Would You Agree With My Assessment?

[jvbastel]

I'd rather you didn't equate f2p with b2p. b2p - are grind-less because there's no money to be gained from the grind. They are free to play after you buy a box - but not f2p. There's a huge difference.

F2P games require grind to make people pay thru MTs. They almost always provide you with the client completely for free. It is really FREE 2 play, but your experience with the game will be sucky, unless you PAY to increase XP rate for instance (thus reducing the grind), or to buy a buff for an hour that makes you stronger so mobs die faster (again reducing grind).

P2P games do not need grind. They need time sinks. It's not the same thing as grind. Sometimes they use grind as time sink - but people tend to not like such games. And that's very dangerous for p2p game hence all the content patches that prolong the game experience.

You're right, my last posts were a bit vague, allow me to express how I see it a bit better.

I feel as though BW missed a big opportunity to greatly influence the MMO market by deciding to go with the p2p model for SWTOR. Requiring a subscription fee from your customers severely changes how the game is developed.
There needs to be a constant carrot-on-a-stick for the players, which will always result in systems like raid lockouts, reputation farms, gated content, etc.

I might be biased because most of my MMO-time spent was in GW1, but I really dislike weekly raid lockouts.
Raiding is my favorite type of content in MMORPG's, and I really dislike not being able to raid when I like, as much as I would like to. I understand why lockouts are there, but I just don't like the system.

By choosing the B2P model, SWTOR would probably sell more copies than with a P2P model. There's a lot of people out there who won't ever pay monthly for games. It would also allow BW to focus more on the story aspect of the game, instead of repeatable raid content, since most of their revenue would come from box sales of the original game and expansions. From reading these forums, that's exactly what most people want from this game.

I'll play swtor regardless, because I greatly enjoyed the 2 beta weekends I was in, but I can't help but feel like this game could have been so much more if it had gone b2p.

[terrahero]

That's the reason why I was hoping SWTOR would become a f2p or b2p game. Annoying grinds are only necessary if there's a sub fee, since there needs to be a proverbial carrot to keep people playing. This is not necessary for f2p or b2p games, where most of the income is MT's and box sales/expansions

Grinds are not a must. When your gear is good enough to raid you can just play all the content of the game. Grinding is just to get the best of the best. I dont know how Bioware will follow on this design, but in Blizzard every new tier made the previous obsolete. So then you could grind to get full T11, when T12 launched, what was the point?

You could choose to "stop the grind" and not play and thus not pay. And then pick up with a new content patch when there is stuff to do again. Or just enjoy the game at end game. And do pvp, raids or 5mans. New gear can be seen as an extra reward, and not so much the goal.

But, i long for a TBC model raiding. Where old tiers are needed to get gear for higher tiers. Else you make a great deal of content redundant. With progressive raid skill plays a bigger role as it has a big part in when you and your guild can move to a higher tier. Some guilds need better gear to compensate for lesser skill. And gives more of a progressive feel, rather then a "reset to default" every time.

[MagusGothica]

Personally, I don't agree with your assessment at all.

While I do agree with the idea that SW:TOR may not be for everyone, I disagree with a few of your points. I won't try and force you to play, I won't try and talk you into it, I won't try and convince you. My philosophy always has been that you should only play what you enjoy playing. If you get to a certain point in a game and feel as though you don't have a desire to play it anymore, then don't. Games were designed for entertainment. The idea behind the very word is that they're fun, they're enjoyable, they're entertaining. If you don't feel entertained by a game, it's no longer a game, it's not serving its purpose. Trying to convince you to like TOR would be like you trying to convince me to like a first-person shooter. It's futile. I can understand why people may like FPS titles. I realize that they are popular, that they have a niche within the gaming community. I recognize the value of an FPS as a game. But personally, I hate them. I can't sit through an FPS. Playing an FPS isn't fun for me, it's torturous, boring, and difficult. And I don't mean difficult as in pleasantly challenging. I mean difficult as in impossible. But that's just for me. As I always like to say, diff'rent strokes for diff'rent folks.

What I don't understand, is why you feel the need to go out of your way to shit on the game, and publicly spout negativity aimed at it. It's much more reasonable to state that TOR doesn't suit your preferences, rather than making sweeping generalizations about what types of people may or may not enjoy it. Different people enjoy different things, you can't take an omnipotent mind-reader perspective and automatically assume that "X person doesn't enjoy Y, so he won't enjoy Z, because Z contains Y". Nobody died and made you God, dude. Just sayin'. You can't read minds, you don't know what everybody else is thinking, or what everyone else may or may not enjoy. In the future, when posting criticisms, please specify that it didn't suit your personal preferences. Once again, diff'rent strokes for diff'rent folks.

As for you, Vespian, I could write entire NOVELS about how much I hate people like you, how you're wrong, on which points you're wrong, but I write ridiculously long, overly verbose responses as is, and I don't want to fill an entire page of the thread with a flame directed at you. I'll just say "shut the hell up" and leave it at that.

EDIT: Read a bit more of the thread beyond OP's post. Tarien, I can understand a couple of your concerns, and they are valid. I am similarly terrified that EA will do to BioWare what Activision did to Blizzard, and enforce things that totally fuck the game in the name of profit. With that said, it's stupid to limit yourself from something you might enjoy just because it *might* end up sucking later. You're not a prophet, you can't tell the future, you don't KNOW it's going to happen. It's just a suspicion. SW:TOR, in its current form, is fun, and awesome. At the very least, I recommend that you shell out the $60 and play it as a single player game, for the stories. You could easily get most of the classes to 50 in one month of game time. Play it as KotoR III and then ditch it. Just finish the class quests you're interested in. That's what I'd do, if I was so inclined. At this point I've signed up for a CE and am fully prepared to play for the long haul, but if end-game proves to suck, that's exactly what I will do. I'll suck up that I spent the money on the game, chalk it up to poor foresight, and maybe pay for one additional month of game time so I can experience the class storylines. Then I'll move on.

