Warframe has by far the best F2P model. Is there any game out there that compares?

[Kconvey 485]

Warframe used to be better, they are getting worse and worse with the monetization.

New frames coming have such poor drop rates now that its just crazy.

Gauss, 10% for each part and all from rotation C..... yeah you better buy this if you want it before the heat death of the universe.

 

[FlyingDice 1,092]

11 hours ago, Wyrmius_Prime said:

Runescape, the oldschool version that is.

Only to a certain extent. The problem with RS2 f2p (and by extension OSRS) was the severe lack of content. It was more or less an extended demo, and you'd quickly end up choosing between quitting, subscribing, or the long, slooooow hill giant grind 'til you got your combat 99s.

 

The only games with good f2p models are games that are actually free: Dwarf Fortress, Aurora, Elona+, &c. Runner-up would be paid games like Starfarersector where you spend $10-20 on an already decent game and get a decade or more of substantial updates for no extra charge.

[JackHargreav 2,657]

30 minutes ago, Kconvey said:

Warframe used to be better, they are getting worse and worse with the monetization.

New frames coming have such poor drop rates now that its just crazy.

Gauss, 10% for each part and all from rotation C..... yeah you better buy this if you want it before the heat death of the universe.

 

Already have the chassis. I got it on the first run btw.

[Wyrmius_Prime 2,372]

52 minutes ago, FlyingDice said:

Only to a certain extent. The problem with RS2 f2p (and by extension OSRS) was the severe lack of content. It was more or less an extended demo, and you'd quickly end up choosing between quitting, subscribing, or the long, slooooow hill giant grind 'til you got your combat 99s.

 

The only games with good f2p models are games that are actually free: Dwarf Fortress, Aurora, Elona+, &c. Runner-up would be paid games like Starfarersector where you spend $10-20 on an already decent game and get a decade or more of substantial updates for no extra charge.

I haven't paid a cent for membership since 2013. You've been able to keep your membership up with in-game gp for over 6 years. Enough gp for 14 days can be earned in an hour.

[Learicorn 416]

League of Legends all the way back in 2013, before the essence system when you'd earn IP for every match and bought champions and runes permanently with it. Cosmetics were legitimately the only thing you had to pay for. Sure, you could argue that the game was "pay to win" since you can also buy champions with RP, but isn't that the exact same case with Warframe? You can either grind them out or buy with premium currency. Plus the game was much better balanced back then and is still more balanced than this nukefest of a PvE.

They also had dedicated servers since the beginning even when their game was irrelevant... hmmmmmmmmmmmmmmm

[Aderahl 0]

@Kconvey

I got all 3 parts in ~3 hrs so I don't know what you're on about.

[kevoisvevo 203]

15 hours ago, Hypernaut1 said:

The only things not earn-able in game (in reasonable time too) are prime access accessories,Steam skins and fan made cosmetics. Premium currency is easy to trade for. There are tons of free cosmetics and colors given away. I really cant find much to criticize with the way they do things. It strikes the perfect balance of never feeling you HAVE to use plat, but able to appreciate the convenience and benefit of using it. 

The closest game I've found with a decent f2p model is Path of Exile. But even in that game, they nickel and dime you for things like 1x use cosmetic skins. Then you have games like Elite Dangerous, where you buy the game AND its expansions and still have to pay for basic color swaps for every ship you get.

What are some other F2P games with a generous player-centric model that deserves an honorable mention?

runescape old version, csgo, team fortress 2, dota 2, path of exiles, world of tanks/battleships. these are the F2P games i know of 

[844448 2,359]

4 hours ago, Kconvey said:

Warframe used to be better, they are getting worse and worse with the monetization.

New frames coming have such poor drop rates now that its just crazy.

Gauss, 10% for each part and all from rotation C..... yeah you better buy this if you want it before the heat death of the universe.

 

Got all the parts in 25 minutes, just need to get good and guard all conduits.

