If you could only choose ONE method of payment...

[Cy-Kill]

I saw this posted over on MMORPG.com, so I decided to post it ad verbatim here, I did however, have to edit some of the poll questions, due to the fact they were over 100 characters, and OnRPG only allows each question to be a maximum of 100 characters:



What is your preferred method of payment?

I am torn between a Subscription Only ($15/month-- no box cost as that is a rip-off), Buy to Play (Guild Wars style), and F2P like League of Legends where you can earn EVERYTHING in game OR get it faster by buying it. Yet no player is at an advantage for spending money, as it's entirely possible to earn it in game without spending a penny.

Free to Play with ability to unlock everything for free or unlock characters/dungeons with money (faster) is great, and the best IMO.

Buy to Play would be next, as this is like any other game, FPS, RTS, etc.

The ONLY reason I am including Subscription Only ($15/month) is because....well....F2P brings a lot of kiddies, trolls, and completely morons. Subscriptions, unfortunately, bar out the vomit and help to provide a more mature (adult) community. It may still be full of immature people, but little kids and teenagers are a completely different story, and (like in LoL's case) it can ruin your own gameplay experience due to their inability to have fully developed cognitive skills. (Kids dying or quitting in LoL can ruin the game for 9 other players).

[Akeras]

Buy to play

[Urfrid]

Buy to play

[Viney1]

Buy to play!!!

[BooNeZ]

As long as a player gets EVERYTHING in-game, I would go for that.

F2P? Sure, as long as all game-changing elements and items are acquired in-game. Cash Shop will ONLY be cosmetics. (Very ideal, which probably won't happen these days.)

B2P? Sure. Cosmetics Only.

P2P? Why not? As long as it is promising.

In order, B2P > P2P > F2P.

I don't care who plays a certain game, whether they're mature or not. If you get insulted by trolls and kids, then you're a loser.

[Jermatoo]

B2P. not contest here.

[GoldenArrow]

Sub only.
Only P2P game I have bad experiences of is SWTOR.

[itsjooNx]

I love the way Nexon does Maplestory's cash shop. Pretty much only cosmetics (for the most part) def not buy to win.

[ApocaRUFF]

I prefer sub-to-play. Games like Wurm Online. I don't mind buy-to-play and buy-to-play + sub-to-play styles, either tho.

To me, sub-to-play means that the devs wont need to fall back on OP cash shop that gives advantage to the guy with the biggest wallet, but does leave room for a smaller type of cash shop, and even room for buying in-game time thru the games currency. Around $200 a year is not to much for the amount of fun and the memories you can get from an MMO.

Buy-to-Play is great, too, because the games tend to be more similar to an in-depth AAA RPG (like Guild Wars) with a co-op and other nice features. I loved Guild Wars when I first got it, the game play was innovative. It reminded me of how I felt a great MMORPG would be, because of all the people that got to play it because it didn't end up costing them like $200 a year.

I enjoy Buy-to-play and then pay-to-play the most, because they are the most professional games. Their support staff is professional, so you're not getting the change if policy or volunteers who get a big head because they got the ability to mute people, or even volunteer GM's who play favoritism. The only game that I know of that has buy-to-play and then pay-to-play that has shitty customer support (due to un-professionalism and favoritism) is Mortal Online.

Besides the great Customer Support that the B2P-P2P model offers, you get lots of content, usually a bug fix patch once a week that fixes and tweaks a lot, a content patch each month, and then a big expansion or content pack every once in a while. It's great, you never really run out of things to do in them unless you're playing 12 hours a day.

On top of those two points, you usually get a much more mature game population. Sometimes one or two young kids slip in, and (unfortunately) much more often adults act immature. But over all, you get a mostly 18+ population that have a decent head on their shoulders. I always find myself playing with great people who are often a LOT older than I am, which is great for a lot of reasons. And the guilds in these games feel a lot more like families rather than a group of freinds.

Examples are my old guild in SWG, RUFF, the original guild leaders were 60+ and married. Unfortunately, one died and the other quit the game because it was to painful to play (they both loved the game a lot). After that, another married couple (who had their first child on the way) took over as guild leaders.

The game turned out to be to painful for me to play, too, so I ended up quitting (I was 12 when I started playing, and had spent many years with them before 'it' happened :/). For a long while I just drifted around from F2P MMO to F2P MMO, I got a bit of fun out of one game, but it was to cash shop dependent, so I quit. Eventually I just started playing FPS and MOBA games only. Eventually I decided to give B2P-P2P MMOs a go again. Started with Darkfall, had some fun but the grind broke me. Then I tried Mortal and found Wessex. Been with them almost a year, and don't see myself leaving ever. It's the same great 'family' feeling, with a close-knit group of mature, older people. People with families, jobs, kids, etc.. and know a bit about life and aren't so quick to call people bad names or troll people.


