I would play GW2 more if it was a subscription-based MMO. [MERGED]

[Riaenvyr.2091]

10 minutes ago, Maikimaik.1974 said:

Okay so what is your point then? 

You know that GW2 will never be p2p, so what's the point of this thread? 

My point is explaining how things are done, in hopes of people understanding and making informed decisions, because of my belief that the worst thing plaguing the world at the moment is ignorance.
I also enjoy challenging my views, learning new things, and am pretty competitive, which lends itself beautifully to arguing with people. And I also adore opposing the "lovely" hivemind of this community, no matter how many pitchforks and torches they brandish.

Aodlop's point, on the other hand, is more of a feedback/discussion regarding how the F2P model of GW2 makes the actual gameplay less enjoyable, because getting a shiny reward boils down to "git gold" instead of "git gud", which we both understand and share.

Edited May 2, 2021 by Riaenvyr.2091

[kharmin.7683]

Another "no" to a sub-based model for GW2 for pretty much every reason indicated in this thread and in the many other threads already on this topic. 

[yann.1946]

34 minutes ago, Riaenvyr.2091 said:

I might need a breath more elaboration on it, then, if I may ask, because no matter how I try to look at it, both instances sound the same: FP2 "needs to be fun enough to spend", while subs "needs to be fun long enough to spend (to buy another month)".

I'd agree with this, though, since it's all business regardless of the scheme, the difference being, as I've explained in the previous post, that sub-based games are required to provide a more entertaining experience by the very design of the monetization model.
I'm re-watching House again, so let's use a metaphor to illustrate the distinction:

Imagine a library where You're charged for each entry. It's in the library's best interest to stockpile on the best books available to make You come back again and again, yes? Sure, they might put a totally innocent tea brewer to sell You refreshment right by the most impeccable chairs, but it's not mandatory. Heavily encouraged, 'cuz tea, but still a choice, since You're there for the books.

Whereas the F2P model doesn't require an entry fee, and You're completely free to browse the books in the Romance and Kids sections, but unlocking every other section is 400 gems, each page of a book is 200 gems, unlocking punctuation is 350 gems per book, renting a wooden log with branches sticking out is free, but a real chair is 400 gems, BUT a CUSHIONED chair is only 600 gems, plus You get this Happy Customer ticket for spending 30 minutes in the library each day...

The world is, naturally, far from black-and-white, and as such there's bound to be as much greed as players can stomach everywhere, and, likewise, a F2P model doesn't immediately mean a game is complete garbage.
The principles upon which they're built simply make them predisposed for certain things.

You're ignoring that to get people to buy the chairs in that library the books need to be good enough to warrant it. You need more engagement to motivate people to spend in a cash shop. 

 

Let's go with dailies as an example, I personally know very few people who like dailies. And even though almost all mmo's have dailies a sub model encourages that design more, as you want to keep people playing more consistently. 

 

Or to say it differently 

F2p games incentive better short term patches to pull people back in.

While sub mmo's incentive more average but retention based design. In the end the enjoyment will be around the same, just preportioned differently in time. 

[Teratus.2859]

1 hour ago, Aodlop.1907 said:

This does sound like a decent compromise. If we get a small number of additional earnables in game in exchange, I feel like this solution could please everybody. 

Quoted the wrong person there buddy, It was Daddy.8125 that said that not me.
Although I'm not against the idea of an optional sub like ESO if people want to pay for it, as long as it never impacts players who choose not to pay for it i'd be ok with it. 

[Dami.5046]

Imagine paying a sub and still getting IBS? At least that piece of nonsense was free.

[Riaenvyr.2091]

14 minutes ago, yann.1946 said:

You're ignoring that to get people to buy the chairs in that library the books need to be good enough to warrant it. You need more engagement to motivate people to spend in a cash shop. 

 

Let's go with dailies as an example, I personally know very few people who like dailies. And even though almost all mmo's have dailies a sub model encourages that design more, as you want to keep people playing more consistently. 

 

Or to say it differently 

F2p games incentive better short term patches to pull people back in.

While sub mmo's incentive more average but retention based design. In the end the enjoyment will be around the same, just preportioned differently in time. 

