Unreal Tournament ?

Disadvantage is more cheaters, hackers and griefers. When you haven't paid anything you have no personal stake, and when/if you get banned you don't lose anything. You'll just make another account and continue cheating, hacking and/or griefing.

F2P as such in the online FPS genre works pretty well for Valve, they've been financing TF2 selling hats and guns to people for years now, and it's still one of the most played online games on the web after all this time. It most certainly wouldn't if it hadn't been free, but then again it looks exactly the same as it did when it launched as well, IE, rather a bit dated by now.
 
pjbliverpool said:
Can someone explain to me how f2p would work compared to a normal one off purchase? Do we have examples of disadvantages of the f2p approach?
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If it's the Team Fortress 2 approach, you get almost all game functionality without paying for anything and then they make you pay for skins and hats which AFAIK give rather symbolic boosts to your stats.
That's the right way to make a F2P game, according to most people at least.
(Of course, Valve made TF2 a F2P title after getting quite a bit of revenue by selling millions of copies beforehand, so I don't know if this kind of F2P could be sustainable from the start.)



If it's the everyone else's approach, you start with an impact hammer and an enforcer and then they make you pay $1 every time you want to use a Shock Rifle, 50 cents for additional ammo, $2 for the Flack Canon and $4 for a Redeemer. And add $2 for full armor.
After a year, they've made some pay-to-win sheep pay $500 for the game and anyone with a little bit of self-respect already hates the game, the franchise, the publisher and the developer.

Yay for F2P.
 
ToTTenTranz said:
(Of course, Valve made TF2 a F2P title after getting quite a bit of revenue by selling millions of copies beforehand, so I don't know if this kind of F2P could be sustainable from the start.)
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Valve launched Dota2 after a very long development cycle as a fully F2P game from day one. All the stuff you pay for is purely cosmetic AFAIK, with no game-enhancing properties whatsoever, and from what I've read they seem to be doing extremely well too.

Of course, valve has a Scrooge McDuck-sized money bin to shovel money from during development, so they can afford their long cycles and whatnot. (Not that Epic should be hurting for money either mind you...)

After a year, they've made some pay-to-win sheep pay $500 for the game and anyone with a little bit of self-respect already hates the game, the franchise, the publisher and the developer.

Yay for F2P.
Click to expand...
Well, yes, this would be the nightmare - AKA Zenimax horse armor - scenario...
 
Grall said:
Valve launched Dota2 after a very long development cycle as a fully F2P game from day one. All the stuff you pay for is purely cosmetic AFAIK, with no game-enhancing properties whatsoever, and from what I've read they seem to be doing extremely well too.
Click to expand...

I thought Valve bought Dota2 already as a work in progress from people who were working on the mod as a part-time, so the development time in Valve's hands wasn't that big (2 years?).

Regardless, Valve has deep pockets as you said. Their income-per-employee must be through the roof thanks to Steam alone so they can probably afford to give players a game for free and then wait 2 years for it to pay off and start getting a profit for another 2 years.
 
ToTTenTranz said:
If it's the everyone else's approach, you start with an impact hammer and an enforcer and then they make you pay $1 every time you want to use a Shock Rifle, 50 cents for additional ammo, $2 for the Flack Canon and $4 for a Redeemer. And add $2 for full armor.
After a year, they've made some pay-to-win sheep pay $500 for the game and anyone with a little bit of self-respect already hates the game, the franchise, the publisher and the developer.

Yay for F2P.
Click to expand...

Ouch, yeah I hope it's not f2p then!
 
Scratch that, they just said it will be free, without the "to play".
It's going to be used as a showcase for UE4 and it'll be made by/with the community.

Less bad.
 
I'm still waiting for the catch.
There's always a catch...
 
Malo said:
So it's free to play but not Free to Play :)
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:smile2: The only catch should be the catch to catch my attention. I didn't quite catch what ToTTenTranz means, but... there's always a but, and he is probably right.

It depends if the catch is the catch that fits us.

Catches aside, I always liked Unreal and Unreal Championship 2 for the original Xbox was one of my favourite games on the platform.
 
Work on the future of Unreal Tournament begins today, and we’re happy to announce that we’re going to do this together, with you. We know that fans of the game are as passionate about Unreal Tournament as we are. We know that you have great ideas and strong opinions about where the game should go and what it should be. So let’s do something radical and make this game together, in the open, and for all of us.

HERE’S THE PLAN:
We’ve created a small team of UT veterans that are beginning work on the project starting today.
From the very first line of code, the very first art created and design decision made, development will happen in the open, as a collaboration between Epic, UT fans and UE4 developers. We’ll be using forums for discussion, and Twitch streams for regular updates.
If you are a fan and you want to participate, create a free account and join the forum discussion.
All code and content will be available live to UE4 developers on GitHub.
The game will be true to its roots as a competitive FPS.
Development will be focused on Windows, Mac and Linux.

SO WHAT’S THE CATCH?
It will take many months until the game is playable by gamers. This is real development from scratch.
When the game is playable, it will be free. Not free to play, just free.
We’ll eventually create a marketplace where developers, modders, artists and gamers can give away, buy and sell mods and content. Earnings from the marketplace will be split between the mod/content developer, and Epic. That’s how we plan to pay for the game.

A lot of this is brand new for Epic, and we don’t yet have everything figured out. Things will probably definitely go wrong from time to time, and when they do, we’ll have to work through them together. There will be a lot of tough decisions to make, and not every feature will make it into the game. But if you’re a fan of Unreal Tournament, a UE4 developer, or a future modder – or if you just want to learn how we make games – we hope you’ll join us. It’s going to be fun.
 
Servers aren't mentioned so that's how it is going to be free. They get a lot of buzz about UE4 going around, have the engine showcased with a free game designed for it by the community (ie. free developers) and won't be providing servers.
 
ToTTenTranz said:
I thought Valve bought Dota2 already as a work in progress from people who were working on the mod as a part-time, so the development time in Valve's hands wasn't that big (2 years?).

Regardless, Valve has deep pockets as you said. Their income-per-employee must be through the roof thanks to Steam alone so they can probably afford to give players a game for free and then wait 2 years for it to pay off and start getting a profit for another 2 years.
Click to expand...
They hired the Warcraft 3 mod developer. It is a complete source rewrite though so quite a bit of development had to be done. And yeah, all the purchaseable items are purely cosmetic, no gameplay benefit whatsoever. Valve has also promised that this will always be the case (has to be really, considering how fiercely competitive the game is ). You can also buy tournament tickets etc. Valve is special though both financially and considering the wide talent pool they have.
 
Seems Valve is constantly ~5-7 years ahead of the rest of the industry. They have nothing to worry about, and they do a great job imo. They make EA, Ubisoft and company look like the bunch of frat boy suits that they are.

Hell, they've even realized that this is the end of the road for consoles. Gaze in awe as Steambox dominates the market in four years when a cheap AMD APU is smoking the consoles for half the price.
 
I never played UT3, if only because it would be no fun having to upgrade the PC and be able to play only with people who have upgraded PC, plus there were already a ton of stuff to play back then. It's the era I discovered custom Warcraft 3 maps or was in a group that played that stuff.

The original UT had lower requirements than playing a divx file had, so it ran everywhere. UT2003 still only required a DX6 card (it's a pity I lost the box I had, which was Unreal 2 + UT2003 combo. BTW UT2003 was just great and too much overshadowed by 2004. Silly maybe but I liked the design of the fifth weapon - the green stuff one - better)
 
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