F2P Cast: 5 Million Can't Be Wrong (Ep.30)

My comments just about the whole ouya console i dont really have any insight but it seem to me that before they even posted the idea on the site they figured a way to have it appeal to both young and mature buys cause one there is the possibility of hacking but you might just end up burning 99 dollars and two the probably thought about the whole kids playing angry birds aspect either way theres going to be a bunch of people buying but the whole idea that they planned is a possibility
or couldve just been hey guys wouldnt it be a great i dea if we could play angry bird BUT ON TV WITH A CONTROLLER basically it will spark alot of peoples intrest and they might just be wasting money but not even no it until about a month later when the realize omg i wasted 99 bucks for this crap well personally i wont by it but it does spark my interest.

P2W means alot of things to me like you said if i gotta buy end game gear in cash shop then its P2W. Also Allods and other games like it that sell attribute items and other permanent stat boosters in the cash shop are also P2W because this allow someone to say spend about $100 at end game load up on attributes and be overly powered compared to those who wish to become OP the right way.

P.S. I think you guys should do a relook at ROM for it is really turning into a P2W game for they sell attributes in the item shop along with their grinding system being horrible when it comes to cash. The auction house is in shambles for their are items that are way over priced now. The leveling from lvl 52-56 has gotten worse because when they tweaked the exp with the new update they didn't tweak it properly for areas like savage lands. Also ROM has a dwindling player base on their servers do to many bad decisions by Frogster such as the removal of ABL's. Plus not including their most recent mistake of letting gameforge taking major control over the game client and some other features. As many people now that play are worried that gameforge will ruin the game as they have done in the past with other titles that they have helped greatly develop.

Hi guys, great show.
I’ve been watching it since its very first episode but never really got the nerve to comment.


Concerning the weekly question, I’d say that this is a very complex subject and …it’s just relative. Simply put, I consider a game as not Pay-to-Win when it offers a realistic opportunity to exchange time for real USD, in the form of player tradable CS items, while it maintains environmental balance. But, I believe that even this simple proposition carries different tones within different contexts, so let’s break it down:

first, obviously, any cash-shop item has no rarity as it’s defined monetarily rather than by the game’s drop tables, and thus, its price-finding mechanisms are intrinsically tied to the in-game community and economy, notwithstanding its perceived usefulness and/or worth (e.g. an expensive yet purely cosmetic item versus a pricey functional and very-sought-after item), also, the factor of the real price in USD and how tolerant the actual purchasing players are regarding the average Cash Shop pricings;

second, given the real USD price and it’s exchange rate for in-game monetary units there’s a dynamic pertaining to each game according to its rules and community. How hard is it to get ‘gold’ or valuable drops and how big is the income inequality in the game? Income inequality here defined as the surplus brought by supplying on the offer side of high demand items and consequently hoarding in-game currency (e.g. a game with a soft level cap XP boosting items are inarguably the most must-have of all items and usually keep the economy flowing whereas stat boosting, untimed or one-time, gear enhancements and consumables albeit valuable become a second priority – and, naturally, both provide extra income for CS-users and are expenses for the non-CS players) – OTOH, this can be effectively counter-acted by working the AH or valuable drops;

third, and getting to the gist of my critique: the definition of goals for the non-CS user. Any game worth its salt is quite complex and although it may include a few unique good-to-have pieces of equipment, usually, what gets to the core of players and entices them are the consumables, such as, following my previous example, some amulet or pot or scroll for XP boosts – and enchanting/enhancements. Keeping in mind how I defined ‘income inequality’ we come to a very flexible and particular set of behavior for the non-CS user farming capacity in the simplistic formula: extra income for CS-user equals extra time for non-CS. And here lies the making of the game on a f2p model, how burdensome this extra-investment is, for both sides.

