Free To Play - This Topic Is Not Post To Win

[BusbyBerkeley]

So recently Quake Live AND now Tribes Ascend have both kind of reversed their free to playness. Quake live is now just a ten dollar game, making it a souped up Quake 3 with matchmaking and stuff. Tribes seems to have been entirely rebalanced and the f2p store stripped entirely, with a ten dollar purchase unlocking all game content. I never played before, so I can't speak much on it, but both of these seem like absolute best case scenarios for end of life free to play games. Charge a flat fee, and open it all up, sort of like a reverse of when an mmo goes from subscription based to f2p model.

Anyone have any thoughts on this? Seems super cool to me.

[graddy]

So recently Quake Live AND now Tribes Ascend have both kind of reversed their free to playness. Quake live is now just a ten dollar game, making it a souped up Quake 3 with matchmaking and stuff. Tribes seems to have been entirely rebalanced and the f2p store stripped entirely, with a ten dollar purchase unlocking all game content. I never played before, so I can't speak much on it, but both of these seem like absolute best case scenarios for end of life free to play games. Charge a flat fee, and open it all up, sort of like a reverse of when an mmo goes from subscription based to f2p model.

Anyone have any thoughts on this? Seems super cool to me.

I would prefer it but I'm confused about how this will be good for their player base, especially with the more obscure Tribes. Seems like F2P was the best way to ensure a healthy player pool.

[rohlfinator]

I wonder how their players are taking it -- I'd have some serious buyer's remorse if I had spent hundreds of dollars on the game and then they remove the F2P store. Granted, large price changes are fairly common in games but not usually to this degree.

 

It's interesting that they're both going that direction. Is the stigma of F2P starting to be that much of a hindrance (at least for that type of competitive FPS)?