[Megathread] Wildstar - Now F2P

[Elim Garak]

Swtor failed for so very many reasons.
It launching as subscription only was one reason among many.

(edit: Also, I wouldn't say it 'failed' failed but by mmo champ standards it did)

The only issue with a subscription was - the game was not worth it's sub-money at release.
But that's hardly the subscription's fault.
And yes I put "failed" in quotes for a reason. I still play it and I'm subbed to it.

[Kelimbror]

It launching as subscription only was one reason among many

As was not having expected modern MMO features, etc, etc.

So critical thinking would lead me to believe that making sure to not do any of the things that contributed to another game's demise is a good strategy for trying to get yours to succeed. I honestly don't understand why people are fighting this. It's almost insane. And it's always the same rhetoric...people are fine with subscription options along with a B2P of F2P model, but their opposition is "Subscription are teh onl gud gamez hurr durr. F2P games suck monkeyz"

Same with raiding, people who like to play casual and have accessible content are fine with their being super hard content they can't defeat, but want everyone to have difficulty options. The opposition says screw casuals, everything should be hard or they shouldn't be able to see the story. It makes my story worse because they can read it. Give them farms and pets, that's good enough.

Like wtf. It's like having brain damage to even try and understand that logic.

[RoninaThorstone]

The only issue with a subscription was - the game was not worth it's sub-money at release.
But that's hardly the subscription's fault.
And yes I put "failed" in quotes for a reason. I still play it and I'm subbed to it.

The problem is that that's an opinion (which a lot of people had) and many people will, most likely, have that opinion of wild star when it launches.

Why? For as many reasons as there are players but here are a few key ones.
Bugs and poor optimization. When you compare a game that has 8 years of debugging and optimization that can run on a TI83 calculator to a brand new MMO... You are going to find problems. With certain abilities, animations, frames per second, particle effects, memory leaks, quests, holes in the world, z fighting textures, ect ect ect. You are also going to have people who are like "well, I can run X game on ultra no problem but on this new game I have to run it on lower settings. wtf" because the developers are using an unoptimized engine and thinking their game is going to be played on computers made in the past 3 years.
If it is f2p (even limited f2p) you will have these people checking back in every now and then to see if the problems they had are fixed. If you tell them, "Sorry, you have to pay 15 dollars to see if you can run it" they are less likely to check back. Costing the developer potential money.
Then there's the "It doesn't feel right" type of complaints. This is an extremely important demographic. They want an mmo different from what they are use to while also not feeling comfortable with the unfamiliar. If you have a subscription, they have this tendency to frame their decision to subscribe as "I can either go back to X or play this new MMO", this either or decision tends to end poorly for the new MMO. If you have a f2p option, the player thinks "well, I can just play this new MMO whenever." and they log on between raid nights or during content slumps or when they are sick of dailies and in the process they become acclimated to the new MMO and eventually their discomfort with its unfamiliarity wanes. Then you have a much higher chance of turning that player into a subscriber. Making the developer more money.
Then there's the "nothing to do" problem. There are two types of this problem, the "i don't know of anything to do" and the "there isn't content left for me to do". The first problem is, in large part, on the developers head. One game I can think of that has a very serious problem with this is Firefall. There's a lot of thing's to do in that game. LGV racing, relay racing, defend the point quests, explore X mark quests, bounty quests, two different LGV scavenge quests, chosen drop pods, chosen warbringers, solo thumping, group thumping, two raid bosses, crafting, thumper repair quest, sin imprint collecting, melding storm hunting, pushing back the melding, and several pvp maps.
What do people think is in the game? Killing stuff and thumping.
The other problem is harder to fix, and why you f2p has an advantage. When you compare a new game to an 8 years of development, you have some issues. For one, in wow there's always something to do. (solo molten core! 5 man wotlk raids! get loremaster! grind one of 60 old school reps!) You might be on the bleeding edge of content but there's almost no one without a backlog. Some might not care to do it, but the fact that it's there keeps them quiet. Again, when faced with the either or choice that people set themselves up for, they are going to waddle back to their old standby instead of running in circles waiting for the dev team to come out with new content. F2p allows people to drift around more freely. Oh I ran out of content? well, I will check back later. There's no subscription so I can come and go as I please.
There's a lot of perks to not demanding that people cough up money just to log on.

[Elim Garak]

F2P games that were designed as F2P games from the concept approval day are generally of less quality. Their design is focused on making players pay in micro-transactions. For instance one such game that I played had micro-transactions as Death Penalty. You either receive a huge debuff and have to wait to get respawn even, or you can buy (for special currency, bought by real money) a special item that makes it all go away. Or you kill an elite mob and it drops a good item that you want - but - it's CURSED and practically unusable unless you pay and de-curse it.