Also 10% is considered as spoiling the players when other games have 1% or less on drops

[Im_a_Turtle 348]

16 hours ago, Ksaero said:

Fallout 76 😄

You get premium currency called Atoms for completing different achievements. And it doesn't cost much in real money. Nothing game-changing in the shop though - it's mostly cosmetics.

Do they still have players acting like NPC's ingame? lol.

[Hypernaut1 12,229]

1 hour ago, 844448 said:

Got all the parts in 25 minutes, just need to get good and guard all conduits.

Also 10% is considered as spoiling the players when other games have 1% or less on drops

10% is not a bad percentage at all. Not for a game where point of the main game is to grind. 

[iLeo 35]

14 hours ago, Palsteron said:

Wrong, there is a tradelimit per day for a reason.  

This is not as much of a problem for players who maxed their MR out, but it extracts cash from all the new players who are frustrated by having 2-8 trades a day.  

The only way to make "unlimited quantities of plat" is to buy and resell rivens, which needs a very high initial investment to begin with, which only people that are not the target monetization audience of this game will have.  

All other ways of getting "unlimited plat" have to do with hoarding, which most people will never get to because it takes months to see your returns while also having a decently high initial investment cost.

I have made tens of thousands of plat in the 6 months of Warframe that I've played. Not trading rivens. Hi! Unlimited. Platinum. I bought everything in the game. By trading. Path of Exile? Real money. 

[SneakyErvin 4,088]

17 hours ago, zruncho said:

 

 

Guys I don't feel like arguing so i'll just say this so you know where I'm coming from. For me the best microtransaction systems are those that don't interfere with gameplay at all. If they do, the developers are designing their game around microtransactions as well not only around gameplay. This always results in a worse experience. Warframe negates this by giving you an option to earn plat through gameplay but it is still not perfect, because many systems are designed around making you spend said plat, not around making them be as fun as they can be.  

PoE has RNG but it is designed in a way to be fun because they don't have to take microtransactions into account. Do you thing that the game would be as fun if you could buy a currency booster or magic find booster? No, because they would be making the game intentionally more tedious than it needs to be to make you buy said boosters. 

I don't care about the price of cosmetic microtransactions because they don't interfere with gameplay. 

As someone who has never spent a dime on any system in WF besides getting slots I have no clue at all what you are talking about. The systems work perfectly fine without using any plat to make things go faster because there is enough to do at any given time and always enough weapons/frames/pets to level at any given time (until you run out of them are feel you are done). The reason you can rush things or buy frames doesnt mean the systems are bad at the core, it is simply a QoL for those that wanna pay to skip ahead.

And you complain about boosters, which you can get for free quite often from Baro. It simply comes down to planning. And if you really need boosters, then you grind fissures and buy them without spending any real cash. Yet you defend PoE that more or less requires you to dump money in order to farm properly because the initial stash tabs wont last you very far if you intend on trading or gather materials. The stack size limitations in PoE are far worse than the optional boosts that you dont really need in WF because materials are easy to get either way. When you really need to horde something specific you simply plan ahead, get a booster from Baro or through fissure plat and then grind those days till you have a good enough stock.

And the problem becomes more present in PoE aswell since it is very time based. You have 3-4 months to get as much as possible out of your time, that means account upgrades are all the more important to skip tedius downtime on micromanaging anything from maps to materials/currency.

[SneakyErvin 4,088]

16 hours ago, Palsteron said:

Good Rivens, which are the only items that affect gameplay that you can't easily farm for.  

Prices are inflated by the fact that whales are buying up the best ones and hoard them.  

Just to be clear, I am not saying that there are not people out there with 100k+ plat that they got by trading, or that all people who have absurd rivens are whales, I am saying that whales are inflating the prices of the only sliver of endgame this game has.

DE doesnt sell the rivens though. It is all on the players for deciding on trading rivens for plat and not something else. DE have said "free market" and the players did what they did with all of it.

[Palsteron 11]

7 minutes ago, SneakyErvin said:

DE doesnt sell the rivens though. It is all on the players for deciding on trading rivens for plat and not something else. DE have said "free market" and the players did what they did with all of it.