Does nobody ever read the entirety of my posts? 😄

I said the world is not black-and-white, so an overlap of certain things is inevitable.
I also pointed out that the F2P tag doesn't mean the game has absolutely no redeeming qualities outside of sparkles and the latest Korean MMO-styled creative-ways-how-to-conceal-exactly-four-square-centimeters-of-the-female-body a.k.a. fantasy armor.

For example, I happen to enjoy Vindictus - a hub-based Korean MMORPG, which is completely F2P, pretty much every system of it is utterly ridiculous even as a bad example, including the typical fashion of such games, except for the combat. The combat is gorgeous, responsive, and almost all the characters have an entirely different feel to them.
I wouldn't recommend the game to anybody at the moment, but the combat system just rings the strings so well for me that I enjoy some brief fights here and there. Otherwise it's really atrocious.

To agree with the conclusion that the enjoyment will be around the same... I find it hard to believe.
Every player is different, of course, but, as for myself, I can compare only three MMORPGs I've been a part of throughout my gaming career - WoW, Vindictus, and GW2, with both Vindictus and GW2 ultimately running out of gas. WoW felt that way only after five or six years of playing the same expansion - private server, Wrath of the Lich King, with a breath of The Burning Crusade before - and even that just because of personal issues with the guilds I was in, not because of boredom.

Yet, people grow up, learn, start enjoying new things for old reasons or old things for new reasons. And singular anecdotes are exactly as useful as dull blades, anyway - grand for training; would totally prefer a sharper edge when a life's at stake.

But, by the very virtue of even what You said, the F2P short term injections of endorphins through novelty, regardless of their inferior quality, leave a lot of wiggle room for any imperfections the game might have, when, in contrast, a player wouldn't want to stay around and continue the subscription for another month if the game systems were just meh.

[Teratus.2859]

7 hours ago, Riaenvyr.2091 said:

Technically speaking, every single influence other than imagination will be in some way limiting the potential, and even then it could be argued that imagination is a limit unto itself, because no person is currently capable of absolute knowledge.
But that's not the point.
The point is that the F2P model necessitates taking away content from players to monetize it. The subscription model doesn't.
This, again, doesn't mean Gamigo and GameForge don't exist, but the model itself isn't at fault, human greed is.

Encourages maybe.. but I wouldn't say necessitates exactly, not if the developers are really driven on getting a particular vision into reality.. more so if that vision is shared by the customers.
Gw2 could have easily locked away some content like Fractals and Raids behind a paywall if they wanted too.. made us pay additional fees for mount creatures and new elite specs etc as well but they didn't.
Their reasons I can't know for sure but I could say that doing stuff like that would obviously cause a huge backlash amongst their customer base.. and that in itself can be a good deterrent.

Gamers do have a lot of power in this industry when they "vote with their wallets" so to speak and all these companies are competing for the contents of said wallets so they do have to appease what the gamers want as well.
That could also be something that influences creative design too but it's still necessary if you want your game to be successful.

In regards to your "model itself isn't at fault, human greed is." statement though I will say that also applies to a lot of things in this world, Capitalism included 🙂 
 

Quote

WoW is an interesting topic.
Warcraft is not just a game at this point. Never was to begin with, but during the MMORPG time, the ecosystem it'd spawned through cosplays, music, fan art, the overall passion for it... is much more vast than a simple game. This means people who never heard of the genre, or sometimes even of gaming, would still be able to tell you what WoW is. Not exactly to detail, of course, but just having an idea in their mind is an absurd thing for marketing.

You're also ignoring the fact that even WoW began with nothing. Sure, not literal nothing, because Blizzard were relatively well-known at Vanilla's launch already, but they made their mark upon the world with content that people couldn't get enough of. They still do, to a certain extent, because something lured the people in. And something made them stay.
They weren't putting knives to people's throats and forcing them to play.

And yet, as Daddy pointed out, WoW isn't as massive as it once was, and in recent expansions the novelty isn't able to carry the bulk of player interest. No clue how accurate the numbers are, but expac after expac the numbers went down from the ungodly heights of Wrath, briefly spiking with Legion, and now they're dying again.

You're not wrong , people were not forced to play this is true but they were heavily incentivised to play because of the financial element.
I don't think WoW was a bad game or anything, I do agree that it's success is obvious and it did earn that by legitimately being a great game.

