And that is exactly why I don't understand why companies keep going down the P2W path... SURELY it's better to have 400,000 players all paying a sub (and potentially buying cosmetics), than maybe 5,000 whaling on P2W crap? As soon as the whales realise that there's only 5k players left, they leave too, and the game dies. It just doesn't make sense to me.
i stopped playing MMO's for this reason. Pay to win kills the game. The second reason i quit MMO's is that most companies (especially Korean MMO's) don't do enough to battle bots (automated farming for resources with multiple computers), or worse still, make botting part of the game. Many here probably still play MMO's but for me, the MMO genre is dead to me.
The gaming industry has practically given up on battling bots/cheaters. You can see it across genres. MMOs just started automating things. FPS games give in-game wallhacks and soft aimbots. MMOs are dead to me because they are just stale and boring. I'd love to see a revolutionary new one that calls to me, but I don't expect to see any MMO revival any time soon.
The culture of some asian countries makes it prime space for extremely aggressive monetisation. It is much, much more accepted culturally for players to progress via paying real money. In South Korea i.e. the concept of competition can very intense and a deep part of the culture overall (due to many social, economical and even historical aspects that would be too long to go through here).
@@dreadeddarko But that is the church, not god... and you don't have to pay. Also, you're a bigot for characterizing the church as demanding money when it's a free service. There are some grifting individuals but to characterize the entire church like that is complete religious prejudice.
Subscription has always been the best. I always say it as an entrance fee into a giant amusement park. Once you're in everything is "free" and is simply game play and reasonable grind goals for your character. All other models are like the bullshit county fair that is free to enter but you have to buy tickets for every ride. So every fun thing or is weighed against the cost of a ticket. This hinders and impedes the joy of every aspect of the game. I'd pay general admission over tickets any day
Except we're also thinking that subs would replace the monetization we currently have, personally I doubt it. Also we are remembering old prices, with the exception of the big games I think Sub fees would probably be really crazy
I’d rather pay $15 a month and have all features aside from some seemingly intentionally awful cosmetics like FFXIV than download a game for free and get either completely fed up with FOMO grind, play 100 hours a week or spend $1000 a week to be able to keep up. It’s also why WoW and FFXIV will never, ever be eclipsed imo. Their player bases are already established and as a result they aren’t willing to pay other sub fees having given years and years to their game of choice and other MMO’s can’t risk going sub fee as a result, so the MMO genre is just a field for developers to make as much off MTX as possible before sunsetting their games and moving onto the next.
It's a sad state of MMOs. Either the greed is running rampant, or the development costs are so astronomical high that the companies need to sell P4C/P2W items just to make even. This is why I've pretty much stopped playing MMO entirely.
It's more that the line needs to go up forever, MMOs usually go in a cycle of content drop and content lull. If you drop a major expansion this year companies expect next year to make even more money, even without the patch drop. Gotta squeeze more money for less content.
Yes, the line must go up. Above all other considerations including overall customer satisfaction. They used to be satisfied with a subscription fee each month. But there's a percentage of the population that don't mind spending 10 or 100 times that much. Not exploiting whales would not be earning the most money possible, which in the current era of hedge funds and derivatives contracts is unthinkable. For a F2P game that's as good as WoW or UO or any of the classic subscription-based games were, having to buy roughly $5 to $10 per month to keep up with the crowd may be the best we can hope for. Path of Exile is some kind of anomaly in that buying power isn't really a thing.
I mean you could just play the critically acclaimed MMORPG Final Fantasy XIV which has an expanded free trial that you can play through the entirety of A Realm Reborn and the award-winning HEAVENSWARD and STORMBLOOD expansions up to level 70 for free with no restrictions on playtime… or you could play this pay to win BS…
@@ElZamo92 I tried FF14 once back in 2018 or 2019, but for some reason it didn't click with me. I appreciate what FF14 does, even though I don't approve it having in-game cosmetic store despite having monthly subscription, but FF as a franchise was never really my thing. Maybe it's because I used to play World of Warcraft for ~11 years, so I'm expecting everything to be like WoW. I stopped playing WoW during Legion expansion back in 2016, because I grew tired of Blizzard's greedy business practices, which weren't even bad back then COMPARED to what it is nowadays.
Games used to be created by people passionate about art, fun and discovering new things as they go on about making a game. Now it's just another corporate business with sole focus on pressing more money. Not like we don't want to pay for our games, of course i would pay a deserving amount for a game and keep it however corporates figured out some people just keep paying as long as they are sold the illusion of being "strong", skilled or being unique in a game.
Yup as always the assholes in suits are in power and their only goal is money... theyve never been gamers in their entire life and never will be, all they want is higher stock price. Its almost like every game company should be banned from the stock market.
