A New Hope... for f2p.

[Xcitement]

On this contention I will have to tell you that you are just ignoring facts that have been reiterated several times. While I almost always agree with you, you want everything in the universe for one low low price of practically nothing. I don't consider temporary buffs or vanity items to be vital to the game, where they need to be given freely to people who subscribe. Subscribers get their own perks, which is the whole effing point. It is a system designed for everyone. It is advantageous, but you are refusing to do anything but roll around in the mud with it. That's your perogative, so no need for me to really keep yammering on about it.

But this is the point isn't it? Trying to squeeze more money out of the players. It's not about focusing on making a better game but making sure they find ways to finagle more money out of players via the cash shop. I used an example earlier with Allods where a player would end up spending more than $500USD for one out of 6 level 10 runes. EA's Need for Speed World rents cars for Boost Points. You get a super powered car to pwn other players with then you have to spend more money to get another because that one time ran out.

This is the kind of crap I do not want to see in SW:TOR.

Just a couple questions, as if they do go F2P I may actually play a bit in my spare time. First off, are they talking real F2P or B2P? If it goes F2P I will be mad, I want my $60 back. If it's B2P then I'm ok, as I already bought it, but I am not ok with people getting it free after I've already paid. Maybe even 60 EA bucks or whatever to spend in the cash shop if it goes F2P.

Second question is, what type of F2P model are they talking, cosmetic cash shop, buy dungeons and raids or buy things you need to progress?

All the Free2Play and Buy2Play crap is people wishing so they can be cheep or cry "I told you so". They truly have no desire to see the game succeed.

[kenn9530]

You're all skipping the most important sentence in the article:



I've been saying for months that their internal numbers were horrible, and here's the first admission of it.

SWTOR does not have 1.3 million players. A subscriber is not the same as a player.

to play SWTOR you need to have an active sub which means your paying for it, if you cancel your account your not a subscriber anymore and not counted in the subscriber numbers so when they said it had 1.3 million subs it did but we dont know where it is now.

I would only be ok with a f2p model if a sub model was still in place so subs get everything and maybe a few other perks while the f2p players get only the basics and what else they pay extra for.

F2P models can make more income than sub models as there will be more transactions rather than a one of payment every month so it could be very good to implement this along with an optional sub model.

[RoninaThorstone]

All the Free2Play and Buy2Play crap is people wishing so they can be cheep or cry "I told you so". They truly have no desire to see the game succeed.

Come on, man.

You know that isn't true.

[Redblade]

On this contention I will have to tell you that you are just ignoring facts that have been reiterated several times. While I almost always agree with you, you want everything in the universe for one low low price of practically nothing.

All I can say about that is if it's the low price of practically nothing then why is there even a debate about the subscription model, I don't think we will get anywhere with this argument though, we just see it from different angles I suppose.

On this point I blame multitasking. Somehow I thought you had mentioned GW2 instead of Rift, because it seemed that you were saying games take a flat amount of money and in return give you a game. My mistake. I see that you were kinda going in an entirely different direction than what we are talking about really, since you are arguing getting value out of sub games...especially in the services department. Though the validity of the comparison is accurate.

Yeah it was Rift, the comparison I was making was simply that Rift with 1/20th or less than WoW's subscribers can produce more content that WoW, hence reinvest a substantially larger percentage of their earnings on the game.

I don't like comparing GW to much as it's a, to my limited knowledge, game with no gear progression at end-game, equality in PvP and no gear treadmill, so it becomes a very different beast that I guess has it easier to justify cash shop sales as there is really no advantages to gain in the first place.

Also limited knowledge makes for poor arguments hence not going to there to much.

[Xcitement]

I wonder if anyone remembered the early months of SW:TOR? Where players were complaining that they had the best raid set and the best PvP set so there's no point in running Ops or PvPing. Remember? There were practically no kind of gear grind. You got your PvP gear super fast if you're REALLY lucky. But with everyone having the same tier gear then PvP is about the battle. There was no gear issue, but players were not PvPing. Players were not raiding.

