Whats with people hating F2P?

[AlphaFox]

For me it has to do with quality, for the most part games where I can play for free have much lower drop rates, lower exp gain but that can all be remedied with cash shop items like x2 exp and drops (for like 2 hours) and other such items that people seem to gladly fork over. Even worse in some games they give you horrible or ugly looking normal armor that you almost feel compelled to buy something decent from the cash shop. I know maplestory was a big victim of the above of course now it's just a laughing joke of itself (Though I still wanna try Maplestory 2). Least with subscription games I feel I am on fair ground with everyone, I don't have to worry about getting behind cus everyone else wants to shell out $100 for Exp gain.

Will admit some games have done it right, Path of Exile is one that comes to mind and (least for me) Shin megami Imagine, while its cash shop may have offered shortcuts, I found the combat fun to the point I didn't care, how I miss that game . When compared to several other games I have tried during my break from FF14 a lot of them just seem to fall into the same category of doing insane damage at level 1 (Honestly I can't stand games where your level 1 doing 1000s of damage), steep exp gain needed and bland click and pray systems.

Plus also for subs being only $15, I will gladly take that over a 2 hour long movie at a theater or eating out.

[Elim]

I was thinking of tinkering with SWTOR again, since I played for a month at launch (before it had gone F2P) and found it lacking, but still fun in its own right... Now I think I'll just steer clear. ._.; I knew things had gone downhill even further after they had launched F2P but I didn't anticipate just how bad it had gotten D:

If you sub for a month and stay with the bare basics(don't buy expansions, don't unlock extra planets, don't buy exp boosts, don't glamour your character, etc), leveling from 1-50 is still fun because the stories are well written. Basically stick with vanilla SWTOR. Lv 51+ the stories for all classes are the same, and at some point, your character is no longer voice acted. They also stopped making faction based content. They've slowly simplified the story, along side of finding everything possible to charge for. Past vanilla SWTOR, it no longer sticks out from the regular run-of-the-mil F2P.

It's sad because SWTORs strong suit was their story. Everything was voice acted. Stories had twists depending on your choices. NPCs reacted to your class(example: if you were a sith, imperial NPCs greeted you as "My lord"). Quests changed depending on your faction. But that was the past. RIP high quality content

[BrokenFox]

The pay 2 win thing is kind of a myth, at least in western MMOs. Games that go F2P just undergo a massive drop in quality with most of the dev's work focused on cash grabs. The Old Republic is a good example of this. I hear LOTRO got hit pretty hard too.

[Nix]

stuffu!

Maaaan, that's disheartening ... I had a blast with the smuggler storyline... But I guess now that really is something that will remain better just being thought of in a fond way XD

[ArcMoon]

Rather than focusing on a quality game, f2p games seem designed around a shop, with the content attempting to drive you there. I played two subscription-based games that started out as great games (LOTRO and Rift). They both went f2p a couple of years in and both began their slow but sure descent in quality and fun. It really hurt me to see that happen. I hope I have learned my lesson and will not linger too long (as I did before) should this happen again.

[Elim]

. It really hurt me to see that happen.

I feel your pain bro.

It hurt seeing what happened to SWTOR. I hung on as long as I could, but once they finished streamlining the story, I was done.

I took the hardest hit with the loss of faction based content. The only reason I clung to the game was to play an imperial/crush republic scum. imp4lyfe. Long live the emperor. Imperial pride. Now no one gives a toss if you're an imperial, republic scum or a jawa.

[Nix]

Now no one gives a toss if you're an imperial, republic scum or a jawa.

#Jawalivesmatter

[Elim]

#Jawalivesmatter

......lmao

[Ashkendor]

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.

Exactly this. In FFXIV, we pay for purely cosmetic things like dyes and glamours and mounts. In F2P games, you do still pay for costumes, but the thing is, they aren't purely cosmetic. They usually have huge chunks of stats on them, and are significantly more expensive than anything we have. F2P games also tend to do things like put powerful items into gacha boxes, further maximizing profit. Instead of selling the items directly, they sell you the chance at the items, though they're incredibly rare. 95% of the gacha boxes contain items that range from 'utter crap' to 'marginally useful' and only a small fraction contain the powerful items you're actually after. They can even take it a step further and put (for an example) an entire set of accessories into the boxes. They're each effective on their own, but together they give you an enormous chunk of stats and you can't hope to be a "top player" without it.

F2P games usually give you minimal amounts of inventory and storage space (10-20 slots) and then make additional bag space able to be purchased for a fairly reasonable price through micro-transactions. Once they get that foot in the door by getting you to pay five bucks for inventory now and again, it's easier to get you paying upward of $30-50 for that cool costume you really want (and a lot of the gear is super dull looking, to further push you toward buying costumes) or $1 apiece for a stack of the aforementioned gacha boxes. Some F2P games even sell access to premium cash-shop only areas that are vastly superior to the open world for level grinding. Exp scrolls are another big seller, as are pets and other things that either affect your skill levels or have extra stats.

Then there's enhancement mechanics. On FFXIV, we get our gear from a raid and it has set stats on it. On other games, when an item drops it's got a fairly weak base amount of stats but can be enhanced to be stronger. Usually there's a base level of enhancement you can take it up to before you risk breaking the item (which means you lose it forever), and "protection" items can be purchased through the cash shop to prevent the item from breaking upon further enhancement. Some of them take it a step further and let you slot extra stats into your gear (cards, jewels, etc sort of like materia), which again is done through cash shop items.

It's very, very easy to spend thousands of dollars just trying to be competitive on a F2P game.

Sadly it seems like this game is slowly going towards a cash shop heavy model.

I see no basis for this claim whatsoever. Nothing in the cash shop goes beyond cosmetic items.

[CrystalRainbow]

Pay to play is Everyone is equal.
Free to play isn't Free it shouldn't be called that. People Keep calling it that but's it's not.

Free to access. pay to enjoy. And in many cases Pay more then sub.

I played one Free to play MMO for about 3 months. I enjoyed it. I have paid sub for FFXI, WOW, FFXIV, for over 12 years. All games are Great games. I will note that FFXI is dated and isn't worth it's current sub even more so with no more major updates in the works.

Now if I took my sub of $12/ month and dropped it on a Free to play game I would ask WHY am I spending money if it's Free to play. Here is the problem.. To play and get the same out of FFXIV as I do out of a Free to Play game. normally I would need to spend more then $12/ month.