The Escapist on Micro-Transactions

I don't see any contradiction. The people leveling faster are exactly equal in power at any given level as anyone else. It's not imbalancing. The speed at which you level is really irrelevant. Some people reach 50 in 40 hours; some take 400.

Plenty of people don't WANT a leveling speed boost. Plenty of people think we level too fast already. I'm one of them.

Making gameplay more convenient by speeding up the levelling process is absolutely a gameplay advantage. And the more inconvenient the base levelling speed is, the more of an advantage it becomes.

Well, he's referring to the $70 monocle in EVE Online. I don't think anyone is saying the CoH prices are outrageous (at least, not yet).


They will. There will be a number of powersets that must be purchased, even by VIP's. Of course, selling "powers" is not even close to selling "power", despite the difference of only a single letter.

Okay, you're both done. Any further and it's just "Is not!", "Is too!"
Whether leveling speed is a gameplay advantage or not is a matter of OPINION.

And so it doesn't look like a personal attack later, since neither of you have done it yet, anyone who claims it is fact, and not opinion, is an idiot.

Given that facts are absolutes, that could already be construed as a personal attack.

Its a matter of semantics, because there's no actual rule about "gameplay advantages" with some standard definition of "gameplay advantages" we're all supposed to honor. Its clear that some people believe that there is a difference between allowing for higher combat performance and allowing for higher amounts of rewards for a given activity, and other people believe both are bad. But both are generally covered under the vague term "gameplay advantages."

Why those two are distinct is because some developers design their games under the theory that what you can do is a limiting threshold separate from how fast can you do it. That design philosophy considers absolute performance to be a pseudo-gate to content: fail to meet the minimum performance levels, and you cannot execute the content, requiring you to go back and play other parts of the game until you reach that level of performance. Other games have much softer requirements in this area (like, for example, City of Heroes).

Actually, I think EC's point was that selling "power" which could be obtained exclusively via microtransactions would ultimately lead to a split base. People who want the power would feel as though they 'had' to buy the widgets, and might feel resentful about it. People who cannot use MTs for some reason would feel left out and abandon the game.

The video wasn't particularly interested in the balance implications of the specific items offered, because that's not really a function of MT; that's what MMOs are built on regardless of their payment model.


I really don't think EC was saying "you cannot sell things that grant in-game power bonuses for Real Life Money." I think it was saying "you cannot sell things that grant in-game power bonuses exclusively for Real Life Money."

So your example would be fine as long as inspirations are also available via in game currency.


It does seem to skip weighing the inherent value of aesthetic items (like Costumes) against practical items (like powers that alter the game mechanics), if that's what you mean. But I think it's purposely skipping a discussion of how much convenience is the right amount, because it feels those are details that can be dealt with once the fundamental nature of what is and isn't appropriate has been ironed out. So if it's a gross oversimplification, it's an intentional one.

-D

I don't count that as selling powers.

No really I don't. It's essentially selling a class or a class path in other games. Doesn't really change the games power scale unless the sold powersets are somehow superior to the existing ones.

What I want to buy are cool stand alone powers that let me make big effects on things. Thats what I want. None of the wimpy powers that they have sold in the past like Ninja Run, Or Beast Run, or the Jump Boots, or the pathetic hide power. No I want big things.

Except, without that very important qualification, LordKat's example of Farmville does in fact completely blow Extra Credit's point out of the water. Farmville and its ilk sell nothing *but* "power" as their games define power, and are hugely successful at it regardless of the problems EC notes. The reason they succeed is because Farmville doesn't have power balance rules to break. They don't care what you do in the game, they just want you to play it, and play it repetitively. They actually want the fast and monotonous players to advance quickly, and act as peer pressure to get enough of the slower and less monotonous players to pay to catch up with their peers. And Farmville doesn't care how many people get upset over the grind and quit: their game isn't balanced around how many people play the game. Its a social network game: whether they fully appreciate this fact or not it doesn't matter if you or I quit Farmville: what matters is the people who do play it get their friends to play it and form social circles around it. These tight-knit circles of players are far more important to Farmville than they are to a traditional MMO, because the whole point of Farmville is to use those social networks to apply subtle peer pressure to keep playing, and keep up with your peers, either with time or with money.

Farmville is all about selling power. Its *designed* that way. That's the exact opposite of what you would want to do with most traditional MMOs. And the reason isn't random: its objectively due to a simple thing you can easily check on those games: are they designed with balance rules applied to the "power" of the game that the content of the game honors. If the answer is yes, selling power is bad. If the answer is no, selling power is not bad. Its really just that simple, but its a distinction EC completely overlooks.


