Free-to-play is the WORST thing to happen to video gaming.
- Thread starter Bigggg BRIM77
- Start date
i currently heavily play 2 f2p games, that being warframe and planetside 2. Warframe does take quite a bit of time to get into, but the gameplay is very enjoyable, especially since the latest update which added a new set of missions. Planetside 2 takes a lot longer to unlock weapons i have seen, considering a good weapon costs at least 1000 certs (or 250,000 xp, but you can easily earn 50,000 xp in 1-2 hours). but the weapons they start you with in planetside 2 are some of the best in the game (the VS Orion lmg is god like). i dont think all f2p games are bad, its saved me a lot of money on buying retail games and they have provided a ton of hours of gameplay, i think i have over 200 hours in both warframe and planetside 2, and the only game i have spent any money on is planetside 2 to unlock 2 weapons i didnt feel like saving for, and ive already made back what i would have spent in certs
Your example about League of Legends is a classic Hanlon's Razor "Never attribute to malice that which is adequately explained by stupidity."
Back during that time, Riot wasn't really good at balancing champions that well. Whether he was overpowered or not wasn't because they wanted people to pay money for him. A lot of players spend Influence Points (the in-game money) on champions instead of Riot Points (real-world money). To be honest it was a huge cycle of huge nerfs and huge buffs with champions, regardless if they were new or not. Often time players would say a particular champion was the "favorite of the month" because he was the next champion who got a huge buff.
Riot is now a LOT better at balancing their champions now. The don't do drastic nerfs or buffs like they used too. League of Legends has one of the best free-to-play models I've seen. You can't buy power. When you enter a game you're on a completely equal footing as everybody else. I've been playing the game for about two and a half years now and I've only used my money to buy the cosmetic skins (They only make your champions look cooler for those who don't play League). I'm a Platinum player too. I seriously think you should come back to playing the game. Even the community is starting to become better now that Riot is starting to seriously crack down on trolls and toxic players.
Back during that time, Riot wasn't really good at balancing champions that well. Whether he was overpowered or not wasn't because they wanted people to pay money for him. A lot of players spend Influence Points (the in-game money) on champions instead of Riot Points (real-world money). To be honest it was a huge cycle of huge nerfs and huge buffs with champions, regardless if they were new or not. Often time players would say a particular champion was the "favorite of the month" because he was the next champion who got a huge buff.
Riot is now a LOT better at balancing their champions now. The don't do drastic nerfs or buffs like they used too. League of Legends has one of the best free-to-play models I've seen. You can't buy power. When you enter a game you're on a completely equal footing as everybody else. I've been playing the game for about two and a half years now and I've only used my money to buy the cosmetic skins (They only make your champions look cooler for those who don't play League). I'm a Platinum player too. I seriously think you should come back to playing the game. Even the community is starting to become better now that Riot is starting to seriously crack down on trolls and toxic players.
I think the best Free to Play games are amazing, and the worst are worse than anything. They have a lot of potential for both rocking or sucking. Games like Team Fortress 2 are amazing (Though it wasn't always free to play, I know). Opening up the game for free-to-plays made it far more interesting, I mean, my scores per match shot up like a bird tied to a rocket.
I've been playing a fair bit of Hearthstone this year. I'm totally F2P and the going is slow. I can't complain though; not spent a penny and I've got a lot of playtime out of it. I might even feel slightly guilty since it's a game a like and respect enough to put money towards. But here's the thing. If I was to buy packs with money, that'd be taking away from the sense of progression. Unlocking cards through winning matches and gaining gold, that's the main point of the game for me.
What I'd prefer, is a one-off purchase that didn't give you any cards but gave you a permanent increase in the gold and dust you earned through playing the game.
What I'd prefer, is a one-off purchase that didn't give you any cards but gave you a permanent increase in the gold and dust you earned through playing the game.
