Is Planetside going Pay to Play?

I doubt it... All of the SOE games were converted, or built from ground up, with a free-to-play model. Only time will tell I guess.

Also, a large chunk of the online gaming market is free-to-play...

thats true but look at ever quest, it only became f2p a couple years back and i think its been running since the 90s.

Games that run on a subscription basis normally do better because when a service is paid for the providers have more incentive to actually take charge and not do stupid ****, and help build the game.

This is because they know better service provided=more subs and loyal ones=more money. Also from a legal standpoint if they do or dont do some things everything can get messy fast.

Games that start p2p and go to f2p generally do best, because they have the loyal subscribers and still normally keep at it because they have more subs than free players generally speaking and then as a result more f2p go p2p.

EQ1 and EQ2 both became F2P at the same time if I recall correctly. *As well as any other SOE game that was not F2P.
They both started out with a sub-model to begin with. But SOE found that the online gaming industry was moving to a F2P model and decided (I'm sure they researched it) to change all their games to that model.

Did the transition to the F2P model on all their games garner more revenue then subscription-only models for SOE? I don't know. Perhaps they break even between the two models? What if they never went to a F2P model but because the rest of the industry did they would be doing worse with subscription-only model in today's market?

but i do have the original discs bought in 2002

i also have the original bloodmoon and tribunal discs

as well as collectors edition oblivion, septem brooch and all

and original oblivion
also arena,
and daggerfall
and redguard unfortunately.

But DLCs CANT be a bad thing! Look at how happy these guys are!

Maybe is the only answer i or anyone else can give to any of that. What we do know is that theyre still generating profit on Eq1 Eq2 and PS2. Also PS1 i think not sure at this point. I think as the current market works that maybe the start off p2p and go f2p over time wont work, but there was one mmo i played that i forget the name of a few years back that you could play free for two weeks then decide to pay a subscription. I honestly think based on how the current markets working that would be one of the best ideas because A) If the devs want the game to not die they need to make it really good or give some kind of hook to keep the players in after the free period B) make sure its not just a hook because if its just a hook on a polished turd everyone cancels subs and C) the player base would get loyal in a purely theoretical perfect world. Of course theres a lot more to consider than theories, and i cant be bothered to look up the statistics needed for some forum post as thatd mean more research than a 10 minute google search, but in theory it could work pretty well.

In my opinion that would kill this game...The population would fall so much, there would be not enough players to battle over the 4 continents. They could just force everyone back to indar at that point though...wouldn't that be fun?!

Can anyone name a single game that started F2P and went P2P?

sub based works best for a PVE game where the environment is a large part of the content.

it doesn't really work for an mmo FPS since other players are the content....so once players start to unsub, there can be a bit of a cascade effect which lessens other players experience. it is also easier to bring in new players when there is no entry fee.

Plus. as much as I like PS2, it's not perfect enough for me to sub...I'd rather "tip" by buying sc when i feel like it.

All fair points, and i cannot think of a reasonable counter argument. it might work if there was significant change to the games quality because sub based PS1 was pretty good and had a large community.

Everybody's saying that subscription-based games are more profitable...
TF2 to Hat Simulator, anyone? The web has it that their profit increased by 200% percent, same as DC Universe.

Guaranteed probably never heard of it, but Face of Mankind (the latest version) went from F2P to B2P a few months back. It was, at the time and still is, a terrible game though. The numbers:

The B2P patch came out in November 2014, and the average players dropped from 48.9 in October to 28.2 in November and 11.6 in December. Down to 9.6 now.
http://steamcharts.com/app/299700

Again more to it then just going B2P, but B2P did see the amount of new players plummet pretty quickly and the game was shedding it's current player base as is, likely due to community issues, the lack of patching (or communication often) from the developers, being a terrible game already, etc.

So yeah, not too applicable to Planetside 2 (as far as I'm aware), but one of the few F2P games that went P2P/B2P. And technicallythey still allowed F2P accounts from the F2P period, you just couldn't make a new account without buying the game and the F2P accounts had some restrictions.


To the topic, I can't see Planetside 2 going P2P/B2P. It seems pretty well known as being F2P and can't see making a change once that happens being anything but detrimental. The one I'm expecting, with the buyout, to possibly go B2P is H1Z1. Plenty of time to make the change and it seems the buy-in early access has still attracted plenty of buyers (could be wrong though, don't have raw data or anything on it).

PS2 has a pretty stable player base around 3,500-4,000 average (peaks are dropping though, from 10k Jan 2014 to 6-7k), and seems probably more worth it to focus on ways to get more of that stable player base willing to spend on the game without reducing population (via P2W type stuff).

Personally think membership seems a good way to get people who aren't/can't play 8-12+ hours to buy into the game (so to speak), but how to convince people playing a few hours a day to subscribe I'd have little clue (not good at the advertising stuff =p). Increased XP and no to short lines fits well for the person who isn't playing long enough to cert grind hundreds of certs a day, without it coming off as P2W (imo) to people who don't want to subscribe. Have to look at the price but maybe a price drop would work to get more of the "non-hardcore," interested? Dunno, just rambling a bit haha.

Never have I seen a video as truthful and full of talented young children as this in my whole life.

If it goes to pay to play Im leaving planetside... Ive already paid more than enough money for the stuff in game... I think it definitely would kill the game.

Saying Pay to play makes a good game is like saying Early access makes a popular game. Try checking out how many mmos with a monthly subscription fee was made and how popular they all got.

I hate sub-based games. I played WoW for years, then stopped cuz of subscriptions. I will never, ever play a sub-based game again, no matter how good it might be.

Sell the game, once. Let me buy it for 50$, then let me play in peace.

I am of the complete opposite mindset. I refuse to play any mmorpg that doesn't offer a subscription. For me it screams cash grab throwaway game.

I will also subscribe to all the mmorgs I play, and refuse to touch their cash shop, since impulse purchases end up being multiple times more expensive than the subscription itself (which is why every game these days was converted to the so called F2P model). If the subscription allows me to pay without me thinking that I I'm nickel and dimed or throttled down so as to use the cash shop, I end up playing for longer. Otherwise, I end up leaving.

The flip side to that is how many F2P games immediately fail, never gain a population, or suddenly go Pay2Win. There would be too many to list. But every major MMO in memory was subscription based.

I don't think competition was as tough then as compared to now. Now we have a huge variety of games that have comparable if not better graphics. If this game became P2P, then I might as well invest in something like BF4 or whatever future sequels.

The free to play model (with Micro transactions) for games only works on mobile devices.

F2P games don't make enough money to create new content on a regular basis and eventually die.