WoW has my #1 favorite "F2P" system (ie either use gold to buy a subscription token from the auction house, or pay cash).
So WoW used EVE's PLEX system and now they're gonna get credit for inventing that too? :P
new thing Id remove.... people that insist on getting into tired arguments, derailing threads for 2+ pages
Huh, I personally feel games like SWtOR and LotRO have vastly superior F2P systems
I would love to hear the rational behind this given that SWTOR and LotRO are near universally considered to have some of the worst F2P systems possible.
I prefer them because they make it very difficult to actually play for free, and as I said I personally despise it when people are able to play these kinds of games for free ...
I prefer them because they make it very difficult to actually play for free, and as I said I personally despise it when people are able to play these kinds of games for free ...
Why? Whats wrong with people being able to play games for free?
Because, IMHO, MMOs should never be free, if you want to play them you should support the developers and the community by subscribing. But then SWG was my first MMO, and I had three active accounts for that game because they only allowed 1 (later 2) characters per server per account, so maybe I'm just old school ... oh and I was paying for those 3 accounts with money earned at McDonald's, so it's not like I was wealthy then, and while I'm better off now I'm still far from wealthy.
I really, truly feel an intense hatred towards the F2P concept and those who came up with it. IMHO it has completely destroyed this one great gaming genre.
I prefer them because they make it very difficult to actually play for free, and as I said I personally despise it when people are able to play these kinds of games for free ...
Why? Whats wrong with people being able to play games for free?
It's called "pay to win". It's a small group of players, who feel entitled to being able to do more since they invested in the game. It also ignores the fact that the f2p business model eventually generates other paying members and a larger return on investment for the company over-all.
years ago, you'd hear of these guys in game conventions, for example. They called them "power players" as that's what they did. Had nothing to do with the game, just how powerful they could get as quickly as they could get. A lot of them would pay thousands for little bitty items they'd use exactly one time and never use again, since something more powerful would come along. They were also the ones most well-known for crunching the written rules of the game in order to hold power over the rest of the group. Today, you don't see as many of them anymore, fortunately. They put many a game out of business.
Because, IMHO, MMOs should never be free, if you want to play them you should support the developers and the community by subscribing. But then SWG was my first MMO, and I had three active accounts for that game because they only allowed 1 (later 2) characters per server per account, so maybe I'm just old school ... oh and I was paying for those 3 accounts with money earned at McDonald's, so it's not like I was wealthy then, and while I'm better off now I'm still far from wealthy.
I really, truly feel an intense hatred towards the F2P concept and those who came up with it. IMHO it has completely destroyed this one great gaming genre.
Except all data has shown across most every MMO that companies get MORE money from gong F2P then they did via subscription.
The only MMO that has ever proven the exception is like WoW, just because of the unique place it holds as like the second truly "big" MMO after Everquest.
They make more money because, for whatever reason, they were either unable to attract or unable to retain enough players at launch. The fact that most F2P MMOs don't come close to the amount of new content that WoW adds in it's content patches would seem to indicate that a successful sub model has the potential to make a lot more money than a successful F2P model. It's no secret STO had many problems when it first launched, ranging from huge bugs to questionable design decisions, and these problems caused them to lose subs and end up in a situation where F2P was the only way to stay profitable.
Indeed but no need to worry president dukat, your freinds in the old star empire are working on a genetic virus to eliminate the bajoran threat once and for all, once introduced it will move through the population quickly mutating after each infection ,thus prohibiting any cure since the cure that was good for one subject would be useless for the next so on and so forth.
Bajorans will die a painfull and horrbile death but the planet will be left unschathed, until we deliver your thalaron device with which you can extinguish the planet itself.
They make more money because, for whatever reason, they were either unable to attract or unable to retain enough players at launch. The fact that most F2P MMOs don't come close to the amount of new content that WoW adds in it's content patches would seem to indicate that a successful sub model has the potential to make a lot more money than a successful F2P model. It's no secret STO had many problems when it first launched, ranging from huge bugs to questionable design decisions, and these problems caused them to lose subs and end up in a situation where F2P was the only way to stay profitable.
