Would it really be so bad if this game moved to subscription based payment and annuity for the stockholders to be pleased?
If this game wasn't free to play, we wouldn't have so many different currencies, we'd have more content to play in instead of items to shop for, we'd have more classes to play and possibly an entire open-explore world.
WoW had two entire continents to start with, with 7 classes (1 unique for each side) and two factions. There are reasons WoW did so well and it's not just cuz it was there at the right time.
Working your way to 40 to get your first mount made the mounts mean something, and having a huge distance to cross made them *REALLY* mean something! What're mounts useful for now? 1/100th the necessity from open-world MMO's.
Free to play games have so much effort put into "how can we get more money from our players?" Instead of "how can we attract more long-term subscribers?"
It's like players are a mere commodity to be taken in, used, and discarded easily.
Can we get some real personality put into the visuals for the NPCs please?
Where's Waterdeep or Amn at? How can I be "of Amn" and not have that city as my starting zone?
Move to a subscription based game, put the content and *PROPER BALANCING* that attracts and keeps subscribers, ditch the free to play mess and all the effort put into making Neverwinter a shopping mall, and make good use of the Neverwinter title before you trash it completely.
Please!
We don't need one-time-or-never-buy, welfare, free-to-play gamers polluting the game anyway. I guarantee you, there are millions of subscribers in WoW waiting for a worthy game to move their monthly payment into. And Neverwinter could be it.
Star Wars: The Old Republic should have been it, really, but it was built on a completely bogus game engine. A real tragedy. Since that failed, would you at Cryptic and Perfect World please reconsider the free-to-play model and make the Neverwinter name mean more than this unbalanced, can't-explore-much, buggy game is?
Yes, there is a good number of successful implementations in this game, and yet it is so far from D&D and Neverwinter Nights rulesets and imaginings.
So.. much.. potential...
Here is the thing to keep in mind.
Cash shop games are great for the developers but bad for players and the game balance. Because inevitably the developers will put in items that give cash users an edge over those who don't buy. Of course you could argue that you could get those items it will just take you longer.
Subscription games don't generate the same kind of revenue that cash shop games do, which is why you see so many subscription games go free to play and introduce a cash shop.
Cash shop games can also introduce free entry which increases the population but at the expense of lower quality players entering the game.
So if a developer wants to make money they lean more towards cash shop free to play versions because they don't care about game balance because players will just put up with it. If players really wanted a balanced game they wouldn't play free to play games or cash shop games. But obviously they really don't care about game balance.
Wow's sub numbers are a fluke. The game released at just the right moment, and hooked a lot of people who stayed with it.
That said, a semi-decent F2P game will profit more than a sub-based game these days. I guarantee you'll never again see a sub-based game that does not also have a cash shop. Which is better for the players? I think it all depends on the game.
Speaking of Wow, let's keep in mind that on top of your 15 bucks, it was ~60$ for the starting game, then another 40$ for every expansion. So, without spending a dime in the cash shop, in the course of a few years you'd have spent $400-500. I can play an F2P for years and spend zero, especially if the game offers me a way to earn gamebucks through playing it.
LOL, we DON'T WANT the WoWTards here, PLEASE let them stay with that crappy game and as far away from here as possible..... Subscription games are a thing of the past, it's a failed model, past it's prime, free 2 play and buy to play are where it's at, why in the world would they want to move backwards instead of forwards? Your suggestion is quite moronic, and quite pointless anyway, as I don't see them changing to a P2P model any time soon, or ever.
It pains me but he is right. Subscriptions are a thing of the past.
Game makers were into the business of making games previously and success seemed to rest on the idea that one should make a game that captured the attention and interest of its player-base. It was like writing a book that didn’t end.
Then someone figured out that suckers were far easier to fleece than anyone had previously imagined.
All that work, all those hours and hours in design, competition with each other, money spent on technology and assets, when all they needed to do was give you a login screen and a cash store.
There are games that cost $40 dollars when they were released on top of a subscription model. Now you can pay $40 dollars for a pretend pony alone.
So the subscription model is gone. Character customization is gone. Playing the character you want to play is gone. Now you take what you are given and pay hard for the rest.
Better to be a newcomer to the scene I think; to enter into this tarnished bronze age of gaming and imagine it to be a pinnacle of some sort. Better not to remember the golden age.
