Quote Originally Posted by ElHeggunte View Post
Actually, your average player tends to spend more on F2P games than they do on subscription-based games like WoW and FFXIV. Game quality also tends to suffer which is why the turnover rate for F2P games coming and going is so great. Going F2P also tends to start heading down the dark slippery slope of becoming P2W. Nobody likes P2W.
Nope, your average player actually doesnt spend a penny on it. F2P games rely on people who spend hundreds on the game (whales).

When Rift went free to play it had a reasonable model. The idea was that you still had a subscription but it give buffs and the rest of the money would come from mounts and costumes. Eventually the buffed the subscription so if you dodnt subscribe you couldnt cap your currency easily etc.. True PTW.

They quickly found out that you have to output lots of these to get the money so they turned to the greatest evil you now get in games - lottery boxes. You always got a prize so it's not gambling - loophole - but what you wanted was had very low in odds. Instead of outright purchasing that mount or costume it was now locked behind RNG with a chance to get it. These boxes brought in tons of money. New mount lottery boxes because world event. They were sneaky. You could do dailies to get a version of the mounts but it took about six months so by the time you got it there were other shines.

Trion are the western publisher of ArcheAge and they adopted the lottery box method there too. Any event the good costumes are behind a lottery box.

F2P is only viable when you employ dirty ways to get money from people like lottery boxes. Sadly FF14 is increasingly putting desirable things on the cash shop.