There are more gold spammers in a RPG then hackers. Hackers generally inhabit shooter based mmo's. Mostly shooters, not always but that is what I have experienced. Besides, they give up eventually and move on!
Funny story. I have a friend in WoW who we tried get him playing, but got bored after level 60+, where he promptly quit. Several months later, I see him online as a level 1 character on another server, okay no big deal. Then a few weeks later, I got to talk to him and he said he got an e-mail from Blizzard saying that his account was seen gold spamming. At that point, we just laughed because there was nothing of worth on his account. So apparently, the hacker just got it for the sake of making a gold spammer. The upside to the story was after recovering his account, Blizzard also sent him a free authenticator.
But the moral of the story - it's common for gold spammer accounts to actually be hacked accounts. This is also notorious in Diablo 3 (easiest way to tell if a gold spammer is a hacked account is by checking their profile. If they have a max level character, with an actual non-bot name, then it's likely to be a hacked account. Purely gold spammer accounts tend to have some level 1 character named lflflflfl). So whoever it was that said b2p or subscription models will stop gold spammers, well, not completely.
OP didnt know Neverwinter has a built-in account chat block if a person is reported for spam enough (super easy to report). self moderating community FTW. i kinda feel bad for him writing all that uselessly...
OP didnt know Neverwinter has a built-in account chat block if a person is reported for spam enough (super easy to report). self moderating community FTW. i kinda feel bad for him writing all that uselessly...
There's a very simple solution to this: Find a RP server. No doubt NW will have one or two servers strongly dedicated to good RP and less grinding/farming.
Ummm there is only one server for NW( ok at launch there will be a few servers but they will all be merged back into one server once the spike of launch is over).
This is one of those battles not worth fighting because you know there is no chance in this happening.
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ambisinisterrMember, Neverwinter ModeratorPosts: 10,462Community Moderator
edited March 2013
Well it could happen if the post-release reaction showed it would be extremely beneficial. SWToR for instance went through development touting the big old banner saying "We will be subscription only. We won't be going freemium! Bla bla bla."
They released...realized they shot themselves in the foot and made the quickest conversion to a freemium model post release than any company has ever done before.
However in the case of SWToR the marketing team and those in charge were ignorant and stuck in the past. Free to play is the future of MMO's for the reasons stated throughout this thread and it would be EXTREMELYUNLIKELY to have any reason to backtrack.
I wouldn't mind some sort of pay so much money up front (one time fee) and get a periodic Astral Diamond allotment like we see in other subscription type games but other than that there's nothing the B2P or Subscription Model offers which is in any way enticing or beneficial to me as long as Cryptic keeps their end of the bargain in the cash shop.
^ Can you name one that went the other way? From FTP to BTP? or FTP to Sub? I don't even get how FTP to BTP is even possible as the OP suggests. I could see FTP to Sub, which I actually would prefer personally, but I don't think I've seen that one happen yet.
My preference is FTS, Free to Sub, everyone gets a chance to try it for free (marketing win) and if you like it you Sub. Why I like sub is you have the feeling you aren't being nickle/dimed/short-changed. $10/$15 a month is cheap gaming.
In gerenal, I prefer B2P (e.g. GW1/GW2) (and if required to cover fundamental costs also the monthly subscription, e.g. WoW) without dependence of in-game stores and only with ONE currency, namely the one of the game universe (Gold, silver...) by ensuring that every player has access to the same and complete game content without any other payment restrictions and that all players have the same start and play conditions. Under these circumstances it is fair and more motivating to play a game without seeing that someone with a lot's of money can speed up in leveling and get "nicer" items if it is provided by an (direct , indirect real cash) ingame-store.
In other f2p games I also like the option to pay a fix monthly subscription, thereby to guarantee financial support to the game and allowing you to have access to the total game content without requirement to look up each detail to be paid for before being allowed to play it (e.g. AoC, LotR and DDO).
I hope that in NWO you will not be remarkably disadvantaged if you do not buy things from the cash shops.
