F2P Cast: Who is Playing That Music? (Ep 45)

Question of the week : what bugs me the most about the f2p world?

I got a few actually, 1) the community, not all f2p games have great communities in them, just like you guys have mentioned in League Of Legends they have a pretty crappy community, however i can just mute the rude people, but still hope they fix that, so that i don't run into them again.
2) the ridiculous game patches, as mentioned by Reavermyst in the comment above, i totally agree with him, absolutely game breaking, i mean it would have been nice if the dev teams listened to our opinions for once and make a difference that way.
3) THE BUGS! so many of them and not many f2p game companies actually listen to the beta testers on this one, like what is the point of letting people into your closed beta just to ignore them? (thinking of raiderz by the way).

Oh and those are my a-bombs for the week by the way, my da-bomb will be given to you guys of course, great show as always, enjoyed it, this show makes being a member here worth it, love all the mmobombers out there and stay safe you all :D

About the Guild Wars 2 thing, i say both false and true. GW2 did some good things but DAOC did the 3 faction war stuff so it`s not like they did anything big but do good stuff that has already been done.

Hey guys as always great job on the show, and it's good to see sej back! I have a Da-bomb and an A-bomb for SD Gundam Capsule Fighter. First the Da-bomb:I loved gundam when I was young and this game teases the nostalgia center for my brain, and has me addicted! Here's what the A-bomb is for. I checked it out and tried it because of the S-Rank giveaway. But the S-rank unit they give away is given to you in the very first half hour of play anyway, if you can get through the quests/missions fairly quickly. IF anything, it is a major popularity grab, which is well needed, the population needs some help but they could have gone about it in a different, more rewarding way for new players. All in all it doesn't change that it's an extremely fun little third person shooter that I have since spent days on, and I recommend it for anyone looking to kill some hours.

I got give A bomb to Getamped 2 for the last update it was very useless for balancing the blocks.

Hey guys great show, i guess im slowly getting into leaving comments here.
This week i got a Da-Bomb for Gameglobe, Simple, Fun game with really no download, but yet a simple way to kill some time, and explore the Game Creator in you. Plus people really do make some interesting levels in Gameglobe, i was amazed.

I wanna give an A Bomb to MMOBomb for never responded to any of my comments on F2P weekly! LOL i even commented on Planetside 1 going F2P lol Im kidding love the show i listen every week and look at mostly all of the videos and content. Keep up the good work guys I appreciate it!

first i would like to say im tired of game companies pumping out CRAP..make some good original games and you might hold an audience...daoc still has a live crowd and even has player created servers. eq2 was a great game before they added mercs and turned it pay to win and killed the chance of free players ever forming a party with payed players...but i do agree that buy to play is the best format for everyone..i paid my 10 bucks for eq2 and i plan to buy swtor very soon. having a cash shop is fine too and i do think players should get an advantage for spending money. if i was paying id want it and its makes people want to upgrade once they get pwned or see someones awesome weapons..BUT there needs to be a way that broke players can earn some cash (without doing surveys or buying crap from another company) such as running "epic" quests.. referring people, logging in consecutive days.. and while im ranting im just going to point out again that noooo onee has made a pokemon style mmorpg(aside from outernauts...browser~) yet thats worth playing..there have been a few close but no cigar... hopefully dragon prophet will feed my need a bit...but i have a feeling i will have to design the game myself and give it to soe or ea for free(or maybe free lifetime member ships to all existing and future games ;0))

I've just started playing Aion and I always forget to turn on the easy level channel!! lol

Bigpoint is starting to sound like apple, blaming their failures on others. When it comes to gaming (not when it comes to apple) people are smart pay to win games won't do that well. If they took on a better free2play model then they'd probably make more money. I don't play Bigpoint games because they're pay to win.

Dragons Profits, I'm not sure. I'll try it but because its Sony I think its more than likely going to be crap. Sony has screwed up more games than any other company I can think of.

I agree that the best game of 2012 will be between Firefall and Path to Exile. Path to Exile isn't browser based BTW. I downloaded the beta and it was a big download unless they're making a browser version of it? RaiderZ could be on the list too. Also there are other games that haven't come out yet.

I give a DaBomb to Elder Scrolls Online. I think this could be the MMO to beat. I'm not sure if its going to be F2P, B2P or P2P but if its anything like the Elder Scrolls single player games it could be a major hit and a good evolution to MMO gaming.