What if I told you that it was always about making money? In the beginning they didn't have internet access so the most effective way to make money was make a good game. Now that gaming has shifted to an online model they can be more of a store with a game attached.
@@iwannadie9031 I wholeheartedly disagree with you. Making anything is about money of course i get that, my point is creators didn't have a leash on their necks as they do today.
@@iwannadie9031sure, no one does it to lose money. Put it was about building something. Now it's about extracting wealth from what was built. Like Boeing.
It's even worse. Often the workers are in that field because they are passionate about it. Then the corporations press them to squeeze every penny they can and suck the soul and the passion out of them.
For me, subscription is the only way to have a fair gameplay. Where your commitment to the game, translate into achievements / power. Also, it's a way to have a constant flow of new content.
It s because they don’t nickel and dime you for progression. Sure you have to pay for the expansions and the sub, but aside from that only your patience and skill will get you the better gear… although WoW has the RMT tokens people use to buy carries and gold… but have you heard of the critically acclaimed MMORPG Final Fantasy XIV which has an expanded free trial that you can play through the entirety of A Realm Reborn and the award-winning HEAVENSWARD and STORMBLOOD expansions up to level 70 for free with no restrictions on playtime? Now available on XBOX series X & S!
You mean, the MMOs with the extremely large player bases are the only ones that can survive on a subscription. There's a reason smaller MMOs don't try the sub model. It doesn't work unless you have a massive player base.
@@thomasdivelbiss1302 That's not true, DCUO is still around, granted it's very heavily "p2w" but it's got a sub if you don't want to buy all the DLC packs. They're still making content for it even.
LOL's monitorisation have gotten worse year after year. Not to mention tencent. Lets see when and if it comes out. But i think you live in a dream if you think no store will be pressent or some form of paytowin.
@@Kimfakkel It was mostly a joke. I expect the Riot MMO to be f2p with paid "convenience" like storage and such. I highly doubt they'll go beyond that. People give Tencent a lot of shit, but unless their name is directly attached to a clearly Chinese product, they rarely interfere. They're more investors than anything. I'd be very surprised if they give the Riot MMO an "East Asian" monetization scheme.
@@Kimfakkel I don't remember being able to get free skins just by playing league. In season 3-4, I had 0 skins. Now I have 190 skins without paying anything. How is that getting worse?
@@Metalwrath2 You are right :) they did add alot of new stuff to monetize. Was more what i ment.. But i see your point. I still dont belive the mmo will be without any store.
Guild Wars 2 still kicks all of these other MMO's asses in terms of monetization. Just buy the game and the expansions, you literally dont need to buy anything else. The only thing I would buy would be a few bag expansion slots, thats it if you really wanted to not be milked.
Completely agree man. Though I hate subscriptions at this point, because they are everywhere, I would pay a sub for a game I actually want to play. As long as everything else is gone. Cash shops have ruined the MMO genre we once knew and loved.
The main benefit of subscriptions after purchase was that people were more likely to "play nice." Social etiquette isn't even a thing anymore, however, so that's a moot point. Everyone now just considers cheating and being a dick perfectly fine.
I would disagree. F2P has ruined the MMO genre, not the cash shop. A cash shop that actually just contains cosmetics, dyes, things like that, I'm still perfectly fine with even on top of a sub... as long as everything is immersion-themed. No immersion-breaking stuff like pajamas, furry costumes, motorcycles in your fantasy game, hammers that look like lollipops, crap like that.
Guild Wars 2 is free to play for the entire base game. To unlock the full game, no subscription is needed. Just buy the expansions which are always on sale. It's horizontal progression so there's no reason to spend real money for power. Every cosmetics in the store can be bought with in game gold earned by playing the game. I think GW2 is very fair if not the best model for players.
my biggest issue with monthly subscription is that it kinda forces you to focus all your time on that game, and as we know we are not young anymore, with real life stuff we don't have time to play one game every evening and thus we are loosing most of the money by not playing the game
So true. When I was Wow player I would only play this game no matter how much I wanted or was simply was sick of it. I have paid for sub and I didn't want my money/time go to waste. Moved on to Gw2 and this game fits me better.
I prefer subscription but agree with your comment, you don't want players to feel 'locked in'. I think a solution is to have 2 or 3 tiers of subscription, where say tier 2 has a low cost ( like 4.99 US) but a hourly time cap (can always 'bump up') with tier 1 being unlimited but the typical 15-20$ per month. Like how phone plans work.
