115520-say-no-to-f2p-page-3

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I think you are the confused one...FFXIV does not have 2 million subscribers...it has 2 million "registered accounts",,,,which means 2 million people worldwide have registered an account for the game at one point or another. It says nothing to how many people are actually subscribed to it. For all we know, only 250k are still actually subbed. I'm sure its more than 250k, but we dunno, SE wont tell us. BTW...thats exaclty why companies like SE release numbers for `registered accounts`....people like you eat it up and confuse it with actual subscriptions. And by 2nd most played in the west, it is absolute fact my friend.....SWTOR has over a million players in the west, more than any other MMO in the west not named WoW. I love how people forget that Japan is not "west" lol, and I love it even more when people forget that SW never had an Asian release (something all of the other top world wide revenu generators have). SWTOR is sitting at #4 worldwide revenu without an Asian release....put that in your pipe and smoke it. In any event, I just want my queues to pop. Like i mentioned earlier, I resubbed Tuesday, and I have yet to have a PVP or Dungeon queue pop after an avg of 1.5-2 hours each try...


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It all depends on what kind of F2P they choose to implement and how they do it.


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Actually, no we don't all acknowledge this. That is your bubble, not everyone else's. Shutting down discussion is what people who are losing arguments resort to, change is coming because it has to. This game is a business, and its not performing to the levels of the owner's wants, and being a businessman myself I can tell you straight up, if I can gain 10 people while losing 3 or 4, I'll do that every time. Catering to prima donnas is the one sure fire way to fail in a business unless those prima donnas are paying big bucks. Sorry but your $15 a month aren't cutting it. So again, look at the suggestions what have some merit to them and contribute, or continue stomping your foot with your fingers in your ears, either way things are going to change.


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Can't you just buy raid gear in rift now? Hows that done well?


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It's called an argumentum ad numerum/populum; and it CAN be false logic if the opinions of the many people who are being used in the example aren't relevant to the issue. However MMO's quality is often judged by how many people play them, under the assumption that if you enjoy a game you play it if you don't you wont. So an example of a false argumentum ad numerum/populum would be: 1 million people smoke, therefore it must not be bad for your health In that example the number of people who smoke isn't at all related to the health impacts of smoking. But like I said, since MMOs being 'good' or not is generally measured by their popularity, claiming that SWTOR is good because it has  high subscription and player numbers isn't a false argumentum ad numerum/populum. SWTOR continues to come out with new quality content, keeps the cash shop away from a P2Win system, and doesn't prevent subs from getting anything they want from the cash shop; as a Sub automatically gives you cash shop currency.


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Personally I think giving players a free trial to a certain level would get a heck of a lot more people to try the game, that takes the time pressure off the trial which lessens resistance, its minor compared to other issues but it'd help. A lower box price is another, and they could keep a sub model going alongside a shop without being too much into one's face about it. Again, just speaking from a personal perspective, I didn't like the extent to which SWoTR kept hammering me with paygates, it actively kept me from subbing because I was left with the impression that even if I went sub, they'd keep hammering me with more must haves. Rift's shop isn't perfect, but I prefer it to SWoTR's by a significant margin. It had been a while since I played Rift so I checked in to see what some of the griping currently was, and the casuals were able to buy T1 raid gear for a significant step ahead, but the complaints about it struck me as just more elitism as I don't really care if Guild X, Y, and Z have done everything the hard way while Guilds L, O, and D paid half their way through it and now are doing the meaty stuff without having ground every step of the way. The rest of the shop in Rift facilitates play and content to suit one's taste, if one wants to grind it all out, a sub still opens all the doors without speed tracking you past the level you want to play.


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But you can skip weeks of time gating that you would otherwise have to endure to get the gear needed to succeed in raids by simply purchasing it. No, that is not done well.


