There’s actually very little grinding involved in LoL if you pay for characters using RP. Thus, IP is spent only on runes. However, level 1 runes are 1/10 price of level 3 runes while being at 50% power so you can experiment with new rune set for cheap.
That said, I sunk a lot of $ into LoL mainly because of skins.
F2P fighting game needs to find a way to make $ while keeping game balanced.
Its such a complicated topic and business model if you think of it.
What do you think is a ‘sustainable service’ for FGs?
I’m really not a fan of pay to unlock gameplay content with real money (which TR and DOA5 are practicing) and i don’t think many other people are either. Its kinda…you know, defeats the purpose of F2P. Its not truely a F2P, its just an extended demo of the game.
An incentive to play the game is (other than it being a fun, addictive game to play) helps. That combined with an Incentive to PAY for something as well is vital. For people that are unfamiliar with dota2’s F2P model, allow me to explain:
Dota2 has ZERO gameplay elements unlocked. Player is immediately available all game modes, all characters. There are no ‘gems/runes’ that alter stats.
An 1 hour noob and 1000+hr veteran are on the same playing field. Sounds familiar right? just like a traditional FGs.
Now Dota2’s profits are 100% from cosmetic stuff. Its has a ‘item dropping system’ where
Basically it creates this obsession amongst players to want cool items, rare items and collect and show off their e-items.
Rediculous I know but it works. It works wonderful. People fucking buy this stuff, its not that different from buying Alt costumes in FGs.
And if you’re disciplined, you can still play and enjoy the game without paying a penny.
Sorry to get a bit off topic but this is why I personally prefer and believe dota2 business model is the best right now.
No. Tekken Revolution is an extended demo of the game. Because you have to pay to play it. If you don’t buy tokens then you’re assed out for the next 2 1/2 hours.
For League of Legends, the game is absolutely playable to you (any and all modes). DOA5 Core Fighters does not work on a token system. The game is also available to you in the way that you want to play it unless you want story mode. Story mode is extra, since that’s sorta like a single player campaign. In LOL, you get your first handful of characters for free, then you make enough IP to purchase all the really cheap champions, and with enough saving, you can afford the 1350/3150 champions. All that is free, and within reasonable playing time.
You have to think about the underlying definition of Free to play.
FREE
TO
PLAY
You are playing the game, FOR FREE. As in, the WHOLE GAME. I’m not talking about individual characters/runes and what not. But the main game itself, being able to go into matchmaking, and go into ranked mode. Competing with people. That’s free. You play that as much as you want.
Going back to Tekken, that is NOT a free to play game because the game effectively locks you out of the game if you don’t have tokens. Now THAT game is an extended demo, because you can’t actually access the game when you want. A true FREE to PLAY game allows you to play the game at all times.
If a lot of people weren’t fans of unlocking game content, then LOL wouldn’t be as popular as it is, and people would just jump ship to DOTA2, but clearly there’s a massive fanbase for LOL, enough to have worldwide championships that pay out in 100,000’s of thousands of dollars. Personally, I like to unlock shit. I like the feeling of unlocking something I wanted and when I get it, I am satisfied with my purchase. I like that I am customizing the game the way I want to play it, and how I want to play it. I like that I don’t have to pay for characters I don’t want to use.
That’s all good and all, but I guarantee you that DOTA2 is not making nearly as much money as LOL, where almost everything is monetized. I prefer the LOL model because it allows me to customize my experience. I can choose to use money, time, or a combination of both.
DOTA2 does not have any runes/masteries and therefore the strategic depth to that part of the game doesn’t exist. and THAT’S FINE. Both games are different. I like DOTA2 as well. I beta tested it while it was in closed Beta and that was before we had the ability to pass out invites.
I think that maybe both business models have a place in F2P fighting games. Maybe we can buy/unlock characters but costumes will be behind a permanent paywall. Then we can have an accessory/clothing drop system that has a random chance to drop after each match. If we don’t want to grind out these items then we could have an option to just go to the store and buy clothing/accessory packs or something. Special effects can be sold behind a paywall as well.
