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Valve Switching Team Fortress 2 To Free-To-Play Increased Revenue Twelvefold
An anonymous reader writes "We've frequently discussed the growing trend among video game publishers to adopt a business model in which downloading and playing the game is free, but part of the gameplay is supported by microtransactions. There have been a number of success stories, such as Dungeons & Dragons Online and Lord of the Rings Online. During a talk at the Game Developers Conference this week, Valve's Joe Ludwig officially added Team Fortress 2 to that list, revealing that the game has seen a 12-fold increase in revenue since the switch. He said, 'The trouble is, when you're a AAA box game, the only people who can earn you new revenue are the people who haven't bought your game. This drives you to build new content to attract new people. There's a fundamental tension between building the game to satisfy existing players and attract new players.' He also explained how they tried to do right by their existing playerbase: 'We dealt with the pay-to-win concern in a few ways. The first was to make items involve tradeoffs, so there's no clear winner between two items. But by far the biggest thing we did to change this perception was to make all the items that change the game free. You can get them from item drops, or from the crafting system. It might be a little easier to buy them in the store, but you can get them without paying.'"
Congratulations guys ;-)
crazy dynamite monkey
I only paid like $30 for the Orange Box when it came out. Valve has given me above and beyond my money's worth over the past 4+ years so I have no problem buying a key every so often to pay them back.
Call it freemium, call it widget frosting, call it whatever you want... giving the core item away and selling the addons has always worked in the gaming industry and this is just another victory for the concept.
i know this is trying to be a troll but he is correct. the fremium model prey's on the inability of many people to not only add the micro transactions together. but also disrupts how people gauge the 'value' of the product by infusing emotional attachments into the mix.
I was going to disagree with you, but then I realized Farmfille is the most popular "freemium" game ever and I was forced to change my mind.
There's no -1 for "I don't get it."
what about those of us who paid for a complete game? are we subject to 'freemium' now too? what a ripoff..
I think keeping 'Pay to win' concerns at the forefront is the key. Nothing turns me off of a game faster than that. At least, when the game is one where I'm competing against other people online. When it's a single-player game, the idea that you have to pay in order to win really irritates me, but if it merely takes a fair amount more skill to win if you don't pay, then it's sort of OK.
Need a Python, C++, Unix, Linux develop
I think the key to all of this for me, and why I like it over other similar models, is this statement:
"You can get them from item drops, or from the crafting system. It might be a little easier to buy them in the store, but you can get them without paying."
If you are lazy, you can pay. If you don't want to pay, you can work a little for it. Sounds good to me!
We already knew that Linux can be a profit area for business, even though it's "Free". Now we see that same thing working in Gaming.
It requires some new methodology, and business modelling of course. But it works!
I'm always glad to see success stories. This a great example. Steam in my opinion has done a great job creating a platform. TF2 plugging in and taking advantage, very smart!
-The wise argue that there are few absolutes, the fool argues that there are no probabilities.
A common truism you learn in business school is that it's usually easier (and less costly) to sell more to your existing customer than to try to get new customers...
If every new dollar you earn is less costly, you have more operating margin which you can then use to feed back into your business and make it grow faster. Thus cross-selling and up-selling techniques are really just no brainers that nearly everyone uses. Works in almost any business (including the gaming industry).
Don't auction games work this way? You 'win' by being willing to pay more than anybody else. Seems to be a proven model.
Please people stop buying stupid hats and stuff for TF2. Every single time you dump money on that game it's less incentive for valve to spend money on other, one time cash cow, games like HL3 or HL2:EP3.
Why should they spend massive resources making a game people only buy once when they can get idiots spending real money on digital hats from now until valve runs out of pixels.
Valve has forsaken their loyal fans for a continual revenue stream from cretins with more money than sense. I've lost all respect for Valve...for shame.
"Look Dad - this one's free!" appeals to every Dad who just spent hundreds of dollars on stuff they left on the lawn or on the floor of the bathroom.
I said no... but I missed and it came out yes.
Since Valve *is* stealing their business model....
I've got to hand it to TF2. I've been playing it for a very long time and I've never had any problems not buying anything. They really are doing a great job with the trade-off system. If we were to start talking unfair advantages, it would be in the scale where your mouse (or hell, even your chair!) would need to be taken into account.
...AN' WHAR DID ME CROTCHY-SMILEY GO!?
With all that moolah, it wouldn't kill them to roll out some new official maps and gamemodes though... and maybe Meet the Pyro?
