Is free to play model ruining many games?

[Hraklea]

How is it unbalanced? [...] so you need to invest the time.

A player that spent 6.300 IP to buy a weak champion is in a huge disadvantage compared to someone that bough 3 strong champions for 1.300 IP each. Requiring time to change your choices is unbalanced by definition. A competitive game should reward the player that plays better, not the player that has more free time to stay AFK farming runes.

Champion balance is relatively good...

No, it isn't. You can follow Team SoloMid blog or Elementz blog (I'm not even sure if he still plays...) for more details on that, I won't explain you LoL's metagame.

You don't NEED to own a ton of champions to do well, only a few.

Until Riot Games nerf the fews you own, then you need to buy new ones. Back to my first answer.

[Deleted]

I always end up spending way more money on f2p games than p2p.
Also in f2p games the content updates/fixes are usually implemented way slower than p2p games.
The communities in f2p games is often really bad!

P2P is still the king in my book.

first of all excuse my bad english.

F2P games are not always bad, most of em are tho.
For example City Of Heroes/Villians does a good job at it, it offers a Hydrid model, where you can play the game Free, or have a sub.
Offcourse if you pay the sub, you get more options, but F2P in this game you can basicly play the hole game, except their raids, if you want to raid in here you have to have a sub( but tbh if you wanna raid you do not play a f2p game ), everything is accesible, you can play all the content, with the exception of Incarnate Raids at lvl 50, but everything else you can play in here, there is no disadvantage here.

For example you have Enhancement, Enhancements is basicly your gear in this game, you can equip your powers/ability's with it.
There are 2 sort of Enhancements Normal Enhancements and Invention Enhancements, the Normal Enhancements everybody can use, and the Invention Enhancements(they give set Bonusses) are only for players that have a sub, or bought a Invention License in the cash shop(which is not that expensive), but not necessery, its the way the game works, all the content can be done without Invention Enhancements.
Everything you can buy in the cashshop is either cosmetic or something you would get if you pay a sub, but not mandatory.
So basicly you decide what you wanna pay for, but it never puts you at a disadvantage, so if you decide to go F2P, and at somepoint you think mmm i would like to play this or that(exception on the raids) then you decide if you want to, but it never is mandatory( if that makes any sense, sorry english not my 1st )language.
Thats just 1 small example.

The community in this game is one of the best i have seen in any online game, no l2p noob, or rage quiting kids non of that, there is a "community" in this game, if you bad(not bad in skill, but bad in the sense of rude/big mouthed/leech/etc etc, people will know i been playing this game since 2004 and a few months ago it went into hydrid model, one of the best mmo games, which release content very quick, in all these years there been 22 MAJOR updates to the game(not even counting the minor ones), but it is a Superhero MMO, which not everybody would like, you eitehr love it or hate it.

thats my 2 cents

[Gangplank]

I'm an avid LoL player and have enjoyed the content they provide. I support them on a regular basis with RP purchases. The main point to remember about LoL is they don't sell power directly (you can buy boosts to increase level gains or IP income, but they don't provide power that a player couldn't earn without the boosts). Other games I've played, such as Vindictus, seem to offer a good experience while leveling, but then introduce end game "max power" items at the cost of real money. While these items aren't entirely superior to what you can earn by playing, it does offer immediate power and they generally ARE the best items you can own.

One thing I do notice with F2P games is they are more susceptible to toxic players who enjoy making other people miserable for entertainment. Not to say paid games don't have toxic players, but most people paying for a game aren't doing so just to torment their allies or opponents. Dota and LoL are two prime examples of how poor a community can be when you let any one join. Even with the possibility of getting banned, these players aren't losing anything monetarily like they would if they got banned from a paid game. Granted, some people spend ridiculous amounts on F2P, but it's voluntary spending and that player probably isn't likely to do bannable offenses to begin with.

[Edge-]

A player that spent 6.300 IP to buy a weak champion is in a huge disadvantage compared to someone that bough 3 strong champions for 1.300 IP each. Requiring time to change your choices is unbalanced by definition. A competitive game should reward the player that plays better, not the player that has more free time to stay AFK farming runes.

No, that's called progression. You CHOOSE which champions you buy, so if you make a poor decision that's on you. They're not all going to be perfectly balanced and they will fluctuated up and down in power, that's the nature of any competitive game that involves classes/heroes. Requiring time to unlock new champs is unbalanced if you're looking at tournament level play, but for most play it's fine since it allows people to learn the champ they purchased while working towards another one. The player that plays better *should* (I say that with asterics since the community is horrible and you CAN get stuck in ELO hell) be winning more games, meaning they get more IP than average players. AFK farm players generally get mass reported by both teams and banned.

No, it isn't. You can follow Team SoloMid blog or Elementz blog (I'm not even sure if he still plays...) for more details on that, I won't explain you LoL's metagame.

Again, I'm talking about overall. They have to balance the game for both top levels of play AND middle levels. If they just balanced around the top 1-5% of players than the game would get much more complicated and play at lower levels would suffer. I'm not saying balance is perfect, but I will say that OVERALL balance is relatively good, especially at lower levels of play (which is where the bulk of their money comes from). I understand the metagame, and any game with character classes/roles is GOING to have a metagame that is going to be a significant factor.

Until Riot Games nerf the fews you own, then you need to buy new ones. Back to my first answer.

It's a good thing there are free champions every week. Balance is an ongoing process so champions will increase and decrease in power (either directly or indirectly) with every patch. You can do well (outside of high ELO matches, and again, those players are the type of player who will have runepages for every playstyle they need and have multiple champs because they play so much) with just the free heroes. If you own 3-4 heroes, it's unlikely that ALL of them will get hit with the nerfbat in the same patch.

[Jakexe]

I have nothing wrong with F2P games, I think world of tanks handled it very well with very small purchases can catch you up on gear. They do want to make a profit.

What I DO have a real problem with if that attitude being brought into bought games, BF3 being my main concern. It tends to make unlocks seem worthless when I can slap down a card and get whatever I want with out the effort.

[Tarien]

My biggest concern with F2P is that they are usually supported via cash shops, and I think that as a Developer who at the end of the day are a business and need to make money, they are going to find ways to get you to spend your real money. This might be through hero nerfing in LoL, or offering a direct path to the best items/unlocks instead of grinding them ingame through virtual currencies, or early access to better gear/abilities/characters. But whatever it is, I don't want a developer thinking about how to get my money from me, because they aren't just limited to my $15 a month, they want as much as they can get, and the slope into greed is extremely slippery I think.

The second issue for me with F2P is that a developer is making content to earn your money, but it has to be something they can sell in a shop that doesn't feel compulsory (just extremely compelling). For instance you can't really have dungeons and zones limited by what you have paid for if better items/more levels are available there, because then it's compulsory. So really it's just gear, levels, cosmetics, mounts, pets, etc. The thing I don't like about this is that I would rather have developers getting my $15 a month, and then pushing out 'real' content (zones, dungeons, raids, etc) to earn my $15 and then keep earning it. I don't want them thinking about what shiny mount they can make to earn some money, I want them thinking about what awesome boss to add to the next raid tier.

I think that F2P is much more suited to casual gamers though, who aren't interested in 'serious' endgame activities, but rather treat MMOs as a purely social activity and tend not to have that drive to see and do everything and for it to be challenging. Could be wrong, but that is what I think.

[Deleted]

So long as the system is fair, I don't see a problem with the free to play model. As it stands, I'm far more keen to pay money out for games without an active subscription than I am to pay out money for services in a game that already have a monthly fee.