WoW only has a successful sub model because WoW cornered the market long before most other MMOs came out.
Comparing to WoW totally ignores why WoW is the way it is, in that Everquest was dying off, and it took the spotlight before anyone else could. It's not the standard which you can use to compare to other games.
No game can have a subscription model as successful as WoW because WoW already exists, and no game WILL have one like WoW until WoW dies.
My point was that even the most successful F2P games have a serious lack of content compared to successful subscription games. For example, with STO every couple months you get one new mission and every couple years you get a handful of missions all at once for an "expansion", in SWTOR right now you get one new "chapter" each month, and with WoW you get a bunch of new quests, sometimes new zones, plus raids and dungeons added fairly regularly and every two years you get an expansion with more content than STO has now after all these years.
As far as STO is concerned, I was much happier with the original feature episode formula, where a new mission came I believe every week for several weeks. That kept me excited and playing, and made it feel like an actual event, whereas now I just play something else for 6-12 months until enough missions get released to keep me entertained for a couple days.
The Borg.
They have been one of the most implacable threats and menaces to grace Star Trek. Here they are farmed like wheat. Yank these cybernetic pretenders and put in a single Borg cube as an event like the Crystaline entity.
Originally Posted by pwlaughingtrendy
Network engineers are not ship designers.
Nor should they be. Their ships would look weird.
The Borg.
They have been one of the most implacable threats and menaces to grace Star Trek. Here they are farmed like wheat. Yank these cybernetic pretenders and put in a single Borg cube as an event like the Crystaline entity.
Again, you'd mess up the primary thing that keeps STO running. Without F2P, they would have already shut down the game and I'm thinking you likely wouldn't want that.
Not to mention the fact that STO has one of the best F2P business models in the industry.
Considering his attitude toward STO's F2P model I suspect that our friend Thunderfoot has never played the likes of SWTOR.....
At least the most generous model I've come across...I really wanted to like SWTOR more, what with the story and voicework, but there are several reasons that I only have the basic 2 toons, neither higher than level 23. Removing stuff from STO blends more into fixing for many things...that said, I'll throw a vote to tailor restrictions, esp. special boffs not being able to be altered at all and the idea of getting knocked out of sprint the moment something shoots at you. Less likely, but more desired would be some (or all) of the rng in crafting, something along the lines of, catalysts or consumables to add chances for particular mods (might also bring down prices on 'desireable' mod combos, so that's a powercreep/balance thing). Less likely still would be the differences between captain classes, since we're all supposed to be command-track, regardless of our department before promotion to captain. Maybe make it a 'limited action set' like Wildstar or similar, where the player characters have progression unlocks that they can slot a certain number of at a time, reconfiguring at any time like our current traits.
Because, IMHO, MMOs should never be free, if you want to play them you should support the developers and the community by subscribing. But then SWG was my first MMO, and I had three active accounts for that game because they only allowed 1 (later 2) characters per server per account, so maybe I'm just old school ... oh and I was paying for those 3 accounts with money earned at McDonald's, so it's not like I was wealthy then, and while I'm better off now I'm still far from wealthy.
I really, truly feel an intense hatred towards the F2P concept and those who came up with it. IMHO it has completely destroyed this one great gaming genre.
Except all data has shown across most every MMO that companies get MORE money from gong F2P then they did via subscription.
The only MMO that has ever proven the exception is like WoW, just because of the unique place it holds as like the second truly "big" MMO after Everquest.
They make more money because, for whatever reason, they were either unable to attract or unable to retain enough players at launch. The fact that most F2P MMOs don't come close to the amount of new content that WoW adds in it's content patches would seem to indicate that a successful sub model has the potential to make a lot more money than a successful F2P model. It's no secret STO had many problems when it first launched, ranging from huge bugs to questionable design decisions, and these problems caused them to lose subs and end up in a situation where F2P was the only way to stay profitable.
