, decided it wasn't their cup of tea, and went back to their previous MMOs.
Rift has done alright because it is a decent game; it has not enjoyed 'runaway success' because it is not a stellar one.
I think WoW burnout is high, so both TOR and GW2 will enjoy quite a bit of success.
I think they will be a success, but the thing to keep in mind is that people may end up being burned out on MMOs in general and not just WoW. I think that is a big part of why Rift hasn't been a runaway success -- people found out they were burned out on MMOs not just WoW and ended up quitting after a few months.
I think it's more likely that people tried Rift, decided it wasn't their cup of tea, and went back to their previous MMOs.
Rift has done alright because it is a decent game; it has not enjoyed 'runaway success' because it is not a stellar one.
This is fact. As much as some people don't want to admit it, WoW is the elephant in the room because it's just a better game than its competition. I played Rift when it came out. It was a very nice, polished game, but it wasn't as good of a game as WoW. TOR and GW2 will succeed or fail based on their own merits, and WoW really won't have all that much to do with it. If they're good games, enough people will play them to make them successful. Neither will likely ever reach the astronomical subscription levels of WoW, but that's what Blizzard does. They make digital crack like no other company, whether it's Diablo or WoW.
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reVerseAttack and Dethrone GodRegistered Userregular
My main issue with Rift was that it took my least favourite part of WoW, the dozens upon dozens of spells and abilities one character has bogging down their quick bars at any one time, and made it worse with their soul system where you end up with ridiculous amount of redundant copycat spells and abilities.
The question I ask here is: Are these actually good games though? The ones I've enjoyed, such as Dragon Nest/Vindictus/LoL have required no investment past what I desire to spend to experience everything. The cost is merely convenience really. Then there are games that are fun, like Spiral Knights, which requires either a decent original investment or just a slow building of resources and patience. This is a slightly more severe mode wherein you lose access to being able to play without the energy investment, IE buying energy with in game money or real money. Of course, its a more casual, instanced style game so I never really spent ages grinding in it, so the limited playtime wasn't ever a horrible bother to me as a player, but to others it probably was.
I've played some Spiral Knights and I enjoy it. It's a fairly casual game, easy to pick up and put down. Plus, it launched with a cash shop - there's no previously-existing game to unbalance, nor any pre-existing subscribers to jilt.
As for good games tarnished by RMT - I used to be a huge fan of Lord of the Rings Online. It's not a bad game, even these days, but the Turbine Store is out of control. It sells a wide variety of things that have no place in a well-balanced MMORPG. My three main gripes:
1. Deed buffs. For those who don't know, deeds in LotRO are challenges like "Defeat 100 orcs in Misty Mountains". When completed, you earn traits which you can equip to raise your character's stats. In low-level areas, slayer deeds are reasonable enough, but as you get into high-level content many slayer deeds ask you to kill unreasonable numbers of a certain mob - often 300 or more. Thank goodness you can buy a deed accelerator with real money which makes each kill count twice, cutting in half the amount of grinding you need to do.
2. Stat tomes. Upgrade your character's stats with real money!
3. Reputation mounts. Save yourself weeks of grinding reputation with a certain faction and just buy their mounts outright.
I have a major problem with developers creating massive grinds and then selling the cure in the cash shop for real money. It's like some shyster flooding a tunnel with molten lava and then setting up shop at the entrance, selling lava boots.
Although I agree with your argument, I disagree with you picking on Turbine over Allods, SMT: Imagine or Asian titles. I mean, it's good to hold Turbine to a higher standard than a newcomer in the market, but lets stick to the facts.
1. The deeds in the new areas are 100/200 and there are more than enough mobs to grind them on. The height of slayer deeds was in Angmar, an area that was released years before they went F2P. The deed accelerators and +25% skirmish points books are convenience items. It reduces a grind to a shorter grind without taking it away completely. Whether you have to kill 450 wargs or 225 wargs, it's still a lot of wargs. And the amount of accelerators it'd cost would give you an incentive to just grind it yourself.
2. I agree with this one. They say that the tomes drop in-game, but they are rarer than an albino dark elf. It's a shame.
3. Those are vanity items that give no other benefit than standing out a bit. If people are willing to spend that much money on such an item I'm OK with that.
