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Alpha Two Phase II testing is currently taking place five 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.
Comments
I won't address other points, cause it would once again be simply fruitless, just like those apples and oranges you keep sayin that I'm comparing.
based upon your word count, you appear to be wound up.
Deep Breaths my friend. i am here for you if you need someone to talk to.
This was a great post
"If you feel BP Tasks are a chore; don't do them. Just like no one forces me to do Dungeons or Raids." - best advice which NiKr cannot follow
Steven has touted that Ashes will be different. If he cannot figure out how to do it with content, then I think he has failed in his dream. I am confident they will figure how to get our money with legit story and fun.
I think Dygz fundamentally misses the point of Ashes of Creation because he does not understand PVP.
I mean active subs not active player account.
If you give the option for people to spend less money to get what they want, that is what they will do. BP prices are a good point where people accept some things they might not like, or people that are just in the pattern of buying battle passes just doing it anyway.
I don't remember him saying they are going to be pioneering monetization in games and coming up with new solutions.
His trade off is losing money on box cost so more people can play the game and not have as much of a barrier.
No, they have been very forthright with how they plan to make money - subscriptions and cosmetics.
A battlepass as most people seem to assume it to be would go counter to that.
This is why I don't get the whole discussion. It is people asking Intrepid to put in a form of monetization that can be bypassed (most people seem to want it to be able to be bypassed), that will directly lower the sales of other monetization Intrepid plans, all so that people can be told what to do in a game that is supposed to be a sandpark (or themebox).
I really don't see the argument for it, despite this thread.
The state of mmos is so bad right now that if Ashes delivers a solid B+ on their vision, it will garner a massive audience. There’s no need for a battle pass to be included in the first few years.
It can happen that AoC will not offer the kind of content which can be delivered by a battle pass.
Asking for battle passes is like asking AoC to be that kind of game which requires them.
Battlepass fits into cosmetic, doesn't matter how you try to twist that so it isn't a counter to anything.
Sure - I'm not saying it doesn't.
I am saying it will lower Intrepids revenue if implemented in the way many people here are talking about it.
Really not going to lower the revenue and it doesn't change anything. Also forum posters are less than .0001% of game population. Its the casual player that matters, and whales who will spend tons of money on the game.
Daily Quests tend to be a sub-set of Battlepasses.
Also, prior to 5 years ago it was common for Daily Quests to be designed to penalize you on the rewards path if you didn’t log in every day by resetting you back to the start of the rewards path if you skipped a day.
Modern Battlepasses tend not to do that.
They don’t have as much doom built in as Daily Quests did 5+ years ago.
I don’t understand how a monetized path lowers Intrepid’s revenue.
They’ve already tested the model with APOC and seemed to like it.
Cosmetic Market can also be skipped - more so that in a Battlepass.
That’s just your bias about me skewing your perceptions.
I don’t miss the point of Ashes PvP.
I just don’t enjoy non-consensual PvP.
The Open Seas is a deal-breaker for me, but I think it’s a great addition for gamers who love PvP combat.
We agree on the apples.
In addition to apples, I expect Ashes will also have oranges.
You don’t have to agree that Ashes will also have oranges.
We will see what actually happens.
And, if Ashes has a Cosmetic Market it basically also has the rewards that typically come with modern Battlepasses.
I didn’t state that Ashes has to have a Battlepass.
I didn’t claim it’s certain that Ashes will have a Battlepass.
Also, I didn’t ask for a Battlepass.
I said I expect the Cosmetic Market will come in the form of a Battlepass.
And then…we’ll see if my expectation is accurate.
I’m not aware of any game that requires a Battlepass.
People asked me to explain why I like Battlepasses. I obliged. They were still confused so I gave a more detailed explanation.
Several people don’t understand how modern Battlepass work, so I gave lengthy examples.
It’s a fun topic.
And especially fun discussing it NiKr, Azherae, Otr and Crow3.
You’ll know I’m close to being wound up when I say things like, “OK. I need to be done…because I’m about to start name-calling and trash-talking you. You can have the last word.”
If this thoeretical battlepass offers a free option and also has cosmetics as a reward, it absolutely will lower the revenue from purchased cosmetics.
If the above are not the case, then it probably won't.
Needs and wants are not the same thing though
Ok. Then was a misunderstanding from my side.
