[Dev Quote] Malorn: There is a dark side to F2P, and it’s an obvious one.

Source:
http://themittani.com/features/planetside-2-malorns-post-soe-interview

If you've ever wondered why PS2 weapons/cosmetics are so expensive, why they have so much "upgrade now" stuff, why new player retention suffers, etc. etc. this provides some insight from a (ex) PS2 developer's perspective on it. I think it's a very interesting read and I mostly agree with him.

Full quote, highlighting what I think is the most interesting part:

There is a dark side to F2P, and it’s an obvious one. The cold hard truth is that a game has to make money or you don’t have a game to play. Nothing is free, it always comes at a price. In the case of F2P that price is inconvenience, monetization injection, and having to spend a lot more money for what you would normally get for much less in a standard paying game. Most F2P games operate at 10% or less conversion rate. Assuming same size player base, you need that 10% to spend on average 10x as much to compensate for the other 90% not paying at all, or have a player base so large that the sheer volume makes up for it. And in order to pay for convenience, you need to first have an inconvenience for which you can pay to alleviate.

What that does to a game is put a lot of pressure and dev resources on monetization. Players hate it, and what most of them probably don’t know is that most developers hate it too. The last thing you want to do to a game you love is work in ways to get players to spend more money. It taints the game and affects priorities. As a dev you want to make a fun game. You want it to be awesome, but if the game is F2P the reality is that monetization is a very important aspect of it.

I’ve gone back and forth on F2P, but ultimately I dislike what it does to a game. The best benefit of F2P is the lack of commitment, and it’s also its biggest drawback. It’s harder to hook and retain new players when they have not made any commitment to the game. Commitment / consistency is one of the core aspects of human motivation, and when you lower commitment you’re going to lower consistency and compliance as well. That makes onboarding more difficult and puts more monetization pressure on the game developer. What’s great about F2P is the fact that you can come back to the game at any time later and have no monthly commitment. But you don’t need to be F2P to get that benefit - you just need a free trial period to see the game isn’t garbage and to not have a subscription requirement to keep playing it. I believe the $60 box price of a game is widely accepted to gamers, and if you make a good AAA quality game, players will be happy with paying for it. As a result that adds commitment and alleviates monetization pressure. That’s a definite win for players and developers alike.

A game that I think is well-designed on every level but especially so in business model is Guild Wars 2. Every player pays the normal expected price of a game and can play it forever at no additional cost. They get a full quality game. And then there’s cosmetics, convenience items, and in-game currency exchanges in place of subscriptions. It’s a nice compromise between the traditional subscription MMO and the F2P MMO. You get the most important benefits of the F2P model while also getting stronger player commitment and less pressure to monetize. The gamer benefits and the developer benefits. It’s win-win. I think they nailed it.

My 2 cents: I hope we get a Planetside 3, and I hope it's not a F2P model.

I would gladly pay 60$ for a Planetside without certs, without SC, without upgrade now and other in-game advertisement clogging up the UI, without all the grinding/farming and stat tracking that just gets in the way of good fun and strategic FPS gameplay. And one where, perhaps most importantly, the devs can focus on quality over quantity because they don't have to prioritize adding new stuff for players to spend SC on over improving what's already there.

I agree, I've always liked GW2s business model. Not as much in it's gameplay department, I think it's predecessor did it better. Pay to play is much better than F2P imo. I've seen F2P tarnish too many games that would have been much better as a P2P game.

I agree but I also think even as a F2P their monetization is disastrously bad as well as confusing.

There are items you can buy cheaper in bundles than the single item itself(NS-7 vs. fresh meat pack), plus 7$ for a single gun is just too much. They do have sales, but they've made people hesitant to buy things except when they're on sale. I see people asking on these forums or reddit: "Should I buy this gun?" and the responses are often "wait for a sale".

I think more people would spend money if the prices weren't so high/offered more bang for your buck. Many of the bundles also just have really useless junk in them, because they haven't kept up on balancing older weapons that've fallen out of use.

I also think they burned a lot of players with the up and down nature of the game and severe nerfing. Which is fine and necessary, but when you have a 7$ weapon that's made useless a patch or two down the road, you don't think "I should buy more 7$ weapons!"

I refuse to believe it.

Guild Wars 2 is strange. Great business model, great core game, but a nearly dead development team.

Mainly because the core is well polished? Only small additions are to be made?

The only big boom in development would be if there's a new expansion coming I guess.
Or the team is small because they QA everything thoroughly before putting it on live...

I don't know, I'm just wondering, that's why I ask.

