General

No, there is no point. MMORPG games are designed and developed with the intention of generating revenue, not to engage players in any meaningful way.

Two essays on the topic: [url=http://omegathorion.wordpress.com/2013/01/01/game-design-the-nature-of-grinding/]here[/url] and [url=http://omegathorion.wordpress.com/2013/08/24/game-design-internet-gaming-disorder/]here.[/url]

[quote=xshadow2]Of course they have. F2P games have the benefit of drawing in a huge crowd and generally being easier to make money off of. Plus, you can be chumps and the community will defend you anyway, because you're free! It's the best, really.

When you achieve whatever goals you personally set for yourself when playing the game.

The designation "pay to win" does not mean you automatically "win the game" by giving money. Such a thing is usually impossible because MMORPGs are designed to not be "winnable". They're pretty much like a Disgaea game. I don't know if you've ever played one of those, but there is no upper limit on how far you can go. Anyway the designation "pay to win" implies that whatever you're trying to do, paying will help you get there either much faster, or even worse: trivially.

You just basically said that pay to play is pay to play because you have to pay to play. It happens to be true. Why is that a downside? You have to pay for plenty of things monthly, so how paying for somewhere you enjoy spending your time a detriment? I'm currently paying 140 dollars a month for my family's cell phone bill, so what is 15, even 20 dollars a month for something to enjoy (that also is generally likely to have better customer support, playerbase, etc.)? Heck these days I give like maybe 100 dollars a month to Steam for random games on sale that I buy.
You have a few types of people.
1. People who play the game and start defending a company despite obviously bad practices, and keep shelling out money.
2. People who play the game, complain, and keep playing the game while shelling out money, but do not defend the company.
3. People who play the game because they have some fun with it occasionally, complain because there are some things obviously wrong, and do not shell out money because they have too many things they're unsatisfied with in order to be a paying customer.
4. People who just don't care either way and play the game. ie utterly passive in all regards.

I'm in group 3. My other account got banned about a month and a half ago for sitting around at homunculus with stance on (Hayato). They still haven't even touched the ticket. Cool, huh? There's more where that came from, but Nexon needs to shape up.[/quote]

Would you say that most of the older F2P games are slowly dying out in playbase, including Maple as well? Or games that I've personally played over the past, such as Flyff, or really any game that was published in 2007 or 2009 etc?)

What is your say on the game TERA, which recently was a subscription model but now changed to free to play?

Most, importantly what's your best advice to "fully enjoy an MMORPG game or just any game?"

Lastly, just wanted to say thanks for your reply again! Much appreciated.

[quote=SilverFoxR]If you haven't noticed this yet, the trend of MMOs losing the paid subscription method and switching to a free-to-play method has been on the rise. Also, many new MMOs have decided to go with the F2P method as well.[/quote]

Of course they have. F2P games have the benefit of drawing in a huge crowd and generally being easier to make money off of. Plus, you can be chumps and the community will defend you anyway, because you're free! It's the best, really.
[quote=SilverFoxR]
[b]At what point does a person "win" at Maple Story?[/b][/quote]
When you achieve whatever goals you personally set for yourself when playing the game.

The designation "pay to win" does not mean you automatically "win the game" by giving money. Such a thing is usually impossible because MMORPGs are designed to not be "winnable". They're pretty much like a Disgaea game. I don't know if you've ever played one of those, but there is no upper limit on how far you can go. Anyway the designation "pay to win" implies that whatever you're trying to do, paying will help you get there either much faster, or even worse: trivially.

[quote=SilverFoxR]
And if you're just going to play the game for fun, F2P is really the better option. After all, if you're just playing to enjoy yourself, do you want to be tied down by a monthly fee? The subscription is going to make you feel that if you don't play as often as possible, you won't get your money's worth... and worse yet, if you can't afford the subscription fee, you can't play. Where's the fun in that? I remember a friend of mine falling on some hard times after college to the point where he could no longer afford the luxuries of paying either his XBox Live or World of Warcraft online fees. Sure, he wanted to play WoW, but he couldn't waste what little money he had to play. It effectively made his account useless.

That, in a nutshell is the major downside of the P2P model... especially if someone is simply playing a game for their enjoyment.[/quote]

You just basically said that pay to play is pay to play because you have to pay to play. It happens to be true. Why is that a downside? You have to pay for plenty of things monthly, so how paying for somewhere you enjoy spending your time a detriment? I'm currently paying 140 dollars a month for my family's cell phone bill, so what is 15, even 20 dollars a month for something to enjoy (that also is generally likely to have better customer support, playerbase, etc.)? Heck these days I give like maybe 100 dollars a month to Steam for random games on sale that I buy.