Switching to "freemium" now may have increased revenue now. That doesn't necessarily mean it would have been a good idea to release as freemium in the first place. Valve had 4 years to convince people to pay up-front for TF2, and they succeeded quite well! But after four years, you've just about exhausted the supply of people that are willing to pay up-front. Switching to freemium not only brings in new customers, it also convinces some of the original buyers to pay again for in-game items. Now that's smart.
IMO they struck the right balance, too: TF2 is still fun without paying anything (or in my case, any more than I paid for the Orange Box.) If you had to "pay to win", people might be pretty pissed off.
prey's on the inability of many people to not only add the micro transactions together. but also disrupts how people gauge the 'value' of the product by infusing emotional attachments into the mix.
Screwing with our brain wiring is sort of how video games (or board games, for that matter) get us to buy them in the first place. There's nothing rational about buying a video game for $50 and then wasting tons of time playing it - it's a purely emotional experience. If running around smashing ogres is what gets your endorphins going, great. If buying Farmville charms does it, who is to say that emotional response is any worse?
Now's when people will start in with this-or-that study that shows that video games sharpen this-or-that skill, as if that's why they bought the game!
W..w..W - Willy Waterloo washes Warren Wiggins who is washing Waldo Woo.
Valve's freemium model is different. The paid content doesn't give you a huge advantage over the free content. Most of the addons are cosmetic and the weapons are balanced or worse than the stock weapons. You're still a competitive player with the free version of TF2, and if you play for a reasonable amount of time the paid content drops randomly anyway. Even if you wanted to sink a bunch of cash into TF2 to be better than everyone else, you can't. I mean, even the paid items can't be crafted.
no the humble indie bundles are 'pay what you want' the fremium model is called fremium because it's nicer then the actual description. 'pay to win'. the fremium model is designed to give those who don't pay a lesser experience then those who willingly ignore simple addition and pay for a weapon here(10 dollars), a perk there (12 dollars), double experience(10 dollars), unlocking classes(15 dollars), etc.
any way, anyone who DOES pay only ONE cent on a 'pay what you want' IS ripping them off. since they are giving you full, unhindered my any sort of these rip off schemes, games. on the good faith you give them a good amount of money. I pay more then the average for linux which in it's self almost always almost double what window's users pay.
So different people value different items in game differently, ergo the system is broken? Certainly there's a psychological factor involved with many small purchases vs 1 large purchase, but suggesting that people need to value a game purchase the same as many micro-transactions is ludicrous. Sounds like old-man syndrome.
the fremium model prey's on the inability of many people to not only add the micro transactions together. but also disrupts how people gauge the 'value' of the product by infusing emotional attachments into the mix.
That business model is older than dirt.
Does this mean piracy really ISN'T that damaging? They could simply make up their "lost profits" (note the quotation marks) by offering virtual perks for real-world cash?
Honest question and sorry if it is redundant, but I don't have the 45 minutes necessary to read everything here as some of these posts read like a kid writing a novel in crayon.
the solution was hats.
and this:
http://www.cad-comic.com/cad/20120305
So, is that 12x the revenue at release? Or 12x the revenue compared to when they went free2play which was after the game had been out for years and basically wasn't even for sale anymore? Also... Revenue? What a useless number. How much have PROFITS increased? You now have hundreds of thousands of people playing your game for free... not buying anything at all. Are the few that are paying, actually making up for all that?
The clear endgame for this situation is to get people to pay as much money as possible for something that takes the least amount of work. So basically, new weapons that use the same skin as old weapons but make winning much easier. To shut up people who don't want to pay, you make the weapon unlock-able, but make unlocking it significantly more difficult than paying $19.95.
I understand that these companies are out there to make a profit, but if you drive customers away by building a name for yourself based on poor investment in new content, and nickle and diming your customers (See EA and SOE as good examples) Eventually, no matter how great of a game you produce, people are going to ignore it because they know what's coming next. 2 months after release "here's the other half of the game and it'll cost you $300 to get it all, but we won't tell you that, we'll just obfuscate the price of everything to the point that you have no idea what you're paying anymore, maybe we'll make you buy 1 kind of in-game credit and then trade it for different kinds of in-game credits, all with different values and exchange rates" (See StarTrek online, it does this in spades)
The gaming industry has killed itself off multiple times due to profit over-reach. I think we're headed down the same road again.
I have about 8 F2P MMO games on my computer now. Instead of having to choose which subscription to pay for now I can play them all!!