I will need to find out how NWO will deal with the f2p model and its ingame shop System at Launch and later on.
But with the license of D&D PWE possesses a strong license with so much potential.
There was a conference in around december in which Craig discussed this stuff. Those guys have researched a lot before making it f2p. More so, they have learned from the experience of other games. It was a long discussion, but an informed one. I now support their decision to make it f2p and agree with Craig that it is the best business model for the game.
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muzrub333Member, Neverwinter Beta UsersPosts: 0Arc User
edited March 2013
I'm a bit cynical, but so far I have not seen anything to convince me NWO would be worth buying. If I had to buy the game to play, with what I have seen, I'd pass. On the other hand, letting me play for free opens up the possibility that I'll really get into the game, and spend money on it in the future.
Now if NWO was actually a huge, open, seamless version of Faerun, with every sandbox element you can think of except for PvP, and still had the foundry, I'd be happy paying a couple hundred for the game, and $25/month without blinking an eye.
Different types of MMO's work better with different types of business models.
Yeah what @muzub says was also something he discussed. If I understood it correctly, he said that when you make a quality MMO, you should have no barrier to entry. As your game will speak for itself. Hence it should be shown to as much people as possible. Because your game is good, they will buy stuff. It is like walking in supermarket instead of ordering something at home and already paying for it with cc before you see it.
He said few more technical mumbo jumbo on the lines that if you keep adding content, a subset of players will always come back. If you want to bring old players launch a class. To induce new players, launch races - or something like that (maybe I swapped a few things here and there but he was saying something like that). He also talked about having the game on for 10 years and a plan how he would do it.
Also he was saying that free MMO has a lot of competition and hence all the games which become f2p because their games are not up to the mark are failing. Hence having a quality MMO, or innovative MMO when you jump to f2p market has become vitally important as of late unlike before.
I have to humbly disagree. I have played a number of true free to play games and I have loved them much more than any boxed products.
Sure there are some downsides but as long as the company truly makes the game free to play and not pay to play/pay to win I have had an all around far better expereince on free to play games. There are also a large number of benefits to both players and developers you completely neglected such as increased availability.
A game with a box price can easily be overlooked by people who don't want to invest money in a game they don't know whether they will enjoy or not. I know I personally have shrugged off even trying certain games which have had a box price because I am most often happy plaaying a different MMO. That's why all the MMO's have gone the freemium route, the box price became a huge barrier to attracting a new player base.
MMO's simply don't work well with box prices. Box Priced items work for games which are meant to be played for a month or two and then die such as Skyrim. MMO's survive through the years by continually rotating players. Old players go and new players fill their spots. This is why the subscription model ultimately went the way of the dinosaur...
Paying up front limits the influx of new players and with so many other MMO's to play the box prices and subscription plans cause players to skip to other MMO's without such a high start-up cost.
This is very well said! I remember back in the day when I played Lineage 2 the CEO at the time. I forget his name, and can not for the life of me find the article; it was a long time ago. At any rate, he stated in an interview that Free to play with a cash shop is the future of MMOs. Lo and Behold, he was right.
Personally I like the free to play a la carte system. It lets me play what I want when I want.
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kwsapphireMember, NW M9 PlaytestPosts: 671Arc User
edited March 2013
I would love some kind of "pay monthly and get goodies/a stipend every month" as an optional model. I can afford a monthly sub, or an up-front cost, so I don't mind dropping the money to get the goodies. I have friends that can't do this though; either they can't afford to drop money on games period, or they're already dropping money on other games. Being free to play will certainly expand NW's player-base. And then those free players will be more inclined to make small purchases when they do have the money to spare, as opposed to being turned off by the whole experience because they can't afford to play in the first place. I totally agree with the F2P model, and there are a lot of things that can take care of the disadvantages like spammers and farmers, and so on.
Going back to the original post, the OP's main beef isn't actually with the business model. It's the fact that if you open your doors to all of the riff-raff on the street, some of the customers will indeed be riff-raff. People who have zero investment in the game are more likely to misbehave than people who are invested in the game.
