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[DTKT]

stash tabs are not cosmetic items.

They probably are. At least, for the average user. I played a few hours of PoE and never felt the need to buy any. I did have a friend buy a few tabs just for convenience. But he's a hoarder and absolutely insane when it comes to loot games. He just keeps everything. A real pack rat.

At the same time, I don't think there is such a thing as a casual user in PoE...

Can't say I know enough to say if stash tabs are purely "Quality of life" or actually necessary.

 

[Lonely1]

I don't understand people complaining about the legendary Pay 2 Win. Are there a lot of games like that? None come to mind.

Most mobile games.

 

[Boken]

Except the 6300 IP heroes that i was talking about. Not to mention the blight that is the rune system that is a huge timesink so your not spending that IP on actual heroes.

4100ip is the average - including 6300ip heroes

yes, runes are the actual offender here. its the system that makes RP valuable through the interaction between ip and rp

They probably are. At least, for the average user. I played a few hours of PoE and never felt the need to buy any. I did have a friend buy a few tabs just for convenience. But he's a hoarder and absolutely insane when it comes to loot games. He just keeps everything. A real pack rat.

At the same time, I don't think there is such a thing as a casual user in PoE...

Can't say I know enough to say if stash tabs are purely "Quality of life" or actually necessary.

if we accept the middle ground that stash tabs are QoL, then they are still not cosmetic. cosmetics are meant to have zero impact on gameplay. a QoL item makes your gameplay more convenient - therefore, not a cosmetic

im pretty salty about my stash tabs.

 

[Lactose_Intolerant]

They probably are. At least, for the average user. I played a few hours of PoE and never felt the need to buy any. I did have a friend buy a few tabs just for convenience. But he's a hoarder and absolutely insane when it comes to loot games. He just keeps everything. A real pack rat.

At the same time, I don't think there is such a thing as a casual user in PoE...

Can't say I know enough to say if stash tabs are purely "Quality of life" or actually necessary.

Quality of life. If you are real crazy and cheap, you can just make more characters to store crap on them.

Really you should sell everything that isn't going to help you level if you die. Currency, maps, quality gems, and uniques you should keep too. Now if you try to get the 90 uniques achievement, you are going to be hurting for space.

 

[nikos]

I'm starting to get really tired of it, especially on iOS. If I come across a game running on all sorts of timers that can be sped up with a payment, I usually delete it. Unfortunately, that's the case for most iOS games these days.

 

[erawsd]

I agree that there is nothing inherently wrong with f2p. I think its a good model, if done right. My issues are:

1. Most f2p games I've seen use abusive microtransactions. This is especially true in the mobile space where its, honestly, gotten way out of hand. Its ridiculous that some of these games have several hundred dollars worth of "stuff".

2. I also have an issue with the attitude that it has bred among some gamers and even some journalist. Anytime a new a sub based MMO shows up or a great mobile game costs $5+ bucks theres a flood of people seemingly upset that its not f2p.

 

[jman2050]

What principle, exactly? That it's fundamentally unfair? I'd point you in the general direction of Dota 2 and Path of Exile. They've bucked the trend in a big way, and we can only hope that other games follow.

It's economy-driven game design that's reliant on a subsidization model to profit from it and that informs every single design decision made on the game whether people admit it to themselves or not. Developers have no incentive to be fair to their customers because it because player exploitation is more profitable. Research and development into the most efficient ways to exploit a player base on an economical and/or psychological level is becoming an industry in and of itself that's only starting to mature. I personally know several friends who have spent substantial amounts of money on these games that they didn't even like that much to begin with (my brother and myself are included in this group as well) and many of them regretted doing so after the fact. As someone who aspires to be a game developer, I find the entire foundation for F2P to be an insulting, cynical, and twisted perversion of what it means to make a game that is meant to be played and enjoyed. While there are developers who, to their credit, are as honest and fair as they can be in designing their games under the F2P model, I consider them guilty by association and refuse to support their games as much as any other of their ilk.

Is this sufficient for you? I can keep going if you like.

 

[Card Boy]

I'm not trying to move goalposts or anything but you get like 30 character slots in PoE to mule your gear if you need to hoard stuff. Diablo 3 only gives you 8 slots.

$15 gets you 6 more account wide tabs.

