association with free to play

shortbushero · 2012-06-09, 11:48 AM

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 · 2012-06-09, 11:51 AM

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 · 2012-06-09, 11:54 AM

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.

Immigrant · 2012-06-09, 11:58 AM

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.

Nasher · 2012-06-09, 05:40 PM

Originally Posted by 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.

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 · 2012-06-09, 05:53 PM

Originally Posted by Nasher

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

Originally Posted by Nasher

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).

Nasher · 2012-06-09, 06:03 PM

Originally Posted by IMMentat

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).

Gandhi · 2012-06-09, 12:12 PM

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 · 2012-06-09, 12:17 PM

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.

Gandhi · 2012-06-09, 12:30 PM

Originally Posted by 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.

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.

Gonefshn · 2012-06-09, 12:20 PM

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.

GuyFawkes · 2012-06-09, 12:19 PM

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.

bullet · 2012-06-09, 11:56 AM

Originally Posted by 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.

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 · 2012-06-09, 11:58 AM

Originally Posted by bullet

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

Shade Millith · 2012-06-09, 12:23 PM

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.