How I stopped worrying and learned to love the beta label.

impervium · June 2013

There's really no need to keep bickering over the beta label. Here's why.

(There's not really a TL;DR, so read it or don't.)

Early buy-ins and the kickstarter culture have led to this trend. You can expect it to permeate software development (not just games) for years to come, or at least until people get tired of coming along for the bumpy beta ride. That's unlikely, considering there will always be some percentage of software users who want early access, who are excited about participating in the development process, and who are wealthy enough to pay for early access without worrying about (or regretting) the size of the price tags involved. I once donated to the development of a word processor. Yes, that's right. A. Word. Processor. How off-the-wall is that? It was designed especially for fiction writers to help organize their ideas. There were a lot of donations.

Are semantics involved? Maybe. But definitely not to the degree that's being exaggerated on these forums. The technical details themselves never come with a magical finish line. There's no magical progress bar inside computer code that announces when studios ought to peel their beta labels off. And the "well you're now accepting money" qualification is a qualification that was purely dreamed up by members of this forum community. It has no bearing on the reality of contemporary software development and publishing.

Bear in mind, too, that while it's (admittedly) amusing to see massive publishers like PWE jumping on the gravy train...it IS the same gravy train that's allowing an increasing number of small, independent studios to crowd-source their own development funding, and retain absolute control of their (and their fans) vision, rather than turning to big publishers who all too often seek to subjugate and exploit development studios. You want more stuff like Terraria, Minecraft, Shroud of the Avatar or Star Citizen?

I donated to Minecraft when it was in alpha. It was a bug-ridden mess and there was hardly anything to do. But if you think that's all I was paying for, you're missing the point. I was paying toward the game's future. And you know what? People who say "it's not really investing if you're not getting anything back" are REALLY missing the point.

Please use your head and ask yourself how many times you plan on writing these petty, bitter arguments about monetized alphas and betas over the years to come. Maybe consider adapting instead.

And I'm not just trying to one-up your logic here.

I went through a similar period of grumpy dissatisfaction about ten years ago when I first noticed this tiny, growing trend in the western market, micro-transactions, and first realized the genre would probably become subsidized in some form if the economy continued to tank all around us. (How's that for depressing foresight? What do ya think, is it a blessing or a curse?)

I didn't WANT the genre to become a product, I wanted it to remain a service, paid for by its subscribers. But guess what? Outside of this post, I could probably count the times in the past few years that I've griped about it on one hand. It is what it is, kids.

Your scrunchy-faced forum posts on the NW forums won't change a shift that's occurring within an entire industry. Trust me. I tried it. Didn't work.

rangergonewild · June 2013

There's still a big difference between a company asking for donations for support and a company who is using the new "We don't pay for testers anymore, we let the testers pay us" model ("There's a sucker born every minute" ~David Hannum(Not PT Barnum)). And you are correct. That is becoming the new trend but that doesn't mean people have to like it or shouldn't gripe about it. Maybe if enough people do complain then they'll change (sadly the only change most companies do is for whatever gets them the most money the fastest). And a post complaining about people posting complaining? Really?

impervium · June 2013

rangergonewild wrote: »

And a post complaining about people posting complaining? Really?

Boiling it down to complaining about complaining, I think, is a cheap back door out of the argument. I know my post reads like an opinion column, so there's some complaining, but I'm defending my viewpoint more than I am complaining about yours.

I'm willing to think about your other points, although really I've already addressed them--fighting the publishing industry with some forum posts, I just don't think it'll work man.

lanzdowne · June 2013

I enjoy reading your posts Impervium. Regarding the ranting and raging that's going on sometimes; about of all things a game, I always try to remind myself 'when playing in the sandbox with young children, they are going to throw sand in your face at some point.'

Oh yah, love the movie reference

impervium · June 2013

I should add that I think this model is more likely to undo big publishing than it is to save it (not that either will happen). For the true struggling indie developer whose pure genius could shine if only it weren't trapped beneath someone's thumb--this new era is their rise.

But my point was just that you can't untie money from the pre-launch anymore.

These are all just ultimately opinions of course, but the funny thing is, I see all the F2P free players coming through and calling this or that disingenuous; and all I can think is, you know, among many in my generation of MMORPG players, free players and the microtransactions which accompanied them are still considered to be the ground zero hallmark of a disingenuous and exploitative publishing industry. And I try not to get sucked into those conversations anymore (what would be the point? What's here is here.), but really, it's insane, I'm basically paying for these people to come play the game, and complain about a horrible business model that wouldn't exist if we all had to pay our own way.

spyke2009 · June 2013

The way indie development teams are approaching monetization has helped make games like League of Legends the most played game in the world.
The way publishers like PWE have approached monetization has held their titles back and given them a bad name, even if said monetization is comparatively better than some other companies.