However there are tools that you can use to manage your experience. When I create a new character in a Cryptic game, one of the first things I do is create new tabs for the chat window. One (actually more, but I'm simplifying here) is "Custom" which contains user-created chat channels, as well as vital ones such as Team, Tell, System, etc. Another is "Ticker" which contains things like XP, reward, and inventory notifications (removed from other tabs). And maybe I should rename the "Zone" tab to "Third Level of Baator" while I'm at it.
Neverwinter should have "Save UI" and "Load UI" buttons under HUD options. When you have your UI set up the way you want, click the "Save UI" button. That way when you create a new character, you can click "Load UI" to copy the settings.
Now when Zone chat gets stupid (which will be often), you can simply change the channel with a click of the mouse. Or rather, a press of the Alt key and a click of the mouse.
(Still, there was this one time in Star Trek Online where the Earth Space Dock zone chat got so appalling, I literally got in my spaceship and travelled to Deep Space 9 just to physically separate myself from those bozos.)
Yeah, one of the first things I do in any game is turn off zone-wide chat.
I can't say whether F2P creates more trolls than subscription. The worst trolling experiences I've had were in Warcraft and early days of City of Heroes. Also SWTOR got really bad after the server mergers.
I see the point though, F2P means people can play without any investment at all and therefore may feel more entitled to grief.
To me, griefing seems to come in waves. For whatever reason, you run into it like bad weather, but it seems to always inevitably pass. And I've definitely run into it just as often in subscription play.
SHADOW - A secret cabal for those who thirst for wealth and power. Check out SHADOW on YouTube!
I have to humbly disagree. I have played a number of true free to play games and I have loved them much more than any boxed products.
Sure there are some downsides but as long as the company truly makes the game free to play and not pay to play/pay to win I have had an all around far better expereince on free to play games. There are also a large number of benefits to both players and developers you completely neglected such as increased availability.
A game with a box price can easily be overlooked by people who don't want to invest money in a game they don't know whether they will enjoy or not. I know I personally have shrugged off even trying certain games which have had a box price because I am most often happy plaaying a different MMO. That's why all the MMO's have gone the freemium route, the box price became a huge barrier to attracting a new player base.
MMO's simply don't work well with box prices. Box Priced items work for games which are meant to be played for a month or two and then die such as Skyrim. MMO's survive through the years by continually rotating players. Old players go and new players fill their spots. This is why the subscription model ultimately went the way of the dinosaur...
Paying up front limits the influx of new players and with so many other MMO's to play the box prices and subscription plans cause players to skip to other MMO's without such a high start-up cost.
Absolutely agree! Great reply. See this happened to me with a B2P game recently. The devs took the money and then 2 months after launch went back on everything they promised the players for 7 years of development literally they did a 180 from what attracted players like me to their game. Add to that the complete disregard for three of their classes, mismanagement of their economy, and the complete nerfing of all loot so that there was 0 chance of getting any currency to play the game by simply playing the game for advancement and you've got a recipe for why I left that game in the dust disappointed.
I won't mention the name but a few on here will know which one I'm talking about.
So why am I sticking with NW? Because I've seen their economy and how it works for the player's advantage on other games. They even improved upon that by making contraversial things like chests only available in game instead of trying to dedicate their updates to adding gambling to their RMT store. I like that they've learned from their other titles and are improving on that model. The only other game title that came close to how great Cryptic's F2P economy is would be LOTRO, because you can play that game and earn points to use in their store as well, over the lifetime of my playing that game, I earned about 2500 points just by playing, and that wasn't everything you could earn either, I was just messing around and saving points.
This game will be awesome in the economy because they do have some exclusive store items but they really aren't game breaking, you can move Zen points from other games you are playing of theirs onto this one thru their accounts system too that was surprising to me to see.
But the real reason F2P is the worst thing ever is because games that are F2P have the worst players and the worst communities.
When players are paying nothing, they have no reason to behave, no reason to care, and the most immature and lame players gather.