I also hate the hardmode model, with the exception of Ulduar. From a game immersion perspective, it's utter shit. In real life, if I'm in a bar fight, I can't toggle an option that suddenly makes the big biker I'm about to fight inexplicably stronger, and suddenly magically have a better version of his pocketknife in his pocket, as well as more cash in his wallet. Similarly, in realistic situations like in the SW universe, it's stupid to expect that you can magically make an adversary stronger, or that you would even WANT to.

Luke - "Hey Vader, no offense bud, you're doing great, but uh, I'm not feeling challenged. Do you think you could uh, step it up a notch? Maybe add some abilities you didn't have before, hit me a bit harder, and take less damage from my attacks? Oh, and I was wondering if you'd be kind enough to drop a better version of that lightsaber when you die."

Seems like a ridiculous scenario to me. Ulduar was cool because yeah, it had hardmodes, but it wasn't a toggle. You actually had to fucking DO something to activate the hardmodes, and even switching them on was often a difficult task. It was a lot more realistic. The idea that you did something different, and things react differently as a result, is definitely a more palatable idea.

With that said, Tarien, my feelings towards Vespian largely apply to you as well. I hate people like you, shut the hell up. I agree with some of your points, but for the most part you're a fountain of negativity. You seem to have a holier-than-thou attitude. Everybody's an idiot for liking something you don't, and you're superior to everyone that likes it because only you have the genius to see it's not as good as they say it is. Diff'rent strokes for diff'rent folks dude. Let people like what they like. Don't waste time shitting on something because it doesn't appeal to you personally. You may have some valid points, but for the most part, you just come across as an arrogant, pompous prick.

EDIT AGAIN: Damnit people keep saying things that I miss the first time through. As far as the B2P model, I highly doubt BW would be able to recoup from the costs of the game, and make enough money to continue releasing content on the caliber of the original launch, on box sales alone. People seem to forget how astronomically expensive this game was to make. BW released some numbers related to their production costs, and those numbers were really high. In a perfect world, we wouldn't have to rely on money, and we could continue to make awesome stuff without worrying about how much it costs. Unfortunately, that's not how the real world works. BW is a company, just like any other, and making the things they make costs money. They HAVE to profit, not only to be successful as a business, but to make up for the funds they sunk into it initially. To pay the hordes of programmers, artists, writers, testers, contracted voice actors, and other staff working on this project. And to have the funds to release quality content in the future. The release cost a lot of money. Future expansions would probably cost a lot of money as well. BW has to be able to pay for it somehow, and from a math perspective, the P2P model is the only way I can see them being able to pull in enough profits to do so. What it comes down to, is that you get what you pay for. If you pay for a good game, and you financially support BW via your subscription, then you're paying for BW to continue to release quality content along the same level we've seen for launch. If you don't pay, then the quality of the game is almost certain to suffer.

[Elim Garak]

I might be biased because most of my MMO-time spent was in GW1, but I really dislike weekly raid lockouts.
Raiding is my favorite type of content in MMORPG's, and I really dislike not being able to raid when I like, as much as I would like to. I understand why lockouts are there, but I just don't like the system.

By choosing the B2P model, SWTOR would probably sell more copies than with a P2P model. There's a lot of people out there who won't ever pay monthly for games. It would also allow BW to focus more on the story aspect of the game, instead of repeatable raid content, since most of their revenue would come from box sales of the original game and expansions. From reading these forums, that's exactly what most people want from this game.

Well, lockouts are there also to not let you BURN out on raids. There are not that many raids so there's a lock out to slow your progress with them, you can't have a lot of raids at same tier - it's not practical because players focus spreads too much and they get lost in content - they feel obligated to do them all, and try to and burn out. It's a dosage system designed both to slow you down to make you play longer and to slow you down to not let you burn out - it works just fine as we can see in WoW. Bioware plans to advance story with content updates and expansions. But the game should be profitable sufficiently (for Bioware and EA). And p2p is the only right way to do it.

[jvbastel]

Well, lockouts are there also to not let you BURN out on raids. There are not that many raids so there's a lock out to slow your progress with them, you can't have a lot of raids at same tier - it's not practical because players focus spreads too much and they get lost in content - they feel obligated to do them all, and try to and burn out. It's a dosage system designed both to slow you down to make you play longer and to slow you down to not let you burn out - it works just fine as we can see in WoW. Bioware plans to advance story with content updates and expansions. But the game should be profitable sufficiently (for Bioware and EA). And p2p is the only right way to do it.

There's indeed some positive things about lockouts, especially for the developer, it does keep people paying longer. However, it also reduces the viability of pugging, since most people will be logged out with their guilds.

Also, if I want to raid more than once a week, I need to level a completely new character. However, not being able to do the part of the game you enjoy the most whenever you want, or as much as you want is not really a good system IMO. I would like to be able to raid a boss more than once, maybe even in a system comparable to LFR, where you can get a new lockout for your guild, but without gear drops. I raid for fun, not for gear.

As for p2p being the only right way, I strongly disagree. Take GW1 for example, which is afaik still the 2nd most successful mmorpg in the western world (yeye I know it's technically not an mmorpg, but gameplay-wise, it's as close to one as you can get ). The game's B2P, sold around 7 mill copies and was very profitable. The 2nd one will probably do even better. I think there is definitely a place in the market for triple A B2P or F2P titles, the MMO-crowd just needs to get rid of the stigmas surrounding those models, which is slowly but surely happening