One more follow-up on that idea of limiting the number of premium items purchased -- I actually remembered this lecture ("Your First F2P Game: Where You Will Go Wrong") from David Edery of Spry Fox, who coincidentally developed the games I chose as an example; Triple Town and Realm of The Mad God -- it seems like they don't think it was worth having the limit, as such a limit is mostly to keep people happy, and it seems at least in the short term there isn't much credit given for doing so.

Some of the other tips from the lecture should be relevant to you as well!

I have two ideas:

1. Items or abilities that the player can get which can be preserved through skillful play, but which can be damaged and rendered unusable or much less effective through less skillful play. These can be repaired by some in-game mechanic for free (in real money) but take time to do so. Players can pay real money for an instant fix. They can play the game either way, but may not be able to access certain areas or will just have a harder time without the items or abilities.

For this I'm inspired by the Master Sword from Link to the Past, where if you keep your life meter full it shoots beams. But if you make a mistake and take a hit, the sword is still good but suddenly less effective than you know it can be. I like mechanics like this because you can have everything without spending any money but in exchange you have to become good at the game. I get double satisfaction-- I'm good at the game, and my skill lets me enjoy "deluxe" features for free!

2. Minions! I always love having commandable minions in a single player game. A minion might be able to do dull tasks for the player (like rounding up arrows or other disposable items, with some exposure to danger while getting them) or maybe accompany the player in dungeons. Minions can be developed by grinding, just like the player character, but the player might also be able to just buy a better minion right from the start.

I never like the idea of having features locked away because I haven't paid, such as dungeons and equipment, even in a F2P game where that sort of attitude doesn't make sense. I feel a greater sense of investment from my time than from a few dollars, and if I've played every part of a game that's available for free it always rankles a bit to have to go through the formality of spending a couple bucks for what feels like such a small expansion of the experiences I've already had. If I get almost the whole game for free, it's odd to pay $2 just for a grappling hook.

For this I'm inspired by the Master Sword from Link to the Past, where if you keep your life meter full it shoots beams. But if you make a mistake and take a hit, the sword is still good but suddenly less effective than you know it can be. I like mechanics like this because you can have everything without spending any money but in exchange you have to become good at the game. I get double satisfaction-- I'm good at the game, and my skill lets me enjoy "deluxe" features for free!

That's all well and good, but the thing is that it doesn't help Orymus3 pay the bills. Ultimately, a free-to-play game hopes to make the dev some money, and if that's the case the goal is to somehow entice players to buy something. Once you've gone down that path, your design -- which ought to include 'monetization design' pretty-much necessarily *shouldn't* reward players just for being good or persistent -- all that really does is say "I give my game away to people who are good or have more time than you. You're terrible or have better things to do, so you have to pay." If your goal is to make money, there's no reason to preferentially incentive good/persistent players in this way over any other type of player; if your goal is to have a large, happy user base, you ought to just make the thing free, period. Outside of mobile/app stores one can hope to make some money on the initial sale, but its an impossibility in today's overcrowded ecosystems unless you're a big name AAA title. The game design must be built to facilitate monetization strategies (even if they're entirely optional for the player to partake in) from its base, it affects gameplay and design decisions, and if you pretend they're independent its likely you'll not make any money. For example, purely cosmetic purchases are far less viable when those purchases are not visible to other players. Likewise, people won't pay big money for items that don't persist with long-term play.

From what I've read around various places, an app that is able to monetize well makes about 50+ percent of its revenue from consumable items, ~30 percent from premium purchases (persistent items), and ~20 percent from cosmetic purchases -- those are games who's play integrates all of the driving factors well (a social aspect, persistence, etc).

