Quote Originally Posted by A5ko View Post
Planetside 2 and Guild Wars 2 (to some degree), are two reasons why F2P is the future. You're kidding yourselves if you think Pay to Play has a future when it's quite clear triple A games can exist without an on-going cost and still pull in a massive amount of cash and subs.

Cosmetic items through cash shops is how these games will make the money, just because you don't like it or think it's Pay To Win isn't going to stop business's from going ahead and doing it anyway.

Are you saying that you would not play a seriously polished and excellent F2P game, just because someone could spend a couple of pounds on a cosmetic item? As for comments akin too "In the end you WILL spend more", this is true IF YOU ARE PREPARED TOO. No one is saying you have to buy anything.

I despise Pay to Win, i've embraced Free to Play, it IS the future. Suck it up.
I don't think it's an issue of what is or isn't "The Future", it's an issue of what does or doesn't fit with the game mechanics. In order to profit enough from the game to keep it running, there needs to be enough incentive to buy the in game content that's for sale. That means making the paid content either more enjoyable or more helpful than the rest of the content, leaving those who can't afford much of the content with a less-enjoyable experience than someone whose only advantage is having more expendable capital. I don't think that's what the designers who made FFXIV had in mind when they made this game, especially seeing how much of the harder challenges rely a lot on teamwork.

I'm not saying F2P models can't be done right given a game where it fits with the game mechanics, I'm just saying that it's not the end-all-be-all of MMO payment methods, and I don't see it becoming so in the future.