Long story short, they're idiots. too many short term $$ gain signs in their eyes and not enough vision.

clcmercy · June 2013

To be honest, Impervium...I could care less if they called it grandmother's cookies.

What I -do- care about is the cash shop attached to the game that is supposed to be in testing. You do not...repeat NOT charge players for goods or services still in testing. That is shady to the extreme.

I can remember when beta meant you filed bug reports. Played the game to break it. If you didn't file bug reports? You didn't test. Oh, AND YOU GOT PAID FOR YOUR TIME. This.....I can't recall exactly when the consumer customer base got flummoxed into actually paying to beta test games.

So, personally...I file the occasional bug report ingame, usually about quality of life stuff...graphical clipping issues and the like, mostly because I'm not a good enough player to find exploits and stuff, but I do have a good eye for detail. To date...absolutely none of the issues I point out repeatedly has been addressed. So...now I just play.

But, let me make one thing clear...until the game is actually live and released? Not dropping a single penny on it. Don't feel compelled to in the least.

datemper · June 2013

impervium wrote: »

There's really no need to keep bickering over the beta label. Here's why.

(There's not really a TL;DR, so read it or don't.)

Early buy-ins and the kickstarter culture have led to this trend. You can expect it to permeate software development (not just games) for years to come, or at least until people get tired of coming along for the bumpy beta ride. That's unlikely, considering there will always be some percentage of software users who want early access, who are excited about participating in the development process, and who are wealthy enough to pay for early access without worrying about (or regretting) the size of the price tags involved. I once donated to the development of a word processor. Yes, that's right. A. Word. Processor. How off-the-wall is that? It was designed especially for fiction writers to help organize their ideas. There were a lot of donations.

Are semantics involved? Maybe. But definitely not to the degree that's being exaggerated on these forums. The technical details themselves never come with a magical finish line. There's no magical progress bar inside computer code that announces when studios ought to peel their beta labels off. And the "well you're now accepting money" qualification is a qualification that was purely dreamed up by members of this forum community. It has no bearing on the reality of contemporary software development and publishing.

Bear in mind, too, that while it's (admittedly) amusing to see massive publishers like PWE jumping on the gravy train...it IS the same gravy train that's allowing an increasing number of small, independent studios to crowd-source their own development funding, and retain absolute control of their (and their fans) vision, rather than turning to big publishers who all too often seek to subjugate and exploit development studios. You want more stuff like Terraria, Minecraft, Shroud of the Avatar or Star Citizen?

I donated to Minecraft when it was in alpha. It was a bug-ridden mess and there was hardly anything to do. But if you think that's all I was paying for, you're missing the point. I was paying toward the game's future. And you know what? People who say "it's not really investing if you're not getting anything back" are REALLY missing the point.

Please use your head and ask yourself how many times you plan on writing these petty, bitter arguments about monetized alphas and betas over the years to come. Maybe consider adapting instead.

And I'm not just trying to one-up your logic here.

I went through a similar period of grumpy dissatisfaction about ten years ago when I first noticed this tiny, growing trend in the western market, micro-transactions, and first realized the genre would probably become subsidized in some form if the economy continued to tank all around us. (How's that for depressing foresight? What do ya think, is it a blessing or a curse?)

I didn't WANT the genre to become a product, I wanted it to remain a service, paid for by its subscribers. But guess what? Outside of this post, I could probably count the times in the past few years that I've griped about it on one hand. It is what it is, kids.

Your scrunchy-faced forum posts on the NW forums won't change a shift that's occurring within an entire industry. Trust me. I tried it. Didn't work.

Change,love it or hate it,it will always come,we all have to adapt and I'm glad you have.

impervium · June 2013

spyke2009 wrote: »

Long story short, they're idiots. too many short term $$ gain signs in their eyes and not enough vision.

I don't want to just say "THEY'RE" idiots, because who are "THEY?" Lots of people work at these publishers. I guarantee you they're not all idiots. What I think happens though is, shareholders or other "key investment interests" are making decisions that used to be made by visionary creators. Before mictrotransactions, the ins and outs of in-game economies were puzzled over by a weird stew of game designers, economics professors and world-builders.

