association with free to play

[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]

Originally Posted by IMMentat

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]

Originally Posted by 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.

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]

Originally Posted by 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.

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]

Originally Posted by meiam

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).

Originally Posted by meiam

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]

Originally Posted by shortbushero

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]

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]

Originally Posted by 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?

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]

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).

[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...