Eh, it can be done right. Turbine MMOs like Lord of the rings Online and DDO both do it pretty well; giving you quite a bit of the game to play for free, and if you want to access the rest, you can either (somewhat slowly, but not unfeasibly slow) garner unlock points as you play), buy it piecemeal or just access the whole game for a monthly fee like other MMOs. (And paying monthly also gives you unlock points, so you can 'own' enough of the game to play pretty freely after you've been a sub for a while, even after you stop paying.) I really like it.
Free to play is terrible when it is combined with an element of chance attached to it. That is specifically targeted towards people who lack impulse control and is worse than online gambling. A lot of smart phone and facebook games have that mechanism and are being called video games, they aren't.
There is no difference between waving a bottle of beer in front of an alcoholic and teasing people with addiction problems this way. People have been going on lately about how the video game market has grown and need to appeal to more people. This is one way it has grown over the past several years.
There is no difference between waving a bottle of beer in front of an alcoholic and teasing people with addiction problems this way. People have been going on lately about how the video game market has grown and need to appeal to more people. This is one way it has grown over the past several years.
F2P isn't inherently good or bad. In in the OP's rant, he conveniently skips over good examples of Free to Play games like Team Fortress 2 and Dota 2. And for your example regarding Yorick, I'd go with this explanation:
Yorick is a poorly designed champion, he's remained a problem even until today and he's the only champion that will never be on the free week rotation until he is fully reworked. If Riot just made the new and expensive champions OP then Nidalee and Kassadin (two old, cheap champs) wouldn't have spent a year+ being dominant.Sanderpower said:
First: F2P has been done really well in many cases and when done right is a genuinely good thing. LoL, DOTA 2, Hearthstone, and TF2 are all prime examples of this. I really don't know how you can complain about LoL. I haven't spent a penny on the game and own 85% of the champions. The free rotation allows you to try out plenty of different champions before deciding on which one you want to get. Obviously DOTA 2 does this better, but LoL really isn't a bad model at all. As for riot releasing OP champions to increase sales, they've released plenty of underpowered champions as well. And yes, if one is underpowered, they're generally going to buff it because if a bunch of people just bought it, they'd be pretty annoyed to find themselves at a disadvantage.
Second: Destiny's successful business model is the worst thing to happen to gaming. The game has made a ton of money, yet there is almost no story and very little content. Instead, they are releasing overpriced DLC to give you a bit more content and some morsels of a story. I have a bad feeling that other devs are going to see this success and realize that they don't have to sell games with a complete story anymore and can instead just sell it in chunks.
Second: Destiny's successful business model is the worst thing to happen to gaming. The game has made a ton of money, yet there is almost no story and very little content. Instead, they are releasing overpriced DLC to give you a bit more content and some morsels of a story. I have a bad feeling that other devs are going to see this success and realize that they don't have to sell games with a complete story anymore and can instead just sell it in chunks.
There's nothing wrong with F2P. It is an excellent model that is simply abused as traditional "purchased" games are. The AAA games released this year are a shining example of bait n' switch and empty promises.
If anything, had purchased games like Destiny, Watch Dogs, or Titanfall been F2P games, a lot less players would have felt swindled by the misleading marketing and overhype.
Say Destiny was F2P. You start with only one character slot and couldn't purchase color pallets or loading screen ships with glimmer. Would you really have felt the urge to drop money on an online only game that didn't even support general chat in towns or trade among players? Would you really have grinded through the one zone of each planed and thought, "Oh boy, I need to purchase another slot so I can play through the exact same thing with another class!"? Would you have spent weeks hoarding your epic engrams, had them decoded into green gear and though "I totally want to go buy some more engrams off the micro-transactions market!"? No. You'd have laughed at screen, maybe posted something negative on the forums, and then go spend your money on something actually worthwhile.
Say Watch Dogs was F2P. You load into the game and immediately notice the graphics aren't as advertised. After doing some research and finding out that the graphical downgrade was intentional, would you then want to go purchase new outfits and vehicles from the shop, or would you uninstall it and think "WTF? Good thing I didn't spend $60 on this."
