I was a bit Stan of Fortnite originally for changing the game, and opening doors to new kinds of businesses models. I understand that yes, it’s predatory at times. I understand people don’t like to have to pay money to own skins.
Overwatch being my favorite franchise of all time, I also understand that the franchise wouldn’t have ever survived if it was sold as a full price product. The only people that would have bought a 70$+ ow2 game, would have been the hardcore fans. The franchise would have failed, and we would never get content again. I’d much rather the FTP model, then a completely abandoned franchise.
because you have to be a grade a idiot to actually believe any skin you buy goes to actually support the game
all the money goes to fund new contracts with china and to fund their actual cash cows like diablo immortal
11 Likes
I will let you think that this situation is successful, with dcs still happening every single game and the design philosophy of sojourn “not having a counter”
you are a budgeted profit farm, this is barely gameplay
2 Likes
F2P is fine. BUT only if you can still treat F2P players as people that support the game with their time. Presently all you get for being F2P is one old legendary from years ago per 9 weeks. They do not value your time if you’re a F2P and frankly I wouldn’t recommend this game to anyone that just wanted to play.
4 Likes
At first people disliked it because of how Blizz was implementing verification, which required a smart phone plan, which not everyone has.
And OW1 was pretty generous with it’s cosmetics, while OW2 is pretty stingy even compared to other F2P games with premium battle passes. I think this is where most of the ire come from now.
Then there’s people just throw every grievence they have at F2P for some reason, as we have seen and will surely see more of in this thread.
Personally I find F2Ps to be a lot more toxic and/or bad, and has caused an increase in me encountering console players which usually sucks. Though I’m sure this is some sort of selection bias.
7 Likes
I think alot of the hate for F2P is fairly well placed imo. Most of these games, rather than just being an accessible game, employ psychological tactics to promote people spending money in the game. and frankly that level of manipulation feels wrong
EDIT: just wanted to throw in this as well. Feeling obligated to put money into a game that you have time into is way different than buying one outright and enjoying the content included
4 Likes
people didn’t disconnect so frequently before. the phone number requirement had to be removed, so there’s an uncapped smurf problem that will exponentially grow and never drop.
find better effort than “some reason” before entertaining sharing whatever opinion you have.
So… Free To Play is usually abbreviated F2P. FTP makes me think of File Transfer Protocol… that might just be me though.
On to the main topic. The main issue with F2P games is that usually they’re monetized in such a way that the company is not necessarily incentivized to make the best game they can. Instead they are encouraged to throw just enough annoyances in your way that you’ll consider paying for their solution, but not so many that you’ll quit. This doesn’t result in amazing games usually.
3 Likes
Im in the same boat with FTP bro. It’s a damn shame that everywhere near me has IT layoffs and I still have intrusive thoughts like that from college
I don’t hate the FTP aspect. The prices were too high in the shop though they definitely needed looking at, though to be honest I don’t buy skins. In general though, I have no complaints about the BP etc.
Genuine question, because I highly doubt it. But do you think OW2 could have ever been successful as a full price game? This is where I don’t get the hat for the model blizzard chose. I feel like everyone has to realize that a full price ow2 game would have been a disaster
This is simply not true. There are tons of AAA studios that survive on a tiny fraction of the sales that OW achieved with its first game. Releasing a full game every 4-6 years is sustainable. It just is. There is no debate here.
Where is the evidence of this?
1 Like
Not directed towards me but I just thought I would toss in that even during the least populated part of OW1’s lifespan is was making just over half a billion a year which frankly is more than enough to keep it running with new content and probably would’ve been fine once a pop increase from 2 happened
1 Like
There are a few issues with F2P as a business model from a consumer standpoint.
-
It has a perverse incentive. The game in F2P effectively becomes a cost center instead of a revenue center, and a business is incentivized to invest resources into revenue centers, that being the MTX. This is why F2P games so frequently feel like garbage even when they make tons of money.
-
Games aren’t closed systems. Profit generated from a game isn’t necessarily put back into the game that generated it, but instead goes to corporate profits, which are then allocated by discretion. Obviously a company is going to want to reinvest to titles that make the most money, but it’s not a one-to-one deal.
-
Kind of a follow-up to #1, but a big issue with F2P is that it also incentivizes selling power. This is why you may have noticed that the devs talked a lot about making skins more accessible, but they didn’t say a thing about the fact that they have heroes in the battle pass. Skins don’t move units like power does, yet in a competitive game you as a player want everyone to be operating on a level playing field.
3 Likes
I don’t have evidence, as none exists. It’s just a personal opinion based on observations. Ibe played with a group of 6 people since the launch of ow1. All of them said they would have never bought ow2, but since it’s free, they will play it sometimes
1 Like
Dunno. I think it’s great.
But I could see high ELOs players grumbling about how they are less important to cater to. Since OWL profits are basically dead, and selling DLC to middle-low ELOs is where all the money is at.
given that ABK has one of the biggest mobile games out there printing money for it without requiring a ton of reinvestment, you’d think they’d be interested in putting that money into supporting great games that devs and players are excited about that aren’t just money machines also, but alas…
1 Like
Because cosmetics were more accessible back when the game was pay to play. By going F2P, they had to look for a new way to profit from this game as the old version would probably make this game obsolete in terms of revenue (they already did the same thing with HoTS and they ended up putting the game on maintenance mode cause everything is basically free in that game).
Business-wise? This was a smart decision. But service-wise? Not really but it’s only a matter of perspective
1 Like
Well put. In most cases going F2P is usually worse for the average consumer. There is a happy medium but why go for that when you could milk your player base for a couple billion per quarter instead. Scummy triple A companies ruin it all
1 Like
It is not that f2p is bad.
it is the conversion from b2p to f2p that makes it worse for existing players.
no worries you still won’t get content
2 Likes