Free to Play VS Monthly Sub, which is better? - [MMOPINION]
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- เผยแพร่เมื่อ 28 ก.ย. 2024
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Free games sound great, but can they actually end up costing you a lot?
Monthly sub games may sometimes feel like an obligation or a chore you must play, but does the sub keep the quality higher?
Somes MMO games are free to play (which is also pay to win) and some are monthly sub. But which of these truly favours the player?
As usual, thanks to my Patreon supporters and Twitch subs for making my channel possible. - บันเทิง
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![The Evil Way 'Free to Play' Games Make Money. [MMOPINION]](/img/tr.png)
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My biggest problem with the monthly subscription, is that it feels weird if you play very casually. Since you are paying every month for something you might not really be using that often. Like if you just buy a game, then take a break from it for three weeks and come back to it, it is no big deal. But do you want to be paying for the entire month in that case? So it kind of puts you in the mindset where you got to constantly keep playing the game all the time and it is maybe the only or major game you are playing, or it drives you to just cancel the sub and not play at all.
I do admit though, that cash shops are ridiculous. So I am not saying don't go with subs, since it might be the best solution to the problem. It just bothers me some times.
I've had that view too, but then I think about it. Let's say I only play...2 hours a week. So *maybe* hit 10 hours over the course of a month. I've would call that being pretty casual. The sub is $15, but if you break that down then I've only paid $1.50/hr for fun. Think about other activities, bowling, movie theater, mini golf, etc. etc. You are going to be paying a *lot* more for any of them for the same amount of fun time.
Of course, you have to keep track of your subs, so you don't end up paying 200/month for a dozen different subscriptions to various games and streaming services and going broke, but, that's a different problem :-P .
Ragnarok Online actually had a solution to this I really liked. You could either pay a subscription for a timeframe, like a month, or you could pay for X hours of actual playtime. Sure, there's probably enough issues with it I can't think of right now, but I really wish other games would've at least tried to adopt this.
Even if you don't just play it casually, a monthly subscriptions does somewhat lead to the thought of "I need to play as much as possible to get the most out of my money". It probably doesn't get there for most people as the cost isn't high enough, at least not consciously. But I've had times where my overall budget was low enough that I played more of a game than I actually enjoyed. I still enjoyed enough of it that I got my money worth out of it, but since I felt like I had to choose between this game and X others, so since I choose this one, I had to get "the most" out of it.
@@phantasyreal That only makes any sense if you exclusively have the internet connection to play that single game
Exactly i like to play different games, u cant really do that with monthly games unless u have a lot of cash to waste, plus these monthly titles still requires u to buy expansions on top of it all
I really like the buy-once model - with the cash shop being mostly cosmetic and avoiding any pay2win.
What's weird to me is that no MMO seems to have a demo system. Let you play up to level 10-20 for free (or the first couple zones) as a demo and then have it be a one-time $20-30 to unlock the game ESO style. (Except ESO lacks a demo.)
what is more despicable to be than ftp games who charge you on their various cash shops is the fact that some sub based games are nowdays implementing cash shops as well on top of a monthly sub so you can no longer earn everything by just playing the game, like money they get from subs each month and expansions is not enough anymore? They gotta milk players for even more? These big greedy corporations are ruining gaming for everyone...
As both player & dev, I'm ok with the idea of a cash shop + monthly sub *IF* the shop is for additional, niche items/elements that only very few players will want. Like a licensed skin, or something that requires an extra subsystem. Rather than make everyone pay extra to include that in the game, I'm cool with just those folks who really want it paying for it.
Even adding special events or sidequests with those niche items as rewards still sucks up a lot of general resources for something that only a small percentage of players are into, which isn't good business.
@@mandisaw I see that the main issue with those games is within the community as it tends to create a divide between people who buy cosmetic overrides and people who hate people who buy them. Again, this is stupid, but players will be stupid a lot of the time :D
By the way, I play Runescape (osrs right now but played RS3 until I maxed) and it has that
True. A monthly sub game should never have a cash shop.
@@mandisaw that is a slippery slope and it makes people discouraging to play when they see the store bought stuff.
@@mandisaw I think that if I'm paying a monthly sub that should be it. But I also have to acknowledge that what I want isn't what a AAA developer is going to provide in 2021, so I'll live with cosmetics if I must.
"Imagine if your phone was usable only for a few hours a day and then you have to pay"
Don't give Apple any ideas
This is how cell phones used to work. Calls and texts were free between 9pm and 9am. Any other time they cost however much a minute/per text. I think 10 cents.
@@oreofox Yup - I remember. And you paid not only for x minutes+texts/month, but also how wide a region. So if you were just calling in your country/region, you paid less than for global access.
Mobile games already do that
You mean pay phones? The only phone you could place a call on while out of the house before cell phones were invented.
lol. like screentime only the company's managing the rules.
I really like Guild Wars 2 and LOTRO models, I call them "free to try", and yes, you have to spend some cash to unlock things. But as a disabled gamer in a budget, not having mandatory fees _(while living in South America)_, is a dev-sent
May I recommend you to Warframe? Warframe, definitely not easy getting into, its not hard or anything, just poorly explained. The game is completely F2P, no loot or weapons locked behind cash walls or content that is hidden. However, time gating is pretty common in the game.
@@ADunleavy Warframe os very good, and yes, completely free, because if you need real money you can get it just by farming relics. But in the long term, I find it a bit repetitive, maybe it's just not my playstyle
@@ADunleavy Warframe is awful if you’re 100% free. Locked slots unless you trade players for a bunch of the cash shop currency prevent you from having multiple weapons or frames (and it’s core to the game that you get a bunch). Without paying, crafting takes days (almost a week for frames) . The grinding is awful for some frames/weapons. You also can’t recolor your character much or get many cosmetic items without paying. Couple all of this with the insane grind for MR that basically forces you to constantly have a new weapon/frame or you’re basically punishing yourself, and it feels wonky.
It’s not a bad game, I’ve played it for a decade and I’m a GM founder. But to say the game doesn’t ask you for your wallet is a joke at best.
