Can free-to-play *ever* be good?

[skeezix]

As a hard ore (without free time anymore..) gamer I've just ignored any game which claims f2p; it just means they're going to monetize by corruption .. Breaking immersion by begging from you, breaking the game by making it pay2win, or some other ghastly flaw.


But is it theoretically possible that a f2p game might actually be good, where thr monetization doesnt break or annoy?


Even articicial limits .. My wife plays Candy Crush and does her ? 5 turns a day or whatever and calls it quits for the day; that alone is twisted .. Its a game, play when you want ..


I'm a PC gamer .. Strategy, stealth, rpg .. But even these titles are getting inflienced. And then you see somebig name titles coming .. But no interest,f2p .. MMOs etc


Or once great lineages like Ultima where a new phone game comes out f2p (with "Lady British" no less)


I don't play any phone games .. Or social games ... All garbage.


But is there a chance?


Skeephone

 

[levi]

I played one of the early f2p web games with a few friends, and it was a welcome diversion. It did have some pay to win features, but we all swore off using those, so our contribution was in viewing ads only. Ultimately though it became a chore having to log on every day to harvest crops and the likes, and I don't think many of us carried over to the second season.


I'm in two minds about the time-limited aspect. On one hand perhaps it stops the experience getting old quickly, but on the other hand to be time limited it needs to have a limited number of things to do, which prohibits free-form exploration and the likes.

 

[DaMummy]

http://www.pathofexile.com/

free to download, free to play, no pay2win, only cosmetic items for sale, and players seem very eager to support it by purchasing cosmetic items because they enjoy the arpg so much. an arpg with good leveling, good end game, good itemization, good community, good support from developer, etc...

 

[levi]

Hmm, a few of their DLC items look like they could improve your chances of doing well in that game. Not pay-to-win exactly, but it's along those lines IMO.

 

[DaMummy]

Hmm, a few of their DLC items look like they could improve your chances of doing well in that game. Not pay-to-win exactly, but it's along those lines IMO.

no it just gives you more room to put stuff in. that wont help you win anything in any way

 

[skeezix]

... so, pay to get better items. --> FAIL, will not play. Easy

If it was 'purely cosmetic', maybe.. but then, strikes me, theyu'd make everyone generic, or ugly, until you bought the items ... but could work.

Perhaps its a question of 'how much free time you have' .. I have very little, so I want a good game, no bullshit; my tolerance for such 'games on the game' is very low

jeff

 

[theweirdn8]

League of Legends is what you need to play then.

 

[skeezix]

LoL might be something; I have been a fan of SC/SC2, but .. I don't have the time to be competitive, and as LoL is a required-teaming game.. it basicly means you're goign to get yelled at all the time, for not having invested your 80 hours a week

Also.. last I checked (long ago), they were still hell bent on the 'theres one map, its perfect, deal with it' mentality, discouraging alternative maps; seems to me if thats still true, its a cutting edge focused too much on a singular goal -- competition, in place of fun. It has to be fun, damnit

But yeah, the FPS and RTS genres do tend towards fairness fairly well.

But .. I'm a Civ IV (even Civ V) sort of guy, or an RPG sort of fellow (Skyrim, say); if Civ ever goes f2p, I'll kill myself

So .. my core point is .. seems so far, if a game is $$, it might be good; if its f2p, its 99.9 out of 100 pure shit.

My Q is.. not specific game counterexamples say, but in general.. i the future.. will f2p be good? (or will all games go to f2p model? We'll see.)

I'm entirely unconvinced; f2p seems for total casuals, the people who've never played a game before, and whose only gamign experience are f2p/social crapware.

jeff

(ignoring freeware .. f2p is different than freeware.)

 

[ekianjo]

How about dota2?


Not saying its good but i wonder if its a decent f2p game.

 

[Tenka]

Shores of Hazeron is free, and there are no game items you can buy with money, unless I suppose you were to arrange something with another player.

If you'd like to become interested, you should read the game manual.

http://www.hazeron.com/

 

[foxblock]

Facebook games or "social games" are garbage in general, they are made to be addictive and time consuming, not to promote fun. It's actually kind of bad.

Some free-to-play games with a good monetization scheme are: Leage of Legends, Dota2, Team Fortress 2, Tribes Ascend, Monday Night Combat (many games on this list).

I belive "Free to play" can be a good thing (for the player base), but it cannot be applied to every game and it is hard to do right and can very easily be done horribly wrong (especially if the developers are solely focussing on making money).

I love this video on the matter:

https://www.youtube.com/embed/WXA559KNopI?feature=oembed

 

[_jr_]

I really think the 21st century needs a Free Content Foundation to not loose the freedom the 20th century has given us (hackers/enthusiasts).