You see, the thing is, DOTA2 has a great system that’s good, FOR YOU, for PLAYERS but you have to consider that Valve is doing this for other reasons, that may not be financial. They simply may be doing this entirely out of passion (the whole Valve team worked on it, incl Gabe Newell, and they played the alpha and beta day in/out). They might have other monetization through tournaments and stuff like that. All this stuff is great, but Valve built their game around their own business plan.
LOL’s system is as well, but LOL’s is also more generic because that’s the main way that they profit from the game, and how they run their company. Valve runs Steam and such, so DOTA2 is only one product they profit from. Riot depends on profit from LOL. That’s what makes their model more applicable to FG’s because, I know that as players, a lot of you don’t want to think about this, but in the end, they are a business, and if they are making a F2P game, they need stuff to sell to players and a reason to keep people playing the game. Accessories and items may not carry a fighting game because people only care about the character. You need more stuff to sell to players, so that means Characters/Costumes/Accessories/Effects/Optional modes (like Story) and many more I might be forgetting. It all sounds like a cash grab but the whole point is to customize the customer so that we continue to use the service (the game).
LoL’s system can’t work in a fighting game especially one made from the ground up.
You won’t have a huge cast of characters since it’s a new fighter 20 would be pushing it to limit.
You can’t have the characters locked as they can have literally different mechanics like characters in Jojo’s Bizarre Adventure.
Character Customization make it where you have to log in on you’re own a account. Which is a time consuming process. And requires more networking services which can cost a lot more money on an already poor community in video games.
The thing is I know which Capcom games where they thought about customization, but during the process they just axed them for good reasons as it would require too much resources and likely not be used in the long run. And you would be surprised how early it was.
Valve used the system from Team Fortress and transplanted it into DotA. That certainly explains why I always see chests on sale on Steam marketplace.
The way the LoL is described is not a system I want for a fighting game. Most fighting game players to do not want to grind to unlock characters. Why you think most Fighters now no longer have unlockable characters? It’s tedious, forces a player to do something they likely don’t want to do and prevents people from jumping into the game if the unlockable character happens to be the one they are interested in. They sure as hell ain’t gonna pay to unlock. SFxT is enough to kill that in the bud.
With the cost of developing characters in a fighting game being definitely higher than in a MOBA (SFIV characters cost over half a million $ each), I don’t think having the game F2P with all characters available is viable.
This is why, if you ask alot of folks, having the option of both retail and F2P is a decent compromise.
We can go on forever debating what the true definition of F2P is but my point is you’re still limited to 4 characters out of what 30+? in DoA5 untill you drop money. Who the hells going to say 'SF4 is great! Its totally free to play altho I can only use Ryu Ken Chun Guile!
Hence the extended demo. Its not the same as LoL or dota2 where you can get these without paying $.
Shit, I totally forgot about this.
Dota2 chars are aready built on existing resources (Dota1). Actually most of the game is haha.
How is it possible for DotA2 to built on existing resources? The original game was Warcraft III mod. I would think Blizzard wouldn’t take kindly to their assists being used
Competitively, LoL isn’t F2P. There is no way you can grind and keep up competitively with everyone else who can shed out money. A lot of Riot’s income is being able to shit out characters every 2weeks-1month. That’s just not possible for fighting games by any stretch and is where the biggest problem for a F2P FG lies; long term sustainability. Cosmetics aren’t enough. If they were, then there would be no need to switch from the retail model and sell cosmetics as DLC like they do currently. Unless you expect a MASSIVE influx of players to start and keep playing for a long time to offset the profits lost from what you would get from a traditional retail model.
It’s probably better to look away from LoL when discussing F2P, merely because Riot struck it lucky with LoL. No one is going to come close to that big of a playerbase in a while. Better to look at other games that have sustainable models while keeping a more realistic playerbase in mind.
The #1 source of Riot’s income is from skin sales, not character sales. It’s F2P competitively if you want to put in the time playing to get the IP required. A lot of top streamers have a huge cache of IP because they play so much daily.
Otherwise, just use RP to unlock characters in the roles that you like. Use IP for runes if you want to maximize your rune page. A good page that can be used for most character is Hybrid pen marks/ armor yellow / MRperlevel blue / Hybrid pen quints.
