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
Of course any company can do anything they want, all depends on how much emphasis they place on customer satisfaction. There is a reason EA has been voted worst company in history and yet people still continue to buy EA games despite the controversy around their latest piece of goonery with Battlefront 2. For some reason consumers of computer games do tend to take a lot more crap than most other industries.
If you bought a movie and it stopped 10 minutes before the end and you had to pay another $5 to watch the ending, would you be ok with that? Would anyone? And yet people do it all the time with computer games.
A lot of people will sub regardless, the introduction of a cash shop is not enough to stop them from playing a game that looks amazing and for which we have been waiting for years. There are countless issues that people can be unhappy with, but not unhappy enough to not sub. All personal preference. As individuals we have just as many rights as a company (well, outside of the US anyway).
IF there is a convenience shop, and they ensure that every costume is available in game... how would you feel if they started selling an awesome costume in the shop, and pointed out that whilst it is possible in game... your world would have needed to progress in a very different way to unlock the event that would have given you access to it?
I personally wouldn't be miffed, there would be other options, but I have the feeling some folks would be.
2 months farming for hat = 2 $ in cash shop for hat
2 months of your time definitely is worth more than 2 $ ...
It's what most MMOs do. They claim you can obtain all items from CS by "just playing" but then make it so that you have to farm 6 months, what would cost you 10 $ in CS, which is BS.
It's not about what you CAN gain by playing, it's about being equally worth it to you to either play for it, or buy it with cash.
If they say that cash shop items will be obtainable in-game, then that is exactly what we will get. They did not mention an average time required to obtain the item and time requirements are different from player to player.
Unless they make cash shop available through some sort of "daily login tokens", then it will be the same time requirement for everyone.
If you let the " parasite " take its root, its only bound to get worse
But because Intrepid making an MMO better than other MMOs in development ... and that they have experience in making MMOs I'm more focused on other things rather than the Cash Shop
( Although Pantheon is really brewing something delicious over there >~> )
Has Steven bought into micro transactions from a business point of view in the effort to make a large profit from whales? Even though he has stated he wanted to create a mmo that was free of P2W and cash grabs.
What form does a cash shop have to take in order not to fall into being a cash grab? I mean every cash shop in the industry right now is a cash grab. When you buy something from a cash shop you are not paying real money directly for the item/s. You are paying real money for gems / coins / bubbles / cupcakes / essence / crystals / unicorn farts / etc......that are then used to buy the item you want.
Just like you buy chips in a casino instead of betting with paper money. It is a tactic used by professional gambling to disassociate in the mind, the loss of actual money. Or another example, every cosmetic costs 1,100 gems / coins / etc...... but the cash shop only offers the the gems / coins / etc in packs of 500 / 1000 / 2000. Even someone extremely slow could figure out that tactic is meant to push you to buy excess (pretty much like every retailer ever).
How can this not be seen as a cash grab? Some will call it business as usual.....however Ashes was pitched as the opposite.
1. You may not be able to buy that item in game it will most likely be a drop. And let us say because of that loot table game mechanics there is a 5 percent chance of it droping, which is 1 out of 20. So if you are unlucky you might be farming or doing that run over 20 times. And that is if the drop rate is 5 percent if it goes lower than that well you are looking at weeks to months before it drops. By the way that 5 percent drop rate or less is a very real scenario.
2.Grinding for one specific piece of gear or set of gear in a dungeoun or raid or zone is not to exciting cause you have to do it over and over again. I am specically talking about drops.
3.If there is an item in the cash shop that you like, let say a really cool mount that is not in game. Well if it was in game it would most likely be a drop not something you could buy or craft. So you would have to grind for it.
4. Cash shops are a good way to introduce new art into the game, that was not created at the time of release and the money could be used to make game art or used to make game improvements of course some if it would be pocketed.
Some items in some mmos are so rare that it can take a couple of years to actually drop. Really I would just rather buy it from the cash shop if it is not to expensive and enjoy the artistic value of it right away.
If everyone can just up and buy wtf ever why have a rarity system at all. Forget greens, forget purples, just make every item legendary, problem solved. Or how about lets add every single item in the game into the cash shop. Talk about customer options!! $15 subscription, $250 in cash shop items, boy you are set, gonna stomp some face in pvp with all the best end game gear, why have to farm or grind for it....
/ end sarcasm
Grinds can suck, RNG can suck, I would imagine that there is not a single player anywhere, in any mmo that has not struggled with RNG. Maybe IS will find a better way. Maybe a 100% guaranteed drop for certain items from certain bosses. Even at the most basic level of table top RPGs which is what most mmos are based around, there is RNG via dice rolls. A cash shop is not a viable substitute for RNG. An item is not rare if everyone has it, even more so for legendary items.
or the more you buy the better the value*/exchange emphasis. Insidious.
I also am lead to believe that would be some loophole legality issue by way of circumventing gambling*.
No clarifaction that such a greasy system will be in Ashes, I hope not.
As for bypassing grind....it's a 2 way entity, MMOs need a grind, they just do... and when you bypass the grind/motivation the incentive to play diminishes, so what typically in effect happens is you actually end up paying to not play the game.
then what happens is the cash shop, like a succubus sucks all the motivation out of the game for instant gratification and or makes the alternative grind so numbingly unbearable that you become disenfranchised, with both resulting in longterm absence.