Yes, F2P games mean monetization has to be built into the game. But you know what it also means? A developer has to make sure the game is good enough that players will actually feel the DESIRE to spend money on it. Rather than just take your money and run away giggling, they have to stand there and either watch their work take off, or crash and burn because they didn't do a good job.
I feel that whether a developer overcharges and exploits micro-transactions in F2P games, falls into the same genre of ethics of whether or not they overcharge and exploit DLC in pre-paid games. Some people get into an industry just to make money. It's only that the gaming industry is in a state where there is no over-site or moderation that prevents false advertising or exploit of the consumers. Sure, you vote with your wallet. But who steps in when you don't get what your wallet voted for?
If anything, had purchased games like Destiny, Watch Dogs, or Titanfall been F2P games, a lot less players would have felt swindled by the misleading marketing and overhype.
Say Destiny was F2P. You start with only one character slot and couldn't purchase color pallets or loading screen ships with glimmer. Would you really have felt the urge to drop money on an online only game that didn't even support general chat in towns or trade among players? Would you really have grinded through the one zone of each planed and thought, "Oh boy, I need to purchase another slot so I can play through the exact same thing with another class!"? Would you have spent weeks hoarding your epic engrams, had them decoded into green gear and though "I totally want to go buy some more engrams off the micro-transactions market!"? No. You'd have laughed at screen, maybe posted something negative on the forums, and then go spend your money on something actually worthwhile.
Say Watch Dogs was F2P. You load into the game and immediately notice the graphics aren't as advertised. After doing some research and finding out that the graphical downgrade was intentional, would you then want to go purchase new outfits and vehicles from the shop, or would you uninstall it and think "WTF? Good thing I didn't spend $60 on this."
Yes, F2P games mean monetization has to be built into the game. But you know what it also means? A developer has to make sure the game is good enough that players will actually feel the DESIRE to spend money on it. Rather than just take your money and run away giggling, they have to stand there and either watch their work take off, or crash and burn because they didn't do a good job.
I feel that whether a developer overcharges and exploits micro-transactions in F2P games, falls into the same genre of ethics of whether or not they overcharge and exploit DLC in pre-paid games. Some people get into an industry just to make money. It's only that the gaming industry is in a state where there is no over-site or moderation that prevents false advertising or exploit of the consumers. Sure, you vote with your wallet. But who steps in when you don't get what your wallet voted for?
The rune system is buying powerSanderpower said:
"But wait!" you say, "runes cannot be bought with RP"
No they cannot, but champions can be. The person who spends RP on champions has more IP to spend on runes.
I played over 5000 games since 2009 before I quit, and I still didn't have all the runes or champions I wanted.
Their f2p model really is quite greedy, and it has only gotten worse since Tencent took over.
To me, "good" F2P games are even worse than the bad ones, because they encourage people to think of the business model as being not inherently bad, and thus the bad ones benefit by proxy. The fact is, there's only room in the world for a handful of fair F2P games that can be successful, and those are the ones that relied on name recognition - either by being a sequel to a really popular game (DOTA 2) or by just being a really popular game that got retooled (TF2) - to amass a huge userbase. And even those rely on getting people to pay for things that have no value (cosmetic items) to make up for people who are too cheapass to pay for something that does (the game itself). Any game that can't rely on that name recognition has to resort to fleecing the hell out of people to even make a profit.
I mean, yeah, maybe there was already a decent number of people who were too cheap to pay for games or just straight-up couldn't afford to, but surely the proliferation of freemium games has only made it worse because it's caused people to treat it as the norm. So now even people who used to be fine with the idea of paying real money for games expect them to be free, and the cycle continues.
I mean, yeah, maybe there was already a decent number of people who were too cheap to pay for games or just straight-up couldn't afford to, but surely the proliferation of freemium games has only made it worse because it's caused people to treat it as the norm. So now even people who used to be fine with the idea of paying real money for games expect them to be free, and the cycle continues.
I strongly disagree. Free to play games are the BEST thing to happen. You seem like some1 that can afford his games so it doesnt benefit you. However in my country the minimal wage is 150 euro and a normal game costs about 50 euro. So we shouldnt play games ? yeah right ...
