Glorious Alpha Two Testers!
Phase I of Alpha Two testing will occur on weekends. Each weekend is scheduled to start on Fridays at 10 AM PT and end on Sundays at 10 PM PT. Find out more here.
Check out Alpha Two Announcements here to see the latest Alpha Two news and update notes.
Our quickest Alpha Two updates are in Discord. Testers with Alpha Two access can chat in Alpha Two channels by connecting your Discord and Intrepid accounts here.
Phase I of Alpha Two testing will occur on weekends. Each weekend is scheduled to start on Fridays at 10 AM PT and end on Sundays at 10 PM PT. Find out more here.
Check out Alpha Two Announcements here to see the latest Alpha Two news and update notes.
Our quickest Alpha Two updates are in Discord. Testers with Alpha Two access can chat in Alpha Two channels by connecting your Discord and Intrepid accounts here.
Comments
I am pretty solidly in the camp of no cash shop at all. I think microtransactions are an excellent idea for F2P games, but they should ONLY EVER be a part of F2P games.
If the game is successful and has a lot of subs then they will be making more than enough money to employ everyone and make a tidy profit (based on my awesome [nil] knowledge of economics and business development). Steven is already rich, I don’t think this is his big money-making scheme. There are hundreds of easier ways to make money than to make an MMO! This is why it is a little odd to add in a cash shop as well as a sub.
I echo the concerns of people who question the direction and the destination of the money made from the cash shop. Will it simply get pumped back into more cash shop items, so the cash shop expands and expands, or will it be pumped back into the game itself so we can have more actual content?
We have already seen a number of companies change the fundamental gameplay and progression of their games to suit the inclusion of the cash shop and loot boxes. I know these companies are well known for their shady practices but people are right to be sceptical and a little fearful of the lure of those dollars corrupting someone with even the best of intentions.
If games do go cashshops i usually hope they go the.. well... for example Final Fantasy XIV cashshop... or the Elder Scrolls Online (minus the RNG lootboxes they have now)).. those are reasonable. Unlike sadly alot of both older as well as upcoming MMO's
League of legends is a fantastic example to follow as far as cosmetic cash shops go. League was entirely funded by champion skins for years. Sure some of the skins cost 20-30$ but those are only for very high end ones. The skins that don't really add any particle effects or really change the look of abilities are very cheap(5$ range). If riot was able to literally fund a game for years off of reasonably priced cosmetics, I don't see why an mmo with a subscription can't too.
If they are putting in huge amounts of time for a cosmetic or mount skin, fine, charge me a butt load of money, but once a recolored armor set that took 2 minutes to change from the base costs 30$ I will never spend a dime on the cash shop.
Based on their prices in the shop already, this outlandish pricing model seems to be the direction they are going tho, so unless something changes by launch they will never get any of my money for cosmetics.
Contrary
There is no need for it.
What we NEED are companies that set examples, that are successful without cash shops and micro transactions.
Companies that are not driven by share holders and corporate laws, cause then its kinda out of the developers hands and gives power to the majority shares and voice of the company where their ONE goal is to make money.
It's why with a indie companies like IS and VR, the hope is that they would refrain from using cash shops and shine a beacon of light in the gaming industry. If the product is good and they maintain with integrity that people would flock to these dependent companies. with very large potential gain in the sheer volume of subscriptions. As well as paid expansions.
Then it would fall to us to support these companies and refrain from spending money on companies like EA, Ubi, Capcom, etc. Cause at the end of the day the blame and responsibility is to the player base. If players complain about greed and continue to support those companies then of course they will not stop.
My primary HOPE is that IS would remove the cash shop. But in the likely event they do not, that they do it in a ethical way. Where primary focus remains on the game itself and the cash shop secondary.
I have high hopes for AOC and majority of what Steven wants to put into it, would love to see it succeed, but I have strong reservations against the cash shop and Micro Transactions and rightfully so, due to the nature of Micro Transactions and how they have been used even in games that are not PTW.
