The F2P experience is horrible.

Discussion in 'The Veterans' Lounge' started by Strawberry, Apr 30, 2023.

  1. DeadRagarr Augur


    Why bring up wow? WoW F2P system is also bad. Its like getting hit by a car or jumping off a building. Both are bad.

    Compare it with ESO which would be a MUCH better comparison.
  2. Waring_McMarrin Augur

    Go ahead and make that comparison if you want, I compared it to a system that I know.
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  3. Spacemonkey555 Augur

    For those people who spend so much time trying to convince the devs to give away more EQ for free, the devs have zero say, it's all corporate at the EG7 level and the only thing they care about is whether or not DPG services the debt. They won't give anything away free without looking at how they can gouge the new customer with near mandatory microtransactions.

    If you convice EG7 to take another look at FTP EQ, you probably won't like the results.
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  4. Iven Antonius Bayle

    I think that the peak was a bit earlier, at the release of GoD. The release of WoW shortly after the OoW release was EQ's doom. OoW was an unbeloved, difficult, and weird expansion with little infos around. Players were looking forward for something more original but then SOE repeated it's fatal mistake with GoD and released another part (OoW) which was more than stupid. It does show us how much impact a bad strategy, not being well enough connected to the player community, and long software development times do have.

    Also interesting are the MMORPG market shares. I was able to reconstruct the rough values for the vanilla years. In july 1999, a few months after the game release, EQ had it's highest market share with about 19,5 %.

    [IMG]

    59 px = 10%

    1999 July - 115 px = 19,5 %
    1999 / 2 - 78 px = 13,2 %
    2000 / 1 - 63 px = 10,7 %
    2000 / 2 - 92 px = 15,6 %
    2001 / 1 - 70 px = 11,9 %
    2001 / 2 - 82 px = 13,9 %
    2002 / 1 - 70 px = 11,9 %
    2002 / 2 - 63 px = 10,7 %
    2003 / 1 - 63 px = 10,7 %
    2003 / 2 - 65 px = 11,0 %
    2004 / 1 - 42 px = 7,1 %
    2004 / 2 - 41 px = 7,0 %
    2005 / 1 - 44 px = 7,5 %
    2005 / 2 - 28 px = 4,8 %
    2006 / 1 - 21 px = 3,6 %
    Nennius likes this.
  5. Iven Antonius Bayle

    We should take a look at the latest EG7 reports for that. About three years ago AllAccess accounts had a share of about 86%. Most FTP accounts are alts and if Daybreak has nothing to offer for those 14% they are doing something wrong, and they are doing it wrong since about ten years.

    If EG7 managers would take a closer look into the general account model structure they might find out that it is totally outdated and that connecting expansion sales to AllAccess is a very bad mechanic. Micro payment with low barriers is the way to go. EQ has way to much macro payment, like expansion and subscription prices including tons of high priced stuff from the marketplace, which is a big barrier to many players and possible customers. Such a concept does only work well during a booming economy and enough whales around but the opposite is the case in the western hemisphere.
  6. Spacemonkey555 Augur

    Ignorant. EQ's playerbase is established workers and retirees who have disposable income, not unemployed kids. They don't need to set up multiple grades and risk downgrades of allaccess subscribers to pick up penny a month spenders. They're already moving in the other direction with paid perks. Instead of listening to you and letting people pay less they're asking the people already paying to pay more.

    Sure, somewhere out there is a huge market of people willing to pay $1/month to play EQ. No one wants those customers, they want people with money to burn that actually pay their way and then some. They can't gamble on some new paradigm forming up if they drop prices. I'd bet a krono they're far more interested in coercing FTPs to sub by making long term FTP painful than they are interested in helping FTPs save money. FTP is supposed to be a first hit is free drug dealer's recruiting method, not a charity for the indigent and underemployed.
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  7. Iven Antonius Bayle

    That is true to some point but only because Daybreak has not much to offer for people with less income and those that are sensitive in spending money; the opposite of the whales. The customer base could be much larger with changes without loosing revenue. Sure, a few AllAccess members would swap to lower account grades but on the other side they would win many new customers and players would upgrade some of their FTP accounts. And maybe most importantly, they would increase their MMORPG market share. It is approved that staggered prices are much better for making cash than the outdated binary account system of EQ (0 or 1). The customers do decide how much they want and can spend and not the company who does make an offer. High prices are a paywall that does reduce the chance that anything will get sold/bought at all and I don't think that Daybreak has a snobbish attitude to lock out poor people.

