there are only a handfull of games who can survive with P2P.
these games have a community over 3million players, and this is why they can do this.
Tree of Savior, would not survive this.
i hope a P2A or P2V will be used for tree of savior.
A game that depends on (sufficient) player base to survive cannot even consider options that will limit its availability to everyone. The following are all poor options:
- You canāt play unless you pay every month (subscription)
- You can play for free but need to pay to unlock additional game content (Free trial)
- You can play for free but your progress is limited unless you pay (P2W Cash shop)
Only very few games that used these models are successful for very specific circumstances. All of them honor the rule: āIf you canāt pay for it, you can at least work for it.ā
Good options must make available the full game experience, and full progress available to everyone, for free. The key to making profit is to encourage people to pay, without pissing off the rest of the player base who canāt. This can be achieved by the following examples:
- Pay for cosmetics only
- Pay for convenience (time saving, grind saving)
- Encourage paid gifts for friends (people like to give presents)
In a game that requires active population to survive. It is important that everything that can be paid for (that counts), can be worked for in game. This makes your player base the biggest possible, and from that population, those with the financial means will support the game (and feel generous doing so).
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ToSās main hooks are its immense cast of classes, and its 2.5D graphics.
but not everybody likes this, 2.5D graphics in particular is a niche market.
excluding people via being subscription would kill this game EXTREMELY fast.
reaction to the original post:
personaly i think this game should be F2Pā¦
sure it can survive on P2P but think about thisā¦ most player enjoy free games and later on use their real money as a support for the gameā¦ and P2P people are just few their would play the game since they have other prior games to pay with and competing with them might be a challenge to ToS devsā¦
and alsoā¦ some hardcore players i know dosnt want a P2P gameā¦ since they cant pay monthly due to lack of money(poor like me) and have just enough money to pay their internet bills/ play at a computer shop ā¦
hmm and i think F2P is for more people, more supporter, equals more supporting money for the devs that P2P, less poor poeple/more rich people, just the right amount of supporter, equals standard support money for the devs ( if i even make sense that is >_<")
F2P is the worst payment model possible. Do not be deluded.
Of course, devs want to make the best possible game, and make the cash-shop stuff purely cosmetic, but after a while, greed kicks in. It always happens. First itās small pushes, adding things that are beneficial to gameplay, but are either very minor, or can be obtained without paying. And then another push. And another.
Right now, there is not a single f2p mmo without p2w elements in it. And even if ToS wonāt have any, are you sure that wonāt change after few months? I have a hard time believing it.
Unless they put every single character customization element behind paywall, they WILL be short on money. Thatās how it works, servers arenāt free, developers need to eat and pay their bills, and money doesnāt grow on trees. There is always hope that Korean, Indonesian, Brazilian, Filipino servers will get them enough money. No wait there isnāt, because they are begging to not be region-locked from International, because they donāt want to pay a penny to their regional overlords. But the harsh truth is, you canāt eat cake, and have it too.
So whatās the best course of action? Maybe donāt region-lock the countries mentioned above, but DO make the International server either pay2play or buy2play. Devs will get the money they NEED, and as an added bonus, there will be less kids and entitled cheapskates.
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There are many ways for IMCGames to get more profit without making the game P2P :
-
Costumes for characters in cash shops.
Costumes can be weapon, armor, helmet, boots, shield, accessory, or overall costumes. -
Costumes for mounts or companions in cash shops.
Costumes can be overall appearance customization (for example, cataphract is usually seen riding a weird mount, now that weird mount changed to a dragon, wolf wearing armor, etc) -
Barracks customization items and styles in cash shops.
Your barrack is your home. You can change its style to a gothic style, cute style, badass steampunk style, etc. - Exp potions, of course with long cooldown so everyone canāt spam the usage. Exp potions are meant to help people who donāt have much playtime for grinding.
- Buff potions (Bonus stats, auto revival item, bonus drop rate, etc), with limitation that those canāt be used in PvP or GvG.
