Exteel - New mech MMO/FPS game

[Zarcath]

Originally Posted by Xhar

I actually played it Was kinda interesting being 2D and all. The vast majority of the population is very very young. Anyway, they must be doing pretty well off, because I have seen advertisements for the game on the back of EGM, and on many sites on the net (IGN, Myspace, etc.). The Cash Shop in the game does work really well, but it's hard to say exactly why with the uniqueness of the title and its young playerbase.

Tried it out way back, was alright.

Gunbound uses the pay for upgrades for 30/60/90 days system also and I assume they're still as popular as ever.

[Remfin]

MapleStory is #3 on PC games page requests on GameFAQs right now. The forum is #2 and it's #19 overall on the site. Before the holiday release orgy it was at #1 for the entire SITE for like 2 straight months. Evidentally it must be popular enough!

[Xurlitil]

Originally Posted by Remfin

MapleStory is #3 on PC games page requests on GameFAQs right now. The forum is #2 and it's #19 overall on the site. Before the holiday release orgy it was at #1 for the entire SITE for like 2 straight months. Evidentally it must be popular enough!

This also shows what crows the game is popular with, the gamefaqers might be worse than the counter-strike community.

And it is somewhat puzzling as to why the cash shop does so well, maybe they are using their parents credit card? hah

That game, apart from the horrid community, is decent, interesting charcters, skills and the environments are well done, for a 2d sidescroller. My brother plays the game a lot.

[Cantatus]

Originally Posted by Deris

The Korean model of play for free, buy upgrades is popular in Asia - doesn't translate well in the states.

NCSoft is trying really hard to make this not be the case. I believe they have 5 games in development, and 4 of them are going to use this model.

[warhammer72]

Mechwarrior done with the space combat and dropships to planetary fights , mixed with the politics in the original books , would be the final mmorpg I would need to ever login to

Done right and high budget enough that is one I would pay a higher monthly fee for easily -

[Praetor]

Originally Posted by Cantatus

NCSoft is trying really hard to make this not be the case. I believe they have 5 games in development, and 4 of them are going to use this model.

The whole Free to Play (F2P) with a Cash Shop model is actually really interesting to me, and I wouldn't write it off so quickly. It offers some significant advantages to MMO publishers, and additional options and flexibility for players.

At a simplest level, a flexible payment plan allows for some price discrimination, which is what every seller would love to be able to do, if not for laws against the practice. McDonalds would love to be able to sell a burger for $4 to an exec coming in for lunch, and for $0.50 to a bum who just scraped together some change, because both entail a profit. Instead it has to fix a price -- say $2 -- and the exec pays less than he'd be willing to, while the bum can't buy it at all. Let's say a burger costs $0.25 to make -- in the first scenario, McD's comes away with $4.00 profit from two customers. In the latter, it realizes only $1.75 profit. Big difference.

A F2P system can end up bringing in more revenue than a fixed subscription would. Some people will pay far, far more than $9.95 a month, or $14.95 a month, that you might have charged otherwise. A portion of the playerbase -- probably those who spend the most time online, and use the most resources -- will shoulder the majority of the operating costs. And that's not a bad thing. And unlike a gimped trial or free demo, the game can be played to the fullest by all players, allowing you to get people hooked before charging them money.

This isn't for everyone, of course. There are mega MMOs, like WoW and EQ2, with huge budgets and incredible amounts of polish, that can function easily with a pure pay-to-play (P2P) model. But for every one of those, there are a dozen random games out there -- the Auto Assaults, Silk Road Onlines, and so forth. There are a ton of games out there that simply don't have the budget to attain the level of quality and polish that the market currently demands for a standard game box + $14.95/mo subscription. Those games simply can't compete with WoW and its ilk, and they'd all fail if they were to try. But suddenly make the game free, and you can get thousands of players who wouldn't have considered the game otherwise. That creates a full and vibrant world (even if you have a disproportionate number of kids who are only playing because it's free), which allows the game to be more attractive to potential paying customers than it otherwise could be. Nothing kills a game faster than low population. No one wants to invest time and money into an MMO that is hardly played by anyone and has no prospects of changing that.

