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Freemium games
I don't object to the concept, even if I don't plan on participating. I actually liked the way Kingdom of Loathing implemented it, and they're cool enough that they'd be top of my list for something I would donate to. If your premium content is on the same level as a full-length game, that's great.
What bugs me though is that most developers that take this route are lazy tards that have no concept of scale. Half the MMO's that show up on Kongregate for instance ask hilarious prices for laughably minor advantages -- the same money could have been spent buying multiple entire games (typically less lazily designed at that) on Steam, GOG, or in the game store a mile from my house.
Comments
^Examples? This sounds hilarious.
Just about every other game here. Bear in mind that the premium currency on the site is around 10-per-dollar, and converting from that to each individual game's premium currency...
This is one of the more amusing ones. Charges about $5 for a box of keys to open locked treasure chests of largely useless junk, or $3 to recharge your energy that recharges on its own very nearly as quickly as you can expend it. You can optionally spend $10/mo for a VIP thing that does little more than give minor discounts to other cash items -- you'd have to buy about $50 of stuff every month to break even.
This charges about $2 for 24-hour buffs, $4 for a minor stat increase.
Here you spend about $4 apiece on any card packs that don't suck. At least it has the benefit of precedent with trading card games already being hideously expensive (and at least being a decent if corny game in itself), but it's still silly.
Pretty much any city-building MMO ever will charge silly amounts of money to cut waiting times. Here you can spend anywhere from $4-$16 to upgrade wall tiles that will in all likelihood be mostly bypassed by any attacker with half a brain, or $3+ apiece to upgrade individual mid-level buildings. Spend $2 for a 12-hour buff to resource collection, or $5 for 24-hour attack bonuses (due to unit building times, no recovery of surviving units, and how ludicrously effective traps are, you're not likely to be making more than a small handful of attacks in a day anyway).
And so on.
The less said about Sacred Seasons the better.
I've always thought that such games are a far worse money sink than a simple monthly-fee MMO. At least there the charge is obvious, up-front, and everyone gets the whole thing.
Not to mention in most such "real" MMO's there's an appreciable "whole thing" to get. Most freemium games you're already looking at the extent of the content -- you're paying to take a minor cut out of the grinding or obstructive mechanics and make it less bad.
The problem with estimating what people ought to pay is that I don't really have much of an idea of how much it costs to develop, run, and maintain an online game and all its components (servers, staff, etc.).
> Charges about $5 for a box of keys to open locked treasure chests of largely useless junk, or $3 to recharge your energy that recharges on its own very nearly as quickly as you can expend it.
The first sounds like Mann Co. crate keys and the second one sounds like energy in Spiral Knights.
The energy system to cap grinding and artificially extend how long people play your game is pretty typical of freemium MMO's, both for the good reason of keeping people on a somewhat level field, and for the less respectable one to try and extort a few bucks for a recharge. Usually though, the developers bother tuning it so that it actually restricts you somehow -- that game, the battles take so damned long to sit through that you recoup most of it even battling continuously.
And on the exact opposite of the field, I present what may actually be the most half-assed freemium MMO ever. The combat consists of spending energy directly to damage quest monsters (i.e., one button) that for the most part don't even fight back, and the energy system is so restrictive that you expend it in about 15 seconds.
But wait! You can spend $5 of kreds to refill it a whole three times! That's a whole 45 more seconds!
For a sense of scale, a couple days ago I bought both entire Portal games for not a whole lot more than that.
Do they have lizardmen as a playable race? Cause that's the only sense of scale you're gonna get out of it.
^ win