I would prefer to pay a higher monthly subscription, because there was inflation meantime and it makes sense to adjust it.
Then the development cost of whatever updates they inject into the game, in form of DLC expansions will be covered by them.
Wiki states that DLC will be free and quite frequent:
DLC expansions (post-launch releases) are planned on a monthly, quarterly, or six-monthly basis.[1][2]
- The frequency and size of expansions will be based on the popularity and subscription base of the game.[1]
- DLC will not cost anything more than the normal subscription.[3][4]
https://youtube.com/watch?v=-fUWFkMvyHY&t=3758s
- Larger expansions will add new content and increase various aspects of the game.[1][5]
- New content will primarily be introduced through the node system. The goal is for existing content to remain relevant alongside the new content.[6]
Each inflection point, which is those updates as expansions... you get to go back reevaluate. Hey, it seems like 89% of the servers out there never opened this door. Well, maybe the predicates were too granular. Maybe they were too focused. Maybe there's a reason why that didn't happen? Let's expand on that for the next expansion so that this content has an opportunity to come out and see the light of day.[7] – Steven Sharif
So I have no idea why this thread has so many posts.
(and I even had the chance to quote the largest post ever - I got no achievement though)
Exactly, and when you’re trying to launch a product with an already lengthy ‘need to have’ list, the ‘wants’ are more like ‘nice to haves.’
Yes i am having fun wrong. Or maybe pointing to a Multiplayer game should tell you that i play them for the Multiplayer part. You will miss the tree for the forest mate.
If battlepass avoids increasing subscription id prefer that. Than a ton of people feeling the price point is too high a monthly sub.
They cannot cover their expenses indefinitely if like most MMO, this one will also gradually lose players.
But maybe in AoC we will see subscription number increasing over-time after release. It all depends how those DLCs are made and what they bring. Maybe they will bring gun powder too!
Otherwise eventually they reach a situation where they have to reduce development team or increase cosmetic price in their store. And those monster coin price.
A combination of both subscription and payed DLCs is the worst solution and they committed to free DLCs.
But I am not worried yet.
We start A2, we see what we get and how that evolves and we will see such topics again.
Also think about the price of the A2 key and how many purchased cosmetics before even having the game.
It can happen that A2 will sustain itself as a "free to test" game for a long time without influx of new "testers".
IS does not seem worried that many biomes are not even started and they have to populate them with quests and NPCs.
IS cannot afford to release the game unless it accepts the game quality they have compared to other mmos.
We will keep suggesting / demanding all that amazing content we dreamed about on this forum the past few years and give examples from other competing MMOs which will be launched while A2 is active.
Can't say much on how much money they have from all the buy ins and if its been used up already. But on wages alone if we are looking at the bare minimum (which im super low balling) We are still talking about on wages alone 12m a year.
I cannot say either. But as a concept, free to play games rely on the fact that some players pay for something in a store and cover what the free players would pay too, if the game would be subscription based.
What IS did was to filter out those who pay and let them in to test the A2. So we do not need additional servers for the free players. Some might not play test continuously but will still buy cosmetics as they did before and they'll login to see the latest monthly updates.
If this cannot sustain itself then the f2p games wouldn't be able either.
Cosmetic sales I hope will start again. I was not a cosmetic buyer but I seem to become one. I used to but other things in GW2 but here if we will have only cosmetics... what can I do?
And to prevent the FOMO reaction, players who wait for the proper release might get the possibility to buy them too. Maybe they'll even get a chance to be selected to join A2. At least for a month to see their cosmetics.
Then the filtering continues, removing f2p players and only those who like cosmetics will actually play test. It is more efficient than the real f2p business model.
What if battlepass increased the subscription?
Once again, if Intrepid expect to get a reasonable amount of revenue via cosmetics, and battlepass offers an avenue to get cosmetics, a portion of the population will opt for that path rather than purchasing cosmetics.
If the battlepass offered has a free variant (as many here are suggesting), that would likely result in less revenue for Intrepid. Since cosmetics are no longer as viable a revenue stream as originally intended due to battlepass being an option for players, the only option left is to increase the subscription cost.
I am not saying this is guaranteed to happen, I am simply pointing out that it is a potential and viable outcome that can not be dismissed if there is a free version of the battlepass.
They have people that work on cosmetics, like stuff for a battlepass. Its not like they use those for everything else, they use them for that.