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

THIS IS A RESPONSE TO YOUR "EDIT"
Name me a F2P game on mobile or console that is truly "free to play" in it's entirety (meaning you can access all game features without becoming a subscriber). Even games that require no extra charges to play would spam with ads or ask that you donate to keep the game going in the near future. Developers need money to keep these games a float. Publishers force the issue of having players come out of pocket because revenue must come from a source. Whether is be a third party or first party. Mobile games have IAP's. Console games have microtransactions and DLC's/micro DLC's. DCUO is a free to play game to an extent. The entire game is not accessible to F2P players; but that doesn't change the origin of the F2P capabilities. It is just like a person who is of bi-racial descent. Doesn't make them less of a specific race/ethnicity because they are only inheriting a percentage of that gene/root.

I'll have to disagree. Example; I played Rising Force - Global for a year, had a Yellow MAU, managed to build myself quite a reputation and was known even by the GMs (a great thing about that game was having GMs almost 24/7 around). There were a LOT of stuff of the pay-to-win kind, however I beamed most of em silly regardless.
True, EVERYTHING was way harder for a F2P, but not impossible. Only reason I left was my PC broke, and when I finally managed to have a new one that could run the game properly (I.E. without lagging at crucial moments) the server went thru several changes that... welll... ****** up the game. And GMs were not so present anymore, so the hackers and duppers pretty much took it over...

I've had similar experience with Aion. But got bored as the classes on this game are not balanced at all. On DCUO, so far, it seems not (much) the case, with some upps and nerfs somewhat often.

I'm fine with them using the distinction of "Shareware"! or "DemoWare!"

On PS it is easy to get Premium as all you have to have is a PSN Plus membership.

This guy.Dude if they drop free to plays how would they get people too test out the game if they want to purchase it later on?

Droping them would not only be bad it would make them lose money so fast The free to play gives them a trail too see if they want too or not Just like legendary i am a preminum player

i have been legendary so many times But too me With the disconnects we had as of late i don't think its worth it.People have to freedom to do what they want its there money.

You can look at it this way: The content of the original release (or core game) is FTP. Anything past that has a cost.

How about the people that aren't lucky enough to have a friend that knows about it in order to tell them about it? How about the people that left the game a long time ago that might go, 'hey, that game is still around? looks like it's grown a lot, maybe i'll try it out.". Right now, this game is marketed to the people that are already familiar to the game. That's no bueno.

The game is free to play pay to win and has been this way for quite some time.

Anyone who tells you differently is trying to sell you something or delusional.

It's not marketed to the people that are lready familiar with it. (That doesn't really make sense) It's just a modell that allows the game to grow indepently. My guess on why they are not really making campaings is that it's just not worth it. There are not many MMOs that have their own marketing campaign. (There are a few, the big names of course) Reason for that is that the world of MMO has a very wide variety of people. You can't find a lot of places where you would efficiently reach your target market, hence it's not worth it for them to advertise, the game is steadily growing anyway, no need to throw away money for senseless marketing. The social medias (Twitter, youtube, twitch, facebook) are doing just fine.

Free to Play gives people the option to try out the game. If you like what you get for free (The first 3 tiers of the game given that are 6 so you have half of the game for free technically), you can opt into either 1 time payments for DLC(which are permanently yours on your account) or buy a monthly membership. A lot of people complain about this but if DCUO did not have a method of making money, this game would be a liability given it would cost way more money to maintain the game than it would generate. If you wanted no more new content, no Devs to fix issues, and nothing to regulate the game, then complete F2P makes sense. And before you say that you can still keep the option to buy stuff, realistically, if everything was given to you for free, what would the need to buy anything be?

I don't see any need to do away with free 2 Play. It's how I started out a little over three years back when I first tried the game. It allowed me to come in, look around and decide if I wanted to commit to subscribing or not.... I have been a subscriber for more than 3 years so obviously the answer was YES.