[quote=SilverFoxR]
EDIT: By the way, I saw the whole thing about F2P players having "Stockholm Syndrome", defending a game that treats them poorly? I have got to say that if that is the case, Maple Story must be some bizarre reverse version of that. The community is never happy, constantly raging on Nexon, yet they keep playing... which is really bizarre if you ask me.[/quote]

You have a few types of people.
1. People who play the game and start defending a company despite obviously bad practices, and keep shelling out money.
2. People who play the game, complain, and keep playing the game while shelling out money, but do not defend the company.
3. People who play the game because they have some fun with it occasionally, complain because there are some things obviously wrong, and do not shell out money because they have too many things they're unsatisfied with in order to be a paying customer.
4. People who just don't care either way and play the game. ie utterly passive in all regards.

I'm in group 3. My other account got banned about a month and a half ago for sitting around at homunculus with stance on (Hayato). They still haven't even touched the ticket. Cool, huh? There's more where that came from, but Nexon needs to shape up.

I honestly like F2P games better. Seems like whenever I buy I game I never end up playing it more then a few weeks. With F2P games I can try out as many as I want till I find something I want to play. The game quality usually isn't even much worse.

If you haven't noticed this yet, the trend of MMOs losing the paid subscription method and switching to a free-to-play method has been on the rise. Also, many new MMOs have decided to go with the F2P method as well.

Although the idea that F2P means "pay to win", this can be easily bypassed by simply playing the game and enjoying it for it is. Take Maple Story (since this is a Maple fan forum), where a lot of people believe we the game is entirely "pay to win" and answer this question...
[b]At what point does a person "win" at Maple Story?[/b]
Getting to max level? Completing all the quests? I see a lot of people trying to merchant, uber-fund themselves and try and get the best possible equipment... but how does that win anything? If you really think about it, all you really NEED when it comes to equipment is to have it be strong enough to handle whatever monsters are in your level range. So, anywhere from 1-3 attacks should be enough (maybe 4 for older, non-revamped classes like Night Walkers, for example). More often than not, there are plenty of opportunities to make money to afford the necessities by just playing the game normally and enjoy yourself. So, why plug $100 worth of NX into trying to get max mesos on 5 characters? Other than seeing higher damage numbers, you're getting little to nothing more than an unfunded player is.

And if you're just going to play the game for fun, F2P is really the better option. After all, if you're just playing to enjoy yourself, do you want to be tied down by a monthly fee? The subscription is going to make you feel that if you don't play as often as possible, you won't get your money's worth... and worse yet, if you can't afford the subscription fee, you can't play. Where's the fun in that? I remember a friend of mine falling on some hard times after college to the point where he could no longer afford the luxuries of paying either his XBox Live or World of Warcraft online fees. Sure, he wanted to play WoW, but he couldn't waste what little money he had to play. It effectively made his account useless.

That, in a nutshell is the major downside of the P2P model... especially if someone is simply playing a game for their enjoyment.

Anyways, I personally would go with F2P MMOs, but that's my opinion.

EDIT: By the way, I saw the whole thing about F2P players having "Stockholm Syndrome", defending a game that treats them poorly? I have got to say that if that is the case, Maple Story must be some bizarre reverse version of that. The community is never happy, constantly raging on Nexon, yet they keep playing... which is really bizarre if you ask me.

[quote=MagicWok]Thank you for your very detailed response, really did help me clarify on this topic in general. Also may i ask, what P2P games do you play?[/quote]

Currently none that I would really consider pay to play, mainly because I don't have any friends that are playing them. If I have no friends to play an MMORPG with, I generally won't pay for it.

I bought Guild Wars 2 because my friend was gonna play it, and we played it some together (I got to level 80, he didn't lol)... but then we both got bored of it; it has some flaws, but that's a whole other topic. Not bad for a one-time 50 dollar investment though.
I bought Defiance, and it's a relatively fun game, and I'm playing it a person I've known for a while (though I go solo a lot because of my messed up schedule).

The above two cases are not really "pay to play", either. You pay to get in, but you don't shell out money continuously. That is, as t approaches infinity, the amount of money that you shell out "continuously" in order to play approaches zero. That being said, GW2 is kind of pay to win, because you can trade money directly for in-game currency (and obviously shelling out does give you a few perks, such as, most importantly, character slots). Defiance I haven't fully tested out yet.

I mean really all MMORPGs are "grind for x to get better gear/levels/skills than person y, so you can kill z faster." It doesn't change much no matter what you play. It's just whether the framework appeals to you.

