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.
This is gonna be a great game
ArchivedUser
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As long as the critics do not b**ch 24/7 of how their preferences aren’t being met, let’s try and be understanding of all parties imvolved.
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In a sense you pay real cash for an item you can then get in game currency for. This should be avoided at all cost.
Conversely, you should say why being able to trade cosmetics makes it more appealing to you.
To be clear, I completely disagree with your suggestion. The prevention of cosmetic trading is one of the ways IS is trying to keep their game hard to access/not profitable for farmers, botters, etc.
I'd like to add that in addition to cosmetics in the shop, there are also cosmetics you will be able to earn through in-game means.
"Nah, I bought that shizz from a vendor. Someone only wanted 1000 pygmy whale coins for it! Looks good right?"
No one here is delusional and dumb because they disagree with you, and no one said anything about the game 'never' being P2W, just that Ashes has generally been against it.
Not sure what the point is. There would be no reason to get a cosmetic from the cash shop if you don't have cash for it. Cosmetics can be found in the game. Any cosmetic you have access too it is likely most others will have access too.
Cosmetics aren't created by player's avatars in the game, or by any craft/merchant in the game, so why do they have to have an option to buy with in game currency?
Also, I would prefer no option to trade items paid for in cash to other players, regardless of the items.
In addition to strongly agreeing with @Azathoth I would also add that the elimination and reduction of gold sellers are different. It will be impossible to eliminate them yes but you can take measures to reduce their effectiveness and numbers. Having a subscription payment per account makes it a higher barrier to entry for example.
Also, one of the main appeals and promises of this game is to never go P2W. So will this last forever? Well I'd say the success of the game largely depends on it and there are lots of videos where IS talks about why they will never do this. One point that sticks out in my mind is that in their words P2W destroys the reputation of the company, turns public imagine of them sour and leads to only temporary increase in profits as the game slowly dies.
Now does that mean NEVER? I don't know but I do trust Steven won't be pulling that nonsense as long as it's in his control, otherwise I wouldn't be here supporting the game a year before it comes out.
ig market. I understand the restriction of rl money items; but my interest would be greatly diminished if it was a highly restricted market as a whole. Part of the whole farming process involves idea of exchange of reward and a merchant role option. It’s s whole other incentive to keep playing.
What you’re proposing is that IS should legitimize gold selling. Because if a player can spend RL cash on a cosmetic and sell it for in-game money, they have indirectly bought gold. To be fair, in this situation it’s IS who is making the money rather than a gold farmer. But regardless of who profits in the end, you are enabling people to buy gold for cash, and then they can use that gold to buy better gear and other advantages. That is by definition pay to win, which IS takes great pains to avoid.
So no, no trading of cash shop items will ever happen and that’s a very good thing.
The cash shop becomes a means unto itself; it will have quotas, profit margins, artists that need to be paid.
Creativity when you have a deadline to meet surrenders at times to the superficial. So how long until we get Harajuku Girl costumes, hoodies, seasonal santa and elf outfits. Basically all of the immersion breaking crap that does not fit into this worlds lore; just so players can feel like a special snowflake for $9.95 and be followed by their perky pug who will share their adventures.
I would rather have their artists create cultural armor sets spanning both recent and ancient history, dating back thousands of years, based upon game lore and races. Hide these plans/patterns in ancient tomes; on discoverable carvings or urns; or simply through discovery while crafting and let Player Character craftsmen forge and sell them. These searches for ancient patterns would be a quest chain and provide a market in and of themselves.
There was a reason there was a cultural thread at certain time periods for different armors. That not every English knight looked different and had to rely upon heraldry.
Uh oh, novel concept; colors and heraldry.
As someone mentioned above, I would rather be able to gage someone's explorations or have an understanding of their story and travels than their pocket book. "Wow, you must have visited Ben the Smith of Harvorshire, he's the only one I know who can make Bandar plate armor."
Instead, we are going to have level 1 walking around like archangels. "Nice wings dude pity they are vestigial and just knock over everyone's drinks in the tavern; trouble getting fitted for a jacket with those?"
The important aspects u value in ur games are all there for u to experience and test for a year or two, until aoc is released.
A lot of players are looking for an escape from the asian/korean mmos, including Steven.
Actually @Azathoth sentence makes perfect sense. IS stated that there will be at least as many cosmetics in game as in the cash shop. So you don´t have to use the cash shop to get cosmetics. There will be just different cosmetics. And additionally he is right: if you don´t have cash don´t use the cashshop.
Yeah Steven can decide that. In a LiveStream they already said that they will have tools to monitor the market. It´s pretty obvious if someone trades large amounts of gold with another player and wants nothing in return.
https://www.panopticonlabs.com/
I agree, designing the whole game for a minority would not be wise, especially the "we want to trade cash shop items in game" crowd.
Very wise indeed.
Hopefully the culture of the players in game will be sufficiently against PTW (whatever form it takes) that those PTW players will be despised and shunned.
If we work together as a society to turn-in gold sellers and other cheaters to the GMs, hopefully we can keep the game reasonably clean and healthy.
*fingers crossed*
WoW has gold sellers but you’re not getting spammed by them every time you enter a city. Other MMOs (like Neverwinter) I have to turn public channels off because that’s all you read.
Even WoW let’s you play for free to a limited extent. I don’t think that AoC has that option, at least at launch. So I expect to see even less than the little I see in WoW.