I got a BIG A-bomb for you guys. This one goes to Zombie Studios for releasing the most game breaking patch for Blacklight: Retribution I have ever seen. I call it the "Derp" patch. this patched added several new weapons, tactical gear, and a new map. Sounds great? It sorta does. Sadly ALL of the weapons that were added tip the balances like a bolder versus a feather!

The new Anti-Material Rifle delivers a 1 shot kill every time. Even though it's reload time is extremely slow and only holds 1 round, almost every player who grabs this gun will know how to compensate to the point the con becomes irrelevant. The Breach pistol comes with an explosive flare round that sticks to any surface and delivers a HUGE explosion radius. The Exploding Tomahawk does the same thing as the Breach Pistol's Flare round, only faster and deadly on impact. The Katana Depot Item has crazy lunge distance and instant kills the target. These are all ridiculous and unnecessary things to add to the game while there are still so many things needing to be fixed.

There's only a mere few things that were added in this patch that I'm happy to see. The Evac map is beautiful, the Armor Upgrades were much needed, New Hero, and a couple armor pieces. That's the only part of this Derp Patch that I have appreciated.

Sadly, this patch has ruined the game for me. As a dedicated Blacklight player, I feel less and less able to get myself to play now that everyone is running around with their shiny "One Hit Wonder" load outs.

It's even more disappointing that Zombie would preach Balance on the forums, then have the balls to spend a few months to develop and HYPE this game breaking patch.

i realy would like to see a free mmorpg with cartoon style and fast bloody based action

you guys should have a live stream at least once a month then play online games with the mmobomb community. like the last time you did it, but every month. i know one is coming up soon but it should be more often. i know others will agree.

HAHAHA HAzUH - BEST MMORPG! NO LAG
aberoth.com

-B2P vs. F2P really depends on the game. F2P has yet to really develop any major model for single-player games. At best they've done what is essentially the old shareware model of releasing part of the game and then asking people pay for the rest. B2P has lately been plagued by a deluge of overpriced DLC and now they're selling the "promise" of future DLC(such as the Season Pass/Elite stuff found in Borderlands 2 and Call of Duty) long before it's even designed, developed and quality tested. So no Boolean logic here when it comes to an overall statement.

Planetside 2 has decent competition in the forms of both PoE and Hawken. I'm having a blast playing it. I know a lot of PS1 players have huge concerns about the game as it stands right now. My only real problem is the inability to completely lock down a continent. But due to there only being 3 continents upon release that really isn't an issue. When they add more they will need to implement that mechanic to prevent the players from being way too spread out upon multiple maps, thus ensuring large scale battles will still happen.

Hawken will not be what a lot of people expect upon launch. I do have to agree with Magicman, the 'mech' thing is really tacked on, it plays like a standard fps. It may peel away some of MWO's more casual players(or a good many of them if PGI can't actually get new content out in short order as well as fix a host of other problems). At first Hawken will get a lot of players but when the 'mech' veneer gets stripped soon afterwards it's popularity will dwindle. With Black Ops 2 releasing around the same time, that will definitely hurt it.

GW2 did not revolutionize anything, it just streamlined a lot of what's been done before. Combat's still fairly hotkey based, but with less keys. Healing is just done on an individual basis. The same collect 10 bear asses quests are just auto given now. You still have to run dungeons over and over though in your eternal fight against the Random Number Generator.

Perfect World has long since had the Mounted mount. The Barbarian class can turn into tigers and any female toon can ride them.

And Planetside 1 still beats Warhammer Online to F2P.

Da Bomb to Terraria, Mario + Zelda + ARPG Loot + A Hell Of A Lot Of Legos = WIN!

ABomb to Team Fortress 2 for needing to Validate every time I start it up.

Why, MagicMan, WHY?!

I feel like a little kid hugging spiderman right now. I know y'all read the comments but I never thought I would be brought up in the show :D. And for the name, I don't blame you for mispronouncing it because it is pretty odd, but it is (crane-lee). My real name is Kraig and I had some weird friends growing up lmao.

Now down to business~
As for the world "revolutionary" I can honestly say that it IS thrown around too much. Kind of like movies saying "#1 Comedy of 2012". Those are just hooks without worms in hopes to catch a dumb fish. Revolution was the creation of the MMO world, giving people customization over there class/race/appearance, a group of guys making a spinoff of warcraft that generated the MOBA genre we know and love. Allowing people to walk up to an event and join without joining a group isn't really revolutionary, that is just tweaking the system in my opinion.