- If there are guild territory, base or something similar, they can sell customization items for that too. Itās like playing Sword Art Online where each guild has its own base. Each base has its own theme, buildings, houses where each player can access their barracks there, statues, trees, waterfall, fields, guild banner, guild airship for fast access to main cities, guild side missions, guild theme song, etc.
- Ask for donations. This wonāt force players to pay. Those who have the money and want to support the game shall donate.
- Steam has workshop. IMCGames can utilize that feature. Players can upload their works, give their suggestions or concepts for new feature/future updates. In case IMCGames ran out of ideas about what they should update, they can take a look at our works. If they found some interesting ideas, they can implement them to the game. Me, as an intermediate 2d designer will gladly help to design some new costumes for cash shops.
- No IP block for other regions. More people will play at the international and more profit they shall get. Dota 2 is the most played game at Steam. ToS can take the 2nd spot with its popularity. Local servers will not last long and eventually will go down, causing local players lost their interest in playing ToS. They wonāt really bother about the global server if theyāre already dissapointed with the local.
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My preference is B2P or P2P. Never really been a fan of F2P, have seen very few games do it reasonably.
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I totally agree, Iām playing FFXIV and I couldnāt be more happy. The P2P barrier gets rid of bad players, makes everyone more mature and nice and makes the game stay alive. Iām pretty damn sure most of us RO folk are like 10 years older now and have the money to pay to play. Locked out would be stingy people that wonāt pay money for something and the children that canāt afford it.
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stingy kids? so u guys who have money just want to play the game for ur self? what about the poor people out there like me who want to play the game but couldnt/cant afford to pay monthly to play the game (schools monthly tuitions hikes/rents/ internet bills/on work and just want to play to relieve stress)?
sure there are bad guys out there but there also good guys that wants to play for free due to the fact that they dont have the money or dont even have pc to play with but play on net cafeā(my highschool life) ā¦
all in allā¦ the money player can only play this game >,ā¦,<ā¦ us poor people who want a decent awesome game have to forcely play free games that dosnt even interest us on playng cause of these money related bariersā¦ i earn my way to the games i played without using real money and thats great cause its challenging! and earning money ingame gives me the opportunity to buy cash related itemā¦ that way, i can say im supporting the game indirectly @_@" but if this game REALY tends to be P2Pā¦ illl just sat in the corner and play me ye old games ā¦ and wait for it to be F2P if thats even gonna happen 5-10 years later =V
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The Free Market aināt communism not everyone can play, free to play was basically invented for rich people who had no problems with spending hundreds of dollars on an mmo to finance a huge community, free to play isnāt free at all the 10% that do pay are paying the game for you. Iām not American or anything, far from that I donāt even have a job. Iām a student but still 10$ or 15$ a month to play a game I like isnāt that much for me. Especially since MMO tend to be HUGE time sinks and take up like 6 hours a day of my life.
I play tons of Dota 2 and FFXIV and I can tell you there is a huge disparity in the community where FFXIV players tend to be mature, polite, decent people. While the average dota player I meet is a angry russian kid who takes the game so seriously he screams at me with his full voice over voice chat. Not that the kid isnāt skilled 4K MMR is pretty decent but then again Iām also 4K.
All in all I literally Dota 2 for me was always a team game Iād play with friends. Even if you get 1 random person in your group the whole game changes. So these days I play Dota 2 exclusively with friends in 5 stacks preferably ranked.
1 Like
Well VPNs and Proxies always tend to increase you ping, and honestly ToS seems very ping dependent with all the AoE and ā ā ā ā form monsters. So Iād rather play on a server with max 150 ping and not VPN to one and have 300.
Iād be okay if they did it like FFXIV did with starting servers begin located in East Coast America be in US or Canada. Iād also be okay with France/Ireland. Then maybe if the European community grows we get our own server later down the line. Not to mention FFXIV again but yet again they did it like this. With the new expansion weāre getting European servers
Fortunately, ToS doesnāt look like a game that whiny casual fools would play. Not to say that the art style, gameplay, or graphics of ToS are bad, but they are not exactly in line with current standards regarding graphics.
