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baconian

Is free to play inherently evil?

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I wouldn't count out LoL on the evil front. They very much inhibit your ability to enjoy the full game unless you're willing to just straight up buy some dudes. The amount of times, when I still played the game, that I was unable to play a dude I really liked or thought looked super cool because I didn't play a thousand games a day to unlock all dudes with IP as they came out, well, in a lot of ways it ruined that game for me.

 

LoL is very much on the exploitative side of the scale simply because it has these arbitrary limiting walls that prevent the player from playing exactly what they want to play at all times.

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The fact that the ideal customer for the F2P model is called a "whale" tells you all you need to know. 

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I wouldn't count out LoL on the evil front. They very much inhibit your ability to enjoy the full game unless you're willing to just straight up buy some dudes.

Nah, it's extremely enjoyable if you're not obsessive about it. There's always a fun selection of guys available to play for free, which changes every week.

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EA have just updated/changed PvsZ2

"During the fight, I lost a few lawnmowers, which is no big deal in a PvZ game, right? They'll be there in the next level I play... right?

WRONG!

With this new update, you now have to purchase lawnmowers to replace them one at a time, and the lost lawnmowers are gone on ALL levels, not just the super hard boss fight where I lost 5/6 of them. They cost about 2000 coins which is A LOT (unless they rebalanced the coin accumulation, which I highly doubt)."

http://m.neogaf.com/showthread.php?t=765017

That's pretty shocking to me. To actually retro fit this shit into an already released game

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It's very much a case of you wanting something there Twig, rather than needing (though all F2P has a bit of both).

I've put cash into buying many heros in LoL, but I've never felt like I was forced. Nowadays, i just tip away with a bout or two in the evening for the fun of it, and i'm sitting on around 8k points, which will buy me any champ i want.

 

In LoL however, there is some more subtle prodding to spend cash. You need IP to buy runes, which provide stats to your characters. You can only get IP by playing. You can however boost the amount of IP you earn by paying cash - you still have to play to earn, but you will earn a fair bit quicker. Having runes directly impacts the power of your character. I don't generally give a shit about doing well in games anymore, but it is quite a carrot to dangle in front of people.

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I am sympathetic to the idea of capturing more of the demand curve - it's fairer on the low end for people to get a pretty okay game for free, and people in the mid-range to get something pretty great on the high end. In practice, it's fraught with danger. For instance, it feels unfair to lock out mechanics to those who can afford to pay, but if the free game is super great than people who could have afforded to pay but don't get away without paying their fair share. The higher end of the demand curve tends not to be taken up by the very wealthy, but by people who you've addicted who can't afford to pay you what they're paying you.

 

Honestly I think the only time you should really be trying for F2P mechanics is if your free portion improves by network effects, and your paid portion serves as a 'prestige' mode. Like if DrawSomething had a 'beat the devs' single-player mode you paid money for.

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It's very much a case of you wanting something there Twig, rather than needing (though all F2P has a bit of both).

That kind of makes me wonder whether there's statistics about regional differences between the success of free-to-play. I can imagine areas where the advertorial idea of you want it -> you need it has taken more hold containing a lot more people who are vulnerable to the free-to-play model.

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That kind of makes me wonder whether there's statistics about regional differences between the success of free-to-play. I can imagine areas where the advertorial idea of you want it -> you need it has taken more hold containing a lot more people who are vulnerable to the free-to-play model.

 

What I want to see is statistics on how much cash Blizzard has made from selling in game pets and mounts to people who already payed for the game, and then pay a monthly fee. I barely brushed over it when i was back playing a few weeks ago (2 year break), but they are selling horses for €20 a pop!

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That model is not what is known free to play. What games are you talking about exactly and how does paying to unlock the full version of a game resemble F2P and not the shareware floppies from the days of yore?

Yes? That was my point: that there are games that are technically "free to play" that don't correspond to what we call the "free to play" business model.

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EA have just updated/changed PvsZ2

"During the fight, I lost a few lawnmowers, which is no big deal in a PvZ game, right? They'll be there in the next level I play... right?

WRONG!

With this new update, you now have to purchase lawnmowers to replace them one at a time, and the lost lawnmowers are gone on ALL levels, not just the super hard boss fight where I lost 5/6 of them. They cost about 2000 coins which is A LOT (unless they rebalanced the coin accumulation, which I highly doubt)."

http://m.neogaf.com/showthread.php?t=765017

That's pretty shocking to me. To actually retro fit this shit into an already released game

 

Jesus Christ I didn't even hear about this. That is bonkers and gross. Guess we can cross that one of the list of 'doing it well'.

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Jesus Christ I didn't even hear about this. That is bonkers and gross. Guess we can cross that one of the list of 'doing it well'.

 

If you haven't been following it, PvZ2 was already completely different from the game as it launched, they completely re-did the progression, streamlining the map into a single path, and completely changing the way in-game unlocks work. They also changed the pace of the levels to be much shorter and faster, presumably to raise the skill floor required to pass the levels and encourage purchase of single-use powerups. It seems they've been casting about for ways to effectively monetize it for a while now.

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That's awful. Nothing quite like taking away a feature/mechanic to rake in more cash post-release. Maybe Bejeweled will do that next... if you end up with a board with no possible matches, you have to pay to refresh the board otherwise every time you try to play the board will be full of unmatchable gems.

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I think the one thing PvZ2 does right with the pay content is the locked plants, because it encourages you to consider alternative tactics if you played the first game.  That doesn't excuse the push toward new pay stuff though.

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It's very much a case of you wanting something there Twig, rather than needing (though all F2P has a bit of both).

Definitely. If I want to play a certain dude, and don't want to play any of the dudes that are currently available, I'm fucked. It's a bad system.

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Evil is IMO the wrong word. I think it's generally reductive, maybe absolutely so. At it's absolute best, free to play is burden less and mitigates the cost of entry. In most cases the free to play and in app purchases are considered as part of the design of the game. As was noted earlier I can't think of a case where in app purchases and appointment times have been used to actually effectively add depth or strategy to the game play loops they exist within. Therefore I would say in pretty much all observed occurrences of the model it is reductive to the joy/fun of the core game design. It pretty much exclusively frustrates most "traditional" game players in most implementations. Especially those with appointment times. 

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Definitely. If I want to play a certain dude, and don't want to play any of the dudes that are currently available, I'm fucked. It's a bad system.

It's a great system, there's just better ones but nobody knew until Valve showed that they exist.

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There's a lot to agree with in this article. My favorite line: "good game design is frequently sacrificed in the name of making something more likely to make money. Players are not respected as people who want to have fun; they're treated as resources who need to be exploited."

 

http://www.usgamer.net/articles/dungeon-keeper-a-symptom-of-a-wider-problem

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I think F2P could be a viable and fair mechanic in the right hands. The key is that it should unlock the icing, rather than replace the cake. Things like cosmetic enhancements are fine and dandy. Also, if you want to buy a permanent advantage in the game, that's fine too; not a fan of e.g. boosting for a particular match though. 

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