 

[Boken]

I realise a lot commentators in this thread are informed by mobile gaming or facebook gaming F2P

thats a whole different beast

 

[TheVampire]

Whenver I see that a game is F2P I immediately think that it must be either crappy or full of microtransactions.

 

[Orayn]

It's economy-driven game design that's reliant on a subsidization model to profit from it and that informs every single design decision made on the game whether people admit it to themselves or not. Developers have no incentive to be fair to their customers because it because player exploitation is more profitable. Research and development into the most efficient ways to exploit a player base on an economical and/or psychological level is becoming an industry in and of itself that's only starting to mature. I personally know several friends who have spent substantial amounts of money on these games that they didn't even like that much to begin with (my brother and myself are included in this group as well) and many of them regretted doing so after the fact. As someone who aspires to be a game developer, I find the entire foundation for F2P to be an insulting, cynical, and twisted perversion of what it means to make a game that is meant to be played and enjoyed. While there are developers who, to their credit, are as honest and fair as they can be in designing their games under the F2P model, I consider them guilty by association and refuse to support their games as much as any other of their ilk.

Is this sufficient for you? I can keep going if you like.

I guess I understand some of your objections but I think you're taking by the guilt by association thing a little far. It's one thing to be against the ills of the current implementation, but I don't think that naturally follows into condemning all of it forever.

 

[Htown]

Am I the only one that feels like people are way stricter with what they're willing to pay for with F2P games than they are with DLC for retail games?

 

[TrueMenace]

The only F2P game that I play is Dota 2. I've only spent like $10 on the marketplace for chest keys, but I will never again. I do however have over 700 hours into the game.

If the game is good and I don't need to pay for anything, then I give a thumbs up to F2P.

But the game has TO BE GOOD with high quality standards set by the developers and community.

 

[Jakeh111]

f2p is fine when it aint pay to win

 

[Slavik81]

I'm deeply suspicious of any F2P game. They tend to be tremendously expensive. Even just learning the business model and estimating how much I am going to spend is time consuming.

I understand why they use that business model, and why it works for some target demographics, but I just can't stand it. A F2P game has to be really good to overcome it's business model, for me.

 

[Gustav]

F2P games don't exist for me. I completely ignore them.

 

[SRTtoZ]

I cant stand it. It makes the game feel cheap.

 

[jaundicejuice]

Team Fortress 2 and Dota 2 are my primary experiences with the business model. It's fairly clear that Valve learned a lot about the model with the transformation of TF2 from a purchased game to a free-to-play one. The lesson learned through that experiment were applied to Dota 2 with, I think, wonderful results. You get all of the substantive gameplay elements for free and they make money off of superficial gee-gaws and doo-dads.

I really have no desire to try out other free-to-play games that do not adhere to or meet this standard. I bought Team Fortress 2 back in the day, so technically Dota 2 is the only free-to-play game I've sunk time into.

 

[Nose Master]

Most of them feel way too shady with the micro-transactions and/or ridiculous time for money trade off. But even if they don't have either, I lose interest quickly. They don't hold much value, obviously. They all ultimately feel like flash games, because they're free. If I paid $0.50 for the exact same game, I'd like the one I paid for more than the one I got for free.

 

[Bluth54]

Sure, technically speaking. In practice it leads to situations where items aren't "technically" behind a paywall, but take literally months of game time to grind.

I have yet to find a F2P game using the "convenience item" model that doesn't eventually become an unreasonably tedious grind. Even in the best cases like LoL or PlanetSide 2, the best you can really say is "most of that stuff isn't totally necessary, so who cares if you can't get it".

I can't speak about LoL since I don't play that, but that's not the case for TF2. It's extremely easy to to obtain weapons, which are the only thing that affect gameplay. And most non stock weapons aren't upgrade, they are sidegrades or completely different from the weapon they replace.

Not only that, but Valve doesn't lock away important content like new maps behind a paywall. TF2 only launched with 6 maps but now features around 50 maps, and no one had to pay a penny to get any of them, unlike most other FPS that require you to pay $10-15 for 3 or 4 maps.