Assuming the player’s need (subjective urge) to keep up with the elite characters we must consider the amount and price (real USD and after exchange) of must-haves and differentiate them from the good-to-haves, and the impact of such items in the game environment. It’s easy to make a case that XP boosting is not a necessity but, typically, theory falls apart and this particular item or others with similar purposes (buffs and chance enhancing) usually become a fixed expense for most players (CS’er real USD cost on purchases / non-CS’er in-game currency). Or that one piece of equipment on special sale offers unfair stat increase, nonetheless, if it can be bought from other players it’s another matter of choosing your priorities.

And with this in mind, a scenario that includes the average budget of seasoned players – that (on a reasonably balanced game) should be working with a decent amount of gold, probably, along some enchanted rares and other valuables – everything comes together and a really good f2p system would even carry some resilience against one or two unbalanced items down to the overall health of the economy that transpires the in-game and comes to real life on actual transactions trough the Cash Shop. Yes, there are examples of thriving economies on established games that got broke by plainly stupid developers choices – inclusion/creation of items for the higher leveled characters or, especially, for the ones at the level cap (where it hurts the most) -- but, normally, one can perceive the dynamics of a particular game very early on. It’s not entirely about one or two special items for sale on the CS, but the synergy between all of its offers and the in-game drops.

And two final points,
there are playable games that aren’t fully Pay-to-Win yet have a two tiered population, elites and second class denizens -- that get on by hanging around each other and can have a great time, but are denied of participation in anything related with that ‘upper class’; which can be really hurtful for playability of hardcore mode dungeons or specially designed world bosses …that get all the good loot… or pvp… what furthers their path down the social ladder making them ultimate providers of pots and scrolls for that elite;

the exclusively cash shop items – untradeable or bound -- is also an entirely different animal. Fair or unfair could be discussed in terms of how big the boost on stats are, or if it’s timed or not, or one-time functional. I would agree with anyone arguing that it’s another tough subject, but, in this particular case, I’m very adamant in saying that any honest f2p model absolutely has no exclusive cash-shop anything. If it exists, anyone that plays a game under an f2p agreement should have the chance to farm gold or whatever to exchange for it. And games that offer specialty dungeon passports or keys or whatever, or exclusive zones, just shouldn’t be played. They’re not f2p but simply demos.

Greetings from south of the equator (Brasil),
And keep up the good work.
Marco

Great show, about Ouya, i think that the Android games are kind of "limited" because they are created for TABLETS!Tablet is not a gaming plataform, i mean, you never gonna sit down and play on a tablet for hours, they make simple games to be a time killer, like a phone game should be, if they use the "full power" of android we can have great games ( like Notch did with Java to create Minecraft).About the specs, who knows?Maybe they "update" the Android version when a new one comes out, and i also think that they will change the specs with the amount of money they have.

Question of the Week:
I think that pay 2 win is when you can't the full game for free (like Lotro or DDO) or that paying simple gives a huge advantage, like extra 50% drop rate in a game where you have 0.01% of getting a good item THAT DROPS FROM A BOSS THAT SPAWNS EVERY 11 HOURS (Ragnarok, iam looking at you)

Bombs:
Well, Da-Bomb for Aion, great game, not pay to win in my opnion, its the first game that i played that let you upgrade your inventory and warehouse for free, and decorate your house for free.Also it have a great lore and cool systems, like the PvPvE Abyss.

A-Bomb...Dammit, i got soo many :) let me see:

DarkBlood for that cheap Ad (if you dint see, its a naked chinese girl playing the game)
OutSpark for being so much gready
PWE for being gready²
DC Universe, for content-block
Sony in general for being gready³
*Insert gready company name here* for being gready (dont you say?)

God, so many greed in this place :D

Ok here goes ;
First I'm in full agreetment with what Magicman stated about pay to win and also a Million DA-BOMBS to the remarks made by Dread458.
Second ; with most that can wait for RaiderZ to start up too thks very much to u all at MMOBOMB for the Beta key to it too .
Third ; Onemanwolfpack u have good points too as well as many others on here .
The A Bombs goes to those who always seem to put others down or call them names about their point of view. And I STATE THEIR POINT OF VIEWS ,AS WELL AS THOSE WHO JUST DO IT TO GAMES WITH OUT EVEN TRYING THEM ,BECAUSE THEY AREN'T THEIR CUP OF TEA !!!
fourth and finally ;
I love all at MMOBOMB since I have been a member now . KEEP UP THE GRAND WORK U ALL. GET DA-BOOM TOO!!!