It's fine if you don't want a cash shop, in some regards I agree with you, but give Intrepid the chance to change your mind. Wait until the game is released then decide wether or not it's all it promised.
catering to Cash Shop is more like restocking the cash shop. If you want to keep selling items you have to present new ones cause old ones have reached thier sales peak. (most of the people that will buy those items already have) Making new gear does not require a lot of effort and can be relatively cheap just look at some of the digital art already for sale at sites like deviantart.com. While making more content takes real time and money. So it is not like they are slacking on making content.
IS might plan to go free to play for reasons like building a player base other mmorpgs have gone free to play and have replenished their player base even kept them from dying so Intrepid is just putting themselves in the best possible position to succeed not exactly greedy (future is uncertain). mmorpgs make tons of money if they make a good game that many players want to play. The game has to be good on its own merit in the first place cash shop just helps out a lot.
There should not be a great disparity between in game items and items in the cash shop. Never the less if people are going to pay money for a cosmetic item it should look pretty good really no way around it.
As far as Greed is concerned it is not Cash Shop specific. Some devs make the game intentionally to grindy thinking they are smart. Basically forcing players to do certain grinds to have near optimal stats(not talking about rare items or legendaries).
Other Devs make it so it takes an excessively amount of gold to just play forcing players to grind gold excessively. Time Sinks and Gold Sinks. There is a right way and wrong way to do it.
Guild of Wars is making a ton of cash and the expansion that it just came out is pretty good but they got Greedy with the cash shop which is just plain stupid. They have no idea how many players they just lost. I do not understand how the devs can think they are smarter than their entire player base. Solution is to run the cash shop better not get rid of it.
I said this before on this discussion IF they get greedy and decide to exploit the game in some fashion they will lose money in the long run cause players will notice but so far they have not done that. (Surprised they stopped the KS for example Star Citizen is at 160 million plus with their crowd funding)
Personally, I think that the more money IS makes the better. It is not naive to believe that the more money they make the better game will be. It is just the truth. Steve has made many many good decisions in my opinion in Ashes of Creation. In order for him to revalutionize this genre he will need huge amount of resources. Pretty sure he has huge dreams. Maybe they will have money for advertising and stuff.(said they did have millions to throw at advertising some sources say,think EA, says half the cost of a game is advertising)
I never feel pressured to buy skins, and tbh I almost never notice them anyways. However, whenever I see someone with an expensive skin, I usually give a little mental nod to them, like "I see you're a man of culture as well." Having skins can be prestigious without being oppressive, and having a diverse cash shop can lead to a positive game environment.
OMG I hope not lol. If they ever go FTP I am out.
Consultant with comments like that, you are not helping your side of the debate, saying Cash Shops are ok.
I think you have good intentions and a positive out look on possibilities, but some of the things you say make people feel more cautious instead of at ease about having cash shops in the game.
One of the main reasons a lot of people are excited about this game is that it is not FTP.
Good grief those top hats in marketing have clearly done their job to condition the consumer zeitgeist so insidiously.
That fact that people already expect micro-transactions as part of their experience* pretty much concedes defeat on ever seeing a "Great MMO" again.
The f2p cashshop consumer base is already catered for with a cheese platter of MMOs
What is missing in the market is a subscription only* MMO for the disenfranchised but substantial MMO community who have been searching for a dependable place to settle into. We are the destitute looking for a new home, and we have been promised a place to stay numerous times, only to have the rug pulled from under us on every occasion.
For some us Intrepid's promise is the last bastion of hope, the fact it has a cash shop however is unsettling and does not encourage 100% respect in the product.
(I still backed it. Not because it was the best*, but because there was nothing better*)
An MMO should be in it for the long haul...
Not some spit in the pan meme....
But maybe i am just fooling myself believing the general consumers of today don't have the attention spans or patience anymore...
Or lets say you buy a nice shield but wait other players have the same sheild (the everyone has everything string of thought) Now you do not feel so special. Is not that the same thing as two women wearing the same dress to a wedding and all the sudden they are upset at each other.
The only valid concern I have actually seen is making the cash shop items far better than in game items intentionally, but not enough to say you should not have a cash shop. Most other reasons are feeling based.