I say that we need an mmo with an active world. I want to walk into a city and see people walking around, new faces, NPC's being chased by guards. Make me feel like I'm not just playing another WoW. Some of my all time favorite games have always been Fable and Elder Scrolls. They are both pretty immersive and you can loose yourself if the world itself. Hell I was just playing Skyrim and found myself running through the wilderness trying to see just how good I was at shooting a moving target with my bow. Was I progressing? No. Was I wasting my time? Probably. Was I having fun? Yes.

If I may suggest, make that a question in a video. "What do you think MMO's could do to make the game more immersive? Would you like to play a game were it feels like your actions matter?" Feel free to reword it all you want, but I just believe that overall that is what most gamers like.

As for the whole "buying levels" thing. I personally don't care if someone reaches end game faster than me, but for some reason I know it turns a lot of people off. Personally, end game is what ultimately makes or breaks an MMO. That is what an MMO should be focused on. If I wanted a game that I play to max level then defeat a large boss then come back to the game on occasion then I would pick up a console game. The main problem that MMO's have is that leveling and end game are two whole different games in themselves. While leveling you go out and do quest to gain experience and you kill X amount of this and that or collect an item while killing things in the meantime. End game you stop questing and you stop going out and collecting items and killing monsters out in the world. Instead you start sitting in town selling items and working on a profession and then going to kill the same dragon you killed last Thursday at 8pm ......... sigh. In my eyes, it transitions from a game to a job. That is how real life is, you play your way to 18 then you start working. We play games to escape life, not to approach it in a different way.

Cash shops. Oh god how I love cash shops (sarcasm). People could take a note from League of Legends. You know that character you always play? You know how you love anything involving space? Well we just made your character a space suit that you can buy in the shop :D. Same could be done for MMO's. Tired of having to run around with an ugly shield that just doesn't match your armor? Well buy one of our many vanity items that will allow you to keep all the stats of the most recent legendary drops, but allows you sustain that Paladin look you strive so hard to keep. Now I know vanity items are nothing new, but that always seem so limiting. I can equip a shield/weapon/helm/chest/legs/hands/back but I can only get vanity for outfit/back/helm. I know I would pay to make my character keep an awesome look no matter what level I was.

Is free to play the best for gamers right now? Well, the way I see it is that I don't want to go out and buy an MMO, pay $15 a month for two or three months before I get to cap then realize that I just don't enjoy the game anymore. Give me the game for free, let me get to end game then start offering me things that I might want to buy to make my gaming experience more enjoyable. Right now I will agree with Magicman and say that buy to play is taking the throne for a while. Free to play will hold a much longer reign, but it just isn't it's time just yet.

Also, I think I might have some bombs to drop myself.

DaBomb: My comment being awesome enough to bring up in the weekly Free to Play Cast. This has become one of my favorite things to look forward to and it makes me sad that they don't have a talk radio station like this. :P

A-Bomb: Not having enough money to go out buy Guild Wars 2. I have been dying to play that game since they released the first screen shots. I signed up for the BETA and just happened to have been out of the state at the time and was unable to join -teardrop- and they never sent me another key for the second closed BETA. Hopefully I will get a job soon, at least a holiday job, so that I can play me some GW2.

As always, great show keep up the great work and consider my previous question about immersion in MMO's. Would love to hear the groups thoughts on that. :D

Great show =]
I got a Da-Bomb for MicroVolts, simply because it's alot of fun. I guess the fact that my main character is a sexy demon clad in leather and lace helps out, too. =]
Also, I have an A-Bomb for Aion (as much as I love the game) for the rifting level caps being removed. I got my brother into the game, and created an alt so we could level together, but it has become difficult to level or quest with the obscene amount of level 60s rifting in to attack level 20-30 players. I understand that most of the blame falls on the community, but why NCSoft would allow for level 60s in a 20 zone just completely boggles me.

I'm gonna try and answer everything you guys posed throughout the episode, starting with the two true/false questions I can answer:

1) I'm gonna say that, in short, my opinion matches up to what Magicman said on Ask MMOBomb. Buy to play is better now, but free to play is on its way up. I think companies that want to make free to play games the standard need to look at how Riot has done it. Their model is phenomenal - everything is available to the player on download, but you have to play for it or, if you really want it that bad right now, pay for it. But it's all available.

