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  1. Default Extra Credits - Free to Play Is Currently Broken - How High Costs Drive Players Away



    Extra Credits put out videos on F2P game models from time to time and I feel like this video is too good to pass up. Here's hoping we can have a nice discussion about it.

  2. Nuclear testing facility Straight Male
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    Default Re: Extra Credits - Free to Play Is Currently Broken - How High Costs Drive Players A




    Straight to the point and highly accurate. LoL is probably the only game that I've felt *good* about spending money on in a long, long time. I've only dropped $25 this year and haven't even spent it all yet, but feel I got my money's worth in a half dozen mystery gifts and dragon slayer pantheon which I bought outright. Unlike Maple and other games where I had immediate buyers remorse, I can happily drop whatever petty cash I feel is convenient without the pressure to spend hundreds to actually make any *temporary* progress.

    Hopefully other games start to rethink their revenue models before it's too late.

  3. Default Re: Extra Credits - Free to Play Is Currently Broken - How High Costs Drive Players A


    Preaching to the choir a bit here, but I agree entirely.

    I remember a previous EC video that talked about a game that had "money bombs" in it, which were cash items which you could use in towns that exploded items everywhere. That's be a nice last hurrah for Maple in its last weeks.

  4. Default Re: Extra Credits - Free to Play Is Currently Broken - How High Costs Drive Players A





  5. Default Re: Extra Credits - Free to Play Is Currently Broken - How High Costs Drive Players A


    I've been watching extra credits for a while now and I just thought of maple the entire time. Really, he said all that needs to be said. It's just not sustainable.

  6. Default Re: Extra Credits - Free to Play Is Currently Broken - How High Costs Drive Players A


    I believe there are 3 EC videos completely focused on F2P (this included) and the item bombs you mention are in the 2nd one. That is exactly what Riot did with the Mystery gifts when they were released, you couldn't open them yourself but rather gift them away to your buddies and they could get a random skin for any of their onwed champions.

    What the guy says in the video sounds tremendously logical: make a game that everyone can enjoy entirely and then add an option through which players can speed up their experience based on the amount of money they spend. Yet for some reason the companies actually doing it right can be counted with one hand and I can't understand why. Maybe that should be the real topic of this thread, why companies believe it is more profitable to make a game that feeds off whales intead of a game that feeds off all their players.

  7. Orbital Bee Cannon
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    Default Re: Extra Credits - Free to Play Is Currently Broken - How High Costs Drive Players A


    Because players that don't pay at all, or pay only a little, don't cover the server resources they use up.

    Even this video doesn't claim they do. What it says it that they're necessary as "content" for the whales.

    And I believe Nexon (both Korea and NA) have realized this. With the "Better Maple" changes, the various new scrolling and enhancement methods, the in-game ways to obtain cash shop items (such as cubes and protection scrolls), the mileage, the auction house, etc, they are trying to make the game more attractive to people who don't spend a lot (or anything), while still keeping the motivation for big spenders to continue to spend big.

  8. Nuclear testing facility Straight Male
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    Default Re: Extra Credits - Free to Play Is Currently Broken - How High Costs Drive Players A


    I think we can all agree they've made some excellent progress. My personal theory was that everything that can be payed for should be possible to obtain for free, but with a lot more work. One of Maple's current errors is making this work exceedingly monotonous to the point of masochism as KhainiWest would say. The error in Nexon's current implementation of this is that spending a small amount of money is incredibly unsatisfactory. You can't make small progress in your itemization by spending less than $20. You're more likely to actually lower your damage than raise it. Thus, Maple effectively pushes away the more sustainable moderate customers in favor of the "whales". We could also look at the eternal cycle of upgrades and new item sets, but I think the picture is clear enough.

    Looking at the top tier games, the discrepancy is pretty clear. They offer an enjoyable experience for free with convenient enhancements that are guaranteed to benefit the customer even at low purchase amounts. Since these enhancements are attractive to all customer levels, they manage to attract both whales and more average players. Seems simple enough that even Nexon could figure it out right?