 

[TrAcEr_x90]

What is the top f2p game going right now? So far I have downlaoded mechwarrior online, planetside 2, and the new marvel game. Mechwarrior seemed super complicated right out of the gate, and all the good memories of mechwarrior 2 started to drift away. I dont remember having to go through so many menus and be so confused with putting on the parts. Planetside 2 seemed kinda cool, my card wont run it on high setting very well and i honestly just put in about 2 hours but most of the time it didn't seem like people knew what to do overall. The marvel game caught my attention more and I put alot more time into this one. Only problem I don't think I'll stick around long after I put in so many hours into diablo 3 and I am now pretty burnt out on that genre.

 

[Keasar]

F2P could work, but most of the time its just artificial lengthening by for instance lowering the amount of XP gain in MMOs or having tons upon tons of microtransactions to unlock content for the game that otherwise take hundreds upon hundreds of hours to unlock (League of Legends characters).

Tribes: Ascend did it the absolute best I think when they offered the Game of the Year Edition that for a reasonable price (around 30 euros I think) gives you every weapon, perk and class in the game unlocked immediately. That is a price I am more than willing to pay if that gives me the proper content of a game right out of the box like games used to.

 

[PetriP-TNT]

Team Fortress 2 is great. Others are bad. Pay2win is the worst.

 

[Bigmac1910]

I pretty much hate it, and I only see them as a glorified demo. TF2 and Dota 2 seems to be doing it correctly though, but I don't play them.

 

[Noisepurge]

If done right they can be amazing.

Mechwarrior Online and World of Tanks have kept me pretty busy and i can mainly play for free and there is no pay 2 win stuff involved.

I have given both games money but not nickel and dime, just the occasional 10$ for cosmetics and making some things faster.

The bang for buck ratio of these games is great, i've played so many hours and spent only so little in comparison to 60$ titles.

 

[Boken]

What is the top f2p game going right now? So far I have downlaoded mechwarrior online, planetside 2, and the new marvel game. Mechwarrior seemed super complicated right out of the gate, and all the good memories of mechwarrior 2 started to drift away. I dont remember having to go through so many menus and be so confused with putting on the parts. Planetside 2 seemed kinda cool, my card wont run it on high setting very well and i honestly just put in about 2 hours but most of the time it didn't seem like people knew what to do overall. The marvel game caught my attention more and I put alot more time into this one. Only problem I don't think I'll stick around long after I put in so many hours into diablo 3 and I am now pretty burnt out on that genre.

Mobas are the kings of F2P and PC gaming right now

on that point then, you should try out DotA2 or League of Legends

given the games youve listed though, you might not like the genre. but sure, give em a shot

 

[XeNoN89]

Tried a few but never lasted very long because i refuse to pay for items in a game.

 

[diamount]

Blacklight Retribution no longer has day 1 rentals?! Obviously Perfect World showing their hand with that move. That sucks, that was the reason I spent money on that game in the first place. Now I won't ever touch it again.

 

[Chû Totoro]

It's mostly cheap games and it's not free. Why should I even bother to look at something that already lie to my face in the product name ?!?
Out.

 

[Blablurn]

It's unbelievable how much free gameplay is out there.

 

[Joco]

I feel it can be done *alright* in multiplayer games, provided paying does not give any competitive advantage over non-paying players. For most of the games I prefer to play - lengthy singleplayer games, often open world - I just don't see the model working well at all.

 

[Solal]

I hate it.

I wanna spend my 70 bucks and then forget about money.

I hate the idea of a game designed in order to make me spend more and more money. It's biased at its very core.

I hate the idea of not knowing how much a gaming experience is going to cost me at the end.

I hate the idea of the game proposing now and then to buy this or that.

That, to me, are huge deal breakers. that would really prevent me from forgetting myself into the game and fully live the experience.

Pay and forget. That's my philosophy.

 

[Nokterian]

Dota 2 a long with Rift and Tera know how to do free to play. No strings attachted and just play the full game.

 

[Sethos]

I loathe the F2P model.

There's just so much wrong with it. First off, it kills that kid in a candy story feeling when you get a new game and there's so much to try! Uh oh, I need to try that car! Uhhh uhhh that level looks amazing! Damn this weapon looks kinda sweet! Now you basically get a plain lollipop and someone pointing at the candy store "You can get more in there".

The model kills that great feeling of trying and testing a lot of things in a new game, because it suddenly gets behind a paywall. Now I need to BUY it before I test it and suddenly I will feel like a right plonker if the item bought isn't something I like.