The thing about RMT is, it might link these virtual worlds to our real-world economy, but the virtual world is STILL THERE. And as this brave new era's developers and their overlords are price tagging everything that used to simply be "The World", available for one simple entry ticket, they quickly lose a valuable perspective that the rest of us proceed to enter the game armed with, wide-eyed and ready to immerse. Well we can't see the whole tapestry anymore, because every thread is tagged like a bottle on a shelf that we have to stop and pay for.

When you say "not enough vision", it makes me think there could have been a better way for this business model. I'd love to know if I'm wrong about it being a horrible business model (for those just tuning in, I'm referring to microtransactions and F2P here; not kickstarters and early-access schemes, which I mostly support). Maybe it's not the business model that is horrible, but the wizards behind the curtain.

lanzdowne · June 2013

In a way, you cant blame the F2P model for emerging, at least from the game dev side. When players started selling digital game items and accounts on places like ebay, over a decade ago. I recall seeing EQ accounts in the $10k+ range at one point.

If I were a dev or game designer or owner, I would not have been happy at players, ignoring the eula and making money from my game, my intellectual property. Those complaining about the f2p model(or p2w as they see it) need a short history lesson. Its the gaming community, who directed where we are today to some large degree. Them and the gold farmers.

Those early EQ 'ebayers' caused the trend that we have now. What can you do to stop it if there's really very little policing or control over selling of accounts. And as a game dev or game owner, why would you let such a golden opportunity slip and fall into the hands of people taking advantage of your property?

I do recall giving my 2cents on an EQ message board years ago, I wondered why the EQ devs werent just selling their items themselves...now we have such an option and we hear the other side of the coin complaining... A great man once said;

"You can please all of the gamers some of the time. You can please some of the gamers all of the time. But you cant please all of the gamers all of the time..."

My apologies for misquoting you President Lincoln.

impervium · June 2013

lanzdowne wrote: »

In a way, you cant blame the F2P model for emerging, at least from the game dev side. When players started selling digital game items and accounts on places like ebay, over a decade ago. I recall seeing EQ accounts in the $10k+ range at one point.

If I were a dev or game designer or owner, I would not have been happy at players, ignoring the eula and making money from my game, my intellectual property. Those complaining about the f2p model(or p2w as they see it) need a short history lesson. Its the gaming community, who directed where we are today to some large degree. Them and the gold farmers.

Well I was waiting for this to come up, because I knew it would hehe.

Here's the thing though. Game designers were surprised, they were blown away by virtual item sales (and it really started in UO before EQ, but I'm splitting hairs). But they weren't up in arms over it. There's a recent candid interview from a gaming conference out there on YouTube: Markeedragon interviewing Richard "Lord British" Garriott. (I know that's given at least a few of you pause.)

At some point, LB asks MD how much he made in "real estate sales" in UO. Well in his first year it was over $100,000. LB did nothing but smile and chuckle. He thought it was kind of weird and surreal, but pretty awesome. Thing is, as LB explained, the devs weren't allowed to say that back then. It was the publishers and lawyers who were up in arms over it. To the devs, it was just another wacky consequence of what was (back then) one of the more interesting social experiments of its time. Google for "the Daedalus Project" and "Nick Yee" sometime and you'll see just how much thought used to go into MMOs and their audiences.

I agree with you wholeheartedly that we directed them to it. But here's the thing. The very [TOS-breaking] nature of those transactions always kept it out of the limelight. MMO publishers haven't exactly been so subtle about it and it's hurt immersion. And we're talking about virtual worlds here. That's problematic.

impervium · June 2013

I have to go for a while, but thanks to the few who responded. Most of you who disagree with me gave me things to think about instead of just trolling. Thank you. Hope more people have comments I can read later.

lanzdowne · June 2013

Ah yes you are correct sir it did start with UO as far as I can recall. I played EQ which was about a year later and shunned the unwashed masses of the UO crowd lol. I will look for those vids ty.

athanshadow · June 2013

the most complaints on this forum are not coming from players who mostly play f2p games.we are used to this type of system and know how work it get everything we need or want.the outrage comes from p2p players who now have buy things like re-specs and a lot of people with founder under their name feeling they did not get what they paid for.the rest are just people who giggle because they HAMSTER someone off on a forum.

xhrit · June 2013

logic for the win.

komarr13 · June 2013

I think a large part of the "beta" label here is just CYA on the company's part. When you say "buy my finished product", if it doesn't work as advertised people are more likely to ask for a refund and, depending on where they live, have more legal avenues to seek that refund. When you say "this product is still in testing, but you can pay for X item/service at your own risk" people will (usually) be more accepting of problems, along with lessened legal issues/consumer laws applying.

stormdrag0n · June 2013

impervium wrote: »

Boiling it down to complaining about complaining, I think, is a cheap back door out of the argument. I know my post reads like an opinion column, so there's some complaining, but I'm defending my viewpoint more than I am complaining about yours.

