Cash Shop Flaws

ArchivedUser

In the interests of full disclosure. I have no issues with the cash shop as is, offering non functional cosmetics and or NPC time share.

After the recent threads on the cash shop voiced concerns. I came to the conclusion that the only reasonable way to operate the cash shop is;

• Cash shop items remain permanently exclusive to cash shop funding (to ensure paid items never become free).
• In game items remain permanently exclusive to in game effort (to ensure items attained through effort remain so).

This is all find and dandy except for two fundamental flaws that are intimately related:

• Finite variety ~ The more items that are created, the more you fill in the blanks. At one point there is no blanks left to fill and any new items are almost identical to ones already offered.
• One time offers ~ If you make items that will never again be obtainable, you have removed even more items from the finite variety. This should not be confused with seasonal items that are always obtainable again in perpetuity, but only within a small window of opportunity. The one time cosmetic offer concept, is as unsustainable as permanent lifetime access offers for 3 years worth of payments.

Recommendations.

• Wide Design Scope ~ This ensures that the finite variety problem can be extended for as long as possible.
• Seasonal Offers are used in preference to one time offers.
• One time offers are removed altogether or extremely rare occurrences.

In the end, there should be a complete design scope from a-z with all the blanks filled in. To prevent criticism of the cash shop receiving favoured or preferential cosmetic treatment, it would be wise to repeatedly cut that scope of variety up into two, in an ever repeating pattern to create new designs. By alternating between in-game and cash-shop to place these new items, every other design blank that's filled in, will be in the cash-shop and in-game. Thus the closest adjacent designs will always alternate between the two sources. Although always different, items in the cash shop and game will eventually be similar.

I envision this game as having a potentially eternal lifespan, as the game never reaches a conclusion with any end game content, but simply grows and decays with the back story diversifying. Much of the future story, will be the story of the players, with the back story ever more fleshed out. So it is absolutely critical that long term planning takes priority over short term profiteering. IMHO.

So.....do my fears have merit and need addressing now, or is such a problem so far off its irrelevant ?

ArchivedUser

Could be wrong but I think Steven did say at some point that there will be cash shop items limited to certain time period and wont come back until that time again (think Halloween).

ArchivedUser

find and dandy

fine and dandy

Edit:

To add something actually substantial to the thread... There is no way pre-designing everything there will ever be is worth it to solve whatever issue you seem to think there is. Finite variety? Why do you even think that there is a finite variety?

Are you talking about the finite that is philosophic? But you know that is an astronomically large number tho? Like, might as well be infinite, because it is so large...

This isn't a real problem.

ArchivedUser

Ravnodaus said:

find and dandy

fine and dandy

Edit:

To add something actually substantial to the thread... There is no way pre-designing everything there will ever be is worth it to solve whatever issue you seem to think there is. Finite variety? Why do you even think that there is a finite variety?

Are you talking about the finite that is philosophic? But you know that is an astronomically large number tho? Like, might as well be infinite, because it is so large...

This isn't a real problem.

Take a large shoulder piece vs a small shoulder piece. Thats two options.

You could create a middle size shoulder piece that you could differentiate between large and small. So now we have three pieces.

Now we create a medium-large and a medium-small, but in reality the difference in size between...

large > medium-large > medium > medium-small > small

...is now so insignificant, people cant tell the difference between any two adjacent items.

So what would be the point of then creating further pieces that fill the gaps between if there is no observable difference ? Why would someone buy two shoulder pieces that looked identical....even if they did have a different label.

So like I said. There is a finite variety that depends on how extreme the difference at either end of the spectrum is.

ArchivedUser

Stopped reading right here:

After the recent threads on the cash shop voiced concerns. I came to the conclusion that the only reasonable way to operate the cash shop is;

• Cash shop items remain permanently exclusive to cash shop funding (to ensure paid items never become free).
• In game items remain permanently exclusive to in game effort (to ensure items attained through effort remain so).

Because that's exactly how the system is set up

Everything else you said is an opinion which goes in contrast of the idea that they need the cosmetic shop to have healthy sales to augment the monthly sub because games take millions to make and maintain and they aren't charging a box fee.  

ArchivedUser

I like where you're coming from, and I understand your concern.

The one thing I don't necessarily agree with is the idea of "finite". If this was true, how are we still, to this day, coming up with new songs, new forms of music, and new sounds? How have we not painted every painting, sculpted every sculpture, or written every book?

Thinking about it from a more direct MMORPG perspective, if I asked you to design for me "as many Elven styled Robes as you could" how many different cuts, colours, accents, materials, angles and accessories could you think up. Mind boggling isn't it?

The devs have a cash shop and they have different things to obtain in the game of varying difficulty. I don't see them "running out of creative real estate" to design upon.