Free to play is not a game. Why do I say this obvious statement - because people do forget and put all f2p games into one basket.
So here he comes and tells me "This f2p game does this and that, we should be looking into this to adapt it as well".
Wrong: you can't copy/paste stuff from one f2p business model to another. And that's what it is: f2p is a business model - NOT A GAME.
So if you think that a feature from one f2p game fits yours you should better think twice and carefully analyze WHY it works for that game & genre, if at all (you usually do not know if it works!).
That is why most monetization mechanics from let's say Candy Crush Saga won't work in your f2p FPS or strategy game. Those are entirely different genres and games and the user does behave differently within the game environment. Of course you can learn a lot from King.com's cash cow but be professional when adapting mechanics!
This brings me to another point: most companies within the f2p space discovered "their" style of monetization model which works best for them and their games. You will find that within the portfolio of these companies they implement the f2p business model in a very similar way.
This leads to some odd behaviors of f2p companies:
1: They think their model is the best
2: They think other models aren't working as they tried adapting them and failed (see above)
It is a very odd situation and basically is further made worse as real data of what works and what doesn't isn't readily available.
That's why specialists who has seen data of working games from more than one company within the f2p space are so high in demand - until this information is widely available.