Even if they did make that caliber of game now, you wouldn’t be able to afford it.
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steppenkatMember, Neverwinter Beta Users, Neverwinter Guardian UsersPosts: 0Arc User
singo78Member, Neverwinter Beta UsersPosts: 8Arc User
edited May 2013
Subscription model is dieing out, just look at some of the latest big releases that had subscription and look what model they are using now. SWTOR for example started with sub had decent amount of content and full voiceover, now it has a free to play model, altough i must admit the worst model ive ever seen in the history of F2P games. Altough i think someone mentioned it before, it should have been a 1 time fee for the game, kind of like GW2 and still have its Zen shop. Mostly to more effectivly be able to deal with boters and exploiters.
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singo78Member, Neverwinter Beta UsersPosts: 8Arc User
It pains me but he is right. Subscriptions are a thing of the past.
Game makers were into the business of making games previously and success seemed to rest on the idea that one should make a game that captured the attention and interest of its player-base. It was like writing a book that didn’t end.
Then someone figured out that suckers were far easier to fleece than anyone had previously imagined.
All that work, all those hours and hours in design, competition with each other, money spent on technology and assets, when all they needed to do was give you a login screen and a cash store.
There are games that cost $40 dollars when they were released on top of a subscription model. Now you can pay $40 dollars for a pretend pony alone.
So the subscription model is gone. Character customization is gone. Playing the character you want to play is gone. Now you take what you are given and pay hard for the rest.
Better to be a newcomer to the scene I think; to enter into this tarnished bronze age of gaming and imagine it to be a pinnacle of some sort. Better not to remember the golden age.
Even if they did make that caliber of game now, you wouldn’t be able to afford it.
This game does on the otherhand have a verry good free to play model. Buy that pony (unlocks for all chars and future chars as well) for a one time fee. Thats a bit less then 3 months worth of subscription that you dont actualy have to pay. I made 1700 Zen by trading on the zen market. So im almost halfway to get one of those mounts for free, its all about the effort you put into it. And everything can be obtained without actualy spending any money at all, as long as we have some lazy ppl with to much money selling Zen for AD. Put in those $15 per month and you will soon have everything you want/need of the Zen market.
So let me get this straight. Instead of subscription based, well rounded and decently polished games (WoW, EQ2, Rift - i know the last two are F2P now) you want games like Neverwinter, where the cash shop is rubbed into your face at every turn, and the game has inconveniences built in that you have to buy away? Where game systems are intentionally gimped to be worthless (crafting outside of leadership) unless you sink money into the game to make them actually work?
F2P is not "the next big thing". It is an insulting moneygrab attempt by the industry, where they churn out a horribly ****ty game, then "soft launch" it into "open beta", bug-ridden, low on content (Neverwinter has no end-game content to speak of outside of dungeon grinds). The reason games go F2P is twofold. One, because they released a ****ty game that was deemed unfit to survive on subscription basis (SWTOR was the prime suspect. No endgame, a shattered community due to over-sharding and over-instancing, no economy to speak of etc), or two, because someone wants to make a lot of money by making a "free" game. So they either import some korean run-of-the-mill grinder and hype it up to be awesome, or they create something like neverwinter and plaster the cash shop all over it.
This also means that you apparently don't want any meaningful PvE competitiveness either. No game where your achievements mean anything, because why be proud of your T1/T2 gear, when people might as well just believe you bought some AD to buy the gear off the AH? Or where training your companions into well, a companion is halted at about lvl 30 because there are no upgrade items for them? And because there are imbalanced, OP companions like the bloody cat, which buffs you AND gives you 3 extra item slots?
No, F2P is a plight on the gaming industry, since it prevents any serious games being made, instead producing a line of forgettable, ever-same games built only around one aspect: To be just enough fun, and just inconvenient enough for people to throw some money at it before they move on.
Well thought, and said. The only thing that I can add is that as some people have mentioned, I think those of us who remember the "golden age" of mmo's over a decade ago, are going to be the ones who believe p2p is the best way to go. I would think that the p2w fans probably don't even like their acronym . The market is a significant factor in all of this though, as some have pointed out as well. The model migrated over to p2w when more games started popping up, so they were all scrambling for market share; p2w allows more people to start playing these games initially, and then be tempted into spending money (they hope). Also much less thought goes into the creation of these games for numerous reasons. I love the p2p model, and wish it would return with some epic new game, but with the market saturated with all these p2w's, it doesn't seem likely just for competitions sake.