Pretty much any argument about superiority of model made that includes WoW ignores the distortion that it's massive playerbase puts into the equation. It could lose, what, 75% of it's players and still have more than almost anything else?. It's false causation to imply that the reason it has more players is the superiority of it's subscription model.
That, and I'd love to hear where someone like myself fits into your view about 'nobody should be able to play for free (because I want my exclusivity/status/bragging rights/feeling of superiority/etc.' I average 25-30 dollars a year, more or less as it becomes available to spare, in an irregular pattern. Usually, it's to buy a ship I can't be bothered grinding, and I've never put in a dime for bank slots, costume slots, or any non C-store ships.
I'd remove the silly set exclusivity for missing an Anniversary Event ship, making the last console you need impossible to obtain.
I was lucky with the Samsar, but not the Krenim one. I wasn't on top of things when it came to the Krenim ship, but if I knew about the console flagship exclusivity, I would've ground that ship.
Also, restrictions in the Tailor. With added bonus of adding all the NPC hairstyles and those awesome exclusive Admiral outfits - like Hakeev, Sela have. The weird Borg head-dress for Liberated Borg would also be sweet to have.
The Borg.
They have been one of the most implacable threats and menaces to grace Star Trek. Here they are farmed like wheat. Yank these cybernetic pretenders and put in a single Borg cube as an event like the Crystaline entity.
But the CE is farmed like wheat ...
&*&^%!!!
That might not have translated well. But you might have heard my scream from where you are.
Then not like CE. But like the Japanese version of Ninja Warrior. Where you are not expected to win and if you do the devs alter it for the next release to make it harder. (Would look like they adapted to us.)
Originally Posted by pwlaughingtrendy
Network engineers are not ship designers.
Nor should they be. Their ships would look weird.
The Borg.
They have been one of the most implacable threats and menaces to grace Star Trek. Here they are farmed like wheat. Yank these cybernetic pretenders and put in a single Borg cube as an event like the Crystaline entity.
But the CE is farmed like wheat ...
&*&^%!!!
That might not have translated well. But you might have heard my scream from where you are.
Then not like CE. But like the Japanese version of Ninja Warrior. Where you are not expected to win and if you do the devs alter it for the next release to make it harder. (Would look like they adapted to us.)
considering the 100k+ dps club... good luck with that
That's fine. You can have your opinion, which holds the same value as that of anyone else. Good for you, not taking an opposing view seriously. Want your admiral rank participation pip? Guess what? Not everyone wants to inhale the wind that the Federation is constantly breaking.
Well, no. Some opinions have more value, especially those of the IP creators. And it is very clear that the whole Star Trek universe runs on the concept of overcoming differences on the large scale whenever possible. That similarities outweigh differences and will make different nations/people work together.
You can have different worlds built work just as well, but within Star Trek, sooner or later you will have this unification. You may not like it, and there's nothing anybody can or will do to make that change, but in a game within this set universe, glorifying conquest doesn't fit as much as in others. So your opinion can be a good headcanon to enjoy the game, but you cannot outrule that in game stuff contradicts that.
Except, in this case, the queues dropped dead, right after Delta/Dilithium Rising.
The queues were never alive to begin with. Only ISA and CCE ever really got played.
I remember when I was leveling my reps on my first toon, there was no problem at all to get a Viscous Cycle for Undine or Dyson Tower Defence (not sure about the name) for Dyson. They were popping in less than a minute almost all of the time. People may have always preferred their standards, but others did reasonably well to be viable for a "daily half hour of mark collecting".
This right here. That was on meimeitoo for throwing cash at zen for dil, when it's stupid easy to get the dil on alts
Well, it ain't necessarily stupid to throw cash at a game instead of farming stuff. I am partially self employed, so am at an advantage here, since I can scale my work hours, but adding an hour a week will easily make me more money than I need to avoid half an hour of doing things I don't enjoy in STO. Saving money isn't smart when you lose money (here I'll take time=money) in the course of saving less. Your mileage may vary, and it may depend on your enjoyment of the work you do or the things you do in game, but as a generalization it doesn't hold.