No, its very obvious that they were trying to convey the notion that you cannot sell in-game power EVER. It was continuously emphasized as a cardinal sin. And that absolute rule is wrong.


I believe an oversimplification can be useful it if presents a core idea disconnected from complicating secondary ideas. But oversimplifications become worthless the moment they cross the line from "true, but only in the simple case" to "wrong." EC's notion that, for example, you can never, ever, ever sell power in an MMO is wrong. Its not generally wrong, but with exceptions. Its just wrong. Its *often* a bad idea, but this is always highly circumstantial and always a qualified rule. The only way EC's rule is true is if you start arbitrarily not counting things as "power" that obviously are, but also obviously violate the rule. Inspirations are power in this game. Even the small ones offer significant power. But they also fall from the sky and are trivial to buy. So selling them (those specific ones) for money would not be problematic. EC's "never sell power, ever" rule trips over its face right out of the gate by having to claim inspirations aren't "really" power, because... because what? Because everyone has them? Because they are easy to get? That has nothing to do with whether they are power or not. It has to do with whether the monetary store offers *more* power than what can easily be obtained. But that gets into cost/opportunity/availability triangles that the oversimplified rule totally misses in its absolutism.

By oversimplifying, EC lost the opportunity to highlight an actual rule that actually works and is just as simple: never sell more power than you can achieve within the game. And they came so close too, they highlighted the notion that MMO developers should not be afraid of allowing players to earn in-game currency that functions identically to currency you purchase with cash. They just needed to connect the dots and realize that the problem isn't power, the problem is selling power you can't otherwise earn in-game. When you sell power you can't get any other way, that's a problem. When you sell power you can earn in-game, you're just selling a time-convenience, just like selling reward accelerators which they also mention is not too problematic.

Uh, that's his real voice.

That, really, is what the whole debate comes down to, and indeed has always come down to - the notion that because this is not a PvP game, power level balance doesn't matter. And it does. We here in City of Heroes may be a bit more sensitive about it than most, what with the debacle around Inventions and how the game should and shouldn't be rebalanced around them. More broadly, "selling power" shifts the status quo, as those who buy power can do so much more, and the status quo will always follow those who pay more. Shift it far enough in that direction and you make the situation for those who DON'T pay hopeless. This, in turn, defeats the point of going with a F2P model as you just end up with a game that people have to purchase and/or subscribe to in order to play anyway. And if that's what you'll be going for, why not just make it a traditional subscription-based MMO?

I really don't want to speak about the dreck of "free" to play MMOs out there like 9Dragons, Divine Souls, World of Tanks and all the other veritable scams which present a shoddy game that constantly tries to reach into your pocket. Just not worth the ulcers it'll give me. But let's look at what we're looking at anyway - City of Heroes. City of Heroes is not going to become quite a textbook case of a "free" to play game. It's still a subscription game, we're still paying $15 a month, but it opens up more options. That should be good, of course, but it comes with a very serious pitfall: You do NOT want to make your existing, paying, loyal customers into second-rate citizens. The WORST thing you could do is tell current subscribers: "Well, you'll become VIPs, but we're instituting SUPER VIP players who pay more and get to ride you around as mounts." In this particular case of City of Heroes, I believe objective one should be to not make the game worse or more unfair towards existing players, and that's not as obvious as it sounds.

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On a slightly different topic, I spoke with a friend of mine a couple of days ago, and uncharacteristically defended the F2P model to him. My main argument then was the same as it is now - that F2P shouldn't have to rely on grinds so much. With a subscription-based game, the biggest thing the game wants to make you do is play as long as possible. For this, developers employ sometimes very malicious time sinks so that you don't get through their game too fast and cut your subscription. One need look no further than the time singularity that is the Incarnate system for a clear example of what a time sink looks like.

But F2P games don't really care how long you play, or shouldn't, at the very least. What they care about is how much you are willing to spend, preferably in quick succession. What this means, at least to me, is that F2P games should end up being less focused on bogging players down into a grind and more focused on enthralling the player and getting him into a mood to buy. Where classic MMOs have traditionally treated us with tough love, F2P MMOs should end up pampering us, as they don't have our running subscription, but must instead continually coerce us to keep pressing that "Buy now!" button over and over again. It should mean games will become less punishing. Unless...

