Jenn aSide
Smokin Aces.
13815
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Posted - 2016.03.23 14:56:36 -
[1] - Quote
There is simply nothing good about 'free to play' to me. Companies who make f2p games love it because it makes them money. But it's the how of it all that sucks.
In a F2P game most people are free riders (or mostly free except for the odd impulse purchase) who do little or nothing for the game's community other than make any kind of local/global chat a cess pit. The money is made from abusing the few "whales" willing and capable (or sick enough) to pump outrageous amounts of real money into the game. It's borderline abusive, it's taking advantage of weak willed gamers the same way that intentionally planting a liquor store next to an AA meeting house would be.
"Pay for access only" games are much less immoral with regards to their relationship with their players. It's one of the things I loved about CCP all these years, with the exceptions of the greed is good fiasco (and more recently, skill trading), they seemed to be the more 'fair trade/ you get a good game, we get to make a decent living but we won't gouge you' type in character, as opposed to the 'squeeze every bit of money out of you that we can before we discard you and shut down all the servers of the game you like' character of other game companies I've had the displeasure of experiencing in my 23 years of this form of gaming.
Players that advocate EVE going more f2p to 'keep up with the times' are imo just responding to a kind of anxiety (better known as 'EVE is dying"). Anxiety caused by the idea that EVE (with it's outdated payment model) will die, thus taking with it all the time and money they 'invested' into it. That fear/desperation leads them to think that something that could (in theory at least) bring more players to the game and more money to CCP would prevent the dying, without considering that the same thing could be responsible for and even accelerate the actual death of the game (by pushing away the loyal customers who play the game because it's not f2p, while at the same time failing to attract enough f2p 'whales' to compensate). |