I'm not saying this isn't a win for valve all around, but you gotta consider their cost to run servers probably skyrocketed as more and more twelve year olds hopped on and started playing. I wonder what their actual bottom line is.
If a game is pay to win, it'll eventually lose it's customer base. You may have noticed that TF2 is explicitly trying not to be pay-to-win. I'm not a user, so I don't know, but at least they are trying. And eventually a functioning model where game designers are encouraged to improve the game while gamers can't just "pay to win" will develop.
The paid content doesn't give you a huge advantage over the free content.
So it gives you a minor advantage over the free content?
Is that actually "good" or just "better than worst case"?
My problem with freemium even when done "right" or whatever you want to call it is still is unacceptable to me at a fundamental level:
I -do- not want to be confronted with real life purchasing decisions every few minutes while playing games. Period. I don't want to be dropped into a "store" everytime I die. I don't want to be prompted to buy something everytime I start up, and every time I quit, and every time a new level loads.
I don't want to asked to evaluate whether or not some two dozen different micro-items is worth $X to me.
I don't want any of it. I don't want to subject my kids to it either.
That saod, I don't mind expansion packs. 20 new tracks and 5 new cars for $10 bucks or whatever is perfectly fine. But don't advertise it in the game so that I have to explicitly decline buying it every time I play... and don't break it up into micro-transactions... $1 per track, 1$ per car... I don't want to excert the mental process of deciding is this car worth a buck, is this car worth a buck, is this car worth a buck to me... I just don't.
And don't have me competing with people in the expansion pack cars if they are anything more than just skins.
Remember even "Situationally better" is still better if you get any control over the situation, which of course, unless you are an idiot... you always do.
any way, anyone who DOES pay only ONE cent on a 'pay what you want' IS ripping them off.
Good. That's the point.
One of the major themes in alternate weapon in TF2 that they aren't necessarily better than the weapons they replace.
There are two weapons in the entire game that have clear upgrades. Those are the Medic's Bonesaw and the Soldier's Shovel.
I'll use the Soldier's Rocket Launchers as an example of weapons that are sidegrades. The rocket launchers are:
Rocket Launcher - 4 Rockets per clip. 20 rockets total. Rockets shoot slowly. Rockets have a good amount of splash area.
Direct Hit - 4 Rockets per clip. 20 rockets total. Rockets shoot quickly. Rockets do 20% higher damage. Rockets mini-crit airborne enemies. Rockets have 70% smaller splash area.
Black Box - 3 Rockets per clip. 20 rockets total, rockets shoot slowly. Rrockets have a good amount of splash area. Player gains 15 health per person hit.
The Liberty Launcher - 3 Rockets per clip. 20 rockets total. Rockets shoot quickly. Rockets have a good amount of splash area.
The Original - Identical to Rocket Launcher, but fires from the center instead of from the right.
Cow Mangler 5000 - 5 Rockets per clip. Unlimited ammo. Slower reload time. Rockets shoot slowly. Rockets have a good amount of splash area. Can not do critical hits. When your clip is full, right-click to shoot a charge shot (takes 3 seconds to fire, during which you move at 1/4 speed) which does mini-crits and sets enemies in its splash range on fire... but uses the entire clip of 5 rockets. All shots do 80% less damage versus buildings, but a charged shot disables buildings for 4 seconds.
GLaDOS for President 2016! "Well here we are again. It's always such a pleasure." -- GLaDOS, 2011
fremium model prey's on the inability of many people to not only add the micro transactions together
#idonthavefactstobackthisup, but when fremium games generate more profit, it's not because the same people end up paying more. It's because more people end up paying a bit. So, instead of me having to make large-ish (let's say 50 euros) investment on a game and hope that it's good, I can get a game for free or for a nominal fee (a couple of euros), play a while and if I like the game, occasionally buy something nice.
There are many advantages here: I get to personalize my games (if I visit a friend with same games that I have and try some of them out, I'll have a whole another experience!), I don't ever waste money on stuff I end up not liking, the publisher gets constant feedback on what kind of content the gamers are into and can provide new stuff based on that and most importantly... the very low cost of initial investment is wonderful. I have a large-ish group of friends and friend-of-friends that like to play together and not nearly everyone in the group is in a relatively well-paying job like the one I have. Yet, because of the this model, we can get into a new game every other week or so.
So... yeah. I really love the microtransaction model though I'm pretty confident that I can perform simple addition.