I don't really care about OUYA, never owned any consoles and not planning to.

DA-BOMB! After all that spunkify went through he deserves a bad ass site like this!

let me put this out there. the ouya only has 5million donated because people dont realize these specs. i know they put that in the video saying its an android blah blah blah but people want a new console and think omg a new console and things will be free to play im going to get this. i hate to break it to those people but everything said was right its an shitty tablet where you can buy adapters ect,..!

Hi guys been a while since i commented love the show as always.

for this weeks question my definition of pay to win is that if an item or service isn't available in game, but available in the cash shop and that item either significantly boosts stats that no in game item can equal or best (at it's lvl) or gives you more of exp or gold that would take a day or longer to accrue in game even with efficient farming then that's pay to win. If that item or service is really expensive (i'm talking to you gpotato) then i will call it being an idiot to win, because if you cant win and choose to pay that much then i think you'd need your head examined.

First of all a Da-Bomb to real life PvP. I'd pay to see that.

Pay-to-Win... for me that would be anything that gives an avantage that can't be obtained without spending money. So I agree with Magicman's definition of a Pay-to-Win game.

lov show as always ,1 point ,i do mmobomb and mmohut and really there diff. but not as much as u think,but mmobomb better at comm stuff and hut for reviews. lik bomb because they got comm down pat (keys,commentary) and hut really doesnt . and im waiting for raiderz be there on the 8th ,tryed c.osteam beta diff hard at times with controls (att),forgot the other 1 ,look it up later. and it is a shame we not gettin c.o.d online and f.s.o looks good ,never played nes version ,hope they dont bad mouth english(usa) ,(eu) or we not going to get any version if so. good hack though ,show them weak spots in code ,and prank cant really pick 1 ,so im going with both , yes they could of hit servers ,and pwned accts, but they didnt if so we wouldnt see to many japan games here. there kind of a bitter people ,(hold grudges) . all i got ,ty for good show guys keep it up .

A bomb for DCUO. the new tides of war summer missions while on paper was a great idea, and i would work my fingers to the bone to get some of these summer event items ( because im all about aesthetics) but when attempting to do the mission at lvl 30 its nearly impossible. with a group full of tanks and a healer fully geared in raid armor and support items it took less then a minute to break us apart. swarms upon swarms of atlantian zergs come out, all tougher then aquaman himself, and between trying to stay alive,trying to hit mini objectives,and trying to keep that waste of coding ocean master alive, its an utter mess. A bomb for making it nearly impossible for higher levels to get some fun stuff done

Havek is an idiot.

The HTC Evo 4G was released 2 years ago. It had 1GiB of internal storage, 512MiB RAM, and a 1GHz Snapdragon processor. It's successor, the HTC Evo 4G LTE hasn't even been released and has a 1.5GHz Krait dual-core processor and 1GiB of RAM with 16GiB of internal storage. A phone that hasn't even been released has half the cores of the Ouya. 8GiB is a lot of internal storage considering most phones have more (e.g. HTC Evo 4G LTE's 16GiB) to store music, videos, sounds, and documents. 8GiB is plenty of storage for any number of games that would be built for the Tegra processor. This device not only has a four core processor, it's nVidia's Tegra 3 processor, the latest and greatest in mobile gaming processors. This is the Voodoo 3 of mobile integrated CPU/GPU combos. The specs on the Ouya are approximately equivalent to that of the Asus Transformer Prime, costing $500, or the Acer Iconia Tab A510 which is around $400. This device is all the power of the latest and greatest Asus tablet for a fifth of the price, and a much larger screen.

