Emphasis on tutorials. Emphasis on New Players.

Colin, I know you're quite the core gamer, and so am I. You, however, seem to be stuck in a prejudiced mindset where you think "fremium is pay to win, and pay to win is evil". A lot of us were, but you seriously need to snap out of it or...



I (and 50 of my colleagues) make a decent living with f2p, and it's really about how you balance it all out. You can gouge your player, giving them imba content or crappy content at horrendous prices... or you could offer actual premium stuff to players who enrich your community and have the funds and the motivation to invest in the game.

Giving people the ability to host bigger games for cash, or to play more games a day, or to play certain tourneys with cash prizes ... that's how it's done. One of the best F2P mechanics is making the rich friend share (kind of what they did with the $1000 commander tokens to give away).

Post-release, making the rich player share would be, for example, allowing them to host a new galactic war of their own for $10 a pop. I'd totally do it, every month, with different groups of players.

You could offer dedicated server instances for premium players, or a voting right for ranked map pools, or priority seats in tournaments, etc..

I'd also love to host tournaments with virtual cash prizes (i.e. points the other, even free-version players could redeem for premium content), etc.

I'd also pay for a decent messaging system that only select people could use (to keep out the riffraff - imagine a new "GG" channel)

Also, I'd love to see premium units. It's absolutely the same as buying an addon, but you can more selectively do it.

And last, but not least, customization - the $1000 Commander thing is really just the tip of the iceberg there, kind of a sonar ping to see how many of us "whales" are out there. I'm sure a lot of players (or their clans) would pay for custom banners, custom textures, and even moreso for custom units.

There are many ways to monetize. F2P is kind of where it's at in 2012++

Don't be afraid of it. Uberent.com is not Zynga.com ...

While we're talking about MicroTransactions, they are just a tool, and can be used for good OR evil, Check out this Extra Cedits Episode on Microtransactions to learn more.

Mike

Well said.
The game I'm now playing is a F2P, it's Tribes Ascend. Hardcore, well balanced but F2P.
And you now what? It's working. You have access to the best loadout and weapon straight at the beginning, the other classes/loadouts/weapons can be unlock with XP (time) or Gold (money).
No weapon is better than another, no class is better than the ones given for free.
Skins are available as custom sounds, costing gold (money). But it's only cosmetic.
1.5 million accounts. When I click on "Play Capture the Flag" I get a game in 5 seconds.

F2P is not evil. It was maybe before and Zynga has given the genre a bad name but it is possible to make a F2P playable and enjoyable for everyone.
For me the focus must be "Biggest playerbase possible" and if possible a playerbase that actually play the game

Oh yeah, Tribes Ascend is pretty damn hardcore.

Uberent's very own Super MNC is also F2P, by the way. I hope it's doing well, I love its aesthetics but I'm not that much of a DotA fan to fully appreciate it, I guess. I love the Mascots though. Dang, I gotta play it tonight when one of my BF3 matches goes awry again and I need some light-hearted fun.

SMNC's F2P model is very much like LoL's thou I feel some of the prices are a bit high, I'm content with the free rotation, prolly cause I don't play it as much, I prefer MNC's gameplay over SMNC's.

Mike

So you make a living of it. You are sooo biased

They idea of paying a fee for bigger games is ... I could put very bad words there, I really dont like it.

Such thoughts lead to games where each functions costs an extra fee. Dont like.

As far as I know it was already stated that anybody can create their own server on their own machine. Which is good. And buying rights to vote is something that is kinda ... You know in past times the rich got to vote in politics only, too. Wasnt good.

I am all in for daily tournaments, just as GPGnet had them. No need to pay money for it.
Having some kind of price is also fun, collection as many avatar on GPGnet as possible was quite fun.

If you want a private chat, just use some 3rd party software for it.

That would be horrible for ladders game. Like: I cant make that units my opponent has just owned me with, cause I dont feel like paying money for it.

Thats something I dont care about. If I had the 1k$ I would actually get a commander myself, but only because it is a really customized Unit only I and 4 friends can use.
Something really special.

There are many ways to ruin games, yes.

Quite true, they stated somewhere that they dont think a f2p concept would be a good idea for this game. A very wise choice.