I would not call this implementation "Free To Win", as they offer no paid items that can't be obtained by putting in the time and effort. Thus it's a decent Free to Play implementation. If the freemium options aren't available erstwise, then I would definitely call it Free To win.
Mark Anthony Collins
If a game is pay to win, it'll eventually lose it's customer base. You may have noticed that TF2 is explicitly trying not to be pay-to-win. I'm not a user, so I don't know, but at least they are trying. And eventually a functioning model where game designers are encouraged to improve the game while gamers can't just "pay to win" will develop.
TF2 is absolutely pay to win.
The goal of the game is to collect all the hats and useless crap.
I hop on TF2 every once in a while only to find that no one is actually playing TF2. Control points? Intelligence briefcase? The cart? Nope. No one gives a shit about those things. They only care about farming shit and running around like retards.
the fremium model is designed to give those who don't pay a lesser experience then those who willingly ignore simple addition and pay for a weapon here(10 dollars), a perk there (12 dollars), double experience(10 dollars), unlocking classes(15 dollars), etc.
Not if done right. TF2 does it right (I haven't played much since they went F2P, granted): all the classes are unlocked by default. None of the unlockable weapons are overtly more powerful than the defaults. Some are certainly easier to use, or more effective with certain play-styles (or overpowered on certain maps, etc), but all of them have some sort of draw-back for whatever advantage they give, so unlocking a new one is more of a side-ways shift rather than an upwards one. Also, you can unlock everything in TF2 (with 1 or 2 pretty rare exceptions, usually special cosmetic items) just by playing it, so long as you have, at one point in the past, paid any money at all for the game (buying an item or buying the game pre-F2P).
"None can love freedom heartily, but good men; the rest love not freedom, but license." --John Milton
You're forgetting the fact that without a player base, a game dies. Particularly multiplayer, which is all that TF2 is. By introducing it as F2P, Valve probably quadrupled the player base overnight. Not only that, but they introduced them in to a game with hundreds of bugfixes, content updates and major graphical overhauls. All of which had already been paid for. Even while most of those freepers will never buy anything in the store, they provide the much needed player base for those who are spending money in game to play with. They're mainly playing on third party servers, so by opening up the game to anyone, they've increased the game's perceived value at no additional cost to valve or the end user, while allowing the game's popularity to flourish.
moox. for a new generation.
There is no paid content in tf2 that can't be obtained through other means, either by trading, crafting, or simply having the item "drop" like an mmo (it just appears between lives while playing, you usually get 10 a week or so if you play a lot). The most expensive content is vanity items, hats or other facial accessories, but those can be obtained via the above methods as well. Several of the earlier ones are available through achievements as well. Most of the strongest items for all classes are the original weapons (or ones available via achievements) - new stuff tend to be sidegrades or gimmicks (but still relatively easy to obtain if you are actually interested in them).
There's nothing rational about buying a video game for $50 and then wasting tons of time playing it - it's a purely emotional experience. If running around smashing ogres is what gets your endorphins going, great.
Wait wait, don't tell me--I think I can figure out on which side of the "Can Video Games Be Art?" debate you fall.
The Daddy casts sleep on the Baby. The Baby resists!
I only started playing TF2 once it became f2p, to see what it was all about. The fact that you only had to spend like 5 bucks in the store to upgrade your account to premium status was tempting and no hard decision once I discovered after a few sessions that the game was really fun. I got to try out the game for free and saw it more as a way to support the developers of a game that I enjoy rather than spending money on useless virtual items that I couldn't care less about. Good job Valve.
The paid content doesn't give you a huge advantage over the free content.
So it gives you a minor advantage over the free content?
We're talking about TF2 still, right?
The thing about "paid content" in TF2 is that you can get any of the non-cosmetic items over time, as you get 6-8 random weapons per week. There are also 27 weapons (3 per class) that can be unlocked through achievements. Weapons can also be crafted, but I'll be honest: It's better to wait for a random drop, because 6-8 items a week makes it take a long time to craft even one weapon, let alone multiple.
The major problem with f2p accounts is that there are restrictions on them until you buy your first item from the store. In USD, the cheapest item is $0.49, but Valve has a minimum of $5 for adding funds to your Steam wallet... however, you can use the remaining $4.51 towards anything on Steam, including games.
My problem with freemium even when done "right" or whatever you want to call it is still is unacceptable to me at a fundamental level:
I -do- not want to be confronted with real life purchasing decisions every few minutes while playing games. Period. I don't want to be dropped into a "store" everytime I die. I don't want to be prompted to buy something everytime I start up, and every time I quit, and every time a new level loads.
