Is it Time to Drop The "Free To Play" Marketing Ploy For DCUO

Is DCUO honestly a Free-to-Play game? Was it ever? Here is how I feel about it.

In my opinion, DCUO is more of a subscription game, with the option to play some of it without paying a dime. The end goal though is to eventually subscribe. That does not coincide with a Free-to-Play model. It's more akin a Soft Subscription model. Premium and FTP merely act as a buffer, rather than an actual access level. FTP at best is a built-in Trial Period

To call DCUO in it's current state a Free-to-Play game, is like calling Madden NFL 13, a FTP game. Here me out. The FTP access level is popularly stated to be a demo version of the game. Level 0 to roughly t4. That is were the FTP aspect of this game comes from. Legendary access and DLCs are by definition Pay-to-Play. I had to buy something in order to continue my progression through the game. Once that progression is stopped by a pay wall, the game is no longer Free-to-Play. It is Pay-to-Play. I can buy a DEMO of Madden 13 on PSN. Does that make the full game a FTP game? No. So if the Devs and the community call the FTP portion of this game a demo of the full experience, how can we justify marketing this game as a Free-To-Play model? In actuality, it is a Free-To-Try game. just like how a madden demo is free-to-try. But you have to pay for the full experience via buying the game(DLCs).

• DLCs are Pay-to-Play.
• Every instance has a lockout function. requiring consumers to Pay-to-Play in order to gain access to it again.

If you have to pay for the full experience, then by definition it is no longer a Free-to-Play, correct? In every aspect it is merely a demo of the full experience. At what point, will DCUO have more Pay-To-Play content, then Free-To-Play content? Have we passed it yet? If we haven't already, when will that point be? Cosmetic options are limited and are definitely not the main source of revenue.Typically, cosmetic products are the staple of Free-To-Play game income (Marvel Heroes Online). It is definitely telling when replay badges are a big source of income. Replay badges functionally are the currency used to Pay-to-Play.

In my opinion. Dc Universe Online isn't a Free-To-Play game. And even when it was close to being one it never truly embraced the model. Instead of focusing on micro-transaction like many Free-To-Play games, DCUO Developers still drives you (by any means necessary) to subscribe. If you have to pay for your right to access content, then that aspect of the game is Pay-To-Play. Just because you have SOME content that IS Free-To-Play, doesn't justify the use of marketing the game as Free-To-Play, when SOME of it is clearly Pay-To-Play. Once the consumer has to pay to access content that progresses their experience, the game shouldn't be able to call itself Free-to-Play.

No. I am not saying, change how we do things. But at what point does "Free-To-Play" on the DCUO website become false advertising? At what point does it become a lie? It speaks volumes that the community and the Developers tell people to subscribe to a supposedly Free-To-Play game. Is it time to drop " Free-To-Play" from the marketing statement?

Thanks for reading.

I agree that if you want to play it to its fullest its definitely not free to play. However, it's good for those who just want to have fun for a while and don't want to get into it seriously. Besides, I never payed for replaying, it's not a neccesity as you mentioned, it makes the game dull very quickly.

In all of reality, the free to play part of this game is just a marketing tool to lure people into subscribing. It's prety clever in my opinion, you can try a demo before getting the full version.

Soooo...how many threads on the same topic are you going to create in one week? Just asking....

Can someone play the game for free? Yes. Then it's free to play....

If someone wants to play the latest and newest content all the time, well then they have to be a customer... Either member or non-member.

They never said "free to play every piece of content in the game..."

Soooo..... When will you take the time to read, and realize that not only have I never made a topic on this before but I rarely post more than one thread a week?

All you have to do is go to profile page and look at my thread history. So before coming in here with a factually incorrect accusation, please take the time to THINK about the things you type before you type them. You and those who liked your post will do well to remember that.

No. They can't play the game for free. They can try part of the game for free.

When a game refers to itself as a Free To Play game. That means it considers it's entire experience Free to play. That is what it means to be a free to play game.

What marketing?!?!!? I haven't seen a commercial or an add for this game since launch. There may have been a blurb when they went FTP, but other than that.....no marketing of this game at all that I have seen.

No, they can play the game indefinitely for free. As long as each tier of gear turns to MoT when the next tier comes out they can keep buying gear. They'll be bored out of their minds running the same content all the time to get those MoT's, but they can keep progressing.

Want to play more content, then yes they need to buy stuff. They could however play for free till they shut down the servers.

I've never thought F2P means everything in the entire game is free. So I suppose that comes from your viewpoint. or someone else's description of what they feel a F2P game is.

T5 vendor gear is inaccessible if you do not own the DLC. and of course the t5 content gear is inaccessible if you do not have the DLC Progression stops at that point man.

Can you name other allegedly Free To Play games that aren't entirely free? I am willing to change my views provided their is evidence that Free To Play doesn't mean "The whole game is free"

There has to be marketing in the first place, DCUO has no marketing it seems.

DCUO doesnt have marketing, nor a real budget for marketing. Free marketing through social media is all they can afford sadly. So DCUO needs to stay F2P.

Nope. Don't play any other games.

I've never looked at their model though and said "F2P... I'll bet they get anything and everything for free!" though.

Who knows, once we hit T7 maybe they'll add a free T5 instance that will allow them to buy gear. They said they could play for free, not be up to par with members tier-wise...

Semantics argument. I would call DCUO a free-to-play game based on how it is setup. The percentage of the game accessible for free shrinks with each DLC but the raw amount of game playable for free is still over a vague an undefined threshold I have in mind for saying it is free to play in good faith.

Thank you for your thoughts on the matter. I see your point

This is how all games that are "Free to Play" work.

F2P is a relative term. I have never seen one game out there that is fully free to play.

Who in their right mind would spend millions and just give it out for free?

In the end, this game is totally free to play.

Everything is always worded so well... You should run for political office Sore.

i think its free to play because the content u could play at release is still available for free plus they added some new free stuff since then ... ofcourse dlc cost extra... ppl who work need to eat ( even those who dont but this is another thread) ... besides most of pvp content is for free aswell since u dont need gear anylonger.

DCUO could go back to simply subscription only like they did in the beginning, now how would this game be if that was the case, probably not a lot of players, since it is free to play by their opinion, it allows people to download the game for free and try it out and play it as long as they can in hopes that they will subscribe and become paying members, when I first started playing this game in 2012, it was free to play, I heard about it when it was subscription only and you had to buy the game for 60 dollars and subscribe, I didn't want to invest money into it because i didn't know how the game was or how long it would last, it would have been a waste of money, when I found out it was free to play, I downloaded it, created a toon and played, had a great time, still am having a great time with the game and I subscribed, because I wanted to enjoy all of what this game had to offer, if it was still subscription only, I may have never decided to play it, so FTP is a good idea, may not be the FTP definition some may want it to be, but it allows people to play the game.

F2P is why I am playing this game today.

DC has such a bad reputation that I would never .... never have tried it if it had not been F2P.

But thanks to F2P.... I tried the game for about a month.... and became legendary on PC and PS3...... and have been for 3+ years.

If not for F2P..... I would not be playing this game now.

I have many friends who have been legendary at least fro a while in the past 3 years thanks for trying the game F2P first.

I still have a handfull of friends who are Legendary..... and again.... they would not be if they had not tried the game thanks to F2P.