The gear grind as much as you hate it is the driving force behind why a lot of players play these MMOs. Using GW2 B2P model and the fact that they have no gear grind as validation that it's what is best for SW:TOR is ignoring patterns and trends of the SW:TOR population.

[Kelimbror]

But this is the point isn't it? Trying to squeeze more money out of the players. It's not about focusing on making a better game but making sure they find ways to finagle more money out of players via the cash shop. I used an example earlier with Allods where a player would end up spending more than $500USD for one out of 6 level 10 runes. EA's Need for Speed World rents cars for Boost Points. You get a super powered car to pwn other players with then you have to spend more money to get another because that one time ran out.

This is the kind of crap I do not want to see in SW:TOR.


All the Free2Play and Buy2Play crap is people wishing so they can be cheep or cry "I told you so". They truly have no desire to see the game succeed.

Yes, this is the point of a business. To get people to pay money for things. They don't design uber items or abilities to put on that shop, to give you some unfair advantage over someone else. You are asked to 'pay' whether by money to points or points you grind out for convenience or cosmetics.

How is this any different than anything else in life? We pay tons of extra money for next day shipping for the luxury and convenience of having it sooner. Most of the people that demand these items are people with little time to invest. In order to capture that market of people with less perceived time for an MMO, they provide an option.

[Xcitement]

Yes, this is the point of a business. To get people to pay money for things. They don't design uber items or abilities to put on that shop, to give you some unfair advantage over someone else. You are asked to 'pay' whether by money to points or points you grind out for convenience or cosmetics.

How is this any different than anything else in life? We pay tons of extra money for next day shipping for the luxury and convenience of having it sooner. Most of the people that demand these items are people with little time to invest. In order to capture that market of people with less perceived time for an MMO, they provide an option.

And that is why I chose to play a subscription based game over a Free2Play/Buy2Play one. So why with all the options out there must people want to change one game into another? You don't see me here screaming GW2 would be better as a subscription game do you? GW2 wants to be a B2P with a cash shop that's fine for them. I am not asking for them to change their model to suit me. I decided not to play it. I decided to play SW:TOR. I get access to everything the game has to offer for my subscription. The models some people are proposing is you get most that the game has to offer for your subscription, the rest you got to pay extra for.

Now tell me how is THAT better?

[CheeseDoodlez]

since its EA. it will probably be more like P2W.

[SirRobin]

since its EA. it will probably be more like P2W.

Above and beyond the whole "subscription versus microtransaction" debate. When you toss EA's reputation into the mix? Yikes...

Still if they were seriously planning F2P for TOR, wouldn't they have already done it to WAR? It was EA's last "flagship" MMORPG, after all, but it still uses the subscription revenue model last I heard.

[Kelimbror]

. The models some people are proposing is you get most that the game has to offer for your subscription, the rest you got to pay extra for.

Now tell me how is THAT better?

Well of course not silly. I'm assuming that market research would yield the intelligence that the game won't take away any features or content, merely add the exact same items I have been explaining. LotRO is the one of the most profitable F2Ps, so I'm sure they will start the research there.

I wouldn't expect it to deviate too much from that, other than they could abuse the legacy system with a cash shop. Naturally I would personally prefer a sub game in the long run.

[Glorious Leader]

Above and beyond the whole "subscription versus microtransaction" debate. When you toss EA's reputation into the mix? Yikes...

Still if they were seriously planning F2P for TOR, wouldn't they have already done it to WAR? It was EA's last "flagship" MMORPG, after all, but it still uses the subscription revenue model last I heard.

I thought about that for awhile to. I think we have to keep in mind timing here. You ever use origin? I know it's satan but you should try it out at some point. Theirs a category at the top called you can browse through called "Free Games". My suspicion is that f2p wasn't as prevalent or as big a force when WAR came out as it is today. They're slow but I think EA is probably coming around to embrace this model. His statements also lend credence to that conclusion.