I dont mind paying for a game, for PA I will spent quite a noticeable percentage of my current monthly income, but f2p is something I really dont like. There are only 2 ways to pay for game, without influencing how the game is played: Pay upfront and pay monthly. I am fine with both. I would totally pay them 20€/month just to play PA with a good support.

Nearly anything you listed sends cold shivers down my spine. Horrible.
Even imagining such things really hurts alot, would totally ruin the game.
I also have experience with f2p games. After I played wow for a while I tryed various f2p mmorpgs, none was nearly as well done as wow. The f2p-concepts always popped out somewhere and just was terribly annoying. Same with LOL or I dont know which other games.

Any f2p game ends up with influencing the gameplay by real-world-money. Thats something I totally dont want. I want to ladder 1v1 day and night without having to pay for it. Especially since I am paying a high amount of money now, before the game is even made.

Put in some kind of "for 10€ all your units are red", but everything apart that is stupid. Since the game is supposed to be moddable, such content wouldnt really be very attractive right next to a free "Black Ops PA Version"-Mod.


EDIT: btw I havent even idea which games exactly zynga made. My negative "prejudice" comes from other games, as mentioned above. All I know is they have something to do with facebook, which I mostly avoid, my account is quite empty.

Too bad, so you're gonna have a bad time. And that's that.

And yeah, I'm biased, but in a way that pretty much everyone, including fuckin ELECTRONIC ARTS is biased these days.

The full price / pay in advance game market is going away. It's all about reach, and then converting the users you reached. And then re-engaging the users you didn't quite reach. And their friends, who you used to reach but who went away for a while.

And you want a good reason to keep supporting your game, and that's a steady stream of income you get from a broad user demographic that you keep engaging, re-engaging, and re-re-engaging some more. Why do you think GPGnet was turned off? Because it didn't earn anyone any money!

Gaming is so much better off with F2P, or, maybe in better terms, pay what you want. (we always had pay what you want to some degree , you could spend a lot on gamerswear, dedicated servers, computer hardware, multiple accounts, etc.)

With the problem of being unable to capture players' attention in the times where everyone has access to several HUNDRED THOUSAND free and non-free games on their smartphones 24/7, and almost as many on the PC, one (as a developer) simply can't afford to have an entry barrier in the form of a pay in advance model. This transition is nearly finished in the mobile sector and will be finished in the MMO and PC gaming sectors in the next 1 or 2 years.

Pay in advance can work in the indie market, for a select few super-hyped titles (minecraft comes to mind), but those are that - flukes. Statistical irregularities. Nothing you'd want to bet your kids' college education on, if you get what I mean. Everyone else who still makes a profit with pay in advance content has a marketing budget per game that exceeds the average gamer's life time buying power by a factor of 10.

And I don't get it, so you want everyone to pay $50 for a game, even if they don't use all the features and if that means you will have SEVERAL ORDERS OF MAGNITUDE fewer players in the community than if you gave away the game for free and took in $200 from the really devout fans who want their game with all the bells and whistles. And $50 from those who realized they love the game after all. And $20 from those who wanted to pay just a little. And $5 from those who still get pocket money. And $1000 from those who are so vain that they want their own custom Commander in the game.

Sorry, but you have no idea how the gaming business works these days. You are in for a pretty bad time, indeed.

Cola, did you watch the video I linked to? F2P and MicroTransactiosn aren't intrinsically bad, they've just been implemented badly more often than good.

Look at this this way imagine there is a game with all the things Thygrrr described, not imagine you could get all those options without paying a cent via slowly earning the game's currency just via playing normally? What would you say then?

Mike

I am having a pretty good time right now. Also I am not saying I would not play f2p games. I play them a little here and there. But thats it. I would never spent years with them.

Some can. I.e. Uber can with PA, thanks to Kickstarter, as well as some other games. This transition is nearly finished in the mobile sector and will be finished in the MMO and PC gaming sectors in the next 1 or 2 years.
However your statement might be true if you just make another game that is like one of the other thousands, yes.

I think thats wrong. Actually I am really positive about how things are going with kickstarter. Crowdfunding is great, look at PA. A game that neither with the old kind of publishing neither with f2p could be as great as it seems it will be, like in "I am going to play this for years" Plus there are tons of games I could spent years with already.