Just because a game is F2P doesn’t mean they have to make it easy to get everything for free.
LoL is the top F2P because:
Able to attract new players. Mostly done by making the game fun to play. They remove non-fun mechanics and unnecessary complexity from the game continually.
Keep old player entertained by offering new content such as new hero and item choices. Skins serves as something novel and a good money generating source.
Business model and F2P revenue generating sources works to generate profit for the company.
Practically no cheaters online.
If a F2P fighting game is to be successful, it will need to duplicate the above major points.
I want to pay 60$ or less and unlock everything non purely aesthetic immediately. Where’s that option?
I don’t give a shit how much money a non-competitive business model makes if at the end of the day I don’t want to play it myself. I like Tekken yet I quit playing Revolution shortly after it came out EXACTLY because of stat leveling and unlocking.
The definition of F2P doesn’t fucking matter. It’s just a PR buzzword anyway. What matters is if you think the game’s structure is good to you as a player or not. (Not to the companies’ bank accounts.) And a structure that makes it hard for the player to be on an even field as far as access to tools go is a bad structure for fighting games.
Though the grinding to unlock is still there, they added an option to player matches to remove stats.
Still exist in ranked though.
The update comes out either tonight or tomorrow for NA.
Anything remotely resembling a character unlock system is awful. The only way I would play a free to play fighting game is if the actual fighting game part was free, with all characters, and they just charged for costumes and other cosmetic changes
If done properly f2p games could be convenient as I would not have to keep buying games I am not that interested in just to keep providing setups for my local community gatherings
I’m definitely in the minority when I say this: But I like unlocking characters. I used to randomly reset my MvC2 save for something to do.
Let’s me try out characters I wouldn’t normally pick, mostly because I’m forced to.
However, on TR, I hate that you don’t choose which ones you want to unlock. It’s like, yay… I have Bryan, Leo, Ling, and Steve… Ling/Leo is one of my Tag teams, so I’m good… but what if I were a Jin or Alisa player… Here I am, sitting on a bunch of characters I don’t use. Worse if I’m Alisa, because I couldn’t even just use Kaz in the meantime. Nobody plays even close to Alisa.
I don’t mind unlocking characters as long as its not for versus.
I don’t know, ask Namco. We’ve been discussing about how they could release a physical version to go along with the F2P version. So regarding DOA5U, you can just go buy the game for 40-50 bucks and get everything but the costumes.
Blame Namco. Instead of allowing us to use our gift points how we want, they made it random. If you got to choose who you wanted to unlock, it might’ve been a whole different story. Blame the stat leveling on Namco. It was poorly implemented and it’s getting patched soon. This thread is about discussing ways to AVOID these problems, in the hopes that FG developers see it.
It does matter. Because Tekken Revolution isn’t necessarily a true free to play game. You have to pay if you want to level up and unlock characters. Not only that, but you either pay more if you lose a lot, or pay less if you win a lot. That doesn’t necessarily make it a good game now does it? The business model matters because it can mean the difference between you enjoying the game, or hating the game.
Remember that this isn’t a thread about proving who’s right or who’s wrong. It’s about throwing in ideas you like or discuss what you don’t like. That can go a long way in helping developers identify what may or may not work.
Also ask Riot…
Last I played LOL, they had character packs you could buy.
Keep in mind that runes in LoL is IP only and requires some grinding to get. However, a maxed out level 3 rune page only provide a minor starting advantage to your character. Your actual play during the game is what matters.
Keep in mind that level 1 runes are 50% the power of level 3 runes for 1/10th the price. This means you can easily get a rune page full of level 1 runes by winning a few games. A win gives you +100 to +150IP. A level 1 regular rune is 19IP. As you can see, there’s no grinding involved to get them.
If a F2P game want to be successful, it has to learn lessons about how to make $ and attract players from the most successful F2P.
You can buy a character pack of Ryu, Ken, Chun and Zangief but if you want the FULL cast that will end up costing 500$. Also you need to get your account to level 12 to be able to use the better super arts. F2P SF5 let’s go!
DOTA2 is ALSO very successful (much more than any fighting game is in any case) so why not copy that instead?