[papajohn4]

1) If you are unhappy with a games design, stop playing/paying

2) I play without any of the things you mentioned and I am not limited at all. Not to mention that you get points every month for having a sub so...don't really see the issue here.

3) Let me underline an important part of your quote that puts emphasis on why this is a great model "You need this trait that gives you +Might, sure go kill 360 wolves or simple buy it" - The game is designed for people to have a way to achieve the same things that you could get from money. If you have money for the game, whether a sub or otherwise, you pay to play. If you don't, you still have a means to achieve it.

4)If your fun is hampered by other people being able to purchase things, then you should stop playing MMOs entirely. As far back as Vanilla wow, guilds charged gold to run scrubs through raids and get them gear. Not to mention being able to buy gold or other people's characters with achievements. This is the SAME issue...actually worse I don't see you railing against this...so..your point has been exterminated.

5)Additionally, the turbine point setup has actually added more things to do/more ways to accomplish than the game ever originally had.

1) Exactly. I will not play lotro and you will not play swtor. Fixed

2)Yes 500 points for a month you cannot even buy an outfit. You can play without them and be happy, nice for you, but I don't.

3)this is exactly what I dislike. if you have money you pay, if you don't you grind. You see? this bothers me. I don't expect everyone have a problem with it, and thats why everything we say on forums are personal opinions.

4)My fun is to have a wealthy competition between fellow players. If you want to buy things to win then you should stop asking quality games become pay to win and focus on playing the existing pay to win games. If you see the game as single player and you don't bother at all, this is you. Also your example is false because Blizzard would ban these players if someone report them and they had proof of this...You can't say that because gold sellers and guilds selling things illegal exist, companies must turn their games into a large cash shop. All games between players must be fair, except if they are single player. Imagine in a race with bicycles someone come with a motorbike because he can buy it while the other need first to make 10 circles with the bicycle and then to switch to motorbike..

In conclusion everything depends to how much competition you feel when you play an online game. If you play the game as a single player game with some people jumping nearby to fill the atmosphere then it is ok. I play online games for a fair and wealthy competition.

[Sills]

I would definitely play SWTOR if it goes F2P. Casually, of course, in the periods where WoW gerts boring.

Same here. I did the trial and liked the game but couldnt justify another sub when I already play WoW so religiously :P If its F2P I can definitly have some fun with TOR

[Kelimbror]

1) Exactly. I will not play lotro and you will not play swtor. Fixed

2)Yes 500 points for a month you cannot even buy an outfit. You can play without them and be happy, nice for you, but I don't.

3)this is exactly what I dislike. if you have money you pay, if you don't you grind. You see? this bothers me. I don't expect everyone have a problem with it, and thats why everything we say on forums are personal opinions.

4)My fun is to have a wealthy competition between fellow players. If you want to buy things to win then you should stop asking quality games become pay to win and focus on playing the existing pay to win games. If you see the game as single player and you don't bother at all, this is you. Also your example is false because Blizzard would ban these players if someone report them and they had proof of this...You can't say that because gold sellers and guilds selling things illegal exist, companies must turn their games into a large cash shop. All games between players must be fair, except if they are single player. Imagine in a race with bicycles someone come with a motorbike because he can buy it while the other need first to make 10 circles with the bicycle and then to switch to motorbike..

In conclusion everything depends to how much competition you feel when you play an online game. If you play the game as a single player game with some people jumping nearby to fill the atmosphere then it is ok. I play online games for a fair and wealthy competition.

1) Except I do play SWTOR and never said I wanted it to go F2P. I have been having a logical argument in a thread of people afraid of this happening. Stop being defensive when someone disagrees with you.

2)If you wanted to play dress up, you could play the Sims or something. Looking pretty doesn't affect the actual gameplay as designed. If you want to use your points to roleplay you can, otherwise you can run skirmishes and dungeons to get tokens that can buy the same crap. IE rewards for actually playign the game, whether you pay or not.

3)This is the definition of entitlement. Video games are not charity work. They do not make them so homeless people can play them at the library. They create them to make something awesome that returns money. Even free facebook games actually use you as a product for ad revenue and cash shop purchases. At this point you are losing all credibility.

