Glorious Alpha Two Testers!
Alpha Two Realms are now unlocked for Phase II testing!
For our initial launch, testing will begin on Friday, December 20, 2024, at 10 AM Pacific and continue uninterrupted until Monday, January 6, 2025, at 10 AM Pacific. After January 6th, we’ll transition to a schedule of five-day-per-week access for the remainder of Phase II.
You can download the game launcher here and we encourage you to join us on our for the most up to date testing news.
Alpha Two Realms are now unlocked for Phase II testing!
For our initial launch, testing will begin on Friday, December 20, 2024, at 10 AM Pacific and continue uninterrupted until Monday, January 6, 2025, at 10 AM Pacific. After January 6th, we’ll transition to a schedule of five-day-per-week access for the remainder of Phase II.
You can download the game launcher here and we encourage you to join us on our for the most up to date testing news.
Comments
Come on guys.... this is becoming ludicrous....
Aren't we all sinners?
Hey now. Charging a subscription fee is definitely pay to win. If I don't pay, everyone else who does is gonna leave me in the dust. I won't even have a chance!
Hell yeah! You know what is also hella pay 2 win in an MMORPG? Internet connection! It's such an insane advantage having it!
Aren't we all sinners?
Paying your power bill is way more P2W.
Winning is not subjective. It cant be.
In order to win, there needs to be a clear goal, defined by someone that isnt you.
You can set your own goals, that's fine. However, achieving them is not winning, it is simply achieving a goal.
Winning in Ashes if creation is not an overarching concept. You do not win the game.
Rather, you win small portions of the game. This may be a fight with another player, a mob, or successfully crafting an item.
These are all activities with a clear objective set by Intrepid, and as such are things you can win at.
Nothing at all in the games cash shop can assist you at all in winning in any of these situations, and as such the cash shop is simply not pay to win.
This is not a subjective matter, it is purely objective. That is because winning is purely objective.
Achieving a personal goal is subjective.
Now, if you want to say the cash shop p2aypsg (pay to achieve your personal subjective goals), you may have a valid discussion.
However, claiming that the concept of winning is subjective is just blatantly incorrect. Starting a thread off with this claim just makes tour point irrelevant from the get go.
Some of you are very angry and agressive people. You should take a step back and wonder if you were what inspired the staff to start a thread about battling toxicity in their community long before the game has even been released.
I'm afraid you might come to realise that the premise of your thread requires you to wear a cosmetic P2W set consisting of a huge pair of shoes, a colorful wig, and a red round nose to be properly discussed.
Aren't we all sinners?
Me bully her? She came here trying to provoke me and pick a fight with her shit posting and insulting XD But nice job defending her, now he might give you her snap
The thread had brought us together in a common goal, id say that is some value xD
I saw the HE
Aren't we all sinners?
I searched "cosmetic pay 2 win" in the Ashes forum search box and got 15 pages of results. I skimmed the first 10 pages and saw many threads on this topic. I know from participating in quite few that there are at least several massive threads on this topic. If you want to know what people think about this, you have many hours of reading there...
Bottom line is that cosmetics in ashes are not going away. The Kickstarter packages included many skins and skins have been sold monthly for about 5 years now. The best that you could try for is no cosmetic shop on release. However, a monthly sub + cosmetic cash shop has been the plan since the game was originally announced. Its what the revenue projections are based on. At initial announcement, Steven had $30 million secured for Ashes. Steven has stated that the game is projected cost about $40-45 million by release at this point. I doubt that you can come up with any argument that is practical from IS point view to reduce monetization while the cost of development is increasing by so much.
Steven does have to recoup his costs. Even after the game is released he will still be paying the studio that is intended to be 160+ developers on top of other business costs while trying to recover his investment. He has to have a reasonable way of doing so.
If you would like an idea of how much players as a whole really care about purchased items, just look at Diablo Immortal. That game has severe pay 2 win PVP monetization with estimates to max a character ranging between at least $100,000 to more than $500,000 USD. I know of one streamer that has spent over $100k on his character and he hasn't said that he is anywhere near max. The complaints from players are extreme. In spite of that, the game has generated $100 million in revenue, has 30 million downloads, and has only been out for 2 months. The point is that player complaints about monetization don't really impact profits that much.
I'm just so glad that IS seems firmly committed to not using pay to win mechanics options that actually impact gameplay.
If Ashes is very successful, it may pave the way for other companies to restrict all non cosmetic sales in MMOs. I can only hope.
If Intrepid decided to put the price of subscription up to $20, and decided to give cosmetics as rewards for people that participated in development (which I have to assume means only developers working at Intrepid), what is to stop them adding the cosmetic store back in the future?
I mean, if there is concern that the current cosmetic store could mean adding pay to win features in the future, what reason do we have to assume Intrepid wouldn't just add a cosmetic only cash shop back after they increased the subscription fee?
The only real difference is that Intrepid knows the vast majority of players are fine with a cosmetic only cash shop - even if a few are not. This means they know they won't get much (if any) backlash by adding it back in later on if they take it out now.
Whoops, accidentally tagged you. My bad.
So, if you are against cosmetic, what would you do?
If you think looking good is winning, then yes, any game with a Cosmetic Shop is P2W.
For most people, winning means being stronger than other players, therefore cosmetics that do not add any extra stats do not make a game P2W.
If you disagree, good for you, it was nice seeing you and I hope you find an MMORPG without P2W for you to enjoy.
Regardless of your opinion or feelings, no matter how many posts like this are made, this game will have a Cash Shop with cosmetics. By the way, I dislike cosmetics very much, but I'd rather have a game with cosmetics and no actual P2W than the opposite.
Last but not least, Steven has said that in-game obtainable gear will look just as good, if not better, than cosmetic gear. So maybe, just maybe, play the game before going full ret*rd.
Cheers mate, time to ostracize this post now.
Can't win if you can't play.