[quote=Instinct]That is nothing close to Stockholm Syndrome at all. Also, most F2P have customer support that remains on par with P2P games.[/quote]

You're a crack addict being held captive by a game that has terrible people managing it, who abuse you with their horrible policies, yet you develop sympathy towards them and defend them. Sounds somewhat similar to me from where I'm standing.

I don't know about "most", but I do hope you're not including Nexon in that bundle of "as good" customer support..

I think the real incentive to play F2P games is just the accomplishment of being able to have the self control to not spend money on the game;
I really abhor F2P models just because no matter how much money you throw at the game, there will always be more people throwing more money at the game doing significantly better than you. I mean, it's fantastic it's free, but you are severely limited unless you give the game some money so you can get a bit of an advantage. The worst part is at that by the time you're done playing the game you actually really regret ever giving the game any money. So if my friends ever ask me to play games like those I'll try to not spend even a dime on the game.
On the other hand I actually like Pay 2 Play models;
the community tends to be tighter knit while simultaneously detracting some unwanted players typically because they don't have a job, too young, or just don't want to pay.
my favorite has been models such as Defiance or GW2 where you just pay once; the only issue that happens with those pay to play models is that I will get bored of it pretty fast because they don't release new content fast enough.

If you like mmorpg's you should definitely try :

Guild Wars 2 or World of Warcraft.

Many people are saying ''ew WoW'' while they never played it before.
It's really fun to play if you can control yourself with an addiction like mmorpg's.
The game is really fun to play. The trial that they're giving will give you an impression till level 20. Besides that, I don't think that you can have an final opinion on WoW after that. The game starts after 20, when you can go to dungeons. Exploring the WoW world is really fun.

If you're not into subscribsion fee's then you should try out Guild Wars 2.

They update their game every month while you only have to pay for the game ONCE.
It now cost 40 dollar/ euro's which is really cheap. And the game is huge. You can do so many things.
I'm already playing it for 1 year (since the launch) and I'm still not done with the game yet.

Good luck!

[quote=xshadow2]The incentive depends on what you find important, but generally speaking F2P games are P2W and they also have this ridiculous community that seems to have Stockholm Syndrome. You'll find tons of people utterly DEFENDING the company's obviously terrible practices. It's mind-boggling. The thing I like about pay to play is that there is no way to get ahead besides playing the game. On the other hand that also means that they will still try to keep you addicted as long as possible, so chances are you're going to come across grindfests to get this or that gear, or to get this or that level.

However, this isn't going to be any better than in F2P games, and F2P games tend to have terrible customer support and reliability as an addition. See, the people in F2P games apparently (on the majority) don't expect anything out of the company in the first place, and tend to just keep shelling out money WHILE complaining about the game... which is really dumb... and then you'll have people still defending their terrible support simply because "hay duud you don't pay nuttin for it, means obv don't gotta expect nuttin from it!" *Slams face on desk a few times*. Naturally since this is happening the company doesn't actually have any reason to change their practices.

Okay, that kind of went off on a tangent. Anyway, F2P and P2P are really insignificant things in the long run. The important thing is that you should play things you find fun, and most importantly [b]only give money to companies you respect.[/b] If you're dissatisfied with the way someone handles something, don't give them money anyway![/quote]

Thank you for your very detailed response, really did help me clarify on this topic in general. Also may i ask, what P2P games do you play?

The incentive depends on what you find important, but generally speaking F2P games are P2W and they also have this ridiculous community that seems to have Stockholm Syndrome. You'll find tons of people utterly DEFENDING the company's obviously terrible practices. It's mind-boggling. The thing I like about pay to play is that there is no way to get ahead besides playing the game. On the other hand that also means that they will still try to keep you addicted as long as possible, so chances are you're going to come across grindfests to get this or that gear, or to get this or that level.

However, this isn't going to be any better than in F2P games, and F2P games tend to have terrible customer support and reliability as an addition. See, the people in F2P games apparently (on the majority) don't expect anything out of the company in the first place, and tend to just keep shelling out money WHILE complaining about the game... which is really dumb... and then you'll have people still defending their terrible support simply because "hay duud you don't pay nuttin for it, means obv don't gotta expect nuttin from it!" *Slams face on desk a few times*. Naturally since this is happening the company doesn't actually have any reason to change their practices.

Okay, that kind of went off on a tangent. Anyway, F2P and P2P are really insignificant things in the long run. The important thing is that you should play things you find fun, and most importantly [b]only give money to companies you respect.[/b] If you're dissatisfied with the way someone handles something, don't give them money anyway!