Furthermore, this WILL be a revolution in the gaming industry. With Sony, Microsoft, and Nintendo placing hefty restrictions on game production (until the Xbox Indie market and Nintendo's Wii store, and even then...) independent developers have had a very rough time producing video games. Rovio was a nothing, essentially three kids fresh out of college, until they came up with Angry Birds. A gaming concept done thousands of times before in Flash games, and thanks to the openness of iOS and the Android Market/Google Play Store they became a household name. An independent developer went from nothing to a household name simply because iOS and Android ushered in a new wave of gaming potential. Since then independent developers everywhere have had their chance to bring their great ideas to the masses, and Android was the reason. iOS may have been a few years it's senior, but Android perfected what they refused to perfect. Now, with Android phones dominating every other mobile OS *combined*, you see how powerful openness is. This is the next logical step. There is no reason why Android cannot host games just as powerful as those that run on the Xbox 360 or PS3, save the advancements in hardware Sony and Microsoft have had to their advantage. Already the Ouya is essentially as powerful (if not moreso) than the Playstation 2, and the concept alone is nipping at Sony and Microsoft's heels.

So yes. This *is* "fight the man." If Apple had it's way, powerful smartphones would have been a very expensive luxury for the elite, and the rest of us would be on J2ME. And even now that Apple's iOS devices have gotten a bit cheaper, there are still the massive restrictions Apple places. A chokehold on the mobile market that only Android could break. And if Sony, Nintendo, and Microsoft had their way, no game would ever be made without their explicit permission. Licensing fees to fund the CEO's yachts, and restrictions and red tape to shut out anyone without the potential to make the big three's pocket's even further stuffed. Not only that, but Android is progressively making PCs less useful. In the future, Android could be the OS that takes over Windows. Who knows, right? Who would have thought Apple's reign would have been taken down by a Google-backed Linux-based OS? And yet it happened. And even still Android games continue to cut into the profits of the big three's console dominance.

Havek is an idiot and it will be hard to respect a single word he says from here on out.

As always, great show. I always look forward to coming home and seeing a new episode up. Working 60+ hours a week doesn't give me much time to game or relax, but your show lets me unwind. Keep fighting the good fight!

I've got both an A Bomb and DaBomb for the same game.

Both go to SMITE

DaBomb for making a MOBA actually worth playing.
(This, coming from a 2 year vet of LoL)

A Bomb for taking all my damn money. I just gotta have those skins!

Question of the Week: What does pay 2 win mean to me?

Pay to win means simply this: Without spending real currency you will never be able to compete at top tier pvp, and or dungeons without first sinking cash. I'm a junky for cosmetics and am more than willing to pay for them. Just don't make me pull out my wallet due to rage during pvping!

P.S. - Havek, I've got your back against MMOHut. I can't put my finger on it, but i just don't like them.

I say Ouno for the Ouya

Alright Now !

The talking had switched to MMObomb vr's MMOhut.

After this get's aired, You now have recruited Spunkify,
Guess he got scared and wanted to join the winning team.

Nice move, Anyone else we need to flame or call out to steal more hosts!

:D

Inflictious

Great show guys, i have been wathcing your show since the beginning, i loved it. I never comment because you guys said all i want to said, Its like you can read my mind o_O. But now i gonna give my A bomb of the week for mmohut because they selling out for money and fired all the people who loved and want to make gamming world fun. My Da bomb the week is for you guy because you take on the right side of the gamming world, and hired Spunkify, who stood up for his belived and got fired.
P/S: Sorry for my bad English. Greeting from VietNam

I was gonna write a wall of text, but then suddenly I got tired.

Normally I'd say that if anything that makes you stronger can be ONLY bought in cash shop it is a p2w; however, I guess the main point to judge a game on whether it's a p2w or pay to enjoy is to actually see on what level the things in the cash shop affect you. Will you be doing PvP if it has no rewards, while you can buy some kind of boosts for PvP? If not then it doesn't concern you. PvE can generally be done without any special cash shop items, with an exception of some games where drop rates or exp rates are microscopic, and those are usually very heavy on grinding. Also you have to see what's the value of in-game currency in terms of real cash, if it is too hard to obtain then it turns into pay to enjoy.

