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Alpha Two Phase II testing is currently taking place 5+ days each week. More information about testing schedule can be found here
If you have Alpha Two, you can download the game launcher here, and we encourage you to join us on our Official Discord Server for the most up to date testing news.
Cosmetics and fun. + Poll
n1trix
Member, Settler, Kickstarter
Hello friends.
I have been playing MMOs for the last 20 years, starting with the good ol Lineage, Going through WOW, all of the Guild Wars and countless of others. One thing I noticed is that anytime the devs introduced shops, be that p2w or cosmetics, the game always started to feel different. I know this game is not supopsed to have p2w features, only cosmetics. But...to me cosmetics destroy part of the game that is the most fun.
The reason? Simple. Take Lineage 2 for example. In the early games, the only way to acquire nice "skin" for your armor was to GET the armor. You could clearly see who is the "Alpha" who spent hours and hours grinding mats, quests and raiding bosses for armor parts, who had the patience. It always felt great to finally click that 60% chance recipe and succeed or drop that piece of armor you needed and finally complete a set.
But now we have cosmetics and people can wear nice armor skins since level 1. What is the point then? People should look like vagabonds and crawl they way through, that was that old school MMOs were all about. Not buying skins and pretend you are "DA MAN".
Steven, if you are listening, this is a sub based MMO, if you deliver only half of what you are planning, you are going to make more than enough money to pay for everything ten times over in the first year. Remember the good Lineage days and rethink the cosmetics shop in your game. The little bit of extra money is not worth the amount of fun and immersion you are going to take away with purchasable skins. What I admired about your ideas and was looking forward the most is the "lets go back to the classic MMOS" type of thinking.
Please, anyone share your opinions about this topic.
Also - here is a poll.
http://www.strawpoll.me/45372101/r
PS.: What I would also like to see is the visual progress of spells. For example.: level 1 fireball would be like....small spark and level 60 fireball a nuke.... that would be cool aswell :-)
I have been playing MMOs for the last 20 years, starting with the good ol Lineage, Going through WOW, all of the Guild Wars and countless of others. One thing I noticed is that anytime the devs introduced shops, be that p2w or cosmetics, the game always started to feel different. I know this game is not supopsed to have p2w features, only cosmetics. But...to me cosmetics destroy part of the game that is the most fun.
The reason? Simple. Take Lineage 2 for example. In the early games, the only way to acquire nice "skin" for your armor was to GET the armor. You could clearly see who is the "Alpha" who spent hours and hours grinding mats, quests and raiding bosses for armor parts, who had the patience. It always felt great to finally click that 60% chance recipe and succeed or drop that piece of armor you needed and finally complete a set.
But now we have cosmetics and people can wear nice armor skins since level 1. What is the point then? People should look like vagabonds and crawl they way through, that was that old school MMOs were all about. Not buying skins and pretend you are "DA MAN".
Steven, if you are listening, this is a sub based MMO, if you deliver only half of what you are planning, you are going to make more than enough money to pay for everything ten times over in the first year. Remember the good Lineage days and rethink the cosmetics shop in your game. The little bit of extra money is not worth the amount of fun and immersion you are going to take away with purchasable skins. What I admired about your ideas and was looking forward the most is the "lets go back to the classic MMOS" type of thinking.
Please, anyone share your opinions about this topic.
Also - here is a poll.
http://www.strawpoll.me/45372101/r
PS.: What I would also like to see is the visual progress of spells. For example.: level 1 fireball would be like....small spark and level 60 fireball a nuke.... that would be cool aswell :-)
1
Comments
MMO's have been $15 a month more or less since 1999. Based on just inflation, that means we should be paying $24 a month now.
Every AAA MMO has at least two income streams. There are games with sub + box purchase, games with box purchase + shop, and games with subscription + shop.
There are no AAA MMO's with just a subscription, or just a box cost, or just a store.
Steven had the decision to make as to which two income streams would be right for Ashes. While I do not know his reasoning behind his choice, it makes sense to me that an MMO that is a little different probably wants a low barrier to entry for new players - so players can try the game out easier.
