[Megathread] Wildstar - Now F2P

[Deleted]

True but unfortunatly we live in a entitled mentality generation. If 100 players are doing cutting edge (most recent, more shiny) content then 10000 want in on the action too without putting the necessary effort and learning the skills to do so. I am embarassed by having to be placed in the same group as these people.

well maybe 20 man will be "casual" raiders raid.. we presume 20 and 40 man will be equal but they keep saying 40 man raids will be very hard.. so maybe it is a step up from 20 man afterall.

---------- Post added 2013-03-27 at 12:19 AM ----------

Watch. When it launches all the best gear will be in the 40 man raids and that will be considered the "real end game" and the 5 mans will be like heroics in wow/rift and the casuals will say "I can do 5mans in rift/wow and WoW has LFR so I can at least see the raid content".
So they will be targeting a niche of a niche market against two established competitors.
Do you see how that might be a problem? Money wise?

they said raids doesnt neccessarily mean best gear.. even solo content is supposed to be "end game" gear. The raiding will have a weekly leaderboard as the raids get changed.. its more of a challenge and bragging rights than look at my awesome gear achievement. They will probably get awesome vanity items but not neccessarily the best gear.

[RoninaThorstone]

they said raids doesnt neccessarily mean best gear.. even solo content is supposed to be "end game" gear. The raiding will have a weekly leaderboard as the raids get changed.. its more of a challenge and bragging rights than look at my awesome gear achievement. They will probably get awesome vanity items but not neccessarily the best gear.

We've heard that before.

We need more info on specifics, loot tables ect, before we can really say but I think it's just good to keep in mind the dangers of trying to make a game that will appeal to maybe 20k people when you need 250k to keep putting out content or something.
We shall see.

[Deleted]

I can't speak for anyone else but my casual guild and me are jumping ship 1 month into release if the game doesn't royally fail to deliver.

I think you underestimate how many players are bored out of their eyesockets being served a main course that's aimed at idiots (with some side-dishes to appease the hardcore)

"Raid content that your grandma can't complete" that, the art, the cheeky / fun attitude and a meaningful pve experience that we can grow in is what sells the game for me.

[Deleted]

We've heard that before.

i know they told us.. source

"My name is Jeremy Wood, and I'm the programmer and team lead for the Economy Team. Econ handles everything in the world of items, from obtaining and trading them to customizing your gear.

Our purpose is to provide players with meaningful rewards for their various acts of valor in WildStar, to give them interesting customization choices, and to maintain a healthy and robust economy for players to trade their wares. I would like to take a little time to share with you our goals and philosophies, and give you a glimpse into our plans for making WildStar stand out from the crowd.

Items have always been a big carrot for drawing MMO players into new content. The drive to get the best gear in the game, or to get that rare vanity item to show off to your friends, is often what keeps players interested in a game for the long haul. To that end, we have numerous game systems with which to reward players of varied gameplay tastes. There are the obvious, of course: questing, dungeon crawling, crafting, achievements, PvP, etc. On top of that, we have more unique systems to utilize, such as player paths and challenges. Our goal is to leverage all of these features to provide players of all tastes with interesting and powerful rewards, rather than to pigeon-hole our players into the "real game" if they want to collect powerful items.

One of the keys to achieving that goal is to make items more interesting and varied. To that end, we have created an item system that supports complex and powerful modification. Most items in the game are potentially modifiable, and often the best items you can get will require components from various other sources in order to unlock their maximum potential. We aim to have enough complexity that there will never be one "best" helm, but instead many equally viable modifications of different helms to choose from based on your own preferences and play style. This all ties in heavily with our crafting system as well, which as a result is far more interesting than the simple items in/item out that we are all used to.

On top of all that, player gear will also be visually customizable. Players will be able to dye all of their gear using three different colors per item, resulting in tens of thousands of potential color combinations for each item in the game. Not every color will be easy to attain, of course, so if you want to look the best, we're going to make you earn it. We will also have a costume system, further allowing players to define their own look. In WildStar, every player will be able to showcase their own unique style, making cookie-cutter characters a relic of the past.

That's just a brief look at our philosophies on the Economy team, but we're really interested to hear what you have to say. The Community team tells me I'm going to be doing a Q&A next week in response to your questions, so send any questions you have to us via Facebook or Twitter, and we'll answer a few next week.

Big thanks to Jeremy for sharing his thoughts on WildStar's economy. Make sure you send in your questions for next week!"