I'm willing to think about your other points, although really I've already addressed them--fighting the publishing industry with some forum posts, I just don't think it'll work man.

As always thought provoking, and well written.

Kudos!

kimmurieloblodra · June 2013

+1 OP. Great Post.

Only one comment I'd like to make though: Usually, when you are testing something, you don't ban your testers for finding an exploit or a bug in the code.... You reward them.

Although I agree this is a beta, I don't think PWE should be dropping the banhammer when someone finds an exploit, that's a little counter-intuitive to the idea of testing.

EDIT: If they continuously abuse the exploit for personal gain, I understand why they are banning, but otherwise .........

laudon1 · June 2013

the title reminds me of dr. strangelove

kattefjaes · June 2013

impervium wrote: »

I donated to Minecraft when it was in alpha. It was a bug-ridden mess and there was hardly anything to do. But if you think that's all I was paying for, you're missing the point. I was paying toward the game's future. And you know what? People who say "it's not really investing if you're not getting anything back" are REALLY missing the point.

First, let me say that I loved your post. It was well-written, coherent, interesting, civil and literate. I'm very glad that I was sitting down when I read it here.

I do have a fundamental problem with the bit that I quoted above, though. It's probably not taking issue with your train of thought, more born of my cynicism after seeing Cryptic in action, and reading around about their behaviour too.

Minecraft was.. a crazy, nerdy labour of love. Neverwinter is feeling more like a cynical short-medium term cash grab, built as far as possible from warmed-over resources and systems. I'm clearly entirely not an entirely neutral party, as I came to the game with some levels of interest- loving the idea of a shiny modern MMO in a much-loved setting that I enjoyed years ago as a spotty teen playing tabletop games.

I don't know, it feels increasingly like a pathological cash sieve first, and a game second. Nothing works properly, yet it costs real money to find that out, and explore the configuration space of the fail. That makes me a sad kitten.

Yes, I'd love to be proved completely wrong, but it doesn't feel like pumping money into it would be supporting a game, keeping the devs fed while they craft something wonderful; it feels like filling the sieve. It certainly affects my perception of the idea of being a "founder"- founding what? A cash grab, with a trajectory that is all too predictable, with a very real terminal velocity?

Like I say, were the game to prove me entirely wrong, then I would be nothing but delighted. However, I have a hard time seeing it right now.

chai23 · June 2013

The issue youre basically justifying OP, is that companies have switched from paying QA to do the majority of their testing, to charging people to do the majority of their testing. There are a few issues with this.

1. People will try and barge into the argument with: No one forced you to pay. Right, however the stuff that gets paid for has to be tested as well. People buy things that are bugged and it leaves a salty taste in their mouth, and then they have the white knights telling them its beta and if they dont like it they can leave etc. - which is just as bad as people complaining about bugs and exploits in an over the top fashion.

2. People pay, then when their accounts are hacked they are told their stuff will not be returned to them. Some of the more vocal blind defenders want us to believe that every single person that got hacked is at fault, which is not only as bad if not worse than people who complain in an over the top fashion, but it really doesnt make people want to pay for a founder back, knowing full well that they are just buying some hacker a bunch of ADs.

3. If we are testing, bugs have to be acknowledged. theres been more than a few issues that were reported in closed beta now that made it to open beta, and were not really acknowledged, addressed, or talked about until someone took advantage of them to the point where their existance could no longer be denied.

4. If you want to call it beta, you have to live with people providing negative feedback. The forumites who tell every person who provides negative feedback that if they dont like it they should just leave rather than posting their opinion - fully need to understand that if they are calling this beta, they are asking for that feedback. Thats what beta is after all. Testing and finding out where the issues are. If the blind defenders dont want to talk about the issues, that fine, but they need to refrain from telling people to leave if they dont like it, as that is not conducive with a beta atmosphere. If they do not refrain, it needs to be enforced.