I don't really agree. Most successful MMOs learned that players are not interested any more in having endless content served to them that basically forces them to log in each day. Most of those games do still have their dailies, of course, but they usually have catch-up mechanics and actively support you in not being forced to play each day. It took them a while, sure, but especially in the current day, I think the ~ 15€/$ a month has more value than ever, given the sheer size and things you can do in those games. I, personally, think the gaming community really forgot how to properly attach value to the money spent on a lot of games. Just try to think of any other (offline) hobby, where you just pay 15$/€ a month and can use it as much as you like. I think there is not much that could compare to just how much value you actually get, simply by the fact that you can do it anytime from home. And in terms of "losing" money, paying 0,50ct a day to make sure you can play any time you like, is not really that much for most working adults (I am talking about western countries, I am aware that this might be different in other cultures or countries). I think more important is the factor that everything is a subscription now, so you don't only pay for your mmo a few bucks a month, but for basically everything you want to use. This makes it a bit tougher to calculate, of course, if the money is tight. So if you really think not playing is a loss of money, maybe it is more the fact that you are not taking it as a hobby anymore but as a forced activity, in this case, I recommend thinking about it and maybe reevaluating how important the game or the progress is for you. At the end, fun should be the driving factor.
I mean, how is it any different from a Netflix subscription? That's also how every game publisher wants you to play their games nowadays. Every company wants you to play their live service game as your only game, and they're going all-in on making every game a live service game. I think the traditional battlepass system is the biggest offender of forcing you to play one game since they expire after a certain period of time. They, like a sub based game with daily requirements and the like, are all about getting you to log in all the time through FOMO, whether you still enjoy the game or not. A good subscription based game that doesn't punish you for not playing has all the advantages of a sub to a streaming service. You can unsub and resub as fits your schedule without worrying about missing out on content. Plus, $15 a month for a game vs a ticket to a movie or something is a really good deal in terms of value, even if you only play a few hours out of the month. Not to say that there aren't better things you could spend that money on, of course. It's entirely down to what fits you life.
This is why I'm surprised they don't just charge you every 10 levels or so, and then once you hit max level, you pay a small server fee for endgame content or you just quit playing.
I don't like the subscription model. It's fine for when you play one main game for years on end but I absolutely hate managing subscriptions when multiple games require them. Canceling, re-subbing, forgetting a subscription to a game you haven't played in 3 months but have paid for anyway etc. It just isn't a comfortable user experience to always be like "Hey let's continue on with FF XIV.... oh where's my credit card?" Sure I've probably spent more on something like Path of Exile or even Dota 2 and I also quit games when encountering a P2W-wall but there has to be some other solution than having to manage 75 subscriptions
To be honest, since couple of years, I started slowly stop MMO and multiplayer games. My favorite game are solo and I mainly just play that now. And FYI, the AI is way smarter than Humans sometime lol
Ashes of Creation is my hope. I know it's been in dev for forever and it'll probably be another 5 years before it's out but that team started making that game because they were fed up with mtx. So here's hoping.
The Alpha 2 test is in Q3 July- September 30thof this year for the sorry fools thats bought in for keys (im one of them sorry fools ) but i think its going to be a big hit and they have to open the gates for more people or giveaways for more keys. what do you think?
Or could it be something they say to make you give them your money ? Like i hope you are right. I dont trust any company befor they deliver. I hope you are right. But i want to see it befor i belive it.
I left Mmo's years ago because of monetization. I just want to play a game not be a paycheck. I want to pay developers for their work, but not have it beaten out of me.
Would rather pay $20 a month and feel that feeling of getting rich and better and cooler looking than other players because I EARNED IT!......That is the vital spark that is missing in MMORPG's PERIOD! (Also Ark Age was not P2W for a long time then turned into a cluster F)
preach, tired of what gaming has become, less about the gaming more about the money and greed. once a game becomes a vehicle for the monetization it is outta here.
I'm so tired of people defending these companies, when WoW started selling levels and gold that became p2w, there's no other definition of p2w than paying for weapons/armor/auctions/dungeon/raid runs with gold you paid real cash for.
Haven't seen anyone paying to learn to do M+ 30 keys tho, so I don't see what aspect of it is p2w. Don't think I've seen anyone paying for duos and getting carried to 2,6k or standing in a mythic raid doing nothing either.
Ur not very bright. U can't get gold without spending money? What about the p2w before the company got in on it? We're u ok with 3rd party sites selling gold? Now the money goes to the devs and ppl are not hacked and exploited for the things sold on these sites. But u don't care about that either
Absolutely agree. Been playing mmorpgs since Asheron's Call and DAoC. Subscriptions for these games were well worth the time invested. How much does it cost to go to a movie for 2 hours? Fifteen per month isn't that costly.
Great video. I think it highlights how many modern games have intentional, built-in inconveniences, that can then be 'corrected' or improved upon by giving the company more money; in order to 'unlock' what would traditionally be considered a normal part of the game. Basically, shrinkflation has come to the gaming industry. "It's not a bug, it's a feature."