As I've written before, there are a few items in the LOTRO store that are too good to pass on if you're heavily invested in the game. There are scrolls that allow you to level up extra legendary items (with the way i.exp reward multipliers work, the more LIs you have equipped, the more i.exp you receive in total), there's scrolls of delving that work on lv75 LIs, while the non-store alternative costs 6k+ shards, and there are a number of limits on Free accounts that are just lame, such as the gold cap and bag space cap. That's just making the game more annoying for people who haven't bought anything yet. Sure, most of them are easy to remove by buying a few points once, but I still think it's a cheap way to push people towards the cash shop.
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acidlacedpenguinInstitutionalizedSafe in jail.Registered Userregular
I don't mind microtransactions, I play World of Tanks and have invested some money into it. I just budget myself to $price_of_new_game/year and keep an eye out for sales and other promotions. That said, I wish whoever thought of the real-money-rentals would die in a motherfucking fire. APB:R was bad at this because they priced anything permanent at like $60 an item just to incentive-ize the 1/6/30/60/90 day rentals. Combat Arms is like that too, though a savvy person can outfit their whole character for the price of one perm by shopping the clearance aisle. Too bad APB:R and CA are pretty terrible games with even more terrible communities.
I still like to play Combat Arms every once in awhile because it feels really good to get kicked for "cheating" from 9 out of every 10 matches. It's like the fact that I've been playing FPS games for longer than the average player has been alive makes me some kind of technogod.
Pay $15 monthly fee for access to all the content: "Yeah, alright, this seems pretty fair given what I'm given access to in this huge world."
Pay $15 in microtransactions in a freemium game to get access to all the content: "WHAT THE FUCK IS THIS SHIT? THEY WANT TO NICKEL AND DIME ME TO EXPERIENCE THE GAME?!"
Maybe it's just what I have played, but I see 2 parts lacking in this argument:
1) For my $15/mon I get access to all content they will ever release. I don't know that you can say the same for f2p-ms games. And for the non-f2p games, like WoW, screw that crap. I'm not paying them $x for the base game($50 originally?), $15/mon, and $40+ for expansions. I'll pay the entry fee (box) and the upkeep/development cost(sub), but that's it.
2) P2W is the major issue I have. With sub models, other people only have better stuff than me because they are either better than me or play more than me, or both. Not because they have more RL money than me. Eve PLEXs are tolerable because they still have to be sold, they don't just get in-game currency for nothing.
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Guild Wars 2 looks like it could further evolve the genre if they prove you can have a full featured MMO without charging monthly fees, but that remains to be seen.
Honestly I think I'm just going to have to wait for WoW to die from sheer bloat before anyone has a shot at breaking it up.
"Orkses never lose a battle. If we win we win, if we die we die fightin so it don't count. If we runs for it we don't die neither, cos we can come back for annuver go, see!".
I do think that ArenaNet will be more aggressive with their microtransactions than they were with the first title. Not the typical F2P temporary buff potions or anything like that, but I foresee quite a bit more pay content than what was in the first game.
I don't like paying a monthly fee (which quickly adds up to far more than I ever pay for any other game for a similar length of time), and I'd rather just pay a la carte for the few pieces of content I'll actually use. So... what is wrong with paying for the content that you actually use?
The wall of text no one will read:
I've quite enjoyed my time with DDO, and I threw down 50 bucks to buy more content on it. That's no more than I would spend on another, non-MMO game. It could have bought a 3 month subscription for me, I guess... but how much of all that content would I actually use? And would I actually get any enjoyment out of my play time, knowing I should "use it or lose it"? I think some people might, but it's definitely not for me. Monthly fees seem like "another bill to pay", and it's something I try to avoid in my gaming.
The model that I've had the best experience with was Anarchy Online. They gave you the entire base game without expansions to play with for free, and that's a lot of content. There are some billboards with ads on them, and to get higher than the 200 level cap (200! That takes hundreds of hours to achieve!), you have to subscribe. But I never felt limited in the things I wanted to do, and they actively fostered their froob community.