[ShimmerSwirl]

They are fighting over the same people though. It's hard to imagine that demographic suddenly doubling.

---------- Post added 2013-03-26 at 10:56 PM ----------



AHAHAHA.
Wow.
Alright then.
That is a hilarious definition of success.

By the sounds of it then, you must thing all your beloved games that started out p2p and have switched to f2p to save face are catastrophic failures.

[RoninaThorstone]

By the sounds of it then, you must thing all your beloved games that started out p2p and have switched to f2p to save face are catastrophic failures.

You are much too high.
The failure is in launching with an inflexible payment model that doesn't maximize profits and creates a feeling of either or against existing MMOs.
So yeah. Those games did fail... At launch. It just took them a while to figure that out and fix their model.

[Deleted]

At launch. It just took them a while to figure that out and fix their model.

lol you dont like p2p.. we get it. i guess being broken at launch has nothing to do with people not wanting to sub it

[ShimmerSwirl]

Watch. When it launches all the best gear will be in the 40 man raids and that will be considered the "real end game" and the 5 mans will be like heroics in wow/rift and the casuals will say "I can do 5mans in rift/wow and WoW has LFR so I can at least see the raid content".
So they will be targeting a niche of a niche market against two established competitors.
Do you see how that might be a problem? Money wise?

You love this idea that since casuals are 90% of the playerbase (a number you pulled out of your butt), that they deserve 90% of game resources. The problem is there is nothing to support this belief. Every MMO that has a casual endgame has ended up somewhere between a failure/average. Look at the MMOs that have been around along time, that have name recognition, that endured and remained successful for a very long period: EQ, WoW, EvE, AC etc. WoW is the most casual of those, but its endgame was still decidedly more hardcore than the casual stuff that is released today. Casual MMOs do not have longevity, please point me to a single one that has. And don't say WoW because that game started losing subs within a month after it went ultra-casual in wotlk.

The '90% resources' idea sounds good on paper, but it just doesn't work like that, its not that simple.

[RoninaThorstone]

lol you dont like p2p.. we get it. i guess being broken at launch has nothing to do with people not wanting to sub it

Clearly muchtoohigh hasn't gotten it yet because he keeps bringing it up.

---------- Post added 2013-03-27 at 12:46 AM ----------

You love this idea that since casuals are 90% of the playerbase (a number you pulled out of your butt), that they deserve 90% of game resources. The problem is there is nothing to support this belief. Every MMO that has a casual endgame has ended up somewhere between a failure/average. Look at the MMOs that have been around along time, that have name recognition, that endured and remained successful for a very long period: EQ, WoW, EvE, AC etc. WoW is the most casual of those, but its endgame was still decidedly more hardcore than the casual stuff that is released today. Casual MMOs do not have longevity, please point me to a single one that has. And don't say WoW because that game started losing subs within a month after it went ultra-casual in wotlk.

The '90% resources' idea sounds good on paper, but it just doesn't work like that, its not that simple.

It's actually 97%.
Before SL hit, only 3% had completed the final raid of rift chocolate.
Before TBC hit, only 3% had completed naxx.

I am going to point to wow because it went ultracasualer in MoP and gained back 2 million players.

Also, swtor is ultraultracasual and has over half a million subscribers + 2 million new f2p accounts.

[ShimmerSwirl]

You are much too high.
The failure is in launching with an inflexible payment model that doesn't maximize profits and creates a feeling of either or against existing MMOs.
So yeah. Those games did fail... At launch. It just took them a while to figure that out and fix their model.

By your logic, any game in the universe that launches f2p will be a success. You know why that is obviously not true? Because a payment model doesn't make a game, the game itself does. People didn't want to pay for those games because they weren't good. They are willing to pay for wow and rift because those game are good.

If Wildstar is good, it wont matter what model they use because people will pay for it just to play an awesome game.

[RoninaThorstone]

By your logic, any game in the universe that launches f2p will be a success. You know why that is obviously not true? Because a payment model doesn't make a game, the game itself does. People didn't want to pay for those games because they weren't good. They are willing to pay for wow and rift because those game are good.

If Wildstar is good, it wont matter what model they use because people will pay for it just to play an awesome game.

I didn't say that launching as f2p is automatically a success. I said that launching with an inflexiable model is a failure. You can fail for many reasons, offering only subscription is one of them.

You are try harding at this point.

[ShimmerSwirl]

Clearly muchtoohigh hasn't gotten it yet because he keeps bringing it up.