What does this do to the players? Well, managed properly, it has some interesting effects with regard to the secondary market. One game I was looking at recently, called Rappelz, is a Korean Lineage clone, that uses this F2P system with a cash shop. Using real cash, you can buy various convenience items, that allow you to get around faster, or lose less experience to dying, or whatever, as well as cosmetic options that give your character a distinctive look. A key point is that these items are tradeable within the game, so someone who doesn't pay real cash but plays a lot and thus makes a lot of game currency, can buy them using game currency. The flipside of this, of course, is that someone can buy items with cash solely to turn them into currency. This basically internalizes the secondary market -- farming services might be able to undercut the exchange rate slightly, but why risk buying from farmers when you can pay 10% more and effectively just buy from the official company? As a result, there aren't any bots or professional farmers running around, because the demand doesn't justify it. That's a huge gain. Now, I've posted a lot about the evils of the secondary market, but I think it's a different matter when it's clarified up-front as part of the game's rules, and players know what they're getting into when they play. If you find the idea that someone can spend cash to get an advantage in-game distasteful, with the game producer's full sanction, then don't play.

In the US, I think that Lineage II actually could have been much more successful, both in terms of playerbase, and in financial terms for NCSoft US, if it had adopted this model. The threads on here a couple of months back about NC cracking down on private servers via the FBI indicated the demand for the game, but just at a different price point. At the same time, currently, in order to play L2 on the live servers competitively, you pretty much need to have a second account, and I think just about everyone who plays at the high end spends significant amounts of money on the secondary market. Hundreds a year, or more. Making the game free would've kept the servers full and allowed for the critical mass of real players necessary to make their centerpiece (large-scale PvP) remain viable over time, but offering items that were tradeable via an in-game cash shop would've also captured a large portion of the massive secondary market that currently dominates the game. As a result of that, demand and profit margins for gold farmers would be markedly lower, and thus Lineage II wouldn't be infested with two bots/farmers for every normal player, which in turn would've made for a much better experience for the players, and more profits. In short, I think the US version of L2 would be pulling in more money per year, and have more active players, if it had followed a F2P model instead of the traditional route.

So yeah, I don't think it's nearly as clear-cut as some have suggested.

[Navaash]

I just realized who wrote that post. Damn, Gurg, you're really itching for some L2, aren't you? :v

If we're going to get into the real nitty-gritty, Magic Online is the ultimate F2P MMOG. Granted, there is an initial setup fee for an account, but once you have the account it's yours for life, unless you get it banned by breaking the TOS repeatedly (kinda like the SA Forums).

On the other hand, you're pretty much uncompetitive unless you pour money into the game, which means buying packs at WotC MSRP, and on top of that to play in events you usually have to buy "tickets", which both serve as a form of currency (think SoJ) and end up being pure profit for Wizards when you burn them to enter an event.

That game has to rake in hundreds of thousands of dollars a month with all of the Magic fiends out there.

[Buckaroo Banzai]

I would expect to see more of a F2P, but purchase in game items/exp/etc, in the future. As someone else mentioned, it works great in the largest continent on earth, and is more profitable for the companies.
Lets face it, MMO's are becoming much more expensive to make, and there are a plethora of them out there. Pretty soon, someone is going to start lowering the 14.95/m fee, and go to 9.95/m. If WoW were to do that, pretty much every single major MMO coming out would have to do it as well.
Not to mention that a free game to play, sits well with anyone. And if you don't want to buy any upgrades, then so be it. You still get to play your game for free.
The problem I personally see with this whole setup, is that the developers are removing the 'game' from the game. Once players can start purchasing the Sword Of Death, instead of questing/working for it, it can become pretty trivial. Not that it doesn't happen already with IGN and the like, but it still removes a portion of what a game is.
What I would prefer to see dev's do, is something along the lines of what Oblivion did with their 2nd content release. Allow players to purchase in game content, like an entire castle with several quest lines devoted to it. And the players still have to 'play the game' to get the rewards within.
As a personal opinion, I wish/hope that MMO's can stay the way they are, with the flat fee. However with dev costs rising, and more games saturating the market, I just don't see it as a viable model in the future. The real trick they need to pull off, is to allow players to 'play a game' and not nickle and dime them to death with tons of annoying transactions.

