F2P Cast: Gamescom Favorites (Ep.35)

I am entirely with Magicmann on the subscription and not-having-enough-money. I often cut my WoW subscription because I'm not playing enough to justify the $15/mo; the only reason I was playing it was because I was paying a sub fee and that's where my people happened to be. If I were to upkeep all the subs that I want to be able to keep track of my friends and potentially what's going on in these games culturally I'd be spending +$75/mo and I just don't have that.

I find myself hopping in and out monthly into some games just to check up on people.

I am thinking the subscription model will stay, we'll just see a lot more gated-community freemium games and possibly a lower sub bracket ($5 or $10) to keep subs engaged instead of pressing the maximum current. However, the economics of this one are still going to be weird, since an MMO game is more than just the initial production cost, it's the maintenance for the servers for the numbers of players and cash shops do seem to be benefiting from that hugely, they're also good for a poor economy and customer retention.

I feel Magicman's getting a bit too hyped for Neverwinter. While the game states it uses action combat, every video we've seen shows that stiff, character staying in one place, hotkey style of animation(in the video trailer used during the show, you'll see several effects attest to this, one being the exaggerated outline "blur" meant to give the impression of speed when the character is staying in the same place, the guy spinning the hammer around in the middle of 3 enemies, but hitting only one, another character being popped up into the air by an earth strike kind of spell yet the guy falls directly up and falls directly down). Another thing is the Foundry will have major restrictions about what type of content can be made, including no custom models/textures/sounds etc, plus as with the STO Foundry, your stories cannot contain controversial or offensive subjects. On top of that, it won't support Persistent Worlds, which were a huge part of both Neverwinter Nights games. Being published by PWE is hardly the worst thing this has going for it(and honestly I don't see them publishing it being a bad thing as their pay2win'ness has been grossly exaggerated).

As for subscription models I don't see them going away, just changing. With companies gaining a large catalog of f2p games I see a subscription service that will give benefits across all their games. Just to take PWE as an example, they could offer a $15 or subscription that would give you that much cash shop currency across all their games each month. They could either let this currency accumulate or have it reset back to the amount each month so there would still be a reason to buy currency beyond the subscription amount. What got me thinking about something like this is the Playstation Plus subscription that just adds stuff like free games so long as you sub and other such benefits, while non-subscribers still have full access to the basics such as online gaming, friends list, etc(unlike XBL which requires you to sub just so you can sub again for other things like Hulu and Netflix and such).

For the question of the week, some clarifications on what is defined as Indie are needed as there seem to be several definitions. For example Obsidian is an independent developer who has been contracted by several publishers. Then there's Red 5 which basically publishes and maintains their own rather large projects without a major publisher. You also have developers like Mojang who make their own games that are fairly standalone with multiplayer servers being privately hosted. And then you have people like Johnathan Blow...hard, who make artsy games and then bitch when other people tell them their games aren't not the best game ever with a deep emotional, thought provoking impact with a commentary on the sad state of human culture blah blah blah(can you tell I don't care for these people?) .

So I'm going to have to take stab and go either the Red 5 or Mojang categories. Unfortunately the game I want you to all play is currently in closed beta and that's MechWarrior:Online. A game where I can just tweak for hours on end to get the right build for a mech and then running it through to see if I've failed completely or it succeeds beautifully...why would not want to play something like that!

hiya magicman great show also in response to brims comment undead subs i got a name for that mmo RE-ANIMATOR beyond mmo.

for my bombs gotta be for raiderz and its an a bomb all the problems i kept having in game lag making the game un playable getting kicked out of game and not being able to log in (several times) i could more or less forgive but the way they chose to deal with over population annoyed me. (splitting of europe and na) It is the most loathsome and lazy ass way, developers deal with it.
on a brighter note a da bomb for ccp games and dust 514 while its a console game it was announced that it will be free to play
and finally im gavin freeman and yes it hurt like nuts.

StarForge and OverGrowth. Trust me. You need to pay attention to those games.


