With Frogboy posting the Stardock roadmap (https://forums.elementalgame.com/404765), it reminded of that long forgotten project Society. For those of you that don't know, Society is a prototype RTS MMO game, where players fight and trade over provinces and resources to try to become the big boy on campus.Now that the Elemental game franchise is in full swing, I feel it is time we discuss what a free to play game like Society needs to be successful. While there are quite a few games using this model today, the ones I will use to compare are Hattrick.org, a soccer management game, and league of legends, an RPG/RTS hybrid. Here are my thoughts:
1. CommunityFree to Play games need more than just viral marketing- they need to make a committed player base. This boils down to one thing: involvement and engrossment, or the bait and the hook. Games use various aspects to "bait" users and get them involved - that is, playing the game on a regular basis. Farmville has players logging in daily to harvest and replant crops. Hattrick has players checking in twice a week to arrange practice matches and set their formations for the upcoming match. League of Legends has "first win of the day" bonuses, which give users an incentive to playing one match a day.The second part is the hook. Anyone can make a button that benefits a user to press daily, but you need to make that benefit worth fighting for. Hattrick does this by making users attached to their league and National Team. While actually helping your nation's soccer team is pretty easy and uninteresting, working and communicating with other users to do so really drives users to success.
Both Hattrick and League of Legends have direct competition, which leads to direct satisfaction for winning and frustration for losing. Both encourage users to invest more into the game and try harder next time. More than this, though, direct competition has players working with and against each other, and this involvement keeps users interested and invested in the community of the game.
2. Player Satisfaction - Accomplishments While Community is a huge aspect of what makes a successful F2P game, rewarding users for their time and energy is what initially hooks them to the game. Without a game focused on hitting the next level or getting the next star, users will feel stagnant and tire of the game. For competitive games, this means giving users a series of benchmarks that they can judge themselves and their improvement by. While competitively and tactically speaking, Hattrick is a pretty dull game, it has loads of ways to compare yourself to your previous self. This includes how you rank in your league one soccer season to the next, how big your fan club is, how good your best player is, and how much money you have in your bank account. In League of Legends, players can see their player level, ELO ranking, and unlocking new content.3. RevenueEverything can be broken completely by the wrong income model. There are F2P games like Hattrick and LoL, and there are what I like to call "Pretend Free To Play" games, which pretend to be free but require a player to put in money to be competitive. There is a careful line that must be drawn as to what a player needs to be competitive and what a player wants to increase their entertainment value.Hattrick gives players the ability to pay a small monthly fee, and in return they get additional features that do not effect their competitive level - at least not directly. These include additional statistics and cosmetic features. League has a different model, using micro-transactions to let players purchase cosmetic upgrades, as well as purchase boosts which decrease the time it takes to unlock new features. While these boosts would make a persistant sports team unbalanced, the finite match time makes this model viable for League of Legends.
So, now that we have some elements for success defined for the Free to Play model, where can Society fit in?
1. CommunityBait - Encouraging players to log in to do basic maintenance on their society will be positive. This should not feel repetitive and dull, but instead involve an interesting choice - perhaps about what they want to focus on improving that day. In the beginning this is pretty easy, with building new farmlands and marketplaces, but later on this should mean deciding whether to drill your militia or research a new technology.Hook - What are users fighting for? They want to make a name for themselves. They want to increase their population. They want to beat out their trading competitors on their continent. These need to be small scale enough that every user can see and improve something on a month to month basis, but with a big enough system for it to repeat indefinitely. Users need to move from their first small pond of little fish to another pond with bigger fish, but without increasing the size of the pond (and making the user feel like they've leveled out). The other part of the hook is involvement with other users. They need to be able to work with others, but without simply teaming up and picking on smaller users. This means investing in worldly expeditions, and implimenting some sort of meta-game competition.
2. AccomplishmentsThis is where Society can really shine. You have all of the basic aspects of civilizations to measure yourself by - army size, population count, territory, culture, and money. All of these factors should give players something to shoot for, even if they are the smallest fish in the smallest pond. There are lots of cool ways to reward players, like cool titles and new buildings.
3. RevenueSociety needs to feel like you can play the game from start to finish without investing a dime, but at the same time make users feel like they really want that new shiny item. So while giving a player a machine gun upgrade would be bad, letting them pay extra to see black knights fight against their opponents generic calvary would be a good idea. With Elemental's buildings, it is easy to see where making new cosmetic content is cheap and easy. And if you let players design their own stuff, adding an extra doodad to place on their tile is still worth selling.