What this means is that the idea of a box cost is out the window based on the design of the game. People are willing to try a new MMO out for maybe $20, but not much more. By not charging a box cost, it means people can try out Ashes for the first months subscription - $15 - and if they don't like it, that is the only cost they have put in to the game.
When WoW released in 2004, the purchase cost was $80, and the subscription was $15. With one month included in the purchase price, this meant that players were spending $245 annually to play WoW. Adjusted for inflation, that is now $356. Playing Ashes for one year will cost players $180 - almost exactly *HALF* of what WoW was charging (inflation adjusted).
This makes your claims somewhat shaky.
Now, unless you have actual hard numbers in relation to the cost of development of a AAA MMO, and the cost of maintaining one post launch, I am unsure why you think you can tell someone that does have those figures that they are or are not making enough money.
It is very doubtful that a game focusing on Risk Vs Reward will be able to maintain Subscription numbers over 2-3mil long term. It is more realistic to expect Ashes to have a long-term concurrent player base between 0.5-1.5million players.
The whole MMORPG pie has an estimated 10-15million players on average. There are more MMOs in the market now than ever and there are quite a few on the horizon. Open world PvP and loot loss are extremely alienating and niche concepts for the average MMORPG player. They might check Ashes out at launch, but the average MMORPG player is not expected to stay in Ashes for long. They will leave for something easier.
This means that Intrepid needs money from any source that is not going to ruin the game. Cosmetics are an easy source of revenue that is generally agreed to not ruin games. The other option would be for Intrepid to get money from "Non-player Investors" who rarely have the games best interest at heart. Right now with the supporter packs, we are the investors. This gives Intrepid to make the game they want, not the game some "Non-player Investors" want.
There will still be cosmetics that can only be earned in game. The cash shop cosmetics are also inferior in every way to in-game cosmetics. They cannot be mixed or dyed. They are one costume that covers the whole body with zero customization other than your head/body shape being different. The cosmetics eared via end-game content will be superior to cash shop cosmetics. They will both look better, be mixable, and able to be dyed.
I understand that you want that old-school feel, but it is just too expensive for what it adds to the game. It literally costs game companies millions of dollars just to make a fraction of the player base like the game a little more. Niche games cannot afford not to have some sort of cash shop in 2021. We need to be grateful that it is cosmetic only.
This is my personal feedback, shared to help the game thrive in its niche.
I hate the monster coin crap. Just sounds like a dumb feature that will not get often used and stop getting developed over time.
This is my personal feedback, shared to help the game thrive in its niche.
I have to agree, it is absolutely on the top of my list for features that are likely to be dropped soon after launch.
Depends how much money they make from selling the Monster Coins, I suppose.
Eh...basic math will suffice...
The game is funded already according to Steven, when it comes down to server maintenance and pushing new content, they wont have all of the staff used for development. Btw WOW in the beginning also did not have a shop and they made billions, Guild Wars 1 was funded only by "buy to play model" and the game was active for a decade without any additional required payment.. Do you realize how much money they have from a playerbase of lets say 100 000 people? Not to mention 1 000 000? With a sub model?
Do the game right, it will pay for itself. Thats how everything has always worked, not just games. Or are you telling me that before cosmetics MMOs and online games in general did not exist and had to take loans from banks to finance their expenses?
Build a time machine and take your argument to Steven in 2017 before he actually sold cosmetics. He has already sold a product. That can't magically be undone because of a preference to the way MMOs were.
Also, your arguments about how WOW and GW1 did things don't work here. The sub money and box costs were better in the early 2000s money, but it is not enough to fund modern MMOs. The scope of modern MMOs is much larger, the costs to employee people and give them benefits is much higher. Essentially, everything about game development costs more and money is worth less than it was. Gamers also stick with games for shorter lengths of time. It all compounds to a situation where more money is always needed.
Like I said many times on this forum. If Intrepid needs money(which they do), I want them to get it from the players who care about the game. Not "Outside Investors".
This is my personal feedback, shared to help the game thrive in its niche.
Um, I bought GW1 back, when servers were incredibly expensive to maintain, the hardware was unreliable, for 20 dollars. Nowadays you buy games for 60-100 even more, depending on the version, what are you talking about? Everything got cheaper and easier to maintain.