I've never had a TF2 free account, but from my understanding is that it bugs you once when you start the game with one of the game's characters having a text bubble mentioning it on the main menu. This is the only time the store is mentioned. other than having a button on the main menu for it. This text doesn't appear if you've ever bought anything from the store or bought TF2 itself from a store (or bought the Orange Box from a store or through Steam).
That saod, I don't mind expansion packs. 20 new tracks and 5 new cars for $10 bucks or whatever is perfectly fine. But don't advertise it in the game so that I have to explicitly decline buying it every time I play... and don't break it up into micro-transactions... $1 per track, 1$ per car... I don't want to excert the mental process of deciding is this car worth a buck, is this car worth a buck, is this car worth a buck to me... I just don't.
When TF2 has new weaponry come out, they sell them as sets along with related cosmetic items, if you really want to pay for them. The catch is that they're ridiculously overpriced... and usually they're added to the drop system at the same time they come out. So, unless you really want the cosmetic items, there's little point in buying them.
And don't have me competing with people in the expansion pack cars if they are anything more than just skins.
Remember even "Situationally better" is still better if you get any control over the situation, which of course, unless you are an idiot... you always do.
I believe I've already addressed this point.
But more to the point, the way items are balanced in TF2, a lot of the times they're different rather than strictly better. One of the more controversial items from the Christmas 2011 update was the Spy-cicle.
The Spy-cicle is a melee weapon for the Spy... all Spy melee weapons do instant-kill backstabs. Note: Spies can disguise as enemy players, which becomes important in the description below.
The Spy-cicle prevents the usual death screams from players, but instead makes a freezing sound and leaves an ice statue behind instead of a corpse. It can also be used to prevent fire damage (and makes the extinguishing sound when this happens) for 2 seconds at the expense of the Spy losing the Spy-cicle for 15 seconds.
The thing is that its upsides and downsides are tied together. Sure, I can prevent fire at the expense of being able to instant-kill b
GLaDOS for President 2016! "Well here we are again. It's always such a pleasure." -- GLaDOS, 2011
> > any way, anyone who DOES pay only ONE cent on a
> > 'pay what you want' IS ripping them off.
> Good. That's the point.
Yeah! Fuck charity with their toys for kids and fighting SOPA and shit! I got hats to buy with that money!
Since the subject came up, I'm going to mention that EverQuest is going to launch their Free-to-Play program in about a week. (the original, EQ2 has been F2P for a while now) info is at http://www.everquest.com/free/ (also a new fresh server starting.)
I don't work for Sony, I just like (and play) EQ. In fact I work for a competitor.
I'm not a fan of the F2P model, I plan to keep my regular sub; but an MMO needs fresh blood to stay healthy, and I'm hoping this will boost the userbase.
The issue is how much money they can get for that endorphin release, and how often they can continue to get it.
Maybe you are choosing the wrong server. Some server descriptions include words like "achievements server" or "trading server". I don't use them expecting hard out action, I choose other servers. There is most certainly a lot of full on action going on, and play to win usually means support your team to make it win.
If I had a DeLorean... I would probably only drive it from time to time.
Yeah.
Hats don't help you win.
What you describe isn't a competitive game but a social one -- collecting meaningless bits of fluff that look neat but serve no purpose.
Pay to win implies that forking over money gives you an advantage over players who haven't. Hats confer no such advantage. You just mad.. for some reason I can't even begin to understand.
... still waiting for this free-as-in-beer free beer I keep hearing about.
TF2 has unlockable weapons. Some of those weapons are distinctly better than the base weapons, and they in any case give the user who has them more flexibility than the user who doesn't. How is that not the very definition of "pay to win"?
I play TF2 quite a bit. Nothing that can actually give you an advantage is buy-only. This includes someone else buying something, and you trading for it. You can get every game-changing item without paying a cent. I bought the game, so I have never had a free-only account, but it's my understanding that you need to have a premium account to trade, which means you have to spend at least 50 cents on a item. Once you've done that, however, you can basically get any game-changing item you want. Things randomly drop while you are playing, but there are 9 classes. Trade any two weapons, and you can get any one weapon you want, generally. It is VERY easy to become competitively equipped with one class, and only takes a month or so of playing to become competitively equipped for all classes you would likely play regularly. TF2 is without a doubt the model of Free-to-Play gaming, from a business perspective. I have bought a few keys, but the impact has been nothing but cosmetic.