If you make players pay a nominal fee for the box they are at least somewhat invested and may care about being banned or prevented from playing (and hey, you'll actually have money to pay for customer support to GET RID of the crappy players too) and may care about the game somewhat, instead of logging in to be immature, grief, and/or just not give a <font color="orange">HAMSTER</font>.
Actually this is not true at all. The very worst players I've ever met were in World of Warcraft. They were the dungeon grinder/raid grinder elitist crowd and that game has always been subsciption.
That crowd recently invaded a well known B2P game and since then the entire community has gone downhill and people are not happy. These people have denied players from running dungeons because of gear and because of class. They've made gamebreaking demands on the devs like DPS meters, Gearscore, and other controversial requests for addons that should never be allowed in any title ever again if anyone in their right mind remembers the way it affected mmo communities when they were allowed anywhere.
So F2P as a model for business not the cause of the nasty attitudes. Sorry, you're wrong there bud. I do hope you're not one to automatically equate these nasty attitudes to the young either because that too hasn't been my experience in mmo's.
Actually this is not true at all. The very worst players I've ever met were in World of Warcraft. They were the dungeon grinder/raid grinder elitist crowd and that game has always been subsciption.
Yup. The riff raff arrived several years ago when Blizzard released WoW and the MMO community population exploded with leet speeking bnet epeen wavers. Server transfers and character name changes ensured that no player ever need face consequences for their behavior.
WOW just got really popular, to the point where it was advertising pick-up trucks during NFL broadcasts. That's a level of "mainstream" that even D&D never reached. The more popular it got, the higher chance you had of running into rude/ignorant people.
I don't think WOW's ugly side was a manifestation of the subscription model. I don't necessarily think F2P attracts more trolls. I do think a game that gets very popular, will increase your chances of running into someone who rubs you the wrong way. It's just simple math really.
For the record, although I ran into griefing on WOW quite a bit, I also had some of the best RP ever in WOW. Shadow Council was my server and I still regard the community there to be one of the finest I've ever played in. I am confident, that despite the fact, there will be dingalings running around in NWO, that overall the community here is going to be excellent.
D&D has a way of bringing out the best in people. I truly believe that.
Yeah, I think F2P sucks too, because overall it tends to cost me more to do what I like to do. I see it as a money grab, not much more. But it works and it keeps games like NWO afloat, so I'll just adjust and move on. Clearly the market has spoken and F2P is here to stay.
SHADOW - A secret cabal for those who thirst for wealth and power. Check out SHADOW on YouTube!
Please use the buy 2 play model where players must buy the box for some amount, rather than going all out free to play.
You get money from every player and can still pillage players thru the store.
But the real reason F2P is the worst thing ever is because games that are F2P have the worst players and the worst communities.
When players are paying nothing, they have no reason to behave, no reason to care, and the most immature and lame players gather.
If you make players pay a nominal fee for the box they are at least somewhat invested and may care about being banned or prevented from playing (and hey, you'll actually have money to pay for customer support to GET RID of the crappy players too) and may care about the game somewhat, instead of logging in to be immature, grief, and/or just not give a <font color="orange">HAMSTER</font>.
RaiderZ (another perfect world game) is/was plagued by gold spammers in every zone, with so many in the cities that you couldn't use public chat at all, because spammers were spamming literally nonstop over each other. If gold selling scumbags had to pay for boxes instead of just making free account after free account, the spam would be less. AND if you charge for the box you can afford customer service to remove bots AND to pay developers to accomplish the monumental feat of eliminating gold spam from chat (something that gets done in lots of other games or via player made addons - but not in F2P, because the devs don't care and/or can't afford to to it).
I just logged in to Tera to see how it was shaking after going F2P and it's a nightmare. General chat is filled with immature morons going on nonstop about who knows what. I sometimes wonder WHY some people log on to MMORPGs because they surely can't actually be PLAYING when they are spamming chat incessantly with juvenile idiocy. Anyways. I logged off after about 2 minutes since disabling all public chat to avoid childish players isn't really acceptable and I don't want to be in a game filled with immature and subhuman brats. Much like I quickly couldn't take RaiderZ because the quality of players is ultra low and gold spammers were completely out of control.
