Multiple MMOs and multiple subscriptions?

[Restos3]

Well, I never felt like spending money on LoL, and I got around 20 champions and 3 rune pages. Not much, pretty modest but it works.
I understand when people say f2p games are left behind compared to sub-based games and that's partially true.
But f2p games (with micro-transactions) is the future, that's why we do have some great and succesful games that are f2p, and that is why developers and publishers are copying that model. Is not a coincidence.

[jakeic]

Well, I never felt like spending money on LoL, and I got around 20 champions and 3 rune pages. Not much, pretty modest but it works.
I understand when people say f2p games are left behind compared to sub-based games and that's partially true.
But f2p games (with micro-transactions) is the future, that's why we do have some great and succesful games that are f2p, and that is why developers and publishers are copying that model. Is not a coincidence.

micro-transactions are bad for consumers. the reason that developers and publishers are swapping to that model is because it is more profitable, not because it makes better games.

[Illuwin]

been playing LoL since early beta, it is by far the only f2p game I come close to stomaching. I've spent money on it, but never felt forced to, it was mostly just to buy a neat skin or buy a champ i didn't feel like waiting for. I've not bought or changed runes in over a year, and you can't buy those. They changed their 'cost' structure (for the currency you earn, not pay for) so that new stuff is expensive and old stuff is slowly 'downgraded'. It's a lot easier for a new player to 'buy' champions than it used to be, as they are not all arbitrarily posted at 6300 IP but rather are priced relative to their release date. By the time you hit 30, if you don't have a few champs and 1 rune page, you've done something horribly wrong.

Other f2p games i've played are just horrible excuses for hiding the real content or perks beneath a dollar amount and its just an endless cycles of pay to win.

subs method still seems fine, but theres a serious lack of quality in games coming out. I played EQ hardcore, WoW off and on, ffxi off and on and tried and promptly quit EQ2, Rift, Aion, Vanguard:SOH, Warhammer and FFXIV due to bugs/no content/personal preference. I personally don't worry bout having 'to sub' to multiple games because my attention isn't naturally held that long by most mmos that exist or come out anymore, dunno if its just my changing preferences or a weakening field.

[Edge-]

micro-transactions are bad for consumers. the reason that developers and publishers are swapping to that model is because it is more profitable, not because it makes better games.

Please explain how its bad for consumers, it doesn't seem readily apparent to me. There are definitely negatives to that kind of system, but there are plenty of advantages as well. Each system has its own benefits and pitfalls.

[Deleted]

micro-transactions are bad for consumers. the reason that developers and publishers are swapping to that model is because it is more profitable, not because it makes better games.

its only bad when the micro-transaction shop is bad. You have a choice to spend money or not, and what you spend it on. Vanity items, extra bag slots, more character slots, bigger bank, instant mail, dyes, name change, server change, xp boost, faster mount, instant travel potions, group travel potions, dual spec etc these kinds of perks wont effect gameplay much and would be an alternative to a sub. When its a micro-transaction shop which is for weapons, spells, classes, armor etc.. it becomes shit imo.

[Restos3]

Ofcourse F2P model can't release content like WoW does, but still somehow Riot gets by (Yes, I know, bad example, but both games are succesful in their fields. LoL is the most popular DotA-type of game atm).
I heard Forsaken World (MMO) is pretty much succesful along with a high playerbase, so I guess I'll add that. In fact, i'm going to check it out. I badly need a new game to play!

[jakeic]

Please explain how its bad for consumers, it doesn't seem readily apparent to me. There are definitely negatives to that kind of system, but there are plenty of advantages as well. Each system has its own benefits and pitfalls.

let's say you wanted to buy a car, if you were to purchase all of the pieces it would cost more than it does to purchase an entire car. this is just an analogy, not a great one but it illustrates what is happening with micro-transactions. they take a game and break it up inorder to sell it for more than it should be worth.

lol has to be one of the most expensive games ever made if you want to purchase all of the content up to date.

http://euw.leagueoflegends.com/board...d.php?t=308717

this post breaks down how much it would have cost about 6 months ago to purchase every thing in the game.

in addition to just outrageous costs of the goods which they sell, their system they use is designed to separate you from your money. why should we have to buy RP in order to purchase something from riot? why doesn't it just cost money? because if you first have to buy RP you lose the sense of how much it is worth in terms of dollars. furthermore it leaves the bread crumbs of what you weren't able to spend, which increases the likely hood of additional RP purchases just to "clean-up" the RP you have left over (which is made possible by their not arbitrary pricing plan of making RP not purchasable in quantities that you can spend the entirety of).

