This game Need FreePlayers in order to suceed stop to trying to limite them to much !

[Dagron]

Originally Posted by Stew

can you avoid personal atack?

Maybe personal attacks are the way to go, i haven't made personal attacks against you and you keep ignoring my arguments.

You keep saying that cosmetics will be über popular and will give them rivers of cash without pointing out a single source other than your own assumptions, and for that they should give everything else in the game to everyone for free because it's all "core elements" and charging for them would scare the free players.

Some people on the other hand post interesting if not quite fleshed out compromises and you just ignore them. Someone even posted this video that i reposted, it talks about how the creators of BFH were forced to implement P2W features because cosmetics alone do not support the game (sure things may have changed a little from then to now and maybe more than 1% of the players will buy skins, but i doubt so many people changed in just a few years), and even after that they kept the number of players steady.

You say we need free players to enjoy the game and we say SOE needs money to keep the game free for most people. We listen to you and post responses that adress your points, but you just keep repeating your beliefs without taking anything anyone say in consideration, just like a foam at the mouth religious fanatic.

[GuyFawkes]

Originally Posted by Stew

actually no, many people here seams to want to have a subscibtion model instead of free to play but like i said they dont realise the consequence of whats they are asking for, this game need 2000 players per continents to be really fun to play, all the balanced and maps layout as been designed with that in mind !

I want to win the lottery, don't mean its gonna happen

I'd pay a sub, but I honestly think now on reflection, that its a flawed concept and stagnates games. Most ftp games in past have been poor, but now even the biggest publishers realise that churning out the same regurgitated crap of clones and minor upgrades and dodgy expansions is wearing thin.
Even console players are starting to realise , hey this cod is just same as last one with a bit of a graphical upgrade.

In short, hard purchase and subs suck and soe aren't following that route any more.

[krakendoom]

Guys there is a vid i saw on here that has Higby going through the game at E3 and one of the players was looking at the store in it's alpha stage. There was tons of stuff on it. As I understand the model, the game is FREE, a lot of the customerisation can be bought with both station cash and in-game resources. There may be a few items from the store that are station cash only as for what they maybe we will have to wait and see. As for Outfits my understanding was that it was going to be a bit like wow guilds you needed a set number of people to start up an outfit but no payment would be necessary.

So can we just wait for the devs to go to beta and see before this thread turns into a FLAMING contest?

[GreatMazinkaise]

So can we just wait for the devs to go to beta and see before this thread turns into a FLAMING contest?

Every thread featuring the comic stylings of Stew turn into a flaming contest.

That being said:

1) People are willing to pay for a premium subscription that gives them perks of some sort. A sub of this sort will most likely be offered.

2) Outfits will almost undoubtedly be available for froobs to join.

3) Outfits will probably have to be paid for in some manner (sub, fee, Auraxium) because they are such an obvious thing to be bought in a game like this.

4) Boosters and what are supposedly sidegrades are available to purchase, and players with the means will buy them with Station Cash.

[TheSaltySeagull]

Originally Posted by Flaropri

This isn't a good comparison for a number of reasons though.

1. Warcraft was better known than Planetside, and there was a much greater story hook for WoW in part because of the established stories in Warcraft 1-3. Planetside has a good following, as does Everquest, but the timing is very different, and the following is smaller.

2. WoW didn't start with millions, it grew into it, and it didn't have a problem when it started because it's smaller population could still fully experience the scripted story-based game. PS2 is a PvP sandbox. Say you have 60k concurrent players spread across 20 servers (numbers pulled out my ass, this is just hypothetical). Those continents are going to seem relatively empty. PS2 doesn't have quests and instances to enhance the gameplay experience. On the other hand WoW would keep trucking just fine, and even the PvP Arena and BGs would be "full."

3. WoW is established people are familiar with it and their friends play it, and speaking from personal experience, I know most people won't switch to another pay to play game easily, and won't play more than one at a time. You gotta get your money's worth after all. F2P is a good way to attract those players that are interested, but unwilling to make a financial investment up front. Avoiding selling power will keep those people playing, even if they never actually choose to pay, and thus provide content for everyone.