Edit: and I didn’t even mention that every single weapon and frame will be half power unless you pump a cash shop item into each and every item individually. Sure sometimes you can get them free; but you honestly won’t be getting enough free ones to do much.
@@Copain88 Being a founder doesn't make you important.
@@Copain88 Hey, 100% free player here with MR 29 and about 1.5K hours. Locked slots are an absolute problem early on but are far from being the end of the world. As most everything aside from Warframes are only there for providing Mastery and being sold, the high number of stuff available is deceptive. You can easily live with only 30 or so weapon slots (you start with 3 and get 2 for 12p so it ain't that expensive), and Nightwave provides a couple of slots as you progress, with its progression being rather easy for all levels of play.
Crafting time is far from an issue. Weapons and frame parts take 12 hours; a full frame takes 72 hours on top of the time it takes to craft each individual component. Slow? Yes. But it is far from being punishible like most craft-locked timers tend to be (there are many free city builders with timers counted on double digit days).
The grind for some frames and weapons are horrendously bad, true. But you don't have to grind those, you know? You can always just trade prime parts for platinum and then either buy what you need from the market or just go for primes. Hell, all the terrible to farm warframes are available in their prime versions (which you can farm for free or buy parts from other players).
Cosmetics being mostly special currency locked is a problem, yes.
MR is semi-irrelevant. As long as you are MR 15, you can craft/buy everything. Yes, the higher your MR the more daily traes you have and the higher your standing limit is, but those hardly matter if you are simply playing the game to have fun. MR only truly matters if you want to push for efficient gameplay and efficient grind which, to Warframe's credit, has a much lower ceiling than most of its competitors and you can perfectly play it having weak loadouts.
Heck, I know player that are between MR 10-14 and haven't leveled a new gun/frame for more than an year because they have found one or two frames and weapons that they have a blast playing and stick with them.
Monthly sub games don't make all the problems go away if the company doesn't care about the customer (eg. WoW). Another problem with monthly sub games is it's harder to get newer players playing/paying. If the free trial doesn't attract them enough, they won't pay for the monthly sub. Also I agree that RNG upgrade mechanics like in BDO are really bad for the player and just make you frustrated and want to quit.
As someone who grew up and currently live on a shoestring budget, I hate monthly subscriptions. I hate the idea that I can spend hundreds of hours and dollars on a game and then lose all access to it because the funds couldn't allow it one month. At least with a F2P game, I can pay on my own terms, and in the event I no longer have access to spare cash, I don't lose the game.
This has been my thoughts as well. Especially with time, as someone currently going through college. There's times where I don't have the time nor money to play that month and to have all that progress frozen or removed is enough to keep me on the f2p path.
I used to have this same problem and philosophy, but then eventually I figured out I spent just as much over time on f2p as with sub game, or in many cases much more.
When friends eventually convinced me I ended up going with just paying sub for a month or two whenever new content hit, then unsubbed for until next content update, making me save money and the game feeling fresh and fun whenever I came back to it.
Hell I even found cash to spare to buy single player games every now and then with this way, something I could never afford when I played mainly f2p games.
Can I also add that not everyone lives in a first world country?
Just because sub is literally Pocket change somewhere doesn't mean everyone can pay the same price. Specially in countries like Brazil where the government is completely against video games.
Given that I quit Wow before even reaching max level in BfA because I could just be asked to put the effort in because it just wasn't fun for me and recently quit playing Warframe a f2p game that I clocked 1k+ hours in. Well... I have come to a different conclusion.
I can say one thing, it's not a question of monetisation. It's a question on how the devs and publishers view the players. Are the players customers that they want to come back frequently? Or are they just walking wallets to be sucked dry and abandoned?
This is a question of company-philosophy not monetisation, as that just communicates the incentive structure.
While blizzard has an ingame cash shop that is just shy of selling loot crates of items that actually increase player power, Warframe some time last year removed stuff from the cash shop because it did not work as intended. Mod packs, basically ingame items that directly translate to character power. You can get all of them through playing just as well.
These things got removed because they were not just the fun waste of premium currency they were intended but worked as a trap for new players to waste their currency on because they did just not know any better.
Which one of these is putting the player first?
you couldnt be asked to reach max? its ok just buy the levels from blizz
are you now worrying about being a max level with no mounts, pets or mogs? fret not for i have you covered! just buy them all from blizz, the new bear mount even has its own unique animation thats unattainable without using money!
@@josephvilteski8707 Your first post is false and second bear is from literally 30 years anniversay blizzcon which was made/had such things since Blizzcon existed.
And actually you can buy it via gold which you can transfer to blizzard money in game so you can get that mount via in game gold without spending any irl money.
When you try to say crap try to be even right about it.
i just started playing warframe, so can you please tell me why you did quit ?
@@hyriuh0689 I have quit warframe after 200-250h because it's essentially a giant grind-fest. You grind to rank up your gear, next you grind to craft new weapons and warframes, then you grind to rank up those - in an endless loop. (And new gear is released faster than a f2p player is able to aquire) All just to keep up with other players - even tho it is not a competitive game, most missions are pretty much a race. Everyone is rushing through missions as fast as they can - and a f2p player will almost always fall behind, be it in dmg or speed.
That being said, I played years ago (before there was any story and then again, when they added some story), so this might have changed a bit (but I doubt it).
I would say there is a good amount of fun to have, but at a certain point you have to decide if you are fine to have basically no progression (compared to other players), pay money to keep up with the others or just quit and find a new game that is more fun.
Free to play is like going to your crack dealer who tells you it's free.
Your first time is gonne be great but everytime after that you're gonna have to check in to the cash shop ... cause it was a one time only thing.
cool profile pic
@@shadowgarra360 Thanks :D
11:27 "these issues don't exist anymore" meanwhile WoW cash shop mount vs raid earnable moun... oh wait they didn't include a raid mount this time...
I remember when the shop was added back in Wrath and telling people they were slowly going to add more things to it until it reached a point the things from the shop were better than the ones in game, and that eventually things that _would_ effect gameplay would be in it. I was laughed at and called a doomsayer and paranoid. What blows is it looks like they are conditioning people to do the same with classic as well. They could of at least had the curtesy to wait until Wrath classic. Such a shame.