What does that have to do with money being able to buy the best items in the game? 

[FlyingDice 1,092]

10 hours ago, Wyrmius_Prime said:

I haven't paid a cent for membership since 2013. You've been able to keep your membership up with in-game gp for over 6 years. Enough gp for 14 days can be earned in an hour.

Fair enough. I'm talking about RS2 because that's what I primarily played. Went to OSRS for a while but I disliked how a lot of the stuff they included was part of the reason RS2 died--the GE and wildy trench are great examples, though at least they didn't keep those godawful wildy arenas. Mostly stopped because Castle Wars wasn't popped, though. High-pop CW was most of the reason I kept playing after RS2 started that long slow slide downhill that led to RS3.

[SneakyErvin 4,088]

12 minutes ago, Palsteron said:

What does that have to do with money being able to buy the best items in the game? 

Because they arent cash-shop purchases, they arent an actual part of the model, it isnt something provided by DE for cash.

It is also not an item you buy that comes pre-made with its stats, it is an item that someone, somewhere has already dedicated time and resources to so you dont have to. It is also an item that needs to drop when you are actually playing the game. That is very different from an item farted out by a game's cash-shop with zero effort, time and resources put behind it.

[Palsteron 11]

43 minutes ago, SneakyErvin said:

Because they arent cash-shop purchases, they arent an actual part of the model, it isnt something provided by DE for cash.

They aren't part of the model? 

You think DE does not make thousands of dollars from some random whales putting absurd amounts of money in for a 20k Kohm Riven ? 

Just because it's not part of their shop doesn't mean it's not part of their monetization model.  

 

[Sziklamester 4,901]

13 hours ago, FlyingDice said:

Only to a certain extent. The problem with RS2 f2p (and by extension OSRS) was the severe lack of content. It was more or less an extended demo, and you'd quickly end up choosing between quitting, subscribing, or the long, slooooow hill giant grind 'til you got your combat 99s.

 

The only games with good f2p models are games that are actually free: Dwarf Fortress, Aurora, Elona+, &c. Runner-up would be paid games like Starfarersector where you spend $10-20 on an already decent game and get a decade or more of substantial updates for no extra charge.

Good to see someone know these kind of games. 

The real free games are those games which shared by the creator/s and absolutely not ask a cent for it.  These people do it with their own time to make fun to others.  You can donate them money if you want it.

Warframe's model is based around the grind to earn what you wish to reach.  There needs buyers to keep  the economy alive so those whom not spend money on the game are getting some in game currency via trading. Not perfect but not that bad system and most free to play games use the same tactic to get money.

[(PS4)CrazyBeaTzu 744]

On 2019-08-29 at 5:50 AM, Midas said:

Digital Extremes has been working on reducing that with email verification 2 step training.

Wait, whats bad plat?

[Karinia 311]

19 minutes ago, (PS4)CrazyBeaTzu said:

Wait, whats bad plat?

Bad platinum is, when someone buying it from third party sources or using other shady methods to get platinum. Then you trade with a said person, whom got his/her platinum from this sources then suddenly your platinum after the trade just dissapear. If you lucky and have enough spare platinum you only will notice platinum lose after the trade (if you were the seller). If not then your account reach negative platinum balance which can only be solved by buying platinum on your account or ask the support to investigate the trades.

In worst scenarios your account can be banned for negative platinum which is a double punishment for those whom trying to trade and earn platinum.

 

[SneakyErvin 4,088]

1 hour ago, Palsteron said:

They aren't part of the model? 

You think DE does not make thousands of dollars from some random whales putting absurd amounts of money in for a 20k Kohm Riven ? 

Just because it's not part of their shop doesn't mean it's not part of their monetization model.  

 

They arent. The items that are part of the monetization model are the ones that remove plat from circulation with every purchase. Like costumes, boosters, forma bundles, slots and everything else in the cash-shop. Rivens dont do that, rivens simply circulate already exsisting plat. Not a single platinum is removed from the game in riven trades. If there was a platinum tax on trades then yes, everything we trade would be part of the monetization because it would eventually require new plat to be obtained by players in order to keep trading.