There is also an argument to be made for games migrating to p2w due to the, "if you can't beat 'em, sanction it" aspect of people violating TOS/EULA's by buying/selling items in the earlier p2p games.
It's likely a combination of the above that drove the market to be largely p2w, but I still romanticize about a game that comes out traditionally like an eq, wow or rift did and stick around for awhile. Anything is possible.
I have to say, from what I can tell Cryptic has put together a fairly effective F2P model. I've had a good time in Neverwinter so far, and while I admit I have not been playing very long, it's not like I have any skin in the game at this point. From what I can tell, the only things you NEED to pay real money for are vanity items (and yes, I consider the fastest mounts to be a vanity item). For a player like me who really doesn't care what my mounts look like or how many companions I have, that's perfect. The meat of this game is all accessible to players who put in enough time without paying a dime, so far as I can tell.
At one point, I would have agreed that this should be a subscription game. However, while that worked for WoW, I've seen too many other sub games fail in the past few years for me to really believe that a sub model is effective anymore. If a cash store model IS effective, and I don't have a to pay a dime to play because other people are willing to fork out big bucks for their pretend ponies- what could I possibly have to complain about?
I definitely can see problems with endgame at this point; but that's not what Cryptic is focused on yet. What I -really- like about this game is the Foundry. Not only because I'll be able to be my own virtual DM (which I think is insanely cool), but also because other players are putting together quality content. So, when I create alts, instead of doing the same story quests every time, I can just go through the Foundry and have a whole new experience. That to me is pretty darn cool, especially considering I'm the type of gamer who is addicted to leveling alts. :-)
I really don't see any downside to this game as long as you take it for what it is. Honestly, I still can't quite believe it's F2P. And in the end, even if I do get bored of the game and want to stop playing, the only real money I'll have spent is to buy extra character slots, and that costs next to nothing compared to the amount of money I put into WoW and other MMOs at this point. If I had one wish, it's that Cryptic comes up with a good, solid raid system for endgame. But even if they never do, I feel like I'll enjoy whatever time I spend in Neverwinter.
Wow's sub numbers are a fluke. The game released at just the right moment, and hooked a lot of people who stayed with it.
That said, a semi-decent F2P game will profit more than a sub-based game these days. I guarantee you'll never again see a sub-based game that does not also have a cash shop. Which is better for the players? I think it all depends on the game.
Speaking of Wow, let's keep in mind that on top of your 15 bucks, it was ~60$ for the starting game, then another 40$ for every expansion. So, without spending a dime in the cash shop, in the course of a few years you'd have spent $400-500. I can play an F2P for years and spend zero, especially if the game offers me a way to earn gamebucks through playing it.
You call market research and careful planning a fluke? What business are you in?
Comments
A Sub game would get rid of all the pay-to-win (i.e., the ability to pay cash for power) that's infused throughout this game.
I've not spent anything on this game, mostly because I refuse to partake in pay-to-win, but I would subscribe if it were a subscription game.
But, this is all just personal preference and I have no expectation of getting what I want.
Star Trek Online and Champions Online, the only other two active Cryptic MMOs.
Star Trek Online is the first google result for STO.
Here is the thing to keep in mind.
Cash shop games are great for the developers but bad for players and the game balance. Because inevitably the developers will put in items that give cash users an edge over those who don't buy. Of course you could argue that you could get those items it will just take you longer.
Subscription games don't generate the same kind of revenue that cash shop games do, which is why you see so many subscription games go free to play and introduce a cash shop.
Cash shop games can also introduce free entry which increases the population but at the expense of lower quality players entering the game.
So if a developer wants to make money they lean more towards cash shop free to play versions because they don't care about game balance because players will just put up with it. If players really wanted a balanced game they wouldn't play free to play games or cash shop games. But obviously they really don't care about game balance.
That single sentence just sums up NW's future.
I know the odds are 1/∞, but I sure as **** hope you're dead wrong about this game in particular.
Most of em' are awful, some of em are decent, and a few are pretty good."