  9. Default Re: Extra Credits - Free to Play Is Currently Broken - How High Costs Drive Players A


    I'm sorry but I still don't get it. In an ideal scenario you'd have, lets say, 10 players spending 10-20$+ 1 spending 1.000$+ a month instead of 1 spending 1.000$ and nobody else because everyone is hating/talking pomegranate about your game. That is the whole point of the extra credits video.

    In the case of MapleStory, the thing is they totally screwed up when they tried to add this "speed up" option to the game. First they create a whole new option, aka potential, instead of using any existing one like scrolls for example, then they completely limit it to the cash shop, then they make it extremely expensive and worst of it all, they start developing their new content based around it and leaving out players who don't pay (i'm totally ignoring CS prior potential in favor of Nexon and drops with potential because that is totally useless.).

  10. Orbital Bee Cannon
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    Default Re: Extra Credits - Free to Play Is Currently Broken - How High Costs Drive Players A


    I agree that a big issue with Maple right now is the gambling aspect.
    A single cube is extremely unlikely to make your item any better than it already is. What's worse, the better your item is, the more likely a single cube is to ruin it. So one must be prepared to use up dozens of cubes at one sitting, or refrain from trying at all.
    The black cubes are a little better, in that they won't harm your equipment, but players still don't like to spend $100 or more and end up exactly where they started.

  11. Default Re: Extra Credits - Free to Play Is Currently Broken - How High Costs Drive Players A


    Personally though, I think the "Free to play, pay to save time" aspect of these models are a main cause of the problem. Fundamentally, after all, that's kind of what a lot of the items in Maple are for. Instead of grinding out forever trying to get lucky with items, you can speed up the process by buying items that cater to giving you the best stats possible.
    LoL makes it so that instead of spending *thousands of hours* trying to get all the champions/runes (fundamental pieces of the game that give you a distinct advantage in the game), you can just buy them instead. EXP Boosts face a similar problem. None of these things are *necessary* for the free to play model. When I came back to Maple, it seemed like everyone was dishing out hundreds to make themselves better. Now in League it just seems like people are spending hundreds to, well, save time and make themselves better.
    League is one of the most popular games *ever*, and they're popular because they excel at giving people a sense of satisfaction even when it's completely undeserved. Buying things is just another part of that. They already have a gigantic userbase. So, instead of trying to hook in whales (since they've already catered to a very large number of whales) they try and monetize *everyone else* too. It's just as bad, if not worse.

    The aesthetic elements like buying skins makes sense. You enjoy the game, you enjoy specific champions, now pay to enjoy the game and those champions more.

    I can't actually think of a healthy free to play model being used right now.
    Old Maple was probably the most healthy free to play model I've seen.

  12. Default Re: Extra Credits - Free to Play Is Currently Broken - How High Costs Drive Players A



    And you know what? I really would like to give Nexon a pat on the back for this. For years cubing was something that was only possible to do if you had bucketloads of cash, but at least now we can do it for semi-free. I'm happy to see that they're making strides to make MS a better game for everyone, not just the whales.

  13. Default Re: Extra Credits - Free to Play Is Currently Broken - How High Costs Drive Players A


    They seriously need to take the next step in this, though. Every game I play except MS has added smarter loot/enhancement systems. For instance, if I play as Thor in Marvel Heroes, 85% of the gear and items I find as drops are for Thor. (This part was indeed added into MS, which I think is great.) But further, non-class-specific items that drop will contain only bonus lines that apply to the character that found/created it. Diablo 3 does this now, too.
    What MS needs is a change to the cubing system. We all know how the current system works. Each possible line has a numeric ID and that numeric ID helps limit the availability of that option when rolling up potential on an item. What they need to do is extend that number by another 5 digits (1 for each job tree) or add a bit to it. This number could be used to filter out the options by job type. They could then do one of two things: 1) sell cubes tailored to each job type or 2) filter the potential line list based on the gear's job restrictions. (The second option would mean that generic job gear would cost more to cube than job-specific gear because of the larger pool of options.) The bottom line result would be that cubing gear would be far less of a gamble and you'd always get potential lines appropriate for the gear. Nexon might see this as a reduction in cube sales because ti would take fewer cubes to make good gear, but in the end it would more than likely result in MORE cube sales because MORE people would be willing to spend money and gamble.