The thing that I ask myself about Microtransactions is "How does this impact how I play the game?" The answer in the vast majority of cases is "Nothing. In the slightest." It only bothers me if I let it bother me. I don't care if you can buy a really cool mount in shop for real money, or even the "best weapon in the game", if the game experience is mostly PvE and I get items in-game that work just fine.
Rift, god bless 'em, has been attempting to put out tons of free content and put on sales where you could get 10 dollar a month rates. Their game just doesn't appeal enough to change the industry that much. Would they have gone with that strategy if they had been bringing in people like WoW was in their first few months? I kind of doubt it.
The GW2 guys said at one point that the monthly fee thing was a big ol' pile of bullshit, so if they can deliver something way kinder to players and have that game snowball into something huge, it might be able to positively affect that aspect of the industry.
Until Titan comes out and they release their new, more awesome than ever, monthly price point at 20 dollars/month because they're committed to delivering the yadda yadda PR Talk bullshit.
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GW2 will have two, maybe even three teams working on content at the same time. One is the standard expansion content, the other is bite-sized DLC-like content and a third would be somewhere inbetween. As long as the prices are reasonable, I'd be more than willing to pay for what I think will be worth it.
I'm actually curious if they'll put in free content updates as well, did ANet do that with the original?
Quite a lot, actually. I believe dungeons were all added post-release for the various campaigns, along with some heroes. Lately they've added in post-game campaigns 'War in Kryta', 'Hearts of the North' and 'Winds of Change' scotch-free, each of which has lasting effects on the world for your character when you finish them. Holiday events are pretty fun, too; last one I saw them add was a commando quest line for April Fools day. A couple of months ago they added in a fleshed out hub for daily quests. Hell, they even threw some bones out to the OCD folks who maxed their level before the first mission of the original campaign via death leveling. Lots of PvP stuff strewn about as well, new rewards and means of increasing faction, though I haven't played much into there. All that for the price of entry.
They've done paid DLC as well, though the missions were more historically oriented and had little to do with the game itself aside from fleshing out some character's backstories.
Maybe they'll make a game that features accurate collision detection for a change. Or, dare I say it, a physics engine.
Or maybe they bummed off the unreal engine and the last 6 years was figuring out how it worked
And it's accurate. It's interesting how box costs, subscriptions, and microtransactions can be mixed.
I have paid nearly 1600$ for FFXI.
I have paid roughly 70$ on GW.
I have spent 30$ on Vindictus.
I have spent 15$ on Dragon Nest.
Three of these titles are F2P or have a microtransaction model. One of them does not.
Two of them have been out for more than five years.
Micro-transactions are evil my foot. They are only as evil as your desire to buy things makes them. I enjoyed Jade dynasty all the way into post game without spending a single dollar. I still have vindictus and Dragon Nest installed on my PC and can play any time I want, without needing to worry about any payments. Their transactions are simply cosmetic or some temp buff stuff, with the occasional mystery box for a sweet looking weapon (Which is cool by me.)
Just randomly, I spent all the money on GW on expansions and bonus missions. Vindictus was for a swim suit and a few mystery boxes. Dragon Nest was for a pair of wings and some rings/earrings.
Pay $15 in microtransactions in a freemium game to get access to all the content: "WHAT THE FUCK IS THIS SHIT? THEY WANT TO NICKEL AND DIME ME TO EXPERIENCE THE GAME?!"
MMOs are still "rich, breathing worlds" with tons of opportunities. Some of the immersion is gone (you're no longer stuck sitting on a dock for literally a half an hour for a boat like in Everquest), but more than anything It's the players that have changed. NerfNow did a comic on this that was kind of depressing with how dead-on it is.
But that's just the nature of things. An activity can seem wondrous, mysterious, and full of limitless potential when you first get into it. As you explore, poke around, and gain familiarity, you begin to learn the boundaries of what is and isn't possible. You begin to see the scripted mechanics behind your actions, and some of the wonder falls away. This is, in a way, lamentable; but it's not anyone's fault any more than it is life's fault for the world seeming less amazing the more you grow up.
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I partially agree. Nostalgia is powerful after all. At the same time I really miss stupid things like GMs interacting with the player base and doing things which, you know, aren't scripted. Matrix Online was one of the last games to really explore that side of things in any decent fashion (but I didn't play it). So I'm not quite entirely sold all the magic is from nostalgia-goggles, I think the developers are also very hesitant to personalize the experience these days for whatever reason. Usually along those lines requests for things like "housing," and vaguery such as "leaving a mark" on the world.
