MMO Subs are a dead model - John Smedley

[tgr]

You've never actually played a F2P game, have you.

This.

You can't address my points directly so you went for good old credibility smear.

Here is idea for you - stop cloning DIKU and start designing games, leave cloning projects where they belong - civil engineering, subdivision planning. Fucking packaged goods "developers".

I haven't played many F2P MMOs except for Wurm, and what it does is allow me to play for free and level everything up to level 20. That doesn't sound like a car without seats or brakes. It sounds more like a functional car, which you can pay extra for an AC, bigger engine, etc.

Please, do enlighten me as to which F2P game is like a car without seats or brakes.

[Malakili]

Its not a matter of just being good though.  It has to be BETTER than other MMOs you are playing or might want to play, and it has likely has to be better

Market demands progress? Oh the horror! Sky is falling. What do you mean we can't just clone DIKU yet another time?!

How much progress are you going to get with a bunch of titles that have to be funded by hundreds of millions of dollar investments to compete?  If there is a reason we've seen stagnation, its because everything has gotten shoved towards the middle because you can't justify huge risks with that kind of budget.  I suspect having more f2p titles out there is better in the long run, even though it isn't my personal preference.  Sure, tons of them will be crap - but since when is that new in gaming?  If it allows more games to get made, we've got a lot better chance at progress than if every project is SWTOR sized.  We've seen SO much progress form the major monthly fee model games over the last 5 years haven't we?  Oh..right.

[Kageru]

This thread seems to be based on the assumption that there will be one "winner" in the revenue generating stakes and all other approaches will be driven to extinction. That seems sort of unlikely. So having aggressive debates about which model you prefer is probably the most pointless thing possible.

A game that is good, novel and has a payment scheme that matches what it offers will do well.

[Ingmar]

No, seriously. You say that F2P games give you a non functional product. This is simply not true of any F2P game I've seen other than some really shady Facebook type things. The only conclusion is that you've never tried, you're just working on assumptions you built in your tinfoil bunker.

EDIT: Oops missed a new page. Post obviously directed at Sinij.

[Kageru]

... all f2p games are going to have something you'd really like to have? Seeing as that's how they make their money I don't think that's too much of a leap. On the one extreme there are entirely cosmetic additions and on the other are things you basically need to make the game fun (paid weapons, XP or gear grinds shortened). The question of where the lines are drawn, and whether a cock-punchingly un-fun without MT game counts as non-functional, are matters of personal taste.

For example does this push the game over the line? (from Allods)

One of the biggest issues is FoD (Fear of Death) and the perfumes required to remove this death penalty. Basically if you die either through pvp or pve you will be penalized with FoD. FoD is a debuff that will last about 2 hours at level 40 and the only other way to get rid of FoD and be immune to it for 30 mins is the perfumes that are in the cash shop for $13.50. You’ll get 20 of these perfumes which will equal 10 hours of game play without FoD.

[Ginaz]

The reason Smedley is so keen on F2P is that, with the possible exception of the EQ franchise, no one wants to pay a sub fee for an soe MMO.  F2P is the only option he has left. 

As for F2P in general, they generally fall into three categories these days: 1) shitty grindfest crap like Allods and Alganon, 2) shitty Asian grindfests like anything from Perfect World, or 3) failed P2P MMOs like AoC, DDO, CO etc.   Theres a few exceptions, of course, like LOTRO (could probably have stayed a sub game but Turbine saw how well DDO did becoming F2P) and niche titles like ATITD or WURM.  I know its all relative, but IMO sub games are still superior when it comes to quality and game play.

[Lantyssa]

Games are not good or bad because they have a sub.  There have been a metric ton of shitty sub games out there.  They were all sub because "that's the way it's done".

There is no cause and effect.

[MuffinMan]

Is there something preventing the old guard MMO's from going F2P? We've seen more recent former-sub games go like LotRO, DDO, EQ2, CoH, Champions, etc... but why not EQ, DAoC, Asheron's Call, UO. Is it too hard to retrofit them to F2P or are they just too entrenched into the subscription model to be viable? I don't know if I've ever seen that discussed.

