Is Planetside going Pay to Play?

Sorry if this is in the wrong area

No

/thread

Thats good. I thought that because they aren't part of Sony anymore that it would change. I'm pretty sure that they aren't part of Sony anymore.

They haven't said anything yet. In fact they haven't said anything at all about the game since the buyout yesterday.

Pay to play isn't really the worst thing that could happen. Remember how we used to play MMOs with a monthly subscription and how they were accountable to their subscriber base, had consistent development, and solid servers/latency? This game isn't going to go back to that, but people shouldn't act like the subscription era was a bad thing, because PS1 was subscription based and it was legendary possibly in part due to the continuous supply of funds.

i really really hope that ps2 gets sub based, i feel disgusted whenever a game is F2P because usually those games are pretty shoddy as time passes, be it from toxic f2p community or devs not giving a ****. Basically everything Xind said.

Nothing wrong with subscription, but implementing it now would kill the game just as effectively as shutting down the servers.

The only subscription MMO I ever played was Star Wars Galaxies. It had constant development all right, in completely restructuring the core mechanics of how combat works and how the skill structure worked and approximately zero dev time went into actually improving the game (because they knew internally they were doing a total rework of everything). So yeah... I am not an optimistic person when it comes to MMOs.

Subscription wouldn't be a bad idea, but as someone above me said, it surely would kill the game to implement that idea at this point.

Yeah because profit-based games do so well as we've seen from the difference between say, Morrowind and Skyrim, or San Andreas and GTA4, or the early CnC games and the later CnC games, they all really profited from going from creative-based development to profit-based development!

If you want to dumb this game down, turn it into an uncreative ****hole that is nothing but geared towards draining your money instead of entertaining you, then pay2play is the way to go.

I always subscribe to any mmorpg I play. I also check any mmorpg for subscription options and what they offer. A lack of such option is almost always an indication of poor quality and cash grab development. Thing is, it has become clear that a subscription can only be an option these days, enticing perhaps, unfair to non subscribers sometimes, but an option nevertheless.

So no, I don't think that Planetside 2 will change the current monetary model. What could potentially happen is that they may try and nickel and dime their paying players even more.

Not sure where you base your opinion. There are literally thousands of, supposedly, F2P mmorps out there that are geared towards draining your money instead of entertaining you. The whole Facebook scene is based on that very premise of nickel and diming.

A subscription model, where it exists, shows two things: a belief in the long term relationship between the company and the players and continuous production over the years. On the other hand, flashy F2P games without a subscription model are based on an enticing hook, before you abandon them as fast as you joined them.

Your examples also make little sense. All the later examples that you mentioned (with the exception of C&C) were much better received compared to the originals. These are also all single player games with no development beyond the initial purchase, so I don't see how the Pay2Play model fits into it.

Subscription (and potentially boosts) is the only way to go in Planetside 2, in my opinion, even now. I'm an average player and in the time since the game's release (some two years and a couple months now), I've made 300.000 certs. With an average of 500 certs per working day and 1000 per weekend, why would I even consider playing this game as a F2P option and buy weapons with RL cash?

If anyone thinks about playing this game in the long term (and wants to contribute financially), subscription is the only way that makes sense.

I do agree with you though, that subscription can only be an option, not the only alternative. Nevertheless, it is the smartest option.

Facebook games aren't based on existing legacies. They are independently developed apps geared towards addictiveness and generating profit. You can't remotely compare those kinds of things with a game with a legacy and history like PS.

The reason the later games were much better received is because the earlier games established a legacy with their creativity and uniqueness, the attention THAT garnered and the revenue THAT generated, resulted in a dynamic shift from creativity (which gave the games their initial fame) to profit-based development, which resulted in a very uncreative, bland, dumbed-down games which yes, were better received because they were geared towards a larger audience... for... PROFIT!

Also you must be quite out of touch if you've never heard of DLCs?

Also Planetside 2 in this regard would be no different. During Alpha the team spouted thousands of ideas and thoughts on these forums about how they were going to develop the game, this game is largely based on a creative effort. In any game development, profit over creativity always negatively impacts the game, as there is less freedom for experimentation, creative expression and immersive value, and a higher demand for blandness (to satisfy a wider audience), a lower difficulty threshold (which reduces specialization opportunities) and cross-console difficulties (again, to please a wider audience, games will have to be ported from either PC to console, or vice-versa and that has NEVER gone well).

Just like those other games I mentioned, we'd have a game that was originally a creative outlet for a dev team, that would turn into a moneysucker based on THAT creative legacy, turning it into a generic heap of ****.

erm... wut? you used Skyrim and Morrowind as an example earlier so:
i just installed morrowind on my new ultrabook 3 days ago (and got suprised by a ubisoft splashscreen) and you know what i installed?
the GOTY edition with the Bloodmoon and Tribunal DLC.


and skyrim basicly had bloodmoon DLC 2.0 as a fanservice bringing back Solstheim with all these little nostalgia things like ravenwood which you build yourself, the skal village which was at the exact same spot as in bloodmon (i litterally set my marker on that spot and walked there and instantly found it) but still gave lots of creative things like the bloodskal blade (most interesting weapon in skyrim) apocryphia, the black books, etc, etc, etc.

you know, you should probably play those games before you talk about them...

