Do games value player time enough?

Often modern games have purchasable items, some that require real money and others that players can obtain with in game currency.

The games I'm thinking of are multiplayer games so having players play the game for any length of time is a good thing.

So why don't games value players time enough to allow all items to be purchased by real money and in game currency (players time)?

Of course this depends on demographics are there enough players who are time limited but not cash limited and enough cash limited and not time limited to allow for the games to make a profit and provide a good populated service?

Are there games that do this today, I recall that some older online mmo games actually ended up with real world economic value from players who were game time rich selling in game items to game time poor but cash rich players?

 

I don't understand the thread. You are asking me a question based on a false assumption and expect me to somehow reply to a false assumption, which is:

What does that even mean? Which games? Which business models? It's going to be really different. And your question actually is really annoying as it's actually not a question at all but just broken logic. It's not even the game, it's business models you're talking about. And some games do exactly that - they let you buy with real money. Even warcraft does. You can buy gold, spend it on items.

Also why is it value? this is the most annoying aspect of your question. Because if a game lets you spend money on *any* item or progression, then it gets called "pay to win" and those who dont have enough money hate it, vote it down and sales suffer.

Since your question+assumption combination didn't do any research at all.

WTF, basically.

 

There's a difference between value and respect.

 

Lets face it, any game that hour gates or cash gates content doesn't value your time. Its purely a money earning strategy. The idea of offering the same reward for hours as for cash is to convince players that by spending the cash they are avoiding hours of work. Thus the game tricks you into thinking that your purchase is actually worth something.

That said, most games already balance this reasonably well. Those that don't tend to disapear.

There is a significant risk in simply handing out content based only on cost. That is that the player can simply bypass most of the gameplay, which makes the game itself a boring experience.

As a young dumb kid I played warcraft and age of empires with all the cheats on. It was fun the first few times to rampage through all enemies. But after a few rounds I got bored with the games. It was simplistic and repetitive. It wasn't until I came back several years later and played without any cheats that I realized the complexity, challenge and fun of the game.

You run the same risk with making all content available just for the asking. Players may well miss the more complex aspects of the game that can only be experienced through playing it. They may also lack the skills built up through playing the game to really appreciate the content. Ultimately you can end up with players paying more money for an inferior experience. And that can't be a good thing.

 

Well they call it play 2 win in mobile circles and in online games and it's been a while since any developer was stupid enough to risk killing their entire title doing that... its fine in single player though.

 

A lot of people say this, but honestly you can get away with a lot, even when you've really started to exhaust whatever good will might have been left. A notable example is how World of Tanks still (unless things have changed since I finally gave up in February) uses premium tanks and ammo that you can buy with your Earth dollars. There's also stuff like MZ's library of games, and really most mobile city builders, where if you want to engage with multiplayer content at all (which is actually pretty big because wow do the games push it), you're not going to be able to keep up with somebody who even put $5.99 into the game because they've paid to skip hours of actual gameplay.

Pay to Win is not the death sentence people think it is because, really, players have been trained to dump cash into games, free or not, pretty heavily for the last decade.

 

You've got it the wrong way around.
Players are the ones who don't value their own time.
Especially if they're ready to play the game for a 1000 hours for some fashion dosh.

So why would games value their time? Unless the game is constructed in a way that players are content, player time is worthless. (not "content" as in "satisfied", "content" as in "being part of other player's experience")

 

Which immediately turns me off the game. If the game's own developers think that the best value I can get out of a game (ie: the bit that I would pay for) is skipping parts of it then why would I not skip the whole thing?

There are plenty of games out there which actively strive to entertain me every minute from the splash screen to when I turn off the device. Those are the games that respect my time.

 

I tend to agree with this. It's not true of all players, but it's also not just players.

Broadly speaking people seem to think critically about where they spend their money, but they often don't apply the same decision making to how they spend their time. So often it's easier to get people's time than it is their money, to the point that sometimes it's easier to get people to give you their time and then turn that into money via some 3rd party.

 

I normally wouldn't be responding to this thread, as OP post is rubbish. But derived conversations are interesting.

This spring to my mind straight away, when read the title.

But speaking about cash involved game play. I think World of Warcraft servers had interesting subscription model.
You could join servers where xp gain was 1x, 5x, 0.5x 10x times norma. Which you could get as slow to submerge in Warcraft world, or as fast, to get most as much in short time. Specially good for these players, who played at least once, and wanted to play different characters.

I did play WoT and WoWs, with quite big time span difference. Years ago I gave up on WoT since I experienced, that playing against players who inject cash, is just spoiling game play. I could master tanker skill to the certain point, but being often overwhelmed by enemy explosive penetration and detection / hide modules. But not that was the worse.
The thing put me off, specially after reaching roughly tear V, Most of games I played, I was put as lowest tear, where I had 2 tears higher enemies. Vary rare happened, that I was top tear in game match.

So years after I gave up WoT, not so long ago I wanted to try WoWs. I was interested in general. But again, was fun for first few tears. However, game match model was copied from WoT, and fun turned into frustration. Then every few rounds my ship was one shot hit from 10k in citadel at early game, making me game over asap.

Few games were fun when lucky match making, when other games were just all about sniping across. I didn't play with battleships however. Didn't bother go past Tear V or VI. no fun.