[Reg]

I think the really old games like UO are down to a core crowd of people that will keep paying for a subscription forever at this point.  Going free to play probably wouldn't attract many new players.

[Lantyssa]

A bit of both I think.  I'm not sure there's much to be gained for them either.  Their communities are pretty much set at this point and any change in those dynamics could be pretty devastating in the long term.

[Mrbloodworth]

You've never actually played a F2P game, have you.

This.

You can't address my points directly so you went for good old credibility smear.

I did. Not all F2p Games are "Pay to win". Whatever that means.

[UnSub]

Is there something preventing the old guard MMO's from going F2P? We've seen more recent former-sub games go like LotRO, DDO, EQ2, CoH, Champions, etc... but why not EQ, DAoC, Asheron's Call, UO. Is it too hard to retrofit them to F2P or are they just too entrenched into the subscription model to be viable? I don't know if I've ever seen that discussed.

Cost to implement versus expected return, I'd guess. Plus you don't want to remind those communities that they can actually cancel the payment they've been making regularly for the last 10 years.

How can their be too many subscription MMO's out there when WoW has reigned unchallenged for so long? It would be just as easy to say that F2P is trying to find a niche without challenging, or even requiring the same polish and content, as a triple-A title like WoW or SWTOR.   <snip>

Suggesting there are not going to be big name MMO titles in the future assumes no one wants to inherit wow's money throne. Which seems unlikely.

Everyone wants WoW's money throne. There has been at least half a billion dollars (Tabula Rasa, APB, Final Fantasy XIV, WAR, AOC, SWOR) or so spent chasing it. The issue is that the pure sub model may no longer be able to catch that dream - the market has changed. It used to be with a box cost + sub model that players would buy a title then grit their teeth and bear the agony of bugs, problems, broken systems et al for a long time before they quit. MMOs were seen as an investment. Today it seems a very different mindset has taken hold: if it isn't worth it in the first 30 days, players quit. This is sensible from the player perspective, but bad from a sub-based model developer point of view.

Its not a matter of just being good though.  It has to be BETTER than other MMOs you are playing or might want to play, and it has likely has to be better

Market demands progress? Oh the horror! Sky is falling. What do you mean we can't just clone DIKU yet another time?!

It isn't just progress, it's the issue that the title you release has to have all the features and content developed by your competitors over years and to be 3x to 9x better to get over player commitment and both acquire the player and retain them. In most cases, this means the question is, "is your game 3x to 9x better than WoW?".

There's also yet to be a really strong case for any other style of game other than the DIKU clone to retain sub-based players in large numbers as well. DIKU only means the base idea behind the systems - hack and slash - which still leaves a lot of flexibility in implementation.

The pure box cost + sub model is on its last legs for reasons other than devs failing to out-WoW WoW.

[sinij]

No, seriously. You say that F2P games give you a non functional product. This is simply not true of any F2P game I've seen

Perhaps you play games differently than I do. I never get into game with "lets grind some newbie levels" goal in mind. When I play it is more "what is need to be done so I can compete at the endgame, and how I can get there fastest". I for example never read quests and don't generally care about story (they all the same stale fanfic) but I research builds, classes and roatations before I even log in for the first time. For me F2P is not functional product because it does not allow me to compete.

[sinij]

It isn't just progress, it's the issue that the title you release has to have all the features and content developed by your competitors over years and to be 3x to 9x better to get over player commitment and both acquire the player and retain them.

Again, this is the case only because you tunnel-vision into DIKU. If you compete in cloning DIKUs, then yes your title needs to be that much better and include everything your competition has, and that generally requires prohibitively large budget since you getting into over-polishing territory. DIKU are done, WoW won it and you are not going to out-DIKU WoW without ridiculous budget.

What you can do, is come up with something else than Ding-Gratz gameplay. Then you don't need mega-blockbuster budget and point-by-point feature matching. People will play it because they want to try something different. Sure, its scary and there will be a lot of failed projects but at least you COULD succeed, while trying to outclone WoW on shoestring budget is GUARANTEED to fail, and no F2P will not save resulting stillborn turd.

Today it seems a very different mindset has taken hold: if it isn't worth it in the first 30 days, players quit.

