The Ideal Free-to-play Fighter

Current Fighting Games Fighting Game Discussion
21

I’ll spare gameplay details, but it is a (singleplayer) game that can technically be finished in less than half an hour, potentially. However, it is also difficult in a way that forces you to learn details of your encounters. When you die, it is game over. Each subsequent playthrough, you are levelled up in the sense that you have more knowledge with which to approach the same game. This is essentialy the same as arcade games of quality (in particular genres), yet it does not depend on a credit system in any way.

I feel that the mentality of meritorious “pay less if you are better” is a bit upside down. While it certainly does create a powerful incentive for the player to improve, on the operator side it is a simple cash grab. We have developed a nostalgic, positive view of arcades and arcade games. icycalm’s article is quite romanticized and, in spirit, ignores or forgives the frustrations and lame punishing design of some of these games. It is quite possible to retain the “punishing” part without a credit system, people do not play arcade games simply to spend as little credits as possible! That is, of course, secondary.

In the context of arcades as a business and social gathering, this is perfectly acceptable, desirable even. There is no doubt it leads to games with what we now call arcade elements of design. However, is it necessary for them? Are those elements only possible (or cheapened in the absence of) a credit saving motivation? I do not think so.

Binding of Isaac is ~$5 on Steam! Well worth the price.

22

As I said, it’s a way to allow an initial free play with an option to pay for continues.

23

I understand, I believe that naturally leads to design where squeezing out credits is the main purpose. Why else would you have such a system after all, if the design elements can exist without this incentive on the player? (e.g. building up a resource through gameplay that can be used to purchase continues)

You can actually continue in Isaac, but the ways are gameplay specific and would be tedious to state. In most cases, you die and it’s over. I call it a natural evolution of arcade design because this level of punishment would be unacceptable with a credit system. Yet in this game, it is acceptable, fun, and reminiscsent of the difficulty of arcade titles.

24

I believe the argument is that a title that unfairly squeezes out credits eventually makes less money since people just stop playing it. A title that’s well balanced however continues to make money since people are able to see that you can play it without continuing, as long as you’re good enough.

I mean, we already see this in the shmup community, where “euroshmups” which often have true, unavoidable damage situations (among other issues) are frowned upon, meanwhile, Japanese arcade developed shmups are preferred.

25

Any of you motherfuckers remember Kwon Ho?

That shit was so great. I don’t really know how much of it could be applied to a future game because my memory’s kind of hazy on it, but it was a lot of fun for me.

26

Absolutely true, but this balance is entirely* *secondary to the actual credit system nonetheless (imo). If one accepts that these elements and games of this nature can exist independent of the system, then whatever triumphs it has seem more like what would naturally occur to prevent these games from failing rather than deliberate and good design. This is the romanticization I was talking about related to the insomnia article. This is not to say that such a system would be terrible, just that it isn’t the evolutionary impetus (bad games die out) or cause of games of this type, good or bad. That is my only disagreement, hence I question what it would add outside an arcade context. It would work fine.

27

No one likes Rumble Fighter:(

Kwonho was friggin godlike, i hate ijji http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0W6NCr1Mj1g&feature=related Was not perfect, but still great.

Atleast we have Jingwu online.

28

Rumble Fighter wasn’t much of a Free To Play at all, and the community is horrendous.

There’s Lost Saga where there’s 50+ characters with tag-in combos, including Ragna, Sol, Jin, May, and Hazama as crossovers.
They also actually care about the balance and just rebalanced 16 of them recently.
However, it has MvC3’s problem where a ton of optimal combos are piss easy and need zero hit confirm due to just about every skill being an unblockable.

Example -
Special Forces is a black ops operative from the namesake who’s CQC combos and being able to run while shooting allow it to do mid-range strings easily.
My optimal combo would be stun with bayonet toss/knifed heel drop (same command in ground/air), leading to aimed flashbang with rolling tackle (his/her dash) as a crossup for the stun to C4 explosive.
You can do it the other way around, C4 OTG to aimed flashbang to heel drop for MUCH more stun for OTG hits, a free reload, etc. That is with more higher risk though.
Unfortunately, you can do the same damage with just using a much easier character’s faint hit as a hit confirm to a mage’s OTG attack.
The average stun mages give can be FOUR SECONDS.
Which you can then combo into sillier things like a ringout setup, disabling your opponent’s equipment, which in this game makes you unable to tag out and use the skill associated with that equipment, or swapping your opponent’s controls.

That and the game needs nazi levels of moderation with all the forced frame skips, enlonged invincibility frames, and lag swapping.
You can even temporarily disconnect yourself so you end up instantly in the thick of the battlefield or run away.