5. The economy is different now from when WoW started and initially grew into the monolith it is now.

4. I don't know if PS2 would succeed with it's ambitions or not without "FreePlayers." Obviously, with smaller player-bases, it could use fewer servers. If there's only 60k concurrent players on average to start*, you could go down to 10 servers instead of 20, leave those 10 for backup or maintenance or patch testing or something until the population grows (assuming the game and avdertising is good enough to cause said growth). But I do think that the trend for games has been to go from subscription to F2P, and that going F2P has helped save many games and reinvigorate their population. EQ, DDO, DCU, AoC, HoN, STO, PoxNora etc. have all received booms from going F2P (at least relative to their previous business model) some more than others, and there are still plenty of examples of games that mostly died out regardless. Even so, going F2P has helped with overall population numbers, and I, even if my internet connection is good enough to not care about server local that much, certainly think that having 20 full servers is better than 10.


*(Numbers as I said are not necessarily indicative of reality, could be less, could be more, I'm not privvy to PS1's average concurrent population over the last year or to the number of servers PS2 will start with.)





Effective communication is effective?

I mean, I fully intend to spend ungodly amounts of money on useless crap in PS2, but I understand where he's coming from, seeing threads asking for initial payments like GW2, seeing threads asking for payments to make outfits, etc. These aren't good ideas, they split communities and discourage players. I don't think the majority of PSU forumites are behind them (indeed I think that this thread wasn't really necessary), but I can understand where the concern is coming from.

I used WoW because everyone is familiar with it but the underlying point applies to virtually anything. If you have a high quality product people will be willing to spend money on it. The OP is trying to state that unless SOE uses a very specific monetary system the game would not work which I believe to be false. There are several viable options the devs could implement should they desire.

As I said I am not gonna debate which model is better as its pointless because they all have equal potential of working or failing. As has been said having a sub based model could discourage players due to the tough economic times and peoples lack of disposable income. On the flip side some people might not like the free to play model because of the stigma it carries and the fact it attracts hackers etc. We wont know how well things will work until live.

Stew however is trying to say that one way is the only way and I do not agree with that. I do not feel this game "needs" free players for it to flourish and have not seen anybody make a convincing argument to explain why it would be impossible to get large numbers of players without it being free. But that is the direction the devs wanna go so I will wait and see how it works.

[ThermalReaper]

I wouldn't even get why people are flaming over this since the subscription model was probably one of the most complete things they've shared their information about.
And as much as Stew can get a little hard to understand what he is saying, let's avoid the flaming before basti starts raining infractions.

[Malorn]

Does anyone have a Stew-to-English translator?

[Flaropri]

Originally Posted by Dagron

You keep saying that cosmetics will be über popular and will give them rivers of cash without a single source other than your own assumptions, and for that they should give everything else in the game to everyone for free because it's all "core elements" and it would scare the free players to charge for them.

Some people on the other hand post interesting if not quite fleshed out compromises and you just ignore them. Some people even posted this video that talks about how the creators of BFH were forced to implement P2W features because cosmetics alone do not support the game (sure things may have changed a little from then to now and maybe more than 1% of the players will buy skins, but i doubt people changed so much in just a few years).

You say we need free players to enjoy the game and we say SOE needs money to keep the game free for most people. We listen to you and post responses that adress your points, but you just keep repeating your beliefs without taking anything anyone say in consideration like a foaming at the mouth religious fanatic.

This is the thing, the thing is...

We don't know the details of the in-game Market. There are several games which have done well with just Customization and Convenience. League of Legends, Heroes of Newerth*, Team Fortress 2*, and some others. There are also games that have embraced Pay-to-Win in a relatively limited, BFH is an example of this, and I'm too lazy to come up with other examples (I think AVA is on a similar model, but I haven't looked into the details recently so I could be wrong).

*(Started as P2P, so not a fully fair comparison.)

The thing is, there are a large number of factors that go into whether or not a game is successful with just C&C and not selling Advantage as the (very interesting) video calls it. Overall popularity, quality of the items sold.

To clarify: From all I've heard, PS2 will sell permanent weapons with SC. However, there are two factors that make this different from "Pay to win." Essentially it is the same as TF2 in this regard.

1. All those weapons are available without SC via in-game resources. Buying the item is similar to a Boost in that it is convenience/shortcut rather than exclusive to SC.

2. Those weapons will be (hopefully) balanced with standard weapons, so they are a play-style/kit choice, rather than a direct superiority advantage. It's also not like you'll necessarily use fewer vehicles either (especially since many vehicles use different resources from weapon unlock resources), just that it takes less time to get the side-grade. Certainly, some combinations might go better in various roles than the standard kit, but that is just optimizing your kit. If I'm flying around in a Scythe as an LA I'm not going to waste a slot on an ejection seat for example. If I buy a replacement for that slot it isn't a real advantage over non-paying players other than saving time.