F2P is all around garbage. Less money up front for devs, with some players surely never paying a cent, and it's a disaster for community since you will definitely get the bottom of the barrel of scumbags who don't want to pay for their entertainment and/or feel like free games are an excellent avenue for griefing or carrying on like children since in the unlikely event that they get reprimdanded or removed, they have nothing to lose and don't care.
B2P is all around win. Sure money for the devs up front. Players are at least marginally invested and might give a <font color="orange">HAMSTER</font> about the game.
F2P doesn't really accomplish much if you get a bunch of people who either never pay or who make the game experience worse for other players.
F2P models tend to be more obnoxious since it's the ONLY revenue stream for the game and devs definitely have to hook game features and/or content into money. I would rather see designers/devs focus on making games better, not figuring out how to monetize gameplay.
B2P ensures some revenue and usually features less obnoxious cash shop hooks moving forward. Win for all.
Hi Voqar,
From what u have say , u are assuming that B2P model will nt have more players that are rude ,immature or trolling the chat.It might be nt be the case and it will be probably be the same.Nowadays most of the kids /teens are able to afford to pay up for mmo B2P, coz their parents doted on them.It would nt be surprised to see the same <font color="orange">HAMSTER</font> of words flooding the chat over and over again!
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kwsapphireMember, NW M9 PlaytestPosts: 671Arc User
edited March 2013
I agree that it's a sheer numbers game - the more people there are in a given community, the more likely there will be disagreements, arguments, and people who just don't get along. On the other hand, while I have no direct experience with the WOW community, I have heard that there seems to be a disproportionately large number of trolls and flame-tards in that particular community. I am fortunate that City of Heroes was my first MMO community, and it was one of the best out there. (I am biased, but hey.)
And while it's true that having a F2P game removes a lot of barriers for trolls and RMT/gold farmers creating a dozen accounts, a lot can be done to reduce their ability to ruin our fun. Having a minimum level to send email or private messages is a good start. I believe NW already has a feature that allows you to /ignoreasspammer or something similar, and it someone gets too many pings like that the system automatically freezes the account. Nothing is perfect, but trolls generally aren't too hard to deal with. The biggest deterrent will be having a vibrant economy in which players feel they can afford goodies without turning to RMT/gold farmers. If there's no business for the farmers, they'll go away. If there's a market for them because the in-game economy is broken, then nothing PWE or Cryptic can do will keep the farmers away.
As far as people who are just immature/jerks? Yeah, B2P is definitely not a barrier for them.
But the real reason F2P is the worst thing ever is because games that are F2P have the worst players and the worst communities.
When players are paying nothing, they have no reason to behave, no reason to care, and the most immature and lame players gather.
.
this is unequivocally untrue.
there are quite a few f2p games with some of the best gaming communities out there LOTRO, DDO, Firefall to name a few.
there are many factors to a good gaming community to numerous for me to go into at this time, but the brunt of the responsibility rest with the publisher/developer. the payment model can be a factor but can be mitigated with a good team of community managers.
I would also rather pay $15-$20 bucks a month. But suckers will spend thousands on the F2P model, so I don't see it going anywhere.
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teepussiMember, Neverwinter Beta Users, Neverwinter Hero UsersPosts: 0Arc User
edited May 2013
Buy to play doesnt work in my opinion for MMO, unless its sub based and even then it will fight on heavily contested category.
So far buy to play games that sell cosmetic stuff in order to stay float have not made huge impression on me, then again all games are different and it comes down to what your looking from them.
I wonder what f2p games are good or how the devs think 3 million AD for a mount is reasonable in this game?
If you weren't limited to 2 character slots, wards costing $10, respecs costing $6 and mounts costing $40 then maybe you have a point, but since it does I can't really say this f2p model is entirely great.