I hate grammar Nazi's.
Yes, but you also find a good number of weapons just by playing. Yes, I purchased the game before the play to win thing, but I have never purchased any weapons and I routinely score in the top on my team. I'm not even that good of a FPS player.
You are entitled to your own opinions, not your own facts.
the fremium model prey's on the inability of many people to not only add the micro transactions together. but also disrupts how people gauge the 'value' of the product by infusing emotional attachments into the mix.
I believe "I'm a victim" statements, such as this, are not only idiotic but patronizing. You're basically saying a) a person is too stupid to understand simple math but b) they're inability to manage money or that they find value in something you find value-less is some how the fault of the company that is selling a product.
If you are willing to put in some time, eventually you can earn those exact same weapons. With a bit of time the playing field is still level and skill is more important. The only advantage of paying is you can buy the weapon and have it now. Most weapons in TF2 are fairly well balanced so even someone that buys every single weapon versus someone with stock weapons will still be fairly even.
We have clearly established precedents for regulating slot machines which exploit the same responses.
Pick a better server. I play on the same several servers all the time. Play on a server with active admins, the guys who actually run it and pay the bills.
Good-bye
I already paid for this game, why should I have to pay again?
I don't mind them making it f2p after a long time as it means there are more players to play with, though having to pay again or be subjected to the "store" while playing is bullshit
And that includes more people being able to play TF2 from more cybercafes. Some cybercafes may not have wanted to pay for TF2 for each machine.
More people at cybercafes going "hey what's that game he's playing? Let's try it instead of CS/L4D".
I am mildly annoyed that I paid money for this when it was standalone and all I got was a stupid hat.
Or you could have bought any of the dozens of 'multiplayer' shooter games that have come out since the release of TF2 where there are no servers still up, no players, and no game to enjoy.
TF2 going F2P added a ridiculous amount of content and prolonged the playable life of the game by years. You don't have a game if nobody else is playing.
"We have to go forth and crush every world view that doesn't believe in tolerance and free speech." - David Brin
WTF are you talking about?
In almost all the freemium games, 10 bucks buys A LOT more than just a stupid weapon. I paid 10 bucks in Star Trek On Line and bought about 180K dilithium....that paid for full upgrades to all my ships for the first two thirds of the levels. I could have farmed the dilithium, but I am lazy.
Shoot... I still use the standard flame thrower and rack up the kills. A weapon is meaningless if you don't know how to use it.
WTF? just use the stock weapons. The new weapons are just more interesting to play with. hacking a guys head off with a sword for example...cool and intimidating....but you can only run in a straight line so all the victim needs to do is step to the left or right and shoot you.
You seem to be implying that art is rational and objective. Art is neither, it is emotional. Video games most certainly ARE art, and just as purchasing art is most certainly NOT a rational activity, neither is purchasing video games. That doesn't make spending money on either foolish or bad, rationality is not a measure of morality or other subjective values.
Most people, whatever they believe, are hugely in favor of engaging in some degree of irrationality. Anything you do that does not directly improve your material condition on strictly survival and evolutionary measures is, ultimately, irrational... which ironically includes a dogged commitment to doing only those things which are most obviously rational, as doing so would almost certainly lead to social isolation and associated difficulty with both survival and reproduction.
Try not to take me more seriously than I take myself.
http://forums.steampowered.com/forums/showthread.php?t=2476390
http://forums.steampowered.com/forums/showthread.php?t=1774666
It's a shame that with that much increase and profit, Valve can't fix fundemental flaws they introduced.
There are two free-to-play models that I've seen
Pay to Win and
Pay for Time
Pay to Win involves payment-only items that give a distinct advantage over other players. Games like APB contain Pay-To-Win models. Sure, these Pay-to-win items in the hands of an idiot will not confer any advantage over a skilled player with base weapons, but pay-for-exclusive weapons with unique properties (in the case of APB, silencers) scream Pay-to-win. I'm told there are some MMOs that follow this route, but I don't know which ones they are. World of Tanks I think got brought up but I don't even know if that's actually an MMO.
Pay for Time involves paying for items that you could otherwise get if you played the game for longer, and give no advantage other than you play the game for less amounts of time. In a game like LoL most things (i believe) are open to everyone with enough XP, but XP is so much of a dribble for non-paying customers that the incentive is there to speed that process up with a bit of cash. Same goes for the in-beta Tribes Ascend and, ofcourse, Team Fortress 2. Lord of the Rings Online has this model (sort of) on top of a pay-for-content model (buying questing areas) which can be bought using in-game points (that you can earn X per day, or suppliment with cash) but good luck buying it that way. You'll need to grind for weeks just to get it for free.