In addition to this per-item cosmetic option, you also have the ability to create a subscriber section. This is where users can pay a reasonable monthly fee to have a cleaner user interface, world rankings, statistics, what their royal family looks like, etc. Because of Society's persistant nature, it would not lend itself to selling boosts to experience and rewards, but there is a lot of room for informatitive features that people would shell out for.
So there you have it - thats my run-down of how I see Society fitting into a Free to Play model. What do you think?
The one thing I fear about FTP are Skinner Box mechanics.
I really would like to see someone like a David Sirlin be consulted on a project like this, or at least have his rants looked at- in order to preserve gameplay. I know Society is a game I expect to skip, due to distrust of MMO mechanics.
the Guild Wars approach is one I would consider though.
Cant stand MMOs anymore. REally don't like multiplayer in general.
First of all, "Free To Play" is pretty much a lie. It's a demo. If you want to get past the first little bit, it's most certainly not free.
This model is usually used by Facebook games, and it sucks. It causes the games to be designed such that you gradually slow down farther and farther, and need to pay to do anything at a reasonable pace. If the game is in any way competitive, people who pay have an advantage over those who don't.
F2P MMOs have the same problem, and in a game with PVP it completely breaks the game if you can simply buy your way to having a combat advantage.
It seems to be a good way to suck money from "casuals", but games like that are something I refuse to play.
Heres how I can see F2P working for an action game where skill matters (like planetside).
First, NEVER touch areas such as damage, accuracy and rate of fire, health etc. Things like reload speed or magazine capacity are fine since they are 'edge cases' and don't define 'balance' (TBH saying "Its okay if his gun kills faster because yours can hold more" is not good design). There is a huge amount of presence for stuff you could add to planetside for this reason. The basics include reskins to new vechicles that are different not better than existing ones. Custom decals and 'paint jobs'. Improvements to your character (like a skill tree seperate from the cert system).
Second, everything avalible via money should be avalible via gameplay. Obviously it has to slow down so the desire to pay rises (its not free to operate, just free to play).
Third, make earning 'in game money' actauly part of the GAMEPLAY not some side thing like a daily quest. In planetside this would be earning XP. (It would need a damage for XP rather than a kill for XP system to promote fun gameplay though which is a FAR better design ANYWAY...).
Fourth, the general design of 'perks' (extras that can be bought with in game or real currency) should be setup in a way that any one of them is easy to get for a free player but getting several of them takes longer. This encourages "Ill pay to get that one now and play for that one" kind of thing. (Remember these games DO need to make money - its not a fairytale). This is exactly how the cert system was created and works great. It gives personal, indavidual short and long term goals for the player with real benefit rather than just "LEVEL 50!!".
Fifth, bombers with toothy maws on the front and hot girls on the side... Nuff said.
The idea behind Free 2 Play is simple in my view; make a game that is fun to play, make it more fun to play with more money and/or time spent. If Planetside Next dosn't do this, Smedly is dumb.
Free to play is the way forward.
https://forums.stardock.com/?aid=404534
http://www.societygame.com/index.aspx?c=1
It largely depends on the model. Let's analyze some high-profile (meaning, at least people have heard of them) F2P MMOs: LoTRO/DDO (lumped together because they're very similar in F2P implementation) and Champions Online.
LoTRO/DDO have a basic amount of content that free accounts can access. There are premium content packs that free accounts can buy, and paid subscribers get for free. But, here's the kicker: in both of these games, you earn Store Points by simply playing the game. In the case of LoTRO, completing your deeds (think misc achievements for killing/exploration/questing/skill usage, etc) earns you points for each one. In the case of DDO, gaining fame by completing dungeons earns you points at various levels.
In such models, free accounts essentially have access to the same content that paid accounts do, paid accounts just get it easier and/or faster. But, over time, a free account can have the exact same game that a paid account can without having spent a dime.
Then we have the newly-transitioned Champions Online to F2P, where F2P gets a huge shaft. Free accounts can't customize their character build, they have to take a preset archetype - this is probably the biggest difference between free and paid accounts and it's a major one. With this model, a free account can't ever match a paid account because there's no way to be able to create your own character build without paying up.
Essentially, not all F2P is created equal. While the common theme is that for free accounts some features are restricted but can be purchased separately (storage space, content, etc) as well as having a microtransaction store, some F2P systems allow you to earn store credits by playing, and others do not. Those that do a are a very favorable form of F2P because you can get everything without being forced to pay, it might just take longer.
