Extra Credits - Free to Play Is Currently Broken - How High Costs Drive Players Away

When I came back to Maple, it seemed like everyone was dishing out hundreds to make themselves better. Now in League it just seems like people are spending hundreds to, well, save time and make themselves better.

So, really, your complaint is that the game is too much like real life?

I never understood why some people seemed to see Double Exp cards in Maplestory as the harbinger of the downward spiral.
The only people it's really a problem for are those who seem that there's something noble about grinding in a program that allegedly was designed for entertainment.

They already have a gigantic userbase. So, instead of trying to hook in whales (since they've already catered to a very large number of whales) they try and monetize *everyone else* too. It's just as bad, if not worse.

You keep saying these things are bad, but you never go into why it is bad.

Before F2P, literally every game in existence was already trying to monetized "everyone else." That's pretty much the law of industry.
Do you think F2P was conceived out of the goodness of someone's heart? pineapple no.
Some person in a fancy suit came of with the idea as a way of making more money per customer as an offshoot of the whole DLC deal which was an extension of expansion packs.

Dota2.
Nothing buyable affects gameplay in any way and is 100% cosmetic.
Everything cosmetic also drops while playing the game.
A fully functionable market and trading system to exchange cosmetics for other cosmetics.
Everything that affects gameplay is available the second you start the game.

Best free-to-play model of any game i've ever played for sure.

Literally DoTA. Every single thing that's relevant to gameplay is completely available to even a newbie; only skill and knowledge determines how well you play. I also love how you can sell/trade hats if you don't want them anymore. *Hint: Buying your desired cosmetics from the market is usually cheaper than buying straight from the Valve store*

LoL still bugs me with the "play or pay to unlock the champions" and "play to buy runes to give a slight in-game advantage". Why do I have to play for countless hours to permanently unlock everyone? Don't give me this "burden of knowledge" crap because I handled DoTA perfectly fine. Runes also give the illusion of "pay to play" except not exactly, because you can either stick with the same old champions but get the better runes quicker, or buy more champions so you have more variety, but your runes suffer and can cost you some games. It kind of nudges people to use money to unlock champions if they want to get runes. I'm aware that eventually you'll get all the runes you need, but you'll still feel annoyed realizing that sometimes the difference between victory and defeat could've been getting those couple shiny runes. I really wish LoL sold champions/runes at ~5%-10% of the current prices. Has anyone even unlocked every champion and needed runes for free without having to play for years? I apologize for complaining so much about League.

So, really, your complaint is that the game is too much like real life?

Yes, pretty much. If video games are meant to be escapism, why would I put myself in a situation where I have to spend hundreds for marginal appeasement when I could just derive enjoyment from real life instead.

You keep saying these things are bad, but you never go into why it is bad.

Before F2P, literally every game in existence was already trying to monetized "everyone else." That's pretty much the law of industry.
Do you think F2P was conceived out of the goodness of someone's heart? pineapple no.
Some person in a fancy suit came of with the idea as a way of making more money per customer as an offshoot of the whole DLC deal which was an extension of expansion packs.

Except comparing the free to play model to DLC and expansion packs is like comparing a rowboat to a speedboat to an aircraft carrier. There's a pretty distinct reason as to why DLC isn't called an expansion pack. Expansion packs were an extension of the enjoyment you already got from playing the original game. They usually provided a large amount of content that provided an experience of its own. DLC is just an excuse to milk money out of consumers for releasing an unfinished game. "Now with 3 new characters and items for $20!" The current free to play model is making money off of an unfinished game by disguising it as something else to make money. Instead of balancing a leveling system or eliminating the need for grinding something out they just say "hey, give us $20 and we'll emulate an ActionReplay for you."

It's quite obviously smart if you want to make money while it lasts. But it's unsustainable and extremely dishonest to the consumer. You should not have to pay money to get to a point where something's enjoyable. That's delusional, and terrible game design.


@IllegallySane; I've played for 3 years. Like 2/3 of champions unlocked and 13/20 runepages. Havent bought anything. It's rather disgusting.

DLC is just an excuse to milk money out of consumers for releasing an unfinished game.

Unless it's done right, ala Mario Kart 8, but those are in the extreme minority and very few and far between.

Unless it's done right, ala Mario Kart 8, but those are in the extreme minority and very few and far between.

Even then, though, it could really be classified as an unfinished game. They released the game without some of the features intended for the game. They almost certainly had been working on the DLC prior to the game's official release, and it probably hasn't taken the full span of time up until now for it to have been finished. Instead of waiting a month or two to add the rest of it, they released the game earlier to make revenue sooner as well as add an added cost for the game. It's a smart business practice, really.

Obviously though that's just a matter of perspective and isn't necessarily applicable to all cases. I can't know for certain whether or not MK8 falls under that umbrella. For all I know, MK8's DLC is a completely fair purchase. The line between DLC and expansion packs does sometimes blur.

