PS4 MMO H1Z1 details revealed

PS4 MMO H1Z1 monetization details revealed

John Smedly, President of Sony Online Entertainment has taken to Reddit yet again to explain how H1Z1's free-to-play model will work.

1. "We will be selling wearables. We felt like this will be a good, fair revenue generator. However - we recognize how important finding wearables in the world is so you'll be able to find and craft a lot of stuff. We agree that's something important. We've also come up with a pretty awesome idea to let players who kill other players loot stuff. So if a player has a black ski mask and gets killed by another player, that player can wear the ski mask for a few deaths (we have durability in the game. Station Cash wearables won't degrade at all but when you loot something.. it will degrade. Please note the original player always keeps their SC purchased wearables. This gives the great feeling of whacking some unsuspecting fool who decided to bring a knife to a gun fight."

What this means is when you buy items of clothes with money (refereed to as Station cash in SOE games) you always keep that item. However, if a player loots your corpse and takes that clothing item they will also be able to wear it for a few lives but they won't keep it indefinitely.

2. "We will NOT be selling Guns, Ammo, Food, Water... i.e. That's kind of the whole game and it would suck in our opinion if we did that."

This is great to hear, as what makes or breaks games in the Survival MMO genre with micro transactions whether or not you can buy items that help you survive or give you an edge over the other player without even looting. Games that do that are Pay to Win and feel quite unfair. So, because you won't be able to just buy everything you need without even starting the game is a great move by SOE.

3. "Nor will we sell boosts that will impact #2."

4. "Emote Pack - of course we'll have the basics for free. But we felt like this is another good and fair revenue generator."

These are actions your character can do, clapping, waving etc.

5. "Character slots - feels reasonable."

Character slots allow you to have more then one active character.

6. " Crates - You can find crates sometimes in game. They're filled with random cool stuff from the store. We're considering letting you see what's in them before you buy a key (ala Dota 2.). This idea isn't fully locked yet."

So it seems H1Z1 is moving in the direction most people wanted it to: cool things to wear without being able to buy supplies.