What I'm trying to say is, the improved communities alone are more than worth the $50 initial purchase and then the $15 a month after.

[charly1337]

F2P with Premium Sub Option-- It's free, but paying a $15/month subs unlocks more of the game.

rip dungeon runners, best system ever

[Narfi Hungry Willem]

I didn't vote.
I can't see me playing any game other than Entropia Universe with its approach of free to play with the ability to deposit or withdraw at a fixed exchange rate.

I can pay 0 or alot each month depending on what I want, and when I get tired of the game or need cash in real life I can legally just pull it back out.

While it would be very difficult it is theoretically possible to play completely for free, access everything in the game, and still pull money out.

narfi

[Jah92]

B2p > f2p > p2p.

[marcipaans]

Voted last for kicks and giggles.

I don't care about the model as long as it's not pay to win.

[Lorddias]

B2P with no sub, because I'd like to play what I purchase when I want and pay when I desire more content. Its simple, if you want quality you have to pay one way or the other. The last option isn't possible. If it was the game would run for less than a year, and who would want to play it if they know their hard work on an mmorpg won't last, so the population would be minimal, hasting its doom because there would be fewer donations. Some private servers are completely free but one thing to remember is that they do not pay for licensing and/or development.

[Technikal]

The once off payment method seems pretty good to me aswell.

[Orpheus]

Huh, wouldn't these be considered business models and not payment methods?
Because usually when someone talks about payment methods they are talking about Paypal, Credit Card, Debit Card, Bank Transfer, etc.

[AngelTales]

Can't express how much I hate b2p2p !!
Though I like subs (p2p) most ... then next favor would be b2p.
Value of account in any f2p game is just .. worthless, leading to hackers, gold farmers spamming channel to sell their ****s

[Jermatoo]

Huh, wouldn't these be considered business models and not payment methods?
Because usually when someone talks about payment methods they are talking about Paypal, Credit Card, Debit Card, Bank Transfer, etc.

Thats what I thought of when I first came into the thread but meh, whatever. Personally I prefer Paypal over anything when it comes to online payment.

[Duo]

If the game is fun, I'm playing it.

[Bryan]

Buy 2 Play, but only with a good developer that I can trust due to ethos/meta-publisher support. (i.e. ArenaNet & NCSoft)

[Phenoca]

Unlockable content - League of Legends style.

1) It does not give power to cash shop users.
2) It saves time, meaning that you are paying money to save time on grind.
3) Company is not milking you for cash because the things that you buy are useful in PvP.

Subscription is a good thing, but ultimately a subscription-based game must pander to newbies. Unlockable content (paying $ money to save on time grinding) is superior. First, it is similar to subscription in that you are paying money to gain in-game time. But in a subscription the time you buy is the time to be allowed to play the game. With unlockable content it is time saved grinding for gold/IP/exp. The reason why unlockable content is superior to subscription is this: It allows rich players to donate more money.

If someone wants to donate it is for PvP-related gear. If someone wants F2P they don't want overpowered cash shops. So letting F2P players unlock cash shop content through grinding is making the playing-field fair while adding advantages to cash-shop users. The only difference is that F2P players are grinding to get ten cents an hour worth of stuff, while rich players can donate dozens of dollars to cash shop. Look at Team Fortress 2. The game made money off of rich people using cash shop. Now if hats could be obtained after winning 500 matches then the system would be better because players would be able to get the same items through F2P.

TL;DR - paying money to unlock free content is better than subscribing because instead of pandering to newbies the company can pander to rich players. And having cash shop content entirely obtainable by in-game grind as in CS and LoL is better than having overpowered cash shops because it levels the playing-field between F2P and P2P players while still giving a significant advantage to paying money because money is time (spent grinding).

[automagicaly]

some of the worse people i've ever met in mmorpg's was in Everquest, a buy and sub game which some also call the best mmorpg community ever. so really theres no avoiding bad eggs no matter what.

[Abhorsen]

b2p + p2p if they can leave out the cash shop with that and provide enough quality, but most of all, FUN in their game. lot of new p2p mmorpgs have quality but tend to be too serious. the makers used their skills on it, but not their souls :P

[ArcDevil]

I have no problems with the current model of box + P2P

[Shadow of The Lost Empire]

I don't like subscriptions of any sort or cash shops. However, I think League of Legends is one of the few games that does it right, you can earn everything (except for skins). On the other hand, I like buying a game and having it for life.

Another game that does that is Team Fortress 2. It once was Buy to Play, then moved to Free to Play with the ability to find or earn everything or buy it faster.