Unless, that it, the developers of these games choose to coerce people into buying from their stores not by entertaining them into buying but bullying them into buying, instead. I refer you back to 9Dragons as an example: That game is one huge, boring grind that you can chip at until your hair turns grey (if it hasn't already) and not get anywhere. Rather than the game presenting less grind to pamper people, it presents even MORE grind to just about strongarm people into buying experience boosting books so that they can get anything at all out of the game. 9Dragons also sells power in the form of premium weapons, premium temp buffs and so forth. And really, I have to ask - why make a "free" to play game if you're going to pancake over your free players and present them with a shoddy game they have to pay to play anyway? Why have a "free" option if it's not in the slightest viable?

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I believe the Extra Credit video comes down to the ideal that happy players are more likely to pay to play a game than strongarmed ones. It may be idealistic, but it's an ideal I strongly believe in. I am not a believer in tough love. I am a demanding customer. If I pay for a service, I demand not just a satisfying service but also polite conduct from the staff. I am not paying for a privilege, I am paying for entertainment. I expect to be entertained first and foremost. I expect my enjoyment of the service to be the business' top priority, because if I enjoy myself, I'm going to keep coming back. If I don't enjoy myself but the business tries to swindle me into coming back anyway, I find this as an insult to my intelligence and, corny as it may sound, to my honour and I don't come back. Ever.

Really, it's a question of how best to convert Free players into Premium players. It's the old "sugar vs. vinegar" argument - do you convert them by presenting them with a parsnip game but rubbing it in their faces that they can uncarrot the game if they pay, or do you present them with a decent, fun experience but show them how they can make it that much better if they do pay? Do you, in essence, convert Free players to Premium by making them happy or unhappy?

Now, Arcana, I know you've spoken on the subject before, and I got the impression you treat Free players with disdain. "Free players are not customers," as it were. I personally simply disagree with this. I personally find that happy players are much more likely to pay for a game they already enjoy than unhappy players are likely to pay for a game they don't like so that they can make it tolerable. That's why I stand by what Extra Credit are saying, idealistic as it may be - because what they are saying is that Free players deserve to have fun, too. And this, really, is what I feel this whole thing comes down to:

Make Free players happy and they will pay you back.

Originally Posted by Arcanaville Samuel_Tow is the only poster that makes me want to punch him in the head more often when I'm agreeing with him than when I'm disagreeing with him.

I don't treat free players with disdain. I simply state the objective fact that they are not customers. They are, speaking specifically of the City of Heroes model prospective customers: people Paragon Studios wants to become actual customers by actually buying actual service, but who aren't yet.

In some F2P games, there really aren't tiers of customers. All players of the game are prospective customers until the instant they hit the buy button, whereupon they momentarily become paying customers. And then they return to the vast anonymous pool of potential customers. These games treat their free players just as well as their paying customers, which is the same thing as saying they treat their paying customers no better than their free players. None of the players get any special privilege for having paid money in the past. They are all potential buyers, and all treated more or less the same because they are all, in fact, potential buyers.

That's fair, and a legitimate model, if you design the game around it. Zynga makes more money per minute than I do in a year on this model. But this is not the City of Heroes model, as I understand it, as I've discussed it with Paragon, and as they've described it to us. The Paragon model still treats subscribers as paying customers. It treats ala carte players as paying customers to a slightly lesser degree. And it treats free players as prospective customers, but not actual customers. Paragon is not offering a free to play game, they are offering a free to play advertisement for the game, which is now a hybrid subscription/ala carte purchase game. The part that everyone can play for free? That's the part that Paragon Studios has basically printed in magazines and given away like an interactive print ad with sound effects. The free game isn't structured like a subset of City of Heroes missing only optional enhancements that can be sold to those players. The free game is a limited version of the game intended to allow people to test drive City of Heroes in a limited fashion, albeit in a far less limited fashion than trial accounts. People keep pointing to those limits as if it was an error on the part of the devs, when it was a deliberate choice.

So when people talk about how "unfair" it is that "free customers" don't get this, or don't get that; when they talk about how important it is we treat them like paying customers, I believe that usually either they don't understand what the Paragon model actually is, or they don't believe it will work and don't see the need to prove or even acknowledge this belief before immediately presuming that some other model is ultimately the one they will have to pursue. We aren't designing City of Heroes around the premise that we should give the entire game away and make cosmetic enhancements for people to buy. We are usurping the free to play model to make a trial version of the game that we believe will entice people to either play ala carte and/or eventually subscribe.