I like the optional subscription like eso, 1st, eve then I can get them when I want but still pop on and see how things are without it costing me anything and then having the option to increase storage and stuff when it's my primary one
Honestly, if Borderlands 3 and the Tiny Tina game had a PC DLC that enabled an inventory system designed from the ground up for big boy computers with mouse and keyboard, and not consoles, I would pay for that. Not stash tabs though, that's just sad.
@@soldier2620 Cmon, in gw2 you just really need to buy two extra bag slots per character until you get your gold farm up. copperfed salvage is a luxury and you can just run around with stacks of it in bags. Although I do have that copperfed, and a teleport to friend gadget at shared slots :). But it's nowhere required to get it.
Ashes of Creation: No box price and just a monthly sub. Optional cosmetic shop that sells just cosmetics. With the promise no P2W items will ever end up in the cash shop. Even no convenance items.
Yeah the only thing Ashes has done is FOMO cosmetic promotions. I'm a little worried that the PvP will just be a zerg-fest, but I am still very hopeful for this game.
@@ramof247 As for holding my breath it won't be P2W. I ask, what's one thing that shows they might have P2W? Not saying things can't change. What I'm saying is that nothing points towards P2W or that it will be added.
I just don't buy or play them. Pretty simple solution, it's up to the consumer, but consumers don't want to wait for the industry to die and be rebuilt so they keep propping it up.
@@tmoney2261 There's unfortunately a number of issues with this sentiment. Game companies spend a lot of money on hiring psychologists to exploit addictive tendencies in people and train kids into problem gamblers, and just telling people to vote with their wallets isn't going to stop them. The concept of the whale with more money than sense buying their way through a game is largely a myth started by companies to hide the fact that they make most of that money off of people with mental health issues. Plus, the majority of people simply don't know any better. Your average gamer is a mom playing some Bejeweled clone on her phone, not any of us. Between that and the fact that we're now at least 2 generations in of kids who have never known a world without microtransactions, and as they say, "there's a sucker born every minute." I remember when AC6 came out, a streamer was talking about how shocked she was that people in her stream were amazed by the fact that FromSoft gave you all the colors and channels for painting your mech with the base game and you didn't have to buy any skin or decal packs or anything. It's gonna take a lot more than just those of us who know better voting with our wallets to change things.
@@conancimmerian5066 You realise RU-vid just recommend random channels and sometimes one clicks on them. Some of us played mmo`s once upon a time too until we woke up to the threadmill nature of these games.
This is going to be a potentially contentious view, but games have always been pay to win. It’s just the currency that has changed. Originally the currency was time. The more time you could put into an MMO the better your gear giving you an advantage. Back in the day I didn’t have the time to raid in WoW or grind arena so was always at a disadvantage. Was that fair? As players have aged they have less time but more money, and so the currency has changed to that. Is that unfair? Time is money and so I would say no. Pay for convenience - if you have time you pay with that, but if you don’t you can pay with money. In some ways, the current system is fairer than it ever was leveling the playing field between those with the time and those without. And, those with money reduce the cost to those with time. Now clearly there are games that totally abuse this, but it is a bit rich for someone who plays games all the time to complain that players can use the currency they have to keep up with you. What do people think?
You're stretching the definition of "pay to win" to the point of absurdity. Not to mention, these games are set up to encourage spending money first and foremost. The amount of time you'd have to put into a game to try (and likely fail to) keep up with wallet warriors is far beyond the amount of time it took to knock out a few arenas or dungeons in the past. Try getting geared up in FF14 and getting geared up in something like BDO or Lost Ark without paying and seriously try to tell us there's no difference.
Those are not great examples, particularly Lost Ark, because it is pure pay to win rather than pay for convenience that I was talking about. Pay for convenience is a level boost or resources that can be farmed in game, or even gear equivalent to that which can be obtained through raiding or pvp. Everyone’s time has a value. When you have less time it is more valuable. I am purely recognizing that is the case and arguing that it is not unreasonable to have a choice about how you pay to progress in a game in a balanced way. Can you explain why this concept is absurd?
@@NYLCasualGaming Your logic is consistent if you want to consider time a currency, but when people say "pay", they're usually referring to money. You can call it "swipe to win" if you prefer.
@@Tiwill This is in part my point. The people who complain about swipe to win are typically those that have the time to play games a lot. Like Force. As players get older they have less and less time to play games as family, work, errands, take over. But they have more money. So now that their time is more valuable, why shouldn’t they be allowed to use their money to reduce the grind and have access to the more fun parts of an MMO. Players with time always view pay for convenience as bad and in the same bucket as pure pay to win, because it lets people get ahead of them when it reality it is also allowing other players to just keep up. As an older gamer myself, I will say that time is just as precious to me as money and I appreciate having the choice about which I spend.
