Only hardcore gamers complain about F2P

Discussion in 'General Game Discussion and Questions' started by Jayg2015, Apr 5, 2016.

  1. Dankrio

    Dankrio Well-Known Member
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    Jun 3, 2014
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    For games like Call of Duty, Fifa etc it makes so much sense.

    This is EXACTLY why I love gaming. Story or atmosphere-driven ones are my favorite meal.
     
  2. Kenan2000

    Kenan2000 Well-Known Member

    Nov 25, 2013
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    #22 Kenan2000, Apr 6, 2016
    Last edited: Apr 6, 2016
    Exactly,Destiny and CoD are good examples,but these can become free2play DLC types of games WHICH IS VERY GOOD like Sims,I have nothing against that.I don't care if I have to pay a lot BECAUSE I'll play these DLCs for YEARS to come (Sims 4 sucked as an instance,so i'd rather play Sims 3 with expansions than Sims 4)

    I'm against stuff like diamonds,coins,points and other shit like that,this is not going to prevail over permanent DLCs and addons cause people are not idiots,since in Eli's world all games will be online only and at some point developers will cut the server wire and BAM - congratulations,you've lost everything INCLUDING your game,imagine if nobody in this world was able to buy a house but only rent it,that would be so "awesome",right?
     
  3. Eli

    Eli ᕕ┌◕ᗜ◕┐ᕗ
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    The whole idea of a game as a service is you can maintain it for much longer than you would otherwise. Do things get shut down? Sure. Will your Xbox eventually break? Yes. If you're into the idea of games as a permanent thing that will never change or go away you're probably better off getting involved in collecting retro games as these things are the unfortunate collateral cost of progress.
     
  4. C.Hannum

    C.Hannum Well-Known Member

    Feb 13, 2011
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    Always love these apples and porcupines comparisons.

    Games are entertainment. I can't think of a single game, premium, fremium, or otherwise that once I felt I'd seen all there was to do I wanted to experience it again in a very long time. Nostalgia is an illusion. Firing up some 640x480 PC game you put 300 hours into in 1993 two decades later is downright painful. There are just too many games to give a damn if a given title shuts down or changes direction so severely you hate the current iteration.

    Besides, your analogy is flawed because it misses the point. One key issue is that it takes the average person 20-30 years to actually buy a house, so the differences between renting and buying for most people is largely academic. While, if you're lucky, your monthly payment for buying is eventually lower than your monthly payment would be for renting in your area, pretty much everyone not near or over the retirement age is still paying out every single month to the bank or else they'll lose everything. When it comes to housing, there's not a whole lot of difference between premium and freemium for most of us :)

    That aside, the main reason it doesn't fit is that games aren't houses. You play one game, then you play another, then another, sometimes three or four different games at a time. There is effectively an infinite number of games out there at this point. I haven't found myself without at least one game occupying all my spare time for over twenty years, and that "problem" is only growing exponentially "worse". Nowadays, I have to choose what is entertaining me the most and drop all the honorable mentions. Instead of buying one or two games a month and playing the bejesus out of them, I'm buying and/or downloading dozens of games a month out of hundreds of choices and discarding nearly every single one of them because if they aren't better than whatever is already holding my attention, they gotta go.

    It's no wonder we are moving toward games as a service because it's pretty much the only model that makes sense in today's world. It's also why those of us who love a particular game do spend on "renting", it's the only way they keep getting developed, and just like renting an apartment, if one day the landlord turns out to be a pervy creep, you move into a different apartment and keep on enjoying yourself.
     
  5. mid83

    mid83 Well-Known Member

    May 28, 2014
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    Look at how many game studios have shut down in the past decade. Game development for AAA games often runs in the tens or hundreds of millions. Then, with the standard retail model, you better get the vast majority of revenue you need in the first couple weeks of release, because most premium game sales are almost all front loaded. That revenue is most of what they need to sustain themselves until the next release. Studios spend years making a game and if it doesn't sell well in week one, they are shutting down.

    Games as service helps with this issue. Yes, games under this model fail, but studios also have time to get an audience and have regular revenue coming in rather than relying on years worth of income on week one sales. This is especially true with the near infinite choices we have now in games. Games as service is the only long term sustainable model.
     