They make more money because, for whatever reason, they were either unable to attract or unable to retain enough players at launch. The fact that most F2P MMOs don't come close to the amount of new content that WoW adds in it's content patches would seem to indicate that a successful sub model has the potential to make a lot more money than a successful F2P model. It's no secret STO had many problems when it first launched, ranging from huge bugs to questionable design decisions, and these problems caused them to lose subs and end up in a situation where F2P was the only way to stay profitable.
The thing is, not all companies work the same. And if you don't find enough space in the major market, you gotta find your niche. Otherwise also niche markets wouldn't be satisfied. As long as there are players not interested in (or not able to) pay a regular subscription, there will be games catering to them. And a good thing that is, too.
Also, as has been mentioned by somtaawkhar already, WoW is a bad example, since it is an extreme stand out. If it were that easy to just copy what WoW did and be successful, we'd have dozens of games with the scope and player base and... of WoW. Thing is, we haven't. This is certainly a sign of quality work on behalf of Blizzard, but it doesn't mean, other versions aren't viable and well done as well. But it is also a self sustaining status. There's multiple alternatives to Facebook, yet many people in the west won't use them, because their friends are on Facebook, and what good is it to be on a better platform nobody uses. Yet the others sometimes make their share of money, too, and continue to exist.
My mother was an epohh and my father smelled of tulaberries
Transwarp cooldown. Often I log in to play with a character and when I select a mission, the transwarp is still on cooldown. I know, you can pay/buy stuff to overcome the cooldown, but what is the point of it anyway? I am here to play to go there to do stuff, oh no, I have to wait and then go there and do stuff. It is a space game. Space is our game world; we are supposed to move arround, not to wait. Also, why can't the cooldown timer not run when I am logged of?
Levels. Yes, I would remove it. A completely outdated game mechanic. It works for RP games, where you play one session and you can have stages, in which the story unfolds itself. For the MMO it is a hinderance. This is not a single player, single story game. Here is a fix. The first mission arc gives one level each mission (we already have it). Then each mission gives 10 levels. I have to say, leveling goes easy and tremendous fast in this game, so why not 'fix' it. I really dislike to play with a character with one leg and one arm, Then I get another leg, a hand, a foot etc. For a first time play through it is not much of a problem, but for replaying an alt it is a drag.
Finally, remove classes. STO has 3 classes and they play almost the same. Make classes just as specializations. You select one in game. You can pick one for ground and one for space. Don't like your class any longer, pick another.
Comments
All the alien ships unless they existed in a new 'Free booter' faction (which counts as both an add and a removal).
Ship has long sailed on that one, but you asked.
So WoW used EVE's PLEX system and now they're gonna get credit for inventing that too? :P
new thing Id remove.... people that insist on getting into tired arguments, derailing threads for 2+ pages
Tovan Khev
.
.
.
.
.
.
and Philip Cray. That's 2 things, I know.
Imma hail you just to tell you the timeline is ok. But I'll wait until you start doing something else before popping up
I prefer them because they make it very difficult to actually play for free, and as I said I personally despise it when people are able to play these kinds of games for free ...
Because, IMHO, MMOs should never be free, if you want to play them you should support the developers and the community by subscribing. But then SWG was my first MMO, and I had three active accounts for that game because they only allowed 1 (later 2) characters per server per account, so maybe I'm just old school ... oh and I was paying for those 3 accounts with money earned at McDonald's, so it's not like I was wealthy then, and while I'm better off now I'm still far from wealthy.
I really, truly feel an intense hatred towards the F2P concept and those who came up with it. IMHO it has completely destroyed this one great gaming genre.