 

 

[FlyingDice 1,092]

1 hour ago, Sziklamester said:

Good to see someone know these kind of games. 

The real free games are those games which shared by the creator/s and absolutely not ask a cent for it.  These people do it with their own time to make fun to others.  You can donate them money if you want it.

Warframe's model is based around the grind to earn what you wish to reach.  There needs buyers to keep  the economy alive so those whom not spend money on the game are getting some in game currency via trading. Not perfect but not that bad system and most free to play games use the same tactic to get money.

Yeah, don't get me wrong, I'm not trashing DE's model. It's pretty good as such things go. But it's still based on milking cash, even if they're not as aggressive and anti-consumer as companies like PGI.

[Palsteron 11]

4 hours ago, SneakyErvin said:

They arent. The items that are part of the monetization model are the ones that remove plat from circulation with every purchase. Like costumes, boosters, forma bundles, slots and everything else in the cash-shop. Rivens dont do that, rivens simply circulate already exsisting plat.

The things you see in the shop (aka the things that remove plat from the economy) are there to entice you to buy platinum, they are the "bait", nothing more.      

The money transaction takes place when someone actually purchases platinum, not when he buys a skin (bait) for said platinum.  

Your statement would only be partially true if there was an exchange rate for platinum--> € that could be enforced at any time.        

 

Edit: After some more thought, I understand where you are coming from, you think of a "customer utopia situation" where all the plat that the owner of the riven received was distributed to people and therefore would make those people not spend money on platinum.  

This is a common missconception, but not reality. People quit with leftover plat, people hoard or people wouldn't spend at all if they had to actually buy platinum with real money.    

Just because I got 1k plat from a Riven trade that I now spend on cosmetics does not necessarily mean that I would have spent money on 1k platinum if that wasn't the case.  

So most of what the extra platinum injected into the system does is inflate the currency and therefore riven prices (which was my very first point that we circled away from)   

So while the conversion rate of what DE earns by getting plat purchases intended for "circulating plat" is not 1:1, it most definitely is part of their earnings/strategy.  

 

[Sziklamester 4,901]

2 minutes ago, FlyingDice said:

Yeah, don't get me wrong, I'm not trashing DE's model. It's pretty good as such things go. But it's still based on milking cash, even if they're not as aggressive and anti-consumer as companies like PGI.

Yep I am agree with you I just not separated the second part of my opinion which meant to all. DE is like a mobile gamer company because the base game with slots, purchasable boosters, time rushers really feels still years after the start a mobile game level but yet the game is developed a lot. Still their model is optional grind but they would like you spend money on them. Since Leyou (Perfect World maybe Tencent aswell) burrowed into them, the monetary part is going to be worse because they need to repay and generate profit aswell. Still I say if they just tried to stay independent and develop a once buy game and do a proper kickstart for the game nowadays still could be a good game with one time pay then you get your content. If they have had dedicated servers instead of peer to peer I would like to pay for them to manage / finance the server and add content. Wow still living and you can see the classis is basically a success because new and old players also went there to check it and a lot will pay for that subcribtion.

 

Free to play game companies must do agressive marketing which anti consumer in order to get money. If a developer just want to be kind and nice to get reputation they do free games REAL free games but the two is far from each other. The only positive part in this game is the option to farm, but if we have no added trading in game, then a lot of players whom now living from others probably never stay with the game. The cosmetics are different thing, those are optional. Weapons and frames basically power, but since noone use them on pvp, this power is only against for pve enemies, which is still morbid, considering you probably played games long before any free to play game ever existed and the developers sold complete games not pieces by pieces. Slots are the only thing, before nightwave series which was a thing, that you could not get by playing, or reaching levels which could be honor your time in game. However I am not against the paying if they give quality product and not feels like a cheap money cashing like how some companies do.