I cannot deny I prefer B2P games and indeed tend to get disenfranchised when a B2P game moves to F2P.
But I also know F2P is the future, gamers spend (on average) spend much more than 15 a month on a F2P game than they do B2P. It's a big money win for gaming companies, all the while keeping your active participant numbers nice and high.
I don't like it, but money talks and F2P is big $$$.
Guild Wars 2 is B2P, and although you might not like the game itself, it works. People pay for the game, and don't HAVE to pay a penny after that. People do anyways though. GW2 has the perfect cash shop. Nothing game breaking or changing. It's all cosmetics and fashion. I love it.
With F2P games they have for force players to buy somehow. The model they lure people in with is Free to Play, but players quickly realize that they'll hit a wall or won't be able to compete unless they buy certain items. Free to play games are really more accurately Buy to Win games.
Neverwinter's F2P model isn't like other MMO F2P models. It's more like League of Legends or Team Fortress 2, which are still growing in profitability. The F2P model you're thinking about is the one used by Everquest, Champions Online and City of Heroes and those games' business are stagnant (or dead). Neverwinter isn't going to try to copy that model.
Really? I find that hard to believe. Name one PWE game that doesn't follow that model. I've tried many of them and they all have that model (PWI probably being the worst). F2P is all about stonewalling players one way or another so that they have to use items from the cash shop.
Sure you could say a player doesn't HAVE to spend money. They can grind for weeks to get enough of whatever special currency (the name changes is every game), and then trade that for Zen. SOMEONE has to buy that zen through, so at the end of the line F2P is nothing more than B2W in disguise.
Comments
Funny story. I have a friend in WoW who we tried get him playing, but got bored after level 60+, where he promptly quit. Several months later, I see him online as a level 1 character on another server, okay no big deal. Then a few weeks later, I got to talk to him and he said he got an e-mail from Blizzard saying that his account was seen gold spamming. At that point, we just laughed because there was nothing of worth on his account. So apparently, the hacker just got it for the sake of making a gold spammer. The upside to the story was after recovering his account, Blizzard also sent him a free authenticator.
But the moral of the story - it's common for gold spammer accounts to actually be hacked accounts. This is also notorious in Diablo 3 (easiest way to tell if a gold spammer is a hacked account is by checking their profile. If they have a max level character, with an actual non-bot name, then it's likely to be a hacked account. Purely gold spammer accounts tend to have some level 1 character named lflflflfl). So whoever it was that said b2p or subscription models will stop gold spammers, well, not completely.
You have taught me something.
Ummm there is only one server for NW( ok at launch there will be a few servers but they will all be merged back into one server once the spike of launch is over).
They released...realized they shot themselves in the foot and made the quickest conversion to a freemium model post release than any company has ever done before.
However in the case of SWToR the marketing team and those in charge were ignorant and stuck in the past. Free to play is the future of MMO's for the reasons stated throughout this thread and it would be EXTREMELY UNLIKELY to have any reason to backtrack.
I wouldn't mind some sort of pay so much money up front (one time fee) and get a periodic Astral Diamond allotment like we see in other subscription type games but other than that there's nothing the B2P or Subscription Model offers which is in any way enticing or beneficial to me as long as Cryptic keeps their end of the bargain in the cash shop.
My preference is FTS, Free to Sub, everyone gets a chance to try it for free (marketing win) and if you like it you Sub. Why I like sub is you have the feeling you aren't being nickle/dimed/short-changed. $10/$15 a month is cheap gaming.
In other f2p games I also like the option to pay a fix monthly subscription, thereby to guarantee financial support to the game and allowing you to have access to the total game content without requirement to look up each detail to be paid for before being allowed to play it (e.g. AoC, LotR and DDO).
I hope that in NWO you will not be remarkably disadvantaged if you do not buy things from the cash shops.
I will need to find out how NWO will deal with the f2p model and its ingame shop System at Launch and later on.
But with the license of D&D PWE possesses a strong license with so much potential.
