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Too many forms of currency
spikedpunchvictim
Member, Neverwinter Beta Users Posts: 7
I understand this game is published by an Asian company, but wasn't the overloaded amount of currency taken into account for Western markets? The many forms of currency make this game feel bloated for me - not rewarding. It's more work to manage the currency, and in some cases (like the isignias), they just take up room in your inventory. They only serve to gate gameplay, which most games do successfully using much simpler means.
I'd like to hear the developer's viewpoint on having all of these currencies. Anyone else curious or have an insight as to why they would make this decision?
I'd like to hear the developer's viewpoint on having all of these currencies. Anyone else curious or have an insight as to why they would make this decision?
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Edit: In fact while looking for said article, I found this bit which explains the situation using Neverwinter as the example.
If you don't think it works, well, just look at how many people are willing to run up against walls to stay logged in or login every few hours to keep their prayer currency intact. Or the people who throw out how everyone's just a whiny cheapskate when the cash shop is brought up citing things like "well you can get X AD an hour it's easy" and completely ignoring the fact they just suggested you grind for upwards of 52 hours to attain a bundle of pixels instead of just playing the game normally, while in the same hand throwing money hand over fist into the game both out of contrarian fueled spite and willful acceptance that there is no line that can't be crossed in the pursuit of money, which I clearly don't agree with.
My problem is mostly the seals, with the exception of the highest end stuff they are worthless, too many seals for each item and by the time you have enough seals to purchase anything, you're already too high a level for it to be worth while.
What Class Are You?
I haven't bought anything from another player yet, as I really haven't needed to, but with 3 main forms of currency (zen/ad/gold) I'm sure it makes for some odd transactions.
Though I'm assuming gold is worthless since you can't use it for anything good.
I Aim To Misbehave
With seals, the only use I've found for them is trading the bounty items to lower level alt's or friends (only the Neverdeath bounty items are character bound) so they can use them to get seals to buy things at an appropriate level.
I Aim To Misbehave
The game is made by Cryptic, a Western company. The number of various "currencies" (personally, I don't really see the bounties & seals that way, but that's likely because I'm used to saving up dungeon drops & quest items like that for rewards, due to years & years of it in WoW, by another Western company) is similar to in their previous games (STO, for instance.)
Which makes me think that Perfect World doesn't really have a great deal to do with it. /shrug
edit: it's an MMO. You collect things in them for rewards.... whether it's gathering Scourge Hearts to trade at the Anti-Scourge guild, or building up a "did this many Air Master dailies" counter, or gaining enough Reputation points to unlock goods from the Mountain Kings. Pretty normal.
It's to the point where I just ignore all the extra currencies (constantly cursing the Dev gods that they keep using up my inventory space) and every now and then (once a month maybe) check to see if I have a high enough collection of one of them to actually use it for anything. Since I generally don't do any sort of grinding, simply playing through content that's level appropriate and moving on, I rarely have enough of currency X to use it at the appropriate level.
At least all the zone tokens can be traded so we just stack them up in the guild bank so that our alts might actually use them before they outlevel them.
I'd even throw in Rough Astral Diamonds, and of course each zone has their token. So what... 16-20 types of currency in this game? Ugh...
Because it makes sense to farm lowbie stuff to get end game items, right?
Not to mention Glory. And in the future Grim Coins.
Of course it always looks like we want more currencies. (cats & keys)
We have nothing but the free to play gaming generation to blame for this absurd degradation of the older gaming generations favorite passtime. It used to be we paid a set monthly amount, had access to everything in game through playing or currency earned by playing, and the developers kept our game up and running and giving us new *QUALITY* content instead of new ~buy in store~ "content". Now every tiny little thing you want to do in these games has someone reaching in your pockets in order to do it. it is HAMSTER, and no ones fault but the brats holding thier daddies wallets and thier jello for brains that lets them think it is ok to dish out money for trash "content" My hate for this generation just keeps growing. I am happy with my decision to keep my own child's passtimes to roleplaying in her book club and trading card games. Keep it real.
/endrant
An excellent post, and excellent link. It's just that we as a society have decided, that it's morally completely okay to deceive and manipulate people when you're selling something. And when you bring this up, people go "I'm not affected by marketing. If you don't want to buy, then don't!", as if they're invulnerable to persuasion. Yet, everybody is affected. And the less you think you are, the more you probably are. Nobody just wants to admit to the possibility of this, so we continue to let companies use these methods.
http://gamasutra.com/blogs/RaminShokrizade/20130531/193353/The_Barrier_to_Big.php
Games with much better economic models will always be there. So I'm not afraid of this casino mentality dominating the gaming world. Most game companies are gamers making games they would want to play. I'd like to know how many Cryptic employees play their own games regularly.
I agree for the most part.
I was a subscribed player of City of Heroes for 7 years (2005 up until its undeserved death last November). For the first 6, everyone was on the same playing field and the only people who had an advantage were the ones who had more free time to play. There were plenty of people who had more or better stuff than me, but that didn't bother me because I had the same opportunity to earn that stuff that they did.
Enter the F2P design model. Suddenly people who started yesterday could spend several hundred dollars at once to immediately acquire stuff I literally had to wait 2 years to get.
And these same people who dropped all that cash to get that stuff still had the nerve to complain about the trivial stuff I got for being a subscriber that they didn't get.
Bottom line, the long term subscribers like myself who kept that game alive during the lean times got completely screwed in favor of a new generation of spoiled rich kids who saw nothing wrong with paying through the nose to get stuff I earned the hard way.
I have serious doubts as to whether I'm going to spend any money on this game. If it turns out that the deep-pocketed "gimme stuff NOW" people have a distinct advantage over me, it might not retain my interest for that long. Which is a shame, because I kind of like the combat mechanics of the game so far.
@spikedpunchvictim: That's what I liked about CoH. Every single dev working on the game had an active personal account and played regularly. When Cryptic was still in control of CoH, it was the same way as far as I know.
The F2P market seems to be taking the approach of "sure, pay us a ton of money and you absolutely can be that guy. You can also do it through hard work, but maaaan, it's gonna be a lot of hard work". You end up with a much lower sense of "achievement" to high-end items, even if you worked your *** off for them, but then if you're the person working (not paying) to get that item, you weren't contributing cash in the first place. The people who chucked money at the game to get the stuff? Well, they chucked money at the game. As long as people do that, it's a workable model. Devaluing equity is missing the point entirely.
The amount of barter items/currencies is outright RIDICULOUS in this game.
They should have kept it all Astral Diamonds coupled with Zen. The rest of the barter items/currencies are a waste of time. In fact, I believe they have so many "currencies" so as to confuse players into just using cash to get what they want (rather than having to invest time in sorting out what they have and need).
Since when has there been a line? You must have been living under a rock for the last 15 years to think ethics play any part whatsoever in the process of making money. On the small scale sure, you have a 'personal' reputation to keep. When a company has lost all respect for it's customers that they no longer do business with, they just close up shop and reopen as another name. Very few people in this day and age are able to keep tabs on all the moneygrubbing shills out there to simply not do business with the company that has hired said person.
Also. It's not exactly the shills grubbing for money, it's you the shareholder telling the shills make my stock go up, make me money! Be damned with the company if you can't, I'll sell your stock and make you go under if you don't do what I say!
It's human nature to be greedy, and if you think there's a line that can't be crossed in the pursuit of that greed. You have a lot to learn my friend.
Why not create a satalite type bank. Kind of like todays ATM machines. Have only a certain amount of slots per account. Not as meny as are allowed in your Menycoins bank. But can be still have access to my Menycoin bank account.
Maybe something to think about for Mod 6
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