Monthly sub all the way. I'm not sure if you mentioned this but, monthly sub games generally have a more dedicated and higher caliber player base.
The sad part is even with the monthly sub they usually end up charging for expansions, cosmetics and sometimes even boosts
Seeing Rift just brings back so many fond memories from before it went f2p, I was a Vanilla player.
Then it went f2p shortly into Stormwhatever.
:(
I find it weird that there are plenty of games such as Dota, Valorant, CSGO and others that are really free to play with optional, mostly cosmetics items on the cash shop that are making tons of money, yet F2P MMOs still rely on butchering the core experience.
thing is all the games you listed are based on pure skill and have an extremely heavy PvP concept. If they started selling power ups like an item that let you gain more gold from kills in Dota or a mod for a gun that lowered the recoil on CSGO people would loathe that and stop playing altogether.
An MMO can have skill requirements, usually it's the mastering of one's class, but they also use gear that you obtain to power up your character. And that can be sold. Also most MMOs have leveling systems. There you go, level boosting is almost a must in the cash shops. Then mounts that go faster or give you extra boosts, that one weapon that would require hours to farm that you can get for just 5 bucks. MMOs have a natural affinity to items that are easily sellable for IRL money without necessarily breaking the game.
The irony that while there are exceptions to this (hello time gating!), the majority of the F2P games I play can barely even be called MMOs if at all, Genshin which keeps somehow getting more F2P friendly with every update rather than the other way around, Warframe where I've only spent money out of literal desire to support the company, and Path of Exile which only sells you things that don't really affect gameplay... I think, haven't gone back to it in a while
"You cannot have fun wrong"...... I accept your challenge sir.
My favorite gaming streamers are the ones who embrace the brokenness & buginess of a game for the lols & play the game unseriously in ways never intended.
I think a mix of both could be nice. let the players play the full game till a specific point and convince them in this time that your game is worth a subscription.
I hate "free trials" like in wow.. the whole new player experience sucks when a player can't interact with the community around.
in the end the sub-model favors the player the most, but they need a chance to get in touch with the game, before forced to pay a monthly sub or high entry costs
FFXIV does this really well.
@@willprotector never got in touch with this game.. it is really story driven by all I heard about it so far, and I'm not quite in the mood to read through years of storylines. but, it's on my "wanna play sometimes"-List :)
Final Fantasy does the same thing with retainers in terms of inventory space. You can buy more than the first 2 they give you for extra money. They're not perm an you're paying for them monthly it's cheap yeah but, if it expires you can't get anything out from it until you rebuy it for a month.
I love you man!!
I wish TERA never change from monthly sub to F2P, that was the worst decision they made.
It would be nice if the subscription price went down as more players joined. I know that's just fantasy land thinking...but it would maybe encourage more and more people to actually play.
Could you perhaps add the name of the game we're seeing in background collage footage like this?
I would suggest a simple overlay in the top center.
I want to know what that first game was
@@derlekking i know that this is late , but if u have not found what the the first game is, it should be Defiance 2050. thats the shooter game that u see at the start of the video.
he did a review about it here
th-cam.com/video/FrMqzPj31jo/w-d-xo.html
@@aikafuwa3768 Thank you for this reply!
@@derlekking you are welcome
It could be there's a deliberate advertising issue that prevents it.
To be honest, you are right on many of the points you made. But there is a superior business design - Warframe. It is completely free, but progress requires you to play with as many frames/weapons as you can get your hands on... If you play enough and farm enough you can make the premium credits by playing alone, not spending a dime. The world is so vast there that it simply caters to your crave to have more, so if you want more and you want it fast - you pay, but there aren't any blockers present. So yea, pay to speed up is actually a great idea, I never got hooked to paying a monthly fee and I probably never will, but if I like the game I would make a payment to speed up my progress.
What if you had an f2p single player mode to let people play(try) the game and then a minimum monthly subscription for online play to cover server expenses and new content development.
Judge: “JSH you are charged with DUI, how do you plead?”
JSH: “you cannot have fun ‘wrong’”
Free to play, expensive to win
You're right on paper, but on practice... subscription models also use every other monetization method and make the game not as fun as they could make it. You have cash shop for the best cosmetic items in all of them. You can't get the best skins by just paying the subscription and playing the game. How they manage to still get so many players to play their game is another story and I guess sometimes is only due to brand recognition.
Great video, Josh!
Love the content, keep it up.
Thanks for video and Monthly Sub is the best option ! ... saying that after long time playing Final fantasy 14
Thanks Josh. This video speaks from my heart.
I feel every statement in your vid except one is true. The one is that free to play (FTP) will cost me more in the long term. That might be true for some or even many, but not me. When Star Trek Online went from mandatory monthly fee to FTP, I unsubscribed and have never paid a cent to them since. I went on playing for a while and meanwhile log in only once a year for a few days in a row, mainly for nostalgic reasons. Similar with some other games that went from mandatory fee to FTP.
The only one exception to this so far was Elder Scrolls Online (ESO). While I was a happy ESO plus player in the past, as I viewed it’s ftp more or less as just a hyped trial. Maybe that is just me being dilusional about ESO actually being able to trick me. However, breaking their promise of getting all DLC included in a ESO+ by lately just labelling some of it as “Chapters” in differentiation of “DLC” and charging even ESO+ players for it, I have now also cancelled my subscription there.
Seems some people still have to learn that if one becomes too greedy, one might end up with getting nothing at all. At least from me.
Definitely agree that Sub models favor the player. The only thing that is stopping me from playing subscription-based games is that I'm always afraid that I'll get burnt out and I'll fall behind on a lot of things, most notably that gear-treadmill. I REALLY want to try Final Fantasy 14, but I don't have the funds to continue on, should I like it enough to do so. I always love to see videos from you; I always feel so much more informed afterward. You rock, dear sir.
FF14 has a massive trial time, you basically can level as many classes as you want up to level 60 (and also experience the whole story up to that point, which is massive). Oh and all those classes can be played on the same character. So no uses of rerolling. The gearing isn't particularly egregious either, there is not much RNG in it. Even crafted gear is really good at high level before hitting best in slot stuff. So my advice, try it out, see if you like it, and if you did like the story, consider buying it even if only for this aspect (it's clearly one of the greatest parts of it).
