Alpha 2 Keys

I heard a lot of talk about a2 keys being cheaper than normal.

i personally believe this is a horrible idea. 1 you mess up with people who purchased it before.

just release the a2 packs for sale again, for the people who missed them.
no need to punish the people who bough them early. and no need to cater to people who bought them late.

release them full price. and it's the only way to go.

or you could make them cheaper and make a bunch of A2 buyers very upset. Or you could make them same price but without skins and make new players upset.

but if you release them same price as before same pack....no issues.

thoughts?

personally. if we cater to people that are late now.... we'll expect this in the future as well and maybe even hope to take advantage of it.

what do you guys think?

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Otr

Ravicus wrote: »

Otr wrote: »

Ravicus wrote: »

If you want the game to succede you will allow Ashes to sell products for funding.

That's why the Alpha key price should increase.

Ravicus wrote: »

There is a definite need for players in alpha 2 now bing that they have enhanced the server mesh tech and will allow more players online to test.

They are afraid of login queues and reluctant to open more servers, forcing players to give up and go play something else.

No, the alpha keys should not increase. why would you say that? They keys before had packages to go with them. If they keys stayed the same price or increased it would never sell. Personally I htink they should start reselling the alpha 2 bundles. I want the game to succede. Who cares about what we paid back when. Its like buying a pair of shoes the week before a sale. You gonna gripe at the company for puting them on sale after you bought em the week before? Na, lets just all stop being butthurt and know that its for funding and testing, nothing more.

They can sell access keys with limited time, which expire in like 5 months. After 5 months the "tester" can buy a new key. And these keys should activate a few weeks after Alpha 2 opens, to prevent login queues.
Then IS would get more money but distributed over the entire Early Access phase.
They can even synchronize these keys with the server wipes which might happen.

They can try to sell the former packages too as you say for those who are decided to stay until release and want some FOMO cosmetics, embers and months of subscription.

Dimitraeos

Friss wrote: »

I heard a lot of talk about a2 keys being cheaper than normal.

i personally believe this is a horrible idea. 1 you mess up with people who purchased it before.

just release the a2 packs for sale again, for the people who missed them.
no need to punish the people who bough them early. and no need to cater to people who bought them late.

release them full price. and it's the only way to go.

or you could make them cheaper and make a bunch of A2 buyers very upset. Or you could make them same price but without skins and make new players upset.

but if you release them same price as before same pack....no issues.

thoughts?

personally. if we cater to people that are late now.... we'll expect this in the future as well and maybe even hope to take advantage of it.

what do you guys think?

When you paid $250, you bought a package containing a boatload of other things. Not just the A2 key. That was your decision at the time. You did NOT just buy an A2 key.

Dimitraeos

patrick68794 wrote: »

They should honestly just put the Voyager pack back up at the same price for this instead of doing anything new or different. Then everyone on both sides of the issue could shut up about it

Id be fine with this personally because I completely missed the cut off. Ill take either frankly. I don't buy the argument that re-opening A2 keys at a lower prices is unfair because the Voyager pack was an entirely different bundle of products, not just A2 keys and anyone buying that should have been consciously making that decision knowing what they were buying.

cupi

Noaani wrote: »

Lineager wrote: »

However, I purchased a thing from Intrepid at an agreed upon price. If I get the thing I paid for, I have no reason to complain that someone else for the same thing cheaper.

I got the purchase I signed up for.

I disagree, there would be a reason to complain and that would be if what you paid for gets devalued. But that won't happen. It was made clear by IS in the last livestream that they have gone back and forth on this and advanced that: ''we'll make sure it's fair for you guys''.

Bottom line, the more the merrier.

Sengarden

Noaani wrote: »

The third thing to consider is that the actual value of currencies changes all the time.

What these all add up to is that if Intrepid attempted to have an in game store that handled all transactions and currency exchanges in the game itself, the game would need to be updated every few seconds to account for changes in currencies that are supported.

This is obviously not going to work.

World of Warcraft, played all around the world, has their cosmetic/pet/mount shop in-game without value-obfuscating currencies. Not sure if the window that opens it is essentially an imbedded browser window to an online shop that handles the currency differences for different regions or what, but it works just fine for them. This seems like a made up excuse.

Additionally, when parental settings are turned on, the in-game shop is automatically disabled.