Care to clarify on this last part? In my field, I haven't noticed. Servers, bandwidth, pay for top industry developers, build tools...
Are you like, hosting your Server Authenticated PvP instances on AWS? How many website designers and community managers are you paying?
Because if you've got numbers where 15 million a month after taxes pays for everything including payroll, office space in Cali, advertising, travel expenses, and licensing fees, I want in on this, I'll have been waiting way too long for no reason, on one of my own projects.
Skins have already been sold so it's too late to go back, skins are already exclusive so it's too late to go back.
Loads more cash shop skins will need to be made because of all the exclusivity, these are skins that could have been achievable in game but are not.
This will take away from the game for those who don't want to spend more money in the cash shop than they would have on the box cost.
Please stop with the monthly exclusivity, the early supporters already have exclusive things to show they supported early, the exclusivity now just abuses FOMO and if the game is any good will reduce the amount of available cash shop skins so any whales who come to the game later won't be able to spend as much money so could result is less money earned overall anyway.
Maintaining a game is more than just server hosting. It is also making content updates, administration, and advertising. Without these things the game would die quickly. See Wildstar for an example.
I am pretty sure GW1 and each of its expansions were $50-60 at release and were only lowered to $20-30 when new expansions came out. Still GW1 was a simple and unambitious game even in its time. It launched with no end-game, and the prophecy story could be completed in a few hours. Compared to a modern MMO it was just a 8v8 PvP arena with some instanced dungeons linking towns. Very basic stuff. ArenaNet also had support from NCsoft the whole time.
Intrepid gets funding and support from Steven and us. That is it. That is also how I want to keep it. If they took out cash shop cosmetics, you can say goodbye to Intrepid and hello to:
Amazons: Intrepid, Activisions: Intrepid, NCSofts: Intrpid...
It would not be better I assure you.
This is my personal feedback, shared to help the game thrive in its niche.
Racial skins should be available from the get go however.
Yes, Ashes is already funded, because Steven put $40,000,000 of his own money in to it - money that he has every right to expect a return on.
At the start, WoW didn't have a shop - correct. As I said in my post though, it had an upfront purchase price, and a subscription that combined meant it cost twice as much to play for a year as Ashes will (when adjusted for inflation). If you want to find reason why Intrepid shouldn't have a cash shop, WoW is a game you should probably shy away from.
Now for Guild Wars. Guild Wars was $60 at release, as were each of the campaigns.
If you played Guild Wars for three years, buying all four campaigns when they released, you would have spent $240, this translates to $330 with inflation, or $110 a year. This isn't a whole lot less than what Ashes is asking people to pay.
If you look at Guild Wars, and then look at the improvements and updates to the genre that Ashes will have, that more than makes the additional $60 a year worth it.
Also, Guild Wars did eventually have to add a cash shop.
As a final point, servers are significantly more expensive to run now than they were in 2005.
Unless you are able to place a figure on how much Intrepid will be paying to AWS for it's server hosting, you really have no statement of fact to make here.
It is very clear you have no idea at all about finance or business of any kind. Stop pretending that you do. You are welcome to say you just don't like the cash shop, but outright making things up to support this dislike is not a good plan on your part.
Also the argument that cosmetics is P2W or affects the game is silly, in Dota2 you have cosmetics and it doesn't affect gameplay at all and no one says anything about it affecting the game, it's just an MMO viewpoint which I think partially comes from that a lot of MMOs there's nothing to do end game but grind cosmetics but hopefully ashes resolves this by making endgame gameplay more engaging so it's not just constantly grinding cosmetics.
If part of the financial success that keeps the game going is the cosmetics (which is other peoples' money), all the better for me.
With some exceptions as I don't mind if some exclusive colors are in the store. I just don't want to see exclusive store mounts that used development time and yet aren't in the actual game without using the store. That is taking things out of the game and putting it in the store. I absolutely don't want to see anything that could count as that.
So as long as they follow that there is a free version of every store item then I won't care as long as there is absolutely no P2W. Those items on the store should also be bind on pickup.
U.S. East