But it did have advantages that many MMO's after it didn't have being such an early runner in this market.
I know the playerbase has diminished over the years and a lot of players found the will to quit.
But how many of them moved on to other MMO's? 
A good few probably but a lot of them also give them up entirely.
I don't think it's a bad thing that WoW lost so many people though, if it hadn't I would wonder how the MMO market would have been affected by that.
Would Gw2 be as successful? would FF14? Would ESO? I honestly don't know.. maybe they would but would they be as successful as they currently are? again.. I don't know, but I would guess probably not.
 

Quote

Also, saying that WoW has been the first to be this successful is far from true. Before WoW, Ultima Online and EverQuest were astonishingly big for their time, since the world was much smaller back then, so to speak.
The world is also more than the west, and, say, Lineage and Lineage 2 were gargantuan in Asia.

I didn't mean it was the first to be this successful, nor that it was the first MMO.
I meant that WoW was the first of it's kind.. it basically revolutionised the MMO genre and was significantly different from anything else on the market when it came out which greatly attracted players to it.
I'm pretty sure I got that right, I don't have time to do a history of MMO's search at the present time lol.
I don't think there were any games like WoW on the market before WoW though.. the only ones I can remember were like online isometric RPG's which are a whole different animal from massively open world 3D MMO's.
 

Quote

The sunken cost fallacy surfaces regardless of what has been invested. It could be money, like in Your example, but more often than not it's time people value and suffer through absurd things to not feel like they've wasted.
Not saying people don't want to get their money's worth, but time spent playing is as valuable a currency as cold, hard cash, and the F2P model is taking a grand advantage of it.
Thankfully, if ANet is good at something, it's pissing off the players who care for their game, so nobody ever had a hard time quitting GW2 😄

I don't disagree with this, however I would argue the more time invested in a F2P MMO is certainly a testament to the quality of the game itself.

WoW sure is a good game too but with a sub obligation how many of those player hours were truly invested because the player wanted to invest them and not invested because they had to pay for it and didn't want to waste the money?
The Fear of missing out element also comes into play as well with this.

It's a lot easier to walk away from a F2P MMO and come back at your leisure than it is for sub based MMO's.. and the more money you invest over time the harder it can be to justify just walking away from it.
F2P MMO's do also have that latter element.. I can speak personally about Gw2 as I don't want to leave the game for that very reason myself, too much invested in the game over the years lol
But without the financial obligation I would argue that a F2P MMO has to work a lot harder to keep players invested in it than games like WoW.. which also have the advantage of a bigger budget as well.
 

Quote

When it comes to predatory greed, You're disregarding basically everything I've said in my previous post. It was before the TL;DR mark, though, so, ah... mea culpa, I guess.
The difference between the F2P and sub models is the very bedrock upon which the games are built.
No matter what indestructible material you make your house out of, it'll fall down if you're building on sand.
That's why I'm quite sure that a sub-based GW2 would be a much different beast than the current version, and who knows if any of us would like it in the first place.

I don't disagree that Gw2 would be different had it been made with a sub in mind.
But as you also pointed out there too "who knows if any of us would like it" is equally valid a counter point.

There's more to consider as well being that the success of this game is largely attributed to it's lack of a Subfee, same applies for Gw1 as well.
This one single element is a big reason why a lot of us Guildwars fans are even here in the first place and remain here.
When Gw2 was first announced this was a big subject people were desperate to hear about as well.. a lot of us Gw1 players were very excited for Gw2 but were also adamant that we would not be investing in the game had Anet decided to adopt the sub model for it after the first game had been so successful by pushing an anti subfee stance.

While I don't predict a Gw3 anytime soon I will say that should one be announced this subject will come up again for that game too and a lot of us Gw2 players will have the same view, if Gw3 is a mandatory subfee game, a significant amount of us will not be playing it and will stick with Gw1 and Gw2 instead.

Edited May 2, 2021 by Teratus.2859

[yann.1946]

2 hours ago, Riaenvyr.2091 said:

Does nobody ever read the entirety of my posts? 😄

I said the world is not black-and-white, so an overlap of certain things is inevitable.
I also pointed out that the F2P tag doesn't mean the game has absolutely no redeeming qualities outside of sparkles and the latest Korean MMO-styled creative-ways-how-to-conceal-exactly-four-square-centimeters-of-the-female-body a.k.a. fantasy armor.