If micro-transactions are your reason for getting off the MMO train that is fine. I don't agree that the practice is inherently evil, but certainly it has been implemented poorly many times. There are also games that do it right. I look forward to Planetside 2 in the hopes that they implement their F2P model in a non-evil way, and if they do I think I would play that game a good amount.
There are a few freemium games where you can continue paying $15 a month for complete access to the game. I don't have a problem with those.
They're in the minority, though. Most freemium titles require way more than $15 a month for complete and total access to everything.
The question I ask here is: Are these actually good games though? The ones I've enjoyed, such as Dragon Nest/Vindictus/LoL have required no investment past what I desire to spend to experience everything. The cost is merely convenience really. Then there are games that are fun, like Spiral Knights, which requires either a decent original investment or just a slow building of resources and patience. This is a slightly more severe mode wherein you lose access to being able to play without the energy investment, IE buying energy with in game money or real money. Of course, its a more casual, instanced style game so I never really spent ages grinding in it, so the limited playtime wasn't ever a horrible bother to me as a player, but to others it probably was.
And on the "COD Online" comment. I didn't even mean FPS style necessarily. Maybe something similar to how Tabula Rasa handled it. I just meant it will most likely be more in the vein of frat-boy couch entertainment ala COD and Madden.
I've played some Spiral Knights and I enjoy it. It's a fairly casual game, easy to pick up and put down. Plus, it launched with a cash shop - there's no previously-existing game to unbalance, nor any pre-existing subscribers to jilt.
As for good games tarnished by RMT - I used to be a huge fan of Lord of the Rings Online. It's not a bad game, even these days, but the Turbine Store is out of control. It sells a wide variety of things that have no place in a well-balanced MMORPG. My three main gripes:
1. Deed buffs. For those who don't know, deeds in LotRO are challenges like "Defeat 100 orcs in Misty Mountains". When completed, you earn traits which you can equip to raise your character's stats. In low-level areas, slayer deeds are reasonable enough, but as you get into high-level content many slayer deeds ask you to kill unreasonable numbers of a certain mob - often 300 or more. Thank goodness you can buy a deed accelerator with real money which makes each kill count twice, cutting in half the amount of grinding you need to do.
2. Stat tomes. Upgrade your character's stats with real money!
3. Reputation mounts. Save yourself weeks of grinding reputation with a certain faction and just buy their mounts outright.
I have a major problem with developers creating massive grinds and then selling the cure in the cash shop for real money. It's like some shyster flooding a tunnel with molten lava and then setting up shop at the entrance, selling lava boots.
Personally, I don't have a problem with making high-level benefits require more grinding. You've already shown that you like the game a lot, and are willing to commit a lot of your time to it, so why not plunk down a couple dollars to help the company that made the game you love so much? It's perfectly natural that these people should want to make some $$$ off of their investment. As long as you can be a leech and still accomplish everything in the game (again, minus vanity items), that should be fine.
The big pitfall in design of microtransaction games is when the gap gets too large. For example, requiring a free player to kill twice as many monsters to get a special merit badge than a paying player is pretty reasonable. Asking them to kill 10-20x more is not. Companies are still experimenting with different models, but a lot of the big successes in the microtransaction world have pretty reasonable effort-reward schemes.
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Subscriptions help pay for servers, customer support, ongoing development, etc. And if you are playing WoW long-term, why are you on a month-to-month subscription? If you paid in 3 or 6 month chunks you would be pushing the price down to like $12/mo.
Also consider how much game-time you get out of most new $60 games. The average FPS game is at best 20 hours long. Even most strategy games only log a total of like 100 hours with extensive play. How much time do most people spend in an MMO? $12-15/mo is what I pay for 2 meals eating out at fast food. One at a restaurant. The MMO sub easily saves me a lot more money than that from other activities.
It's sort of a power gamer trap. Make money off the impulsive.