Anyone here ever hear of Runes of Magic? It's free to play, there's no hidden options that you can only get through money. The only things you do with money is buy items that are available in game anyway, or buy currency through their legitimate system. It's a shortcut but it's not unbalancing in the endgame. You can also use money to change the looks of your items and fully customize your character. Got a weapon that is amazing but looks like a toy? Pay and it'll look like that flaming falchion you had before, but with the higher stats.
It's a WoW clone, no doubt about it, the developers even said that they tried to take everything that worked with WoW and add what they felt was missing. Along with battlegrounds, for example, guilds can build castles and lay siege to eachother, or even fight in a CTF match where both guild castles are on the map on either side of a chasm. I'm only 1/3rd through leveling, as I said, but I've not run into anything yet that I can't get in game that I have to pay for.
I've not read enough about Society to know exactly what the best options, in my mind, would be, but free to play isn't a complete lie. If you look hard enough you'll find games that don't make you pay to enjoy them.
I think the League of Legends crew had a good idea when they decided that they were never going to sell power. They sell new heroes for cash (also unlockable with F2P ingame currency) and they sell skins (not purchasable with F2P ingame currency). Some of the things they refuse to sell for money include runes (which provide in game stat boosts) and summoner levels/experience points (which let you use more runes/get more mastery points/use different summoner abilities). I think this has done a good job of making the people that don't spend a dime feel like they're not missing out on core gameplay features while at the same time providing enticing options for people that are willing to spend money.
Yeah, I didn't include League of Legends because it's not quite an MMO. I think LoL is a bit unique in that it's *only* a competitive game so having stuff that actually influences gameplay be real-money only would basically cause the whole game to fail. MMOs can get away with that because most of them are focused on PvE, where power imbalances aren't really an issue.
I will pay anything as long as the gameplay is there. This is why I don't generally like MMOs, they make pong look like Gal Civ 2 in any case. I am still waiting for internet and computing technology to increase to the point where an MMO is better than a SP game.
I have always wanted to play an FPS with one to five people acting as commanders and playing an RTS over our heads. I envision another player presiding over this game as the supreme commander, TBS. He only plays two or three times a day on a massive map against other Supremes. Then there would be the God players. These guys are the gods of the games and have their own fights over even larger scale battles. They make the rules for the peons and can favor a particular group if they do something to benefit the god player (he may also be an alien for Sci-Fi).
In some you would have to level up to one day hope to become a god. In others it would be a mere matter of skill; losses mean you lose command at the end of the month/year. This concept would be awesome for anything from an actually good warcraft game to a command and conquer world. It would be every kind of game at once, and new ones would form that we haven't even thought of. This is the future.
But we don't have the technology and we don't have the gaming companies to make this happen.
I will probably play Society just to support SD, but I wonder how close it will come to my dream.
Free to play games always seem to generate a lot of discussion. There are so many different models that it's hard to make judgements about every F2P game out there. Some games prefer to aim their shops to the "top tier" players who tend to pay ludicrous amounts of money on a single game (1k+ USD). Others go for the mainstream variant with minor, but mostly necessary "upgrades" to the game - these generally don't cost much, but can also stack up overtime.
Some games build the item shop into every aspect of the game - crafting, raiding, pvp, leveling up. Others keep them as novelty items that don't give the player anything more than e-peen bonuses.
Personally I prefer games that have reasonable limits on how much you can spend (5-20 usd per month) but still give an in-game bonus, not just e-peen. It may be my imagination, but games that aim for the "top tier" of players generally end up with very small player bases, making the game extremely boring and segmented (either you're in the "cool", paying group, or you're in the F2P useless group). Likewise, games that try to sell only novelty items remain small scale because most players just don't buy stuff like that. The development of such games also seem to twist towards introducing new novelty items rather than new content.
At the end of the day, the F2P model may restrict some players from playing a game they would have loved to pay for like a normal game or maybe even a pay2play mmo. I think this is why F2P models tend to generate so much discussion - players just can't grasp the concept that they are not the target audience. They "demand" changes to the F2P model, when the developers may not even be interested in them as customers. Most players don't understand that. They see a great game and they want to play it, but the F2P model may be restricting them from doing so.
World of Tanks is an interesting (Though poorly implemented.) version.
It's very much like a standard FPS with unlocks. Start with dinky old tank with armor made of wet paper that shoots spitballs. From there you earn experience to unlock upgrades and new tanks, and credits to buy those, some consumables, ammo, and to repair your tanks. The MMO aspect comes solely from the FtP business scheme and that the game is hosted on a few regional servers.