Popular games will naturally attract a large number of unsavory folks.
welll thats true we need to pay for the game to make it aliveā¦ but that can be done indirectlyā¦ u care less for poor people? well thats ur decision
i just want to play this freelyā¦ i dont want to be a bird in cage that pays for his freedome! no way! i mean i earn through playing and thats hard work! dont i desive to have some merit there? maybe notā¦ but as i saidā¦ earning my way through nothingā¦ is my way of life and its decent for meā¦ maybe not for uā¦ but for a poor people like me who can only deceantly earn money and pay my bills and still playā¦ well i apposed to P2P biased to F2P cause thats the only way i can play this gameā¦ it my only optionā¦ well i can get a better jobā¦ but to decrease my playing time? no wayā¦ u may call me lazy but i like playing games and that makes me happyā¦
for me a strong vote for F2P!
1 Like
Iām talking based on friendās experience. You use VPN just to log-in, and then continue playing without it.
This is my personal opinion :
P2P : Very limited players, stable monthly-yearly income from those players who paid + cash shops.
F2P : Super huge amount of players, unstable income from cash shops (can be very high or very low), developer canāt make sure that everyone will pay for the cash shops.
B2P : Limited players (There are players who can afford to buy the game once and thatās it, rather than pay regularly), unstable income from cash shops (can be high or low), but the developer already had their first huge amount of income from the amount of buyers.
Whatās best? That depends on the developer.
We canāt say that P2P will be the most money maker for the developer because I think the amount of players will be cut off in half, maybe more. On the other side, F2P players will greatly outnumber the amount of P2P players. There is a possibility for huge income, but thereās also a possibility for low income as everyone only spend their money on cash shops based on their needs (exp pots, costumes, etc). For B2P, the amount of early income will be similar as P2P system, maybe even higher considering there will be more people who can afford to pay the game once rather than paying regularly (paying regularly is like forcing them to play in order for their money arenāt wasted). For the later B2P income, itāll be similar to F2P one as the players will spend their money based on their needs.
free to play is for rich people? wow i didānt know thatā¦
im not a rich personā¦ im just a plain poor guy who wants to play this game with the option of not paying monthly for itā¦ i want to support it tooā¦ but i was sayingā¦ i cant earn enough money to pay for it its pushing my time for playingā¦ i want simple gaming life and the F2P!
it may look that way that most people invest thier money of cash shop but thats their way of supporting the game they playā¦ my way is indirectlyā¦ call it a cheapskate or whatever but thats the only way i can support themā¦ sadly
this barriers are what making me and my freinds sadā¦ try living a hard poor life then ull know my pain T^T
There are plenty of F2P games that have mostly vanity cash shops that are surviving just fine. To name a few Iāve played: Tera, Aion, PSO2, none of which Iād consider āPay 2 Winā.
And as has been said, P2P has been successful with very few games, I wouldnāt mind P2P but I know for a fact that a couple months after release there will likely be very few players willing to continue paying a monthly subscription and then moreso when people realize the game is going stale or canāt find people to play with.
P2P is also difficult when you have friends that you want to play with, but they canāt afford to pay for a subscription based game, or are not fully interested in the game until they play it for a couple weeks but no trial option being available.
The thing to consider about the money example you made, 10 dollars in different currencies maybe low in some countries, but in others can be a lot more for others.
This is one reason why there are region specific servers with individual publishers, and since those publishers want to make the most profit possible they sign agreements to block international IPs. Which is a win/loss on the consumer depending on the publisher.
2 Likes
For those who want to inform themselves, i would also suggest all the other videos Extra Credits made.
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Excuses, there is always something you can do to afford this.
Videogames are a commodity, not something essential to life. You donāt need ToS. If you REALLY want it, then there is definitely some other pleasure you can give up on to afford this.
@himself I checked few articles, and most countries have such minimum wages, that one daily wage is enough to pay 10$ for this. An exception from the bigger ToS communities are Indonesia and Philippines, which require 2 days of work. Minimum wage, I didnāt check how much you get being a cashier in fast-food.
Itās all in the head, those who strongly desire to play, will find a way. There is still few months before it releases, find a job now if you donāt have one yet, and start saving up.
1 Like