association with free to play

[shortbushero]

when most people see free to play they automatically associate it with games like tribes ascend. tribes ascend is not pay to win but some will argue that it is, with the amount of time that is needed to unlock something. so this message goes out to devs, please don't make it a huge grind, like SWG 2003 jedi grind, to unlock something and make it fair. this would probably be more relevent during beta etc.. but i'm just voicing my concern.

EDIT: PS 1 vet here. i've been following ps2 since the beginning of it's announcement, i'm not new to this lol i know how everything is gonna work i'm just asking devs to not force the store on us as the only way of development

[Verruna]

Ascend's grind was way too long and is why i only played that game for a short time. Theres a good balance that can be reached though, i just hope the devs hit it right.

[meiam]

Yeah 100 000 exp for a new gun when you get 500 exp on a winning match of 20 minute, plus you need to spend more exp on the gun itself to make it good is pretty much pay to win in my book.

Hopefully the fact that there's a lot more stuff to unlock will make it so that they don't have to make everything ridiculously pricey.

[bullet]

when most people see free to play they automatically associate it with games like tribes ascend. tribes ascend is not pay to win but some will argue that it is, with the amount of time that is needed to unlock something. so this message goes out to devs, please don't make it a huge grind, like SWG 2003 jedi grind, to unlock something and make it fair. this would probably be more relevent during beta etc.. but i'm just voicing my concern.

I don't know about most people but I certainly don't think of Tribes Ascend when I hear F2P. I think of old F2P games that sell power and thats the main thing people are thinking of with the F2P, its come up numerous times and the team is definitely trying to swat that idea quickly.

I think it depends on whats being unlocked and more to be more specific, this game has certs, add-ons, attachments, new weapons, etc. that should have different levels of difficulty to unlock. Aside from that, if the game is fun to play and you enjoy it, then there is no grind.

[shortbushero]

I don't know about most people but I certainly don't think of Tribes Ascend when I hear F2P. I think of old F2P games that sell power and thats the main thing people are thinking of with the F2P, its come up numerous times and the team is definitely trying to swat that idea quickly.

I think it depends on whats being unlocked and more to be more specific, this game has certs, add-ons, attachments, new weapons, etc. that should have different levels of difficulty to unlock. Aside from that, if the game is fun to play and you enjoy it, then there is no grind.

yeah that's true, but i did enjoy tribes ascend a lot actually, and my friends too but the grind turned me off and stopped playing after a week or two

[Immigrant]

PS2 new weapons won't be stronger (or at least that was promised) than default starting ones so you can't compare this game with Tribes in that matter. They will just be different and any improvement will require a tradeoff. Also Tribes released OP weapons like that Plasma rifle on purpose to milk the rich customers in exchange for too much power what was horrible.

[Gandhi]

I look at it a bit differently. The problem with Tribes isn't so much that the XP gain is slow, it's that the gold price for weapons is too high. People who never spend a dime in the store can and do complain about the XP gain, but what do they expect? They complain that's it's not fair, but do they really think it's fair to play the game entirely for free?

Ask yourself this, would you have spent $40 on the box to play the game if it didn't have a cash shop? If so, what's the difference between that and spending $40 in the cash shop to unlock weapons or pick up boosters? If not, then why are you complaining? You wouldn't have played the game at all without the F2P system.

If you can't be bothered to spend even $8 for a booster and lifetime VIP bonus then you really have no right to complain about unfair grinding. With just that VIP bonus I get 1000-1500 XP per match, still not much but it's not like I can't play the game without having everything unlocked. I'm not grinding, I'm just playing the game, and every now and then I'll find myself with enough XP to unlock a new weapon, which makes the game interesting again for a while.

So IMO it's the gold prices. In a game like Tribes I think $50 is a fair price to unlock everything that's available on launch, and that's the problem with it. To unlock everything you'd have to spend far more than that, which is unfair. Having to pay more for content released later, that's fine, it's no different than DLC for a box game. But the $50 I would have spent on the box should unlock everything available at launch. For Planetside 2 I don't know, unlike Tribes it's an MMO, different rules apply.