That said, a semi-decent F2P game will profit more than a sub-based game these days. I guarantee you'll never again see a sub-based game that does not also have a cash shop. Which is better for the players? I think it all depends on the game.
Speaking of Wow, let's keep in mind that on top of your 15 bucks, it was ~60$ for the starting game, then another 40$ for every expansion. So, without spending a dime in the cash shop, in the course of a few years you'd have spent $400-500. I can play an F2P for years and spend zero, especially if the game offers me a way to earn gamebucks through playing it.
It pains me but he is right. Subscriptions are a thing of the past.
Game makers were into the business of making games previously and success seemed to rest on the idea that one should make a game that captured the attention and interest of its player-base. It was like writing a book that didn’t end.
Then someone figured out that suckers were far easier to fleece than anyone had previously imagined.
All that work, all those hours and hours in design, competition with each other, money spent on technology and assets, when all they needed to do was give you a login screen and a cash store.
There are games that cost $40 dollars when they were released on top of a subscription model. Now you can pay $40 dollars for a pretend pony alone.
So the subscription model is gone. Character customization is gone. Playing the character you want to play is gone. Now you take what you are given and pay hard for the rest.
Better to be a newcomer to the scene I think; to enter into this tarnished bronze age of gaming and imagine it to be a pinnacle of some sort. Better not to remember the golden age.
Even if they did make that caliber of game now, you wouldn’t be able to afford it.
Star Trek Online / Champions Online.
I won't play a sub game again, just saying.
And I love my Ioun Stone. :>
- Titania Silverblade, the Iron Rose of Myth Drannor (Lvl 60 GWF, Destroyer)
- Gwyneth, the Cowardly Cat Burglar Drowling (Lvl 60 TR, Saboteur)
- Lady Rowanne Firehair, Heartwarder of Sune (Lvl 33 DC)
- Satella, Sensate (LvL 44 CW, Renegade, Non-Active)
Check Steppenkat's Foundry Quest Reviews!
This game does on the otherhand have a verry good free to play model. Buy that pony (unlocks for all chars and future chars as well) for a one time fee. Thats a bit less then 3 months worth of subscription that you dont actualy have to pay. I made 1700 Zen by trading on the zen market. So im almost halfway to get one of those mounts for free, its all about the effort you put into it. And everything can be obtained without actualy spending any money at all, as long as we have some lazy ppl with to much money selling Zen for AD. Put in those $15 per month and you will soon have everything you want/need of the Zen market.
Well thought, and said. The only thing that I can add is that as some people have mentioned, I think those of us who remember the "golden age" of mmo's over a decade ago, are going to be the ones who believe p2p is the best way to go. I would think that the p2w fans probably don't even like their acronym
There is also an argument to be made for games migrating to p2w due to the, "if you can't beat 'em, sanction it" aspect of people violating TOS/EULA's by buying/selling items in the earlier p2p games.
It's likely a combination of the above that drove the market to be largely p2w, but I still romanticize about a game that comes out traditionally like an eq, wow or rift did and stick around for awhile. Anything is possible.
At one point, I would have agreed that this should be a subscription game. However, while that worked for WoW, I've seen too many other sub games fail in the past few years for me to really believe that a sub model is effective anymore. If a cash store model IS effective, and I don't have a to pay a dime to play because other people are willing to fork out big bucks for their pretend ponies- what could I possibly have to complain about?
I definitely can see problems with endgame at this point; but that's not what Cryptic is focused on yet. What I -really- like about this game is the Foundry. Not only because I'll be able to be my own virtual DM (which I think is insanely cool), but also because other players are putting together quality content. So, when I create alts, instead of doing the same story quests every time, I can just go through the Foundry and have a whole new experience. That to me is pretty darn cool, especially considering I'm the type of gamer who is addicted to leveling alts. :-)
I really don't see any downside to this game as long as you take it for what it is. Honestly, I still can't quite believe it's F2P. And in the end, even if I do get bored of the game and want to stop playing, the only real money I'll have spent is to buy extra character slots, and that costs next to nothing compared to the amount of money I put into WoW and other MMOs at this point. If I had one wish, it's that Cryptic comes up with a good, solid raid system for endgame. But even if they never do, I feel like I'll enjoy whatever time I spend in Neverwinter.
You call market research and careful planning a fluke? What business are you in?