Having up-front pricing and parental protections like this is just common sense. You can't just hide behind the vague statement that "our content is intended for a general audience and not aimed at children", which doesn't actually mean anything - especially when your product is rated T (which Intrepid would be unwise to aim higher than) and therefore technically purchasable and playable by anyone - to justify value-obfuscating currencies only purchasable in set quantities.

cupi

Blip wrote: »

I don't often care about these things, but I got the Alpha 2 pack just so I could help test.The FOMO was real. Now they turn around and say, "Hey, we're going to give you access on the cheap."Can't help but be annoyed at best and pissed at worst.Feel like Intrepid is giving us the middle finger here.

Who are you quoting here exactly?

Sengarden

This whole exclusivity conversation is missing a HUGE point... Alpha 2 is not the game. It's not even really a "game" at all in the traditional sense. We'll most likely be testing a bunch of unfinished systems that don't even have all of their supporting systems fleshed out yet - the eventual wholistic function of which are supposed to make the whole world function properly and feel truly "fun". The main focus of an alpha test is on testing systems and giving feedback, not "winning the game." This is why most companies do hired testing as much as possible, because those people actually understand the task at hand and do their jobs.

If y'all were in the right mindset about participating in the A2 testing and feedback process from the get-go, you wouldn't even be talking about this stuff. You paid money to support the development of a game before the alpha phase was even over, and Intrepid got the money. Good on you. I'm sure they appreciated the support. Now, as a "reward" for spending $250 dollars, you get to do something most companies pay people to do. Test a highly unfinished game state and give intelligible, meaningful, well-constructed feedback. Not "play a game that you paid for". That's absolutely so, so far from the experience of participating in an alpha test, and neither Steven nor anyone else from Intrepid painted the experience any other way, as far as I can remember. If you impatiently fantasized about A2 being "early access" to Ashes of Creation, then I'm sorry, but you're sorely mistaken, and it's your own fault.

It doesn't matter how much you paid, and it doesn't matter when they ended up releasing the option to buy A2 access on its own. You bought a bundle of products and an experience that you thought was worth the cost at the time. To be very clear, A2 access was not one of the products. The cosmetics, $90 of pre-paid game time, and the $100 worth of cosmetic shop currency were the products. The experience you paid for was testing A2. It's not a product. You don't own it. They can wipe your files at any time, and they'll obviously get wiped before the actual game releases. You paid for the experience of doing a job most people get paid to do. Congratulations.

Now, guess what? Something happened that Intrepid couldn't feasibly anticipate with complete accuracy. The servers are more capable now, so they need more testers. A lot more. They already did an entire month or something of open sales for the last Voyager pack, so I think it's safe to say that they've gotten all the people willing to pay $250 by now that they can. They now need to offer the experience to a wider market. Charging as much as they did last time, even with all the extra stuff from before thrown in, won't get them the numbers they need. They need to lower the cost to fulfill their demand, especially now that they're less than three months from the start of A2, and you're all sitting here suggesting they waste their own time for months without a full testing pool just so you can play pretend that you're in the AoC early access? Really?

Otr

Sengarden wrote: »

This whole exclusivity conversation is missing a HUGE point... Alpha 2 is not the game. It's not even really a "game" at all in the traditional sense. We'll most likely be testing a bunch of unfinished systems that don't even have all of their supporting systems fleshed out yet -

Many Early Access games are like that. I was reading that Pax Dei is missing all essential features yet people rushed to play.
However AoC will improve the state gradually and toward the end will be close to the real game. Only the story will be missing to prevent spoilers.

Raviis

TSYM_Muscles wrote: »

Will they allow us to purchase gifts for friends when they open the A2's? I have a lot of close friends that i would like to gift A2 access to.

Just venmo them the money for it?

Noaani

cupi wrote: »

I disagree, there would be a reason to complain and that would be if what you paid for gets devalued.

That isn't a reason to complain.

If it were, new car sales would always result in complaints.

Noaani

Sengarden wrote: »

Not sure if the window that opens it is essentially an imbedded browser window to an online shop that handles the currency differences for different regions or what, but it works just fine for them. This seems like a made up excuse.

WoW's store is an extension of the Battle.net shop.

Perhaps look in to what you are using as a comparison before claiming other points made are "made up".