4)Buying skirts and fancy bow ties doesn't help you win at the game. Leveling faster doesn't make you win the game. In a game such as LotRO and star wars, there's really no competition by design other than PvP - which doesn't really count in LotRO since it's monster play.

In regards to you thinking I have false information b/c "Blizzard would ban these players if someone report them and they had proof of this" you clearly have no grounding in reality of how that game has worked. There's nothing preventing guilds from accepting gold for running someone through a raid. Also, you must not have ever noticed the frequent posting of GDKP runs during WotLK on the offical realm forums. Because...I don't remember CMs popping in there wth ban hammers.

You are overwhelming wrong on this point, but I couldn't really buy in to your credibility like 3 points ago.


In all honesty, F2P would bring a lot more people to the game. It would lead to revenue numbers that would satisfy the production of the future gamestate. Everyone on here can complain that they don't want those people playing their game, but then these are the voices that were listened to when the game launched, crying to not have it anything like WoW.

We see where that led.

[Lathais]

4)My fun is to have a wealthy competition between fellow players. If you want to buy things to win then you should stop asking quality games become pay to win and focus on playing the existing pay to win games. If you see the game as single player and you don't bother at all, this is you. Also your example is false because Blizzard would ban these players if someone report them and they had proof of this...You can't say that because gold sellers and guilds selling things illegal exist, companies must turn their games into a large cash shop. All games between players must be fair, except if they are single player. Imagine in a race with bicycles someone come with a motorbike because he can buy it while the other need first to make 10 circles with the bicycle and then to switch to motorbike..

Silly analogy is silly. In a bike race, you are in direct competition with everyone else in the race, of course buying an advantage is frowned upon. In an MMO, I am not in direct competition with everyone else playing. I am actually cooperating with them to accomplish the same task. If I have the time to play 40 hours a week, and can grind the same things someone can buy, but that someone can only play 20 hours a week, but we raid together, I could care less if he bought it and I farmed it, we both have it and are both using it to accomplish the same goal.

[Xcitement]

3)This is the definition of entitlement. Video games are not charity work. They do not make them so homeless people can play them at the library. They create them to make something awesome that returns money.

EXACTLY! And this is another reason why I am happy to pay for my entertainment. So these companies stay in business to continue giving me entertainment. I buy my games from the store and not download crack copies. I pay my subscription yada yada yada. What I disagree with is going down the road of B2W and when a cash shop is involved more times than not, WAY MORE, that is what it degrades to.

Everyone has things that make or break it for them when it comes to their entertainment, to their games. When SW:TOR was under development I held no delusions to what it would be and I am happy with the product. If the game was going to be released F2P with a cash shop I may have bothered to check it out but chances would of been no. DCU, LotRO, CoH/V all have F2P/Sub options and I glanced @ the website and decided it wasn't for me. I know I'd of been pissed off so decided not to give myself the grief. I'm not going to go on those games website and create threads that they get rid of their cash shop. So why are people here trying to rally support for the game to go F2P and get a cash shop.

[Kelimbror]

So why are people here trying to rally support for the game to go F2P and get a cash shop.

]

I honestly don't know. I'm personally just defending the F2P model and trying to show that it wouldn't be the evil white satan for SWTOR. The people who are lobbying for it?...beats me. Maybe they are broke and want to keep playing or they are angry at the game and only think having it free would justify its existence.

[Xcitement]

Part of me believes some of those who decided to leave the game wants validation of their decision so if it goes F2P they can shout "HA! I TOLD YOU SO!!!" and feel vindicated that they "made the right choice". Who knows.

[Forsedar]

I'm not going to jump up and down screaming that F2P doesn't have it benefits- because we all can agree that it does. However, I personally do not like that style of game. It always has the potential to get worse. With a subscription, it has extreme potential to give you more and more content. F2P leads to cash shops... and cash shops lead to horrible, horrible things.