This model still falls into Convenience and not Power/Advantage in my view, and is something that BFH missed out on (much to its chagrin). BFH also had that problem with VP rentals.

AVA is similar, in that it sells rentals, but you can unlock weapons eventually (It also sells consumables not available with currency though I think, which is why it still falls more into the sell advantage category, but again, haven't checked recently so I could be wrong). AVA also has far less to offer in terms of customization.

Weapons sales are certainly a good potential, but they can and should be able to be unlocked with in-game resources... even if it takes a very long time. Likewise, XP boosts will likely have at least some market, even though obviously they won't get you anything you couldn't get normally.

Skins/models are somewhat iffy in concept. You personally won't see them, except for your vehicles and via 3rd person views which are not conducive to successful shooting at present. Still, Hats are ludicrously popular in TF2, and people still buy skins in Tribes as well. Vehicle skins/models seem like they'll still be very popular regardless because you can and do see that more often, and given precedent I think it is reasonable to think that, given proper Marketing and that the game is in fact good, Customization will be successful.

Transfers/re-certification and other similar services happen, but obviously would be the minority of any F2P business model.


What a lot of threads are doing however, is trying to split the community. "Pay to play like GW2" or "Pay for an Outfit"/"Be subbed to join an outfit" etc. That isn't cool.


So long as the in-game rewards system strikes a good balance between being able to unlock things and the time it takes, there should still be a demand for buying weapons or whatever in-game. Having a wide selection, and expanding it at least as fast as people would theoretically be able to unlock them if they played full-time if not faster... that's good business. And seriously: Hats. And you can unlock hats in TF2 through standard play, but they still sell like hotcakes.

Originally Posted by TheSaltySeagull

Stew however is trying to say that one way is the only way and I do not agree with that. I do not feel this game "needs" free players for it to flourish and have not seen anybody make a convincing argument to explain why it would be impossible to get large numbers of players without it being free. But that is the direction the devs wanna go so I will wait and see how it works.

Fair enough. I was after all just focusing on the initial get-go. I do agree that at least eventually as word/ads spread of how good the game (hopefully) is it isn't required. I do think there is a strong argument that F2P is "required" to get initial numbers on a decent number of servers... but as I said, they could start with fewer servers to get the desired number on the individual servers. It depends on their goal, how many servers and hubs they want to have, with more hubs allowing for greater range (wider coverage around the globe) and more servers allowing for fewer problems for players (by ratio) if 1-2 crash at a given time.

EDIT: I do think though that there are plenty of examples of good games that didn't get their just due. I mean, it isn't so great now, but Home of the Underdogs was a website devoted to such games, and has plenty of examples of pretty good products that didn't do well because of poor Marketing/Advertising/both. It isn't just whether or not the game is fun, especially in an entirely PvP affair that requires bodies and competes with other games of similar mechanics (if not scale).

[TheDAWinz]

Stew, just reading your posts make my eyes hurt, your lack of intelligence makes my brain hurt, and your annoyance makes the NC look bad. Get off these forums, you know little of what you talk about. Seriously, please, STFU.

[WorldOfForms]

PS2 could never work as a subscription game. Just look at PS1's failure. PS1 started off with about 70,000 subscribers (which is EXTREMELY low for an MMO) and the population dropped steadily from there on out. The only reason the game didn't shut down years ago is because a handful of loyal players kept it from being a total loss.

Over the years I tried to convince every FPS gamer I knew to try PS1, and they either made an ugly face when they heard it was a subscription game, or they quit soon after trying it, when the first free month ran out, again because of the subscription.

MMOFPS is not MMORPG. FPS players are not remotely used to paying monthly. Also, MMORPGs, even the best ones, have crappy shallow "gameplay" that amounts to you being a rat in an experiment pressing a lever to get a cocaine pellet.

PS2 has to rely on actual gameplay to keep you interested, not some operant conditioning to get that pellet. This makes a required subscription not sustainable.

To this day when I tell people I paid a subscription for an FPS for seven years they look at me like I'm crazy.

[Sifer2]

I think SOE probably knows what they are doing. I didn't think so at first. Cause it seems like these god awful horrible looking camo's was the only thing they were selling. I knew that wouldn't work as most people just wont pay for that unless they are paying out of pity wanting SOE to get some money for the game.

But then I realized the real thing they are selling is the ability to level up. He said it would take over 2 years to level up playing normally. But they will sell the ability to boost that xp gain. That's what they actually intend to make the money on. The cosmetics stuff is mostly a smoke screen to direct attention an potentially anger off of the booster packs.