And one more thing- Pay 2 Play will not return once it inevitably fails. I will try to keep this short. People do not see money as a fashion statement. People do not like giving away money. What you are suggesting is that people, after a few years have passed, will decide that now they feel like being forced to pay a fixed amount of money on a rigidly set time span and that being free to not give away money, if they so choose, was to much of a burden for them. And now they hate it. "We want less choice" !

This has the same chance of happening as women deciding that they no longer feel like having the right to vote.

And yes, seeing F2P (for what it is) as a change in human mentality rather then a poor mans bagel (that made no sense but it was the best example i could pull out at 02:00 in the morning) it is logical to presume that F2P will certainly outside of the realms of MMOs. And the way i see it- eventually ooze outside of the realm of games in general.

MC baggy pants are still awesome.

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You haven't played any of the other Cryptic games i presume, Magicman.

City of Heroes/Villains and Star Trek all have The Foundry. If you are curious as to how they work. Try them out. It is a huge part of each of those games but none of those games are founded on the Foundry, they are perfectly capable of standing on their own.

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The best free indie game that I've played is Dhux's Scar. I absolutely love it. It has one of the best stories I've played through, & is a totally awesome throwback to the SNES jRPG days. Square Enix, as of late, could learn a thing or two from Dhux's Scar's story writer.

Brim man i luv u bro i swear to god when u started talking about u being right (this was about SWTOR ) man i didnt even need 2 see ur face i could tell from ur voice that you were happy as all hell :P i wanna give a Abomb and Dabomb but idk if im allowed to talk about PS2 :P

when W.O.W go's free2play till will be over for awhile but when World Of Starcraft come out it'll be back to paytoplay

The name Neverwinter alone will draw in the people in but w/o the foundary it will have a hard time keeping up with all the other games out there, but i will no doubt be playing day 1. i also think sub game are a thing of the past, otside of WoW, but even free to play has a right and wrong way Aion=right way DDO(though ima long time player)=wrong way

Sweet, Thought i was not gonna see one of these for awhile, And Perfect timing,Give's me something to do now while i install GW2 Ty.

Magicman, I know you will be playing, Idk if there are servers, But if there is what server did you create your char on and what's it's name. I will add you to friend's list and maybe Finaly be able to game with you for once !

Inflictious

I agree w/ brim i said a couple of months ago about tera, did a play-threw of tera ,in the browser version ,i lasted 20 mins ,it was awful, and said if that was what gameplay is ,i woulnt play it if it was f2p . so agree dabomb,all the way around for enmasse on there part.

ace of spades is the best indie mmofps . its minecraft with guns kinda like brickforce but there isnt even a cash shop . the game rules !

I think Neverwinter can manage to do pretty well even without the creation system... yes, it is one more action mmorpg, but it is one of the only free ones that have open world; the story is not generic, is the actual D&D stuff, they used and created content on the D&D story; it has more than the grindy quests... this game just need to work well to have a large community.

And I disagree a bit about pwe, the cash shop do offer some dumb stuff, but is not that bad, anyone that wants the hardcore game and plays like a hardcore game can get access to those items... is not like they are EA or SOE, if you know what I mean xD

I would say that I like the f2p idea, but EA should just do b2p games, sell them and leave us alone... I'm scared with this Command and Conquer and we all know how Star wars will suck

About the browser thing, I would play way more browser based games if they had a downloadable client, I hate browser games, they are laggy, they don't work great, most times not because of the game itself but because the browsers are terrible

I do not agree that subscription will come back to be the thing, yes, EA and some insane publishers might still make p2p games, but nobody will pay, there is no reason to rent a game forever... and is not about production value, f2p are getting way more money than almost every p2p game, the companies only insist in this model because they think they will have the 11 million players for 10 years, and they won't, not even WOW will hold that number... and Star Wars and Secret World are proving that there is no reason to even try this model ever again, and everyone that don't agree with that, that still say that subscription is not dead or dying, always bring WOW as the only example, and the thing is, WOW is one in a million, no one will have this success with this business model, wow is surviving because already have committed playerbase, and even Blizzard already said that they are interested in f2p and that WOW might be f2p in the future (nobody doubts that xD), so the only example to sustain that subscription is alive is a game that won't be p2p for too long either

on foreign fridays can you do one on bladeandsoul

im first? buahaha