I’m making this new thread despite existing threads because this one is geared a bit differently than the rest. I apologize for the opening statement being a bit crude, as I haven’t been here in a long time and the most recent fighting game I’ve played is Tekken Revolution with my last serious games being UmvC3 and MK9 back when they were released. That said let’s get to the point.
The free-to-play model is becoming more widespread, especially with the success of games like League of Legends. No doubt that game companies want to take advantage of this new business model and fighting games in particular are attractive due to the content of the game and how it can be setup.
The most notable free to play fighters being talked about these days are Tekken Revolution and DOA5 Core Fighters. Both games use a wildly different business model. Tekken Revolution is essentially a timed demo. You have to pay more to play, similar to arcade games. The unlock system is sort of a time-release-like function. Conversely, DOA5 Core Fighters offers the characters you want to play, at a cost. It’s special costumes are available to purchase at the digital store when the game immediately lands. You are able to purchase the story-mode as an additional option however you will get multiplayer and practice mode for free.
I wanted to bring this up because Capcom is looking to get into the F2P fighter scene, and they have considerable IP’s to choose from, to make this game. Yoshinori Ono is looking to Tekken Revolution and DOA5 Core Fighters closely to see if he wants to do a F2P game. My opinion is that he is looking at the wrong titles when he can look at a successful model such as LOL. It’s not in the same genre, but it’s business model is sound. It. makes. money. DOA5 uses a similar model to LOL but note that only Tekken’s model is completely different from the rest.
If we want a successful F2P games, we must let the companies know what we want, what works and what doesn’t. LoL is an excellent example of being able to pull the customer/player in, keep us engaged, even if we don’t spend any money, it ensures the customer still spends a lot of time on the game and is having fun with it.
Unfortunately Tekken Revolution utterly fails in this regard. In Tekken Revolution, we get 5 tokens to play with for multiplayer. Once that’s spent, we lose all capability of playing the game to earn the game’s rewards (gift points for the next character). The token system rewards skilled players, so skilled players will spend 1-5 bucks on tokens but poorer skilled players will either spend more on the game, or spend less time playing the game. Both are counter-intuitive as the game becomes less engaging and restricts it to a game where only the skilled would bother to spend money.
In addition to that, the gift point/character unlock system is extremely flawed. One cannot simply pick or obtain the character he/she wants to play, it is randomly unlocked and only after significant time investment into the game. As a fighting game, this is very very bad and also counter-intuitive to getting more people to spend time on the game. People need to have their mains so that they can develop them and spend more time honing their skills against other characters.
To top it all off, Tekken Revolution does not have a way to practice in the game, which is essential for every fighting game. Yes, I know that a practice mode is coming in the very next update, but to ship without it was extremely poor judgment on Harada’s part. The RPG mechanics and the new invincibility broke Tekken as we know it. Many people just max out power to kill somebody in a few hits or throws. The invincibility moves encourage people to do unsafe moves and when you go to counter, they’ll do an invincibility to power through it. Making what was once an unsafe tactic into a safe one. Any offensive strings can be stopped cold with an invincibility move, so the way that you are offensive is completely different in TR. It changes the game so much that it hardly resembles Tekken anymore. Of course, the better you get, the better you can deal with these things, however the problem is, it fosters a terrible community because people are encouraged to do bad things and therefore that is all they will do, b/c it works. These new mechanics hurt not only TR, but all of fighting games.
Enough about Tekken Revolution, how about DOA5? In my opinion, DOA5 sounds like EVERYTHING I wanted TR to be. Right off the bat, you can play 4 base characters, and immediately be able to purchase additional characters. You can also purchase additional costumes that already existed for the original DOA5 title. There is no token system, so you can play as much or as little as you like. While this system is AWESOME for us consumers, it doesn’t sound like a system that can thrive for the company. Not only should we be able to purchase our characters, but we should be able to earn them, albeit at a significant time investment (similar to LOL) and at different levels of time investment. There needs to be a reason why we should buy more than 1 or 2 characters. Other than aesthetic reasons, I’m not too sure what the solution is. Speaking of aesthetics, new costumes should be a healthy source of revenue in the F2P model. In addition to the costumes already purchasable, they should continue to make more and maybe add in special effects to attacks.
While the RPG mechanic in Tekken Revolution completely failed, it isn’t necessarily a bad idea. It was just implemented wrong. The skill points should be used to alter the properties of a move. For example, if I wanted to power up WGF, this particular power up could be an extra 1-5 base damage (just throwing example out there) or it could be less frame disadvantage on block, or even a little extra height on the lift. Each move would have a small but advantageous benefit of sinking in skill points and you would have to sink a lot of skill points into one move, not to mention other moves that makeup your entire character. So one move may not be end all be all, but a combination of powered up moves could prove very advantageous for you, but not in a way that breaks the game. Your Kazuya might be very different than someone else’s Kazuya.
Anyways, this post is getting a bit long but for the most part I’ve gotten out the ideas floating around in my head. I think it’s important for game developers to understand that if they want to make a successful F2P game, it’s important to utilize the proper model that both makes it fun for players and makes them a lot of money in return. There’s a lot of potential in making a F2P fighter. Maybe we could have a tourney mode where we pay in and we get a reward similar to Riot Points that enable us to purchase new characters in the game’s store? Possibilities are endless. Thanks for reading if you’ve made it this far 