Why f2p become so popular?
Isn't around 100k player enough for game to be profitable?
Having a 100k playerbase forced to spend money in a cashshop every month is more profitable
>>322219873
No game developer wants to be profitable. Profitable is a joke. Every game developer wants all the money in the world. Literally. They want it so no one has money so they can talk shit to you about not paying the money you don't have for their newest game so they can be angry and cry in a corner.
>>322219873
Greed. Every MMO is made with the end goal of becoming as popular as WoW.
Basically, MMOs are CONCEIVED with the premise of the possibility of being the next WoW now.
There are just no low-budget MMOs made by a good developer. It is a concept that does not exist. Similarly to a high budget multimillion match-tree clone.
For low budget, the preferred way to go about it is creating a singleplayer game, or a lobby multiplayer at worst.
tl;dr This industry has a huge issue with saturation, most of the genre issues are because of this.
f2p means you get a steady stream of people trying the game out, if they like it enough to keep playing they'll often end up paying a sub.
The days of an MMO launching and attracting an instant player base of paying customers is over. But hey, at least it shows that video game demos aren't entirely dead.
>>322219873
>Isn't around 100k player enough for game to be profitable?
Ragnarok Online in Europe had a playerbase of only ~4k and had been profitable for several years without a cash shop.
It's all about scope and budget management.
The problem is, as the post above, nobody wants to make low budget MMOs for some reason. Which is especially ironic because server hosting is the tech-related thing that dropped most in costs over the last decade.
Making a low profile MMO today would be extremely cheap.
>>322221149
>Ragnarok Online
Older game, simpler and cheaper assets to make. The more modern and visually impressive the game more costly and lengthier content updates are. It's basically why Age of Conan has been receiving its updates on a fucking straw. WHERE IS MY FUCKING CRAFTING OVERHAUL, FUNCOM?
>>322219873
F2P became popular because they flooded the market with F2P.
Basically, the average casual player sees 50 F2P games available, why would he EVER try a P2P game? He has no clue about mechanics/gameplay/quality, just wants to play a game to fill time.
F2P flooding has effectively killed P2P and quality filtering. It's very similar to the mess of shit that is the iOS store.
>>322221284
But why would sane person even touch f2p games, they can't be good by default
>>322221282
>Older game, simpler and cheaper assets to make.
Yes, and?
Do we need top-down MMOs with 100 characters on screen to have a billion polygons each, and super-realistic detailed textures and effects?
Looks like you're part of the problem of the shitstain mentality this industry has.
>"it doesn't work even though there is evidence it works but I just decided it wont, let me flood the market with WoW clones that fail within 6 months now, that shall prove my point"
Not a single quality developer has even tried making a low budget MMO ever since EVE, which by the way is still profitable and has been very profitable for over a decade.
>>322219873
>Why f2p become so popular?
Literally no barrier for entry. And it kinda helped, in the west at least, that first proper western F2P MMOs were conversions from P2P so they had some semblance of production values compared to obviously cashed-in Korean F2P games. I remember everyone was going apeshit over DDO and LotRO which basically opened the floodgate and made F2P acceptable without any of that Asian stigma.
>>322221494
Most players are clueless casuals who have no standards and just need a random game to fill the gaps, as I said. This is the case since "gaming" went mainstream. It attracted people who actually don't know shit about videogames.
Hence, mediocre F2P games getting popular.
>>322221494
Are they any different to paid MMOs?
>>322221558
Well obviously not, but no one wants to make just enough money to stay afloat and visuals are the easier draw to get new players. It's simply how it is, although you can look at this new wave of kickstarted MMOs for an alternative I guess.
>>322221494
>But why would sane person even touch f2p games, they can't be good by default
Not really. Also, most players are casuals and F2P games are good enough to just waste couple of months in without any obligations. Cash shop and end game grinding doesn't really factor in for majority of players.
>>322221634
Not him but F2P further breaks the balance of the game with cash shops, adding yet another layer of community discrepancy, so yes, they are automatically inferior no matter what.
>>322221558
>Do we need top-down MMOs with 100 characters on screen to have a billion polygons each, and super-realistic detailed textures and effects?
apparently so
>>322221494
The casual player doesn't know this and assumes that cheaper is the safer choice when you don't know shit about a thing
>>322221634
p2p mmo designed to keep players interested so they would pay for their sub, so developers forced to make at least "interesting" content
f2p designed to take as much money as possible
What about Gorgon? That shit is kind of free right now. It was KSed not that long ago.
>>322221902
why are they going with that stupid gender locked class system?
so much bullshit
>>322221734
I am waiting for camelot unchained as a matter of fact.
The problem is that these kickstarter MMOs are not really low budget, they are mid-budget, because people still fall for the kickstarter hype scam, so they throw money at them.
Also, kickstarter by nature makes it easy to give unfair bonuses (in the forms of goals/support tiers) which makes the game P2W.
Still, creating a niche MMO with a 5000-10000 userbase in mind would be extremely cheap and effective, as you said companies just want to hit the jackpot and instead would rather risk going bankrupt and over-deliver.
The genre is in a horrible state and has been for some years, there is essentially one archetype of game (PvE instanced arrow grinding simulators), people are thirsty for different kinds of MMOs.
>>322222417
>waiting for the f2p games
Fucking neo /v/
>>322222380
Literally because it costs too much to make a gender for every class with those assets quality.
>modern MMOs
No really, just stay away. They are pretty character creators and nothing more.
>>322221809
Does that matter much when the majority of MMOs now are of the WoW theme park variety? Inferior sure, but it's hardly by a massive degree.
>>322221989
Not sure interesting is the correct term, higher numbers on your stats and items content is what it seemed to boil down to a lot of the time.
>>322222528
Competitions is always interesting, it's men nature to try and become better than others, "best gear", "best raid leader" "fastest runs" "others ways to attention whore yourself"
No matter how silly you think it is, it's interesting
In p2p everyone put in same conditions, so people ready to compete with each other and work together
>>322222528
>Does that matter much when the majority of MMOs now are of the WoW theme park variety? Inferior sure, but it's hardly by a massive degree.
Well, all that matters is they are inferior. Yes, themeparks MMOs are shit regardless, but why play those I know are even worse?
The "issue" with MMOs has always been community tiers, because the games are filled with grinding as a cheap way to keep the players locked in. There, in a P2P MMO, you got:
>the guy who plays 5-10 hours a day
>the guy who plays 1 hour a day
Since most MMOs are unfortunately designed around grinding, this breaks the community and eventually leads the death of the game.
With F2P and cash shop, you add yet another tier of people:
>the guy who plays 5-10 hours a day AND spends hundreds on the cash shop items
Basically, these guys are untouchable gods and clans made of these people control the entire server/economy/territory/pace.
Normies mistakenly believe that cash shop is a positive thing so that they can buy and skip the grinding which they don't have time for, but the issue here is that you will never catch up with the new tier "guy who buys and grinds both", just the same, if not worse, than in P2P games.
At the end of the day, the ideal fix is to remove levels and grinding, but this will never happen because grinding is ingrained into the genre and people actively want to grind, that's the core of the game for many of them.
tl;dr modern MMOs are destined to be shit no matter what, it's just that the F2P ones are even shittier