Cash shops are way to sell optional adittional digital art to players best description I can think of.
I know this is what people have been saying but i haven't seen anyone give a good example so here is one.
This is the armor you will be able to get in game as an empyrean elf. To me at least, this armor looks good.
But say your master of life and death (cleric) is speced more on the death side and you want to have a more ominous appearance. You could go to the cash shop and cover up your beautiful elf armor with a necromancer's costume.
I might be wrong but it sounds like this is the goal of the system. You have cool ingame armor but allow you to cover it up with a different style if you desire.
NOTE: I failed to add that you can earn costumes in-game. The cash shop isn't the only place to get costumes.
So even if let's say the game gear looks great but locks into specific looks based off of out race, armor type and tier. But you could get cash shops gear that looks unique to ignore this race armor and tier lock.
It would give cash gear an edge over the in game gear, and to break out of these generic locks you would have to spend money on top of the subscription to do this.
This is the sort of stuff I am worried about between separation of what is available in the game and what is available in the cash shop.
Tho there is no way to really know till it happens.
Maybe after reading some of the posts and concerns in this thread the team could maybe make an official announcement to further transparency on how the cash shop will work and how in game and cash shops items will differ.
My impression is people feared another BDO where in-game gear looks like potato sacks and i think we can prove that is not the case with the concepts we already have. That was the main goal of my post.
I do believe there should be a way to earn 'currency' (though a big grind would be associated with it) in game to use in the cash shop, as somebody posted in that "embers" discussion that it could be an in game reward to spend in the shop. I like the sound of that but wouldn't bother me if that wasn't the case.
As long as a kid with daddy's credit card can't go into the cash shop and buy [ Level - 100 "Noob Slayer Sword" ] I'm fine with it. Intrepid promised this will never be the case and thank god it's about time.
Edit: I would like to note though that ANYTHING in a cash shop should not be able to be traded for in game currency, or traded in game full stop as this could also ruin the in game economy. As long as the cash shop stays completely separate then Steven can put as much flash and sparkle in the cash shop as he wants (within moderation, don't let it distract from making in game content we all pay for through our subs)
The SLA would define a commitment to produce a number of cosmetic's per month or per 2 months etc , that any player can immediately use . Everything else must be in-game.
Not producing these cosmetics would be violation of the contract for everyone to see.
Im sure my game would go broke after a while , but hey the journey would be amazing.
1) unique models. No unique models on a cash shop. Recolors and variations are fine, but every model should be obtainable in some form in the game. I think it would be perfectly fine however to have each model in the game be unique, and only have recolors available from the cash shop.
2) a UI button. No, don't even think about it. It totally ruins the immersion in the game, especially in a game where commerce is a big deal, if you are constantly being made aware of real-world transactions. A button on the launcher, title or character-select screen is fine. But when I'm playing the game I want to forget that I'm playing a game.
3) no consummables. If having multiple characters is going to be/becomes common then ideally cash shop items should be bound to accounts not characters for the same reason. I don't want to feel obligated to go back to the cash shop every month or whatever.
For me, a cash shop is an extra: an addition to the game. As long as the game has plenty of content in it, I'm perfectly happy to have a cash shop. Many of the arguments against them ignore the reason why they exist in the first place: the increased cost of game development, due to increased labor cost. The subscription fee or box price of a game, is often not sufficient for the company to make a profit off it: microtransactions make up the difference. Cash shops, especially if they allow for gift-giving, can even add to the social aspect of a game. For example, if you can buy an item that turns you into a creature which your friend can ride. That adds something to the experience of the game, opening up roleplaying opportunities and breaking barriers between players. It's an MMORPG, that is a cooperative roleplaying game. Ideally cash shop items would offer expanded roleplaying opportunities, or ease cooperation.
Hope your having fun with Alpha 0
For those that haven't seen it yet
Dungeon Crawler Network made an episode on micro transactions, go check it out.
They have some nice episodes covering AOC deff worth a subscription.
I think I may have won the Worlds Record in the longest Youtube reply in history