 

Many peoples claiming there is the trading, but in order to get something in this game somebody must pay money for platinum, otherwise no economy, no progression. That is a viable tactic, you make profiles and each profile specializes in one frame and gear if you wish to avoid the money spending. You can reach everything in this game but you need to sacrifice a lot if you not wish to spend money on the game or not trading to get platinum, which is the same what I said above. The game is designed around to pay money, there is a point where you must pay. Known, many peoples not paid a cent to the game, because they are happily waiting for others to spend money. That also true nobody forces you to spend on the game, but if you give to everyone this and that as answer, " hey, you can get everything just trade " then sooner or later you will stay in the mud, because no platinum exchange and no economy. Simply this game is created for this. As the riven part I am sure the real reason behind the rivens was the same like prime acessories. Money. Primes in my eyes a pumped up version of the regular items, because why not, if you buy them. Rivens in other hand generates them a lot of money, because whales and business peoples here and there making their business and hoarding materials then sells them for higher prices. This is good for the devs, because it generates a constant need to spend platinum, and all the newest peoples in game getting discounts very often while veterans and some cases advanced "but not veteran" players get nothing. 

 

I stopped spending money on them, firstly because I spent a lot in the active time, when got discounts, second reason is there is no discounts for me years ago, and I know the normal price tag for this meaningless in game valute is around the 70-80% discount rate, otherwise not worth to spend 200+ dollars for getting items where you can farm those items. Slots the only things which is similar on PoE and ofc in World of Tanks etc. I have basically enough slot to get items in the next 10+ year if the game manage to survive. 

 

If I need to suggest a game which is free to play, but fair, then I could no say any game, because the free to play itself is a big lie, what peoples claim a good thing, but that is just a method how to milk players. Reliable and creditable developers using sub fees if the type of game needs it, or sell you a complete game, what you buy once then use forever.  They can add expansions if those expansions are great enough to be called expansions *cough Sims cough*. But we know the game industry became more profit oriented so that's why could hav happend Free to play, Dlc, Lootboxes, Early Access etc. Those developers whom tried to sell you a thing once become veterans or just left the industry completely, the newest ones are following what their business mans dictating. Despite these all I think the Digital Extremes is not a bad company, but their portfolio is not that great, yet they tried to sell their games normally but they failed to find normal publishers whom not wanted to milk them. This is how the Star Trek game ended, they tried to live with the option to sell it with the movie, but the game was a mess. Warframe is using the free to play model but just a variant, still the model if you consider A B C or D variant good or bad then we can say theirs is probably fair except 1-2 thing.

 

 

[Hypernaut1 12,229]

4 hours ago, SneakyErvin said:

As someone who has never spent a dime on any system in WF besides getting slots I have no clue at all what you are talking about. The systems work perfectly fine without using any plat to make things go faster because there is enough to do at any given time and always enough weapons/frames/pets to level at any given time (until you run out of them are feel you are done). The reason you can rush things or buy frames doesnt mean the systems are bad at the core, it is simply a QoL for those that wanna pay to skip ahead.

And you complain about boosters, which you can get for free quite often from Baro. It simply comes down to planning. And if you really need boosters, then you grind fissures and buy them without spending any real cash. Yet you defend PoE that more or less requires you to dump money in order to farm properly because the initial stash tabs wont last you very far if you intend on trading or gather materials. The stack size limitations in PoE are far worse than the optional boosts that you dont really need in WF because materials are easy to get either way. When you really need to horde something specific you simply plan ahead, get a booster from Baro or through fissure plat and then grind those days till you have a good enough stock.

And the problem becomes more present in PoE aswell since it is very time based. You have 3-4 months to get as much as possible out of your time, that means account upgrades are all the more important to skip tedius downtime on micromanaging anything from maps to materials/currency.

PoE also has lootboxes. The closest thing WF had to lootboxes were mod pack, but they were for mods you could easily get in game or trade for. transmuting with credits served the same purpose too, so it still wasn't a cash exclusive thing to get random mods.