Pay to win is a term reserved for those terrible Korean MMOs, where you pay real money to rent (no, really. Rent.) superior PVP gear or buy premium ammunition that can't be acquired anywhere else.

[shortbushero]

no of course not. i allready plan on spending like 50 well deserved dollars on station cash and buying stuff and what not. but the thing is some people can't spend 50 dollars every month for it. and including continued development. new content will be released and some people can't buy all the new stuff. i have to pay rent and such and support my living. but during that month i want to still be able to progress in my character. without it turning boring into just a grind fest.

[GuyFawkes]

hopefully after ps2 is launched the industry and playerbase as a whole start to think outside the box and realise that you can break the mold. Not every mmo has to be a dumb wow clone , not every fps has to be confined to 16v16 map, and not every ftp game sucks just because its ftp.

[Gonefshn]

I don't think the Pay 2 win side of this arguement is very important because in Tribes: Ascend there are honestly weapons you can unlock that are just REALLY good (cloaked Spin fusor).

However it is important to make a good balance of time spent in game vs acquiring reward. Someone who isn't paying for a boost might take a long time to advance a cert tree but if you allow small incremental rewards to be earned fairly quickly that will still let you feel like your actively growing as you play.

[Shade Millith]

While it does take some grinding to get new guns, Tribes Ascend is not P2W.

The starting three classes/loadouts are very solid, and the pathfinder (One of the starter's) only needs a single unlocked item (The Thrust pack) to immediately put you into the best flag capper/chaser class. Even without the thrust pack, it's still excellent.

As far as I'm concerned, if you want to look at P2W, look at World Of Tanks.

[shortbushero]

guys the discussion is not pay to win, the discussion is that some people can't drop money every month and will get left behind every time new content comes out (if the grinding vs payment is unbalanced)

[Vetto]

Hopefully SOE has watched what Valve done with TF2 when it comes to F2P, While the initial changes of TF2 left a lot of people bitter I must admit, it the best F2P model I Have seen, Were most the time you are buying cosmetic items, and any item that a weapon is obtainable threw in game means and not to much extra work.

It boiled down if you wanted to be one of the first with it, or wait a few days and craft it.

And in the end no weapon was better per say.. just some effect were less desirable on cretin classes, but you could still kill some one with any gun just as easily.

[Gandhi]

no of course not. i allready plan on spending like 50 well deserved dollars on station cash and buying stuff and what not. but the thing is some people can't spend 50 dollars every month for it. and including continued development. new content will be released and some people can't buy all the new stuff. i have to pay rent and such and support my living. but during that month i want to still be able to progress in my character. without it turning boring into just a grind fest.
That's true, but I'm not talking about spending $50 a month on it. I'm just saying if you want a particular weapon so bad that you feel like you're only playing the game to grind for it you should probably just buy it instead. Unless you have OCD and play the game for the sole purpose of unlocking everything, in that case a F2P model might not be the right thing for you.

As long as I can play the game properly without unlocking things it doesn't bother me. Tribes can be played just fine with the default classes, and I imagine it'll be the same for Planetside too.

[Envenom]

when most people see free to play they automatically associate it with games like tribes ascend. tribes ascend is not pay to win but some will argue that it is, with the amount of time that is needed to unlock something. so this message goes out to devs, please don't make it a huge grind, like SWG 2003 jedi grind, to unlock something and make it fair. this would probably be more relevent during beta etc.. but i'm just voicing my concern.

EDIT: PS 1 vet here. i've been following ps2 since the beginning of it's announcement, i'm not new to this lol i know how everything is gonna work i'm just asking devs to not force the store on us as the only way of development

While I see and acknowledge your point, I feel no sympathy for people who want a free ride. SOE has worked their ass off for this game. You need to be fair to them too.

Nothing in life is free. While the EXP system should be 'balanced' to some degree, don't even think for a second that without dropping a cent you will cake walk through the game. It should be a grind. These guys need to eat too!

Buck up!

[IMMentat]

The overall impression towards F2P games has been improving for a while.

The problem so far is that few of the companies marketing F2P has hit on the time versus money #sweet spot# that most players are looking for (while still being profitable for the service provider).
Battlefield Heroes was an example of a game that gave a lot to free players but then had the developers go back on previous promises (causing media uproar) because they "gave too much of the game away for free".

