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[Spyxos]

I've tried several f2p games recently and I was really surprised at how high quality some of them are. Not long ago I felt that the gap to paid games was huge, but the f2p games have caught up quite a bit. You get so much content completely free of charge. Sure, I buy a few skins or characters from time to time, but there's absolutely no pressure and I could play the games in pretty much the same way without spending any money.

And the upcoming Path of Exile 2 seems to be setting new standards. Diablo 4 looks like a joke by comparison. And D4 has a lot of overpriced skins even though it's a full-priced game.

 

[bender]

What have you been playing?

 

[LectureMaster]

I think PoE and Warframe are probably the only two unicorns in the f2p market, in terms of monetization.

 

[deriks]

Slowly?! Even fucking CoD has a f2p and is pretty since ever

 

[Lorianus]

I had more fun in recent Star Rail / Genshin patches than recent AAA games so i say yes.

 

[TintoConCasera]

I'm not a fan of gacha but I appreciate how some of them have been getting better at actual gameplay, like Genshin or ZZZ. There's a mobile Wizardry game that came out not long ago that also seems kinda cool.

 

[Spyxos]

What have you been playing?

Warframe, Fortnite, Cod Warzone, Zenless Zone Zero. Counter Strike 2. I had a look at Genshin, it looked pretty high quality, even though I didn't play it for long.

 

[Big Baller]

 

[Nankatsu]

Yes, because companies realize they can produce at a slower rate while milking player base.

 

[Danjin44]

I personally dont for care any F2P Gacha games.

 

[hemo memo]

I run away from anything F2P.

 

[diffusionx]

There have been good F2P games for a while now, but the fundamental design will always be different.

I've tried several f2p games recently and I was really surprised at how high quality some of them are. Not long ago I felt that the gap to paid games was huge, but the f2p games have caught up quite a bit. You get so much content completely free of charge. Sure, I buy a few skins or characters from time to time, but there's absolutely no pressure and I could play the games in pretty much the same way without spending any money.

And the upcoming Path of Exile 2 seems to be setting new standards. Diablo 4 looks like a joke by comparison. And D4 has a lot of overpriced skins even though it's a full-priced game.

Original PoE made D3 look like a joke too.

 

[Danny Dudekisser]

Even if the mechanics and visuals have improved (which they clearly have), there's still a fundamental misalignment with what traditional games offer. Frankly, I have no interest in playing or even considering playing any of them.

 

[chakadave]

I think it has its place.

 

[Parazels]

Team deathmatch in COD mobile is the only free game, which I play regularly.

 

[TommyCronin6969]

If free to play games have been impressing you so much then the games you've been paying for must be trash.

 

[HerjansEagleFeeder]

They haven't gotten better, paid games became worse and worse.

 

[Spyxos]

If free to play games have been impressing you so much then the games you've been paying for must be trash.

Not really, i played some good stuff, but the f2p games before that were not good.

 

[bender]

Original PoE made D3 look like a joke too.

Say what you will about D3, and lord knows I bagged on it a lot through its' lifespan, but the I don't think any other ARPG feels or controls quite as well on consoles (D4 included, oddly enough). I'm looking forward to trying POE2 though.

 

[clarky]

I think the OP is slowly catching up.

 

[Pejo]

Absolutely they are. It's just a different monetization model at this point, not really indicative of quality of both story or gameplay. There's less "guarantee" money, but much higher potential for F2P games, which is why the eastern regions are actually putting legitimate budget and effort into the games. I think it can definitely exist alongside the traditional games model.

Like this is a f2p mobile/pc game.

 

[Men_in_Boxes]

P2P is dead.

Long live F2P!

 

[Generic]

Yes, the best game ever made is Fortnite after all.

 

[bender]

Yes, the best game ever made is Fortnite after all.

 

[Spyxos]

Absolutely they are. It's just a different monetization model at this point, not really indicative of quality of both story or gameplay. There's less "guarantee" money, but much higher potential for F2P games, which is why the eastern regions are actually putting legitimate budget and effort into the games. I think it can definitely exist alongside the traditional games model.