2) I think Hawken is going to be an amazing game for those who are waiting for it. I got a beta key from the MMOBomb giveaway. I didn't get a lot of time to play it during the beta weekend, but my time in game was immensely enjoyable. It is simply a fun, fun game. However, I don't think it will pull in people who aren't really into the whole idea of flying around in a giant mech and shooting other giant mechs. Of course, I can't comprehend why anyone wouldn't be into that, but that's me...

Speaking of Hawken... guess what game is getting a Da-bomb from this guy! That's right, it's Hawken. More specifically, I'm going to give the companies behind it - Adhesive Games and Meteor Entertainment - my Da-bomb for actually releasing a real beta product. This goes back to a number of discussions you guys had on the Free to Play Cast, about how game companies have been using beta releases as money grabs. Well I'm here to tell you, there was no money being grabbed with the first Hawken CBT. Hell, they even gave out some cash shop currency for everyone to buy and deck out a mech of their own.

Now, for my f2p world annoyance. It's got to specifically with first person shooters. In almost every single free FPS I've ever played, the grenade... you have to actively switch to it before you can throw it. I honestly can't say how much this annoys me. Maybe I just got used to playing shooters on console, where that's never been a standard thing, but is it really that hard to program a "throw the grenade" button? It's not A-bomb worthy, but it sure as hell gets my goat.

Great show as usual, I know I don't answer every show but since I've started to listen (episode 40 if I'm correct I guess) this is the only show one internet that I really want to listen and have the felling that "I can't wait". Well except with anime because the ones that I follow weekly also give me that felling but anime is another area.
I've a A Bomb for Aeria Games Idk if I gave it already but if I had I still want to give it, I can't understand why such publisher with some good games can be that dumb to release games like Waren Story and Born to Fire in 2012. If it was a small publisher I would get it but they aren't They have the money to get better games but still they get that crap. It blows my mind, is one of the things that really grinds my gears in the F2P market these days, and Aeria Games isn't the only one doing it.

So what grinds my gears in f2p mmos is the lack of good matchmaking. Especially in most f2p mmorpgs I find it annoying to look for raid groups and dungeon partys myself. I never played WoW but heard it has some system like that. My only encounter with a f2p mmorpg matchmaker was with Forsaken World and it failed hard. (it placed some jobs in specific roles even if the player did not skill that way i.e. a dd-priest).
League of Legends got some good matchmaking (still cursed at sometimes though) but the community cries out for a role-specific one where you could set your preferred position beforehand. Riot fears a stagnating metagame but to be honest it hasn't changed on positions for a long time now.

True or False Questions:
1) I was the one who provided that question :) I still have to say B2P is the best for gamers, even though it may not necessarily be the best for a company's profit.
2) I'm gonna hold back on answering this. I know there's a lot of hype about PS2, but until that Cash Shop appears, I'm reserving judgement.
3) Not gonna bother answering this, I haven't played Hawken.
4) I have mixed feelings about GW2 being revolutionary, like Sejiro says, how much can you "revolutionise" a genre, to the point where it becomes a separate genre entirely (like how Dota started a split from traditional RTS games). There's only so many ways questing and combat among other things can work. Honestly, Brim's right in saying that the word "revolutionary" doesn't really mean anything now. So on that point, I'd say that GW2 has enhanced the MMORPG genre. Sejiro's also right in saying that if you're the type of gamer who likes to get to endgame quick as a flash like in traditional MMOs, this is gonna screw you over...and unfortunately, a considerable number of people who bought the game had this in mind, and thus were disappointed.

What's bad about the f2p world? I dunno..there's some things I think definitely aren't great, but...

I agree with Path of Exile if you can count Open Beta as a release. But Sony has alot more money to spent on advertising, so Planetside 2 will be more popular i guess. But the thing with free mmo's is that like 95 % of all games that come out every year are kinda like crap.

For your planetside2 being the best game for 2012 i would disagree though i have not played it yet it seems like it's going to be a rush job and hopefully not to buggy given the November release...i would say Path of Exile will be the best (and it's not browser based btw) the pvp has been added and the game is literally doubling in size come open beta and it's not pay to win and even better they are quick with bug fixes.

First! (not tht it rlly matters at all) -_- i love all u guys thx for keeping me informed and up to date with all these things. It helps me decide wht game companies to stay (and play) with thx again

-Arias