Smite has a decent model. Pay a retail box like price and you get all the current and future characters unlocked. The equivalent in PS2 would be like you pay your 60 dollars or whatever and get all non cosmetic infantry and vehicle weapons unlocked and also any future ones.

What people don't seem to unserstand is that a "One Time Purchase" model simply will not sustain a game like Planetside 2. So the question is, "Would you carry a monthly subscription for Planetside 3?" And more importantly, "How many players would carry a subscription?"

Planetside isn't like a Battlefield or a Call of Duty. There are no, and will never be, "Player run servers". SOE must carry the cost of running and maintaining the servers themselves. So, to people who say "Yea, I'd pay $60 for Planetside 3 as long as it wasn't monetized with in-app purchasing," I ask this, "Great, that will carry the game a year; then what?"

GW2 is doing financially the same as Wildstar, that should give you an idea of how "great" their business model is.

I wouldn't mind paying 60 bucks for Planetside 2....if the game actually worked,the simple problems were fixed and the core gameplay was balanced. Seriously if I payed $60 or even $20-$40 I would be very disappointed when beginning this game from scratch,sure over time we have become used to the bugs and balance issues (infantry effectiveness against vehicles being the games biggest hurdle to overcome right now) If I had just started the game and seen some of the bugs and constant spawn locks because all of the infantry-only players refuse to cert and pull their vehicles since "infantry AV should be just as powerful as vehicles so that it's fair." and the devs (especially Malorn who even though I requested on multiple occasions that he kick infantry from the spawn,which would just make them fight from somewhere else ultimately fixing the game in the long run) seemed content on coddling one type of player over another even when it breaks the game. These are the things that keep people from commiting to the game long enough to even consider spending $10 on a hat.

It's a lot of wasted potential.

So is Planetside 2

Nobody is really talking about Battlefield or CoD business models here.

Giving people a one off "box" charge in front that let's them not worry about being constantly asked for their credit card when they are exploring the game is a popular idea though. One of the better things about traditional retail games. But if you look at a lot of those retail games they are also now constantly asking people for their credit card to open chests or play new maps or whatever.

Tbh, I think the most feasible monetization Idea for PS3 would be to have an up-front cost ($30 -$60, depending on the quality), and then sell some cosmetics and special bundles like they do now. Without all the cert crap.

obvious solution? make a f2p game that at it's base is fun to play, that you don't feel it's necessary to spend money on to get into the play and do reasonably well. like planetside 2 was when i first started playing on briggs in june 2014. i went crazy for it and i wanted more. and i bought more, plus a year's membership. to be honest if i started playing yesterday, i would not.

As a PC gamer since 99, my prefered model is the old one too: 50~60€ at some point, then maybe 20~30€ for an expansion a year or so later. And another one after that if need be.
I think it's much fairer than either F2P or the "milk the cow" model at 60€+50€ season pass or low content 10~20€ DLCs every month+effin Day 1 DLCs (mostly AAA titles, but smaller editors like Paradox interactive love it too). Both models ultimately affect how the game is played, how the world is made believable, the story and atmosphere compelling.

Thing is, when you think about comparing a F2P title to the traditional model like Malorn does, is that his premise of comparing same playerbase is necessarily wrong. What kind of success would have PS2 faced had it had the standard model? It's highly probable the playerbase would've been smaller, especially considering that there's F2P competition draining potential 60€ customers at the same time (which can be compared to dumping).
PS2 not being a renowned title, it can't be on the 60€ model as easily as the AAA titles, yet given the scale of PS2 it's hard to judge how the game would fare without the non-paying customers, who can be considered as content for the paying ones.
So what we have at this point is the F2P model affecting the way it's played both negatively for reasons Malorn cited, and positively.

In 6months (~600hours) i've put around 100~120€ in PS2 (membership, boosts, weapon packs when i was low BR), and that's a lot in my opinion, so i'm all with Malorn on the principle that 60€ >F2P model, but it really looks like a very tough equation.

Problem is it's a popular idea amongst people writing on a forum. But how many of those would actually put up those $60? Then we still have the problem with servers. Basically the only MMORPG than can still use a subsription model in WoW. The rest have tried and been forced to dump it and go F2P or close shop. SWTOR was amongst them. You think you would get all guns if you paid up front? I doubt it if you look around amongst other FPS. It's all based on player progression one way or another. It's a neat little trick to keep people playing. If you got all your toys from the start, people wouldn't play as much as part of the character progression was gone. A $60 retail wouldn't solve the server cost either. That's what differentiate online games from the others. Many FPS don't need their own servers. They trust others to handle that so when they have released the game, they are done. They might have a bunch of servers for awhile but then they close them down and let the community run their own servers. The games that need a constant server running needs a steady stream of income to keep those servers up. So cosmetics would still be sold. So what would the difference be? We would still have certs and we would still have an in game store with real money. So the same as now but with a $60 price tag as well.