 

[KickAss]

http://www.pathofexile.com/

free to download, free to play, no pay2win, only cosmetic items for sale, and players seem very eager to support it by purchasing cosmetic items because they enjoy the arpg so much. an arpg with good leveling, good end game, good itemization, good community, good support from developer, etc...

Wraeclast reads like Warcraft. can't help it.

looks amazing, tho. luckily i'm 100% immune to the rpg temptation.

i watched friends of mine losing their lives to wow.

i do believe that the f2play approach does not necessarily produce worse games. but i also do believe that there's much more interest in making money than in producing high quality games for free.

 

[Mr_Loon]

As a hard core (without free time anymore..) gamer I've just ignored any game which claims f2p; it just means they're going to monetize by corruption .. Breaking immersion by begging from you, breaking the game by making it pay2win, or some other ghastly flaw.

I consider myself a gamer, i.e. someone who enjoys playing video games, if the game has that certain something then I don't care if it's hardcore, casual, phone based, Console or PC etc. However I do find the way that f2p has been used so far by the vast majority of the gaming industry to be utterly cynical and fairly contemptible. For me, on the whole, f2p games lack that certain something.

But is it theoretically possible that a f2p game might actually be good, where thr monetization doesnt break or annoy?

In theory yes, in practice not so much.

Even articicial limits .. My wife plays Candy Crush and does her ? 5 turns a day or whatever and calls it quits for the day; that alone is twisted .. Its a game, play when you want ..

Candy Crush saga is an absolute shocker when it comes to cynical manipulation of gamers, there are many paid alternatives which both predate it offer near identical or even improved gameplay.

I'm a PC gamer .. Strategy, stealth, rpg .. But even these titles are getting inflienced. And then you see somebig name titles coming .. But no interest,f2p .. MMOs etc


Or once great lineages like Ultima where a new phone game comes out f2p (with "Lady British" no less)

I'm also a PC gamer and it's really sad to see f2p begin to take a foothold as an acceptable norm.

I don't play any phone games .. Or social games ... All garbage.


But is there a chance?


Skeephone

Don't be put off phone games by the fact you are a hard core gamer, there are a small number (that I have tried) that are genuinely excellent, the thing that these have in common is that touch control is either the best way to play, or not that much worse than physical game controls.


Stuff like monsters ate my condo (touch is best) or Super Hexagon (touch is nearly as good as HW controls).

From my perspective there is nothing wrong with the concept f2p in principle but in practice it's being used and has come to mean a cynical gouging of gamers.

There are a couple of excellent f2p games I've played on Android, Jet Pack Joyride & Hill Climb Racing both give players the option of paying for upgrades but neither make it an excessive grind to get cool new stuff for free. Hill climb racing is a superb game, with almost no grinding required, if it had been released for SNES or Megadrive or in the Arcade it would have been seen as a classic. It really does evoke that 'classic' era of video / arcade games for me. There have been over 50 million downloads from the play store & it features in the top grossing charts, probably makes a 1000th what candy crush saga makes but does show it is possible to do f2p with 'soul'.

 

[WizardStan]

Jet Pack Joyride I have not found to be a very good f2p game. You get maybe a couple hundred coins per play, with stuff costing thousands and tens of thousands of coins to buy. Or you just buy coins with cash to get stuff faster. That's exactly the problem Jeff has with these types of games.

 

[FaeMinx]

^ Actually, Jetpack Joyride is one of the few games on Android that managed to hook me and kept me addicted for days. I made not a single purchase, and ended up with all the extras in the game. Why? Because it's the game play itself that was addictive... unlocking features was simply an added reward for obsessively trying to fly just a few metres further, or trying to nail all the requirement for an achievement.
The game is fun as it is. I actually think that making purchases would have detracted from the enjoyment, like opening a present before you're supposed to. Personaly it never felt like I was grinding away tediously. Each flight is randomly generated and you have a choice of objectives to go after at all times. These are some of the reasons why this game is a great example of how free2play can work well.

 

[comradekingu]

LoL is play to win, HoN and Dota2 arent

 

[levi]

LoL is play to win, HoN and Dota2 arent

Cool, two new games I've won at, and I haven't even needed to play them

 

[elwing]

I never saw any f2p games that don't try to coerce you to pay money to play...

some make the leveling much faster an easier if you pay.

some other limite the content you have access to.

some other limit the highend gaming.

and lot of them combine lots of theses drawbacks...

I played EQ. f2p is really useable until the 70+ level. there you start getting limited in spells and stuff... but anyone who played and enjoyed that now there are many month if not year of fun thing to do at lower levels...

 

[Orion4874]

I've gotten to the point that I just ignore any of these f2p games which is a shame because there's a lot of great games that fall under this genre. Sure, there are some that you can get buy with not paying but that almost always means large tedious amounts of time grinding to gather enough funds in the game. No, give me a set price for a game. I'd much rather pay $20 for a good game outright than make multiple payments of $2-5 dollars each. I pretty much just look at it as a money-grab!