They still have WoW to get back to! In the past, people tolerated a lot of BS simply to experience DIKU, it was new and exiting. Now they are ether "why do I want to do exactly same thing again, but with different bugs" or "WoW has this issuebug fixed, so I just go back to playing it". This might be too niche for you to know this - but truly open-PvP mmorpgs (SB, DF, EVE) are all buggy and feature-incomplete as hell, yet people who are into them tend to tolerate it. Why? Because there isn't open-PvP WoW to go back to it, so sad refuse like DF and EVE is all there is.

The pure box cost + sub model is on its last legs for reasons other than devs failing to out-WoW WoW.  

Agree to disagree. The core issue is that market has more clones than a deathstar.

Way I see it, people can afford more than 15$/mo, you spend more than that just on cable or checking your Facebook on smartphone. People play different games all the time and can afford multiple subs. Issue is that most are simply unwilling to play more than one monthly sub for a DIKU because they are not different enough, so you play the best one and maybe pretend to quit and shop around F2P when your class gets nerfed.

DIKU only means the base idea behind the systems - hack and slash - which still leaves a lot of flexibility in implementation.  

DIKU means exp level-based (ding-gratz), epicz (gear drop) advancement system with a rigid role (class) system centered around cooperative PvE (dungeons and raids). EQ and WoW are DIKUs, UO and EVE are not.

[DLRiley]

No, seriously. You say that F2P games give you a non functional product. This is simply not true of any F2P game I've seen

Perhaps you play games differently than I do. I never get into game with "lets grind some newbie levels" goal in mind. When I play it is more "what is need to be done so I can compete at the endgame, and how I can get there fastest". I for example never read quests and don't generally care about story (they all the same stale fanfic) but I research builds, classes and roatations before I even log in for the first time. For me F2P is not functional product because it does not allow me to compete.

You do this, in mmos, and honestly haven't quite the genre? Lolz, the ONLY way to be even remotely optimistic about an mmo is if you are completely utterly ignorant of what it takes to be "competitive", yet you seek this knowledge out first and still think mmo's are a competitive medium? LOLZ. Just wow sinji.

[sinij]

Alternative is to keep doing different flavors of "kill 10 rats". I don't inspire to reinact FedEx or Pest Exterminator employee in my spare time. Single player games do single player better, so if that all you do why bother with mmorpgs?

[Valmorian]

Alternative is to keep doing different flavors of "kill 10 rats". I don't inspire to reinact FedEx or Pest Exterminator employee in my spare time. Single player games do single player better, so if that all you do why bother with mmorpgs?

The only difference between "kill 10 rats" and "do 10 raids" are the size of the numbers flying off the tops of their heads.

[sinij]

Alternative is to keep doing different flavors of "kill 10 rats". I don't inspire to reinact FedEx or Pest Exterminator employee in my spare time. Single player games do single player better, so if that all you do why bother with mmorpgs?

The only difference between "kill 10 rats" and "do 10 raids" are the size of the numbers flying off the tops of their heads.

Yes and no. While both are "kill 10 rats" difference is level of polish. Developers tend to spend A LOT more time on raids. So if you are going to do "ratting" why not go with the best ratting available?

[Malakili]

Alternative is to keep doing different flavors of "kill 10 rats". I don't inspire to reinact FedEx or Pest Exterminator employee in my spare time. Single player games do single player better, so if that all you do why bother with mmorpgs?

No, the Alternative is to play a competitive genre.  Hell, this is, in fact, pretty much exactly the reason I quit MMOs.  Sure, I resub to WoW, or try something free every now and again, but I've found my competitive itch much better scratched by other genres.  In fact, MMOs were sandwiched between CS/Quake and TF2/Quake Live/Starcraft 2 for me.  The genre is just too played out, sub or f2p, if you are looking for something that really challenges you as a player.  Maybe ultra high end, i'm talking top few guilds in the world, or world class arena teams, etc, can match that, but I doubt you are in one of those, and if you are, then you are probably dedicated enough to WoW that you shouldn't care what else is available in the genre let alone the pricing plans or said games.

[DLRiley]

Alternative is to keep doing different flavors of "kill 10 rats". I don't inspire to reinact FedEx or Pest Exterminator employee in my spare time. Single player games do single player better, so if that all you do why bother with mmorpgs?