For example, I happen to enjoy Vindictus - a hub-based Korean MMORPG, which is completely F2P, pretty much every system of it is utterly ridiculous even as a bad example, including the typical fashion of such games, except for the combat. The combat is gorgeous, responsive, and almost all the characters have an entirely different feel to them.
I wouldn't recommend the game to anybody at the moment, but the combat system just rings the strings so well for me that I enjoy some brief fights here and there. Otherwise it's really atrocious.

To agree with the conclusion that the enjoyment will be around the same... I find it hard to believe.
Every player is different, of course, but, as for myself, I can compare only three MMORPGs I've been a part of throughout my gaming career - WoW, Vindictus, and GW2, with both Vindictus and GW2 ultimately running out of gas. WoW felt that way only after five or six years of playing the same expansion - private server, Wrath of the Lich King, with a breath of The Burning Crusade before - and even that just because of personal issues with the guilds I was in, not because of boredom.

Yet, people grow up, learn, start enjoying new things for old reasons or old things for new reasons. And singular anecdotes are exactly as useful as dull blades, anyway - grand for training; would totally prefer a sharper edge when a life's at stake.

But, by the very virtue of even what You said, the F2P short term injections of endorphins through novelty, regardless of their inferior quality, leave a lot of wiggle room for any imperfections the game might have, when, in contrast, a player wouldn't want to stay around and continue the subscription for another month if the game systems were just meh.

I did read your entire post thanks for asking. My point was that while i agree that f2p and subs prioritize different things. Sub doesn't incentivize better things, just more repeatable things. 

 

As an extreme example, Would you say the witcher 3 is extremely replayable?

Honestly in my opinion, it isn't that replayable. Its still a really good rpg. 

 

You could argues that mmos need to be etremely replayable, and to some extent you're right. But the quality of an mmo isn't necessarily in a one -one withits replayability.

 

[Game of Bones.8975]

What's the difference between buying what you want ala carte with real money and paying for a monthly  subscription with real money?

 

You assume the system described is the one that would be rolled out. Other MMOs may follow that method, but ANET has proven to try to buck-the-system in the past.

 

Subscription owners feel obligated to play to get their moneys worth and drop payments when Needs fall into the Wants category. I feel comfortable logging in for 5 minutes a day when I can't play.

[Funky.4861]

I chuckle a little every time someone says gw2 is f2p 🙂 The trial version is, but trial versions normally are.

[Stx.4857]

Guild Wars 2 is the only MMO without a sub that I think handles it well. I normally prefer sub based games, but I like the way GW2 is currently set up.  Everything on the cash shop can be bought with in game gold...  what other game can you say that about?  

 

The great thing about GW2 is even though they have awesome cosmetic stuff on the shop, there is still tons of just as cool cosmetics to earn in game.  

[Aodlop.1907]

11 minutes ago, Stx.4857 said:

Everything on the cash shop can be bought with in game gold...  what other game can you say that about?  

It's true, but grinding gold isn't fun or challenging, it's just boring and time consuming.

Those amazing cosmetics being on the store, regardless of whether they can be earned with real money or in game gold, means that you're not a reward for achieving something in the game (other than a mindless gold grind, of course).

 

In WoW for example, you get seasonal PvP sets and Mythic+ mounts that are gone once the season is over. They're unique recolors or skins that require commitment and some skill, and you feel better about earning them than you do buying anything in GW2's shop.

Because those items don't just look good, they're also a testament to your in game achievements. A proper reward, which is something GW2 desperately lacks.

[Stx.4857]

9 minutes ago, Aodlop.1907 said:

It's true, but grinding gold isn't fun or challenging, it's just boring and time consuming.

Those amazing cosmetics being on the store, regardless of whether they can be earned with real money or in game gold, means that you're not a reward for achieving something in the game (other than a mindless gold grind, of course).

 

In WoW for example, you get seasonal PvP sets and Mythic+ mounts that are gone once the season is over. They're unique recolors or skins that require commitment and some skill, and you feel better about earning them than you do buying anything in GW2's shop.

