121950-the-free-to-play-thread

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{| style="width: 100%;" You already know how people feel on this subject: https://forums.wildstar-online.com/forums/index.php?/topic/118719-free-to-play/&do=findComment&comment=1234784

I personally never do arenas or rated. But I can say just having a *cupcake* ton of new players won't fix that problem. They need to fix the issues keeping people from PvP'ing, and low population isn't the problem. Because from what I've seen, quantity far outstrips quality when it comes to flooding the playerbase with "f2p".


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http://www.amazon.com/NCSOFT-Wildstar-Online-Game-Code/dp/B00IYWV5HS/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1423235602&sr=8-1&keywords=wildstar


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Yes, essentially. You need to set up an account, which costs 5$. They do not include the first month's subscription, obviously. So either you need to also pay your first month's sub up front, or have someone send you a PLEX (the father of CREDD). At worst, it would cost a person 20$ to start up, five for the account setup and fifteen to pay for the first month.


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Comparing any game's population to the population of WoW is a tired and overused argument. Please read this carefully: WILDSTAR =/= WORLD OF WARCRAFT Stop acting like it is, does, or should. I haven't seen the game this populated since I started last June, so I don't know what your problem could be.


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And there it is. The "you need to be max level to find people" argument. IMO not a really good one for an MMO especially when trying to draw in new customer. But yes I know that at max level you will see a lot more people. But just saying in WoW I have no problem seeing plenty of people in leveling zones from starter to max. I am not trying to knock Wildstar in the slightest either, but just stating a fact about the leveling zones. And yes I was on during peak times in 2 zones. But no way am I saying this game is dead or dying as I am sure the population is rising with the new drop but the test will be if people stay a few months after and if people will continue to come back then or new customers.


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Hmmm, someone has played Guild Wars 2 lol. Yeah, GW2 is the perfect example of B2P scams. But not all B2P/F2P games function like that. Just many.

Really, how is it disgusting? Every couple of months they put some mount in there. Same for minipets. In an entire year they haven't even put armor skins or weapon skins in there besides some headpiece. WoW's cash shop is the perfect model. The vast majority of mounts, pets, and all armor are obtained from playing the game. They just release premium promotional mounts on the cash shop, and often the minipets they release have their proceeds donated to charity. WoW's cash shop is one of the few WORKING cash shops. Definitely not pay to win or look good. ESO's cash shop we need to keep an eye on. We'll see down the line how many of the mounts and armor skins end up in the cash shop in proportion to rewards from the game. If it's terrible, it'll be like the morally bankrupt GW2; if it's good, it'll approach something more like WoW's. But Wildstar needs to start pulling in profit and increasing playerbase fast, or it will go the way of Warhammer Online.


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Wildstar is profitable. It is, according to their last quarterly report, generating a profit. Whether you think it has enough people or not is not relevant to whether or not it's generating revenue in excess of cost or not. At its lowest point Q3, it was still generating more revenue than Lineage 2. Wildstar isn't losing NCSoft money to develop, and they've stated pretty definitively they're definitely still supporting it. Assuming a F2P game makes more money because more people play it is simply factually incorrect; a million people can play a F2P game and if nobody actually buys anything, the game will be in the red anyway. Even if Wildstar only has 100,000 active accounts, every single one of them is accounted for in terms of revenue. Especially if they go F2P, population is not equivalent to revenue. There are a lot of reasons I play this game and not some other game, and the lack of a pay shop is one of them. My 15$ pays for everything, and I was extremely displeased with every cash shop added to a subscription game. The reason I don't want anything to do with them is exactly what I was saying before, that 15$ is stated to be a perfectly reasonable amount of money for any person to pay. Anything put behind that pay wall, from a costume piece to a FABkit, takes development time to build. It's not additional services, that is development that, at present, costs 15$. If you are really interested in spending more money than 15$ in Wildstar, buy a CREDD. Don't lock things behind a pay wall and take away someone's choice to grind up the in-game currency for an item. I'm not interested in that. I have very deliberately and logically outlined several ways a free option could be implemented without affecting the subscribers and CREDD users. There is no reason to not implement those, which directly target the actual free players with recuperative measures instead of aiming for the rest of us. To not do so is to say that, in fact, you want specifically to make someone pay more than 15$ or deal with the burdens themselves. Why shouldn't that cash shop, those currency reductions, those ad banners, all of that actually affect the people who are playing for free. You are specifically ignoring those options and saying that, in fact, their measures need to target those of us who actually are accounted for at what has already been decided is a reasonable rate. Gouge the free players if you give them an option. Why not? They aren't paying a subscription or buying a CREDD. They can play the game (or however much of the game is being allocated to them), they just won't get the game as we know it. And if they want it, they can pay for it like the rest of us do. That's fair, just continue developing the game and give everything to currently subscribed members as it comes out, individually charge the people who aren't actually paying for it. That's all we're saying. If you want the option for people to play for free, let the consequences of playing free lay directly on them. But if I've paid my 15$ a month, I ought to get everything developed that month. NCSoft certainly seems to think that's a good bargain with me right now.