[Deleted]

currently you can spend EUR 130 just on vanity items in wow...

---------- Post added 2012-02-21 at 10:27 PM ----------

let's say you wanted to buy a car, if you were to purchase all of the pieces it would cost more than it does to purchase an entire car. this is just an analogy, not a great one but it illustrates what is happening with micro-transactions. they take a game and break it up inorder to sell it for more than it should be worth.

lol has to be one of the most expensive games ever made if you want to purchase all of the content up to date.

http://euw.leagueoflegends.com/board...d.php?t=308717

this post breaks down how much it would have cost about 6 months ago to purchase every thing in the game.

in addition to just outrageous costs of the goods which they sell, their system they use is designed to separate you from your money. why should we have to buy RP in order to purchase something from riot? why doesn't it just cost money? because if you first have to buy RP you lose the sense of how much it is worth in terms of dollars. furthermore it leaves the bread crumbs of what you weren't able to spend, which increases the likely hood of additional RP purchases just to "clean-up" the RP you have left over (which is made possible by their not arbitrary pricing plan of making RP not purchasable in quantities that you can spend the entirety of).

im not a LoL player.. cant all of this be achieved in game without spending money?

[Edge-]

let's say you wanted to buy a car, if you were to purchase all of the pieces it would cost more than it does to purchase an entire car. this is just an analogy, not a great one but it illustrates what is happening with micro-transactions. they take a game and break it up inorder to sell it for more than it should be worth.

lol has to be one of the most expensive games ever made if you want to purchase all of the content up to date.

http://euw.leagueoflegends.com/board...d.php?t=308717

this post breaks down how much it would have cost about 6 months ago to purchase every thing in the game.

in addition to just outrageous costs of the goods which they sell, their system they use is designed to separate you from your money. why should we have to buy RP in order to purchase something from riot? why doesn't it just cost money? because if you first have to buy RP you lose the sense of how much it is worth in terms of dollars. furthermore it leaves the bread crumbs of what you weren't able to spend, which increases the likely hood of additional RP purchases just to "clean-up" the RP you have left over (which is made possible by their not arbitrary pricing plan of making RP not purchasable in quantities that you can spend the entirety of).

It's a good thing that cars aren't, and will never be, microtransaction based then. Also, that analogy fails because many games don't deny you access to ANY content if you don't pay, or have a limited amount of content that requires purchase, all of which is optional. If you look at a lot of the cash shops, they sell things like cosmetic items, mounts, pets, temporary experience boosts, dungeon cooldown resets ect. None of which are required, none of which give you more power than anyone else, none of which give you access to additional content that non-paying players can't access.

im not a LoL player.. cant all of this be achieved in game without spending money?

It can. Spending money just makes it more convenient/faster.

[jakeic]

It's a good thing that cars aren't, and will never be, microtransaction based then. Also, that analogy fails because many games don't deny you access to ANY content if you don't pay, or have a limited amount of content that requires purchase, all of which is optional. If you look at a lot of the cash shops, they sell things like cosmetic items, mounts, pets, temporary experience boosts, dungeon cooldown resets ect. None of which are required, none of which give you more power than anyone else, none of which give you access to additional content that non-paying players can't access.

anything you purchase gives you something, otherwise why would you buy it? just because that something isn't immediately tangible doesn't mean that it isn't an advantage over someone who isn't paying.

[Edge-]

anything you purchase gives you something, otherwise why would you buy it? just because that something isn't immediately tangible doesn't mean that it isn't an advantage over someone who isn't paying.

That's extremely strange logic.

For a game like WoW with it's microtransaction shop, which is no different than it is in may other games, you purchase mounts/pets. Neither of these things confer ANY advantage over someone who doesn't use it. I never purchased a thing from the WoW cash shop, and that never left me at a disadvantage over anyone else because all the items were purely cosmetic.