Now if NWO was actually a huge, open, seamless version of Faerun, with every sandbox element you can think of except for PvP, and still had the foundry, I'd be happy paying a couple hundred for the game, and $25/month without blinking an eye.
Different types of MMO's work better with different types of business models.
He said few more technical mumbo jumbo on the lines that if you keep adding content, a subset of players will always come back. If you want to bring old players launch a class. To induce new players, launch races - or something like that (maybe I swapped a few things here and there but he was saying something like that). He also talked about having the game on for 10 years and a plan how he would do it.
Also he was saying that free MMO has a lot of competition and hence all the games which become f2p because their games are not up to the mark are failing. Hence having a quality MMO, or innovative MMO when you jump to f2p market has become vitally important as of late unlike before.
This is very well said! I remember back in the day when I played Lineage 2 the CEO at the time. I forget his name, and can not for the life of me find the article; it was a long time ago. At any rate, he stated in an interview that Free to play with a cash shop is the future of MMOs. Lo and Behold, he was right.
However there are tools that you can use to manage your experience. When I create a new character in a Cryptic game, one of the first things I do is create new tabs for the chat window. One (actually more, but I'm simplifying here) is "Custom" which contains user-created chat channels, as well as vital ones such as Team, Tell, System, etc. Another is "Ticker" which contains things like XP, reward, and inventory notifications (removed from other tabs). And maybe I should rename the "Zone" tab to "Third Level of Baator" while I'm at it.
Neverwinter should have "Save UI" and "Load UI" buttons under HUD options. When you have your UI set up the way you want, click the "Save UI" button. That way when you create a new character, you can click "Load UI" to copy the settings.
Now when Zone chat gets stupid (which will be often), you can simply change the channel with a click of the mouse. Or rather, a press of the Alt key and a click of the mouse.
(Still, there was this one time in Star Trek Online where the Earth Space Dock zone chat got so appalling, I literally got in my spaceship and travelled to Deep Space 9 just to physically separate myself from those bozos.)
I can't say whether F2P creates more trolls than subscription. The worst trolling experiences I've had were in Warcraft and early days of City of Heroes. Also SWTOR got really bad after the server mergers.
I see the point though, F2P means people can play without any investment at all and therefore may feel more entitled to grief.
To me, griefing seems to come in waves. For whatever reason, you run into it like bad weather, but it seems to always inevitably pass. And I've definitely run into it just as often in subscription play.
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Absolutely agree! Great reply. See this happened to me with a B2P game recently. The devs took the money and then 2 months after launch went back on everything they promised the players for 7 years of development literally they did a 180 from what attracted players like me to their game. Add to that the complete disregard for three of their classes, mismanagement of their economy, and the complete nerfing of all loot so that there was 0 chance of getting any currency to play the game by simply playing the game for advancement and you've got a recipe for why I left that game in the dust disappointed.
I won't mention the name but a few on here will know which one I'm talking about.
So why am I sticking with NW? Because I've seen their economy and how it works for the player's advantage on other games. They even improved upon that by making contraversial things like chests only available in game instead of trying to dedicate their updates to adding gambling to their RMT store. I like that they've learned from their other titles and are improving on that model. The only other game title that came close to how great Cryptic's F2P economy is would be LOTRO, because you can play that game and earn points to use in their store as well, over the lifetime of my playing that game, I earned about 2500 points just by playing, and that wasn't everything you could earn either, I was just messing around and saving points.
This game will be awesome in the economy because they do have some exclusive store items but they really aren't game breaking, you can move Zen points from other games you are playing of theirs onto this one thru their accounts system too that was surprising to me to see.
Actually this is not true at all. The very worst players I've ever met were in World of Warcraft. They were the dungeon grinder/raid grinder elitist crowd and that game has always been subsciption.
That crowd recently invaded a well known B2P game and since then the entire community has gone downhill and people are not happy. These people have denied players from running dungeons because of gear and because of class. They've made gamebreaking demands on the devs like DPS meters, Gearscore, and other controversial requests for addons that should never be allowed in any title ever again if anyone in their right mind remembers the way it affected mmo communities when they were allowed anywhere.