In short - calling it beta, then telling us we just need to live with it because its beta, is a direct contradiction. The entire point of beta is to find those things that negatively impact the game so the company can make changes which heightens the overall experience of gameplay, which is not the blind acceptance mantra I see posted far too often where people just want to stay in their comfort zones use "its beta" to excuse any aspect or behavior that makes the game less fun to play. If the idea is that they do not want us to identify those things that make the gameplay experience less enjoyable, then they need to remove the beta tag, because the mantra of "leave if you dont like it" directly contradicts "its a live beta".

s3pt · June 2013

The thing is, you can try to spin it however you want or justify it to yourself but what it boils down to is this: there is absolutely zero difference between what they are calling open beta and a launched game. Zero, zip, nada.

It's live, accepting money and there will be no wipes, exactly what a launched game is.

If you are intellectually honest with yourself, you know this is true. Hell, even gaming review sites which are notorious for kissing developer *** for $$ can see this and call it what it is.

TLDR; a spade is a spade, no matter what you want to call it.

kattefjaes · June 2013

chai23 wrote: »

2. People pay, then when their accounts are hacked they are told their stuff will not be returned to them. Some of the more vocal blind defenders want us to believe that every single person that got hacked is at fault, which is not only as bad if not worse than people who complain in an over the top fashion, but it really doesnt make people want to pay for a founder back, knowing full well that they are just buying some hacker a bunch of ADs. .

The ones who are hacked and get told to go and boil their heads are the lucky ones. Most are just ignored, and their tickets closed with boilerplate.

lostdraftee · June 2013

I don't really care if it's beta r not. This game is not big hit by any means. The content and presentation are average at best. There is nothing that can keep players interested for years to come. Minding all that it was a suicide to reveal this game to general public in such a broken state. In addition, neither publisher (PWE), nor developer (Cryptic Games) had shown in past their ability to long term support of their games. PWE has history of releasing game that score below average at best and has record of being greedy money grabbing company. Cryptic has shown inability to produce new content and support for their products in past. No wet fanboy dreams can change these facts.
So for myself, I quitted the game without creating posts and threads about this. Ten minutes ago I found NWO launcher in Start Menu. First, I wanted to delete darn thing. I've opened launcher just to make sure that they did something with the game. So they did. Patchnotes with 3 lines in them. Three lines patchnotes without fixing any gameplay issues after month of doing whatever? No, sir, label "beta" has nothing to do with this mess.

clockwerkninja · June 2013

While I agree with the major points in the OP, I do not think the sentiment will be able to save PWE from backlash over neverwinter. Everyone I know who invested money insists they are done with everything PWE has touched. That is a no exaggeration across the board DONE. These are gamers who have BETA tested and played F2P games for years.

So while I agree with the OP as to why F2P is a good model and we should support it, I do not agree that we should give company's like PWE the rights they needs to trample on the whole F2P market. New gamers coming to F2P just for neverwinter will now see the whole model as a scammy way to back door your credit card.

If they would have stepped out of the way and let the game nerds at cryptic handle the game world then everything would have been ok. Instead they have shown that the publisher will be the final say and gamers are not willing to accept that. Many are leaving in droves, some like me are hanging around to watch the fallout or to see Cryptic pull this one from the flames..Whatever comes first.

spyke2009 · June 2013

impervium wrote: »

There's really no need to keep bickering over the beta label. Here's why.

(There's not really a TL;DR, so read it or don't.)

Early buy-ins and the kickstarter culture have led to this trend. You can expect it to permeate software development (not just games) for years to come, or at least until people get tired of coming along for the bumpy beta ride. That's unlikely, considering there will always be some percentage of software users who want early access, who are excited about participating in the development process, and who are wealthy enough to pay for early access without worrying about (or regretting) the size of the price tags involved. I once donated to the development of a word processor. Yes, that's right. A. Word. Processor. How off-the-wall is that? It was designed especially for fiction writers to help organize their ideas. There were a lot of donations.

Are semantics involved? Maybe. But definitely not to the degree that's being exaggerated on these forums. The technical details themselves never come with a magical finish line. There's no magical progress bar inside computer code that announces when studios ought to peel their beta labels off. And the "well you're now accepting money" qualification is a qualification that was purely dreamed up by members of this forum community. It has no bearing on the reality of contemporary software development and publishing.