Anyway, great show as always.

Hello,
Magicman! Question of the week answer: Pay to win is as you said with one exception (there always are...*whispers*). Not being able to get something or a feature that is a key to you performing at 100% (supposedly), but mostly pay to win is a world conspiracy designed by S.H.I.E.L.D. to balance the forces in the universe... I'm talking about games (yea i still am) - a game must have people that play games and pay for every freakin thing (like carrot costumes and such), trolls that whine about not being able to play right because they don't have a carrot costume or a sea star diadema to make them look like barbies. Of course there must be normal people who accually use their brain and not pay a cent for things like that (like myself) and still develop their playstyle according to the things they can get "freely" (you all know that saying: "Time is money" right?).
P.S. I'm sorry i wanted this answer to be somewhat trollish to all the bad players around the world that always whine about getting harrased in games by people that pay for gear and stuff like that and donators that get bonuses and such. This is absolute cat dung... I im 20 years old and i play games (specifically computer games - consoles... blah...) since im 4. NEVER have i ever payed a dollar or an euro for a game and i have always been in the "Really-really good players" and in my opinion pay to win system is made to make the noobs with green (or yellow for that matter, beats me) don't stop playing the game when they get beaten by a guy like me that has a little above the average gear or stats or whatever. Sooo, yea... Really?

Awesome episode IMHO. Keep them up and coming so we can all enjoy Haveks' Bombs!

P.S. I wish RaideZ was going into Open Beta next month... Can't die in C9 (on purpose) and i'm looking for something more challenging!

My view on pay to win is buying power, Such has defense charms- offensive charms- or anything that gives an advantage to combat that normal free players do not. A fair cash shop to me is ridiculous cosmetics (Me want cowboy hat for me heavy) with some EXP boosters... Now its time for my bomb

A bomb to outspark, they made a new game called dark blood but yet they still haven't came around to fixing divine souls.....
F bomb to SOE- their kid games suck, honestly the only reason why free realms and clone wars adventures are around is to give SOE money... Hopefully that money goes into making planet side two.. (P.S don't make games for kids if all your gonna do is steal their parents money)

Well it seems MMOHut is dying anyways. http://www.reddit.com/r/gaming/comments/wzev5/i_was_the_former_editorinchief_for_mmohutcom_and/

Why is OUYA so popular.

People just are to lazy to hack and crack their own Android phones and tablets and probably they dont have skills to do it either. Thats it.

They buy, attach it to the TV and play. It's easy

I guarantee that even if you will post 12 steps on how to get your Tablet working with a controler , they will choose to buy the console :D

Pay2win for me means, simply the following: You can make it so that if I don`t pay my character will have no clothes and I will jump around in-game naked, but as long as anything, ANYTHING, that influences how much damage I deal to those bastard healers, is buyable with currency I can earn by doing quests and killing mobs, then its fine.

So, to sum it up, if anything that influences gameplay is only buyable with real money, then the game is pay2win. Now, reading this, don`t you feel like there are now even less not-pay2win free2play games?

My little brothers name is Kalon. "Kay Lin"

XD

meanwhile MMOBOMB is mentioned in this post:

http://i.imgur.com/EysPj.jpg

Which comes from here
http://www.reddit.com/r/gaming/comments/wzev5/i_was_the_former_editorinchief_for_mmohutcom_and/

A pay to win game to me is SOG if u play the game u would know what i mean!

I think as long as the OUYA uses a separate market place (similar to nVidia Tegra Zone) and remains easily hackable (maybe even the ability to increase RAM), it could be a great little piece of hardware.
Plus, there are some great games on my tablet I'd love to play using a controller (Zenonia being one).
But honestly, if I had a controller for my $600 Tablet that I already own, I would just play on that through the HDMI.

