dont know where either one of you are getting your 4 beers a month= a month license. i dont drink no 30 dollar beer. and also. if a game is “free to play” then it should be free to play. IF you advertise FREE BEER but then only give people .5 ounces and only 1 sip per day. unless you buy 15$ worth of stuff. then its not really “free beer” and the people you draw in with free beer are not happy and get a foul taste for the game and tell there friends about this “bad place that did cheap advertising”. its the same for this game. sure its “free to play” but its also “pay to have fun with friends” and its not 4 beers a month. its 10$ for a month. the same as EVE and WOW and other MASSIVE content games. call me cheap and whatever crap you think makes your hog bigger to sit on. but i dumped 40 into this game already. im paying my dues. but im not pridefull enough to overlook fundamental problems.
and to be CLEAR. pay to lessen the grind? perfectly ok. pay to play with friends? NOT ok. sure in Wot it works or whatever. but this game can’t afford to have the same model of a high player base game. seeing as we have hardly any player base and losing even what we have faster than ever.
This. I hate to see people trying to throw you into a guilt trip for not pooling out your income on a Free2Play game. I played in a group yesterday in which it took about 5 tries in queues averaging about 6 minutes each for Regular matches. We would insta queue in Arcade a couple times, but there was still increasing wait time. Sometimes when i login as well i get thrown in a queue because the server is full. The point being that i see the game becoming gradually slower as there aren’t enough active players and the server not being able to handle more players if they were there.
Another point i want to make on the F2P model is that it can be thrown for a lure, like alot of “deals” and “bargains” websites do. The websites may or may not offer substancial content that would satisfy a price point for the consumer, but just by being there you’re catching on an incentive. You want a low price, and it shouldn’t hurt to window browse, but it does. You end up spending what wasn’t in your budget. You come in to save money, but may end up spending more than you did than not being there. Even if the “price” of being a member of the site was free.
I’m seeing that the numbers of hours played on the game is being thrown around as a guilt trip “for not giving back”. The support for a free2play game can come from an appreciating playerbase that wants to see the best for the game and it’s servers. People say that they want to give back, but they don’t do it no strings attatched. I hardly hear of someone donating for the sake of a donation. Which should be exactly that, a donation, a gift, a contribution, charity, and not expecting something back immediately or at all. You all stand by this point of aiding in contribution to the game, but expect TopMark weapons, topmark ships, ship slot, bonus exp gain, bonus rep gain, nonlimited squads, and everything else that comes with “Premium”.
You may try and throw me for a guilt trip for “not giving back”, but at least i don’t stand by a point where my contributions are immediately reimbursed like a …purchase. I can spend days on the game, earning my rep/cred in battles to get the Mark III weapon or module of that tier, just so someone can shortcut me by throwing out cash for their “Premium”. There’s the real slap in the face, is allowing players to just pay their way into a game without any real investment to the game. Which is prone to create a short term playerbase, lesser individual skillset, and a plethora of other things.
As people have mentioned this is still is currently “beta” some how…even though it is well beyond short term. There are still signficant problems addressed by many players. It boils down to the point if it all will be worth the long term investment. Yes I have paid for quite a bit of games in the $50-60 range, but not without close speculation. Still at the end of the day I still have the disc, it’s replay value is what it is to me. What i paid for will still be there when i want it, you can’t say the same for such a dynamic that we are currently in. The point being that alot of peole are still on speculation, they don’t want to throw their money down a road that’s going to become a beaten path. I play with a group that generally plays only F2P MMOs it’s hard seeing what is going to grab our intrest and what will keep us long term. If i threw about my money on everyone of those i’d easily break into my budget for living for the month.
I’d like to see that socialability not be hindered, that players can’t just pay their way out, donations are treated as such, and that this game’s player base doesn’t keel over due to as KCIV said “overlook(ing) fundamental problems”.
friends and community are key to f2p games. If you are looking for a good group of guys to play with then you can add me ingame “KCIV4” friendly bunch working on building the community :)