Wait you do that anyway and pay 15 a month for it. Your complaint has nothing to do with F2P and everything to do with how mmo's are built, and since your experience is with sub based mmo's your just complaining about sub based mmo's. F2P MT gaming just broke some fourth wall inside of you and you're trying to desperately repair the illusion that your monthly sub is actually affording you premium service, like the assumption was way back when, when people were charged by the hour.

[Kageru]

If you enjoy doing co-operative and complex content in a group then MMO's are still the best game for that. And the "best" (newest, shiniest, most content filled) MMO is likely to require a subscription.

The people who just enjoy exploring new worlds, new mechanics or just treating MMO's as a single player game are more fickle and more likely to experiment with f2p options.

[DLRiley]

Wait mmos aren't good for that. MMO's are just starting to figure out what 2 person co-op means (or in other words people may just want to play with just one other person, go figure). Hell we may get a 2 man dungeons by 2014, where your noob friend who just bought and installed the game may not completely gimp your chances of not getting face whipped.

[Kageru]

Yes, they've focused more on group than duo play. Possibly on the assumption that consoles covered that area... no idea really. Though some games seem to be allowing the duo access to more content (DDO, CoH and SWTOR coming to mind).

Pretty much irrelevant though. WoW has proven there is a large enough market whose itch can be scratched. And any game with the same degree of content and coverage is likely to be subscription based. Both to fun the expensive development and because they can get away with it.

[DLRiley]

WoW proved one thing back in 2004. Its 2011, going on to 12, WoW proved that the mmo can be sold as something far more successful than a gated community. Its 2011, and we now know that you don't have to charge suburbia prices to get the same content. 

[Kageru]

WoW is still making huge amounts of money so whatever argument it made still holds. I'm sort of disappointed it is still so dominant, especially with the Blizzard C-team in charge and doing their very best to sabotage it. But I'm pretty sure the game that takes over from it as the MMO hotness (probably Titan, possibly SWTOR) is going to be subscription based, probably with a cosmetic goods cash shop as well. A game that can get the extent of buy in that WoW, or even EVE still has would be stupid not to keep accepting the money, plus the psychological effect of people "buying in" to the game and purchasing multiple month subscriptions. I suspect the number of people subscribed to Eve but barely playing it, who would not be generating any revenue in a f2p model, is worth considering.

The closest to a big-name game going free2play is probably guild wars 2, which will be fun to watch and looks good so far.

If there's a fully f2p game (no box, no sub) that is competing at this level I'm not aware of it, and would be more than happy to check it out (Dragon's nest looks interesting). The current games are mostly aged titles, failed titles (like APB) or shallow asian PvP grinders. Though I assume f2p games will also evolve.

[Amaron]

When you have a small subset of people actually paying for the game then you are going to cater to that subset.   Doing that is going to often preclude appealing to a mass audience.    The alternative is a F2P game where it only looks free but nearly everyone actually pays for it anyways.

[Ratman_tf]

Instead of making better games, they just changed the way they get at your money.  Oh look, I can play 200 shitty WoW clones for free*.

*Xp boosters! Only 9.95 for a pack of 12!

[Malakili]

But I'm pretty sure the game that takes over from it as the MMO hotness (probably Titan, possibly SWTOR) i

I think Diablo 3 has as good a chance as anything of being the game that "takes over" for WoW.  Has more or less all the MMO meta game, we know most WoW players want to solo or small group anyway.   Somewhat ironically, the MMO genre has gone so far away from what it used to be that Diablo nails most of the things "the masses" want better than the MMOs themselves.

[Kageru]

That would surprise me. Diablo 3 is likely to have smaller encounters, less continuous addition of content, less content (~20 hours according to a quick google) and fewer persistent world aspects. I don't think it will directly compete with the social and raid game-play that MMO's offer. I'd suspect people will take a break from their MMO, consume the content, and then mess with it casually after that.

[Ingmar]

That would surprise me. Diablo 3 is likely to have smaller encounters, less continuous addition of content, less content (~20 hours according to a quick google) and fewer persistent world aspects. I don't think it will directly compete with the social and raid game-play that MMO's offer. I'd suspect people will take a break from their MMO, consume the content, and then mess with it casually after that.