The Netflix example of 80% of every film is not far off from what Paramount is doing. They have series like The Office or Parks and Rec there to watch for free but only like the first half of the series (like first 3 seasons or something).
I think Star Wars The Old Republic has done a good "Fremium" game. Its free to play but only 1 character, and minimal access to content. BUT. if you subscribe, even for 1 month, you gain access to all content released to that point (that expansion). That says even if you unsubscribe. It has a cash shop, is cosmetic only AND subbing gives you currency to use there. I think its a good option for a game that may not be able to survive as a monthly sub option only.
Also,
Tiers of Microtransaction sins:
1. Cosmetic Only
2. Time Savers
3. Power ups (strong items, etc.)
4. Anything Random (Gacha, lootboxes, etc.)
Pay to play sounds better to me. MMOs are expensive and require maintenance, so maybe they can cost 80-90$ once if their actual development cost and maintenance cost between the expansions justify it and that's it. But oh well. F2P makes it P2W usually and Subscriptions are quite expensive once you add them over the years.
You'd have to pay double that for the kind of MMORPG that today's market can produce--then you would have to pay double for an expansion. Most point to Guild Wars 2, but even it has cash shop (cosmetic or not). MMORPGs are expensive to maintain and because players naturally fluctuate in an out---they need a steady influx of money. Subs are the best way to do this without hijacking the gameplay to be unbearable.
Reminds me of A Tale in the Desert. That was a subscription game but it encourages you to purchase more subscriptions if you want to progress faster (locations located several real life hours apart that you can travel to, use offline time (which if I remember correctly you get at 1 to 1 ration so it's very limited) or just buy another subscription and park your alt there. If I remember correctly they also did other things like allowing non AFK macros so you could get more stuff done faster if you had more subscriptions as long as you had them all were you could see them and respond to the GM if challenged.
You also couldn't let your subscription lapse for more then 30 days or other players could claim all your stuff.
I loved the game and there were many people who didn't buy multiple subscriptions but it was good at selling multiple subscriptions and keeping them.
After 30 seconds I can't help but pause and say : on a long enough timeline yadda yadda...from that film I can't mention
DC universe online is an exception. Sure, you need to pay for certain powers but every power can work perfectly fine as either a dps or support role even at top end elite content. Theres lockboxes you can open with money but "stabilizers" you can earn through a weekly mission to unlock them. They sell items to massively speed up upgrade times but you can absolutely free to play get artifacts (which go to 200) for free and theres a shop with in game currency that lets you buy those "protects from failure" items. And all dlc is free to everyone. Itll take alot of grinding but you absolutely can be a top end player without spending a dime, the membership just gives small benefits that you might want to have if youre ok with spending
The problem with FTP was that for many games it started as essentially just an extended 'trial' account. Very limited experiences meant to grab your attention and get you to pay to play. Over time however the free account became permanent alongside the paying players. This means that the devs transitioned their focus into monetizing the 'free' accounts (endless microtransactions) that take up more dev time than improving the game so people pay a sub.
Devs used to have to put their best foot forward and grab new players with an exciting game. Now the devs are actually incentivized to slow down or drag out progress while promising all the 'fun stuff' is at the end game. Then proceed to sell shortcuts to that end game. FOMO pays better than producing a quality product.
New players then obsess about 'catching up' to established players (by paying their way there, not by putting in the time and effort) as some requirement to enjoy the game. This is huge in Eve - so many new players demand that they should be able to buy their way in a month to what might have taken someone years to achieve. Entitlement is a gamer mindset that is a symptom of the FTP/PTW culture that has infected gaming for years.
I could have tollerated weekly or biweekly subscriptions, but monthly is out of the question. I only play MMOs for 2 weeks every 1 or two months. In my MMO prime, I was playing 4 MMOs per month for a week each. What can I say; I have commitment issues.
I still dont see any video on Silkroad Online by Joymax ! Dude you really need to get into that s**t ! YOU ARE NOT READY
As someone developing a TRPG set in the Silk Road - I've been eagerly hoping to find info on how/why that game went under - would love if Josh covered it.
@@mandisaw I have been playing it since launch , I played it for 9-10 years until it died, if you need any information I can provide you with anything you need to know
@@FoxyNews89 Easiest question (that's not always easy) - was it fun? Why did you like it?
@@mandisaw The Only Fun part about it was the competition i had with my Grp of freinds. Me and my IRL friends got hooked on this game since middle school, and since then we competed for getting the most gold and valuable in game items
that bit at 13:00 sounds like AOL back in the day lol
100% facts. The sub model was always the best deal for the consumer. As soon as players allowed themselves to be convinced that the F2P MTX business model was in their best interests, the MMORPG genre began its inevitable decline.
I live in a country where MapleStory is a very popular game, some of my friends say that paying monthly is a "scam" but they are more than willing to fork out 3 digits on just a single piece of equipment in the game which just baffles me.
Hey Josh, Thanks for your videos, love your content. Could you please start putting the name of the game you are showing on screen? some of these games look great but i have no idea what they are called when you are not talking about the game. Thank you for taking the time to do what you do :D
Sure thing! if you have any timecodes of games you want to know, let me know.
I've honestly only seen one game where the free-to-play model actually works in the players favor, Path of Exile.
You get all the game, all the expansions, all the content for free. If you want to look pretty, of have more then the base amount of character/bag space (which is fairly generous), then you have to pay.
Of course the developers know that given that this is a ARPG looter, if your going to play this for any extended period of time, your going to eventually fill up all your bag space and want to buy more. And as long as you can convert some players to playing customers, there is a reasonably high chance they will pay again. And players are often vein and want their characters to look good.
From the players perspective, the game has given them a good experience without having monetization thrown in their face every 5 seconds, and by the time the game would actually push them into a position where it would make life a lot easier if they did pay, the player is more amenable to doing so having gotten a good deal thus far.