If you want to talk about League, that's not an advantage, that's a convenience. You don't get access to anything that makes you more powerful than any non-paying player, you just get access to the same things faster. My brother owned every champion and all the runes he needed without paying a single cent, so people who paid hundreds of dollars for champions, skins, and IP boosts had no advantage over him, beyond player skill which you can't buy, despite their significant investment.

[Deleted]

anything you purchase gives you something, otherwise why would you buy it? just because that something isn't immediately tangible doesn't mean that it isn't an advantage over someone who isn't paying.

F2P offer 3 basic things in their items; time, vanity or power. Only the last is really seen as distasteful by players and a lot of F2P don't go down the road of offering power for cash as it pisses of their playerbase and they can get the same amount of income from only offering the first 2. Some F2P models are actually pretty good in that the consumer gets to choose exactly what they want to pay for and have access to their characters (and work) without having to pay money in subs for the privilege. If you want F2P to be really free then your basically using time as your currency. F2P has a bad rep, and some publishers still haven't learnt the lesson that the market is teaching them, but more and more MMOs are using the model in a way that generates income for them and doesn't resort to methods like selling power.

[OhpUldum]

Subscription based services are generally built around you using the company you are subscribed to as your sole service provider. It is in the companies best interest to have your subscription 100% of the time and not off and on throughout the year.

I don't see a paradigm shift in subscription based MMO's however with more and more games coming onto the scene you can expect to see some premium competition for your money. Over the next year to two years I would expect to see a shift in what you get for your subscription, right now games like WoW give you the ability to play the game and you pay extra for character transfers. The future could have your monthly subscription off you far more for your dollar such as the game, character transfers, authenticator, etc.

[Restos3]

F2P offer 3 basic things in their items; time, vanity or power. Only the last is really seen as distasteful by players and a lot of F2P don't go down the road of offering power for cash as it pisses of their playerbase and they can get the same amount of income from only offering the first 2. Some F2P models are actually pretty good in that the consumer gets to choose exactly what they want to pay for and have access to their characters (and work) without having to pay money in subs for the privilege. If you want F2P to be really free then your basically using time as your currency. F2P has a bad rep, and some publishers still haven't learnt the lesson that the market is teaching them, but more and more MMOs are using the model in a way that generates income for them and doesn't resort to methods like selling power.

Exactly, I can't think of a successful with a high player base game that actually sells power with real money.
I just doesn't work.
People just moves on to the next game.

[Chaotica]

free to play is just their word for,,, pay to win

[PACOX]

Ofcourse F2P model can't release content like WoW does, but still somehow Riot gets by (Yes, I know, bad example, but both games are succesful in their fields. LoL is the most popular DotA-type of game atm).
I heard Forsaken World (MMO) is pretty much succesful along with a high playerbase, so I guess I'll add that. In fact, i'm going to check it out. I badly need a new game to play!

There are F2P games that release content faster than WoW. WoW's release schedule is actually really slow based on industry standards even though it hard the largest or one of the largest player bases (depending on how you count I guess). WoW staggers content releases on fixed scale. You pay about $45-60 for each content release. How? They only way WoW can make money off of content releases with a p2p model is if they stagger them or they risk players burning through them and then unsubbing.

A F2P doesn't have to worry about staggering content, in fact they want to pump out new content ASAP (see LoL's new champion every 2 weeks system) because they sell access to the content directly. If they stop making new content, they stop making money where in a p2p system people will continue to pay at the hopes of new content release.

Time is money and F2P games have less time. I for one, welcome the new F2P trend so I am not left paying for features I don't use. I stopped playing WoW because I was paying $15mth when I only way maybe 1/6 of the game. I did just enough dailies to raid and only logged in to raid. $15 isn't that much, but its not worth it when I am only playing a fraction of the game. We staggered out progression so we wouldn't run out of things to do because once a raid was on farm you pretty much just paid a month to keep the lights on until 3-6 months for another raid came out. That doesn't fly well with me. I rather just pay for DLC which you doing but in overpriced monthly installments.

[lopk]

If people want to play more than one mmo, more power to them! It's something I could never do though.

I'd much rather spend all my time and focus to create one awesome character instead of a few good characters over several games.

Edit: LoL is my only exception, really. I play it ocassionally and have never spent any money on it and don't plan on it!