Paying for MMORPGs

[Aylmer]

I came across a forum that a list of members stated that they believe that MMORPGs should be free. I believe their crazy. From a business stand point a company wouldn't be able to keep the maintenance up for server performance nor be able to afford creation of new expansions just from the sale of the original game and expansion packs. I just want to know if anyone agrees or disagrees with me.

[Kailea]

Re: Paying for MMORPGs

people have had this argument for a long time, there are people who thing you should pay for MMORPGs, and there are the people whp think it would be better to be free, with an added cash shop.

I myself hate cash shops, because 90% of the time, when games have this, all the "good" stuff is in them, and there is no way for a non paying person to get them

[Feba]

Re: Paying for MMORPGs

It's entirely dependent on the business model. You can do software sales plus subscription (FFXI), subscription only, with software free (EVE), or software only, with subscription free (Guild Wars). You can have free software and subscription, but with incentives to buy other items (most free MMOs), you can have advertising, you can have ways for players to play without paying inside a subscription game (EVE, for example, allows you to buy game time using in-game currency). You can have buyable ingame items, but allow people to buy them from other players using in-game currency.

Clearly, Guild Wars is successful enough to prove you wrong about software sales not being able to support a game.

I think the bigger problem is finding an ethical business model. Is it ok to charge someone for software, and then charge again them to play that software? Is it ok to force people to spend absurd amounts of money on your game in order to have the best equipment? Is it ok to leave the game effectively broken if someone won't buy an expansion?

[Omgwtfbbqkitten]

Re: Paying for MMORPGs

SMT Imagine has the store concept, but I've been left with the impression its more for fun little extra character skins and whatnot rather than weapons. Lots of clothing and armor in that game can be won through quests, though. Its free to play, but it sounds like the model for it works alright.

People against fees for MMOs generally fail to realize that these are games that receive a steady flow of content updates and improvements to the game. Not to mention server maintenance, that costs as well. They just think its like PSO or Diabolo where nothing really ever changes (Well, at least Blizzard will step in to address balance issues and moderate the community to an extent, something Sega never does unless its Backwards Day for them or something).

[Aylmer]

Re: Paying for MMORPGs

I agree Feba. I never played Guild Wars nor know about how it operates as far as the business end, but I agree it would be nice to have one with out the other but not both. I would hate if FFxI was free and the software was but I have to pay for everything and be bombarded by a million ads.

[Icemage]

Re: Paying for MMORPGs

I'm much happier with the paid subscription model for a number of reasons:

(1) People who break the rules can be caught and punished in a meaningful way. With free services, there isn't a strong deterrent to griefing (as well as more insidious stuff like real money traders).

(2) No escalation war being waged with wallets. A lot of "free" MMORPGs have this ridiculous "keeping up with the Joneses" mentality at endgame where you have to keep buying more and more stuff to stay competitive.

(3) More likely that player concerns will be addressed. Not that Square-Enix is the most responsive of companies under the best of circumstances, but one can only imagine how much worse it would be if they didn't care a fig about people who weren't paying anything into the system. At least this way you don't get silly things like GMs ruling in favor of people who pay more to play (such as often happens in the "free" MMORPGs).


Icemage

[Feba]

Re: Paying for MMORPGs

With free services, there isn't a strong deterrent to griefing (as well as more insidious stuff like real money traders).

That isn't really true-- a character is still a time investment that people do not like to lose. Unless a game is charging you when you violate the TOS (which I can't imagine would be legal), you're not being punished in a subscription game; just losing time and money investment.

(2) No escalation war being waged with wallets. A lot of "free" MMORPGs have this ridiculous "keeping up with the Joneses" mentality at endgame where you have to keep buying more and more stuff to stay competitive.

(3) More likely that player concerns will be addressed. Not that Square-Enix is the most responsive of companies under the best of circumstances, but one can only imagine how much worse it would be if they didn't care a fig about people who weren't paying anything into the system. At least this way you don't get silly things like GMs ruling in favor of people who pay more to play (such as often happens in the "free" MMORPGs).

Yeah, this is what I'm talking about with finding an 'ethical' model-- a free game with paid items can be run ethically, but you do have incentives not to. I used to play a game where the servers were intentionally kept at near capacity to encourage people to buy items that basically amounted to a subscription, and allowed them to log in any time, even if it meant going beyond server 'capacity'. Unsurprisingly, this encouraged people to not log out, or to log in at non-peak hours, and then idle until they wanted to play. That's not good for anyone.

Even in a free game, the company has to have some reason to care about the non-paying players. The most obvious being that they're 'potential sales', but then it's also fair to say that if you can avoid paying and still do well, plenty of people will. Advertising is one way to do it, but how do you advertise without breaking the atmosphere? Sure, it works in something like Second Life, which is modeled on the real world, but how do you sell Pepsi in a fantasy world? One does not simply advertise into Mordor.