Riot games - League of Legends, is one of the best current examples of a solid F2P unlock system (lots of inexpensive characters, individual prices drop over time and weekly "free to use" champion rotations), Riot charging £2-10 for a champion alternative appearance (anything from a re-colour to a model, voice and animation overhaul) is also an example of a #they really expect me to pay that?# cash shop.
To their credit Riot do not sell ANY performance boosters for cash.

[Envenom]

The problem so far is that few of the companies marketing F2P has hit on the time versus money #sweet spot# that most players are looking for (while still being profitable for the service provider).

Well spoken. This is spot on.

[meiam]

The overall impression towards F2P games has been improving for a while.

The problem so far is that few of the companies marketing F2P has hit on the time versus money #sweet spot# that most players are looking for (while still being profitable for the service provider).
Battlefield Heroes was an example of a game that gave a lot to free players but then had the developers go back on previous promises (causing media uproar) because they "gave too much of the game away for free".

Riot games - League of Legends, is one of the best current examples of a solid F2P unlock system (lots of inexpensive characters, individual prices drop over time and weekly "free to use" champion rotations), Riot charging £2-10 for a champion alternative appearance (anything from a re-colour to a model, voice and animation overhaul) is also an example of a #they really expect me to pay that?# cash shop.
To their credit Riot do not sell ANY performance boosters for cash.

The rune in lol are performance booster for cash. I wouldn't be surprised if rune are were a good chunck of cash come from in LoL

Also lol work on a different system than PS2, you can't have new class every month in PS2

[ThermalReaper]

Funnily enough for the first few days during E3 a lot of the tribes forums were spammed by people flaming and praising planetside 2 vs tribes ascend.

[bullet]

Funnily enough for the first few days during E3 a lot of the tribes forums were spammed by people flaming and praising planetside 2 vs tribes ascend.

I wouldn't even put these 2 in the same boat. One is a twitch shooter and the other is a vehicle/infantry based warfare game. I'd like to say PS2 is tactical too, but there is always going to be a zerg around.

[IMMentat]

The rune in lol are performance booster for cash. I wouldn't be surprised if rune are were a good chunck of cash come from in LoL
LoL Runes (small stat increases, damage, defence, health/mana regen, etc) are only purchasable via tokens earned by playing the game. You can however buy rune pages that provide somewhere to attach the runes you have earned (no different from tribes ascend charging for alternate lodeout slots).

Also lol work on a different system than PS2, you can't have new class every month in PS2
You are thinking too literally, you could have a new gun/device or decal every month.
The basic premise of free to test items on a rotation is sound.

[PsychoXR-20]

tribes ascend is not pay to win but some will argue that it is, with the amount of time that is needed to unlock something.

While I am enjoying the game, I was just thinking this last night. If you opt to not pay anything you get around 1,000 XP per game, some weapons take 100,0000 XP to unlock, which is pretty ridiculous.

While I understand that Tribes (and probably PlanetSide) want to incentivise you to sped real money, I think Tribes went a little too far.

[NEWSKIS]

While I don't particularly like the idea of an extremely long grind, however I also don't want to have unlocked everything within a month of playing. BF3 was like that for me. It was too easy to get points and the gameplay itself wasnt enough to keep me playing, so after a month and a half I stopped playing.

Overall I'd rather have a really long grind than unlock everything in less than a month.

[Crator]

They've already stated the in-game progression system will be like the EVE Online progression system. With being able to progress even while offline. Pretty sure that is going to dictate how the rate at which you can get unlocks.

Are the unlocks and side- grades the same thing?

[meiam]

Well if the grind is too long what will happen is people will just stop playing rather than paying, they'll go "well I'm not spending 100$ just to be effective, or grinding for 100 hour where I'll just get farmed by wallet warrior"

Then you're left with very small player base, for a game whose main feature is 1000s of player fighting at once that's bad. I guess if you can buy everything for the price of a game then it'd be fine, but you get to the point where if you brought everything but the server population is constantly low, you'll just get bored and feel like you wasted money. It's a balancing act, one which tribes messed up I think.