It's amazing how the free market, "vote with your wallet" crowd seems to about-face or disappear when it comes to F2P. I'm even seeing some of the same names in this thread, lamenting how F2P is ruining gaming. Well, thankfully, you guys can vote with your wallet. Or make your own games if you don't like it.
Don't be stupid OP. Seriously. Idiots are the worst thing to happen to vidya games; there are plenty of examples of FTP games out there that handle it perfectly fine (Fallen London, Urban Rivals, and to a lesser extent Eredan Arena). Just because the first FTP game you played did pricing models poorly by no means invalidates the entire system.
This, this, this. We can end this fucking idiotic thread now.Sanderpower said:
Free to play isn't a replacement for buy to play video games. A free to play single player experience doesn't work. Free to play is a replacement in the mmo bracket for the subscription model. Let's do some math here, and see what kind of subscription you were paying to League of Legends.
The thing to understand about online games, is that running, and developing the game takes a lot of money. For a lot of games, they won't attract enough new players to sustain this cost over a long period of time. So, the best option that the game developer has, is to charge the people who are playing the game. Now, instead of packaging up the game, and selling it at a single monthly price, free to play games break down what they're offering and let the player choose what to buy.
I find it helps not to think about the value of the individual things I'm buying, and think more about buying things as a donation to the people making the game. Instead of paying 10$ to the game to get a new character, I think of it as giving the game 10$, and as a bonus I get a character. That helps me justify buying things from free to play games, but I get not everyone agrees with that mentality.
2 years, is 24 months. If you paid a total of 150$, then you were paying about 6.25$ a month. That's pretty good, especially since League of Legends, and almost all free to play games, don't have an up front cost associated with the game. If I wanted to subscribe to the big MMO, World of Warcraft, I would be paying 12.99$ a month, and that's not counting the cost of any new expansions that are coming out.Bigggg BRIM77 said:
The thing to understand about online games, is that running, and developing the game takes a lot of money. For a lot of games, they won't attract enough new players to sustain this cost over a long period of time. So, the best option that the game developer has, is to charge the people who are playing the game. Now, instead of packaging up the game, and selling it at a single monthly price, free to play games break down what they're offering and let the player choose what to buy.
I find it helps not to think about the value of the individual things I'm buying, and think more about buying things as a donation to the people making the game. Instead of paying 10$ to the game to get a new character, I think of it as giving the game 10$, and as a bonus I get a character. That helps me justify buying things from free to play games, but I get not everyone agrees with that mentality.
Pretty much every "elitist" ever that insults their team for being bad in WoT is 99/100 an absolute scrublord, noob of the highest order that shines like a bright red tomato. Artillery gets much more shit in that game.jklinders said:
OT: To be honest I completely disagree with you that LoL is a bad F2P model. It could be a lot worse and a lot of the bad stuff about it seemed to be more to do with stupidity than balance especially, since a lot of old cheap champions are quite dominant and strong at the moment. Even then a lot of the low cost champions are perfectly suited to Yolo queue. That said it would be nice to have all the champs.
My worst big F2P model is probably Hearthstone. It takes quite a long time to get cards for any sort of deck that isn't an aggro deck and for me the game is far too simple and I don't understand a lot of the community when they call for nerfs of stuff that isn't needed. Many of the people don't seem understand the power that comes with deck thinning and draw power and cycling as far as combos go.
Agreed. PoE is an example of F2P done right. Sure, the extra inventory space you can buy (once!) is a nice game bump, but other than that, everything else is simply cosmetic, meaning NO Pay-to-Win.Ol said:
...and as a bonus, it's a great game!
I like how your argument supposes a payment method is inherently morally aligned. It's just a payment method. It has as much power as the market collectively allows it. Also, how people will just go with a bad F2P monetization system because some hypothetical person says "Well, Dota 2 and TF2 work as F2P. Star Trek Trexels and Dungeon Keeper must be legit too."Steve the Pocket said: