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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
Monetization and manipulation:
I'm sorry but what was that a response to in my text? Or are you maybe agreeing with me? Is it a statement that they have to make money somehow? I'm sorry but it is hard to have discourse without any context.
Are you arguing that it is a given fact that it must be pay to win and thus the only thing we can do is try and mitigate it? I don't subscribe to that belief but if that is your point then have we been given enough information about how the store will actually work to have any opinion about it?
We laughed when they sold the Horse Armor in Oblivion how idiotic it was, but now that sort of thing is accepted as fait accompli.
Watching the video is easy to understand what happens in AOC, let me explain:
- Hook: packages with exclusive benefits.
- Offers and Scarcity: Exclusive items with limited time.
- Subscription: Generate a sense of investment in the user.
- IKEA effect: Integrate consumers into the process of development and assembly of the final product.
- Anchoring: Set entry conditions that imply a lower cost than the one perceived as real (without cost of the base game = great deal).
- Social proof: Youtubers, streamers and Kickstarter consumer (people are interested in the product and invest money in it).
- Labeling technique: it is not P2W ¨because¨ they are only cosmetics.
Monetize - Retain - Acquire.
While Intrepid uses one of the less aggressive models regarding microtransactions, it does not stray from the basics of such manipulation techniques to generate income.
It is not the worst case, but it is far from being an old school model.
The purpose of the original post was to generate a model that generates income for the company but in a less aggressive way in search of full access to the available content by users who so wish.
I've seen that movie before and I agree with your analysis, but.. that ship has already sailed? I remember when this was first put on kickstarter and I saw all the exclusives being offered, I decided then and there not to sink any money into it whatsoever until it was fully released. Nothing you can do now will change what has already happened, so the most you can do is try and limit the damage but I don't see the point.
If the goal is to get everything and you can't, then you can't reach your goal. If you change your goal to be "I want everything except what I can't get", then you've already moved the goal post enough that you can just set the goal to be "I want everything I can get without sinking money into the game" which is a common goal in online games these days, and in which case the store doesn't matter except in the fringe case where you can pay to get things that you could otherwise grind.
It is the central point of my contribution.
My feedback to Intrepid is, if they actually wanted to create something different, going back to the roots of video games and attracting old-school consumers, well, from my humble point of view, they failed.
They failed from the start, they failed to use some monetization and consumer engagement strategies of moderns MMORPG.
It is very clear that the ship has already sailed, with my contribution what I am trying to tell them is that the ship is going straight to a large iceberg.
They can continue with the same route, ram the iceberg and if the ship is strong enough it may survive the impact and continue its course, or it may find itself against an impenetrable wall, sink in the attempt or drift away floating in a sorry state.
Once the initial damage is done the only option is to mitigate it or risk maintaining it.
A model that maintains the exclusivity of the cosmetic content already delivered but changes to a less aggressive model where access to all the content is guaranteed for a more reasonable value may be an option.
Of course this will keep future users from accessing 3 years of exclusive cosmetic content but at least it will not perpetuate this system in the future.
The ideal is already impossible, the damage has already been done but mitigating it in the future is still possible.
As all change this presents several unknowns, how harmful would it be to maintain the current model vs how harmful would it be to change it?
Well, it is an answer in which each one can have a different answer, in my particular case, I am inclined to think of a less aggressive model as a solution, but it is obvious that it is not in me to make this decision, just to contribute it as a opinion more in the forum.
But I want the one rock to "Rule them ALL"
The cosmetic store is not P2W. You can keep spinning it anyway you choose but it is not. If you feel the cosmetics are important and you would like them, then buy them. No problem. Their will be in-game only cosmetics that you can ACHIEVE and not have to worry about others buying them. This has become a NORM and since NORMS are society driven, you will have to bring this to you're congressman/woman and have them force change to a new Societal Norm.
/bow
Now I personally don't include cosmetics or completionism in my computer gaming (thank the lord) so for me AoC is still a viable product in that sense. I am starting to feel like "online" gaming is a negative now instead of a positive, which is sad since I've been playing online since BBS MUDs were a thing.
I have occasionally dabbled in other games where I know I'll be disappointed but usually I get at least a few hours of fun before I get disgusted and I've fallen off the wagon a time or two as well (I'm looking at you BDO and STO). It is disheartening to see others spending thousands of dollars on a game and feel like they are "winning", but hopefully they have the disposable income to burn.
You Shall Not Passsss!
You Shall Not Passsss!
You know that Norms can change?
In fact, actual Norm of monetization is a change from previous Norms.
It is not necessary to arrive at the congress to be able to share an opinion in a forum.
In fact, the current monetization rules did not need to reach congress in the beginning to show themselves as the norm to follow.
The point of what you mention is part of what I am trying to mention.
To quote your example, these models do not create large gaming communities nor are they based on the old premises of online entertainment.
Players who are not interested in this type of content may join the game and precisely because they are not interested they will not spend large amounts of money.
Those who are interested find part of their gaming experience behind additional payments, within this group those who are not willing to pay exaggerated amounts of money will stop playing (less income for the game) and those who cannot resist (for whatever reason) they will end up spending disproportionate amounts of money (a model in my opinion unpleasant and that does not focus on equal treatment with the consumer base).
It is not uncommon to see millions of users rotating from game to game dealing with the feeling of dissatisfaction caused by this type of practice.
It can be profitable but it is far from the premise of creating one of the best gaming communities, at least from my point of view.
Agreed, but I give the AoC devs props for at least aligning themselves with the mainstream audience regarding cash shops (only cosmetics), but it is at the cost of outliers like you.
In general regarding the F2P model I can't fathom how the business model is flourishing since I personally am having a hard time conceiving of spending money in the amounts that whales do, but as long as it is profitable the trend will continue. It doesn't matter if millions come and go, as long as a few stay and spend a few thousand USD.
The last pay to play MMO I played was SWTOR, and that wasn't profitable enough I guess since they switched payment models eventually.
The way I see it, it is not that it is not profitable, it is about knowing that there is a way to generate much more income with the minimum investment cost.
The problem is that this model is based on a fundamental premise, exploiting the weakness of vulnerable consumers and ruining the gaming experience of those who are not vulnerable but see a fundamental part of their gaming experience, monetized.
What I understand when a developer uses these practices is that he seeks to prioritize maximum profits at the expense of a not very pleasant deal with part of his potential consumers.
And as I said before, although Intrepid chose one of the less aggressive models, it does not stop being part of the model.
In addition, the existence of this model opens the door to future slides towards more aggressive practices.
It is clear that Intrepid assured that this would not be the case, it is also clear that it is not the first study that promises things that over time it cannot deliver.
That is the only quantifiable metric for that term - a term I atempt to not use myself.
I've played games where I would spend less than 12 hours a week logged on, but would be at the cutting edge of the raiding scene. In no way was that what anyone could consider "hardcore", unless someone simply used that term as a synonym for "organised".
I've also played games where I spent 30+ hours a week basically gardening - and if I were to use the term "hardcore" for anything, I would use it there.
That said, since you have a history of having your own definitions for terms, I'm sure you have one for that term as well.
I suppose that everyone has a definition that comes from their experiences over time.
The definitions are not static in this environment, without going any further recently, the categorization of hardcore and casual was put aside (which always had variants regarding what each one represented) and another type of classification was taken into account:
https://resources.newzoo.com/hubfs/Newzoo_Gamer_Segmentation.pdf
Taking into account that AOC is based on a very competitive - group based game model with limited options for casual and individual progress, you can evaluate the current categorization of player types and see clearly what the pull of users from which they are going to get:
- Permanence in the game for attraction to competitiveness and group activities.
- Investment of large amounts of money in microtransactions.
SWTOR: no payment required for the base game, optional monthly subscription (full gameplay experience, access to expansions, monthly credits to spend in the store), microtransaction store (cosmetics, boosts, convenience).
I don't say it, they say it:
If you want an unlimited gameplay experience (access) you have to pay the subscription.
Discuss a topic in a forum?
One thing I would be in favor of is if the longer subscriptions (3, 6 and 12 month) also came with an amount of embers.
I ask from a sincere point. After all of these posts I feel the main reasons been lost.
Well, I think that to the list of adjectives assigned to me in this thread should I add that of not being sincere?
The contributions are about payment models, the vision on how effective they can be based on the type of player attracted to the game, the feedback on how each one sees the current (how it feels or affects the gaming experience) and any proposed alternative and related issues that arise during the development of the thread.
What reason? Even at the start there wasn't a reason. Just one person's opinion that they think Intrepid should change their system to accommodate.
If I got interested enough to play again (I did really have a lot of fun in it at one time) I'd certainly pay a subscription. You pretty much have to.
My interpretation is that he wants Intrepid to not repeat the mistakes of the past, as perceived by him. In that regard I agree with him - timed exclusives are a plague on gaming in general - but I do not see how the damage can be mitigated at this point.
If you truly care about customizations and want to catch them all (i.e. win), as a new player it is now impossible to reach that goal regardless of the future development of the game. It would be like a game releasing a pre-order with a bonus where you can reach level 50, while all new players can only reach level 49. It has fundamentally broken the game from a collector standpoint and even limiting future problems so it doesn't get worse can't fix what has already happened.
In that regard I am having trouble understanding why Elder Souls has pivoted the argument to be about paying for winning in the future when it doesn't really matter at that point in my opinion, because you can never compete with older players on a fair level. It has sparked a long discussion about monetization in general and if that was the goal then goal reached. If the goal was to make the game not broken in a "collect customizations" win condition then it was impossible from the start and never possible.
Of course we always have the slippery slope argument, what they say now and what happens later. Just look at Fallout 76 how definitions can change over time..
SWTOR is a shining example of someone shoehorning in a different profit system after the fact. I recall laughing out loud when I read the notes and realized that since they couldn't really limit the game content without rewriting everything they instead limited the player UI. Madness. Fun fact: my old keybinds to trigger abilities on hotbars I no longer had still worked and triggered the ability that used to be there, so it was shoddily implemented as well.
It can be mitigated in a big sense by paying for unlocks to approach the subscriber experience, but since then they've added other limitations on the free experience with regards to loot and areas you can access with the new content they've added since then.
I mean, if people are going to arbitrarily create win conditions, it is on no one but them if those conditions can't be met.
It isn't that arbitrary, in fact it can even be said to be the focus of games like Pokémon and the like. But yes, the win condition itself is not incompatible with pay to win; however it is incompatible with exclusives.
I'd even go so far as to say that the customization win condition is the most prevalent pay to win in gaming right now, if not straight pay to play if there are no alternative ways to acquire the items. That's why they are often excluded, like for example when major streamers do a mount-off in WoW.
The win condition in Forza is to be first over the line, that doesn't mean it is not arbitrary if I make that my win condition in Ashes.
What if I want to have a win condition from Pac-man, or from Tetris, or from Bejeweled? All of them would be completely arbitrary in Ashes, because they are not stated win conditions in Ashes (not that any have been stated).
Anyone that plays Ashes with the arbitrary win condition they pulled from Fortnite (last person standing) will probably find that this win condition is incompatible with a game like Ashes as well.
The fact that they exist in other games doesn't mean a whole lot.