For another, there’s GetAmped2.
The balance is actually okay for the most part…if you’re using manual guard.
You see, they thought it was a **GREAT **idea to make auto guard block on priority clash.
Auto guard users can use the same exact tactics a manual guard user can use as well, such as crossups like overheads and unblockables that don’t work on them.
So along with the weak = fast and strong = slow priority standards, all one has to do is get a fast weapon and mash weak combos for a decent win rate.

When I say the balance is okay for the most part, there’s a few weapons you can use that are outright better than their just as rare equals.
Thunder Cross, a well…Lightning Control Mech System, has one of the fastest combos, a passthrough tackle that’s safe against most accessories reach, an EX version of that as a super is a self-contained unblockable setup.
It doesn’t replace your main fighting style’s air attacks and last strong hit, meaning you have a safe dive kick, above average health, and a launch combo if you’re using Fighter.

There’s also Grandchase, but that can be pretty much summed up as "WHO GETS THEIR ULTIMATE IN FIRST?"
Elsword, its spiritual sequel, removes that problem, but the balance between characters is out of whack in the first place with the mage ironically having the BEST DEF IN THE GAME if you boost her stats enough.

But yeah, KwonHo was great, Ijji isn’t though, so it was doomed from the start.
What happened to DOA Online anyway?

29

Though i wouldn’t call rumble fighter balanced, those tiers can be overcome due to the flexibility of the movement options. I’ve seen top players beat other top players using some of the worst ranked styles in the game. As long as you know its advantages and disadvatages, you should be fine as long as you stop a players offense with counters and make them think twice about pressing a button. Except sage for obvious reasons.

30

Not to mention the effect it had on competitive TF2. After two years of competitive, I finally gave up because the game was getting to be too much of a joke. Weapon bans and theories on balancing the game was getting pretty out of hand, Valve was adding items nearly monthly and most of them weren’t fit to be used in competitive, or were far too good, and it’s really preventing the game from being taken seriously with sponsors…nobody wants to put any money into a team if they wanna play Sims Fortress 2.

31

It doesn’t help that Valve often uses the online community as a testing group. Remember the original Sandman? Valve released an item that was obviously untested and gave one too much reward for barely any effort and completely broke the Medic’s uber, and while it was instantly banned in comp play, it ravaged pubs for a full month before they nerfed it.

32

I think it could work. I’d like to see the free game as the standard modes and a few character styles.

Then pay for extra styles and options to customise your character, a la Soul Calibur 4.

Maybe each of the styles could have sub settings, kind of like Ultra or Super Art selection, or even Bust/Slash, and so on, so even if you are using the saame style as someone else, you can further customise it to make it unique, PLUS getting to choose the entire appearance of the character.

Further to this, you could have a stage creator, again with extra items and settings you can buy to configure it how you want.

Finally, make it so you can save all your customisations as a “hardfile” on portable storage so you can play offline too, but then you won’t be able to download that data and change things (to prevent people just copying all their friends shiz).

33

Here is the problem with “performance based pay to play”. Anyone who is bad will quit the game, because it feels punishing to be bad at the game. This is terrible for retention. It’s also insanely difficult to monetize well, and in general, the player will feel ripped off if they’re not getting content for their money. It’s best to mask that through “subscription” fees that give you “unlimited” access for a month (similar to Netflix, where you are getting content directly for money, but you’re still paying for access of a service for a set period of time). This kind of model also makes you feel bad for trying new content (if play x I’m going to pay money), which makes new content introduction feel awful. Instead, if you pay for access to new content directly, you’ve done the same thing while the same thing happens, but they player won’t feel directly punished for taking such an action.

Basically, “Playing to win” turns into “Paying to lose” with this model. There’s a lot of reasons why arcades died. The business model was one of them.

34

Honestly, like someone else said in more words… X-copy League of Legends’ model, except instead of individual characters with skins, have the player use a fully customized avatar ( perhaps attach some ‘default’ avatar to a given style for flavor purposes ). Fighting styles obtainable after investing a certain amount of time in the game ( less time if you win a lot, more time if you lose a lot ) or with real money. Customization options for your character, which should be purely aesthetic, should be a mix, with a few simpler options that you can buy with the in game currency, but higher end options costing real money.

35

Thinking about it more it could work if it was set up something like this:

Every character has the same set of universal normals but…

Players can select body type (with each body type having a universal set of normals) but a heavy body type would have higher health and stamina, but overall slower normals and jumps. The reverse applies to smaller body types and there being an even middle type to choose from.

Each body type has a set of specials that can be assigned. Let’s say a normal body type could only be assigned 4-5 Specials whereas Light and Heavy could be assigned 6-7 Specials.

But specials can take up more than one slot. So let’s say you can go with an ST style 360 with just as much damage, but that takes up two or even three slots depending on body type. But if you get a Half Circle grab it only takes up one slot, but doesn’t do as much damage, and maybe there’s grabs that do less damage but can be comboed and followed up (like Clark from KOF) into but uses up two slots like the 360.

