Free to Play vs Your time

Because most people do not have the option to pay, or the people playing (kids) do not have mommy or daddy to pay for them, so they play "Freemium" games. I for one will donate to a free games cash shop for aesthetics or to get boosts for exp or gathering or something, but I don't want equipment/gear/anything that makes a "Freemium" pay-to-win. And I hate that.

But another good reason people don't pay is they feel it's a good enough time waster to hang out with friends, but they don't feel like donating to the game when they just might turn it off/on again in a fews days or a week.

My general rule of thumb is if I enjoy a game and I've enjoyed a game (No matter if SUB based like FFXIV or FREEMIUM like TERA) I will donate after a month of solid playtime to show my support.

Some other people justify not paying by the glitches/bugs/exploits in a game that the game developer hasn't fixed or addressed yet either, which turns them off to donating/paying money to a broken product, even if they enjoy it immensely and have done so for an extended period of time. You can't fault these people either; they have the right of it. When the producers fix their game, they deserve their money. So this is a legit standpoint.

Those are just a couple of the points I could raise, and there are plenty more. I've played so many different P2P games and "Freemiums" that I believe I can say the above in full confidence.

 

Sometimes i did this thing. I will try the game for a month (f2p) and if the games looks interesting and enticing or i noticed something different, that's the time i will purchased items and customize my character. I did that thing on Rohan Blood feud and Cabal.

 

That particular aspect is part obligation avoidance and part money efficiency.

If a player can only play 8 hours a month, $15/mo means they're spending $1.88/hour for their entertainment. Much different than the player putting in 20+ hours a month paying $0.75 or less per hour. Players don't actually do this literal calculation, but it's the math behind their subconscious sense that they're not being very money-efficient in the 8-hour scenario.

This generates an obligation to play more which many players are fine with but not all.

Whereas in F2P players can play the game long enough to discover if it deserves their money in the first place (many games don't, but with a B2P/sub model you'll have already given them money) and then spend money accordingly (if both players decide to spend a little money for every 20 hours of fun they get from a game, then they're going to spend money at different rates but both get the exact same value per dollar.)

 

I think it's kinda simple, there is soooo much free entertainment to be had online and offline, but legitimately free and pirated.. People just aren't that used to "Paying" for entertainment. Shame really, think people should pay for what they use, even if it's in small amounts. People put lots of work into building these things.

 

Priorities. These vary amongst people. Some of us have families, mortgages, etc. Some of us don't feel that paying $15 a month is worth it if we do not enjoy the game. Now, if you have the money and enjoy the game but are just not paying on principle...well, that's your right as well.

 

Theoretically that would be the ideal case. But in reality, students are poor. College students too. People from less developed countries, even more so. An hour or two a day of relaxation might not be worth the $15.

 

Honestly, I would prefer if companies changed the p2p model from a flat rate per month to time a person actually plays. Its a bit more realistic and I think p2p models would have more success if they tried it. A payment sort of like paying for hours or minutes actually logged into the game vs paying for a set period of days when you can log in. Helps people still want to play games when they have a tight schedule or when their pc blows up or w/e so they can justify paying for something without feeling like it'll go to waste due to real life circumstances.

 

I had been paying WOW for years, and then played DDO as my off-game. Just kinda a psychological thing, but if I am paying a sub, then I feel the need to log in often. Because DDO is free, I don´t feel bad if I go a month without logging in.

But overall I feel the same as you for main games. My time is the limiting reagent, not money. I wouldn´t play Rift or another wow-clone just because they are free when I think the are inferior games.

 

If the game isn't worth the money it doesn't mean that it isn't worth to play it. They are two completely different things. If a game sucks, no matter what it costs, I wouldn't play it but if a game is kind of good and would be interesting to play but it costs too much then I wouldn't buy it but still if it would turn in a near future to be free to play then I would give it a shot.

 

I live on second-world country. 14 USD a month is like a tenth of my monthly allowance, you know? I can make that much money last a week. And even if I splurge, a take-out meal only cost like 2 USD here, while if you actually cooked it yourself, 1 USD can feed you for a day. Rather substandard meal, perhaps, but it is filling and delicious.

 

This is not charity. If companies don't oblige you in any way to support the game financially, then why should you do it? This is business, mate. If I offered you an apple and told that it was completely free of charge, would you still want to insist paying for it, even though I explicitly told you otherwise?

 

Because people don't always have the money to pay, or people think that the price is too high to buy. It's a marketing thing--free to play games will probably end up having more players because its free, but will face things like P2W or premium offers. On the contrary, subscription games like WoW probably wouldn't suffer from P2W content.

 

They did offer it for free, though. I'm sure you know their business model already, right? There'll be enough players to pay to support the game, and all that.

The second problem is, there are simply no way to pay it. Like, I have the dosh to get the super-extra-special-equipment, but I don't have Paypal account (and my bank can't link to paypal, sorry!), or can't buy the game's special currency. So... I use that money for something else, instead.

 

The assumption here is that people playing the game have money for it. Also, unless a game demands payment (I'm assuming we're talking freemium, not WoW private servers) then I don't feel anyone has any obligation to pay them.

Even if playing free, you're still generating a buzz and web traffic for the developers. If they didn't want that, I don't think they'd offer it.

Now for the reason I PERSONALLY don't pay for freemium stuff. I hate shortcuts. If I wanted an unfair advantage I'd go get a game shark and Pokemon Silver. I like the grind, I like the challenge etc. I'd probably more likely to give money to a developer if they took the mium out of freemium and simply asked for donations.

 

Yeah, Freemiums are generally like that. Most of them sell aesthetics and exp boosters, but that's not really pay to win in a freemium unless they content-cap levels and you have to feed in to buy it. So generally they're still worthy of a shot to see if you want to spend more time/possibly some money in them.

Most free to play games get bad raps because of how they copy other games yada yada, but if you play each for their own bit, with your group of friends (and not only just solo - that's important) these games took up a chunk of time for me, for quite awhile.

 

I don't care for subscriptions simply because I don't have the time to constantly play it to justify the fee. Also, I'm wary of MMOs in general because there is nothing stopping a company from closing its servers for whatever reason and for however long they want. If I paid a month's subscription but the servers shut down and it takes them weeks to get back up, I just lost money that could have went elsewhere. Also, if my internet goes down due to a fluke or my computer gets hit and I lose access to the game,that money is wasted again.

Finally, unless it's a game I really like or I'm part of a guild I care about, I tend to give MMOs a month before I move on to something else.

 

I've never played an MMO that costed a monthly subscription, but if I did, I'd only pay for it if I got the same amount of hours or more from the game that I would from a one-time-payment game that I buy up front. If I spend at least that much time on it, then yeah, I'd say a monthly subscription of a decent price is worth it. The only time I really hate MMOs that are not free to play is when they make the game entirely play-to-win; when they advertise the game as being "free to play" but then throw things in your way like, you can only get past this point if you either pay to do so or refer a certain number of friends to the game. That sort of thing. That's just annoying and really sneaky in my opinion.

 

Adding to this: sometimes you may just play a game because there are no better alternatives that you know of. After leaving Tera (because of pc-related problems and not game-related), I tried to get into a couple of other MMOs. I didn't pay for it because it wasn't worth it, which didn't mean that I thought the game was 'bad'. It just meant that while I thought the game was worth playing casually, it was not good enough to justify investing in it further than that.

 

I guess it just boils down to how much time you can spend playing. If games are all you do, or you spend a large portion of your time playing them, I can totally understanding paying for better features, donating to the game, etc. But for some people, they just can't justify paying (or they simply don't have the money)