@@NYLCasualGaming Or those who want the game world and the real world to be separate things. If you find P2W games fulfilling, more power to you really. You've got lots of games to spend on. For me the genre isn't even worth my time, let alone my money...
I think the way ESO does it is perfect. The games available even if you don't pay for an subscription, but if you're going to be serious about it you're going to need the subscription. I think thats a really good middle ground to have.
I feel this so much. My biggest hope is just, that the bubble will somehow someday explode and were back at least for games that are mode for fun and maybe some ways to support the devs further. I am totally fine to play MMOs that are somehow smaller, but just with a nice and stable community and good scaleable content. That would be great.
I do like it's difficultly curve as most mmos are way too easy. The only concern I have is mob respawn rate I don't want to wait 1000 hours for a mob to respawn. Still I am interested.
@@truedps8 It is still being developed, and it is being developed transparently to the public. Warts and all. The polished and finished art the team shows looks beautiful. You should give it another look, their realistically simulated lighting model now looks fantastic.
@@AndvarYT We talking about the same game? I looked it up...and uhhh yeaaaahhhh. I mean hopefully they can DRASTICALLY improve it. I wish we had more quality MMOs, but making an MMO that looks like it was made back in 1998 is not the way forward, no matter how good the game design is.
Live service games need money coming in constantly. Monthly payments is the only reasonable way for everyone it seems, otherwise the game is just doomed.
Then pls explain how Path of Exile does it. Completely free, better quality than Diablo despite being the much smaller studio. Or what about Fortnite? Never paid anything for it and its still going strong. There is no need for a subscription, literally just sell skins. Good game + selling skins = big money. Its that simple
@@sirharmony8626 I guess the most important factor is: they actually care about the quality of their game and the community. Also, their skins are overly expensive and on a grand scheme, the game is carried with its gameplay, the looks and design is kinda meh which saves cost on that front. Most of the creative design goes into the skins. Also, it is a little bit pay to win as you can't really avoid buying at least some storage space, if you want to play it seriously. All in all, it basically survives by constantly being on top of the time, being a company that is (at least on the surface) not guided by pure greed and short-term cashflow and, of course, arguably being the best in its genre. I'd argue almost every live service game could accomplish that, if it wasn't just planned as a cash grab from day one, and if you don't sell your soul and have to please shareholders with every step you take.
Companies don't care how many play, they only care how much people spend, and have found doing the nickle, and dime thing with micro transactions of every type imaginable makes them more money, than just selling access to the game. Eastern games also aren't worse for being pay to win, it's just players there tend to play games somewhat differently than players in the West, as those games were developed around those players. Western developed online games are more geared towards Western players, so they are still pay to win, you just may not feel it as much, as the pay to win was made more around how you are looking to play. People for instance like to claim Warfarm isn't pay to win, but I absolutely would say it is, if you spend money there, you will **MASSIVELY** reduce the grind required to get, and level things, which is pretty much all playing that is about. That means it most certainly does have a huge pay advantage, therefore is pay to win, it's just that as it was made more in line with the Western audience, and is a Western developed game, people tend to be more forgiving of its pay to win nature, or just choose to ignore it. MMOs/live service games aren't a genre, as a game genre defines the actual playing experience, while all being a MMO means is you play it online, with a large number of people. There for instance are a lot of RPGs, that aren't MMOs, that work with party systems, so when you are playing with other characters, you, or the AI are controlling those additional characters. All being a MMO changed in this formula, was made those additional characters controlled by other people, it really didn't change how you play the game, it just meant that if doing content that required multiple characters, you now have to deal with all the asshats you can run into in online games. I would say that making a RPG, a MMORPG, unless you're playing only with friends, tends to just make the experience worse.
I think it may have been a mistake to lump Dune Awakening in here with the other games you discussed. Conan had some FOMO monetization of cosmetics - cosmetics available for a limited period of time - but no pay-for-convenience or pay-to-win really. So I would hope that Dune follows that same model, and we have no indication otherwise.