The developers were willing to slowly grow their game, and realized early on that they needed to keep player interest and good will for the long haul. And they've built their business model around that ideal. It's a win win. Which is unfortunately extremely rare in this industry.
I totally agree, only game whith completley free to play system that managed to dethrone diablo and ashamed blizzard! ;-)
Thank you very much for these details. I'd been trying to explain this to friends for years, but to no avail. They still think it's better to play a F2P game, even though they have not found a single game yet to keep them around for more than 6 months without paying way more money than buying a game and paying $15/month sub. And they still don't see it. So they've spent the last several years MMO game jumping and never actually continuing to play the same MMO, which is literally the point of MMOs, to continue playing for a long time, not a couple months and quit over and over.
The point of playing an MMO is to have fun. I wouldn't listen to someone looking for a second life in an MMO aswell. 🙄
@@jamaly77 Everyone has a different definition of "having fun". I was pointing out that my friends were not having fun, but they didn't understand why they weren't.
I never said they had to have fun the same way I do, I simply was pointing out why they used to have fun in an MMO, but has since been unable to have that fun again.
In SWTOR, if your a preferred status and you have to pay to hide your head slot... I know which type ill go for.
The F2P part is totally correct. But the second part about subscription is missing the other cornerstone: To hold you in a game longer, developers create artificial limitations with a daily/weekly cool down to reduce your game tempo.
I wouldn't mind seeing Josh Strife Hayes Jump into Star Citizen and play then judge it there a Free Fly at the end of April or beginning of May when ever Invictus is going on but then again the longer he waits the better the game will be since they will have more of the game done by then
just one "word": GW2
What are your thoughts on Warframe? Not exactly an MMO, but free-to-play still. They do fall into the trap of selling XP boosters, but otherwise have actually done a decent job about being not awful to players. In fact, they even pushed through an immediate patch to fix an issue that effected me as a blind gamer, without any money being involved at all. Not saying they're perfect, but maybe DE (the devs of Warframe) have found some way to at least slightly balance their payer versus player scales of fun and profit. Thoughts?
I've not played warframe enough to have a valid opinion on it yet.
I'd need to play a lot more before i have anything to say :)
Subscription is the best option only when the developer respects the player enough to not double dip with a cash shop. One of the biggest complaints with games like World of Warcraft is the store being an out right insult to the player base who has put in the time and effort. Whales might be good for the bank account but they will sink your ship.
I have only played 2 subscription games, Asheron's Call and Dark Ages of Camelot. I did play the free version of Dungeons and Dragons Online. Over all i prefer playing the free to play since i am content to grind since i have other more important things to spend my hard earned money on.
One thing not mentioned is that sub games are incentivized to make you grind. They will find the balance between wasting your time and not making you quit. WoW is a master at this.
having a sub fee to make sure you play long and hard...
Free to play games are also gridy as fuck, to make you play more, so you spend more time in the game -> there's a bigger chance that you'll buy something from the cash shop (or you'll buy some kind of booster).
@@bookfish completely right, and all game with microtransactions are doing the same. including the ones with sub anyway so...
Disclaimer I am not a hardcore MMO player I only play very casually and from time to time since I like more small groups of friends type of games or just singleplayer.
I am a FTP player since I was very little and I have never spent any money on them for the simple reason that I didn't have any. If I were to spend money on a FTP game I wouldn't play it to be honest. The only thing that I have spent money on is I think 3€ on a skin for my fav character in League and thats it. Anything else that I have played it was either FTP or Buy to play. And I think that Buy to play is the best option for me cause it has a good balance of you pay once and the game treats you right and if you REALLY want some extra stuff you can pay for some but it is really not needed for these to enjoy the game cause they have already gotten money from you.
The best FTP game that I have played imo and have sunk a lot of hours is Warframe which is not exactly an MMO but it is the only game that I didn't feel pressured to buy anything with real money apart from the Aya even they did and even then I didn't buy anything cause I really didn't need to. Since you can just trade stuff for the premium currency of the game (platinum) with in game items. I have earned more than 2k plat as a FTP player and most of the hours that I have played I didn't even farm for plat. If I did I would have over 5k or even more. Which basically you can buy almost everything with 5k plat.
I'd like a game that you BUY. Which means paying an upfront ammount of money for the entire game, then every 2 or 3 months maybe they could launch an expansion or so and you could buy it for a REDUCED PRICE. Imagine an MMORPG that costs 60 dollars and every expansion is 15-20 dollars. I know I would buy all expansions regularly. But we got games like TESO, where you must BUY the game, then BUY a subscription unless you wanna waste time and then you gotta BUY the expansions (which costs MORE than the game itself!!!)
I am not pro shops in games or subs, but "but going to all you can eat expecting to get homemade from scratch,and in michelin quality." is farsought from the getgo.
the most fun MMOs have a subscription. that's just how it is.
that being said there are some fun ones that don't.
New world for example doesn't have a sub, and it's quite fun. It does have a battle pass system, which is arguably very similar, but overall quite a bit cheaper. $20 every few months, and it's by no means required. Just a bit of a boost here and there, couple of emotes.
the video is kind of "black and white" themed for me, I don't know any online games without cash shop now, and if cash shop is there it's mean someone needs it. Also, subscription models often try to make you stay by manipulating your gameplay(Daily/weekly/monthly bonuses, quite deep social systems(you don't leave while your friends playing the game, btw I don't say it bad, just manipulative), story content coming in small portions, etc.).
Unfortunately XIV has that bag issue with retainers the items get locked into them if you can't pay your maint fee you can't access them at all. I was very disappointed and figured we'd have withdraw only privileges when the fee lapsed.
I refuse to play those black holes for money known as free to play the same way if refuse to put money in a slot machine.
When I started playing mmos there was no such thing, as I recall, as a free to play game. Later the ones I played started to become free to play or at least partially free to play, however that started to happen when the game showed signs it was going out of business, meaning it was noticeable for us players the game was starting to suck... And once it became free to play (fully or partially) it didn't get better, in fact it kept steadily getting worse. So I prefer and miss those monthly subscription mmo days. However, the way some single player games have managed to use micro transactions (best example being later Assassins Creed games), I wouldn't be surprised if the Companies and Developers would find a way to scam us even if monthly payed mmos were back. But overall I preferred mmos when they were monthly payed.