Like this is a f2p mobile/pc game.

I played it once for an hour or so, I almost fell asleep during the dialog. But it seems to get much better with later content.

 

[StereoVsn]

Pretty much every gatcha game and most F2P games annoy me way too much with their stupid currency crap, stamina bars and so on.

P2E and Warframe are quite different though. Both weren’t quite what I liked, but you can tell they are good games for their audience.

 

[MiguelItUp]

Honestly the quality of F2P has improved over the years IMO. But every now and then there will be a F2P game that is the polar opposite. Bad monetization, bad game, etc. Before you know it, it's gone. But the ones that have remained and are popular are for various reasons.

 

[Pejo]

I played it once for an hour or so, I almost fell asleep during the dialog. But it seems to get much better with later content.

Yep initial launch story, and well everything outside the combat, was rough. It's improved every single patch and is quite good now. There's lots of positive buzz for the big 2.0 release coming up in a month or so, too.

 

[ap_puff]

Modern F2P games are much more advanced compared to the mobile trash from a decade ago. They have to be because the market is extremely competitive now, you can't win at life by just making some jpg's for people to collect any more. That said, they still have a lot of problems mainly because their monetization model prevents a lot of good storytelling from happening. Episodic content will always mean that storylines will drag out far longer than they should, be filled with unimportant filler, and rely on gimmicks and cliffhangers to keep people interested. It also usually screws up the gameplay loop as they rely on mindless grinding and timegated content to keep people invested. One thing that I do think they do better than most regular paid games is their music though, they're more willing to put experimental and less modern cinematic orchestral forgettable tracks in games. Although, apparently there's a game called Limbus Company that has pretty good writing - I can't personally say anything to it because I'm maxed on gachas right now, but it has a cult following just due to its writing.

 

[Mayar]

What do you mean they're catching up? Here we need to clearly divide the market into free to play PC and Mobile.
Purely on the PC market, relative stagnation, the only 2 projects so far that, let's say, have passed the test of time and are still enjoying great popularity are, as was correctly noted, Warframe and POE. From time to time, attempts appear to create a company for them, but so far no one has been able to gain a foothold, there was an attempt from the Koreans to gain a foothold due to The First Descendant, but they did not succeed, the game quickly lost the number of players and on average floats between 7,000-15,000 players, which is also certainly not a tragedy, but the same Warframe, depending on the patch, on average floats at 40,000 - 60,000. With POE, approximately the same situation, timid attempts from the Koreans, not a single success so far.

Mobile free to play is a separate song - as examples of games from Mihoyo were given here, these games are now outselling absolutely all games that go on open sale, on average, Mihoyo games bring in tens of millions every month, depending on the success of banners. Therefore, they are not catching up, they are ahead of the entire market in terms of revenue. Which is actually more alarming than pleasing. The guys are doing so well that they have already expanded the company to 5000+ people =)

 

[ap_puff]

What do you mean they're catching up? Here we need to clearly divide the market into free to play PC and Mobile.
Purely on the PC market, relative stagnation, the only 2 projects so far that, let's say, have passed the test of time and are still enjoying great popularity are, as was correctly noted, Warframe and POE. From time to time, attempts appear to create a company for them, but so far no one has been able to gain a foothold, there was an attempt from the Koreans to gain a foothold due to The First Descendant, but they did not succeed, the game quickly lost the number of players and on average floats between 7,000-15,000 players, which is also certainly not a tragedy, but the same Warframe, depending on the patch, on average floats at 40,000 - 60,000. With POE, approximately the same situation, timid attempts from the Koreans, not a single success so far.