@IllegallySane; I've played for 3 years. Like 2/3 of champions unlocked and 13/20 runepages. Havent bought anything. It's rather disgusting.

Ugh god. The woes of a Free-to-play player in a game like LoL. I'll have to pay money if I want everyone in a reasonable time. That or only unlock the overpowered/flavor of the month guys.

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Ugh god. The woes of a Free-to-play player in a game like LoL. I'll have to pay money if I want everyone in a reasonable time. That or only unlock the overpowered/flavor of the month guys.

 Spoiler

This is going a bit off topic, but I own 8 rune pages and 56/120 champs after playing for ~1.5 years. I earn more than enough IP to pick up a new champ every week or so and that's more than enough to keep me busy since I don't play several of the ones I already own satisfactorily. With free week rotations, it's pretty easy to pick out the champs I'm most interested in and just buy those.

It was certainly annoying when I first started playing ranked that I was limited to 2 rune pages, but looking back it really wouldn't have made a difference at my skill level. I honestly have no problem with LoL's minor paygates since they offer such a vast selection of content anyway. Plus, the "grind" for IP is just playing games which I would do anyway. If you enjoy the game, it's not much of an annoyance.

If you're one of those people that flits from champ to champ or between roles, it can be frustrating but that's really not an advisable way to play the game competitively. I might like to see all champs available in normals or team builder, but never in ranked since it would just encourage playing new champs without much practice. Free week rotations suffice for my casual curiosity, but I can understand it wouldn't for others. Asking for more than that would certainly hurt Riot's profits and I don't think it would really gain them much.

In the grand scheme of things, I think their model is very balanced and a pretty good example of what other companies should be aiming for.

If you play 2 games a day and you have a perfect 50/50 win ratio it takes around 1300 days to unlock all champions in LoL. That's disregarding runes or rune-pages entirely.
I REALLY dislike paywalled game-affecting content myself, while LoL's model is "okay"it is definitely not what i'd say others should be striving to aim for.

To me it's the main reason i have dropped LoL completely as a game, and the same reason most of my friends have as well. You simply can't take a break from the game and then come back to check out new content, because that new content is locked away.

If anything other companies should be looking at the talks Valve did way back during steam dev days about their own F2P models because it is by far the best out there.

Very relevant:

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[video=youtube;RHC-uGDbu7s]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RHC-uGDbu7s&list=UUStZs-X5W6V3TFJLnwkzN5w[/video]

You do not need to pay-wall game affecting content to have a profitable model.

Also, a new EC on MMO economics.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=W39TtF14i8I

Aka, all the things that Maple used to do but hasn't really done in a long time.

Remember when boat travel and taxi travel expenses used to actually be relevant?

A question I have for the people here, since we've established that League and DotA have what are probably the best F2P models out there (league isn't perfect, but its comparatively better than pretty much everyone besides DotA), could other smaller games AFFORD to survive on those models (or similar models)?

Ideally you'd want to make people WANT to spend money, not force them to do so to achieve anything significant ingame. If we had some of the stuff we have now in maple, a year or two ago; the game probably wouldn't be in such a sorry state. I can only hope Nexon carries the lessons they've learned over to MS2.

A question I have for the people here, since we've established that League and DotA have what are probably the best F2P models out there (league isn't perfect, but its comparatively better than pretty much everyone besides DotA), could other smaller games AFFORD to survive on those models (or similar models)?

Ideally you'd want to make people WANT to spend money, not force them to do so to achieve anything significant ingame. If we had some of the stuff we have now in maple, a year or two ago; the game probably wouldn't be in such a sorry state. I can only hope Nexon carries the lessons they've learned over to MS2.

I feel like Nexon has made quite a few strides to make the game less pay to win. I too hope they carry over these philosophies to MS2. Lets start off on the right foot!

With all the costumes and the high population maple had since day one I'm not sure why they went with the pay2win way so hard.

I would like to make a comment about all the criticism people here makes on League's business model, but I don't think this is the appropiate place. I will just say that League simlpy follows a different method to acchieve the same objective of perfect F2P business model as DotA2 and just there are many that don't like it there are also some like me who like it as it is.

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On topic. The problem with the economy in MS is that Nexon never really implemented a drastic way to combat inflation, I guess that in part was because KMS issues with inflation have never been nearly as bad as in any other server. There's been a few attemps like the JMS' silent crusade first items (which made a lot of people complain) and the first highschool event with its totems, but they all end up being taken away or modified whereas hackers have never, EVER stopped injecting more and more mesos to the game.

With all the costumes and the high population maple had since day one I'm not sure why they went with the pay2win way so hard.

Isn't it obvious? Greed.