As far as FtP is concerned, you can buy Gold with cash, which in turn lets you buy premium tanks, ammo, and consumables as well as a 'premium subscription'. The game is released in Russia already, and if the same pricing is used, it'll be about US$10 for 2500 gold, which is the cost of one month of premium subscription. However, some of the Premium tanks tend to be weak as they have no upgrades, premium ammo and consumables become amazingly expensive if you intend to play more than a couple short rounds, and the 'Premium subscription' nets just a 50% boost in earned experience and credits.
$10 for a month of premium doesn't sound like a lot, until you realize the incredible grind it is to reach more than a small bit of content. Of the three 'Tier 10' tanks available, each takes about six months of steady gaming time (two to three hours a day) to reach with premium. This doesn't even include the nine other lines that end at tiers eight and nine.
/rant
Once im in the game and comitted (because I like playing it) im much more likely to actualy pay for stuff (since I know its not a bad investment that I wont get any use out of). Things like 'required consumables' are an instant off switch to me.
Ultimately Im much more comfortable with a business model that says "Buy stuff because you like it" rather than "Buy stuff because you need to or you can say goodbye to your friends sukka!". I guess its just the mark of a good business to do it properly?
let me start by saying, im sick of MMO's, been playing since the MUD days, heavily since UO, and its just the same ole regurgitated shit now. Ill get my knickers in a twist when someone does a good sci-fi, twitch based mmo. Im looking forward to Planetside Next (LOVED playing planetside when it was more populated, most epic battles ever.)
As for FTP, i fucking hate them, i would rather pay 10-15 bucks a month for years to play a QUALITY game with a good dev team that continuously improves and evolves the game, prime examples, Eve and WoW, though i havent played either for a while (that style of mmo just dont appeal anymore).
ftp just smells of greedy half ass bullshit to me (not that blizzard isnt starting to seem that way too, fuck activision :/), that and i hate micro-transactions, cause I always spend more than i should or want to, I'd rather pay a flat monthly fee, or even something similar to what guild wars did/does (not sure if they are doing the same with numba 2).
people like froggy-poo need to make MMO's, if stardock made a sci-fi twitch mmo, /drool......
oh and mix in ATITD (A tale in the desert), crafting and housing and research, that would be EPIC
I used to play LOTRO by quarterly subscription, but it was expensive to keep the subscription going over the course of a year. Now that it's F2P, I can buy what I need (read: quest packs) when I need it, and I don't have to login every day of the month to get value for money.
While it's true that a lot of F2P MMOs don't have production values as high as paid ones, there are those that do LOTRO and DDO were both good successful MMOs (though DDO mostly just appeals to people who dig D&D, it's pretty niche), and they transitioned to F2P and got even better.
There *are* a lot flooding the market, mostly Asian-style MMOs, and those are generally lower quality.
Surprisingly enough, I don't trust SD to make a good MMO. They have absolutely 0 experience with such things. The only MMO I can see them trying is something sandbox, where they don't have to make much content because the goal of the sandbox is for people to make their own (see: EVE - basic mission templates is the only real created content, everything else players do themselves using game mechanics). This isn't a bad thing, and we need more good sandbox MMOs, but at this day and age it's hard to make one that stands out and is good, especially for a first timer.
Played Guild Wars for nearly 6 years now. In all that time I have spent $27 on extra character slots in the company store. Plus the price of the Expansions. All F2P of course. GW 2 will also be F2P. A game can be F2P and at the same time well maintained and in development. This requires income from new game sales and a company store. GW does not sell anything that affects game play in their company store.
New game sales require a dedicated player community that keeps the game alive and generates enough positive buzz to keep the new game sales cash register ringing! At the heart of the community is a well moderated forum. GW has a couple of those. A comprehensive wiki, GW has 3. Responsive tech support, a community representative to deal with "issues," the list goes on.
F2P can work. But not without a lot of planning and effort.
It doesn't count as F2P unless they have zero cost for ownership. GW does not qualify.
LoL did it perfectly. You dont sell power, but you do sell looks and flexibility. I think that enough people will always pay for those things if your game is good. Never sell power, since thats going to always turn off a huge percentage of your potential player base. So many people, like me, just hate that.
I dont know where SD is going with Society since the info on the website is quite outdated (they still say they have an expected release date of 2007, lol). But they hybrid scheme that they proposed in their game info isnt a good idea to me (basically they would charge a monthly fee for "premium" content which would give a leg up over free players).
But they could very easily just rip off LoL's payment scheme. Sell skins for units/buildings. Only allow some units to be built for 1 week every 6 weeks or so, but if players pay to unlock them they can always build them. You always want to have buildable units in all niches (so always have some sort of ranged unit buildable), but you would have many more choices if you paid to unlock units permanently.