Now, from the sound of it, what Orymus3 has is a single-player, non-social, (probably) largely non-persistent adventure game, and to be frank that seems to be kind of a perfect storm for the free-to-play model -- "successful" games in this vein might be popular but make very low return-per-player (the big boys call it ARPU, Average Revenue Per User) so they subsist on the shear size of their user base. If you cannot achieve such a large user base, low ARPU won't be paying your bills. With a lower user base, you need to maximize ARPU if money is a goal, and that means creating monetization potential in the game -- integrating social aspects, multi-player, persistence, and designing to encourage steady purchase of consumables (which includes, of course, pricing them fairly).

That's all well and good, but the thing is that it doesn't help Orymus3 pay the bills. Ultimately, a free-to-play game hopes to make the dev some money, and if that's the case the goal is to somehow entice players to buy something. Once you've gone down that path, your design -- which ought to include 'monetization design' pretty-much necessarily *shouldn't* reward players just for being good or persistent -- all that really does is say "I give my game away to people who are good or have more time than you. You're terrible or have better things to do, so you have to pay." If your goal is to make money, there's no reason to preferentially incentive good/persistent players in this way over any other type of player; if your goal is to have a large, happy user base, you ought to just make the thing free, period.

... [other good points and information] ...

Now, from the sound of it, what Orymus3 has is a single-player, non-social, (probably) largely non-persistent adventure game, and to be frank that seems to be kind of a perfect storm for the free-to-play model -- "successful" games in this vein might be popular but make very low return-per-player (the big boys call it ARPU, Average Revenue Per User) so they subsist on the shear size of their user base. If you cannot achieve such a large user base, low ARPU won't be paying your bills. With a lower user base, you need to maximize ARPU if money is a goal, and that means creating monetization potential in the game -- integrating social aspects, multi-player, persistence, and designing to encourage steady purchase of consumables (which includes, of course, pricing them fairly).

I fail to see how my suggestion about speed-repairing items is materially different from yours regarding "Easy mode" amulets and spare ammo. If a player is interested in speeding things up, they can pay real money. If not, they can grind doing something else while their equipment is repaired or they can just wait. If they're grubbing through monster corpses for stray arrows because arrows are necessary to the game but you have the binary choice of "grind for ages and hope" vs. "spend $3" the same good-players-play-cheaper is still in force: good players will need fewer arrows and therefore not have to grind as much. Good players will be able to avoid fire traps in dungeons and therefore not need to pay for an amulet as much. Or they'll have less need for extra inventory slots. Or they'll need to buy fewer healing potions. Or whatever else. Purchases that make the game easier inherently favor the less skilled or less patient players, and have less appeal for the best players.

And there are exactly zero elements in my suggestion that would conflict with any other mode of real money content purchases. If the approach is similar (in practical terms) to other difficulty-reducing sales schemes, the ARPU value of the feature and game overall should be the same in either case.

Would you be willing to elaborate a bit more on the differences between the approaches we've outlined? It may be just because I'm not too plugged into the business end of things or paying much for F2P games, but I'm not seeing the divergence.

I don't think there's a big fundamental difference either, and I agree that better players will always be less inclined towards certain kinds of items -- really what I meant to get across was that this common notion that a skilled or persistent player should be rewarded for that by not having to buy anything. There's this weird notion that this model is the only "fair" way to do f2p, but there's just no good reason for it to be this way--there's no evidence these people will suddenly start buying things, no evidence that they'll promote your game to other players who will buy things at a higher rate than other players--these people just enjoy a smorgasbord of f2p games and don't really support any of the content the consume in any tangible way.

From a business standpoint I know it might sound bitter, but really you design considerations should not be constrained around these players. Yes its worth trying to engage those at the margins of this group, but 90% of the group will never even consider buying anything. There's a good argument to be made for those people to just fall by the wayside. While the stick around not only might they incur you an ongoing support cost, but will give you feedback on how to appeal to their non-paying selves, and complain and defame you when your design decisions don't favor them. I say rather than bending over backwards to allow these players full progression of the game, give them what amounts to a demo whose scale is limited not by hard limits like time, but by the impracticality of progressing without ever having bought something.