So F2P as a model for business not the cause of the nasty attitudes. Sorry, you're wrong there bud. I do hope you're not one to automatically equate these nasty attitudes to the young either because that too hasn't been my experience in mmo's.
Yup. The riff raff arrived several years ago when Blizzard released WoW and the MMO community population exploded with leet speeking bnet epeen wavers. Server transfers and character name changes ensured that no player ever need face consequences for their behavior.
I don't think WOW's ugly side was a manifestation of the subscription model. I don't necessarily think F2P attracts more trolls. I do think a game that gets very popular, will increase your chances of running into someone who rubs you the wrong way. It's just simple math really.
For the record, although I ran into griefing on WOW quite a bit, I also had some of the best RP ever in WOW. Shadow Council was my server and I still regard the community there to be one of the finest I've ever played in. I am confident, that despite the fact, there will be dingalings running around in NWO, that overall the community here is going to be excellent.
D&D has a way of bringing out the best in people. I truly believe that.
Yeah, I think F2P sucks too, because overall it tends to cost me more to do what I like to do. I see it as a money grab, not much more. But it works and it keeps games like NWO afloat, so I'll just adjust and move on. Clearly the market has spoken and F2P is here to stay.
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Hi Voqar,
From what u have say , u are assuming that B2P model will nt have more players that are rude ,immature or trolling the chat.It might be nt be the case and it will be probably be the same.Nowadays most of the kids /teens are able to afford to pay up for mmo B2P, coz their parents doted on them.It would nt be surprised to see the same <font color="orange">HAMSTER</font> of words flooding the chat over and over again!
And while it's true that having a F2P game removes a lot of barriers for trolls and RMT/gold farmers creating a dozen accounts, a lot can be done to reduce their ability to ruin our fun. Having a minimum level to send email or private messages is a good start. I believe NW already has a feature that allows you to /ignoreasspammer or something similar, and it someone gets too many pings like that the system automatically freezes the account. Nothing is perfect, but trolls generally aren't too hard to deal with. The biggest deterrent will be having a vibrant economy in which players feel they can afford goodies without turning to RMT/gold farmers. If there's no business for the farmers, they'll go away. If there's a market for them because the in-game economy is broken, then nothing PWE or Cryptic can do will keep the farmers away.
As far as people who are just immature/jerks? Yeah, B2P is definitely not a barrier for them.
there are quite a few f2p games with some of the best gaming communities out there LOTRO, DDO, Firefall to name a few.
there are many factors to a good gaming community to numerous for me to go into at this time, but the brunt of the responsibility rest with the publisher/developer. the payment model can be a factor but can be mitigated with a good team of community managers.
Let the dead rest, for pities sake.
So far buy to play games that sell cosmetic stuff in order to stay float have not made huge impression on me, then again all games are different and it comes down to what your looking from them.
If you weren't limited to 2 character slots, wards costing $10, respecs costing $6 and mounts costing $40 then maybe you have a point, but since it does I can't really say this f2p model is entirely great.
Guild Wars 2 is B2P, and although you might not like the game itself, it works. People pay for the game, and don't HAVE to pay a penny after that. People do anyways though. GW2 has the perfect cash shop. Nothing game breaking or changing. It's all cosmetics and fashion. I love it.
With F2P games they have for force players to buy somehow. The model they lure people in with is Free to Play, but players quickly realize that they'll hit a wall or won't be able to compete unless they buy certain items. Free to play games are really more accurately Buy to Win games.
Really? I find that hard to believe. Name one PWE game that doesn't follow that model. I've tried many of them and they all have that model (PWI probably being the worst). F2P is all about stonewalling players one way or another so that they have to use items from the cash shop.
Sure you could say a player doesn't HAVE to spend money. They can grind for weeks to get enough of whatever special currency (the name changes is every game), and then trade that for Zen. SOMEONE has to buy that zen through, so at the end of the line F2P is nothing more than B2W in disguise.