You don't have to like it, but they're fairly monetized. You can play LoL at high levels without spending a penny, once you unlock enough champions which doesn't take too long. Monetizing convenience and cosmetics, not power, is exactly how F2P games should be monetized.
Riot issues - Yeah, the executive team and management are garbage. Hopefully this separate team won't have to deal with 30something year old C-level bros farting in peoples faces.
Tencent - Yeah...and? Thus far there's been no evidence or indication of any bad behavior from Tencent. They own Riot, they own Grinding Gear Games, they have a majority stake in Klei, they have minority stakes in Epic and Bohemia etc. and yet none of those companies have gone to shit and we've seen no indication that they're scraping user data.
Vanguard anti-cheat - It seems some anti-cheat programs get folks up in arms while most don't seem to. I'm not tech expert, but when I was poking around plenty of commonly used programs in big games have similar permissions yet folks don't lose their minds over it. It running constantly? Yeah, bad look, good criticism. It running at all? Yeah, that's anti-cheat.
I don't get why everyone hate Tencent so much outside of, "They're a Chinese company". I've been following their moves and the companies they've been picking up for a while, and despite all the doomsayers, "LOL IS DEAD NOW, IT WILL BE OVERMONETIZED GARBAGE!" "POE IS DEAD NOW, GGG GONNA SELL BOOSTERS!" "EPIC IS GONNA GIVE ALL YOUR USER DATA TO THE CCP!" etc. etc. etc. yet not a one of those predictions has ever come to pass.
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There's nothing of the sort. Vanguard was US developed (Riots primary operations remain based out of CA), and it's not a trojan.
Behold, the elusive voice of reason. But genuinely, thank you for stating the facts.
Like dear lord is it irritating to see so many clueless people who feel the need to have an opinion on things they literally have no experience with or haven't heard of before reading the thread title. For them to go out of their way in specifying that Tencent is Chinese comes off as borderline racist, do they even know who the CEO of Tencent is without looking it up on Google the moment they read this?
Riot absolutely has the pedigree, talent, resources and reputation to develop a successful MMORPG than can go toe-to-toe with the likes of World of Warcraft. Frankly, the genre could use some serious competition and innovation for once.
Worgen hard, or hardly worgen?
I dunno about that, or that we'll see some serious innovation, but they have one of the better chances at delivering a solid game right out of the gate, at least. I'm here for it with pretty low expectations, and if it ends up being good and it means I can go back to constantly complaining about how Ghostcrawler doesn't know what he's doing and is totally ruining my favorite class (still salty over paladin changes under his watch, knowing full well it wasn't "him" that made most of them) that'll be a oddly strange comfort. Like the good 'ol days.
It is! I'm not fan either, but by all accounts this is mostly Tencent investing in western companies to get more access to western currencies. IIRC there are still limits on how much western currency Chinese people and companies can exchange/have right now so buying up/investing in western companies is a way around that.
Every major company in China has ties to the government and the CCP in some way, shape, or form. You kinda have to to be a big company there.
But I've seen no indication or evidence that they're doing anything as a result of that. Folks have been eagle eyed to spot any indication that they're scraping player data, but from everything I've seen there's no indication whatsoever that they're doing anything other than letting their western owned studios continue to operate as they had before the acquisition.
It's hard to get around Chinese companies with ties to the government, they're a part of a huge number of supply chains.
I have no interest in LoL lore (and out of everyone I've played with since 2010 I have only had 1 friend that knew anything about LoL lore) but I am very interested in a LoL MMO.
To how many of you was League of Legends the refugee game from World of Warcraft burnout at some point in time?
This is absolutely a dream come true to me and was a point of discussion for many years.
Hyped
Yeah its pretty dumb that they retconed/changed things like nerfing beings from demi-god/god status and shit only to add new ones and stupid shit like Seraphine. Why the fuck didn't they make her base skin more on the level of Sona then give her some idol skins?. At the very least she should have a style that looks like she came from Piltover.
Its like they got one team trying to make a cohesive universe then one just tossing out shit they think is cool.
I have spent less on Wow subbing day one than I have in any f2p game I've played. Wow costs what less than 200 bucks a year?
The ETC fit the appearance of wow and wear armor from in game. Seraphine doesn't fit the already established lore look of Piltover nor the musical characters that already exist.
Last edited by qwerty123456; 2021-03-09 at 09:23 PM.
It depends on what you mean by pressure. Is new content pressure? Are limited items pressure? Valorant had 100$ dragon skins. Genshin impact has 10-20$ battlepasses players "need" that run about a month long each. Hell even people who were doing totally f2p in the thread here ended up caving and buying the cheap version as well as the monthly primogems for 5 bucks. That's 15 bucks a month bare minimum 25 if you do the bonus battlepass thing.