[Praetor]

Originally Posted by Navaash

Gurg, you're really itching for some L2, aren't you?

Well, it's one of the relatively few non-WoW MMOs about which I know much. I can't really speak authoritatively about EQ or DAOC or FFXI or whatever, so they don't serve as fruitful examples. It does really stand out, though, as an example of a game in which you have a hardcore group of players that are probably spending easily $750+/yr on the game, and more in some cases, and NCSoft is only seeing a fraction of that. And at the same time, the game is stagnating because it isn't worth $14.95/mo to potential new players in the current market. Seems like the perfect scenario for a F2P model.

Originally Posted by Buckaroo Banzai

The problem I personally see with this whole setup, is that the developers are removing the 'game' from the game. Once players can start purchasing the Sword Of Death, instead of questing/working for it, it can become pretty trivial. Not that it doesn't happen already with IGN and the like, but it still removes a portion of what a game is.

Yeah, it's about drawing a line. I think that if players could just buy powerful items directly, that'd result in an unenjoyable game experience. I'll use Rappelz as an example, since it's the game that had me thinking about the viability of this model a few weeks ago when I saw a plug for it on the SA forums. That game uses something more or less identical to WoW's rest exp system, and the game's cash shop prominently features items that increase the rate at which you gain "rested" status (nontradeable, and very cheap -- effectively $1/week), but also tradeable potions that cause experience gain not to deplete your existing rested status for one hour after use, for roughly $1.50 each. Those potions are probably the centerpiece of the Rappelz cash shop, alongside a bunch of other stuff like cosmetic masks and helms that don't really give a performance advantage over in-game stuff, but just look cool. Someone who spends more real money to keep himself stocked with these potions can thus level faster than those who don't (allowing adults who play for 2-3 hours a day to keep up with kids who play 6hrs/day but have no credit cards), but beyond that, because they are tradeable, wealthy high-level players who are entrenched in the typical Korean-MMO grind and don't have much else to spend money on will purchase them in bulk, so that they can avoid having to pay real $ to enjoy the cash shop advantages, while simultaneously creating a way for players to effectively purchase gold. Just go to the cash shop, buy some rest-exp potions, and sell them for gold. Market forces cause the price to fluctuate, effectively creating a $:gold exchange rate, but the use of these potions is widespread, and every single one means another dollar or two of game revenue. I don't really have firsthand experience beyond a casual glance at the game, so I can't say for sure how this plays out, but theoretically it seems like a very sound business model that, done right, may actually be healthier as a player gameworld than the "RMT is illegal but IGE flourishes anyway" status quo.

If you can buy from the company, then there's low demand for professional farmers, and thus low supply. I'd much rather play a game in which players can buy assets with real $ and which does not have bots and farmers, than a game in which players do so anyway despite the rules, and where that invites a glut of farmers seeking to profit. A world with complete monetary integrity would be better still, but such a game has yet to exist.

[frott]

Originally Posted by Praetor

So yeah, I don't think it's nearly as clear-cut as some have suggested.

It is shit.

The moment it becomes a pervasive model is the moment I retreat to Montana and raise falcons for entertainment. People are missing the point and validating these game models based on the economics behind them.

You can take all the winnings by bringing a gun to the cockfight, doesn't give you a prize rooster.