---------- Post added 2013-03-27 at 12:46 AM ----------



It's actually 97%.
Before SL hit, only 3% had completed the final raid of rift chocolate.
Before TBC hit, only 3% had completed naxx.

I am going to point to wow because it went ultracasualer in MoP and gained back 2 million players.

Also, swtor is ultraultracasual and has over half a million subscribers + 2 million new f2p accounts.

Well you could actually make it sound even more dramatic, because it was really only 1% of players that saw Naxx. Of course that number conveniently ignores the fact that most players didn't bother with Naxx because BC had been announced and quest greens were going to replace hard earned Naxx gear a week after release. There simply wasn't time or motivation for many people to run Naxx.

WoW gained 1 million subs the week that MoP released, and then immediately started losing them again, 600k last quarter.

Swtor had half a million at last call, don't know what they have now, and f2p players can't really be considered 'subscribers'.

---------- Post added 2013-03-26 at 08:58 PM ----------

I didn't say that launching as f2p is automatically a success. I said that launching with an inflexiable model is a failure.

So I guess WoW is a failure then.

[RoninaThorstone]

Well you could actually make it sound even more dramatic, because it was really only 1% of players that saw Naxx. Of course that number conveniently ignores the fact that most players didn't bother with Naxx because BC had been announced and quest greens were going to replace hard earned Naxx gear a week after release. There simply wasn't time or motivation for many people to run Naxx.

WoW gained 1 million subs the week that MoP released, and then immediately started losing them again, 600k last quarter.

Swtor had half a million at last call, don't know what they have now, and f2p players can't really be considered 'subscribers'.

---------- Post added 2013-03-26 at 08:58 PM ----------



So I guess WoW is a failure then.

They had"well over 500k" and "dipped below 1 million"and have since "gained subscribers and 2 million new players".

Also, people unwilling to do new content because of an expansion? I think you just defined people who are NOT HARDCORE.

WoW would be a failure if it launched today as subscription only. The market has changed since 2004 in case you haven't noticed.

[Deleted]

WoW would be a failure if it launched today. The market has changed since 2004 in case you haven't noticed.

just cant take what you say seriously with these kind of assumptions.

[RoninaThorstone]

just cant take what you say seriously with these kind of assumptions.

This is a forum. If you are taking it seriously you are doing it wrong

[Razael]

Ya'll really enjoy them P2P vs B2P vs F2P discussions =p. If i'd get a beta key for every post about it in this thread my whole family would be playing WildStar soon.

[ShimmerSwirl]

Two short reads that really shed light on some of the behind the scenes of f2p/b2p.

http://bhagpuss.blogspot.com/2013/02...-game-gw2.html

Honestly after reading that can you really say anything but, "Why don't they hire more programmers?"

And its a good question, what stops them from it? You would think a MMO that is thought of as highly successful and the posterboy for B2P greatness would be able to afford basic staff to run the game.

And:
http://www.guildwars2guru.com/topic/...any-cash-shop/

Again, nothing is truly 'free', the gameplay itself is limited by the fact that every design choice must be made under the pretense of, "Does this get players into our cash shop?"

[RoninaThorstone]

Two short reads that really shed light on some of the behind the scenes of f2p/b2p.

http://bhagpuss.blogspot.com/2013/02...-game-gw2.html

Honestly after reading that can you really say anything but, "Why don't they hire more programmers?"

And its a good question, what stops them from it? You would think a MMO that is thought of as highly successful and the posterboy for B2P greatness would be able to afford basic staff to run the game.

And:
http://www.guildwars2guru.com/topic/...any-cash-shop/

Again, nothing is truly 'free', the gameplay itself is limited by the fact that every design choice must be made under the pretense of, "Does this get players into our cash shop?"

http://www.vg247.com/2013/02/05/ncso...f-total-sales/

And then there's this bit on Gw2.

Also, lol if you think anyone thinks that f2p is "truly free".
If you stock your cash shop with content it would be the same question as "does this get our players to subscribe?"

[Deleted]

I'm not super into player-housing but it actually looks pretty damn fun in this game.

[Valeron]

Seems this thread is heading offtopic but I will say, if you think GW2 is tailored for people to use the gem shop then I don't know what to tell you. There is absolutely nothing there that has ever enticed me to use it (other than more character slots). You are linking a 4 month old thread of someone who clearly wants a sub model.

About bhagpuss's blog, I do agree that they seem to be understaffed. But is that really a result of the payment model? I mean they have all kinds of job postings for ArenaNet.