They way I see it, Elder Scrolls Online is in trouble already. I was in the beta, and it's not exactly a shining star. Its another MMO, a more actiony-combat system, but theres no weight to it. Its click click click click until something dies, and theres no strategy to it. It wants to use realistic graphics, but the animations are exaggerated and almost cartoony. Throw a monthly subscription onto a $60 price tag and it's gonna have some trouble out of the gate.
it also feels very stale and slow for some reason. In skyrim for example, the combat was pretty fluid and it was satisfying to hit something (especially with a huge hammer)
Right, I know, EVERYONE has a 'friend' or knows a guy. I could care less what other people's opinions are (much like I am sure you could care less about mine) I will find out for myself. I have ALPHA/BETA tested more games than I care to post here and played even more than that over the last 15 years. Games these days do not compare to what they were when the genre started but they are getting better. I can see a few reason why people do not like TESO. The biggest being it is not Skyrim on line, they had to make concessions to make a single player (replace single player with table top, sound familiar?) game work as an MMO. People don't want to understand that. everything beyond that is just personal opinion. People love to bash the pay model, people love to bash any new thing coming out as it isn't 'what they asked for'. That will blow over. I am not a fan of the Elder Scroll series, not at all, but from an objective point of view, the game is solid. It has all the things you expect in trip A MMORPG, and then some. As far as the Sub fee I believe they went a little crazy there, but that is another limiting factor I support. I wish the games I am interested in would go that route, as I stated earlier that is a real good step in keeping the rabble out of the community. Sure, you will always have problem causers, but when cash on the line people tend to use the ignore feature as opposed to getting involved in big mud slinging contests. They probably should have made the sub fee a bit lower. But eh I can, if I wanted too, afford a heck of a lot more than that, so no big deal. Anyway, at least my opinions are based of my experience, not a 'guy I know'. They are just that however, opinions. DjemoSRB - I am not really interested in discussing anything with you.
Nice example, DDO is a MMO that did things right. Good gameplay, good community for a f2p game (there wasnt a more mature community in any MMO ive played, and ive played allot of them) and you basically payed for what you wanted to play (aside from tons of free content already ingame). The updates were solidly frequent and each one was worth your money. I spent quite a buck for many content updates but the freedom of actually buying these when i wanted, if i wanted is what the game won me over with. My issue with p2p is simply that you feel forced to play it once you start, each day ive not played is like throwing money down the toilet. And in some cases work and studies prevents me from doing any gaming for a week or so, thats allot of money down the drain. B2P lets you play on your own terms, i dont have to worry if i will have money for the gym and the food required to keep up and im always going to put in money in the game when it comes by. So in my eyes its a perfect payment method.
my feeling for the varius payment method are: F2P: i don't have the game, i play a unlimited trial, i am sure that at a certain point i must pay or farm all day for some content or service, but i am free to test and decide about give money to the game. freemium: i don't have the game, i play a big trial, if i like the game maybe i can consider pay something and pay for some month the fee, but when the month is expired i don't loose nothing, so if the game get some majior patch i can evaluate and choose to give more money. B2P: I OWN the game the game is mine like a single player, if i don't buy the game at release i am almost sure i find some 50% or 75% discount the next year. For sure the game will have some item shop or DLC like all the singleplayer today have. If i am lucky the money are only for aestethical things. but i still don't lose my money, i can still play for what i have payed i can go back in the game when i want. P2P: i pay for a service, i don't own the game, i need to pay, in some cases i need to pay for PATCHING or DOWNLOADING the game!!(because the client ask me my log in and pass for start the download), if i don't play my beloved character are unacessibible, i can't test improvement of the game, so i can't have a new and better opinion of the game,(unless they don't give some free days for the new patch but i must play when they want!!). At the start of the MMO era the p2p was the only solution for the high cost but today the argoument is no more valid. TL; DR A payment method is basically about: freedom, freedom of choise, freedom of evaulate, freedom of dedice when and if throw money.