I guess they just wanted to increase their income as any company normally would, but the methods they used were completely terrible (both cubes and protection scrolls).

I would like to make a comment about all the criticism people here makes on League's business model, but I don't think this is the appropiate place. I will just say that League simlpy follows a different method to acchieve the same objective of perfect F2P business model as DotA2 and just there are many that don't like it there are also some like me who like it as it is.

The thing about their model is that again it's a matter of perspective. From a logical standpoint it makes sense. It's simple, entirely sustainable, and the things that affect the game are openly available. But it's not perfect nor optimal for a plethora of reasons, at least as a consumer. Instead of paying money to achieve an arbitrary goal (leveling, runes, unlocking champs), I instead must spend countless hours, which is essentially the same thing as spending money. As far as the model itself goes, it works fantastically. Riot is sitting on a sustainable throne of gold. But the RP system is horribly imbalanced, especially with regards to time vs money required, and that's somewhat unfair to the average consumer.

It's great, but I think it's pretty apparent from the results that valve's model is more free from criticism than riot's.

A question I have for the people here, since we've established that League and DotA have what are probably the best F2P models out there (league isn't perfect, but its comparatively better than pretty much everyone besides DotA), could other smaller games AFFORD to survive on those models (or similar models)?

Ideally you'd want to make people WANT to spend money, not force them to do so to achieve anything significant ingame. If we had some of the stuff we have now in maple, a year or two ago; the game probably wouldn't be in such a sorry state. I can only hope Nexon carries the lessons they've learned over to MS2.

Fully tradeable cosmetic items the only thing in CS.

People always want to dress up their character, and you give everyone that chance, since the clothes are fully tradeable (if they do not spend NX themselves). Merchants will find a way to make 'profit' out of this and will buy the clothes.
Everyone happy, nexon gets money.

Expand this to damage skins, monster skins (?) evo lab backgrounds/music, pet covers (just give everyone a boring pet with new, cool styles to buy in CS), effects, emoticons, etc etc.

Yes, this is much like DotA and LoL, but why wouldn't it work for all types of games? I see no reason it has to fail.

Yes, this is much like DotA and LoL, but why wouldn't it work for all types of games? I see no reason it has to fail.

I think it can fail in games with a reduced player base, but the pay2win they usually add to those just kills them faster.

I think it can fail in games with a reduced player base, but the pay2win they usually add to those just kills them faster.

Trading helped TF2 a lot too when that also had a small playerbase (And now the playerbase is much larger and still only growing).
TF2 growed a LOT after going F2P and gaining tradeable cosmetics/weapons and stuff like it.

Trading helped TF2 a lot too when that also had a small playerbase (And now the playerbase is much larger and still only growing).
TF2 growed a LOT after going F2P and gaining tradeable cosmetics/weapons and stuff like it.

Definitely agreeable, it certainly CAN work. The real problem is that its a somewhat risky model to use if you're just starting out and don't have a huge playerbase behind your game, you'd be fine once your game takes off (assuming it does) but the first few months would be very rough financially i'd imagine.

Honestly thats probably why alot of companies end up resorting to the pay2win approach, they don't think their customers would spend money otherwise (or they don't have a large enough playerbase to generate sufficient profit)

Definitely agreeable, it certainly CAN work. The real problem is that its a somewhat risky model to use if you're just starting out and don't have a huge playerbase behind your game, you'd be fine once your game takes off (assuming it does) but the first few months would be very rough financially i'd imagine.

Honestly thats probably why alot of companies end up resorting to the pay2win approach, they don't think their customers would spend money otherwise (or they don't have a large enough playerbase to generate sufficient profit)

By that perspective, how can you justify that ideology when the playerbase peaked in 2007-2008 and has steadily gone down hill (almost 75% of its player base). Granted cash shop had gachapon as it's "main source" of "pay2win" but it was nothing compared to the cube implementation, in fact I would argue it was much more manageable.

Though if you're speaking generally I can understand, but maplestory went the opposite approach and has lasted 10 years and still maintains a 20-25k base, vs the 100k+ they used to maintain

I think that the thing people miss is that the income generally comes from the game itself, not whatever cash system they've constructed. The risk involved with using a free to play system is virtually the same as anything else. "Will people enjoy my game and spend money on it." Even with Maple's brokenness, people still spend money because they enjoy the game. Any system can theoretically work as long as the game remains appealing enough. It's not a matter of "can this system work," it's a matter of "is this system healthy, can it thrive."
That's why people buy cosmetics. They enjoy the game, so they spend money on it.
Any game is a risk, any game is an investment. Sure, free to play games may be marginally riskier (as far as I can assume), but it's not enough to justify foregoing game quality to rake in cash cows.

And since Maple started dying and people stopped enjoying the game, they've had to push the less practical methods just to stay afloat.