Because those items don't just look good, they're also a testament to your in game achievements. A proper reward, which is something GW2 desperately lacks.

Not everyone wants prestige cosmetics.  When I was younger I cared about that...  now I'm not looking for a challenge constantly, just to casually enjoy the game.

 

They already have rewards in this game for challenging content right?  No reason to make everything in game locked behind some challenge, that's not fun.

[Farohna.6247]

26 minutes ago, Stx.4857 said:

Not everyone wants prestige cosmetics.  When I was younger I cared about that...  now I'm not looking for a challenge constantly, just to casually enjoy the game.

 

They already have rewards in this game for challenging content right?  No reason to make everything in game locked behind some challenge, that's not fun.

Good summary of it, GW2 does that very well...casual game play for someone who possibly has irl things going on and a relaxing pace.  Also some forget that in many games it's not just cosmetic, it's also a relentless grind for new gear...prestige yes, but also for big numbers.

[Hesione.9412]

I'm not in a financial position where I can afford a sub. However, I can use real money to occasionally buy things from the gem store thanks to putting a little money aside each month. If this went to a sub model, I would have to stop playing.

 

This seems to be another thread of "I want Y instead of X and because I want Y, I will come up with reasons that are important to me (but not to other players) to try to justify Y." (And X was rejected from the start by the company.) Basically, telling a company its financial decisions were wrong - that's what CEOs and boards/stakeholders are for.

 

There is nothing stopping any player who wants a sub-based game to make their own...

[Aodlop.1907]

48 minutes ago, Stx.4857 said:

They already have rewards in this game for challenging content right?

Not a lot, really. Even casual content that you do enjoy doesn't have great rewards either for that matter.

[Dondarrion.2748]

If this was a poll, I'd choose the "HELL NO!" option.

[Ashen.2907]

A sub based game relies heavily no time gating in order to prevent people from attaining goals, or at least delay such as long as possible, in order to ensure that they need to pay for that next month's sub fee, and then do it again, and again, in order to keep their revenue stream. A cash shop game, or at least one such as GW2, relies on producing things that people want, but are not required, to buy while playing the game without being so gated.

 

Sure even a FtP model wants to stretch content out so that people do not blow through it in a day and walk away, but nowhere near to the degree that is necessary for a subscription based model. And, of course, sub based games generally have cash shops where you lose access to the item you purchase if you do not pay a sub fee as well.

Edited May 2, 2021 by Ashen.2907

[Ardenwolfe.8590]

If this game went subscription-based, it would die a quick death.

[fatihso.7258]

I would not play GW2 if it was subscription based because paying the exact ~$10 on USA and a 3rd world country isn't the same thing. Same as gems are cheaper for some of us than others as company does not practise regional pricings.

[Obtena.7952]

1 hour ago, Aodlop.1907 said:

It's true, but grinding gold isn't fun or challenging, it's just boring and time consuming.

That's just a problem your mentality for how you play MMO's. If you don't treat them like they are a job to 'grind' to get something and just play it for the content you like, it IS fun/challenging to grind for gold. See, there is two things wrong with rewarding loot directly from content.

 

1. You don't get to choose how you want to play to get something you want. 

2. You HAVE to treat that content like a job because it's typically RNG or that loot is a reward for doing that content many times. 

 

It's so weird people have this idea that they have this massive problem 'grinding gold' to get something they want ... but when it applies to having to grind content itself to get something they want, grinding ISN'T a problem there? What's the difference? There isn't one. If anything, grindng the gold is a better option because of the two points above. You have a contradiction there that you have to resolve if you want to argue loot for rewards vs. gold. 

 

 

Edited May 2, 2021 by Obtena.7952

[Riaenvyr.2091]

12 hours ago, Teratus.2859 said:

Encourages maybe.. but I wouldn't say necessitates exactly, not if the developers are really driven on getting a particular vision into reality.. more so if that vision is shared by the customers.
Gw2 could have easily locked away some content like Fractals and Raids behind a paywall if they wanted too.. made us pay additional fees for mount creatures and new elite specs etc as well but they didn't.
Their reasons I can't know for sure but I could say that doing stuff like that would obviously cause a huge backlash amongst their customer base.. and that in itself can be a good deterrent.