Having a free gun rotation would be pretty damn fun I think, get player to try new gun once in awhile, that's one of the stuff I liked about lol, some hero I'd never play but I found out I liked them.

I am a bit worried about gaining cert outside game, that might cause the price of stuff to be insanely high with the justification that you're always gaining cert point.

I still think tribes was pretty pay to win, the basic class all need at the very least 50 000 exp to be competitive, that's like a good 100 game for a new player, and as soon as you get out of the newb league and into the real player league, it's incredibly rough since you don't have the good perk/armor upgrade/weapon upgrade and all that, plus once you spend all that you're lock into that one class with all the other being barebone, if you get in a match and a bunch of people are already filling you're role, you have to switch to something much less effective. Hopefully there really won't be straight upgrade in PS2.

[james]

Its really hard to balance an incentive to buy vs still being f2p. I think tribes does a great job it gives you 3 classes that can hold there own, and you can enjoy the game. I didn't feel like i was at a disadvantage before i payed money. Yes the XP of the weapons may be pushing it but if it wasn't high why would anyone spend money.
I do think you have to realize well it is p4f, there still need to be incentives to pay. And in almost every game besides maybe tf2 you need to pony up money if you want to pay with the elites. But then with tf2 until the nerfed it you had to have the tommy gun to be a good heavy.
As long as it doesn't feel like i have to pay money to keep competing, i'm fine with it. It should be i want to spend money not i'm forced to.

[Nasher]

PS2 new weapons won't be stronger (or at least that was promised) than default starting ones so you can't compare this game with Tribes in that matter. They will just be different and any improvement will require a tradeoff. Also Tribes released OP weapons like that Plasma rifle on purpose to milk the rich customers in exchange for too much power what was horrible.

The more recent weapons in Ascend are not OP like the last batch, so they have learned their lesson. They also nerfed the plasma gun in a big way. They are also going to nerf ALL machinegun type weapons in the next patch, most of which are unlocks. Because they are deemed to easy to use by the community.

Ascend's unlocks are more about opening up more choice than being more powerful and that's the best way to do it. If you wanted to play a heavy all day and nothing else, you can 1 shot people all day long with epic mortar shots, or shoot people in the face with a spinfusor just as good as everyone else (assuming you have the skill to do it, like this guy: youtube.com/watch?v=u_Uxg8rcmJM) :P

[IMMentat]

They've already stated the in-game progression system will be like the EVE Online progression system. With being able to progress even while offline. Pretty sure that is going to dictate how the rate at which you can get unlocks.

Are the unlocks and side- grades the same thing?
From the Neurotoxin info thread and a few other bits of info around.

In terms of unlocks each individual weapon will get its own upgrade path, to make it more effective.

Weapons themselves will be usable as soon as you unlock them with in-game tokens (Auraxium?) or Money (Stationcash).

Stuff like scopes, supressors etc that go onto the weapons I am less sure about, not remember seeing any info on if they are bought or certified, but my guess is on a mix of both.

[IMMentat]

The more recent weapons in Ascend are not OP like the last batch, so they have learned their lesson. They also nerfed the plasma gun in a big way. They are also going to nerf ALL machinegun type weapons in the next patch, most of which are unlocks. Because they are deemed to easy to use by the community.

Ascend's unlocks are more about opening up more choice than being more powerful and that's the best way to do it. If you wanted to play a heavy all day and nothing else, you can 1 shot people all day long with epic mortar shots, or shoot people in the face with a spinfusor just as good as everyone else (assuming you have the skill to do it) :P

The more recent weapons in Ascend are not OP like the last batch, so they have learned their lesson. They also nerfed the plasma gun in a big way. They are also going to nerf ALL machinegun type weapons in the next patch, most of which are unlocks. Because they are deemed to easy to use by the community.

Ascend's unlocks are more about opening up more choice than being more powerful and that's the best way to do it. If you wanted to play a heavy all day and nothing else, you can 1 shot people all day long with epic mortar shots, or shoot people in the face with a spinfusor just as good as everyone else (assuming you have the skill to do it) :P

Nice to see Hi-Rez may finally be getting the right idea but thats 2 games they have released that I have loved the game but hated the #cost# of (be it time-per item or money). Unless the seas part, the items drop in price and the game not punish casual players as hard, I doubt I will go back to tribes or global agenda often (if at all).