Yeah this. There's no way it takes the MMO timeslot in people's schedule long-term, it just won't satisfy the social aspect on anything like the scale that an MMO does.

[Amaron]

Isn't the player limit 4 in D3?   Pretty sure that's going to kill the idea of it taking away any MMO players.   They'll all play it for a month then go back to whatever.

[sinij]

What you could do is come up with something different from Ding-Gratz DIKU gameplay. If you do, you would not need mega-blockbuster budget and point-by-point feature matching with all of your competition. You won't need Yellow Fucking Exclamation Mark on your "must have" features list. People would play your game because they want to try something different, and not because your orcs are 10% greener than competition. Sure, it might be scary to start and there will be a lot of dead projects littering the road to success, but at least THERE IS A CHANCE TO SUCCEED! Trying to outclone WoW on shoestring budget WILL GUARANTEE your project FAILURE, and no amount of F2P could save resulting turd. You will end up with a shitty game wrapped in obnoxious pay scheme and your job will be to make it even more obnoxious to scam quick buck out of whatever playerbase you got.

I am re-posting this in vain hopes that there are some gamers left in the 'packaged goods' crowd that does mmorpg design these days.

[UnSub]

Kageru, I can't think of any pure cash shop titles (or titles that might be F2P but don't also have sub bonuses), but games that offer flexibility in pricing options often get off-the-radar success. Wizard 101, Runescape, Club Penguin, Puzzle Pirates do very well financially afaik and have a lot of players. But these aren't games for those of f13 (although I keep meaning to go back to Wizard 101 and play through their pet system).

Another reason why the pure sub payment model is on its last legs is that it has only worked for MMORPGs as a payment model. MMOFPSs (exception: PlanetSide, and then only for a while) and MMORTSs (exception: Shattered Galaxy) have tried and generally failed to keep players paying that monthly fee, especially since their main competition are industry heavy-weights that let you play online versus other people for free.

There will be sub payments as part of the mix for a long time to come, but it isn't the dominant model moving forward. Hybrid models - F2P + subs + RMT + maybe something else - are the way things are moving because it keeps players in the game and spending money.

Sinij, if you are charging a pure sub fee on the PC, you are probably still competing with WoW, even if you haven't built an MMORPG.

[Phred]

For example does this push the game over the line? (from Allods)

One of the biggest issues is FoD (Fear of Death) and the perfumes required to remove this death penalty. Basically if you die either through pvp or pve you will be penalized with FoD. FoD is a debuff that will last about 2 hours at level 40 and the only other way to get rid of FoD and be immune to it for 30 mins is the perfumes that are in the cash shop for $13.50. You’ll get 20 of these perfumes which will equal 10 hours of game play without FoD.

While Allods has a lot of faults they dumped this a while ago. Now they've gone for a more Pay to Win model with their rune upgrade system.

[Kageru]

There will be sub payments as part of the mix for a long time to come, but it isn't the dominant model moving forward.
(snip)
Sinij, if you are charging a pure sub fee on the PC, you are probably still competing with WoW, even if you haven't built an MMORPG.

The first part is a possibility, but I don't see any strong evidence for it. Maybe if you count it by number of users which tends to be huge for f2p titles, less so if you are looking at top revenue generators. I would expect a wide variety of revenue models, including subscription plus cash-shop for the really big name titles, to continue forward and the games that match their design, development budget and revenue model to do better than those which screw up the connection (eg "do an aPB"). I would not even be surprised if something like "CS:GO", or some future equivalent, wanted to charge a small sub-fee for "competitive league" access on vendor hosted servers. APB, Crimecraft and Global Agenda certainly believed this model was coming but none of them were big enough or good enough to buck the current trends.

Really, it could go either way.

Eve, Lineage2, Perpeptuum, Wurm, A Tale in the desert are all MMO's that are not really competing directly with WoW because they have gameplay focusing on a different aspect of game-play. There's no meaningful world PvP in wow, or world building, and likely never will be. The SWTOR people are convinced they are not competing with WoW because they have a story focus (though I think they're delusional).