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{| style="width: 100%;" If I take the original intent of the thread:

This is assuming that "Free to Play" would make the game "alive". On one hand, you lose the players who can't stand this business model (myself included) and on the other, you gain a bunch of freeloaders. Then, you hope you can pull a few heavy money spenders, either the rich ones or the ones with spending disorders/addictions (the "whales"). This will indeed allow Carbine/NCSOFT to make more money, assuming they manage to have enough added in the cash shop in a weekly basis. You need to add enough so that the normal players can't get everything, but just enough so that a whale is tempted to afford it. To top this, you add a bunch of extra options which susbscribers (aka those who like the game enough to pay for), will be interested in. After that, you have the typical 2015 Free to Play title for a MMORPG. Is it effective? Of course. The entire model is designed to take advantage of the general public stupidity, addictions and mental disorders (including but not limited to gambling issues). When you agree to pay to rent a bunch of coloured pixels usable only in a specific game, you may have some ulterior motive, but you are still paying for something that is technically "nothing" (you get pretty darn close to the marketing dream). On a dollar to dollar comparison, you can have a $25 mount skin, from the cash shop of a very popular game. For that same $25, you can have Skyrim with most of the DLCs if you can find a decent deal. It's clear that whoever sold that $25 mount skin is getting a lot more return on its investment than the ones who created Skyrim. With players ready to give that much money for so little, it should not even be debatable that Free to Play generates a lot more profits than a subscription game. Yet, the thread is not about profit, it's about a game becoming "alive". This is where it gets interesting. In a subscription game, you pay for your ability to access the game. This means to get the most out of your dollars spent on the subscription, you need to play. The more you play, the cheaper the entertainment value of the game becomes. Hence, the core concept of the subscription is to make you play more. On the other hand a Free to Play game is meant for you to play whenever you want, which doesn't put such "pressure". Since you don't pay for it, you are more likely to play more games simultaneously than concentrating on your subscription game. While I don't have a study to back me up, I do think that the average player of a subscription game will play more than the average player of a Free to Play game. This makes the subscription a better option to make the game feel more alive. Few players playing more is similar to plenty of players that play less, with the added bonus that when fewer players play more, there is a concept called a "community", which bonds players together and encourage them to play even more. For a MMORPG to be alive, there is a crucial factor, which is player retention. A given player should be investing time on an extended period of time and keep logging in and become part of the virtual world. A subscription game is usually very good at this once the playerbase is stable. Free to Play is more open to the play whenever you feel like it and if you can still invest time over an extended amount of time, by principle, I would say that it is less likely to happen. I think the business model of WildStar should go with what the developers want. Either they want a good profit, which Free to Play is the way to go or they want a stable and active community, which I think subscription is the way to go. Since MMORPGs are defined by their players and their communities, I am more interested in WildStar because it is a subscription game. It's not necessary going to create a better community, but to me, this is the best entertainment I can get for my money. If the playing community shares this opinion, then we have at least this in common (plus our interest for the game). In the end, have fun!


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Well i wasnt about to list every single thing that i found wrong, i just picked one and that happened to be dungeons. But that also might just be because back when i first started playing i didnt know what the difference was between adventures, dungeons and shiphands. But i did also noticed the same thing about daily zones early on and i felt that maybe they sprung those on us too early. But thats only cause in other games they didnt release daily zones until later when the game had already been out a while. For me i guess its also like a double whammy cause they were daily zones AND daily zones that took place in recycled areas. Which is actually good for the devs because it saves time and they dont have to create a new area and they just move a few npcs and 3d assets around. I guess i wouldnt have minded the daily zones too much if it knocked my socks off some how. Instead it was just go here do this, go there do that. They need to add some vehicle type stuff or something. If you played WoW during TBC do you remember their first set of dailies? Skyguard dailies, Shartuul event and stuff like that. Then they added the Sunwell dailies with the bombing runs and the HOLY CRAP IS THAT BRUTALLUS WHAT THE HELL IS THAT!!! and then you do some more stuff that feels objective oriented. Thats the kind of stuff i think they should add to the daily zones. Things that make you feel like you are working towards a bigger objective. Vehicle type stuff which they had in Whitevale on Dom side where you tear gas the prison or in Farside-moon where you chase the pirate in a ship and you shoot at him (though their vehicle stuff could use some polish) or a main event in the daily zone like a big ole boss fight that isnt terribly difficult but is meant to get people together to fight him and have some fun and get some loot.


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