I've only played the first 10 levels in TESO but it seems mediocre so far. It's not really terrible by any means. The worst part of it is the "feel" of the gameplay though. The animations are stiff and wonky and it makes movement and combat feel unsatisfying. The world that I've seen so far is quite pretty though and all the NPC's have been voice acted (I recognized many VA's from Skyrim) which is nice. I personally won't be playing it because of their payment system but I would definitely change my mind if it went B2P or F2P because it has potential, especially with their PvP options.
I did some different stuff on a new (to me) race and I am see where people have issue with the combat system right now. Melee seems a bit clunky right now. I have been playing ranged thus far. I like the payment model, but I can see why others would not.
My 2 cents. Beta is Beta. Don't use that as a reason why its going to fail. This weekend it was a stress test, so of course it may be laggy. But ESO will be going f2p (maybe b2p). No question about it. $59.99 + the sub fee? Yeah its pretty clear its just a cash grab because they know they have fans that are stupid enough to buy into it. Is the p2p model dead? ....Partly. When this discussion comes up on forums people who are in favor of the p2p model always use the argument "look at World of Warcraft" which is by no means a valid argument point. Wow started 10 years ago when this type of payment model was popular and over the 10 years to now its built up a fan base that will be willing to pay for what it is (The world, the lore and maybe even people they have become friends with over the game) And every now and again you'll see articles that say "WoW has lost x-amount million subs" ...every year it says that but when they release a new expansion they gain back subscribers. I think they have something like 7 million subscribers now So 7 million times roughly €15 (I know it may be higher in US and lower in UK but we'll just say euro to get in between) would be like 105,000,000 per month now more than likely its a good bit less than that because of the different currency's but still. 7 million * the sub fee is still a ton of money so wow has no reason to go f2p + They also charge for an expansion every other year. Lets look at ESO! ...Its a Elder Scrolls game and the "selling point" would be the pvp. Plus they have a cash shop as well! ...Well Gw2 does the same 1 v 1 v 1 and that's b2p so really the fact its an Elder Scrolls game is the only thing going for them and that also has a cash shop. B2p is a far superior model, You generally pay one price and you have everything unlocked. I always felt I had to play a p2p game since I was paying for it. But with b2p I can play it one day...maybe leave it for one and come back it to whenever I want and on top of that some months I could pay more on the in game store - Example if I have a free weekend where I know I'll be playing I can buy the likes of boosters. Planetside 2 did another good example where some guns you can buy them 2 weekends before you can buy them with ingame currency. Wildstar will be another game that is going to be p2p - I'm by no means bashing it when I say Its a wow clone but it does stuff better than wow but in saying that I still can't see it being a successful p2p model. Like it has the option to pay the sub fee with a ingame currency but I think it will be a case where everyone will be trying to do it that way that the prices to get the ingame currency ..like in an auction house for example will have the price really high...so it may turn out to be more along the lines of "Pay for 3 months and save up the ingame currency to get 1 month free" etc which isn't bad ...and they have the housing system which a lot of people will like. I think p2p is still viable sort of. You'll have to offer a lot (which ESO does not) to get people hooked. With a B2p model you get the best of both worlds! e.g people who don't want to pay a sub fee for the game and people who would be happy to pay a sub fee for the game but now don't have to. tl;dr ESO will become f2p or b2p. It will have different tiered acounts higher tiered accounts (the people who subbed and brought the game will have perks). The people who paid the game will still be annoyed but I'll reference many threads to them saying how it was clear this was going to happen so its your own fault.
I read an interesting thread on a different forum concerning the Buy to Play model and why it is a better model. The whole just of it was; With all the PC games trying to appeal to console players, having one fee (the normal $60.00 U.S.) for the price of the game would work better as they are already used to that. makes sense to me. I could probably warm up to that model, but that brings up another issue for me in that I would prefer to keep console and PC separate. That is a whole different topic however.
