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
This is so irrelevant to what I said I don’t really know how to respond. I’ll start by asking you not misrepresent my thoughts. Visual progression is personal goal achievement type winning, not everything in an mmo has to be “pvp winning.”
Ha! No need for pearl-clutching, I’m clearly just ribbing you from the p2w thread. 😜
I'm actually surprised I haven't blocked them, by now...
Ultimately, you'd run into an issue where there will be people who immediately buy the blinders, creating progressively fewer costume-buyers, which will then cause fewer players to see value in the blinders and drop their "subscription" to them (without potential costume-buyers ever seeing that downward buying trend, still not buying costumes) and inevitably costing Intrepid money in the long run.
You do realize that people are quoting you because they thinks it's funny right?
Worth it.
If I can avoid cash shop bloat obscuring PvP and uprooting established worldbuilding, that's plenty enough reason to risk a ban. I value experience over virtual permanence.
You would have to be dumb to edit game files and think you aren't going to get banned instantly. I thought your post was a troll joke one...the at fact you are being serious.
Looks like you're jumping to the conclusion that cash shop cosmetics in AoC will be anachronic/lore-breaking.
I'm pretty sure everybody else here has come to a consensus a long while ago: they won't be.
I consider cosmetics, from the cash shop or not, this way:
I don't know where people I'll meet comes from. I could fight a guy with a magnificent & shiny armor and quickly discover he's the lamest warrior there ever was. Or he could wear raggs with a rusty sword and beat the sh*t out of me.
Imagine what the Balrog thought when he faced the old man Gandalf with his ragged grey robe and his wooden staff. Would've stayed in its cave deep below if it knew what was coming.
Sure, we have stats and all in our gear. But once equipped, it's part of our character. The only difference with stats increasing as we level up is this part of our stats is modular. It's a simplistic way of increasing customization in numbers.
As for the base appearance of these pieces of gear, it's just that: a baseline.
It was fun during early WoW when you could easily identify who's a threat just by looking at them. But it's a narrowed point of view. Immersion, in a seemingly endless medival-fantasy world where thousands and thousands of people lives, is not when you know the guy you're facing got his pauldrons from killing boars 2 regions from here.
They are the one's making the game, so anything they decide to put in, will always be the intended graphics. Whether we like it or not, doesn't change that it is intended.
So far, I think the vast majority of cosmetics that have been shown are intended to populate different areas of the world. I think this is jumping to conclusions for the direction the game will take in the future. But I don't agree, they've really shown anything I'd consider lore-breaking yet.
Additionally, the cosmetics have so far been in limited runs, so future players that missed the opportunity are unlikely to have them as well.
Albion online have skins you have an free option to hide other players skins and people still buy it for real money and in game for millions of silver...
I personally dont Care for skins to and they just damage pvx MMORPGs, much more impressed when someone have an in game gear set hard do adquire , that was how i grow playing MMORPG, where the dude with an beast gear enter the city and everyone bow , this was Lost in mmorpg mostly because of skins and transmong, to dont mention other factors like in new world, all tanks and bruisers with gandhalf skin and mages with skins of plat armors, that was a shit show in wars .
That was a problem to in Albion like people ganking with skins that looks tier 1 gear , you decide to fight instead of Run, then you get One shoot and realize they have tier 8 gier. That was One of the reasons to them to add that option
I hope you've not pre-ordered a pack, then. Cos spending that much money with the intention of getting banned seems rather ludicrous.
No, this won't be possible.
The first thing the server will do when you log in to Ashes is scan your game files.
In games where add ons are a thing, this can't really be done as add ons alter game files. However, since Ashes won't allow add ons, your game files should be literally exactly t he same as everyone else's.
If they are not, the server will simply patch your client so that it complies.
I mean, I would personally like to see the option to not show cosmetics (though I fully understand why it will not happen, and am on board with that reasoning), and I am also all for people doing literally what they are able and allowed to do, right up to the line where they are not allowed to do the thing (or can't do the thing).
I've also stated outright on these forums my intention to do a specific thing once the game goes live, and have had many people claim that it will get me banned (it won't).
So, in many regards, I am on your side here.
However, what you are talking about here just won't be viable.
I’m always about more player-choice instead of less. So yeah this seems like a fine idea. It’s unlikely that I would use it, but options are good. Maybe it would even be good for the medieval-obsessed people who can’t bear the thought of good looking female armors.
+1 to your idea.
Right now, there are no box prices, and the way the world is designed, they can't very well gate expansions behind pay-walls, so they will be "free" updates. Personally, I detest cosmetic shops. I would chip in another $5-10/month if it meant playing the game without it and having all that hard work go into in-game achievements instead. However, the majority of people would never pay more than $15/month for an MMO, and that fee alone is not enough to fully fund a large game studio running a live-service game environment with consistent updates.
If the cash shop is to be the only supporting form of income from AoC, they need to hit a sizable income target. There will definitely be some cosmetic buyers who're purchasing skins for their own roleplay aesthetic. However, I would argue the majority of potential buyers will do it for the sake of expressing their roleplay aesthetic to others. If you devalue cosmetic products to that large of a percentage of the potential market by creating a system where the majority of the playerbase can completely invalidate the social dynamic of cosmetic purchases, then the income which Intrepid receives from the cash shop will immediately plummet, and we'll be left in a scenario where the only solution to maintaining the game is raising the sub fee - a solution that won't work.
I also wish I could hide cash shop cosmetics. But fulfillment of this wish demands that the incentive for cosmetic purchases be changed from social to personal, and that objectively holds less value for the majority of the potential market. It would require an alternative for consistently funding this massive project post-launch, and I haven't heard a viable idea yet.
lmao! well the first death to the purple sex object would be funny as hell as you try to figure out what the hel just happened. The following ones not so much...
I'd settle for corrupted players dropping all skins on death, purchased with RL money or Looted. they drop em all.
Being able to see how someone is equipped in pvp (and even pve) and having the gameplay experience to know if you should run or fight is fairly important. This is most likely the reason these things are turned off in seiges and other events. I don't think this is a narrowed point of view. I believe the matters in open world pvp too when you might be contesting a gathering area or something else with people from another node/guild.
Valid argument. But we just don't know the number of people that would choose to NOT buy skins IF there was a "skin hide" option. And we don't know how many people would opt to buy the "skin hide" option. Arguing either way is just speculation. Steven has said many times that the game is already funded, so the cash shop hustle shouldn't be critical to the games success. Lets say theres 50k backers/preorderers. That's 15 x 50k. 750k per months. 15k players per server. So they only need 4 servers to house these players, a low cost overhead on hardware for sure, but lets say 50k for hosting. They'll need to pay devs/admins/staff each month. Most making 100k to 200k yearly (guessing with this). lets use 120k to make the math easy. 120k is 10k per months per employee. 10k time 50 employees is 500k. Leaving 200k profit. Add in a cash shop with or without a "hide skin" option will still be extra money. Also add in the 50k people that have spent 75 to 350 dollars on the game already. 3.75m to 17.5m, plus Stevens already 40m (i think). Financing the games development or lifespan shouldn't be an issue. These aren't exact numbers and probably miss a lot of the overheads of doing business. Sadly they are located in California which expensive to live so salaries are higher, and taxes are basically prima nocta there. Well they are San Diego which is a tiny bit better maybe.