Making Multiplayer a Free-to-Play Engine: The potential after exploring and solving the problems.
Mar 18, 2017 15:24:36 GMT
XCPTNL likes this
Post by ddrguy300 on Mar 18, 2017 15:24:36 GMT
Credit to XCPTNL as they were the one to get me thinking about this/suggested it.
This is something I have mixed feelings about, to say the least. You can't have a ton of free to players just running around in the totality of the matchmaking process because you inject a lot more casual gamers in significantly more areas where they can be a much more significant hindrance to those trying to complete higher challenges. The game, in this case, would become a lot more "guild" based and elitist because of the pool of newbs that would be desired to be avoided would be drastically increased. And I really liked being able to jump into games with a decent confidence that I'd 1) be able to find good players to player with and 2) that we'd be able to get the job done without having to be part of a larger group (guild). This is an attractive part of the game that could be diminished.
In order for this to work, there would HAVE to be a level/xp/difficulty cap as the wall most if not all free to plays have.
Reasons why:
Cap the level/xp at 10 because that seems like a good wall where free to players have a decent foothold in which to play and it also keeps them from the full game's mechanics - can't get prestige unlocks without that xp beyond what it takes to get to level 10.
Cap the difficulty because you really don't want to sift through a pool of level 1 free to players trying to get in on a Gold match. Players don't want the pool of gamers that need to be carried to increase five or ten fold. For that matter, I would take it a step further and restrict silver access to kits that have reached that level 10 mark, because the same thinking can be applied to silver and gives the free to players something to shoot for and not just expect (or be able) to be carried through a silver match at level 2 or 3. This seems like it would be easy to code anyway.
A final point to that, I tossed around the idea of locking characters, but 1) that could prove difficult to code, unless you could still get them as cards, but just could not play them, and 2) Bronze and Silver would be a lot more difficult if we threw in a TON of free to play human kits in the pool of pug gamers. To Devs reading this: Heed that warning because you would lose a lot of already playing fans and only retain a small pool of hardcore/gold players. So to wrap that up - character locking = no.
In conclusion: This idea can work, but there are a ton of preemptive developmental atrocities that need to be considered/avoided before putting this into effect. And I think I just listed them all.
Should all of this be executed correctly however, yes this could be largely successful, especially in terms of future content funding/micro transactions. I'm honestly quite shocked that premium packs are still as expensive as they were in ME3. But that rant aside, with free to play limits in place as I've just suggested them, Bioware has a very real opportunity to sell those packs:
If you can only level up to 10 and only via Bronze and you can only play Silver at level 10 and have no access to Gold at all, in game credits are significantly harder to acquire, and while that sucks, it also makes the higher packs more worth buying. And then if you're not comfortable with their pricing, but still like/love the game? Boom, another copy just got sold.
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P.S. No idea how strike teams and mission funds would work out here. Maybe restrict it to just one type? Or restrict it all together might be a better option. Not entirely sure how all that works/how I feel about it yet anyway. All I know is that that's another can of worms to consider too.
Maybe the best answer there is to restrict it completely and perhaps open it up under certain restrictions once a similar analysis to the one above has been looked over. I'm not well versed enough in that aspect to venture an opinion, nor is anyone else as it is new (another reason to just restrict it), but everyone knows the standard horde mode.
This is something I have mixed feelings about, to say the least. You can't have a ton of free to players just running around in the totality of the matchmaking process because you inject a lot more casual gamers in significantly more areas where they can be a much more significant hindrance to those trying to complete higher challenges. The game, in this case, would become a lot more "guild" based and elitist because of the pool of newbs that would be desired to be avoided would be drastically increased. And I really liked being able to jump into games with a decent confidence that I'd 1) be able to find good players to player with and 2) that we'd be able to get the job done without having to be part of a larger group (guild). This is an attractive part of the game that could be diminished.
In order for this to work, there would HAVE to be a level/xp/difficulty cap as the wall most if not all free to plays have.
Reasons why:
Cap the level/xp at 10 because that seems like a good wall where free to players have a decent foothold in which to play and it also keeps them from the full game's mechanics - can't get prestige unlocks without that xp beyond what it takes to get to level 10.
Cap the difficulty because you really don't want to sift through a pool of level 1 free to players trying to get in on a Gold match. Players don't want the pool of gamers that need to be carried to increase five or ten fold. For that matter, I would take it a step further and restrict silver access to kits that have reached that level 10 mark, because the same thinking can be applied to silver and gives the free to players something to shoot for and not just expect (or be able) to be carried through a silver match at level 2 or 3. This seems like it would be easy to code anyway.
A final point to that, I tossed around the idea of locking characters, but 1) that could prove difficult to code, unless you could still get them as cards, but just could not play them, and 2) Bronze and Silver would be a lot more difficult if we threw in a TON of free to play human kits in the pool of pug gamers. To Devs reading this: Heed that warning because you would lose a lot of already playing fans and only retain a small pool of hardcore/gold players. So to wrap that up - character locking = no.
In conclusion: This idea can work, but there are a ton of preemptive developmental atrocities that need to be considered/avoided before putting this into effect. And I think I just listed them all.
Should all of this be executed correctly however, yes this could be largely successful, especially in terms of future content funding/micro transactions. I'm honestly quite shocked that premium packs are still as expensive as they were in ME3. But that rant aside, with free to play limits in place as I've just suggested them, Bioware has a very real opportunity to sell those packs:
If you can only level up to 10 and only via Bronze and you can only play Silver at level 10 and have no access to Gold at all, in game credits are significantly harder to acquire, and while that sucks, it also makes the higher packs more worth buying. And then if you're not comfortable with their pricing, but still like/love the game? Boom, another copy just got sold.
---
P.S. No idea how strike teams and mission funds would work out here. Maybe restrict it to just one type? Or restrict it all together might be a better option. Not entirely sure how all that works/how I feel about it yet anyway. All I know is that that's another can of worms to consider too.
Maybe the best answer there is to restrict it completely and perhaps open it up under certain restrictions once a similar analysis to the one above has been looked over. I'm not well versed enough in that aspect to venture an opinion, nor is anyone else as it is new (another reason to just restrict it), but everyone knows the standard horde mode.
