Team Fortress 2's Conversion Rate Is Huge And Confusing

[Waaghpowa]

1. TF2 is an amazing game with a lot of content, but you don't feel like you HAVE to buy certain content to be competative. I STILL use stock gear for some classes and i have enough items to start a large war.

2. TF2 is great value, whether you play for free, bought it recently or bought it at launch with the res of the orange box it was a stellar deal. Owners of the game get acess to frequent drops, crafting and trading which means they never really NEED to by things. But the long term vlauve of the game makes them WANT to buy things.

3. The items are REALLY cool, both in terms of trying out new stuff or just their asthetics.

4. You can't pirate thhe game since it is free and you can't hack items since the game is set out with a very effective anti cheat system and items only really exist within steam's severs.

I believe points 1 and 2 are the best points. Valve actually produces quality games and at a reasonable price, increasing the likelihood people will actually purchase the game. One of the most used, and dumbest, of piracy justification is "it's not worth my time/money". "Good news!" Says Valve. "We made a game worth giving a shit about!".

 

[FreakSheet]

Interesting... Well, I haven't spent any money yet... I wonder how long I've been playing...

lets see... 200 hours

W. T. F.

 

[The_root_of_all_evil]

I quite like F2P players.

They make such beautiful targets.

I'm a F2P player and I decided to get better so the originals wouldn't notice.

Won't work. They still call me a F2P when I'm above them in the scoreboard, carrying a Southern Hospitality, Widowmaker and Short Circuit and wearing a Pink "Old Geezer".

Rule of Thumb: If they're lower on the scoreboard than you, mute player

 

[Irridium]

It's also interesting how they note that Russia is their second largest European Market.

Uh...Geography fail?

D'oh!

Meant second largest market in Europe.

Sorry, words confuse me. Don't worry, I'm only 20, I'm sure I'll figure them out eventually.

 

[Irridium]

tf2 is inherently a hard game TO pirate, given that its free, the individual things however are not, unless you pirate them, which will VAC ban you, meaning you can't use them. So its kind of logical.

TF2 isn't Valve's only game (series) though.

There's Half Life, Portal, Counter-Strike, Left 4 Dead, and Day of Defeat. All those cost money. Plus there's Global Offensive which is coming out. I'm assuming he means second largest market for all their games, not just TF2.

Valve may have solved the piracy problem, the problem of long term support, the tricky microtransaction balance AND managed to keep everyone on side. Gabe is a wizard.

Why it works is simple;

1. TF2 is an amazing game with a lot of content, but you don't feel like you HAVE to buy certain content to be competative. I STILL use stock gear for some classes and i have enough items to start a large war.

2. TF2 is great value, whether you play for free, bought it recently or bought it at launch with the res of the orange box it was a stellar deal. Owners of the game get acess to frequent drops, crafting and trading which means they never really NEED to by things. But the long term vlauve of the game makes them WANT to buy things.

3. The items are REALLY cool, both in terms of trying out new stuff or just their asthetics.

4. You can't pirate thhe game since it is free and you can't hack items since the game is set out with a very effective anti cheat system and items only really exist within steam's severs.

Hm... it's almost like he's treating it as a... service. Something every publisher is trying to push, yet completely failing to deliver since they try to charge for anything they possibly can and stopping support for a game after a year or so.

Game publishers don't seem to realize that services in this sense means a game with a CHEAP entry point, and constant free updates to give it a long life-span with support by micro-transactions from items anyone can get normally so nobody feels like they're getting ripped off.

Selling something for $60 then selling DLC for all kinds of crap and locking out multiplayer for used buyers does not a good service make.

...sorry, kind of went off a bit there.

 

[Vrach]

Is that number pre or post F2P? Could be that a lot of players just figured to buy one item to get the premium stuff?

 

[Geo Da Sponge]

I quite like F2P players.

They make such beautiful targets.

Oh sure. Perfect targets, for the other team.

I'm not sure we need three snipers, guys... Okay, if we're going to have three snipers can they watch different approaches? Okay, if they're all going to look at the same approach can they at least not stand in front of each other?

 

[Lancer873]

I think it would be fairly obvious, I mean you would have to be an idiot not to understand.

Currently, F2P players can only find, craft and carry limited number of in-game items, and they cannot trade with other players. However, buying any item from the Mann Co. store grants the F2P player the same rights and privileges as a player who bought the game before the great free-to-play switcheroo.

If you offer the game as F2P and then fuck over and alienate all of said F2P players untill they buy something you are going to have a large portion of them buying shit.

Except they don't. I play it F2P and every class is perfectly capable of doing damage as a free player. Sure, it'll take me a bit longer to get a dead ringer or a wrangler, but I'm still capable of being a good spy and engineer without those. And hell, after two days of playing, I got everything I needed to be a demoknight (Chargin' Targe and Scottsman's Skullcutter). It might be a bit harder to get hats but I'm fine with the Headless Horsemann's head and the Spiral Sallet.