The devs have even gone so far as to say, point blank, that CoH Freedom is *not* a "F2P conversion" and yet people keep saying that's just semantic games, then complain about all the ways Paragon Studios is "doing it wrong" by not fitting the very model they say Paragon Studios is obviously following. People need to realize the reason Paragon isn't following the F2P model "correctly" is because they aren't following the F2P model at all. They are following their version of the Hybrid model which prioritizes subscribers and subscriptions, and uses the free to play access avenue as interactive advertisement.

I'm really not speaking of "fair" or "unfair" so much as I am speaking about attitude. I'm aware that Free players are treated as prospective customers, but with an unlimited trial come problems. When you have a 14-day trial, the game can go out of its way to give you everything awesome you can imagine... For 14 days. Would you like more? Well, buy the full version! But when that trial is unlimited, other means must be used to get people to buy the game and not just squat the trial, and this is where problems start to occur.

The two major ways that I see this problem being approached are through sugar or vinegar, as I mentioned before. You can either present people with what looks like a great game that money will make monumentally better, thus relying on people's willingness to invest in the games that they like, or otherwise present them with a horrible game that can become great if you pay for it, thus relying on people's desire to resist rage-quitting. I suppose that with a the Freedom model, Free players quitting doesn't really matter since they're always free to come back next week, but I just disagree with with intentionally kneecapping people's fun to strongarm them into subscribing.

I'm really not talking about giving everything away for free, but I still feel that - as we've discussed before - teaming should be one of the things given away still. That's not because I feel Free players "deserve" it or that it's "unfair" to keep it from them, but rather because I feel that if people could team, they're more likely to stick around, and if they stick around, they're more likely to pay for something or other. City of Heroes: Freedom seems to want to have it both ways - it's not a game you have to purchase before you can play, but it still kind of wants to be a game that you kind of have to pay for before you can really play it, and I'm not sure this model will work very well. If you want to get people to pay up-front, sell your product. If you want nickel-and-dime people, then give them a strong base game.

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I will agree, though, that Korean grindfest F2P MMOs don't treat their paying customers any better than their free customers, because those MMOs treat everyone like garbage. I respect City of Heroes more than practically any other MMO I've played - and I've played a few - specifically because this is the only MMO which has ever made me feel welcome. That counts for a lot.

Originally Posted by Arcanaville Samuel_Tow is the only poster that makes me want to punch him in the head more often when I'm agreeing with him than when I'm disagreeing with him.

I can see it now....

Tired of waiting almost 24 hours to gain another Emperyian merit or cash in some Reward merits? Dislike waiting for your "Fame/Renown" to wear down for tip missions? Check out these new temp powers below!

Cooldown Timer Reduction Token ~ 125pp: Reduce a single cooldown timer in the game by 50%. Just use the temp power right after an ingame cooldown to cut it's timer down by 50%.

Cooldown Timer Removal Token ~ 200pp: Remove a single cooldown timer in the game. Just ue the temp power right after an ingame cooldown timer to remove its effect.

Pretty much he falls victim to a perception issue with many MMOs. That the end-game is all that matters. As such, leveling speed is simply a frustrating hurdle to jump through until you can 'play the real game'.

As such it's more palatable to the consumers since it's really not effecting the game at the points where it matters, and frankly, many of them don't look forward to going through the level grind 'again' and appreciate various options to buy out of that grind.

And that's the other side of the coin (which I though I also commented on?), in that with the offer of convenience comes engineered inconvenience to "pay away" with money. When I spoke of games becoming less grindy and frustrating as keeping people for long periods of time was less important than getting them to spend money, I knew there would be a push to not at all remove time sinks, but rather ask people to skip them with money, and indeed design WORSE time sinks that people would suffer through badly if they didn't pay.

In your average F2P game that everyone plays everything for free, I can KIND OF see this as being excusable. After all, there is no "paying class" and you have to make money out of somewhere. But in City of Heroes: Freedom, we who still subscribe will remain VIPs. We will still be paying for a game, so paying off old deliberate time sinks or even introducing new ones comes off as telling me that I'm not paying quite enough. It's one thing to ask a person playing FOR FREE to pay more to enjoy more of the game. It's quite another to ask a person ALREADY PAYING A SUBSCRIPTION to pay more or suffer.

Now, all of this is not a criticism of the Freedom model. I don't know exactly how that will work and what it will offer. It's just a general expression of concern in relation to putting paying subscribers in a position where they feel like "Freeloaders" by introducing massive benefits at an extra cost.

Originally Posted by Arcanaville Samuel_Tow is the only poster that makes me want to punch him in the head more often when I'm agreeing with him than when I'm disagreeing with him.