Gamers do have a lot of power in this industry when they "vote with their wallets" so to speak and all these companies are competing for the contents of said wallets so they do have to appease what the gamers want as well.
That could also be something that influences creative design too but it's still necessary if you want your game to be successful.

In regards to your "model itself isn't at fault, human greed is." statement though I will say that also applies to a lot of things in this world, Capitalism included 🙂

The sole issue with art of any kind is that its perpetrators can't live only on air, thus every beauty requires a beholder, otherwise the creator starves to death, which means that the beginning of a vision needs people who believe in it (at least as far as capitalism is concerned) even before it's brought to life.

At this point a developer seeks a publisher. The publisher funnels resources into the developer, and the developer builds wonders. But since the publisher isn't happy with being paid back only thrice over, the developer's soul is now being drained 'till they cease to exist.

Complementary to that, the community of this particular game has been bred specifically for the "numbness" and "ignorance" genetic traits. Yes, there's a lot of people who care for the game, and all six visit the forums regularly, but the majority of the payers couldn't give a bag o' beans for anything deeper than skin.
Take, for example, the "Templates" debacle where ANet decided to dress as EA for Halloween. The feedback on that was so negative that they hid the

topic, and even that only AFTER selectively deleting a grand many other threads under the guise of "merging". There was no apology, no improvement (besides a couple of bug fixes), and the abomination still plagues the game to this day, as triple-monetized as at its launch.
The "vote with your wallet" creed is absolutely the most powerful thing to counteract corporate greed, yet it's much, much easier to abuse our bodies' outdated hormonal reward systems than to deliver a genuine satisfaction.
Chemically, the same thing. The latter simply doesn't leave one's bank account as empty and one's psyche as maimed.

As a technicality, GW2 does lock everything behind a pay wall, since pretty much all the relevant content requires the expansions, but the pay wall is so laughably tiny when compared to all the content acquired that it might as well be completely disregarded.
Doesn't matter much if you enjoy more than a single thing offered by the expacs, but if you're a very focused player, then it's pretty much pay-to-win, because not having an elite spec hinders your performance to the point that grouping up with you is always sub-optimal not because of your skill, but because of the game's balance.
Can't imagine there are many such people around. Doesn't make it any less true.
 

 

14 hours ago, Teratus.2859 said:

I didn't mean it was the first to be this successful, nor that it was the first MMO.
I meant that WoW was the first of it's kind.. it basically revolutionised the MMO genre and was significantly different from anything else on the market when it came out which greatly attracted players to it.
I'm pretty sure I got that right, I don't have time to do a history of MMO's search at the present time lol.
I don't think there were any games like WoW on the market before WoW though.. the only ones I can remember were like online isometric RPG's which are a whole different animal from massively open world 3D MMO's.

According to this article, the very first 3D MMO was Meridian 59 (1995), with EverQuest (1999) being the next and much more commercially successful entry, even surpassing Ultima Online in popularity.

As we already see eye to eye on the fact WoW isn't just bad-but-lucky title, there's nothing to argue here, especially since the entire philosophy of the great amalgam that WoW is consists of taking good ideas from anywhere and then implementing them into Azeroth; just pointing out that being the first 3D game wasn't WoW's case. You know, devil in the details.
 

 

14 hours ago, Teratus.2859 said:

I don't disagree with this, however I would argue the more time invested in a F2P MMO is certainly a testament to the quality of the game itself.

WoW sure is a good game too but with a sub obligation how many of those player hours were truly invested because the player wanted to invest them and not invested because they had to pay for it and didn't want to waste the money?
The Fear of missing out element also comes into play as well with this.

It's a lot easier to walk away from a F2P MMO and come back at your leisure than it is for sub based MMO's.. and the more money you invest over time the harder it can be to justify just walking away from it.
F2P MMO's do also have that latter element.. I can speak personally about Gw2 as I don't want to leave the game for that very reason myself, too much invested in the game over the years lol
But without the financial obligation I would argue that a F2P MMO has to work a lot harder to keep players invested in it than games like WoW.. which also have the advantage of a bigger budget as well.

Well, I don't have the data on this, and my personal experience is questionable at best, considering my perspective on the vestigial nature of regret.