If MMOs are your favourite genre then you'd know that 90+% of them have been p2w since the start, the "subscription + box price" model was and is unusual, all this tells me is that MMOs aren't actually your favourite genre considering you don't seem to know anything about their history. And to address the main point of the video, an MMO being p2w or not is irrelevant to your enjoyment of the actual game, unless you're a compulsive spender it can easily be ignored, unlike in the 2000s, games aren't p2w in the truest sense anymore, there are no games that will completely stop you from progressing or playing the content unless you pay, which was often the case in the past. The value proposition to you, in a f2p p2w MMO, is significantly higher than a sub/purchase based MMO, it costs me nothing to play Lost Ark, for example, and there is absolutely nothing stopping me from consistently reaching the highest level raids, all it asks of me is that I play the game for an hour every day or two, whereas if I were to play FFXIV, it would cost me upwards of $180 a year, and they STILL sell cosmetics, boosts, appearance changes and qol in their cash shop, Hello? Why would I ever want to pay $180 a year for the privilege of logging into the game? At the end of the day, all that matters is the quality of the game, yes, nobody wants to play a p2w game that's also just a bad game, nobody would want to pay a sub for a bad game either, there's a reason Lost Ark is one of the only new MMOs to gain an audience, and it's because the gameplay, content and visuals are all top tier, on top of having a completely unique combat system. Does p2w truly matter? To an extent, but realistically, most new games aren't anywhere near p2w enough for it to be an actual issue, what matters is innovation, and quality, both of which are completely lacking in MMOs and have been for a long time, perhaps we should start calling out the real issues with MMOs lately? Or we can sit here and complain about p2w all day while ignoring the actual problem at hand? There's a reason more and more gacha games are coming to PC and consoles and absolutely dominating the market, these new gacha developers are making some actual quality games, and I'm sure we're all aware that they're far more p2w than any MMO ever was, yet, they're acquiring massive playerbases, why do you think that is? By the way, on what basis are you saying Blue Protocol is p2w? Have you even played it? Even the JP version is among the least p2w MMOs of all time, for what reason would you believe that the western version would somehow be p2w?
I was around - and played - many of the early popular MMOs: Asheron's Call, EverQuest, DAOC, Ultima Online, Runescape, and then later Vanilla WoW. None of those games where pay 2 win at release, if they where than I was completely oblivious at the time (it's possible, I was around 10-14 for the earlier one's). You bought the game, some had a monthly sub, but that was it.
@@ForceGamingYT Thanks for the reply - Yes, early western MMOs mostly used subscriptions and/or pay to play models, but it wasn't long before the east started overtaking the west in terms of putting out (and innovating in) MMOs, almost every eastern MMO was f2p and relied on p2w and selling "convenience" features, the amount of (unique) games they were making compared to the west almost makes the west seem irrelevant, after the initial rush of western MMOs, there was a big gap where there was basically nothing until WoW, and again after WoW, the west made almost no (significant) MMOs. Basically what I'm saying is you're looking at a tiny subsection of the MMO sphere, the east has been the primary producer and market for MMOs for a long time. But even they've stopped making MMOs for the most part, and since nobody wants to make them, there is no innovation anymore, only "safe" games that are more or less copies of what already exists, which are bound to make a profit but overall will be completely insignificant and die off relatively quickly. They're all p2w because it's the only way you can make a profit off an MMO that isn't doing anything to push the genre forward, would anyone pay a subscription for throne and liberty with all the p2w removed? Could blue protocol survive if you had to buy the game? I think not, these games aren't doing anything that hasn't been done before and aren't excelling in any area either. Unless MMOs get better, they literally can't survive without p2w whales, subscription models work only in few cases - either you're a huge name putting out an MMO version of a well known series (final fantasy, warcraft, riots MMO if it weren't cancelled) OR your game offers a level of quality, originality, and innovation you cannot find anywhere else, which honestly hasn't happened for well over a decade. But in either case p2w is likely to be more profitable so it's probably not going anywhere. It's unfortunate that this is the way things are, but I can't see it getting any better when most MMO developers have all but given up on making legitimately good games. Maybe in the future technology will be progressed enough to the point indie developers will be able to make MMOs - currently impossible due to high cost of entry, if that ever happens we're sure to see some innovation again. Personally I think it would be amazing if 2d MMOs started coming back.
It won't stop because of Gamers. We can blame corporations all we want but if it wasn't selling, they wouldn't still be doing it. Gamers spend their time complaining about ridiculous identity politics, meanwhile these studios are selling the game piece meal, for over $100 with a promise to deliver a complete game. The gaming community has deteriorated into degeneracy and this is the result.
I would check your sources (@9:35 - "...from what I've heard...") The things available for purchase in Conan are, for the most part, variants of what can be earned in game - building pieces and sets , mounts, weapons and armor, that offer mainly cosmetic benefit.
Give me pay for cosmetics and DLC/Expansions over P2W. Guild Wars 2 does a good job with this. City of Heroes when it went F2P with optional subs works, too.
Guild Wars 2 does have some questionable monetization, but all that said, GW2 is fucking expensive to run I'm sure with how fucking huge the game is now, and even with those questionable practices, those questionable things are honestly kind of in the corner. It seems you almost have to look for them to find them, and the game plays so well that first-time players never really feel like they need or even want to buy those things. And then there's the mostly reasonable gold to cash-shop currency exchange you can use at any time. So yes, it's not talked about nearly as much as it should be, but Guild Wars 2 seems to strike the best middle ground between keeping the game well-funded while also being consumer-friendly.