Bear in mind, too, that while it's (admittedly) amusing to see massive publishers like PWE jumping on the gravy train...it IS the same gravy train that's allowing an increasing number of small, independent studios to crowd-source their own development funding, and retain absolute control of their (and their fans) vision, rather than turning to big publishers who all too often seek to subjugate and exploit development studios. You want more stuff like Terraria, Minecraft, Shroud of the Avatar or Star Citizen?

I donated to Minecraft when it was in alpha. It was a bug-ridden mess and there was hardly anything to do. But if you think that's all I was paying for, you're missing the point. I was paying toward the game's future. And you know what? People who say "it's not really investing if you're not getting anything back" are REALLY missing the point.

Please use your head and ask yourself how many times you plan on writing these petty, bitter arguments about monetized alphas and betas over the years to come. Maybe consider adapting instead.

And I'm not just trying to one-up your logic here.

I went through a similar period of grumpy dissatisfaction about ten years ago when I first noticed this tiny, growing trend in the western market, micro-transactions, and first realized the genre would probably become subsidized in some form if the economy continued to tank all around us. (How's that for depressing foresight? What do ya think, is it a blessing or a curse?)

I didn't WANT the genre to become a product, I wanted it to remain a service, paid for by its subscribers. But guess what? Outside of this post, I could probably count the times in the past few years that I've griped about it on one hand. It is what it is, kids.

Your scrunchy-faced forum posts on the NW forums won't change a shift that's occurring within an entire industry. Trust me. I tried it. Didn't work.

Sadly true. Aside from the whole hyperbolic claim that the "vocal minority" aren't able to cause changes. D3 was a hard lesson for Blizzard in that regards.

*bear in mind usually claim of "the vocal minority" is more often than not a fallacy.

ganjaman1 · June 2013

As soon as you see the server merges , you can be pretty sure about 2 things :

1. The population of the entire game is not enough to fill 3 servers .

2. The end is near , which will be old news considering how bad is the situation right now on MF and BH servers lol .

kimmurieloblodra · June 2013

ganjaman1 wrote: »

As soon as you see the server merges , you can be pretty sure about 2 things :

1. The population of the entire game is not enough to fill 3 servers .

I don't understand the correlation here....

silentsins · June 2013

spyke2009 wrote: »

The way indie development teams are approaching monetization has helped make games like League of Legends the most played game in the world.
The way publishers like PWE have approached monetization has held their titles back and given them a bad name, even if said monetization is comparatively better than some other companies.

Long story short, they're idiots. too many short term $$ gain signs in their eyes and not enough vision.

I think that fundamentally, the F2P model is unhealthy for the MMO industry as a whole. MMOs aren't really designed with a drop-in drop-out nature like most casual games. They require some level of commitment to your character, guild, community, ect. (How many times have you seen the statement "this class doesn't come unto it's own until level X?" in an MMO forum? What about "the game doesn't really begin until endgame?"). Subs reinforced these design choices through the Commitment and Consistency principal...
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robert_Cialdini
...in that the sub made you feel obligated to play to justify your purchase. Facebook games and even LoL on the other hand, are much more modular in nature. There's little commitment to buy in, and very little drawback for leaving (LoL has a steep learning curve, but there's no artificial progression keeping you from picking up where you left off a year later). They more primarily on the little dopamine hits you get from earning <whatever it is the game says is the reward> and social networking in order to get you to keep playing (note: all the game types mentioned do all of the above to some degree, but MMOs emphasize one aspect while the social games emphasize another).

MMOs are taking the F2P route because it makes the publishers more money. Unquestionably so. The thing is, what seemed like a great idea when it was a few companies with a leg up on the market might not be such a good idea when EVERYONE is doing it. Where's the commitment when there's all these F2P games and the payment model encourages you to hop from game to game? What's the point of dealing with all these artificial progression systems and grindy nonsense when there's a WHOLE NEW game over there, and most of it is free to play as well? Why should companies bother with the insane costs to get an MMO off the ground when those other mediums have less up-front costs and similar returns? These MMOs HAVE to give you the majority of the experience for free simply to keep up with the market.

The F2P model in the MMO genre relies on customer loyalty (or addicition) to get each individual gamer to pay more than a sub price, yet the model itself actively discourages loyalty. I think that when the majority of the consumers get savvy about this, the market will collapse without some major changes. MMOs are literally a buyer's market right now, and voting with your wallet is the best way to get your point across to these companies; they're not a charity, but neither am I.