    It's a solution that's easy to implement. The biggest problem would be the butthurt folks who spent money on the old system. Nexon needs to not fear them and make the game better for the sake of the game.

  14. Default Re: Extra Credits - Free to Play Is Currently Broken - How High Costs Drive Players A


    Dota2.
    Nothing buyable affects gameplay in any way and is 100% cosmetic.
    Everything cosmetic also drops while playing the game.
    A fully functionable market and trading system to exchange cosmetics for other cosmetics.
    Everything that affects gameplay is available the second you start the game.

    Best free-to-play model of any game i've ever played for sure.

  15. Default Re: Extra Credits - Free to Play Is Currently Broken - How High Costs Drive Players A


    I hate to even jump in this conversation, because I'm so jaded concerning Maple that nowadays I look on EVERY SINGLE NEW THING WITH DISDAIN. I wish the game wouldn't die. I wish the playerbase would surge after QoL improvements and less P2W is implemented, but it's been this way for YEARS, and GMS is lacking some content that reduces the reliance on P2W (not because of time frames, but because... well I don't even pineappleing know anymore *cough*auctionhouse*cough*mileage*cough*). Maple was, and will always remain, my first love, which is why I wish the best for it. Every time I watch an EC video, I immediately want to copypasta the video and quotes from the video ALL OVER the Nexon forums, because it makes so much sense that their business model is alienating and unsustainable long-term, but nothing really changes.

    You guys on SP are sooo full of wonderful ideas; willing to put time and effort into theorycrafting serious improvements on the game, and eventually on Nexon's bottom line (stop sucking on that whale blubber, you pineappletards). I just wish that NexonNA was able to made conscionable decisions without deferring to NexonKR every time, and then make GOOD, MORAL decisions (we've seen some leeway in regards to changed content, but we need a version of Maple that caters to an entirely Western audience, not watered down Korean content).

    Keep sensible shortcuts, tone wayyyyy down on the predatory gambling, give us transparent and reachable itemization goals, give us options on decorative item durations (YOU KNOW WE WANT PERM CLOTHES AND WILL PAY PREMIUM FOR THEM, GIVE THEM TO US NOW), make bossing accessible and worthwhile (unique items with unique effects, ala Ryudes, that are only account tradeable and won't bog down the economy), and maybe add some area bosses or quests that give unique and useful items as well because exploration made Old Maple sooo good. Saving the game isn't hard, but somehow it seems impossible. Thanks Obama.

  16. Default Re: Extra Credits - Free to Play Is Currently Broken - How High Costs Drive Players A


    Oh, true. I always forget Dota is a thing that exists. Whoops.

  17. Default Re: Extra Credits - Free to Play Is Currently Broken - How High Costs Drive Players A


    LITERALLY maplestory.

  18. Default Re: Extra Credits - Free to Play Is Currently Broken - How High Costs Drive Players A


    I bet you that the guy writing these videos is a Scanian or something.

  19. Default Re: Extra Credits - Free to Play Is Currently Broken - How High Costs Drive Players A


    All of the above, but Marvel Heroes instead of DOTA2. Everything can be acquired in-game for free except costumes. Costumes are rather expensive, but they are purely cosmetic. The only other thing you have to buy is extra storage space. You can buy heroes instead of earning them. Buying them typically gives you all of their costumes and gives you storage space for them. It usually works out that the hero itself is free and you are really buying all the costumes and storage for a discounted bundle price.

  20. Water
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    Default Re: Extra Credits - Free to Play Is Currently Broken - How High Costs Drive Players A


    Daniel? I dunno but he did mention Maple in one of the videos so maybe. I forgot where though. >.>

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