Let's be 100% honest here.. I don't care it is this game or ant of the tiny little (SO Called F2P) strategy games you can find online all F2P amounts to is a gimmick to get people in the door. At that point if you want all the "REALLY COOL" stuff you better be willing to pull out the credit card and either pay a monthly fee for access to everything or PAY for every single new DLC that comes along. The same thing applies to even those strategy games I mentioned earlier. OH sure you can slowly, VERY SLOWLY, build your city, army or whatever your supposed to be making without spending a dime but eventually as you level up those wait times become so long your either buying tokens to speed things up or waits DAYS to complete a single task. By that time they hope you are hooked enough to want to spend the cash to keep up with your friends and any competition you may have out there.

F2P is just a clever way to get people to come and look at all the pretty colors and make them want to open wallet .. spend cash. I see no reason to do away with it since IF WE WANT THE GAME TO SURVIVE WE WANT IT TO MAKE MONEY. Trust me I came here when NC Soft closed the City of Heroes Servers. COH hadn't even gotten to a stage where it wasn't turning a profit but that profit was minimal and NC Soft wanted the servers the game was tying up for other projects so POOF No more COH.

No modern MMO can compete without some form of free to play. For example Elder Scrolls Online decided recently decided to go free to play. It has been P2P for over a year now but before it comes to consoles this year it will F2P. This game would probably not be here today if the change wasn't made.

I'm sure I read somewhere that you still need to buy the game...

Right and idk why people care so much about what others do. Im legendary and tbh idc if people in my league are premium, but f2p i rarely see since im t6 and run the new content a ton when it comes out. If someone is f2p they wont be running w/me so idc. Tbh as long as they keep making $ to keep the game going then idc at all about the whole f2p, premium, legendary thing. Im gonna pay my sub every month and do my things regardless of who is premium or f2p.

The entire game as it was when it became ftp id's available to play for free. Additions to the core game are available for a fee. If you had to pay in order to download the game it would not be ftp. You do not need any dlc to play abd the dlc will not work without the free game. Anything after t4 is end game as you have beaten the original game

Well its like a very long trial.
You can play 1-30 levels content. You can get ur CR up (more or less slow-painfully) to T4. Thats enough to give you a good idea of what the game is about and in case you like it, throw some money dude!
Anyways better than buy DLCs you can have a month or 2 as member and rise the hell up ur CR.
I think its pretty balanced, even though I still think the premium should have a higher money cap than freebies.

Think of it as winning a free cuise. Free access, but if you want the good stuff (restaraunt vs free buffet, activities vs just going to the free and over crowded beach), you're coming out of pocket.

I wouldnt be here without it. I was excited about the game when first announced but refused to pay a subscription fee. When FTP came out I jumped all over it. A little over 3 years later and I have since spent around $500.

There are a few F2P titles out there that allow you to play the entire game for free, which allow you to acquire content through extreme levels of grinding, or offer faster access through marketplace purchases, either by offering actual items/gear (aka the pay to win fiasco), crafting items that speed up the process (i've wanted DCUO to latch onto this as far as exobytes are concerned, offering them on the MP as opposed to scanners, which still require lots of time to farm, with varying intake rates), and those that offer bundle/booster packs that combine certain features, which may or may not include access rights to particular areas of the game (currently what DCUO is using).

Warframe, on PC and PS4, for example, is entirely free. Everything can be unlocked for free if you're willing to grind for countless hours for particular items. I want to say Blacklight: Retribution works the same way, but I hadn't played it much at all. I got the impression that, as an FPS title, players with store access to better gear stood out as much more capable (overpowered) in these titles that lack PVE coop content (Blacklight), and are strictly PVP based. Warframe, in contrast, is like 90% PVE, coop friendly, so it's setup is more friendly to players who don't intend on making purchases. The tradeoff for releasing the entire game for free is putting players through an almost ridiculous level of grinding, which results in these players becoming population buffers that maintain activity/community.

and thats why DCUO is my only game I play on PS4.