Would R02 work as a Free to Play game?

[Doom88]

Having played some other F2P games like Crossfire and such, I'd really like that Red Orchestra 2 remains a game that should be paid for. Tripwire have given a lot of content and amazing things to us already and I completely feel like I've gotten my money's worth from my pre-order purchase back in August 2011. The game has come a long way since then and the guys at Tripwire should be rewarded for their efforts.

Plus, I wouldn't see how Tripwire could facilitate an income under a F2P model with Red Orchestra 2.

 

[Insurance Salesman]

While I don't think that free-2-play ala Planetside 2 would work well considering the game has not been built with microtransactions or cosmetic DLC at all in mind, I do think they could put out a free demo version of the game that would only let the user play riflemen ala the Rising Storm stuff. That would limit the ability of free players to waste classes, troll or ruin games via hacking while keeping a fairly consistent player population (which imo is probably the best part of F2P) and being fairly thematic to boot.

But then again, maybe that would lose Tripwire money in the long run since free weekends wouldn't be as exciting as before and wouldn't be as significant a sales pull. I don't know.

 

[Bane5]

Plus, I wouldn't see how Tripwire could facilitate an income under a F2P model with Red Orchestra 2.

The original idea I was trying to convey wasn't a microtransaction model but a sales through expansion model.

I know that RO2 is dirt cheap right now and its a ridiculously good value but TWI's problem is that their game is still a niche game. If the base game were free, more people who never heard of RO2 would be tempted to download it on impulse. With more people playing the base game (no rising storm or even perhaps restricted only to rifleman), they can sell more rising storm expansions and such.

TWI, through their hints in the announcements section seem to be planning on future expansion packs. From TWI's perspective, the advantage of expacs is that its new content and therefore fetches a higher price.

For example the revenue in comparison to:

5000 players buying RO2 for $4.99 + rising storm for $9.99 +newer xpac $19.99

vs

5000 players + 20,000 players who decided to try it because it was free: rising storm for $9.99 +newer xpac $19.99

The point is that because base RO2 is already so cheap, TWI isn't losing much in terms of revenue by making it a free multiplayer demo. In fact i think they are facing an enormous opportunity cost by not doing so.

The free to play weekend has already quintoupled our player count. TWI could make a lot more xpacs and jusify more resource invested if their were more people playing and willing to buy them. I truly think that RO2 could manage 30,000+ player counts if the base game were free. It could become THE world war 2 game to end all world war 2 games with a high playercount and large number of expansions covering multiple fronts + all the many new mods that would be created with a large modding base.

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Judging by everyone's responses, people are extremely leery about f2p trolls--I am too, but their might be workarounds like setting up official servers only for demo players or restricting them only to rifleman. The point is to get people to pick up RO2 and decide if they like the game or not before actually investing in the full game. I think the free weekends attest to the sheer volume of players this game could attract.