I just hate the cheesiness that suddenly starts to ooze from the game. My mind simply won't let me enjoy a heavily monetized game. You know at some point your experience might grind to a halt and ask you to insert you CC. I can't enjoy games either where they break my leg in a sea of missing features that aren't 'essential' so you get that plebian feeling. I also hate when they add a shit ton of cosmetics, that usually means you can't take a game seriously because people are running around in pink latex with a squid hat and a pair of bigfoot boots.

What's even worse is, you can rarely get the full experience for a normal game price. Each individual unit or item is so grossly overpriced that by the time you've bought the entire game, you are like $2-300 in the red.

I steer WELL clear of F2P games. Even when they do it 'right', there's still that feeling of shitstain all over it.

 

[TwiztidElf]

I enjoy League of Legends, Happy Wars and Rift.

 

[dimb]

There is a lot of focus on the negatives of free to play gaming in this thread, but really the business model also creates a pretty unique opportunity for developers to provide continued support and updates to a game without the need to charge a subscription fee. I really find subscription fees to be pretty screwy. They create a very cumbersome relationship between the developer and the user where money is continually funneled into the title with little to no guarantee of quality or relevance of new content to individual users. It also makes it much more difficult for the developer to gauge player interest in the content they are creating. In a free to play model players are able to purchase what interests them à la carte and can decide for themselves what they feel is worth investing in.

 

[Leezard]

There's a right way and a wrong way to do it.

The wrong way are games like Blacklight Retrobution and until recently World of Tanks that had elements of Pay 2 Win. In no game should you be able to buy power and even worse is in no game should you be required to buy X in order to do Y.

The correct way like Path of Exile, DOTA2, LoL, TF2, etc work is the way to go. Make cosmetic and convenience style microtransactions that are in no way required to do anything in the game. The convenience items are usually stuff like boosters that allow you to say gain a level a bit faster which doesn't matter to me because if Bob gets a level 15% faster than me I can still gain that level without paying at all. One of the best things that MMOs are starting to do since GW2 came out is allow you to take your time spent in game and convert that into the cash shop currency. You can take gold and convert it to buy any microtransaction that is sold for no $$$ out of your own pocket. So you can either pay with your time at your job ($$$) or your time at your computer (in-game currency conversions). This makes it so everyone can obtain anything regardless of their current income. I've noticed now that since GW2 came out, NWN and Rift both have a conversion system and SWTOR allows you to buy the items on the AH without needing to convert.

Agreed.

 

[Karakand]

As a recovering RPG player, having the opportunity to bash my dick repeatedly via grinding for new abilities and gear without having to pay any money for the masochistic experience is much appreciated.

 

[DocSeuss]

I don't really care for F2P because I'm a guy who plays single-player and co-op mostly.

I like modding and tweaking my games.

I value being engrossed in the game experience, and "HEY YOU BUY THIS STUFF THAT'S NOT IN THE GAME BUT COULD BE" rips me out of it like Mister Torgue narrating Dear Esther.

Just... imagine Mister Torgue talking to you while you play Journey. Imagine him saying "WOOOOAH THAT IS SO BADASS NOW PUNCH HIM SO HARD HE EXPLOOOODES!" while you're trying to connect with the experience Journey has established for you. That's a F2P game to me. Even the mere sight of a store in-game punches me in the dick so hard it registers on the richter scale.

I don't like that I can't exactly play them offline, whenever I feel like, on my own.

So... that. That is how I feel. I don't value them because they're multiplayer games that largely exist in a way that can only be controlled at the whim of the designers and they consistently yank me out of the experience.

 

[Sir Garbageman]

I think it's a viable business model and there are many great games out there that employ it. I dislike the design it encourages, however. The better games are the ones that stay away from purchasable competitive bonuses.

Sums up how I feel about it as well.

 

[li bur]

I like them if they are done right, i hate those pay to win model usually found on tablet

 

[danmaku]

It seems that F2P has the same problem of iOS gaming (and Wii gaming, to a certain extent): there's so much shovelware around that the good games get lost in the crowd. At the same time, the good ones are also among the most successful ones, so I guess people just see what they want to see.

 

[careless mango]

I've rarely played one that kept me interested for long to purchase anything.

Same, except rarely = never.