The interesting thing - you could get these done for free - through mindless grinding for hours. So they were kinda available via in-game activities, but again only for people who have a lot of time to play - kids. And there are of course pay2win items - like for you to participate in any serious raiding you have to improve your character thru special system (like glyph system only bigger) and it could be only done via real money payments. So you kinda still had to pay a subscription - only it wasn't a subscription.

So what's the point of all this F2P for a player? None. It almost always takes more money to play F2P game at the same level as P2P game.
Tat's why people prefer subscription. You pay static fee and get everything without any of F2P's intrinsic inconveniences.

[RoninaThorstone]

Tat's why people prefer subscription. You pay static fee and get everything without any of F2P's intrinsic inconveniences.

That's why SOME people prefer subscription.
Which is why you offer a subscription option as well.

[Elim Garak]

That's why SOME people prefer subscription.
Which is why you offer a subscription option as well.

Well I didn't say ALL people prefer it.
Btw, that game I was talking about... just recently they opened subscription-based servers. Ponder on that.

[Immitis]

Wow did pretty good when it catered to the hardcore players back in van/bc.

you mean back when it was insanely easy and casual compared to the other games and everquest players teased wow players for playing "the easy game" wow has always appealed to the casual, thats what made it popular in the first place

[RoninaThorstone]

Well I didn't say ALL people prefer it.
Btw, that game I was talking about... just recently they opened subscription-based servers. Ponder on that.

I have. Which is why I think that offering a f2p option and subscription option is best. That way you get both groups of people.

[Valeron]

still talking about payment models?

[RoninaThorstone]

still talking about payment models?

Until the dev team comes out and says what their plan is, do you really expect it to stop?

[Valeron]

well haven't visited this thread for a few days, saw that there was quite a bit of activity but was just disappointed that all it is talking about payment models

[Immitis]

F2P games that were designed as F2P games from the concept approval day are generally of less quality. Their design is focused on making players pay in micro-transactions. For instance one such game that I played had micro-transactions as Death Penalty. You either receive a huge debuff and have to wait to get respawn even, or you can buy (for special currency, bought by real money) a special item that makes it all go away. Or you kill an elite mob and it drops a good item that you want - but - it's CURSED and practically unusable unless you pay and de-curse it.

The interesting thing - you could get these done for free - through mindless grinding for hours. So they were kinda available via in-game activities, but again only for people who have a lot of time to play - kids. And there are of course pay2win items - like for you to participate in any serious raiding you have to improve your character thru special system (like glyph system only bigger) and it could be only done via real money payments. So you kinda still had to pay a subscription - only it wasn't a subscription.

So what's the point of all this F2P for a player? None. It almost always takes more money to play F2P game at the same level as P2P game.
Tat's why people prefer subscription. You pay static fee and get everything without any of F2P's intrinsic inconveniences.

that is horrible but free to play doesnt have to be like that. free to play can be done right. in my opinion no store should charge for anything other than vanity items or perhaps leveling perks like pay x and gain experoience x times faster but besides that nothing that gives you an advantage over other players in any substantial way so mostly pets, mounts, transmog/dye/whatever gear customization a game may have

[RoninaThorstone]

well haven't visited this thread for a few days, saw that there was quite a bit of activity but was just disappointed that all it is talking about payment models

Well, lately we've been talking about thing's like LFG, dungeon finder, LFR, and whether or not the majority of players should be able to access content (easy mode / hard mode) or if only 1-3% of the players should get their money's worth (hard mode only)

[Immitis]

well haven't visited this thread for a few days, saw that there was quite a bit of activity but was just disappointed that all it is talking about payment models

theres been alot of other conversations, payment model only came up like this page for awhile O-O

[RoninaThorstone]

that is horrible but free to play doesnt have to be like that. free to play can be done right.

Yep.
League could charge your account 50 cents every time you die but they don't.
But people will just ignore that and keep pointing to bad examples to justify why they think f2p as a whole is bad.

[Valeron]

ah so this is kind of like a general mmo features thread, gotcha

[RoninaThorstone]

ah so this is kind of like a general mmo features thread, gotcha

Check back when beta launches. There will be plenty of info then (even if there is an NDA)

[Valeron]

Will they have a playable demo at pax?

[Enjeh]

Will they have a playable demo at pax?

Probably.

"Here's another look at the Falkrin you'll come up against in Deradune. Come fight them at PAX East!"
https://www.facebook.com/photo.php?f...type=1&theater

[RoninaThorstone]

Will they have a playable demo at pax?

I'm hoping they hand out beta keys too.