 

[Undead Dragon King]

I don't think it's the hats that are driving sales. Think about it. What's the #1 bestselling item in the Mann Co. store by far?

The Mann Co. Supply Crate Key.

Those little bastards are the proof of Gabe Newell's evil genius. Providing players with a box which forces them to pay for a partially disclosed "or especially rare!" item is half the reason why the Mann Co. store is doing so well. Since each one-use key is a total rip-off at $2.50, it's only inevitable that these are the lion's share of the revenue. Since most of the obscenely popular "strange" weapons come from boxes, it's only made the situation worse for consumers and better for Valve.

MOAR BAWXES!

 

[E-Penguin]

It's also interesting how they note that Russia is their second largest European Market.

Uh...Geography fail?

D'oh!

Meant second largest market in Europe.

Sorry, words confuse me. Don't worry, I'm only 20, I'm sure I'll figure them out eventually.

I think he meant that Russia is not in Europe, but in Asia, something which is both right and wrong.

They're both.

 

[Sansha]

I think it's partly because the items are so appealing, and partly because it's really, really, really easy to buy things. Steam and Steam Wallet are ruthlessly efficient systems.

 

[Not G. Ivingname]

Snip

I think I have an answer, the 50 Item limit.

I am a F2Per, and I am running up hard against the 50 item limit. I am having to covert to scrap metal or delete any unwanted items, and it is very hard to give up items I have used a lot. People are just getting a hat so they can keep what they have and get more items.

 

[Irridium]

I think he meant that Russia is not in Europe, but in Asia, something which is both right and wrong.

They're both.

I'm just going by what Newell said, which is "Russia now outside of Germany is our largest continental European market".

The European part of Russia is the second largest then.

 

[Hungry Donner]

I picked up TF2 because it was F2P, I enjoyed it a lot, so I was happy to upgrade to a Premium account simply to support the move.

I'm not surprised that a large number of new accounts are doing this. While the F2P limitations aren't burdensome if you want to try out the game for a while I could see them chafing if you want to participate much in the community.

 

[Krion_Vark]

Interesting... Well, I haven't spent any money yet... I wonder how long I've been playing...

lets see... 200 hours

W. T. F.

A bit ago the Steam Servers had a little hiccup on play time. It says I have played Magika for 35 hours when I haven't played it for more than 2 hours since I was playing it with a friend and we haven't played it since it crashed on my computer.

 

[Et3rnalLegend64]

I did technically pay for stuff, but that's because I wanted the extra backpack space. I spent the minimum of 5(?) dollars and never bought anything again. Do I still count?

 

[Random Argument Man]

I quite like F2P players.

They make such beautiful targets.

I'm a F2P player and I decided to get better so the originals wouldn't notice.

Won't work. They still call me a F2P when I'm above them in the scoreboard, carrying a Southern Hospitality, Widowmaker and Short Circuit and wearing a Pink "Old Geezer".

Rule of Thumb: If they're lower on the scoreboard than you, mute player

I rarely get the bad rep (lately) when I'm on top of the scoreboard. I remembered when I decided to get better with the huntsman. Started with "Oh, he's F2P...switch to heavy noob!" and changed to "WTF, eight headshots in a row?!?!?"

The only class that I didn't get a hang of is the Medic. I never get a good heavy that pushes when I deploy an übercharge...

 

[Scrythe]

I never really got into Team Fortress 2. The only reason why I have it is because it came with one of the many Valve packs that they put on Steam every other month that comes with all of the Half-Life titles and the Orange Box. I played it once just to try it out, kept getting yelled at for playing the game (i.e., killing the opposing team) and uninistalled it thinking to myself "Oh, so this is one of those [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/City_of_Heroes] games [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/City_of_Villains]."

Now that I keep hearing about how it's somehow turned into Gaia Online (emphasis on vanity items), I laugh harder each time I see this image:

Spoiler

 

[Itsthefuzz]

I think it would be fairly obvious, I mean you would have to be an idiot not to understand.

Currently, F2P players can only find, craft and carry limited number of in-game items, and they cannot trade with other players. However, buying any item from the Mann Co. store grants the F2P player the same rights and privileges as a player who bought the game before the great free-to-play switcheroo.

If you offer the game as F2P and then fuck over and alienate all of said F2P players untill they buy something you are going to have a large portion of them buying shit.

Hello sir you seem a bit mad. They don't "Screw over" F2P players. The core of the game is there, for free, for these players. You want to have cool hats and fancy weapons? Then pony up. Simple.

 

[Pandaman1911]

I don't know why I buy things, either. I paid for the game, and I continue to buy things. I mean, when the Mann Co. Store came out, I was like "PAY FOR WEAPONS?! NEVER! THAT'S OBSCENE!" and then I saw that I could buy the Liberty Launcher for only 49 cents or something, and I went "Ooh. That's not all that much. Maaaaaaybe just one..." and now I've spent at least twenty dollars on all the old weapons, 49 and 99 cents each and whatnot. Whatever brainwashing they're putting into their code, it's w-

ALL GLORY TO THE HYPNOGABE