For me, monthly subscription is a big reason for not being interested in a game. I don't like the idea of having to pay monthly to continue my "adventure".
I think monthly subs pushes people towards the "meta" because they want to try as much as possible before the month is over. And once money was invested, most people felt "obliged" to continue investing so as not to "lose" what has already been invested.
I prefer to have the option to pay to improve my experience with the game (not to win) than having to pay to have some experience, but I am against limiting your game mechanics to be able to sell a "better experience". We can say that the sale of cosmetics in a cash shop is a form of limitation because you are limiting access to visuals in the game, but I think it is a relatively acceptable way of generating a financial return.
While most games with a monthly subscription allow for some free experience, most do not allow a substantial part of the game, sufficient to create a firm opinion of the game, to be experienced for free.
And the investment of the developers in the part of the game that can be tried for free is generally greater than in the other parts of the game and/or the free part is focused on making the non-free part of the game look much better than it really is, making the player have a "wrong" idea of the game. Obviously, this makes total sense from a commercial point of view, every marketable product aims to generate profit and I am not naive to think that games should be different.
Therefore, I prefer to pay once to be able to play "forever" (B2P) or to pay only for "extras" and not for the game itself (F2P with cash shop without "pay to win", at least, what I consider "pay to win"). I think it is possible to create a F2P game with a cash shop without "pay to win", profitable. And if we think about it, we all pay something to win, be it time and/or money.
We all would prefer a quality F2P game without a cash shop that sells solutions to players, but that type of game is very, very, very hard to find, as these MMOs are incredibly expensive to make and Cosmetics alone wouldn't bring enough profit, hence, why we rarely see these type of F2P MMOs, the closest example I could think off is probably Path of Exile which still has some pay to get ahead features, but it is much more tame compare to the other F2P games out there. Also, paying with time to win in an MMO is exactly how it should be, in an ideal scenario, time is the only currency we should need in order to excel in the game, that is what everyone who isn't a Whale is looking for, we want to feel content for the time we invested playing the game.
@@ronb7189 Well, as i wrote in the comment above, we all "pay" something to "win" in a game, be it time and/or money and, if we consider that we could be using that time to make money, we can say that we all pay with "money" to "win", and therefore all games are "pay to win". Also, usually and intentionally, the money you would make, if you used the time it took to get an item in the game, is very much higher than the money you would spend if you bought the item directly for money. So, in this case, theoretically, those who "pay" with time are paying more than those who pay directly with money. Don't get me wrong, I am not validating the idea of "winning" in a game through spending money, I am only making this parallel because I find it an interesting point for reflection. I also think that playing time should be valued more and I don't like to "lose" to a "Whale" despite having invested more time in the game than he/she. Therefore, I have a policy of spending on a game, at most, just what I get through the game (RMT) or a "small" amount, in case I don’t receive anything (beyond fun) through the game, but the game pleases me a lot. And I really think it is possible to create a profitable F2P or B2P (buy to play, with a low purchase value) game with a cash shop without what I consider "pay to win".
@@ronb7189 Moreover, I believe that methods to pay money directly to "win" in games are implemented out of pure greed and not because the game was not generating profit. The cost of making (and maintaining, in the case of an MMO) a game does not justify the implementation of pay-to-win practices, in my opinion.
@@elifasmiguel5526 MMOs are already much more expensive to make compare to a typical single player game, on top of that, it would need a huge staff for things such as maintaining its servers, security, customer support, programmers to fix bugs and continuously update the game to keep it fresh and so on. Not to mention, the market is already over saturated with MMOs so their is a ton of competition, simply put, making a high quality MMO that is F2P with no pay to win features will likely not even be profitable IMO, their is a reason why their is no examples of such games today and why most high quality MMOs are subscription base and/or sells game updates as expansion packs. F2P MMO is just something to avoid as its either terrible, P2W or both and that is just the nature of the MMO genre itself, its much harder to be that indie developer that makes impressive games when the start up and maintenance cost of quality MMOs (not dead or terrible ones) are pretty high.
@@ronb7189 Well, then we agree to disagree, because, unless you consider selling cosmetic items in a game for real money as paying to "win", I do not agree that the expense of creating and maintaining a game justifies the inclusion of "pay to win" and much less that all f2p games are terrible, "pay to win" and/or need to be.
My only problem with subscription based games is the feeling of loosing money or guilt when I cannot dedicate the most amount of time to it. Most the times when I pay a subscription I happen to not have time to play for a reason or another and end up wasting my money. I play mostly free to play ones because I play solo and casual. I don't care about metta or rankings so I just play for the fun. And I don't mind paying for products I use. And I don't like paying for progression because is like paying to play less of the game which is stupid. I pay for cosmetics and fun stuff. And I like to pay for a game I use.
Our issue with current mmorpg market is as follows:
Sub-Based games are not on-par with other games as experiences and quality compared to if we were to pay the same money for lets say a gamepass with a library of many different experiences (such as xbox gamepass or similar) so in that way we pay and we get more.
MMORPGs have to feel like a one-time, play-forever deal while also having options (that do not influence gameplay itself in any way) to provide for the players while also providing for the game.
Honestly even character slots or similar limitations being lifted I am okay with.
Some limitations that I am not okay with are "make problems intentionally to sell the solutions later" type of situations (BDO I am talking directly to you) so... yeah...
this man has not play enough ESO..where the only thing that works propperly is the crown store
Now with them and most they didn’t I mean the very concept of an MMO means game as a service
What is your opinion on loot boxes with cosmetic only items that don't destroy immersion by not matching game style?? :)
I play Guild Wars 2. Best of both worlds :laugh:. Mostly at least. I hate the thought of feeling obligated to play to make use of a subscription.
"The probably never coming out Star Citizen"
Oof
Being a huge fan of Wing Commander, my late husband backed Star Citizen, and kept up with all the updates. He literally died waiting for that game.
@@mandisaw I'm sorry to hear that
@@ZontarDow Thanks
All good points and one I thought of long ago and agree with the logic.
In reality though...monthly subscription doesn't work.