[papajohn4]

1) Except I do play SWTOR and never said I wanted it to go F2P. I have been having a logical argument in a thread of people afraid of this happening. Stop being defensive when someone disagrees with you.

2)If you wanted to play dress up, you could play the Sims or something. Looking pretty doesn't affect the actual gameplay as designed. If you want to use your points to roleplay you can, otherwise you can run skirmishes and dungeons to get tokens that can buy the same crap. IE rewards for actually playign the game, whether you pay or not.

3)This is the definition of entitlement. Video games are not charity work. They do not make them so homeless people can play them at the library. They create them to make something awesome that returns money. Even free facebook games actually use you as a product for ad revenue and cash shop purchases. At this point you are losing all credibility.

4)Buying skirts and fancy bow ties doesn't help you win at the game. Leveling faster doesn't make you win the game. In a game such as LotRO and star wars, there's really no competition by design other than PvP - which doesn't really count in LotRO since it's monster play.

In regards to you thinking I have false information b/c "Blizzard would ban these players if someone report them and they had proof of this" you clearly have no grounding in reality of how that game has worked. There's nothing preventing guilds from accepting gold for running someone through a raid. Also, you must not have ever noticed the frequent posting of GDKP runs during WotLK on the offical realm forums. Because...I don't remember CMs popping in there wth ban hammers.

You are overwhelming wrong on this point, but I couldn't really buy in to your credibility like 3 points ago.


In all honesty, F2P would bring a lot more people to the game. It would lead to revenue numbers that would satisfy the production of the future gamestate. Everyone on here can complain that they don't want those people playing their game, but then these are the voices that were listened to when the game launched, crying to not have it anything like WoW.

We see where that led.

1)Well I just disagree with you, like you disagree with me. So we both get defensive :P

2)The outfit was an example of course. I made several other examples with stat tomes, traits, leveling speed, professions leveling speed. I do like to play dress up in my RPG games, though I am very interested to the game mechanics also so sims is not for me.

3)Of course. And there are 2 ways for these companies to make money. The one is a steady subscription model, the other is to abuse and spoil kids with a dady's credit card and force the regular player to pay more than is needed to enjoy all the game.

4)Again you talk about skirts when I said about all other stuff you can buy. Unfortunately even in pve the game have competition. When I run with feet until level 20 and try to gather resources for my profession and the others do this with mount from level 6 and they get all the spawns, this bothers me. When I go to kill 30 mobs for a quest and someone is there and kill them twice as fast because he bought traits and stat tomes and I run out of respawns this bothers me...when the others will get max level and start raiding with their +stats and full traits , while I will level 1 week later and have to grind for the traits to then catch up and eventually get a spot on the raid..

I can bring so many examples where there is competition even in the pve. And at the end, tell me a bad guy, I don't want someone get something on the MMO I play with no effort because he pay for it with real money, while I get it with some effort. I am a bad guy and this bothers me while all you are good people and you feel happy for him.

As for the guild runs, I cannot argue for this because I don't know what really happened. If it is like you said then Blizzard made a big mistake for let this to happen. Also in lotro as you said, there is no pvp..I don't count monster play as pvp, but in swtor there is pvp and the competition between players is higher.

At the end, why people ask for the game to be free to play?

1. Cannot afford the subscription? (already discussed how cheap is if you count the hours you get of fun)
2. They have extra cash in real life and they want to "cheat" the game?
3. After playing wow the whole week they want to login for an hour to swtor, park their car to the mailbox and see their lightsaber?

Lotro became free to play because the game got to a point where there were extremely low population and they were to decide to close the game or to go free to play. My guild had 45 people and before the free to play we were 2 people online for months and not every day. Swtor is not at this position at the moment. If they come to a point that they will either need to close the game or go free to play then I will support the F2p model. But if they make x profit and decide that if they go free to play they will make x+1 profit , then I will unsub immediately. I can understand if the game is dying from the people online in my server/guild, and the swtor is doing fine for now and I think will get more people once the game is ready, cause still is missing lot of things