It's called "pay to win". It's a small group of players, who feel entitled to being able to do more since they invested in the game. It also ignores the fact that the f2p business model eventually generates other paying members and a larger return on investment for the company over-all.
years ago, you'd hear of these guys in game conventions, for example. They called them "power players" as that's what they did. Had nothing to do with the game, just how powerful they could get as quickly as they could get. A lot of them would pay thousands for little bitty items they'd use exactly one time and never use again, since something more powerful would come along. They were also the ones most well-known for crunching the written rules of the game in order to hold power over the rest of the group. Today, you don't see as many of them anymore, fortunately. They put many a game out of business.
but you asked.
They make more money because, for whatever reason, they were either unable to attract or unable to retain enough players at launch. The fact that most F2P MMOs don't come close to the amount of new content that WoW adds in it's content patches would seem to indicate that a successful sub model has the potential to make a lot more money than a successful F2P model. It's no secret STO had many problems when it first launched, ranging from huge bugs to questionable design decisions, and these problems caused them to lose subs and end up in a situation where F2P was the only way to stay profitable.
Indeed but no need to worry president dukat, your freinds in the old star empire are working on a genetic virus to eliminate the bajoran threat once and for all, once introduced it will move through the population quickly mutating after each infection ,thus prohibiting any cure since the cure that was good for one subject would be useless for the next so on and so forth.
Bajorans will die a painfull and horrbile death but the planet will be left unschathed, until we deliver your thalaron device with which you can extinguish the planet itself.
"Ded" Alert.
My point was that even the most successful F2P games have a serious lack of content compared to successful subscription games. For example, with STO every couple months you get one new mission and every couple years you get a handful of missions all at once for an "expansion", in SWTOR right now you get one new "chapter" each month, and with WoW you get a bunch of new quests, sometimes new zones, plus raids and dungeons added fairly regularly and every two years you get an expansion with more content than STO has now after all these years.
As far as STO is concerned, I was much happier with the original feature episode formula, where a new mission came I believe every week for several weeks. That kept me excited and playing, and made it feel like an actual event, whereas now I just play something else for 6-12 months until enough missions get released to keep me entertained for a couple days.
They have been one of the most implacable threats and menaces to grace Star Trek. Here they are farmed like wheat. Yank these cybernetic pretenders and put in a single Borg cube as an event like the Crystaline entity.
Originally Posted by pwlaughingtrendy
Network engineers are not ship designers.
Nor should they be. Their ships would look weird.
But the CE is farmed like wheat ...
Bah. Thaloron is passé for planetary genocide. We'll all be rocking Genesis Torpedoes in the next six months. You'll see.
At least the most generous model I've come across...I really wanted to like SWTOR more, what with the story and voicework, but there are several reasons that I only have the basic 2 toons, neither higher than level 23. Removing stuff from STO blends more into fixing for many things...that said, I'll throw a vote to tailor restrictions, esp. special boffs not being able to be altered at all and the idea of getting knocked out of sprint the moment something shoots at you. Less likely, but more desired would be some (or all) of the rng in crafting, something along the lines of, catalysts or consumables to add chances for particular mods (might also bring down prices on 'desireable' mod combos, so that's a powercreep/balance thing). Less likely still would be the differences between captain classes, since we're all supposed to be command-track, regardless of our department before promotion to captain. Maybe make it a 'limited action set' like Wildstar or similar, where the player characters have progression unlocks that they can slot a certain number of at a time, reconfiguring at any time like our current traits.
Pretty much any argument about superiority of model made that includes WoW ignores the distortion that it's massive playerbase puts into the equation. It could lose, what, 75% of it's players and still have more than almost anything else?. It's false causation to imply that the reason it has more players is the superiority of it's subscription model.
That, and I'd love to hear where someone like myself fits into your view about 'nobody should be able to play for free (because I want my exclusivity/status/bragging rights/feeling of superiority/etc.' I average 25-30 dollars a year, more or less as it becomes available to spare, in an irregular pattern. Usually, it's to buy a ship I can't be bothered grinding, and I've never put in a dime for bank slots, costume slots, or any non C-store ships.
I was lucky with the Samsar, but not the Krenim one. I wasn't on top of things when it came to the Krenim ship, but if I knew about the console flagship exclusivity, I would've ground that ship.