[Icemage]

Re: Paying for MMORPGs

That isn't really true-- a character is still a time investment that people do not like to lose. Unless a game is charging you when you violate the TOS (which I can't imagine would be legal), you're not being punished in a subscription game; just losing time and money investment.

In most games it doesn't take much/any time investment to get to a point where you can become irritating/dangerous enough to other players to grief. FFXI is a bit more bullet-proof in this sense these days than when they started, but there are still ways to screw with other players without investing any time at all. This is one of the rare times when the relative impotence of low level characters + the grinding level-up mechanics benefit the game indirectly, but yeah - still ways to grief.

AH-botting and fish-botting come to mind.

And I've never met a griefer who actually cared about what happened to THEIR character as long as they had the opportunity to make someone else miserable (at least, not until about 3 seconds after they get banhammered).

Even so, things would be very different if it weren't a subscription-based service, wouldn't you agree?


Icemage

[Feba]

Re: Paying for MMORPGs

Different, of course, but that doesn't mean worse.

If by 'griefing' you mean violating the TOS, and not actually harassing other players, then I think FFXI is a pretty good example of that not working. As long as people will buy currency, there's reason to bot. At worse, you have to lower your profit margins, or raise your price.

The only real solution is to either make it so that it's not worth or impossible to buy whatever it is you can bot for, or to keep people from harmful methods of buying it.

You might be able to stop the people that solely log in to be dicks to people by adding a fee, but enough people are going to be dicks whether that's their sole intention or not.


You know, I'd be interested in seeing the results of in-game penalties. Not just suspensions and bans, but penalizing players within the game (fines on in-game currency, deleveling, confiscating equipment). I'd have to imagine it would be a good way to keep people who are around and just happen to be dicks from being too much dicks. And people that are only around to harass other players would have to keep putting in effort to get their levels/equipment back every time they gank or mpk or whatever else.

[Kailea]

Re: Paying for MMORPGs

well even though I am for P2P MMORPGs, I have tried many free ones

Luna Online
Perfect World
Shin Megami Tensei

just to name a few, and they where ok, but *shrugs* the just did not "take me" like FFXI has.

both PW and SMT have show that the free game and free to play with cash shop do work. But again I just prefer P2P

[Feba]

Re: Paying for MMORPGs

My bigger problem with free ones is that they don't tend to have a lot to do. They typically just give you a ton of leveling to do, and leave it at that; with gear farming if you ever get to endgame. Whereas pay-to-play ones tend to give you a reachable endgame, and a lot to do there, and along the way (side quests, minigames, etc.)

It's not that you can't do this in free ones, they just don't. And without more to do than kill things, it's very hard to get any sort of a story or world going, which is where a lot of the love comes from-- how many of us would play FFXI if Vana'diel were a boring, generic world which was nothing but fetch quests and dungeon raids?

[Kailea]

Re: Paying for MMORPGs

My bigger problem with free ones is that they don't tend to have a lot to do. They typically just give you a ton of leveling to do, and leave it at that; with gear farming if you ever get to endgame. Whereas pay-to-play ones tend to give you a reachable endgame, and a lot to do there, and along the way (side quests, minigames, etc.)

It's not that you can't do this in free ones, they just don't. And without more to do than kill things, it's very hard to get any sort of a story or world going, which is where a lot of the love comes from-- how many of us would play FFXI if Vana'diel were a boring, generic world which was nothing but fetch quests and dungeon raids?

yeap both Perfect Word and Luna Online are very guilty of this -.-

Luna online so far 90% of the quests have been "kill this many" or "collect this many from this mob" types.

[ItazuraNhomango]

Re: Paying for MMORPGs

Ethical way of making money off of online games, eh? I'll give it shot. How about: Transparency, Mutual Consent, and At Will Termination.

Make it very clear to the potential users how the enterprise is supposed to make money, and the users' role in that--not hiding it under massive paragraphs of tiny text written by lawyers--but up front, clear and plain. Any changes should be announced ahead of time, in area clearly visible to all existing users.

Users, of course, will have to agree to it before able to use the service, and both the users and the company should be able to terminate the service agreement between any particular user and the company at will with no substantial penalty.

Meet those guidelines, and I say any reasonable arrangement not violating laws should be ethical. Subscription, purchasable in-game currency, expansion packs or in-game items for sale, advertisement, etc.--anything goes, as well as any combination of any of those models.

As the deal is clearly spelled out ahead of time, both parties agree to the terms, and "no punishment" contract termination is available at all times, I think it's fine.

The hardest part is probably full transparency, IMO. Online game companies may view exact revenue breakdown as industrial secrets to be guarded from (would be) competitors. Getting them to spell out exactly how much money they extract from their userbase and how plus forward projections--in plain, easy to read language--likely, that will require legislation and a lot of brow beating.

* * *

Bursting my own bubble, the above guideline seem to be insufficient when it comes to making big changes to long existing games.