Ayeveegaming1

I wonder if this conversation is really about item RMT and people "protecting" their investment.

Chicago

Raviis wrote: »

TSYM_Muscles wrote: »

Will they allow us to purchase gifts for friends when they open the A2's? I have a lot of close friends that i would like to gift A2 access to.

Just venmo them the money for it?

I'm pretty sure you can do this, they gift out A2 codes all the time, it's not really breaking T&S, just buy an alpha 2 redemption code and send it to your friend, infact some of the early packs came with codes you could gift out to your friends

cupi

Noaani wrote: »

cupi wrote: »

I disagree, there would be a reason to complain and that would be if what you paid for gets devalued.

That isn't a reason to complain.

If it isn't, why did IS explicitly mentioned they went back and forth to make it fair?

Githal

cupi wrote: »

If it isn't, why did IS explicitly mentioned they went back and forth to make it fair?

If you buy a game on Steam, And the next day the game is put on 50% off, Will you have reason to complain?

TheDarkSorcerer

Where is this other thread people are talking about? Can't seem to find it.

I don't mind having more testers in A2, that's awesome! But just as long as the other perks aren't being given like name reservations, cosmetics etc. However, I do think the FOMO they created around packs and A2 keys was a little bit unnecessary.

I just survived Hurricane Beryl without any power for 4 days in 100+ degree weather... I think i can survive more people getting A2 access lol. No big deal.

RocketFarmer

Guess there’s Pay to Win and now there’s Pay to Whine?

The only ones I think deserve something are the folks that have put in the time and effort to test during Alpha 1 and those already doing so on early Aplha 2 (including the 500 “stars” they identified during the live stream that they indicated would be invited - and the lucky 500 random folks).

Perhaps we’ll have more stars coming from the next Alpha 2 key wave. I don’t see that as a negative at all. These folks are just helping to make my purchase a better investment. In addition, Alpha 2 isn’t even a final product so I do not mind a reasonable price for it. They need the optimal number of testers, and Alpha 2 key price plays a role in that. And if Intrepid thinks they need to throw in more perks to those who purchased previous bundles, that would also be fair. Doesn’t necessarily need to be punitive to anyone. And I think multiple options for those who already purchased would be reasonable. Like more months to the subscription, more tokens, or more cosmetics. I think each player has different preferences.

13Shields13

I asked AI to resolve the issue of this conversation, but in song...

I paid my way into the spotlight,
Alpha Two access, felt so right,
Thought I was special, thought I was elite,
But now it's on sale, and I can't compete.

I grumble and I moan, can't believe my luck,
I thought I had something, now it feels like muck,
Did I waste my money, was it all in vain?
Or can I find a way to ease this pain?

Oh, I bought my ticket, but now I cry,
Alpha Two access, slipping by,
I wanted the glory, the prestige so sweet,
But now it's just another bitter defeat.

I flaunted my badge, my exclusive pass,
But now it's a joke, like shattered glass,
I wanted to be first, ahead of the game,
But now everyone's laughing, and I'm filled with shame.

I thought I was special, in a league of my own,
But now it's open to all, and I'm all alone,
Was it worth the price, the bragging rights?
Or am I just another fool in the city lights?

Oh, I bought my ticket, but now I cry,
Alpha Two access, slipping by,
I wanted the glory, the prestige so sweet,
But now it's just another bitter defeat.

But maybe it's not about who got in first,
Maybe it's about enjoying the journey, not the worst,
I can still find joy, find my place,
Regardless of who bought in, at what pace.

Noaani

cupi wrote: »

Noaani wrote: »

cupi wrote: »

I disagree, there would be a reason to complain and that would be if what you paid for gets devalued.

That isn't a reason to complain.

If it isn't, why did IS explicitly mentioned they went back and forth to make it fair?

Because not everyone is reasonable.

cupi

Noaani wrote: »

cupi wrote: »

Noaani wrote: »

cupi wrote: »

I disagree, there would be a reason to complain and that would be if what you paid for gets devalued.

That isn't a reason to complain.

If it isn't, why did IS explicitly mentioned they went back and forth to make it fair?

Because not everyone is reasonable.

I'm more inclined to think that it was because they wanted to reassure the people who helped
them make this project possible that what they paid for won't get devalued overnight. And it won't, as they went back and forth on it.

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