It pays to be obvious, especially if you have a reputation for being subtle.
Did you even bother reading the article? "But by far the biggest thing we did to change this perception was to make all the items that change the game free. You can get them from item drops, or from the crafting system. It might be a little easier to buy them in the store, but you can get them without paying"
Which in a competitive market will ultimately result in the optimium endorphine hit per buck ratio. I'm nearing retirement so l'm hoping they perfect this before my "sunset years", just in case I'm alergic to morphine or something.
And did you exchange a walk on part in the war for a lead role in a cage? - Pink Floyd.
Pay for game time is not free. You cannot play for free because you have to buy game time. Only pay to win is "free to play, pay to win".
A far closer to "free" model is buy to play, where you buy the box and play forever. Aka the classic sales model.
The other truly free to play model is advertisement supported one.
So it gives you a minor advantage over the free content?
It gives you alternatives..
Like one Heavy alternative weapon, "Natasha", slows enemies it hits, BUT does only 50% damage compared to stock weapon.
Or "Brass Beast", 20% more damage, but takes much longer time (50%) to start firing, and you can hardly move (60% slower) while it's spun up.
Or, the "Tomislav". Spins up faster (40%), no spin up sound, But does less damage (-20%).
Which one is the best weapon? Also, keep in mind you can only change weapons before spawning. Each one of the alternatives are specialized versions of the main weapon, better in some cases, but worse in others. And you're locked to that choice until you die.
Take the Brass Beast, and you're better suited for defending, but almost useless for attacking. The Tomislav, and you have to sneak up on people. Not that easy for a slow moving mountain.
It's The Golden Rule: "He who has the gold makes the rules."
Speaking about free to play business model and not mentioning League of Legends is just a failure.
See... that's what I like about the way Riot implemented their "freemium" content in League of Legends. You cannot buy power. In fact, you can buy almost everything with in-game points (IP), which you earn by playing the game. The only things you cannot obtain for free are skins and IP/XP multipliers. To buy the "power" items, which are runes, you must play until you've earned enough IP. And finally, there are items that can be bought with either IP or money, such as extra champions or rune pages. It becomes a tradeoff between playing time and money. Those who have the extra disposable income can spend it, those who don't can still enjoy the game in its entirety.
I played it for a year without spending a single penny, got to the max level, had a few champs all tricked out and was not missing out on any features. Skins are purely vanity items, but they are still immensely popular. They cost something like $7.50 each. I probably own a dozen or so, for my most played champs. Some of them have different sound effects. It's really just a fun little vanity toy and way to "tip" the game devs for the countless hours of enjoyment I've had with the game.
On the other hand, "pay to win" games are vile, offensive filth in which I refuse to take part. If the whole purpose of a game's design is to artificially cripple free players and force them to pay in order to have any fun, it should have been payware in the first place. Valve knows this all too well, and they specifically avoid releasing game-breaking paid items for TF2, because then the only people having fun will be the ones who spend the most money, which cannibalizes your user base and quickly destroys it. You can buy useless hats, which are just doodads to satisfy your OCD and brag about, and that's perfectly fine.
-Billco, Fnarg.com
(also City of Heroes and doubtless most other MMOs) are not Free to Play, they're Free to Try.
Drawing a distinction between a time limited, level capped or limited race/class trial is splitting hairs. If you don't care about levelling, you can play a limited time trial game (e.g. EVE) indefinitely just by starting a new account every month or so. The 'grind' back to the cap is essentially trivial.
But in either case, the time/level/class capped people can't compete with the premium players. That's not a bad thing, they bring value by providing an underclass to which the paying players can feel superior, but let's not pretend that a limited trial is the same as making the whole game free.
If you were blocking sigs, you wouldn't have to read this.
Wait wait, don't tell me--I think I can figure out on which side of the "Can Video Games Be Art?" debate you fall.
Well, it's not really germane, but I happen to think they should be regarded as artistic works - at least as much as a Hollywood film, for instance.
W..w..W - Willy Waterloo washes Warren Wiggins who is washing Waldo Woo.