For example, one thing which bothers me a lot is the underground practice of buying an existing character. I consider our named, in-game avatars to be representative of a player himself/herself, not just a shallow reflection of in-game accomplishment and item collection. Getting someone else's character to use is akin to identity fraud in a weird way, even if it's mutually consensual.

Yet, clearly there is a market for these characters, as well as profit enough to make people want to sell, and be middlemen for such transactions.

Now, looking at it critically, SE has always done RMT at some level: Game itself and expansion packs offer access to in-game area/items. Purchase ticket for fan festivals and get codes to obtain certain in-game items. That ugly teleporting neck(?) piece from buying a memorabilia. Mog Satchel for purchase of the security token (though, it's more like bribing players to better secure their accounts with storage than any profit seeking, IMO.).

Would it really be so horrible for SE to offer, say, a character with all jobs leveled to 37 (but not unlocked--still need to quest to use the extra jobs), with all the spells learned, and all skills capped for Lv.37? Let buyer pick one job as main job, and SE generates a character decently equipped (NQ's and some reasonable Rare/Ex stuff) for him for that job. The cynic in me says people who care will figured how out to play the jobs well fast enough, and people who don't care won't play well no matter what anyway.

This way, people with too much RL money can skip all the SJ leveling if they hate that, and I will have fewer "it's just a sub" people in low level parties. And, it'll be easy to price it (and adjust features of these new characters) so the underground market for existing characters take a big hit.

I don't mind SE making more money off of those who are willing to pay--better the profit, longer FFXI will be around, I say. Heck, it's a great opportunity to sell useful, enhanced (yet non-game breaking) services: non-quest zone maps for $1 each, and outpost teleport access to selected regions (e.g. Zulkheim, Ronfaure, Kolshushu, etc., and maybe Elshimo Uplands) for another $1 each.

Just slap a big warning that "We recommend players new to FFXI start with a Lv.1 character free with every subscription to fully experience all that Vana'diel has to offer."

However, this would certain be a huge change, and quite controversial with the players.

Does SE have some sort of implicit agreement with us to never introduce so drastic of a change on real-money trade? Long standing company policy means the tradition is in someways higher order than the contractual language (which mostly likely allows SE to add any service it sees fit)? Or, does the profit imperative mean SE is free (and, in fact, should) to create a new revenue sources it deems not harmful to the bottom line, regardless of consistency with past policies or users' feelings?

[Yellow Mage]

Re: Paying for MMORPGs

If by 'griefing' you mean violating the TOS, and not actually harassing other players, then I think FFXI is a pretty good example of that not working. As long as there is evil in the hearts of men . . .

Reading this part of your post reminded me very much of that . . .

[Icemage]

Re: Paying for MMORPGs

Different, of course, but that doesn't mean worse.

If by 'griefing' you mean violating the TOS, and not actually harassing other players, then I think FFXI is a pretty good example of that not working. As long as people will buy currency, there's reason to bot. At worse, you have to lower your profit margins, or raise your price.

I consider griefing to be any activity where the intent is to explicitly ruin someone else's experience. It can include other bad activities like cheating, breaking of Terms of Service, or whatever, but with specific regards to griefing as a term, I measure it by intent.

RMTs by and large are not griefers - what they do is bad, but it is not the sort of personal malevolence I associate with griefing.

The only real solution is to either make it so that it's not worth or impossible to buy whatever it is you can bot for, or to keep people from harmful methods of buying it.

You might be able to stop the people that solely log in to be dicks to people by adding a fee, but enough people are going to be dicks whether that's their sole intention or not.

Real money trade will find a way to happen in any situation where there is a virtual item that can be exchanged in some fashion that requires investment of time / difficulty to acquire. That's how the laws of supply and demand work, and they apply in the microeconomic scale of an MMORPG userbase no less so than in macroeconomics. That doesn't make what they do right - it's simply stating that any situation where RMT can potentially be profitable will more than likely spawn RMT activity. The trick is to try to design systems such that these situations are as infrequent as possible and of only limited value.

As for griefers, making it difficult for them to grief, and punishing them in a meaningful way when they do, goes a long way towards reducing the prevalence. As with RMT, you can not stop it all, but you can limit their impact.

You know, I'd be interested in seeing the results of in-game penalties. Not just suspensions and bans, but penalizing players within the game (fines on in-game currency, deleveling, confiscating equipment). I'd have to imagine it would be a good way to keep people who are around and just happen to be dicks from being too much dicks. And people that are only around to harass other players would have to keep putting in effort to get their levels/equipment back every time they gank or mpk or whatever else.

It's an interesting thought, but you'd have people whining about it constantly (rightly or wrongly). I doubt any MMORPG developer wants to deal with that sort of headache. Banning / suspending players is a sledgehammer approach, but fairly effective since it's just a magnified version of what you're talking about.


Icemage