    Just simple upselling and it does affect FTP accounts also.

    Seems like only Spacemonkey555 does want to lock out such people. Pecunia non olet.

    Of course it is not about charity. You don't get my suggestions if you think that they are about that. I always try to construct win-win situations. I am the craftsman ! ;) (see sig)
  8. Spacemonkey555 Augur

    :rolleyes: Great news everyone, we can overload the servers, lose money on every sale but make it up in volume! Don't worry about lag, DPG will double server capacity with all the miniscule new revenue they get from people who can't afford to sub... Winning market share is often useless, many a fool has killed their business chasing new customers.

    Of course it is about charity. You're a ftp who wants a better deal without paying the price. Craftsmen make things for their own profit. You can tell when they don't care to make things beneficial to others, because then they can't sell the crap they make no matter how hard they push it.

    I love the internet. Spent a few minutes reading about your quote. Roman emperor says money doesn't stink, from the point of view of the tax collector, not the businessman. What was he taxing? Urine, which was used to clean clothes and teeth in the roman empire. Doesn't at all support the idea of losing money on every sale but making up for it in volume, sorry. Some customers just aren't worth it.
  9. Iven Antonius Bayle

    With so much rabulistics I cannot take you seriously, Spacemonkey555.
  10. Jardad Journeyman

    F2P is a hook for "new" players, working as intended .. Seasoned will pay in $ and/or Time.
    yes, its painful to come back and have dozen's of toons across several accounts all with Raid gear that has no stats. so you have 2 choices , pay up or go farm/buy Defiant stuff on Live,, or go to Test.
    Expecting to exploit F2P without penalties isnt realistic /fair either IMO .
    could they let you exchange Prestige for a Defiant piece? sure, but why should they, they owe you nothing, plus they know your not goin to Sub, so what's the point?
    If you have Prestige type gear, you most likely have enough PP to grab some Defiant.
    EQ is a P2P ( Sub + Expansions) MMO , never meant to be F2P.
    many MMO's are doin things to cut down on the exploiting of F2P.
    EQ's , SWTOR (e.g) have great F2P models considering they are P2P models. WoW probably the worst.
    Some F2P MMO's , Black Desert Online (eg) was 10$ OR F2P (depending when) that pays returning players "rewards" ( very good ones) as well as tons of accumulated wealth when you come back after 30 days of not logging in.
    but its a F2P primary and Sub/Marketplace secondary
    Corwyhn Lionheart likes this.
  11. Skuz I am become Wrath, the Destroyer of Worlds.

    F2P is an "extended trial" and a bit more, it is really very generous for a free offering, games which offer more than EQ "for free" do so at the cost of hamstringing everything behind a miscrotransaction paywall that ruins the core gameplay far worse than the restictions EQ has.

    EQ is quite playable as F2P offering many levels with very little in the way of restrictions and it is is reasonably inexpensive to sub, even temporarily to unlock a whole lot that you can keep once you stop subbing.

    Offering more of the game for free is up to the devs but I think they have pitched it squarely at the point where if you want to play a LOT of EQ, you could make one of each class & play it molo as far as you can go then start over on another class. Run out of slots on an account? Make another account.
    How much is that in sheer hours of gameplay for nothing? I bet you it is rather a lot when you think in those terms.

    F2P is plenty generous, sure they "could" make it better, but it can't be too good or they will never convert from F2P to subs.
  12. Skuz I am become Wrath, the Destroyer of Worlds.

    Not the best way to represent the data unless you really understand well what you are looking at.

    It could look to most like EQ is losing numbers a lot earlier than it actually did, because the effect of more MMORPGS coming on to market increasing the number of people playing MMORPG so the expanding subscription population is not visible when viewed as a "100% of sub population" which in reality was a growing number.


    It also masks the fact that EQ Peaked around 550,000 subscribers at the END of 2004 (with some sources having put it that high until as late as Feb 2005).

    Subs were climbing before GoD & continued to rise until after Omens launched, some people to this day are convinced the game was declining in total subs as early as PoP but that is not true.