Actually, there's a question. I wonder if the HDMI on the OUYA will use HDCP?

Havek, you were rambling for half an hour and managed to call tens of thousands of people idiots, all while missing the entire point of OUYA. The company chose Android because it has a lot of recognition, because it's easy to develop for and because it's open source and not because it has Angry Birds on it. Having all the apps for it already is, of course, a plus. You were so hung up on Angry Birds it completely dictated your opinion and the rant. You heard Android and immediatly jumped to the conclusion that it's gonna be Angry Birds and those types of games. That would be like saying a Windows based console would be a WoW mashine, nothing else, which is ridiculous. Just because it comes from the mobile space, doesn't mean it's limited to the same content as the mobile market. It probably will feature an OUYA version of Angry Birds, because porting it is a matter of hours and it's essentially money lying around for the developer, just implementing the controller support and that's it. But OUYA is actually meant for games like Journey, Flower or Unfinished Swan, all 3 can be found on the PSN for PS3 and are great little games that are very innovative. I agree that OUYA will feature a lot of crap, because it's easy to develop for, but the great games will make it to the top, just like with every platform. Games these days cost tens of millions of dollars to make and executives are not keen on the idea of taking chances with things that may utterly fail just because they are new, which is perhaps the sole reason we see rehashed sequels year after year. Indie games, on the other hand, like Minecraft, have that luxery, because in comparison, they are dirt cheap to make and the risk is very low. I am also the type that has all things rooted and I could hook up my PS3 controller to my phone right now via bluetooth and in essence, replicate what OUYA is doing. Well why not do it like this then? Why isn't everybody doing it already? Because it's not that easy if you aren't tech savvy, and requires accessoires that aren't boxed with the phone/tablet. Also, Everybody has a different brand and different hardware specs in their devices, it would be like developing for an Android powered ARM-PC. All OUYA is doing, is getting rid of all that hassle and just create a box that you hook up to your TV. Creating a desperately needed home for indie developers who have been struggeling to get their games out there, because their options are very limited. PSN or XBLA comes with fees or unacceptable deals for developers, like for example, giving up the rights to the IP. Think of OUYA as a dedicated Steam-like box for indie games, which is perhaps the best way to describe it. Also, the hardware specs do not concern me, as Magicman pointed out it isn't a direct competitor to XBOX or PS, and the Tegra 3, if fully utilized without having to think about battery life in a mobile device, can put a lot of great Free2Play games on the PC, even some full price titles, to shame. 1GB of ram is ok, 2 would be much better though. Tablets today do not have better specs, more storage doesn't equal better specs. And these tablets are 5 times more expensive than OUYA, the cheapest out there can't hold a candle to a Tegra 3 tablet. I agree about the 8GB internal storage, it's just ridiculously tiny in this day and age, but you can hook up a USB harddrive, so not that big of a deal. I did not back the project and do not plan to do so, though I am interested to see where it will go and I will follow it. And yes, it's hard to argue with 5 million dollars, 80% of which probably come from Indie developers who want a home for their games.

TL;DR: OUYA is not an Angry Birds console.

Wow, such a wall of text and I haven't even given a bomb or answered the weekly quetion, should I just devide the comment into chapters? :D

Anyway, A-bomb to the guy who thinks there are no great free2play FPS games out there and DA-bomb to Tribes: Ascend, Team Fortress 2 and my favourite, Blacklight: Retribution.

Weekly Question:

I have the exact same view on it as you Magicman, I do not consider time vs. money pay to win. However, I think games like Combat Arms, that are just blatently pay to win, as the best guns are available for cash only, can still be fun even if you are not paying, because at the end of the day, the best gun won't do you much good if you can't aim it properly.

'' i say we do some real life pvp '' lol havek . so i was thinking a few days ago what if mmobomb and
the other free to play mmo sites got togther and made like a record book for free to play games
telling dos and donts of cash shops and advertising the best free to play mmo . just an idea. great show magicman .

* This spot was Hacked by Inflictious *