I think this is an important concept for the MMO F2P system. Players feel this obligation or waste when they have something they are paying for but not actively using (IE the subscription). However, even if they spend the same amount of money in the little burst they do play then don't spend any when they don't, they wont get this feeling. I know its how I work... and personally I also love the LoL model, I think they are the only non-MMO I've seen doing F2P "right".
But time=money. So playing a grind game to me is useless in most iterations. I don't want to have to spend more than 4 hours a week and I would like serious accomplishments fro that time. It would really be cool if they had difficulty settings on MMO's to let busy people have as much fun as the hardcore trust fund types that can spend eight hours a day playing. If they could make thses games without grinding, I might play even if the gameplay stays where it is.
Most non-Korean MMOs do not have grind until you get to the level cap. WoW, LoTRO, etc all have a gigantic amount of quests and you don't even do all of them because you just outlevel them due to the sheer number. So I guess what's your definition of accomplishment? If you want to gain 5 levels in 4 hours every time you play, no MMO is going to accommodate that past the newbie levels. If your accomplishment is getting stuff done, then pretty much every Western MMO gives you that.
F2P is a very tricky thing to pull off successfully. You're essentially trying to find a balance between two competing goals: A free game, and a way to pay the developers to make the game.
The key is presenting sufficient value in the "Free" game, but at the same time, provide enough extra incentive in the paid pieces to keep the game operating. This is what games like LotRO, DDO, LOL etc do well. The core of the game is there for everyone to enjoy. The additional paid content is there for anyone who is more than just casually interested in the game, but it doesn't penalize those who don't buy it.
The next thing is to put that paid content at a price that doesn't scare players, but is still worthwhile to the developers. What's the right price vs added value for a thing in a F2P game? Is it $0.99 for armor? $1.99 for a new unit? $4.99 for a map pack? What's the $/hr value for any given game?
One of the most important things for any F2P game is to ensure a critical mass of players continually. If you assume only 5% of your player base will buy any given piece of DLC, how many players would you need to break even on a DLC item that cost $1,000 to develop? If it's $1.99, you'd need 503 sales, so you'd need 10,060 active players. And that's just to break even on the thingamajig. If you want to turn a profit (to, ya know, keep paying developers, support, community etc) then you need to sell a LOT more.
Personally, I prefer the approach of DLC in F2P games be one of two things:
For Additional Content, I mean things like map packs, adventure modules, extra social features etc. Items that do not give me an advantage over other non-paying players, but that give me more stuff to play. Extend my experience overall, and I'm all for it. This is stuff that doesn't let me (or others against me) curb-stomp me in a competitive game.
The second point is a little more nuanced and much harder to pull off. Lets say that when playing a game, every victory in a match gives you 10 woofie points (imaginary game currency unit), and The Sword of Noob Killing +1 costs 100 woofie points. I can either win 10 matches (not an unreasonable number if I enjoy the game), or I buy a 100 pack of woofie points and get the sword. Obviously in this case there needs to be a system in place to prevent new players from playing against fully equipped folks, but that's doable through gear scores, number of matches played etc. The specific balance of something like this has to be carefully managed.
F2P is all about a lot of carrot and very very little stick. If the next awesome thing is just $1.99 away, and you aren't punished by not having it, then I feel the right balance of play vs $ has been reached.
It's worth noting that this is all just my personal opinion of F2P, the business model, and how I prefer these games to work. It is in no way necessarily the way any future Stardock title would work.
@Annatar11: Yes you are right. I think accomplish means to have done something significant to progress the story or develop my character.
This can be getting to the next chapter in a quest. It can be finding a cool sword. It can even be knitting a sweater in the case of WoW, though it is rather insulting to me personally. I don't like quests that feel linear. WoW, since its the main MMORPG I have played, has a lot of really good quests where there are choices and alliances and unexpected results. There are 100 times more get me those black feathers of [random area]. They are in my opinion a grinding mechanic. Quests need to be interesting stories. Sure there could be jobs and crafting, but those should be optional grinds while stories and actual skill make up the majority of the game. A good fighting mechanic has yet to be added to any MMORPG (though thank you for trying Star Trek).
I would also think that for games one pays for, you should be able to fight meaningful battles over land. Why is this not pursued?
But in a F2P I would think that a few cool but not over powerful classes, rank in society, jobs, crafting skills, land, houses, resources, and any special item designs are something worth selling to gamers. Pretty much anything worth buying in America is up for grabs.
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