If I'd had to pay for this game to play it, I would never have bought it.
Why?
Because I was convinced I would HATE this type of game until I started playing it, and even though I have bought things, I've still spent less money on this game overall than it would have to buy Battlefield 3 or 4, let alone both of them.

Does anyone have statistics on the amount of members vs non-members?
(I'm a non-member btw)

My rationalization: buying a gun (an ES gun.. which means it is to me, usefull on 1 char) can cost, as mentioned in this thread, about 7$.
What about a gold gun, or a black one? 1400 station cash..
Then we have stuff like 100 cert weapons, that still cost significantly more SC. -> clearly not gonna buy, even if on sale.

The membership: about 15 bucks a month.
10 bucks if you take the 1-year package.
-> 120 bucks/year.
To me, that still sounds like a lot.

I think SoE could do with creating a "light membership"
5 bucks/month. -> 60 bucks/year. This is your "AA title" purchase cost.
This gives you:
-No "10% of from marketplace purchase
-500 SC/month -> same as the full; you are monthly paying SC, and getting:
-access to the daily member sale
-+20% xp
-+3% xp for every member in your squad

-Debatable:
-Half the passive cert gain of the full members (-> some cert gain to encourage loggin in)
-+20% resources-> not at the moment... but, if resource revamp is implemented, could be quite nice
+25% xp weekends (vs double xp weekend for full members..)
-no login priority (full member only)
-Since I went with "full monthly SC" as the 10-bucks program, the rest needs to be more restricted.

I'd say, no extra chars, no extra loadouts; but maybe one each.

If there is a "light" membership, how far should F2P access go?
Example: I'm currently "F2P". If I can "pay" at 5 bucks/month, I would completely understand that only paying people can post on the forums.
Why should F2P have the 4 loadout slots? -> reduce to 3.
I can't think of other stuff right now.


There cometh a but:
If I pay 5 bucks/month, I'd expect things like
mouseyaw
better hitregistration
less buggy patches (infiltrator rifle dissapears.. LOL, ninjarifle for the ninjaclass.. except after 2 times, the LOL wears off..that is one of the most minor bugs. But why do you patch bugs? )
better map & base design: spawnroomcamp & be bored, step outside and greet the HE shells coming in..
Actually possible on some places to snipe at people from the next base..
Running along 70% slopes one moment, sliding down a 40% slope the next...
Game encouraging battles.. not redeploy, ghostcap and wait for enemy to show up.


Other stuff:
I do fear that PS2 without the cert system would have a far shorter lifespan..
people would simply figure out "Orion=good"; "Anchor=good" and not look twice at the other weapons, and things could get stale rather quickly.
Here's how I think a "payers only" , still certing system would work:
Per class, you set up a default loadout, that you get maxed out.

Example:
for the NC heavy, I select
Anchor, get all attachments,
Phoenix / 1 RL
exception; the sidearm.
Select 1 tool: max rank health stim, health HoT, C4 (maybe here only 1 rank of C4)
Unlock 1 grenade type
Unlock max rank of 1 shield type
Unlock max rank of 1 suit slot, I select.. advanced shield capacitor

-> Now, I do start of on equal footing with everybody else. But, playing & earning certs will open up far more additional roles.

-> A similar thing happens for the vehicles.

-> If I'm smart, I unlock the stuff I want to use the most; I create balanced loadouts etc.
But, if I make a mistake and create a mismatch of a loadout it isn't really a disaster anyway; I have all the attachments for my primary, so I can swap stuff around; and I'll earn certs to "fix" my loadout.

This also makes it far, faaar easier to spend earned certs on "fun" upgrades, like the TR minigun, instead of.. "my ress tool should get another meter of ress range"; which is not "exiting".

edit: forgot to mention:
since I can select adrenaline shield and get it at full rank straight away, certs can't be used to balance stuff out.
Challenging, but in the long run better: "nanite mesh generator is the "starter" shield; once you get really a lot of certs you should pick adrenaline shield" is kina bad game design.
Most weapons would cost the same amount of certs.

edit2:
the above is some work for a new player. Lets say you start empty, but you get unlock rights. You can use them whenever you want; and perhaps refund them within a week even.
But, for player retention I also think it could be a lot better if you can honestly tell someone they start of at the same "powerlevel" as others, if they can make choices right away, and if this takes place assisted by some tutorial about class loadout, etc.