  6. Xexist

    Xexist Well-Known Member

    May 6, 2010
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    I would prefer an Onlive type service over a world full of free to play. Howevers I dont mind FtP if its done right, but lets be honest. 90% of them (im being generous) are garbage designed to only suck money out of people, not to be fun at all.
     
  7. TheOutlander

    TheOutlander Well-Known Member

    Apr 15, 2014
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    I wouldn't necessarily say I'm a hardcore gamer, but I'm alright with F2P and microtransactions, heck, one of my favorite games of all time is F2P (Warframe), however the F2P model implementation matters a lot to me, I'm ok with premium currency and timers as long as they don't prevent me from continuing like in Warframe or Dirty Bomb (another game I like) but rather incentivize me for paying with ways to bypass some of the grinding or allowing me to try out stuff a little bit earlier, but not to necessarily break the game and make it a P2W situation.
    But yeah, I'm ok with F2P, Midnight Star, Isolani, Quadropus Rampage and plenty of other games have used a F2P model that works with the consumer.
     
  8. Leegames

    Leegames Well-Known Member

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    #28 Leegames, Apr 8, 2016
    Last edited: Apr 8, 2016
    Also hardcore gamers are usually a joke, thinking gaming started with the PS1. ;)

    I do think true gamers enjoy all aspects of gaming, and are able to differentiate between good and bad F2P - just as well as they know the difference between a good and bad premium game.
     
  9. volcanopele

    volcanopele Well-Known Member
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    Mar 27, 2011
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    Funny that you mention that. I have been playing more retro games on my iPad lately because there hasn't been much exciting coming out except for FFIX. In the next couple of months there should be more coming out, like Siege of Dragonspear, Titan's Quest, and Twilight Struggle, but otherwise, yeah, I'm in emulator land. The collateral damage is all the good, premium titles that are not being made because developers would rather go after the easy money. I don't begrudge them for wanting to put food on their table, but they are making games that I have zero interest in ever playing.

    As OP said, people are welcome to their hobby, and spending money on their hobby. I'll roll my eyes at the silliness of buying fake currency, but as long as we can all have our hobby, there's no issue. But this F2P garbage is starting to affect me, mostly by developers deciding to stop making premium games (just look at that recent article about Gameloft). As mentioned above, it is starting to seep into console and PC gaming. Already, Call of Duty now has CoD points you can spend on Black Market crates.
     
  10. Jayg2015

    Jayg2015 Well-Known Member

    Jan 5, 2015
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    I pay my cable bill to watch tv.
    Guess what happens ...
    I paid to watch my favorite show and what happens everytime I watch my shows ?
    I'm forced to watch commercials every ten minutes .
    Even though I'm paying already to watch my show I'm still in a F2P experience.
    Everything we do.
     
  11. Boardumb

    Boardumb Administrator
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    Apr 14, 2009
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    I think this is off base. There is no easy money in the App Store, no matter what type of game you make. 99.99999% of all games released fail. A VERY tiny handful make a lot of money. It's more like playing the lottery at this point.

    Developers aren't making premium games because the audience has rejected premium games time and time again, and free to play has been accepted en masse and proven to be a possible source of revenue. Key word being "possible" as there's no guarantee any game will ever make any sort of profit, let alone break even.
     
  12. ackmondual

    ackmondual Well-Known Member

    Dec 25, 2009
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    Free-to-play ain't going anywhere, that much is for sure. Us whining and airing our grievances about how f2p will be the doom of us all reminds me of how 5 years ago, the folks whining and airing their grievances how iOS gaming isn't real gaming, and will doom the gaming industry if it ever takes flight.

    We'll never fully return to the past days of gaming glory, but we can still play and preserve it.

    Even before F2P, and mobile gaming, there were never really THAT many good games to begin with. Majority of them weren't that great.
     
  13. madreviewer

    madreviewer Well-Known Member

    Sep 22, 2013
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    I could see that, but is it going to cause a market crash? Just like e t did.
    When everybody decide to play the games and not make inn app purchase
     

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