While a lot of games build a legacy, an IP as is usually want to be called by the title holders, this does not necessarily translate to later games being profitable simply because of that. Three titles come immediately into mind, the latest Doom, the latest Duke Nukem and the Dragonage 2.

Also, lets not ignore that these earlier times things were much simpler, both for the developers and the players. An mmorpg like SWG was terrible in execution, but at the time it was one of it's kind (and probably still is). People tend to give slack to pioneers (not always), but for later attempts there is a feeling of deja vu, or seen that so many times I'm not impressed any more.

DLCs are really an abbreviation for expansions in smaller increments. I'm more interested in the modders scene than the official releases, especially if we are looking at PC titles.

The problem is one of balance. Creative developers don't necessarily make good managers and their creating vision doesn't necessarily translate into a self sustainable game. The most recent example I can think of is Vanguard and how the creative vision of a potential great game could not be contained to something sustainable, or fun. So yea, you need your audience and you need your profit, if you also want your game to see any development beyond the initial stage.

As for games that gained their profit on consoles but absolutely flourished on PC, I can only think of Skyrim. That game that wasn't a very good PC port, was the cause that a number of open world single player games started getting created. Same thing with WoW, if it wasn't for that success, we wouldn't have so many attempts at creating mmorpgs over the years; and the only reason the mmorpg creation is stagnating lately is exactly because no similar success was achieved.

At this point we start talking about too many controversial issues though. Casual vs hardcore. Profit vs creativity. F2P against membership etc ... each of those would require their own thread and people would never agree to one or the other anyway. So the best these companies can do, and they do it, is to give us the option for either.

Hahahahah what in the world are you talking about dude? Holy ****.

Morrowind was made by Bethesda and Ubisoft was hired to release the game in Europe and translate it into different languages. They had no involvement in any of the creative process or development. There was no DOWNLOAD, the game was released on a ******* CD. Tribunal and Bloodmoon were separate expansions that were released half a year and a year (again as ******* CDs) respectively after Morrowind's release.

Modern-day DLCs entail developers releasing unfinished games, then offering the rest of the content as a DLC straight after release so people with pay more (look at Mass Effect 3 and Rome: Total War 2 for instance).

Seriously, why even bother posting when you clearly have no clue what you're posting about?

You know, you should probably have bought the original games in 2002 and have the original CDs before you talk about them...

i... wat? whats wrong with you? if you start to insult people because they have a different opinion than you, you should probably not participate in discussions.
first: i have my little morrowind.iso. in case you don't know what an .iso is: it IS a CD. the only difference is that i have both DLCs (which became a popular term for all expansions just as i bought BNW for Civ5 on disk but i still call it DLC) on there because it's the original GOTY CD.
second: Rome 2 was a buggy mess, civilization packs, didn't change anything about the "artistic" part of the game.
Mass Effect 3 was still a great game, their stupid decision to rip "From Ashes" from the game and release it seperate didn't change the story of From Ashes. well and you do know thatMass Effect 2 also had additional Content?

you know, you should probably think about other peoples position before you talk about them. as a little help: http://xkcd.com/438/

Oh my GOD stop being so goddamn DENSE.

I am talking about PHYSICAL CDs. Companies back then didn't release unfinished games because it would cost too much to release tiny amounts of content on separate disks, it would have to be burned, distributed, marketed, etc. When developers released expansions they were TRUE expansions, since releasing a CD that wasn't fully utilized was a waste of money.

Nowadays, developers can easily release games with a bunch of unfinished elements, which they can release in tiny DLCs that seem to cost almost nothing:

This kind of policy was absolutely impossible back then and developers were forced to be creative and release full content. Right now, the same is the case for PS2, because it's free to play, the developers depend on their creativity to draw in players, who will THEN spend money because they like the game and would like to do more within it, also due to the variety of content, immersiveness, etc.

If the focus in PS2 development becomes profit margin, we'll see a rapid dynamic shift from creativity to "enticement". You'll see a LOT of schemes pop up in the game to make you pay, since that will be the focus of the game, at the cost of creativity.

The reason I start to be so insulting is because you have absolutely no clue what you're talking about, it's not a matter of a difference of opinion. The problem with you is not a difference of opinion, it's your stupidity.

I'm pretty sure that moving this game to Pay2Play will cause immediately server pop decreasing to 10...20% of what we have now.
Even now I can't call Euro servers pop good enough for all the day except primetime.
If there will not be anymore several 48-96+ battles on Alerts, then I will just drop it cuz I see nothing interesting in small battles, where PS2 terribly sucks compared to any good shooter.
Massive scale is nothing when whole continent is empty.

P.S. If you are that kind of Vanu who prefer to record Warpgate dance parties instead of battles then P2P can be right change for you lel.

you really are incapable of a civil discussion are you?
a ISO is a digital copy of a hardware CD, that i made from my original morrowind GOTY disc because Ultrabooks lack the capabilty to read them...

and your entire arguments falls flat because creativity never was the strong point of PS2. it took 1 year to release a single continent and another to rework a second one, 1 new vehicle per year which were both were extremly badly implemented, we got like 3 new weapons per empire which came close to being something unique.
i don't see how a focus on content to sell would result in anything bad aslong as they don't try to go the mobile model road... after all this is a F2P game that builds upon selling you content incrementaly....

there are more successful, and dare i say better mmos that are sub based. Comparing it to games like skyrim doesnt work as there is a large difference between a single player game and an online game