That's...


.... too bad. :/

The entire marketeering populace appreciates that.

The problem is that you can say that about anything the free players don't get. I will concede, however, that teaming has a potential differentiator from most of those other things by being a social connector. But we already bar free players from participating in most of the other social connectors because of the potential for abuse. That's a judgment call.


I think you yourself tripped over an important point here. You say CoH:Freedom "wants to have it both ways" but you really cannot state two different ways that CoH:Freedom *wants* it to be. You're sort of self-maneuvered into saying they want it one way, but it *is* another way. I still don't think you're willing to concede that they way they are doing it now is the one and only way they want to do it. What they *want* is for subscribers to get more game than they are getting now for the same subscription price, and to add an alternative mode of play that involves paying ala carte for what you want. That's the one thing they want.

The "free" play is a necessary evil: a means to an end. Its the degenerate case of an ala carte player that doesn't buy anything. We have subscribers, and we have ala carte players. The special case of ala carte (Premium) players that buy literally nothing are the Free players. The actual target of Freedom are the subscribers and the Premium players. Those are the people we want. Paragon believes that will be more than what we have now, and plenty enough to sustain the game. They want thousands of Premium players. They don't need - or even want - millions of free players. That's not their goal.

I feel the need to repeat this: City of Heroes is not becoming a free to play game that happens to have a subscription plan. Its a subscription game that is adding an ala carte option. Free players are coincidentally ala carte players that haven't bought anything yet. This game is not being built around the free to play model that has as its target getting as many free players as possible and then converting some small fraction of them into microtransaction buyers. Its still centered on subscribers first, and ala carte player second. When you say they "want" a free game anyone can play without paying, I believe if it was possible to execute the Freedom model *without* a free to play option, they would have done it. That's impossible, so we have it as a necessary evil. That is what makes this not a free to play game. A free to play game bases its foundational model on the premise of getting as many free players as possible, knowing some small percentage will buy stuff. Its axiomatic to the game's design. But its here in City of Heroes Freedom only because we need it, not because we want it. We still want the game to be primarily about the subscribers, and secondarily about the ala carte customers that support the game.

"What do you mean, 'We', White Man?"

I'm going to reserve judgement on what they plan or hope for or expect because the reality is that the people who actually sign up for those free and premium accounts are only going to care about their own self interest and aren't going to give two figs for what the developers want. I've seen it before and while I think they have a pretty good plan, you know what they say about the best laid plans of mice and men.

OK, I agree, but consider this - where are those "ala carte" players going to come from? They're certainly not intended to come from the existing subscribing population, I don't think, as that seems like it would be a net loss from the company. So I assume they are expected to come out of the ranks of the free players. But the problem is that this remains a purchasable game like it always was, but it's being presented as a F2P title, at least externally. Yes, I'm well aware that the developers have gone out of their way to disagree with that classification, but the reason people keep bringing it up is because the model "feels" a lot like this.

The reason I say City of Heroes "wants to have it both ways" is that I agree with you on a fundamental level - the developers still want you to purchase "the game," or at least something from their stores, preferably as an entry fee to justify the support you are receiving. They also want you to thereafter pay a subscription fee. In intended operation, this is not in the slightest different from the model we have now - you buy the game, then you pay a monthly subscription. But the entire drive behind the move appears aimed towards attracting new players, and attracting them with free stuff. So what we have right now is a game that's still following a traditional model of "purchase + subscription," but also looking to expand by drawing from the population of people looking for a "free" game.

Personally, I don't say that Free players should have teaming options out of some sense of solidarity. I'm saying this from a purely practical standpoint - if I get into a game with a Free option and I like it, I'll call up my friends, praise the game and get them to play it. If we find out we can't play together unless I pay as I did with World of Tanks, then I'm just as likely to go "Cabage it! We'll find another game where we can play together!" and instead go play Spiral Knights (if their CS could respond faster than once per month) or the Hellgate London zombie or one of the others. Because, really, if I can't play an MMO with my friends - and this may sound odd coming from me - then I'm highly unlikely to even bother unless said MMO is GRRRATE! By contrast, if I CAN play with my friends and stick around to develop some familiarity and habit for the MMO, I'm going to consider paying for it, and consider it seriously.

I get limiting Free accounts down severely, but I just feel that taking away one of the biggest hooks of an MMO is a step too far.

Originally Posted by Arcanaville Samuel_Tow is the only poster that makes me want to punch him in the head more often when I'm agreeing with him than when I'm disagreeing with him.