@@arnox4554 gw2 is definetly king in its own lane. people tend to confuse anet under ncsoft as a direct competitor with wow but anet is such a small studio incomparrison. it gets a lot of hate, but it really does a lot of things well in comparison to other games with gw2. ill always be willing to throw money at gw2 for its lack of subscription and its lack of pay to win. yes there’s pay for connivence and really doesn’t give you an edge over other players which i really respect. people think mmos should just be about who is better than who with gear or skills but i love the fact that gw2 is really about replay-ability as pvp and wvw are self driven content outside of story mode while granting the fact that there is over 12 years of in game content to which most of the players will never be able to complete as the top achievement points in game currently is over 50-60k. gw2 leans heavy on shared experiences for the life of the game and people generally spend their time talking about how they play with other players and comparing their in game experiences rather than talking or crying about grinding or the amount of real money spent in game. i seriously laugh at many players who look down on gw2, as i’ve spent more time on this game and didn’t need to spend anything to get top gear
@@thomastgnome6526 There are several types of lootboxes in the game which are the dye sets (which you can buy directly on the trading post, yes), the mount lootboxes (though you can also just buy mounts directly as well), and, of course, the Black Lion chests, which have exclusives you can only get by opening them. There are the Black Lion statuettes which you always get when you open one and can exchange directly for the item you want, but many of the good exclusives require 20 statuettes or more, and the sellable exclusives you get like the permanent contracts, while available on the trading post, are so damn expensive, only the most fancy-pants of trader barons can afford them with just the gold they have. But perhaps most egregious of all, the cash shop uses FOMO tactics to get you to buy items while they're "in season" and when they'll be "in season" exactly is never known. While there are a few exceptions like the Super Adventure Box items that follow a predictable schedule, most of the other cash shop stuff doesn't follow any sort of release schedule at all.
Subscription services invariably lead to fewer games and more niche games. That's the problem. Only so many customers are going to sub to an MMO. Most willing are going to sub to the biggest game on the market. Rarely subbing to multiple games. So everything else becomes more narrow in its appeal and competitive advantage. It's splitting a % of a % that is small to begin with. Making new development even riskier, less frequent, and less innovative. This is exactly what happened with blockbuster filmmaking currently. It's a 200 million gamble on the 10th installment of a franchise, a remake, or nothing. And they are right to make Fast & Furious Part 30. Because only so many are willing to pay $30 to see a 10m budget movie about clean drinking water. Only so many are willing to pay a sub for multiple games. And if you're not making WoW 2.0 or Final Fantasy 17, then you're taking a big gamble enough are going to subscribe to your original IP MMO.
Yep, only the biggest names can get away with asking for a subscription and flat price for expansions, it's pretty much entirely unreasonable to expect smaller names to adopt a less profitable model - guaranteed failure, if MMOs being p2w is the only way they can survive then they need to be p2w, the other option is they stop making MMOs, which for the most part is what most developers have chosen - since around 2015, MMOs have gotten more and more sparse, with gacha games rising and taking their place.
PSO2:NGS is a big example of this. some say its not pay 2 win but scratchers = money on the market = buying weapons and augs. then on top of that, they charge for bag space and "premium" which if you dont have, you get kneecapped and have to spend 1000 hours to make enough to buy a few items off the market.
I hate how games these days awnser the question: "what monitisation should we have?" with the awnser: "Yes!!!" You have games like paxdei that has a initial price, a subscription, multiple "levels/tiers" and pay for convenience... That is just insane to me, how could anyone think that stuf like that is in any way okey?
I think that New World has a relatively decent monetisation model - one upfront price (plus another for the expansion), and then a battle pass / cosmetic store that to me doesn't feel like you're at a disadvantage for not swiping for. My preference though would be a subscription.
I agree with you on basically all your points. I have been playing MMOs for since the 1990s and have left games, Black Desert and ArchAge, most recently, because of their cash shops. I now play ESO and find it much better in that regard. I like paying a subscription fee as it supports the games I play and I think that is fair to the people who work on the games. I have hopes for Pantheon, which I note you didn't mention. We'll see.
long development not allways means it is far in progress of the game development, it depends how many times they reset the full process, test multiple ideas concepts and also can indicate in some cases issues in the development process.
An important point to note is that game prices have not kept up with inflation, budgets, payroll, marketing, and other expenses because gamers are not willing to pay those kinds of prices. It even shocks my friends when I say most games should be around $150 each if they kept up with inflationary costs. That said, I have a perspective on this from a parallel job with a similar driving force... I've been a web (marketing) designer for 24 years. I've seen all this before. Everything I design outside the website is designed to try to get people to the website and, hopefully, keep them there to shop. This same rule applies to games. Keep the initial price of the game at a price where you think most gamers will tolerate and then once you get the customer in, hit them to little shinies all over the place, enticing them to spend more. More money and more time. By doing that you have a captivated audience and can build loyalty and your brand and keep making more money. Luckily, because of what I do, I see this stuff coming a mile away and just make reasonable choices on what I do or don't want to do without succumbing to external pressures. None of this is new. It's just more in your face these days.