Gw2 constantly has sales on shit and much needed things like the material vault as well as loot boxes. STO has 30-60-200$ ship packs released regularly as well as loot boxes and other shit. Fortnite has limited time shit and battlepasses. Warframe has the 100+ dollar prime packs that release several times a year. And so on and so on.
The fact of the matter is that F2P games are only able to exist because people spend more then they do when a game is a sub game.
Last edited by qwerty123456; 2021-03-09 at 10:00 PM.
I'd argue skins aren't "pressure", they're always optional cosmetics. Which is like, exactly what should be monetized. Super expensive skins are cool and all, but I can play the game with the default skins and still have a grand old time. If I wanna drop $100 on a skin I can! But if I can't afford it no worries, my gameplay ain't impacted. Devs gotta eat and shit, so if whales wanna drop that cash good on them.
Battle Passes? Depends on the game, I'm not familiar with Genshin's but most games have free/paid tracks with Battle Passes and pack it with cosmetics/convenience stuff (again, what should be monetized). What's in Genshin's that's "needed"?
GW2 has sales on shit all the time yeah....and? That's just normal shit being sold for cheaper, none of it is necessary. The closest thing I could think of would be the scrap machines, but those are much more of a convenience than anything else. Additional material storage is again, optional, I've never purchased it and I've played since launch. Loot boxes suck but again, completely optional. Never purchased one, only ever opened random ones when I find them/keys.
F2P games are heavily monetized, sure. But self control exists for players who may be on a budget. And on average, most folks don't spend much, or anything, in F2P games. I've worked on a few and the majority of players spend little to nothing. You've got a smaller crop of players who periodically drop some cash here and there, then you've got the whales that drop thousands/tens of thousands each month because they can and they subsidize the game for the free players. There's no "F2P costs people more than P2P" measure that I've ever seen that comes close to being true.
Beyond that even P2P games have adopted quite a few F2P monetization techniques. WoW sells tons off account convenience perks and cosmetics, it also straight up sells transferrable time that can be sold to other players for in-game gold (similar to GW2 Gems -> Gold). And it's got a bloody sub on it.
Yeah because everyone wants to look like a basic bitch when they could look badass. There's no pressure there at all. Hell you have kids in school being bullied because they have basic skins in Fortnite. Dev's gotta eat and shit and yet these companies are raking in billions. EA ain't making god tiers of cash just off of single player rpgs.
Do you seriously believe that a p2p game that is failing and suddenly making bank as a f2p game is doing so because they have millions of more players spending 5 dollars a month instead of 15? Or is it that they expect the people who actually pay to spend more in game? Even your example of the games you worked on having the whales subsidize the game is proof that they expect the people who pay to pay more. F2P players aren't given the game out of the goodness of the devs heart its so that the world feel more alive for the whales.
Its not just whales buying shit. Sales and limited time content exist to trick people into buying something they normally might not or risk losing out on it or get a "deal" when in its not costing them 85$ per 100$ skin they craft since its just pixels like what occurs with real items. They could easily keep the item at the sale price and yet don't.
Genshin's is exp, gold, a weapon, character skill books and shit. It costs a ton of resources to get to max level and you only get so much resin per day without paying for it with real cash. (resin is basically your energy meter that most mobile games have so you cant just constantly grind) also to guarantee you the featured character of the banner you can spend like 200$ just to hit the pity.
Self control only works so much. And when you have systems in place designed to drain and or trick you self control isn't very effective. There's reasons why you have to buy a virtual in game currency with money instead of buying shit directly with cash and one of the reasons is to obfuscate the amount of cash a player is actually spending.
STO just had the 200$ ship and item anniversary pack. Clearly they expect people to buy it otherwise they wouldn't have put the price so high. They had a much better 10th anniversary pack last year for the same price with like double the ships but Perfect World told them it was too good a deal.
Just because there are people who get the game for free doesn't mean they don't expect the actual people who pay to pay less than a yearly sub fee. They wouldn't have 50-300$ packs in f2p games if they didn't expect people to buy them.
Don't get me wrong I don't think F2P games are the most evil thing in existence (battlepasses are). But I'd much rather play a monthly sub game where you aren't exploiting a fraction of your playbase.
Given their pricings in Valorant I'd say I expect the people who buy shit to be spending 1k a year atleast. Depends on if they have loot boxes or what. The more gambling the more they can drain from the players who play.
Last edited by qwerty123456; 2021-03-09 at 11:17 PM.
If you have a more fair way to monetize games that doesn't impact gameplay, I'm sure the industry would love to hear it.
Like, I spend on skins sometimes too because I like them. But that doesn't mean I'm spending hundreds in skins in a game every year, I'll nab a few I like each year and call it a day. It's really not terribly difficult to set a "gaming budget" and limit your spending in F2P games while still picking stuff up.