Ditched their games all together.

 

True. I suspect it has something to do with time not being as easily trade-able.

 

"Pay to Win" is a controversial topic. Paying to avoid playing the game is also controversial. There are plenty of games that implement both though.

 

Think of games as micro economic systems that need two things to run players and money. Lets keep this simple we all know they need lots more stuff to get up and running and become profitable.

Even one off purchase games that are online need a constant flow of money to run, maintain and ideally improve upon as well as an active player base to keep the game fun.

If an online game needs good players and money why aren't the in game items available in both real money and in game currency that is built up by good players?

As a game developer you want new players to be able to jump in and spend some money and mature players to be rewarded for playing, why treat them differently?

Why have pay only items and game coin only items or don't we value players time enough?

 

You must be playing the wrong games. Dungeons & Dragons Online, Lord of the Rings Online, and Fallout 76 all have ways to acquire store currency in-game. Additionally almost everything in the Fallout 76 store is available as an actual physical drop in-game.

 

But not all games have this, some have paid only items and in coin items as separate things.

 

For many if not most games, where money is involved, the first halve is only true.
Milking players to deep pockets as much, as can.
Then go with new project.

 

Do people value their health? If so, why do they keep shelling out cash on pseudo-science cure-all's that don't work?

Because they don't know any better, and they've been tricked. Knowledge is power. Ignorance makes you vulnerable. There's no philosophical argument here -- it's just old fashioned trickery. Manipulation. Nobody care's about making gamer happy, they care about getting the cash. Whatever the most efficient way is.

No matter what, a person always gets exactly what they deserve. So make sure you get exactly what you deserve.

 

Luckily this is not entirely true. I think the good developers (companies) are the ones, who try to do both.

And there are some.

 

It was the death sentence for warframe initially. When they fixed that, they achieved the success they were looking for.

Pay to win is the same as trying to win a legal battle, it's going to be difficult if the opposition has more money than you, so it causes a high amount of resentment in the player base.

 

Well, to skirt the edges of an endless semantics argument, I could say that developers who seek to deliver a greater value game are working an alternate business model to, end goal, get the cash. It's just a question of degrees. If everybody is making top quality product, how then do you outdo the competition? That's where you get into some of the dubious practices -- not to say any of it is evil or I resent the people doing it. I just research games before I buy them and leave stinging reviews when the shysters do trick me. So the universe balances out.

 

Not so much in the triple a sector these days. As a swede it's really heart breaking to see what EA turned Dice into for example.

 

What did EA turn Dice into, then?

I've played Battlefield on and off since the original and still really enjoy it. I get more play per dollar for Battlefield games than I do out of many other games, and after 10+ years of that I'm still not bored of it. What are they doing wrong that's "heart breaking"?

 

It started already with BF3, but it was first with Battlefront 1 it really showed. The losing of the games soul, the dumbing down. BF2 (And BC2) was the peak of battlefield, Bf4 the last one that was playable.

 

How?

 

BF2 had

- Limited sprint
- Non-regenerating health and armor
- Better balanced weapons
- Bigger maps
- Spread out flags
- Geared towards vehicle warfare
-Supply drops
-Vehicle drops
-Commander

Some of above could be fixed by playing on Hardcore on BF3

 

How do design changes like those equate to "losing of the games soul"?

Personally I had issues with the vehicle-oriented design of earlier games. Due to the size of the map, if you didn't have a vehicle you often got left behind with no way to reach the action. With that in mind I don't necessarily mind the smaller maps and changed emphasis with vehicles.

I suspected that you were going to complain about their monetisation or something like that. Or the way that in BF1 the game is turned into a scorefest. Or, going back further, that the game got ruined when it started including consoles.

 

The games are dumbed down totally now, COD clones.

 

"I don't like thing" is not the same as a game series "losing its soul."

 

In this case it is, console kids destroyed that franchise. If you want anything but casual you need to look on the indie market

Edit: also there is no replacement for classic BF, it's a perfect balance between arcade and realism. Squad, arma etc are more milsim

 

Hm, yes, filthy casuals and the like.

*smokes pipe while checking a stock ticker*

 

I only smoke cigar!

 

Kids these days...
*rocking in the rocking char and telling embarrassing jokes during family diners*

 

Sniper Elite 4 patched in some higher difficulty settings a while back focusing on realism and hardcore gameplay. Worth a play if you haven't already. I find it's my go to when I want a challenging shooter but also something I can just pick up and play and drop without any commitment.

Rebellion games don't get the higher sales like COD and BF, but to me, they are some of the best games on the AAA market. Reason is that they are just games. Not wanna-be movies, or just focused on pushing the graphics above all else -- they're just all about the gameplay, and the shooting is just superb. I can play with an xbox controller almost as good as with a m+kb. The controls are just perfect.

 

@Murgilod @LurkingNinjaDev
Too close.


I understand what @AndersMalmgren means but I'll have to only partly agree.
Yes, many FPS games are made with the same old COD formula but they are only made like that because it works. There is still demand for such games because they're easy to understand. Just like pop music.
You don't have to go full indie to find fast paced FPS alternatives. Take Titanfall or Doom for example.