Good points. That said, I think the best F2P monetization in the industry is PoE. Sure you might have to pay for stash tabs, but that is equivalent to a box price and you can try the game without them. Support packs etc are just great and make you feel good about supporting a game you love.
As long as games are being made for the global population, the idea of a box price and subscription is instant death for any new game despite me being a classic gamer longing for something like that.
Being older and having income, I would be fine with a subscription based model so long as it can be under 15 dollars . But I could see this becoming a huge problem for players who enjoy multiple games or for casual gamers where it's not worth it and is troublesome to pause payments or keep track of everything.
I think a sub fee is such a good way to fund mmo/live service games but I can imagine the average spend for the other routes is considerably higher than a sub fee.
I like the box and sub. I wish they would also have Gametime. Sometimes I want to play an MMO for just a bit once a month, I wish I could buy 20 hours of Gametime and use it whenever, and if I go afk in game it pauses my timer
Not everyone can afford x amount of subscriptions every month for everything in life now. Free to play is very consumer friendly and cosmetics should be purchased by people who want to.
@@beastrule easy, payment up front lessen the ingame store and make it the game smaller. AA and smaller game manage just fine....it is the triple A where games goes absurdly expensive to make Games like dave the diver manage with free updates and dlc. Thea and thea 2 have a few dlc updates. City skylines updated the core game for free every time a dlc came out. Dungeonmans a oldschool low graphic dungeon delving game have had 3 free updates. Holocure a vampire survivors game is ENTIRELY free as the dev sees it as a passion project Reasonably priced and better game size beats predatory ingame stores with skins.
It used to be where game devs made games out of love but now they are succumbed to shareholders that want to push every cent out of a game. That's why indie devs will now and forever be superior to fully fledged studios backed by publishers. It's the unfortunate truth but I don't think there will ever be a major MMORPG until server tech improves to the point where it doesn't take millions to maintain a month
Tbh, I prefer the Eso/76 method of buy to play with the optional sub. If you're filling your storage up in either game you're playing to much or keeping all the trash you shouldn't. Far as riot goes, oh well, no longer paying attention. I don't want a reinventing of the mmo genre, I just want a good mmo.
Straight up New World has no pay to win or even pay for convenience. They have a costume shop, but thats it. At least the last time I played it anyway. One and done purchase, no monthly sub either. Extremely good MMO.
Monsters and Memories is launching early access, no wipe servers next summer! Old school Everquest inspired game, with the team lead being someone who worked on the game during the classic trilogy of EQ expansions. No pay-to-win, it definitely deserves some coverage from you when it comes to upcoming new MMOs.
Having spent the last 20-ish years playing damn near every MMO under the sun for some period of time (minimum of a week or two, maximum of years), I think Guild Wars 2 is probably the single greatest example of a cash shop integration in a modern MMO. Old school with the box price and monthly sub and that being it was the peak, but as new releases go, GW2 is expertly integrated.
Did you forget gw2 exsits? The base game is 100% free with zero restrictions. The expansions are fairly price. Oh and there cash shop is mainly cosmetic.
MMO's took their lead from gatcha games as they make astronomical amounts of money. It was an unfortunate turn in the road of MMO's but it works because people complain but still stick their hands in their pockets and cough up the cash. If you want it to stop, then either stop playing as I did, or stop paying which I did first of all, before the in-your-face monetisation just sent me back to playing one off games. I buy a game and play it through. It's a one off expense and I can revisit it whenever I want to.. Moreover, when I play I'm immersed into it as I don't have to worry about anything but the story, mission or quests that I'm on. Freedom and no fomo involved.
Pretty much, one thing I've never really done was truly reach the endgame of MMOs ever. Originally, it was due to time requirements and how much I'd pay to do it; but nowadays, it's because of this topic. I'll end game stuff that is pretty much stuck to offline obtainable endgame stuff. Monster Hunter being a non-MMO and pretty much serving to a grind that is not dependent on recurring costs. (Save for paying for an expansion). I'm ok with that, given that those games are not meant to be constantly going until they aren't profitable, like an MMO. They have a proper endgame to development and may make some money on cosmetics, but the commitment is only a few or so years and then they move onto another game. Keeping costs lower so to not require the level of recurring funds as MMOs do.
I would never have thought that I would get rid of my gaming addiction because of P2W, battle pass crazy games and greedy companies. Whenever I download a new game with excitement, I either delete the game or refund it as soon as I see a Battle Pass.