Also, restrictions in the Tailor. With added bonus of adding all the NPC hairstyles and those awesome exclusive Admiral outfits - like Hakeev, Sela have. The weird Borg head-dress for Liberated Borg would also be sweet to have.
&*&^%!!!
That might not have translated well. But you might have heard my scream from where you are.
Then not like CE. But like the Japanese version of Ninja Warrior. Where you are not expected to win and if you do the devs alter it for the next release to make it harder. (Would look like they adapted to us.)
Originally Posted by pwlaughingtrendy
Network engineers are not ship designers.
Nor should they be. Their ships would look weird.
considering the 100k+ dps club... good luck with that
Well, no. Some opinions have more value, especially those of the IP creators. And it is very clear that the whole Star Trek universe runs on the concept of overcoming differences on the large scale whenever possible. That similarities outweigh differences and will make different nations/people work together.
You can have different worlds built work just as well, but within Star Trek, sooner or later you will have this unification. You may not like it, and there's nothing anybody can or will do to make that change, but in a game within this set universe, glorifying conquest doesn't fit as much as in others. So your opinion can be a good headcanon to enjoy the game, but you cannot outrule that in game stuff contradicts that.
I remember when I was leveling my reps on my first toon, there was no problem at all to get a Viscous Cycle for Undine or Dyson Tower Defence (not sure about the name) for Dyson. They were popping in less than a minute almost all of the time. People may have always preferred their standards, but others did reasonably well to be viable for a "daily half hour of mark collecting".
Well, it ain't necessarily stupid to throw cash at a game instead of farming stuff. I am partially self employed, so am at an advantage here, since I can scale my work hours, but adding an hour a week will easily make me more money than I need to avoid half an hour of doing things I don't enjoy in STO. Saving money isn't smart when you lose money (here I'll take time=money) in the course of saving less. Your mileage may vary, and it may depend on your enjoyment of the work you do or the things you do in game, but as a generalization it doesn't hold.
The thing is, not all companies work the same. And if you don't find enough space in the major market, you gotta find your niche. Otherwise also niche markets wouldn't be satisfied. As long as there are players not interested in (or not able to) pay a regular subscription, there will be games catering to them. And a good thing that is, too.
Also, as has been mentioned by somtaawkhar already, WoW is a bad example, since it is an extreme stand out. If it were that easy to just copy what WoW did and be successful, we'd have dozens of games with the scope and player base and... of WoW. Thing is, we haven't. This is certainly a sign of quality work on behalf of Blizzard, but it doesn't mean, other versions aren't viable and well done as well. But it is also a self sustaining status. There's multiple alternatives to Facebook, yet many people in the west won't use them, because their friends are on Facebook, and what good is it to be on a better platform nobody uses. Yet the others sometimes make their share of money, too, and continue to exist.
Transwarp cooldown. Often I log in to play with a character and when I select a mission, the transwarp is still on cooldown. I know, you can pay/buy stuff to overcome the cooldown, but what is the point of it anyway? I am here to play to go there to do stuff, oh no, I have to wait and then go there and do stuff. It is a space game. Space is our game world; we are supposed to move arround, not to wait. Also, why can't the cooldown timer not run when I am logged of?
Levels. Yes, I would remove it. A completely outdated game mechanic. It works for RP games, where you play one session and you can have stages, in which the story unfolds itself. For the MMO it is a hinderance. This is not a single player, single story game. Here is a fix. The first mission arc gives one level each mission (we already have it). Then each mission gives 10 levels. I have to say, leveling goes easy and tremendous fast in this game, so why not 'fix' it. I really dislike to play with a character with one leg and one arm, Then I get another leg, a hand, a foot etc. For a first time play through it is not much of a problem, but for replaying an alt it is a drag.
Finally, remove classes. STO has 3 classes and they play almost the same. Make classes just as specializations. You select one in game. You can pick one for ground and one for space. Don't like your class any longer, pick another.