But we can look at it logically.
A sub-based game has a stable income, which fuels the engines of development, even if we ignore any greedy practices like cash shops and CEOs taking 20 mil paychecks for "good behavior", because they sexually assaulted ONLY six women today.
A F2P game is never really free to play, otherwise there could be absolutely no further development, meaning that, beyond playtime, there's bound to be a certain amount of money invested, which already creates another tether to the player.
Plus, people suffering the FOMO effects need not be concerned merely for the monthly sub fee ticking out, otherwise the phenomenon couldn't be present outside of paid worlds, like in real life.
For the FOMO-afflicted people, It's enough to know their friend group went out for a drink without them to start feeling miserable, and I'm pretty sure the mostly traded currency in such cases is the emotional one, which is very easy to distribute even among people over the internet.

Coming back to what I've said before, it's much easier to mislead and abuse the human nature, and that's exactly what a F2P game wants to do, because such a model's income is very unstable, which is why it must behave like it does.
Having good systems in a F2P game, I think, is actually counter-productive for the same reason why ANet loathe their veteran players so much: a brilliant system means entertainment without payment, so the system has to be watered down to give people a reason to circumvent it via an in-game purchase.
 

 

14 hours ago, Teratus.2859 said:

I don't disagree that Gw2 would be different had it been made with a sub in mind.
But as you also pointed out there too "who knows if any of us would like it" is equally valid a counter point.

There's more to consider as well being that the success of this game is largely attributed to it's lack of a Subfee, same applies for Gw1 as well.
This one single element is a big reason why a lot of us Guildwars fans are even here in the first place and remain here.
When Gw2 was first announced this was a big subject people were desperate to hear about as well.. a lot of us Gw1 players were very excited for Gw2 but were also adamant that we would not be investing in the game had Anet decided to adopt the sub model for it after the first game had been so successful by pushing an anti subfee stance.

While I don't predict a Gw3 anytime soon I will say that should one be announced this subject will come up again for that game too and a lot of us Gw2 players will have the same view, if Gw3 is a mandatory subfee game, a significant amount of us will not be playing it and will stick with Gw1 and Gw2 instead.

Hm.
I really hate what-ifs because of how many unknown variables they always contain, but I'm really curious about what a sub-based GW2 would look like.
Through all the problems there are in this thing, I'll die on the hill of claiming that the value for money of GW2 is absurd. It might even be good enough in the current state to warrant a monthly fee, if most probably not from the majority of the current playerbase, granted the most of the gem store items would need to get moved to being rewards for playing.
But, again, what-ifs.

As for the third installment, I haven't played it myself yet, but from what I gathered on the forums and through ser WoodenPotatoes, the original GW was very different from the second game when it comes to gameplay, setting a precedent for ANet tabling the turns to a large degree.
Unfortunately, hells know to what extent the developers hold the reins in such questions, even if they wanted to go full sub immediately, or even whether NCSoft are counting with ANet for GW3 or anything after GW2, considering how swiftly have Jormag and Primordus been terminated.
Still, without more info, speculations won't get us far.

[Bristingr.5034]

On 5/1/2021 at 12:09 PM, Black Storm.6974 said:

which can be earned by playing whatever content I enjoy

Except WvW. Anet refuses to make that mode profitable or even a stalemate in terms of cost/profit for the players. Hell, the Commanders often lose money in that mode due to all the siege blueprints that need to be made/bought.

Edited May 3, 2021 by Bristingr.5034

[voltaicbore.8012]

I think threads like this ("GW2 with sub = better! Also subscriptions = fundamentally better design motivations!") demonstrate a complete lack of understanding about why this game was made, and why it's survived this long despite being based on an highly obscure IP and numerous fiascoes along the way.

 

As others have noted already, GW2 set out to deliver a sub-quality experience without the sub. You can argue about the feasibility of such an idea or how well ANet pulled it off, but you need to actually address these ideas instead of just assuming the usual framework of sub-vs-f2p design motivations apply to GW2.

 

Trying to imagine GW2 with a sub is akin to trying to imagine a Tesla that runs on an old combustion engine. Tesla are cars... combustion engines make cars operate.... so  a Tesla would of course operate if you built one to run on a combustion engine. But the entire point of a Tesla is to have a well-running (and as of the current day, quite expensive) car that specifically doesn't use an old combustion engine. It would lose the very essence of what would make it a Tesla in the first place. IMO such discussions are utter wastes of time.