Mobile free to play is a separate song - as examples of games from Mihoyo were given here, these games are now outselling absolutely all games that go on open sale, on average, Mihoyo games bring in tens of millions every month, depending on the success of banners. Therefore, they are not catching up, they are ahead of the entire market in terms of revenue. Which is actually more alarming than pleasing. The guys are doing so well that they have already expanded the company to 5000+ people =)

fwiw "mobile" games like mihoyo and its new competitors are rapidly shifting towards pc and console as they are becoming more and more demanding to run, because there's a lot of pressure to introduce better looking graphics and more stuff to do, which means a lot of the lower end mobile devices are becoming left behind in ability to run the game. For example we have an OT on Wuthering Waves, a Genshin competitor here. That game barely runs on mobile and got a lot of hatred at launch because of its high device requirements, so now almost all of its playerbase is on PC.

 

[SmokedMeat]

They’re taking in the most cash thanks to whales, so there’s no reason why they shouldn’t have amazing budgets.

 

[Mayar]

fwiw "mobile" games like mihoyo and its new competitors are rapidly shifting towards pc and console as they are becoming more and more demanding to run, because there's a lot of pressure to introduce better looking graphics and more stuff to do, which means a lot of the lower end mobile devices are becoming left behind in ability to run the game. For example we have an OT on Wuthering Waves, a Genshin competitor here. That game barely runs on mobile and got a lot of hatred at launch because of its high device requirements, so now almost all of its playerbase is on PC.

Yes, you can play their games on consoles and PCs, but the main revenue comes from phones. I'm too lazy to look for the article, but it seems like 70%, I could be wrong, it was a long time ago. From more recent information, they collected $5 billion from China alone, and that's only Android and iOS and that's only Genshin. Most of the revenue from their games still comes from phones. Players in Asia prefer to play Gacha games on phones rather than PC or Consoles.

 

[ap_puff]

Yes, you can play their games on consoles and PCs, but the main revenue comes from phones. I'm too lazy to look for the article, but it seems like 70%, I could be wrong, it was a long time ago. From more recent information, they collected $5 billion from China alone, and that's only Android and iOS and that's only Genshin. Most of the revenue from their games still comes from phones.

That's based on older data, the latest estimates are around 50:50 mobile revenue to console+pc for games industrywide. The difference for Mihoyo may be Honkai Star Rail which is much easier to play on mobile on account of it being turn based.

 

[TrebleShot]

DEfinitely, have more fun playing first descendant than Outlaws tbh

 

[Aenima]

Yes.

For story telling, single player games are still the best experience as you get a story with a beginning and ending, while there are F2P games with very good story telling, like Nikke from Shift Up, its a story that might not see a definitive ending untill the devs decide its time to shutdown the servers.
F2P games already catched up in all other departments though.

 

[ap_puff]

Yes.

For story telling, single player games are still the best experience. F2P games already catched up in all other departments though.

I would say that a lot of core gameplay loops are and will remain worse than normal single player games because of the monetization though. Equipment, unlocking copies of characters, stat/skill grinding... are all much more of a chore than b2p games because those loops exist to milk the player.

 

[Aenima]

I would say that a lot of core gameplay loops are and will remain worse than normal single player games because of the monetization though. Equipment, unlocking copies of characters, stat/skill grinding... are all much more of a chore than b2p games because those loops exist to milk the player.

Agree.

 

[Radical_3d]

No. Their main problem has not seen value of production since ages ago.

 

[Men_in_Boxes]

Honestly, F2P has not only caught up, but has surpassed the quality found in P2P. Too much money in the F2P market and the significantly longer development timeline means the quality is higher. The math is undeniable.

 

[Mayar]

That's based on older data, the latest estimates are around 50:50 mobile revenue to console+pc for games industrywide. The difference for Mihoyo may be Honkai Star Rail which is much easier to play on mobile on account of it being turn based.

Unfortunately, I can't find a breakdown by players, they haven't done it for a long time as far as I understand, just giving out a general figure, without knowing the figures we can speculate for a very long time, but I don't think it's 50/50 =)

 

[dreamstation]

Plenty of decent free to play games but I steer clear of any of that gacha garbage coming out of Asia.

 

[DavidGzz]

Path of Exile 2 is Free to try...in about a year. Then you need to buy stash unless you're only playing the campaign and quitting. The early access is $30 for half the promised acts...unless you've spent $480 on the first game. Sure, free though.