    While WoW closed-beta was active (March to September 2004) and some more-open stress tests were conducted during GoD, it did not launch until 2 months after OoW launched.

    EQ OOW launch date: September 14, 2004
    EQII launch date: November 08, 2004

    WOW launch date: November 23, 2004 (selling 240,000 copies in the 1st 24 hours).

    I swear some people think WoW had 10 million subs on day one, but it took a few years to reach that number, its first expansion launch January 2007 - Burning Crusade sold just over 3.5 million in its first month, 2.4 million of that was in the 1st 24 hours.
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  13. Andarriel Everquest player since 2000

    I always thought f2p was just to give people a little taste of what eq is before they become a gold member now it seems like f2p are give me give me give me kinda like tlp's both which i hate!
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  14. Iven Antonius Bayle

    It does show percentual subscriptions of the total market segment. I am not sure if that is even identical with market shares. It does not reveal when EQ peaked as the market was still in a boom phase.

    There is a difference between active subs and active accounts/players. I think that the statistics are also including some of the already inactive accounts/players (active subs of the last year or so) so there is some lag involved. When only counting in the active players, EQ should had peaked around the release of GoD and maybe even earlier, but the active 6, 12 and 24 monthly subs were still running until early 2005 and even longer, and got added into the statistics.
  15. Cloud the Third Augur

    Active subs is a meaningless number of the game itself. You need active players per day / total servers to get a real number of the population for a game and how good it is. There are tons of people out there who sign up for a year to play a game and never play after month 1. This chart is good for maybe a business trying to make money because they don't care if people play the game or not, they only want people to pay for the game. I know of tons of games out there that were released had a ton of people buy it and the game was dead in less than a month because it was so bad noone really played it.
  16. Iven Antonius Bayle

    As soon as something does get achieved it becomes boring and there are those people that do only buy stuff for bragging like lifetime memberships. :cool:
  17. Cicelee Augur

    Amusement parks have signs next to roller coasters saying that you have to be this tall to ride.

    Everquest has signs saying you have to have this much money ($18/month) to play everything.

    Maybe the solution is to not allow F2P to reach max level -5/10 levels or whatever the parameter is. You play free from 1-50. Make it 1-85 since that is when old heroics start. Or make it 1-100 since that is new heroic characters start. Remove all prestige, you can do whatever you want for free until 50/85/100. After that you need a valid payment (money/Krono) in order to continue.

    I would guess the amount of people on Live servers who care about the 1-50/85/100 game represents less than 1% of accounts on that server. Only DBG knows that percent. But as long as people are not allowed within 20 levels of max, who cares?
  18. Skuz I am become Wrath, the Destroyer of Worlds.

    But you chose to respond to my point about when EQ began declining with that graph anyway....

    Classic Iven "moving the goalposts".

    What is actually "measurable"?
    Without figures given by the companies themselves on contigous player numbers, then what is directly comparable based on available information?

    None of your waffling changes or disproves the metrics I made my assertion upon, the decline in overall subs was not until after Omens of War and you have been unsuccessful in your attempt to show otherwise basically resorting to hearsay.
  19. Rijacki Just a rare RPer on FV and Oakwynd

    Not to mention that subscription numbers alone are pointless because SOE/DB went to an All Access model which is a subscription to ALL of their active games. There are players who actively play in more than one game. There are players who hop between the games every few months.

    For the entire time I have been playing SOE/DB games there is always someone saying "the game is dying" or "no one plays [game]" or tries to use some in-game method (i.e. /who) to validate their own guesses and/or throw up some fabricated graph that is nebulous not only on details but without any valid attribution of the data used to create it (often using circular attribution or rumor or outright guesses). Even using the publicly shared data used for the G7 purchase is misused, misread, and/or altered to support their own guesses with other information contrary to their theory discarded, ignored, or denigrated. Truly the only ones who can definitely speak on the health of the game are the game producers and they aren't making that information fully public.
    Corwyhn Lionheart likes this.
  20. Skuz I am become Wrath, the Destroyer of Worlds.

    Very true, I just recalled what I had heard from devs as being when the game peaked, began significantly declining & then began its resurgence with TLP - at least approximately, nailing down the definitive terms isn't even straightforward as you rightly point out so it's a vague generalisation at best but there have been at least a few somewhat publicized signposts.
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