 

 

[Riaenvyr.2091]

12 hours ago, yann.1946 said:

I did read your entire post thanks for asking. My point was that while i agree that f2p and subs prioritize different things. Sub doesn't incentivize better things, just more repeatable things. 

 

As an extreme example, Would you say the witcher 3 is extremely replayable?

Honestly in my opinion, it isn't that replayable. Its still a really good rpg. 

 

You could argues that mmos need to be etremely replayable, and to some extent you're right. But the quality of an mmo isn't necessarily in a one -one withits replayability.

 

My apologies, haven't meant it in a derogatory way. I tend to assume that everybody starts exactly where I do, leading to a conclusion that misunderstandings come from the lack of care or focus, not because I might be explaining things like a moron.

I'm far from an expert on the topic, so there's no way I can with any authority say this is how it's done and this is how it's not; all I'm drawing on is personal experience as a player, and various articles, videos, and general discussion about the issue at hand, so do take it with a grain of salt.

The main idea behind a MMORPG is a constantly evolving world, a world where the core structure stays mostly intact, while features are built upon it over a long period of time.
This means that, unlike in single-player games, the gameplay must consist of activities which are repeatable and rewarding, otherwise the players would lose interest very quickly, regardless of the monetization model.
Well, repeatable, or always new, which I can't imagine being sustainable, unless the creators are very imaginative.

Yet, there are several very different repeatable things to do in games, the distinction of which is what makes or breaks a game:
From my experience with the few games I mentioned, the main repeatable gameplay loop in WoW (again, I can only talk about the old Wrath) and Vindictus revolves around the gear treadmill. BUT!
The difference between the sub-based WoW and the F2P Vindictus is that WoW releases a level of content, players grind adequate level of gear, then a new level is released, the players grind this next level, and so on, while Vindictus forces people to not only grind bosses to craft and improve equipment, but there's also a chance of failure while enhancing and/or enchanting every single piece, in some cases causing the materials to be lost, in other cases shattering the piece of gear altogether, which then requires more grind to be replaced, not to mention the absurd RNG behind which most of these drops are locked.

Still, I could be just cherry-picking the best and worst of each to prove my point, so let's look at GW2.
There are three main game modes here: PvE, sPvP, and WvW.
Let's say we have a player who already enjoys the combat system and is in full ascended gear, because GW2 supposedly has no gear treadmill.
In PvE, Fractals are (daily) repeatable content which awards gold, Raids are weekly repeatable content which awards gold, Strikes are daily repeatable content which awards gold, DRMs are daily repeatable content which awards gold, and open world maps are wheneverly repeatable content which awards gold.
The rewards for both PvP modes is, besides the obvious competitive "gitting gud", gold.
Every game mode also awards armor/weapon skins, which, considering the structure of Reward Tracks and/or currencies traded for said skins, is GW2's own iteration of gear treadmill.

Literally every single end-game system in GW2 is repeatable content, which, by the virtue of the F2P nature of the game, has been watered down for the Gem Store to provide a solution, too.
It's, of course, nothing compared to the aforementioned Vindictus or games built on that principle, but to claim that the F2P model favors repeatability to any lesser degree than the sub-based one is demonstrably not true.


When it comes to Wild Hunt, we can't compare a relatively static single-player game to an ever-moving MMORPG.
Single-player games are made, sold, and mostly untouched afterwards (unless they're horribly bugged and the developer isn't Bethesda).
It also depends on the genre, because a large potion of The Witcher games is the story. Many people enjoy playing through even these games again exactly to explore different choices and their consequences, but a better example would be, say, Supergiant's Hades, where a single run through takes roughly 30 minutes on average without tryharding, yet the story moves even between these runs, and if the other systems weren't delightful to consume, nobody would care for how many times they can finish the infinite loop.

So I completely agree that the quality of a game has very little to do with its potential to entertain more than a single playthrough, even in games like Hades or MMORPGs which rely on keeping people within their worlds for a very long time.
And that's why I'm proposing that the distinction between the reason for and the implementation of repeatable content is considered as well, not merely how much of it is present.