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Where are you getting the 3% from, you could look at SWTOR as an example their subs have stayed fairly static at around 500k, and their revenue shows that only around 40% of their revenue is coming from people paying for services other than subs. While there may be a small number of subs under 10% paying that extra 40%, the game itself is good without that portion of the revenue to be honest. And much healthier than Wildstar is, I would be highly surprised if come November when the NCsoft 3rd quarter results are posted if they are close to breaking their $9mill budget.


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Your link is for all F2P games (farmville, angry birds etc wtc). His was for client based games (LoL, World of Tanks etc etc) Guess which one of you is not disingenuously white knighting?


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Just as an aside, I'm wondering since you've said this many times, what IS your experience? I'm genuinely curious as you do seem to have a good insight (whether we disagree or not) on the industry.


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This is kind of veering off topic, but... So you are of the belief that games should not learn from predecessors... Each new video game should not have to go through the same evolutionary process as the ones that came before it. You look at what worked very well and you see about including it from the start.


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don't know if its good or bad that the forums are more entertaining than the game at times..


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I just frontloaded a LOT of options that wouldn't even change Carbine's development incentives, none of which are technically free to play. Why go F2P with a cash shop when there are better options? Hell, if Pizza Hut paid a few dollars of my sub to put a stylized Pizza hut in Thayd, Illium, and on the PDA, I'd order a lot more Pizza Hut through those UIs. If there were unobtrusive Pepsi machines everywhere and that paid a few dollars of my sub, I'd buy more Pepsi. If they're killing entry barriers, why the sub and not the game box? 60 dollars up front is worse than 15 dollars a month at keeping people from trying the game. Why not kill the box price and the "free game time" and charge an extra five dollars to set up an account the way EVE does if we're sacrificing money for the sake of population. Why not give all subscribers monthly, if not fortnightly, rewards like housing plugs, costume pieces, et al, then throw those items on a cash shop afterwards? It's not exclusive at that point, subscribers get everything in the game they were around to fund, and people can buy into months they weren't around to play in. Hell, why wouldn't they just try a subs invitation rewards program first? There are a ton of better options out there than literal free to play. Nothing on Earth is free to play. The money is made somewhere, and unless it's in advertising, it's coming from us somehow. The video's idea of "Let people pay to win, but let people grind if they don't have the money," that's the essential model F2P was built on, and it's predatory by nature. The video completely misses that what is being set up isn't done on behalf of the players, but the companies. In a world run by PLAYERS, F2P would be okay. F2P is not okay because the gaming world is run by corporations, and setting up layers of content experience is, by nature, going to produce these results. Eventually, NCSoft will get their money, and the way to get it is to widen the gulf between the have and have nots, or to gate more content behind the shop, or to make more and more things "optional" until they are getting their money. And those layers will always start with people who can buy in and buy well and end with people who cannot. The whole point is, there are completely different tracks of development we aren't even beginning to consider, it's F2P or bust. That discounts the aforementioned advertising, Wikipedia-style crowdfunding for expansions, letting people "sponsor" game improvements so the payers are the ones directing content development, purchasing the game in smaller blocks (buying into PVE, PVP, both, etc to slowly raise the subscription), etc. All of these give all the players all the content, they can all feasibly fund the game, and they aren't 15$ a month. We don't talk about these. Some of them, like product placement, are stigmatized dirty words (which is ironic, as F2P games are essentially advertisements for their additional services), some, like the Wikipedia idea, requires the game be nearly perfect, the sponsorship model would direct the game in the direction of the most money, etc. But even having to buy the PVE and PVP wings of the game separately and thus being able to cut your sub in half doesn't design content for the expressed purpose of drawing more money out of a player than 15$ a month, which is the nature of the F2P animal. I have no idea why the idea sticks around and gets defended so heavily as being "better than the game shutting down." Maybe it is, maybe it isn't, but it's never been subs, F2P, or death. We've just been willing to accept that idea, so why would a company even try to do anything different? They can fleece us just fine in F2P without having to make the game better for everyone.


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