As for the rep mounts. . . even that doesn't bother me too much. you can work for it and get it free or buy it. What's the rub?
and deed buffs. . . so you don't use them and do your deeds the old way. I've never used one except for the free ones you get when you make a character. I have used a few skill deed buffs to bypass the daily limit for deeds on a really tough one to get.
They deserve to make money off their game and give you more than one option to do it with. I think that's more than fair.
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I suppose that means FPSes need to start stretching 20 hours worth of content over the span of 20 months, then.
Vindictus and Dragon Nest are actually both incredibly well produced and polished games. Say what you will about some F2P games, but there are others which are of noticeable quality. The same could be said regardless of payment type. Also, that 'It's only 15$/mo' argument doesn't really work when I've been playing Dragon nest for.. what 2 months now? Vindictus for a year, and I've spent less than 45$ total. Monetarily speaking I could grind in something like Jade Dynasty everyday forever and not spend a dime if I didn't want to. It's a pretty solid game as long as you realize its just a long grind. Most games are though. I mean, subscription wise... What games do we got? WoW, AION, FFXI, Rift.
Raid grind, superkoreandramagrind, desire-machine-hate grind, and raid grind.
I'm paying to grind or I'm not paying to grind. Choices, choices...
I think they will be a success, but the thing to keep in mind is that people may end up being burned out on MMOs in general and not just WoW. I think that is a big part of why Rift hasn't been a runaway success -- people found out they were burned out on MMOs not just WoW and ended up quitting after a few months.
I think it's more likely that people tried Rift, decided it wasn't their cup of tea, and went back to their previous MMOs.
Rift has done alright because it is a decent game; it has not enjoyed 'runaway success' because it is not a stellar one.
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This is fact. As much as some people don't want to admit it, WoW is the elephant in the room because it's just a better game than its competition. I played Rift when it came out. It was a very nice, polished game, but it wasn't as good of a game as WoW. TOR and GW2 will succeed or fail based on their own merits, and WoW really won't have all that much to do with it. If they're good games, enough people will play them to make them successful. Neither will likely ever reach the astronomical subscription levels of WoW, but that's what Blizzard does. They make digital crack like no other company, whether it's Diablo or WoW.
1. The deeds in the new areas are 100/200 and there are more than enough mobs to grind them on. The height of slayer deeds was in Angmar, an area that was released years before they went F2P. The deed accelerators and +25% skirmish points books are convenience items. It reduces a grind to a shorter grind without taking it away completely. Whether you have to kill 450 wargs or 225 wargs, it's still a lot of wargs. And the amount of accelerators it'd cost would give you an incentive to just grind it yourself.
2. I agree with this one. They say that the tomes drop in-game, but they are rarer than an albino dark elf. It's a shame.
3. Those are vanity items that give no other benefit than standing out a bit. If people are willing to spend that much money on such an item I'm OK with that.
As I've written before, there are a few items in the LOTRO store that are too good to pass on if you're heavily invested in the game. There are scrolls that allow you to level up extra legendary items (with the way i.exp reward multipliers work, the more LIs you have equipped, the more i.exp you receive in total), there's scrolls of delving that work on lv75 LIs, while the non-store alternative costs 6k+ shards, and there are a number of limits on Free accounts that are just lame, such as the gold cap and bag space cap. That's just making the game more annoying for people who haven't bought anything yet. Sure, most of them are easy to remove by buying a few points once, but I still think it's a cheap way to push people towards the cash shop.
I still like to play Combat Arms every once in awhile because it feels really good to get kicked for "cheating" from 9 out of every 10 matches. It's like the fact that I've been playing FPS games for longer than the average player has been alive makes me some kind of technogod.
Maybe it's just what I have played, but I see 2 parts lacking in this argument:
1) For my $15/mon I get access to all content they will ever release. I don't know that you can say the same for f2p-ms games. And for the non-f2p games, like WoW, screw that crap. I'm not paying them $x for the base game($50 originally?), $15/mon, and $40+ for expansions. I'll pay the entry fee (box) and the upkeep/development cost(sub), but that's it.
2) P2W is the major issue I have. With sub models, other people only have better stuff than me because they are either better than me or play more than me, or both. Not because they have more RL money than me. Eve PLEXs are tolerable because they still have to be sold, they don't just get in-game currency for nothing.