My take on this is that yes, technically, a new player who buys all the weapons has more flexibility than a new player who goes purely F2P, and as such might have an edge if he knows what weapon to use in what situation. A few months down the road, though, the latter will have dropped some weapons and gotten others from achievements, making it all even out - skill level being equal. That's another thing, too: even if you had all of the weapons the game offers, they are designed in such a way that - with a couple of exceptions - they only give you
So it's all a game of knowing what weapon works best in what situation, as very few weapons are straight upgrades to the ones you have at first, and that knowledge cannot be bought in the in-game store. Even if it did, IMO it's only a matter of time before F2P newbies catch up and learn to use them, eventually leading to a somewhat even playing field - once again, all skill being equal. I have seen my brother, a one-year player with plenty of weapons and FPS experience, get owned repeatedly over a single game by my F2P girlfriend, back when it had just become free. That was simply because she had dropped /one/ weapon and it so happened that the game mode we were playing made that weapon/class combination very useful.
/is/ smaller, but it's still functional. You can also only receive items in trade, not give them away, sure. Buying any item in the store, the cheapest costing 50 cents, removes all of those restrictions /permanently/, though, and if you ever fill your F2P backpack or really need to trade for that one weapon you want, maybe this game really is worth at least 50 cents.
So yeah. All in all, I think Valve succeeded in finding the balance between Pay-to-Play and Pay-to-Win. If you are F2P, your item storage
Oh yeah, and also: hats.
I've spent many hours playing TF2 over the years. (I was a fan of TF, so I bought TF2 full price when it was released.) Occasionally, there will be a technical issue with Steam where it can't access your 'earned' items, so you get a default loadout. In other words the same items you get when you first start playing. And I've got enough experience/skill that I'm able to do quite well, usually scoring in the middle of the pack with that gear. That's my proof that they are doing it right. Experience/skill is not handicapped by not having the latest and greatest.
Oh, and I haven't spent *any* money on TF2 other than my initial purchase, yet over the years I have picked up pretty much all the weapons from random drops and crafting. I don't have a ton of hats, but I have at least one unique one per class, and that's all I ever really wanted. BTW my lack of buying isn't because I don't love TF2 (I do love it) but more because when I'm on Steam, whenever I look at buying something, I get distracted by a new shiny game and spend my money there instead. :)
Jesus Christ, how is this modded insightful. Perhaps you should play the bloody game. You aren't confronted with anything you don't want to be - you have to specifically decide to go to the store.
GP is not saying "pay for game time", i.e. subscription. He's saying you can compress time by purchasing tools that will lessen the grind. In LOTRO, for example, you can purchase XP accelerator and slayer multiplier scrolls that lessen the number of mobs you need to kill for the next level or quest credit. By not buying these aids you just have to invest more play time, i.e. grind. But game time in F2P is free.
Nostalgia isn't what it used to be.
I've spent many hours playing TF2 over the years. (I was a fan of TF, so I bought TF2 full price when it was released.) Occasionally, there will be a technical issue with Steam where it can't access your 'earned' items, so you get a default loadout. In other words the same items you get when you first start playing. And I've got enough experience/skill that I'm able to do quite well, usually scoring in the middle of the pack with that gear. That's my proof that they are doing it right. Experience/skill is not handicapped by not having the latest and greatest.
I really hate to play Spy with the stock loadout... I'm far too used to the Dead Ringer by now, having used it for... er... probably over 300 hours now (I've clocked nearly 800 hours as Spy in the last 4 years). Which is funny, since I originally thought the DR was trash and that I'd never use it.
Most of my other primary loadouts would be fine with stocks, though. The only other ones that might give me problems are Pyro (Degreaser, Flare Gun, Axtinguisher/Homewrecker) and offensive Engineer (Gunslinger is key).
GLaDOS for President 2016! "Well here we are again. It's always such a pleasure." -- GLaDOS, 2011
You are misinformed. You can play LOTRO to level cap entirely free. Paying will lessen the grind, but it's not a requirement. It's up to you how valuable your time is. Note that MMO expansions cost money for everyone, including subscribers.
Nostalgia isn't what it used to be.
Yeah.
Hats don't help you win.
What you describe isn't a competitive game but a social one -- collecting meaningless bits of fluff that look neat but serve no purpose.
Pay to win implies that forking over money gives you an advantage over players who haven't. Hats confer no such advantage. You just mad.. for some reason I can't even begin to understand.
When the game is about collecting pointless shit, then paying to get that pointless shit instantly is paying to win.
The game has been about collecting pointless shit for about 2 years now. No one actually plays the game.