Planetside 2 is getting my optimistic side. DCUO was a plesant suprise from an SOE that had lost a lot of player-confidence and the current PS2 dev team are doing far more than any others I have encountered to communicate with the playerbase (Though Riot Games also deserve honourable mention for also having fantastic community news/support/humor).

[sylphaen]

They said Planetside 2 will mostly be Pay4Convenience and to be honest, I like the idea.

With 6 classes that can each have many roles requiring many specific customizations and more than 5 vehicles also requiring custom set-ups, I think favorites will be a very convenient tool to have.

In PS1, we had 10 favorites and while I did use all of them, I which I had more set-ups available. I had:
- non-REXO driver setup
- REXO driver
- Buggy driver
- Base close range assault
- Base CY assault
- Base SA setup
- Skyguard setup
- Outfit squad setup
- etc...

I could literally have had up to 20 as I switched my certs around depending on group needs.

In PS2, if devs really thought well and PS2 offer a lot of gameplay diversity in each roles category, I expect we will still need a lot of favorites:
- combat medic (medium range accuracy - 100% offensive skills/items/implants/etc...)
- combat medic (close range gun - 100% support)
- combat medic (generic role)
- engineer (full support)
- engineer (full offense)
- engineer (specific strategy requiring set A of skills/items/implants/tools/etc...)
- etc...

Let's say you have only 1 custom set-up per class when you are playing for free and paying players get more favorites saved: both players are as deadly, it's just a lot more convenient to keep a sub and enjoy having all those favorites available rather than recustomizing your character. You zebra camo might be great on Esamir due to the snow but changing it everytime you switch to Indar will get annoying at some point.

Of course, many other more conveniences will be offered to eventually make paying for a subscription worthwile.
e.g.: characters that can be played on all servers (EU/NA), characters on any empires on one account, multiple custom set-ups per class per continent, shared certs between characters, etc...

[Nasher]

Nice to see Hi-Rez may finally be getting the right idea but thats 2 games they have released that I have loved the game but hated the #cost# of (be it time-per item or money). Unless the seas part, the items drop in price and the game not punish casual players as hard, I doubt I will go back to tribes or global agenda often (if at all).
...

Hmm I dunno. I paid for the basic VIP pack on Ascend (which was £20 I think) and then another £6 a few months later and I unlocked pretty much everything I wanted with that. By the time the 30 booster ended I had something like 200k XP to spend as well.

That's about what you would pay for a similar retail game and tbh Ascend is the best FPS I've played in years. You can do far worse for more a lot more money (like CoD).

[Vashyo]

Even the people who don't pay a dime still can attract more paying customers in to the game and if they hold sales on items, people will buy em just because they think they are getting value for their money.

There's many ways to do it right and wrong, I think Tribes did a bad decision because just unlocking one gun takes lot more time than the average person spends on a single shooter.

Some players will also leave the game if they feel like they're not making any progress, the more time people invest in a game the more likely they will start buying items.

[ArmedZealot]

Hmm I dunno. I paid for the basic VIP pack on Ascend (which was £20 I think) and then another £6 a few months later and I unlocked pretty much everything I wanted with that. By the time the 30 booster ended I had something like 200k XP to spend as well.

That's about what you would pay for a similar retail game and tbh Ascend is the best FPS I've played in years. You can do far worse for more a lot more money (like CoD).

I have a similar experience with Tribes.

So far the only people I have found that are complaining are the ones that don't spend money on it.

[Verruna]

Too many people getting hell bent on talking about freeloaders, i'm going to be supporting the game throughout, and also happy i dont have to pay 60 bucks upfront for such a awesome game. But for a f2p game to keep population, you have to keep the freebies somewhat happy with how long it takes to unlock something, freebies in turn keep people who spend money happier, as the battles STAY HUGE! Theres a good balance between freebie unlocks and desire to unlock stuff instantly and/or faster, i'm really hoping the devs hit this right, or the game won't be successful.

[Crator]

It's been said many times by SOE devs, "Players are the content!". Why would one make their content pay to be content?