Why you ask? Because the developers take money from the monthly subscription to pay to maintain the game (as they should) but they should also put a decent amount of the subscription money BACK INTO THE GAME. However, IME...they put a paltry amount back. This means your game comes out with 'updates' every 6 months to a year with 'new features' sounding like it took one person an afternoon to do after he was done doing other duties. Yes, I know, it is harder to do these things than I think...but these new 'features' were pathetic.
An example from when I was more into MMOs was Eve Online about 10 years ago. They were upfront they were working on another MMO (I think called Dust or something' and for years they would come out with an 'update' of trivial things that just could not have taken a team of even 3 long to do. They even acknowledged they were taking the revenue stream from Eve and putting it into a new game. Therefore, I spent something like 3 years playing an MMO where NOTHING CHANGED. No new features (that I used anyway or noticed).
So, in theory your video is spot on. In reality...
I suggest that a hybrid would be best like yes go sub, but have a small sub fee like 5$ a month and then also have a cosmetic shop where you can buy cosmetics but also transmog gems, this should supplement your income and satisfy the whales while keeping the rest of the population happy and well yes offer a free trial, show off your game.
And yes ofc buy to play.
"Imagine if your phone was free to use but you could only use it for a few hours a day."
Actually that sounds fantastic! Where do I sign up?!
I've never gotten in to the whole pay monthly to play a game- thing. I've subbed to games a few times but it just feels wrong. So for me its either free to play or buy to play without any kind of subscription.
Will say that Warframe is probably the exception to the rule here, only cash I put in was because I wanted to give the devs some money for making a great game, not because I felt I needed to
This is why you should follow the cardinal rule of MMO's: Don't play MMO's.
I am clean and sober from Everquest 19 years and 9 days.
Why would someone with that attitude follow guy around them?
What you say does not align with what you do
@@Swordart2022 Of course it aligns with it. I don't play MMO's and watch a guy who says MMO's mostly suck and why. XD
@@luckyspec2274 So you like your echo chamber reinforcing your decision to make you feel good about not playing pity.
@@Swordart2022 I want to find one MMO that's actually good..sadly PWI which was F2P has faded. And I can't be asked to play WoW and pay for their garbage. So...still looking.
Is it possible to rehabilitate MMOs that went from monthly to monthly/vip and F2P/cash-shop hybrid back to a monthly service? I have Dungeons and Dragons Online in mind. They have so many pay-to-win options, it feels like it would have to punish the people who have sank money into shop-exclusive options to have them cut out, but making them widely available would throw balance out the window. Perhaps splitting servers into a monthly-only servers and everyone else goes to the shop-enabled servers? But then it's a whale vs F2P issue demographic issue.
I know I'm coming a bit late to the party, but anyway... Overall, I feel like the subscription based games are in a slightly better spot than F2P, although I don't think the difference in quality is that big. The main reason for that is I think the developers striving for the highest efficiency possible, so if they have X monthly subscribers, to make as much money as possible they can either try to increase the number of players or to make sure that those existing players will pay for the following month as well... And when they want to be effective in keeping their existing playerbase paying, it seems to me that it is often easier to spend development time and money on systems that exploit human psychology (stuff like FOMO, sunken cost fallacy and such) rather then to focus on the best player experience possible.
Josh, what is your view of ESO's system? I am conflicted. On the one end, it borrows from F2P games with the creating a problem and selling you a solution (e.g., crafting storage with ESO plus), on the other hand, it doesn't seem to be excessively creating systems within the game to make the game less fun in order to nickel and dime people. Where would ESO fall into? Worse than a pay to play but better than a free to play?
I personally really like eso's system. I bought the complete collection when it went on sale and have found many many hours of fun in it and don't need to worry about a sub.
ESO works well for people who want to buy a quality game, but then only pay extra for the bits they want.
@@JoshStrifeHayes I actually jumped to ESO after trying Neverwinter. I got far enough in Neverwinter where I started to notice the paywall and decided to look elsewhere. So far ESO is fun, great quest design, but very mediocre combat feel.
F2P is a cancer on this industry. Monthly sub is the only way to ensure you get a full experience without things being nickel and dimed and without them selling crucial parts of the game back to you. Like cosmetics.
Josh, have you heard of Realm of the Mad God?
The problems as I see them are 1)loot boxes are gambling no matter how it is done; 2) selling the best content on the store. All MMOs whether they are subsciber based or FTP take advantage of players. It is never about the player. It is about how much of a yearly bonus is the CEO going to get.
I just can't wrap my head around a subscriptions that cost as much as a triple A game if you play them for 4 months. Buy by three Triple-A games a year and have them forever are be able to play WOW for 4 months
I disagree with you about monthly subscriptions because I think you're missing an important point. The model doesn't just incentivise keeping people playing, it's keeping them playing FOREVER. So this still leads to bad design, like padding out endless mediocre quest chains, endgame grinds, and intentionally addictive mechanics. Not to mention, nowadays they all also have cash shops. Pretty much every problem you've talked about in your videos was invented by a game with a subscription model.
I dunno man, I played BDO (maybe the worst cash shop ever) for like 2 years, and spent maybe $200 total, have all the basics, 5x T3 pets, "p2w" tent, costumes, max inventory and weight, etc. FF14 + 2y sub is like $400, and they have a cash shop with costumes too. Heck, they even have skip story + instant lv70 in their cash shop, on top of the game, the expansions and the sub.
My problem is I don't like the the three main subscription based MMOs and have already played them in the past.
Here’s to hoping you
Review DC universe online
And Phantasy Star Online 2
I like ESO's model, Buy 2 Play with optional monthly sub that gives that gives access to latest expansions etc.
I'll add a counter-argument: Expectations and total cost of ownership. Do you actually have to have 'the best'? What if you don't actually want a Maserati and are happy to pay for a Toyota if it gets you from A to B and is affordable? To make this analogy even closer, how many people lease a premium car as opposed to buying a decent cheaper one?
Rent models like subscriptions also encourage you to binge to "get your money's worth" which can be unhealthy and you have the constant pressure to get value from the, knowing that in the end you have exactly nothing but memories.