I think that will probably be pretty successful. We all know how addictive leveling up can be. And how you just want those few more points to fill up the bar, and unlock stuff. That's what people will pay for so I don't think they will need to limit free players at all.

[Dagron]

Originally Posted by Flaropri

Wall of text

I agree that nothing is set on stone and that all we're doing here is speculation (i have been saying things like they're fact, and for that i apologize). It's true that depending on the specifics it could work with any model we can think of... hell, i don't like to say it but even with P2W BFH still seems to be doing well.

I know what's Stew's fear: if the devs listen to the vocal part of the community they may ruin the game in his opinion. He probably thinks BFH is ruined despite the fact that their numbers say otherwise.
So that's the thing, they should and most likely will look at the numbers instead... what we're doing here is suggesting ideas just in case they haven't thought of them yet and if they like one they should study it before implementing, we're not saying they should just stfu and do it (if they blindly believed in internet communities' wisdom, they'd be fools).

All we want is to discuss the possibilities, but Stew keeps flipping out every time someone suggests anything other than what he has his mind set on.

[Flaropri]

Originally Posted by Dagron

All we want is to discuss the possibilities, but Stew keeps flipping out every time someone suggests anything other than what he has his mind set on.

I haven't been keeping up with Stew's subsequent posts, but I do think he's getting unfair flak from people, just as I also think his fears aren't fully justified. Perhaps I missed the part where he went off insulting people, I don't know. Regardless, I think it's fine to just disagree.

I also think that BFH was relatively okay with it's new model because it was established. If you watched the part where he went over the numbers based on forum goers after the change was implemented it shows that a lot of them were still paying quite a bit, and they did it because they already were invested at least emotionally (and probably financially in most cases) in the game.

I think it would not have gone as well if they'd started with that model though. On the other hand, they were definitely overly conservative in their cash offerings at the outset.


Anyway, I think Stew's initial point (at least as far as the Devs' stated goals, if not in an absolute sense) is valid. I also think that suggestions like requiring SC for Outfits would do more harm than good, at least initially, and would probably be in some ways more damaging than BFH's model for reasons I've gone over in that thread.


I don't think anyone should flip out though. I don't think there's anything wrong with stating your opinions firmly (I used to, got over it a few years ago). Nothing wrong with disagreeing loudly or rejecting compromise either, so long as it doesn't become spam or devolve into insults. At least that's how I look at it.

*shrug*

[Dagron]

Originally Posted by Flaropri

I think Stew's initial point (at least as far as the Devs' stated goals, if not in an absolute sense) is valid.

I also started out sort of agreeing with him, but his constant rants that spammed throughout about 10 pages of the outfits thread and then deciding to make his own thread about his gripes with that one annoyed me.

I still agree we can't scare away the free players, but the way he keeps textwalling everyone who disagrees in any degree with him feels more like he is just demanding for SOE to drop it's pants and bend over to the free palyers.

[Stew]

Originally Posted by Dagron

All we want is to discuss the possibilities, but Stew keeps flipping out every time someone suggests anything other than what he has his mind set on.

Your rigth on that i have a mind set its very true exactly like some of you have a different mind set ..

My mind is set on whats will make this game sucessfull in term of players based and in term of overall gameplay experience FOR THE MOST players not for myself i dont have any problem to pay for Ps2 as long as the servers are full of happy players and dedictated players !

Here My mind set , is set around making sure this game will not ruins the possibility to get more players to proove them this is a real free to play and they are welcome to pay or not to pay for it , Because in BOTH case they will contribute to enhanced the games !

I dont feel jealous to (( pay for others )) like some people here seams to be calling free players (( moron free loaders )) etc.. they are not moron they are players and they derserv as much respect as Those who pay for the games

If its lack of inteligence to defend the game sucess to make sure SOE dont run in something that can possibly kill the game yeah, you can think this way

But i know from my experience thats this game is ambicious, mostly OUT OF PROPORTION !

And i know a full suport for free players having mostly no limitation !
««exept for boosters and cosmetiks and gold plate pistol and so on thing thats arent core is all fine because they will not feel they are abused»»

Everything thats can cause to much frustration or feeling powerless for the vast majority of the player based wich will be Free players ,must be avoid thats simple to understand many people seams to understand some others seams to dont want to understand !

hope many of you will think about it despite the feelings they may have to me here we talk about the sucess of the game and its player based its not a war between individuals !