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1: NC

2: NC and TR

3: NC, TR and Vanu

[Reudh]

I think Girlinhat has the best idea.


And while I haven't even set eye on Mabinogi, I know it's been around for a while, so it must be working.



And buying power is the key to losing an otherwise happy playerbase very quickly, I think.

"I have $800USD to burn on this game. I cannot be defeated."
"I do not wish to spend money on online games. I'm easily defeated by virtue of my thrift."

I HATE games like that.

[Johnfalcon99977]

Depending on how it is done, it risks getting far too silly. It's fine for TF2, but Planetside has a somewhat more serious tone.

Comfirmed: Planetside will have the ability to make the cockpit of your Fighter craft covered in pink Hearts with Zebra Camo.

Its far too late for that, buddy.

[Aklyon]

Heres the proof of the above.

[Sensei]

I can sure see people paying to be silly, IMO that's ok. I'd be very surprised if they never had any items sold for real money that gave you advantages (improved XP and the like in F2P games actually really bugs me because they tend to make the free players' game very grindy). Even if they didn't at the start, they would be forever tempted to add them, and there will be people willing to pay for shortcuts. That's not horrible, in my opinion. It might just be reasonably balanced, and that will be all there is to it. It could be horrible, but there's simply no way to tell without playtesting the actual game (unless they're doing something egregiously wrong).

You know, a cool example of a high-level pay for cosmetics might be a cosmetic change that extends to guild armor/vehicles, rather than just the buyer, perhaps with a kickstarter-style donation system within the guilds.

[Dariush]

Mabinogi offers virtually no "pay to win" involved - people will argue that but the main buff cash shop items are things like "2x exp 1hr potion" and similar.  The main intake of money for Mabinogi is dyes (for unique characters), pets (for convenience), and monthly subscription (mainly for inventory, because it uses this inventory-tetris style that limits bag size).

You know, this sounds like the very definition of P2W. Thinking like that, games with real-money weapons that deal 3 times more damage than normal-ones aren't P2W because you can achieve the same result (killing a monster), but three times slower.

[Blizzlord]

^+1 for wisdom.

[SHAD0Wdump]

You know, the poll up there really gave me trouble for a while since all three empires have aspects I like...

-TR: Great color scheme, black with bits of red is something I've always appreciated, even if it slightly reeks of 'trying too hard to be bad-ass'. They also have a penchant for order and teamwork.(At least in the first game before they decided tank drivers man the guns too in this game)

-NC: Bigger is better philosophy with their weapons, absolutely my style. I can also have a bit of appreciation for the freedom fighter attitude, but not as much. It really is the guns that attract me here.

-VS: Awesome technology with style to match. Those curves and that color scheme(PURPLE) attracts me strongly. Can't say much for their philosophies but they just look and feel good.

Eventually I just decided, fuck it, I'm going VS.

EDIT: Thooough I'm likely to still go with whatever empire my friend would choose if she decides on playing this. Still leaning toward VS if I get a choice.

[Frumple]

VS is my initial leaning, assuming I have a computer capable of running PS2 before its servers close. Purple and hover tanks and lasers, what the hell else do I need?

Well, artillery. I'd go with whatever side has the best artillery, too, if VS didn't work out. I can't even aim artillery worth a shit in FPSes (tribes taught me this) but I don't care. Get big enough blast radius, even misses kill people.

[Gunner-Chan]

I don't know if Ill even play this. But If somehow I do Ill likely go TR out of nostalgia for a friend. Besides, black and red and miniguns is cool.

On the Mabi play to win thing, yeah. It only looks like that if you haven't actually played the damn game. Pets don't do anything irreplaceable or even that valuable, and inventory space isn't really an issue considering what makes an item is upgrades. The x2 EXP is also very useless considering you can gain XP by just idling, or you know. Actually playing.

[Aklyon]

How do you gain xp by idling?

[Gunner-Chan]

You gain XP as you age. Up to age 25.

Edit: Wait, it was actually AP. Well that's better actually!

(Also don't derail this too much. I just don't like it when people claim pay to win when it's not)

[Frumple]

Yeah... being totally fair to Mabi, it's not pay to win so much as pay to enjoy -- not investing money simple massively inflates the amount of time and/or effort you have to spend to do certain things (primarily re: travel and inventory juggling), not provide any actual mechanic advantage (well, barring that pet cheese stuff ). It's an enjoyable game when you're not spending a quarter hour or more to walk your way to a particular town and spending a sixth of your game time wrangling your backpack, but violently poorly designed without the addition of mounts and expanded inventory.

It's nice enough with some friends, though, and from what I understand not really that bad as MMOs go. Still. When I think bearable f2p scheme's, Mabi's not what I think about, just not the worst of the lot. Not sure how its methods would be able to apply to a FPS, though. Disallowing some sort of fast transport (teleporter, orbital drop), maybe.

[Dariush]

Yeah... being totally fair to Mabi, it's not pay to win so much as pay to enjoy -- not investing money simple massively inflates the amount of time and/or effort you have to spend to do certain things (primarily re: travel and inventory juggling), not provide any actual mechanic advantage (well, barring that pet cheese stuff ). It's an enjoyable game when you're not spending a quarter hour or more to walk your way to a particular town and spending a sixth of your game time wrangling your backpack, but violently poorly designed without the addition of mounts and expanded inventory.

My point about killing monsters faster still applies.

[Reudh]

Runescape at least until recently tried to completely segregate F2P and P2P servers: in that P2P players could access F2P worlds but they would have no advantage there. They presented F2P as a different game, which it pretty much was.

It seems to work quite well.

[Blizzlord]

Runescape at least until recently tried to completely segregate F2P and P2P servers: in that P2P players could access F2P worlds but they would have no advantage there. They presented F2P as a different game, which it pretty much was.

It seems to work quite well.

I agree, as I have played that game F2P for some time. The "premium players" have no advantage over normal players in normal servers. That does not mean that they don't have better ways to do things when logged on to the premium servers. Still, I find it pretty balanced.

Edit: modified the title so discussing F2P can no longer be considered derailing.