I've spent $10 dollars on this game as the standard "tip" that I give to F2P games for the ride to level cap. I have zero interest in spending more at the current quality of the game. That's not whining, it's genuinely what I feel that this game is worth. Edit: I have no problems spending a lot of money on GW2 though. That game has many flaws, but I the cash shop is certainly not one of them.

rangergonewild · June 2013

silentsins wrote: »

I think that fundamentally, the F2P model is unhealthy for the MMO industry as a whole. MMOs aren't really designed with a drop-in drop-out nature like most casual games. They require some level of commitment to your character, guild, community, ect. (How many times have you seen the statement "this class doesn't come unto it's own until level X?" in an MMO forum? What about "the game doesn't really begin until endgame?"). Subs reinforced these design choices through the Commitment and Consistency principal...
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robert_Cialdini
...in that the sub made you feel obligated to play to justify your purchase. Facebook games and even LoL on the other hand, are much more modular in nature. There's little commitment to buy in, and very little drawback for leaving (LoL has a steep learning curve, but there's no artificial progression keeping you from picking up where you left off a year later). They more primarily on the little dopamine hits you get from earning <whatever it is the game says is the reward> and social networking in order to get you to keep playing (note: all the game types mentioned do all of the above to some degree, but MMOs emphasize one aspect while the social games emphasize another).

MMOs are taking the F2P route because it makes the publishers more money. Unquestionably so. The thing is, what seemed like a great idea when it was a few companies with a leg up on the market might not be such a good idea when EVERYONE is doing it. Where's the commitment when there's all these F2P games and the payment model encourages you to hop from game to game? What's the point of dealing with all these artificial progression systems and grindy nonsense when there's a WHOLE NEW game over there, and most of it is free to play as well? Why should companies bother with the insane costs to get an MMO off the ground when those other mediums have less up-front costs and similar returns? These MMOs HAVE to give you the majority of the experience for free simply to keep up with the market.

The F2P model in the MMO genre relies on customer loyalty (or addicition) to get each individual gamer to pay more than a sub price, yet the model itself actively discourages loyalty. I think that when the majority of the consumers get savvy about this, the market will collapse without some major changes. MMOs are literally a buyer's market right now, and voting with your wallet is the best way to get your point across to these companies; they're not a charity, but neither am I.

I've spent $10 dollars on this game as the standard "tip" that I give to F2P games for the ride to level cap. I have zero interest in spending more at the current quality of the game. That's not whining, it's genuinely what I feel that this game is worth. Edit: I have no problems spending a lot of money on GW2 though. That game has many flaws, but I the cash shop is certainly not one of them.

I think this really "hit the nail on the head". I have tried many of the recent F2P MMOs and I think the longest I've played any of them was for about 2 months (SWTOR). Compare that to the 2 years I've spent on EQ and the 5 years I played WOW. I put about 9 years into Neverwinter Nights multiplayer, bought every expansion and official campaigns (but technically that is not really an MMO. Maybe a mini MMO?). So I definitely see what you are getting at here. It really "chaps my hide" when people just brush it off and say "F2P is the way of the future. Just adapt and accept it." If I don't feel that it is right and I feel that it is hurting the MMO gaming genre that I used to know and love I absolutely will not accept it or move on quietly. Especially when it comes to a game that just slapped the Dungeons and Dragons logo across itself but "feels" very little like it.

erethizon1 · June 2013

rangergonewild wrote: »

There's still a big difference between a company asking for donations for support and a company who is using the new "We don't pay for testers anymore, we let the testers pay us" model ("There's a sucker born every minute" ~David Hannum(Not PT Barnum)). And you are correct. That is becoming the new trend but that doesn't mean people have to like it or shouldn't gripe about it. Maybe if enough people do complain then they'll change (sadly the only change most companies do is for whatever gets them the most money the fastest). And a post complaining about people posting complaining? Really?

Even better than complaining is speaking with your wallet. If a game is P2P do not play it for the first 6 months to a year that it is released (unless you have credible reasons to believe that it is actually a finished product and not a buggy beta that has been released too early). In the case of F2P games you can start playing whenever you wish but do not contribute money in any form until the game is what you consider to be worthy of being released. Following this philosophy anyone that is currently playing NW knows they are participating in a beta test and expect the game to be buggy and full of trouble. Some time down the road when the game is ready for release we can decide if the game is worth contributing to financially.

How I stopped worrying and learned to love the beta label.

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