But here are a lot of fun things to do in a mmorpg like exploration, questlines, dungeouns, pvp, seiges, working on dps skills, acheivements. I mean there are more things to do than I have time to do them which is good cause then we would have nothing to do. Doing the same thing over and over for a drop is boring and no fun, There fore if the Cash Shop gives me the chance to get and item that I like for money insead of doing even 6 hours of grinding I would take it, cause I would rather pvp for six hours and have fun than do something boring for six hours and get a drop.
Case point:
There is a item in the cash shop you really like. Would you rather have it in game do the rng grind and feel special when it finally dorps. Take in consideration that you most likely already be doing the rng grind on one or more items in game Or pay real money for it and be thankful you did not have to spend the time to grind it out.
I disagree with the statement. There is a cool mount in the cash shop! It should be in game so we could do the rng grind. Really? I mean you are going to have more rng grinds than you care to have. And you want the really cool item or mount as an rng drop to add to the rng grinds you are already doing?
You are entitled to your opinion just like everyone else. However I am very confident that if IS allowed players to bypass the RNG of loot drops with a cash shop purchase, the vast majority of supporters would drop Ashes and not come back. Even the few that are ok with micro transactions in the game.
^
Intrepid has given the impression that they are aware that lots of long grinds aren't fun. It'd be nice if, when you kill a boss, you can take ALL of their clothes if you want them. (immersion)
But how do you then make it 'special' but accessible to all?
Well if there's more than one boss in game, why couldn't you rotate who's wearing what?
Also, why is everyone assuming that you have to get cash shop cosmetics through drops? Just because that's the way other mmos used to do things?
If I were making the game I'd be more inclined to hide a chest, or have a vendor selling them... possibly at the end of a dungeon etc...at least that way EVERYONE who participated in the content could have a chance to purchase it with in game gold / swap for certain dropped items.
Of course Id also likely make the shiney stuff super expensive...season specific...etc etc.
But this is veering away from the main subject, should microtransactions even exist?
There's a reason Ive been calling a convenience shop rather than cash shop, because convenience is the only player advantage I can see to it.
If given a choice between a game where ALL designed content is available in game, or one where you have to part with real life money if you want to see some of it....there really is only one obvious choice.
And yet, as exclusive cash shop items IS the way that Intrepid is currently thinking, it's likely to require some serious thinking and actual figures as to why having one will affect their bottom line...so far I've heard nothing but 'Well I think' or 'I believe'
Is there any other way that Intrepid could make money other than a convenience shop?
Do they put up the price of the basic sub to cover the loss?
Should they have a basic sub+donation of your choice option?
Should they do, as they did for the Kickstarter, have an 'if we raise x then we can afford to y for everyone' option?
I quite like the donations now = credits for any future, non ashes related Intrepid content.
People, myself included, are largely selfish...we want to pay out money, but we also want to feel good about doing so, normally it's an instant gratification of 'I have this sparkly thing' How do you tally a lack of microtransactions with intrepids overall projected income AND customer satisfaction?
The definition of convenience:
- anything that saves or simplifies work, adds to one's ease or comfort,etc., as an appliance, utensil, or the like
- advantage or accommodation
With these definitions (If you think I made it up, go see for yourself and google "convenience") it is clearly visible that convenience is p2w.
Anything that makes your progress faster and with less effort and gives you an advantage is p2w.
If we have a cash shop, it will either be cosmetic only or we'll have no cash shop at all.
If it was casual players would automatically be losing out, so the only way to create a true non p2w state would be to limit everyone's game time
The short side on the story is that if say they come out a few months from now and say the sub is going to be $25 a month with no cosmetic shop to justify the increase, people are still going to lose their frigging minds. They literally can't win. Stay at 15 and maybe not cover ROI fast enough for investors, increase it and have every welfare gamer screaming UNFAIR! UNFAIR!
And theres a big difference between an extra $1 and $10, but I totally get your point
2. you loot it and show it to a skilled crafter, you do not give it to him, you just put in trade window and he decyphers it
3. crafter then tells you what materials you will need, together with this pattern if you wish your outfit made
4. some of these materials require different boss drops, some require gathering, some fishing, some PvP achievement (so you can buy from PvP vendor), and some in game gold
5. now when you have it all, you go back to that crafter put it all in trade window and he clicks a button and the base robes are made, but you can't wear them yet
6. having base robes made, you go to skilled enchanter, he inspects them with special skill and gets some clues about where you need to go to finishe up those robes, he tells you the clues
7. now it's up to you (puzzle) to figure out where you need to take this clothes (some mysterious part of world, and how to finish them up
8. when you figured out the clues and found your destination, a final (solo) challenge awaits
9. manage to succeed in this challenge and your clothes are ready, not you get to wear fancy outfit, that you can actually brag with.
That is how I bring some specially outfits into the game, in addition to regular outfits obtainable from classic sources.
I'd assume that such quests will be very time consuming and a lot of "go there do that" and a lot of "wait for that boss and hope for a drop so I can proceed". There is a lot of RNG involved, which you also stated you don't like.
Either I am missing the point or you a contradicting yourself?