Haven't seen kids bullied in school over Fortnite, haven't been in school in ages. But that's pretty basic "school" stuff, if not Fortnite skins it'd be something else.
And actually yeah, EA is making loads of cash off single player games. Jedi: Fallen Order was a massive hit for them, and their struggles with Anthem caused them to pivot DA4 from a live-service game to an offline single player game.
Not at all. Going F2P dramatically expands the playerbase (games often see 100-1000% increases in active, concurrent, registered players etc.) which brings in both a lot more players improving the health of the game, and being able to both turn existing paying players into bigger spenders while picking up new big spenders, plus some additional smaller spenders on the side, usually helps their financials. I've worked on games that have done the transition and it's not like they're simply monetizing the existing playerbase more...well except for maybe CoH.
Not "expect", but they cater to whales on the monetization front to a certain extent, much moreso in mobile where whales may legitimately help steer development. That's literally the nature of the F2P business model: A small crop of wealthy players dropping huge loads of cash largely subsidizing all the free players who don't spend a penny over years and years of playing. And that's a fantastic fuckin deal for free players, they're getting oodles of free content because wealthier folks are paying for it.
It's a mutually beneficial arrangement, yo. F2P players aren't "out" anything for playing a F2P games for years without spending a penny.
"Trick" isn't remotely accurate, but leverage "FOMO" is very accurate. But it's not something unique to gaming or F2P (seen the McRib? how about the limited time deals with WoW subs and cash shop cosmetics?), and sales are like...a standard thing across every business and generally pretty good for consumers.
Again, this seems to be more, "People lack self control!" rather than, "The game is exploitative!" since I genuinely can't think of any truly exploitative major F2P games on PC/console, which is what we're talking about with a Riot MMO.
Ok, so your spending is determined by how quickly you want to progress some aspects of the game. How dreadful that they'd incentivize spending some money! But that you can progress for free, albeit at a slower rate, is pretty rad. If you're "serious" about a F2P game I'd expect one to be willing to drop some cash on it as one would a B2P/P2P game, that's how they all kinda work, but for casual players who don't care as much about quick progression it doesn't much matter. I fit into the latter category (though don't play Genshin), and have no problems dropping cash in F2P games I'm more into.
Not really, it's more to follow ye-olden Xbox Live model of tokens where you would always have tokens left over as there was no way to buy a "clean" amount of tokens. Those leftover tokens remain there, tempting you to buy some more to use them. PoE does that to a point, though their point system is pretty much 10:1, so 10 points = 1 dollar, so that 240 point armor is $24. Easy peasy.
It appears it was $200 for the whole pack, which is 4 legendary ships and a TON of other stuff. STO is actually one of the more aggressively monetized games from what I know. I hope more games don't follow this model, but it's a game I casually play on the side from time to time and enjoy all the same.
Yes, these are the whales I'm talking about. Many have the lifetime sub, so ongoing subs isn't a way to monetize them and they need to work on other offerings. As much as lifetime subs are great for players, they're a disaster for revenue generation.
If someone "NEEDS TO HAVE EVERYTHING!", sure. But for someone playing normally, probably not. They may want a few skins a year depending on their budget, but that's entirely up to them to decide. Riot, or any company, having additional MTX options for bigger spenders doesn't mean they expect everyone to buy that shit.
Just like Blizzard selling mounts and pets and whatnot doesn't mean that they expect everyone to buy that shit on top of the sub, either.
Most have plenty of fine in-game options and plenty of cheaper options. Considering you're not paying a box price/sub, is it outrageous to expect to spend a bit of cash on a cool skin or two?
As for the Blizz comparison...they'd have to drop the sub, too. GW2 is monetized that way (transmog charges) and honestly it's still pretty generous with them and they're fairly cheap.
Fair, but that presumes that there won't be any cool/good in-game skins/armor/weapons. Something which I don't think I've ever seen in any game I've played.
The long/short of it seems that F2P games simply can't be monetized in any way. Power? Hell no. Cosmetics? Apparently not. Convenience stuff? No way! So what are they left with, a gofundme page?
Cosmetic skins are a standard monetization tactic for games in the west as well, it's not an Asian market thing. If you want something more unique to the Asian market, that'd be straight up power selling/P2W.
Hey, you'd rather spend $15/m that's fair! I can get that, but please remember that you're also not getting everything in a game like WoW or FFXIV. Both maintain cash shops. To the point, I don't think there's a single MMO out there that doesn't have additional monetization on top of a mandatory sub.
But it's also something you can easily do in non-sub games. Just set yourself an annual limit of $180 or so and spend it how you want.
Why? Lockboxes I can agree with you on, but just general games with cash shops? Teens have jobs. Teens have expendable income. There's no reason they shouldn't be able to buy that one cool skin they want with their spending money from their allowance/part time job.