@Mike:
No I didnt watch it, I'll have a look at.

However, when playing an rts, I dont want to earn ANY kind of ingame-currency at all.
Thats one of the good points of rts, you always have the same stuff as your opponent.
In mmorpgs, you never really can have good pvp, since somebody always has the bigger weapon.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8FpigqfcvlM

funny, but worth seeing

That's true, IF you sell power, which I agree with you on as being a bad idea, and as I said, how would you feel if you could get all those options without paying a cent via slowly earning the game's currency just via playing normally? What would you say then?

Mike

In an rts I dont want to have any difference between a new player and a player who is playing for years, apart from the actual skill of the players.
... and maybe a few optical gimmicks. I dont care about those. But as I said in the presence of modding they make no sense.


EDIT:
Watched the video...
"Because some games are just always gonna make more sense as subscription or pay up front-style game".

RTS just doesnt fit together with micro-looting the players, imho.

O no pleaseeee, no F2P

reasons:

-in a rts everyone should have the same units.
for this reason I am also non-large-expansion pack DLC
this would further complicate finding matches with people with the same stuff
-everyone already preorderd by backing
-50$ and especially 1000$ tiers should be special, giving all players access to custom art, would diminish this effect.
-different aesthetics on other units will make players have to learn each possible look of all units.
-except from unit aesthetics there is not much you could change without throwing off balance.

also, no monthly fees, that sounds even worse to me XD

Edit: I play LOL, in which F2P works as it does not change balance, and all characters are easily recognizable, even with non-standard skins.

What the hell are you guys discussing f2p for in a topic about tutorials and new players.

Also, doesn't it state on the kickstarter page this game isn't gonna be f2p?

Tutorials and encouraging new players to be better are only good for the game. The more competent opponents the more interesting the game in general.

Sir, with all due respect...

Are you out of your ******* mind?

Has it somehow passed you by that this is a Kickstarter game? That the point of Kickstarter is to fund the kind of games Electronic Arts won't touch? That a big reason people backed this game is because they want an experience that's incompatible with the slot machine school of game design? Because they want something that's not been ruined by the hysteria over nickel and diming every ******* thing into the ground?

You say it's a good idea to let players pay what they want. I agree. But Kickstarter is already PWYW, and a much better kind of PWYW than free to play, because it's a kind of PWYW that doesn't incentivize making the game worse. Those suggestions you made are terrible. They're totally P2W and they would massively harm the game. How can you not see that? We paid for a game with LAN and mod support out the ***, a game where you don't have to **** around with DRM, in short with a design philosophy that makes the game a lot better but which is an obstacle to maximum monetization in a F2P system. We paid for a game with no ******* paywalls!

I'm sure you're great at making F2P games and profiting from them. Just, please, don't try to ruin this one, ok?

To try and drag this thread back on topic, I do have one suggestion for a method in which the players and us fanboys can pick up a lot of the load.

A player-run "PA Academy" sort of thing.

Back when World in Conflict came out, because of the heavy reliance on your teammates, the large number of n00bish players made a lot of games painful, not just for top-notch players, but for all of us semi-casual players who didn't have the talent or time to play with the big dogs. It was one thing to lose a game because your team got outfought, outplayed, and hoodwinked by good players on the opposing team - it was quite another to lose many games because half your team dropped heavy tanks they didn't know how to use, and got wiped out by a single airtstrike (or a single decent enemy infantry commander).

As a way to cut down on straight-up n00bishness, and also to provide a fairly casual multiplayer experience to the non-pros, a bunch of us set up a WiC training camp, where pros, good, and simply competent players would split up (two or four to a team), with the remaining slots filled by newbies. Then we'd run games with a Teamspeak server with both teams in the same channel. The effect was a running play-by-play of advice and strategies in a low-pressure scenario, where the newer players could learn the ropes and see more advanced strategies in action without simply being beat down and frustrated by vastly better players. It also meant that with at least a few good players in the game, there wasn't a situation where a whole lot of new guys were stumbling around in the dark, and learning bad strategies from each other.

If the PA community is anything like the old TA community (ie, mostly devoid of idiots, cheaters, and trolls), I don't see any reason why we couldn't set up something similar within a few weeks of launch.