Example: My sister played WoW full-on for years and years, and was eventually highly ranked globally and desired for every raid. It cost her *thousands* of dollars to support the lifestyle, she eventually got burnt out and stopped playing. By comparison, I logged into GW2 last night after *six years* of F2P inactivity, there was my toon, just as I left her, even have a series of annual gifts in mailbox welcoming me back. Total cost to me? *$0* and I can continue to play for as long as the service continues to run. It may not be the 'best mmo experience ever' but it suits my extremely casual mmo playstyle (a few hours a month on average).
So for me, a subscription is a complete waste of money as I won't use it enough to make it worthwhile, and if I stop paying, I end up with nothing. This is why I prefer the third (second imho) model - pay for the game upfront to have a 'decent' online gaming experience hopefully without hellish enforced microtransactions, and pay what I think it's worth in cosmetics etc to support continued development. I bought UO, GW1, ESO etc and would consider buying GW2 if it became a larger part of my gaming activity. I have not and will never buy a subscription for WoW, FFXIV, or the latest 'hot thing' in mmos. I have absolutely no interest in being part of the zero day hype. In fact the opposite, I prefer to be a /r/patientgamer and buy in about ten-15 years afterwards.
Subscription isn't all that great either because those games still have a micro transaction attached to it as well. Its less invasive but its still there. Also there is another thing here, if more money comes into a game there is a chance that it will get better as well, also a big likely its just a rip off for greedy higher ups.
As opposed to sub games where the design decisions center around delaying the player, slowing him down, dragging everything out so that, in order to experience the content, story, etc he has to be subbed, and paying, longer. Making the content boring by forcing you to drag your feet and using sunk cost fallacy to keep people paying in a sub game is no better than a cash shop.
Buy to play with pure cosmetic cash shop for long term in-game lore cool guy flair or in game gold because trying to make cash Inna game when I have a real job sucks. I'll pay that 5/10$ for a bunch of gold to stay pvp competitive rather than wasting my free time farming and crafting. Possible subscription perks/ guild specific needs for large active guilds. Or excessive storage for collectors or people who really want an address in the hub city. Everyone else lives at the hostel.
I mean I agree with you and prefer sub games, but here's the catch: *most people* prefer not to have to pay a monthly fee if possible - no matter how shitty the microtransctions might be. Having a sub fee on a game *automatically* increases people's expectations and makes people far more judgemental of a game even if they might end up spending more on a free to play or buy to play game. I have friends who still play various non sub based games, and the number 1 thing they will ALWAYS mention is how they do not like having a monthy fee hanging over their heads, even when they are not playing - this makes them feel "pressured" to have to play that game because they have already sunk a monthly fee in it. Contrast it to non sub based games, in sub based games they feel like the game a noose on your neck saying "PLAY ME PLAY ME" and can jump in and out whenever they want - and in this day and age where there are billions of games around, most people don't really want to stick to one game. It's the peace of mind people get not having to pay a fee every month and be "imprisoned" to that one game that makes them prefer non sub based games, even if the microtransctions are way worse.
The other issue (since you're in the west I assume you have less of this issue), is currency conversion rates. I live in SEA - MOST of the countries around me (I'm in Singapore where the currency strength is good, so I don't mind sub fees) have currencies considerably weaker than USD. Telling them to cough up 15 USD a month isn't very appealing, compared to F2P games, even if the cash shop is based on USD and far more predatory. People here are *quite* willing to put up with massive inconveniences just so they don't have to pay a fee. And the few rich people who do sell cash shop items ingame - they get treated like "sultans" (i.e. kings) and people constantly beg them to put stuff in the ingame shop. And when F2P games only need a few whales to turn a profit, you can see why many game companies (especially those based in Asia) don't exactly care to attach a sub fee to their game - especially when simply having a sub fee will turn off a LOT of people playing who aren't in first world countries - they will simply not even bother looking at it, no matter how good it is.
Gw2 model is good because is a mid way through the subscription and free mmo, but as a teen the best game is the free, as an adult is EVE online
Free to play games were good as a kid because they are not mandatorily tied to credit cards and kids generally aren't aiming to be top-tier players. When I was a kid, I played the hell out of Runescape, Maplestory, and a bunch of other obscure f2p mmos. Yet as an adult, revisiting those games on f2p accounts invariably led to disappointment.
One thing to add. Free to play games that players say it's only cosmetics. Those MMOs are the ones that don't have any identifying boss drops. With gear so bland you can't tell the difference from a new player and a max level. It always happens eventually. Why bother designing cool gear when your cash shop will cover it up nicely.
Is there any MMORPG that follow the same model as League of Legends who makes most of its money with cosmetics from its cash shop while still being free-to-play?
Personally, I think the scammiest model is Overwatch who costed up to 60 bucks at launch and features lootboxes for its cosmetics.
Yeah its POE by GGG best and only real game with completely free to play with no forcing mechanics and systems at all.
F2P goof for some games bad for others.
I feel SWTOR did it right, big cash shop but cosmetics and convenience items only, gear or power upgrades( unless you consider XP boots for fast leveling "power")
what would you think about a donation system? There's got to be at least 1 game out there that survives purely on donations or has at least tried.
What you are describing is a free game.
@@JoshStrifeHayes i meant one that has donations as its sole source of income and not paywalls or cash shops or anything like that. Just something that survives making monthly community goals with only the proposition that the game survives and all future DLC release is based off of meeting those goals with no cash based rewards.
Free 2 play Netflix exists it's called peacock, and I would consider WOW to be free to play not monthly sub even though they got both
What games did you show here? I know Rift and GW2 WoW & FF14
I disagree that Neverwinter doesn't have content locked behind a paywall. I mean they want cash to unlock the Dragonborn race, which I'd argue changes the game experience.
Wish you had gotten to try Fallen Earth before it closed. It had some old item dupe inflation issues but besides that the free playing experience was very good (except for the money cap. I paid a dollar to have that removed)
Sub with a free trial is best F2p is too deceptive. You should try Uncharted Waters online its like 6 pages of cash shop nonsense before you can even get in game but best game of its kind only reason its still around,IMO.