[Rune]

Originally Posted by frott

It is shit.

The moment it becomes a pervasive model is the moment I retreat to Montana and raise falcons for entertainment. People are missing the point and validating these game models based on the economics behind them.

You can take all the winnings by bringing a gun to the cockfight, doesn't give you a prize rooster.

I believe this half empty can of Skoal is yours, sir.

[frott]

Someone who spends more real money to keep himself stocked with these potions can thus level faster than those who don't (allowing adults who play for 2-3 hours a day to keep up with kids who play 6hrs/day but have no credit cards)

And what about those who play 6hrs/day and have credit cards? Let me guess, it is OK because they're supporting the game. It is OK because it is their money, etc.

But guess what, nobody can keep up with them. And rather than having everyone pay a baseline amount and compete, making clear lines in the sand and building interesting game dynamics to accomodate new players and old (hi there, eve and guildwars), its easier to keep a shitty levelling system where experience = power.

In those free games and games that successfully integrate new and old players without needing the hook of an expansion, the rub there is experience = choices, not power. A level 1 character doesn't need to be less powerful than a level 1,000 character. Flying a garbage hauler doesn't need to be less essential than flying the star destroyer.

The bottomline is that this sort of interaction encourages people to pay for winning. Someone who plays a shitload would easily drop more cash on the game. Why, it's "their hobby."

You do realize that the entirety of this discussion is "How to set up incentives in F2P games so that people pay cash for progressive playing."

If you assume this model is to be self-sufficient the money has to come from somewhere, they're more than making it simply optional.

Go figure, when I was growing up people got murdered for hi-tops. Nowadays it's getting shanked in a fucking cybercafe over a yu-gi-oh booster pack and a game timecard.

[Praetor]

I'm not advocating the merits of such a system as a player, really, but at least it has the advantage of putting that up front and out in the open for potential players who are considering the game. If you find it distasteful, then you don't touch the game at all. Using my example above, if you are competitive and have to be at the top of the leveling curve to enjoy a game, but aren't willing to spend money to get there, then you don't play the game. If you just want to take the content at your own pace, then you can play for free, and the hardcore players are the ones subsidizing it for everyone.

In considering it, I think you have to keep in mind that IGE and its ilk are major presences in virtually every major MMO currently on the market. Name a major MMO in which I cannot right now use my credit card to purchase gold, or items, or a readymade account. From a practical perspective, it isn't too different, and for a developer, it's about internalizing that external market. This isn't about WoW, or EQ, or Conan, or Vanguard, or any number of games with big names and big budgets behind them. Those games can charge a monthly fee. But there are only so many of those, and there only can be in the market.

As I said above, playerbase is everything to an MMO. An MMO could be a masterpiece but if the servers are all ghost towns, I'd want no part of it. While small-market MMOs are struggling and merging servers, F2P imports have tens or even hundreds of thousands of players. I find that interesting.

[nicuss]

Free to play systems don't necessarily have to provide a significant in-game advantage to people with a credit card. An alternative would be to just sell consumables as it was already suggested, but even better you can simply charge users to equip/use the items they've obtained from normal gameplay, or for other privileges like guild officer, etc. For instance you could let everyone use green items freely but charge a small fee for equipping any blue one, and a higher fee for epics, etc. That way when you get wtfpwned by someone infull T3 gear you can be certain that the guy actually earned every single piece of that, he didn't get it because he had more money that you (assuming you can afford the fees to equip same stuff).

Puzzle Pirates actually uses such a system (they have regular subscription servers too) and it seems to work just fine. All items require the same amount of work/currency to get as on the subscription servers, but the "better" ones also have a price in "dubloons" on top. Dubloons can be bought with a credit card. They went a bit further and allowed players to trade dubloons for in-game currency (and viceversa) which effectively allows you to buy currency with a credit card, but that part is really optional, the system would probably work fine without it -- in which case you really couldn't do anything to improve your character with a credit card.