It could work out. A developer could use a predominately 3D engine (Probably not Source but Unreal Tech) and render the whole thing like Rumble Fish (A pretty bad ass fighter I might add that was worked on by former SNK employees). The real challenge would be balance and possibly netcode and getting players to connect within their region so U.S. players aren’t constantly being connected with some dude in China at 500 ping.

*The dev could go even farther and offer different modes with varying Tag Modes (MVC1 or 2 style, and KOFXI style), or one on one, or KOF style, or Items like War of the Gems or like in Survival Mode in Garou. Plus each mode could have Team Supers, EX moves, EX Supers, Parries, etc.

36

The performance based model does have some possible benefits. Say for example the game holds weekly (or even daily) tournaments among players and the prize is some nifty customizable aesthetic option. You don’t have to pay to just play the game or play against other people, but if you want to enter a tournament for those prizes, then there’ll be an entry fee of sorts.

37

That is a very, very interesting angle. I haven’t decided whether or not I agree with your line of reasoning, but it’s a really compelling take on a tired, old issue.

38

I think the psychology behind monetization is extremely important. Moreso than people give credit for it. The most important thing is you need to be as empowering to the player as possible with your model, even if the money you make is exactly the same, the way the player feels about it completely changes the level of success you have.

You can theoretically make 12 different F2P business models that would in your given market make the “same” amount of money. However, the one that makes the player feel the best is going to be the most successful outside of that vacuum.

Imagine for a second that you don’t have the drive to be the best at an arcade game.

If you are to monetize at 1 dollar per 3 minutes of play on average, which do you think will appeal to every single person on average:
50 people play for 1 minute, and one guy players for an extremely large amount of time because he’s played the game a lot and he’s really good at it -or-
Charging 1 dollar for 3 minutes of play, and if you’re really good, you play more for free (although there could be say, less content so no one can hog the game for as long).

Under business model 1, you will most likely have low retention rate, but theoretically make more money than model 2 assuming a perfect world with infinite playerbase. However, business model 2 sacrifices money for player retention. Suddenly each person is buying a guaranteed amount of content they can enjoy (and hopefully find fair), but the model also enables higher retention because they feel far less punished than model 1, while still gaining reward.

Plug that model into the competitive part of an arcade:
The good player plays for a long time.
The bad player has to pay every time they get trashed. Unless they’re playing someone equally bad, they are getting an extremely low value for their money, and there is no guarantee of getting anything out of their money. Suddenly, what is their incentive to play? Assuming they have no desire to put in a large amount of time into the game, there is none.

Now assume they can play for 3 minutes, trashed or not trashed. Their money goes a lot further. Even if they get stomped, they have a safety net of content that they get for their money, while the good player suddenly keeps a similar amount of value for theirs. In current arcades, if you play a very strong player, your money is pretty much robbed from you.

Put yourself in the seat of an average games player, the person who likes a cheap thrill for a few bucks. This is your average consumer. The arcade model is not suited towards them. The only reason it worked in the first place was there was no competition.

With consoles, you are making a pretty established contract with a player. I pay X money, I get to do whatever the hell I want with the content I just bought, and I get all of it. Pretty hard to beat that!

Hopefully this helps people understand F2P business models a bit better.

39

Apart from the usual vanity items and character customisations and so forth, heres another possible thing to monetise.

For free, you get training mode with all characters. If the game allows offline, then all characters with offline as well.
For free, you get to play online with 1 character of your choice. You can change which char you pick, but you have to wait a week between changes.

You pay money to buy extra character “slots”. Possibly you dont buy the slots, you subscribe to them. (ie. paying account has access to more slots, etc.)

Sure, this kinda sucks for those used to the traditional model, but it’s “tough but fair”. You’re not restricted from trying characters out, and having more slots doesnt give you much of an advantage. People can stick to 1 char and perform perfectly fine. So its a reasonably legit way of extorting money from players.

40

I think a fighter that’s F2P would need to be very good for people to consider playing competitively. Buying a fighter in the first place is a small commitment because you put money into it, you WANT to learn the game to at least a basic level. With F2P, I’m afraid that people will give up easier than with paid games.
Anyways, I imagine a game like guilty gear, with tons of unique characters, but no truly broken one since there will be mechanics that help defense.
Guilty gear had perfect blocking, burst, and the mechanic that didn’t let someone steamroll too easily. Then again, it punished turtles with the same system so maybe that could go.
Then when there are maybe 50 characters, and the balance is good, people will need a reason to get good. This all depends on the initial scene, are there tournaments? Developer involvement?

Best case scenario is that its taken seriously as a real fighter, but this will be hard since people generally aren’t willing to get into a new fighter if nobody else is playing it. Its kinda like a snowball, when it gets going it’ll be big soon, but the question is how to get it going…