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Cryptic puts more time into ways to make money than the game itself.
whoamark
Member Posts: 0 Arc User
The game is content starved, Feywild is a beacon of light for those too bored to play with the lack of content and other issues that have been plaguing the game these past 6 weeks.
Having to pay for a new race? Not cool. These "packs" seem so devious and pricey! They've got a cash grabbing scheme plotted well for everything in this game it seems. The game has potential, but Cryptic appears simply in it for the money. I hate seeing games with potential have this happen to them.
I see Feywild as a ploy to keep people enticed so the carrot can be dangled above each player some more so people can further empty their pockets over time spending much more than they ever should on an online game for features that should be present anyways. Leave the store for cosmetics and convenience.
Having to pay for a new race? Not cool. These "packs" seem so devious and pricey! They've got a cash grabbing scheme plotted well for everything in this game it seems. The game has potential, but Cryptic appears simply in it for the money. I hate seeing games with potential have this happen to them.
I see Feywild as a ploy to keep people enticed so the carrot can be dangled above each player some more so people can further empty their pockets over time spending much more than they ever should on an online game for features that should be present anyways. Leave the store for cosmetics and convenience.
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in fact sun elves which are free are mechanically better with a 2%ap bonus compared to the 1%ap bonus of the moon elf.
all games are in it for the money pwe is not a non profit organization, but Pwe is less greedy than some, WOW still charges 15$ a month and charged 60$ to play pandas. defiance started its game with 2 races they will be releasing an expiation pack that includes casti, also you don't see many FTP games with a zen exchange and AD driven AH, a lot of games make it so out of game purchses cannot be sold at all.
plus these type of posts probably just get ignored by devs anyhow only people who see them is know it alls like me and fellow trolls.
Then they considered charging everyone for the next zone and it blew up in their face, so they grudgingly did it for no money. Then some more content... then a whole lot of nothing.
Years later, after minimal development and a STILL content-starved game, they are dropping lockboxes everywhere and have just released a small emote pack for zen.
STO is starting to heat up and released a good content pack, and have generally done way better than CO. But there have also been huge gaps in content (like KDF, which had been pretty much ignored for most of STO's history and left mostly undeveloped until just recently).
Cryptic has a history of not putting out a lot of content, so get used to it.
As for pay stuff... Cryptic ALSO has a pretty reasonable history of not being P2W. Their choices are often short-sighted, overpriced, and frustrating... but they have managed to avoid the eastern-style progression locked behind pay walls.
Wicks and Things: NW-DI4FMZRR4 : The Fenwick merchant family has lost a caravan! Can you help?
Beggar's Hollow: NW-DR6YG4J2L : Someone, or something, has stolen away many of the Fenwicks' children! Can you find out what happened to them?
Into the Fen Wood: NW-DL89DRG7B : Enter the heart of the forest. Can you discover the secret of the Fen Wood?
I think the point the OP is trying to make is this: with a subscription game the developers need to make the game as interesting and engrossing as possible to make sure as many players as possible stay to maximize profits. Hence the interests of the players and the developers are closely aligned.
However, with a F2P game, especially one where you can buy legally buy currency, the route which maximizes profits (perhaps from P2W PvE or PvP 'whales' ) may not be the one which leads to the best possible experience for players.
In both cases the company obviously wants to make money. However in one case the interests of both players and developers are closely aligned, in the other, not necessarily so. (There can be exceptions of course - e.g. 'Path of Exile' which is a superior Diablo3-style ARPG, where all purchasable items are basically cosmetic.)
I'm also tired of hearing that Neverwinter isn't P2W when it is. You can spend real money and then convert that money to astral diamonds and then use that money to get essentially everything in the game. The tier sets and such, plastered over the AH to the point where people can hardly make a profit these days. There's no genuine grind in this game so much as a brutal excursion up a cliff that leads you to the same items that somebody else can buy with real money.
Nothing against players who use real money for convenience, just saying that it drowns out the atmosphere of the game and leaves you feeling as though you have to grind for aeons or cough up the funds. Few alternatives, little content in general to really keep free players on the grind.
Great Weapon Fighter: Because when is today not a good day to die?
PC and PS4 player. Proud Guildmaster for PS4 Team Fencebane. Rank 5 Officer for PC Team Fencebane. Visit us at http://fencebane.shivtr.com
A game cannot be entirely financed on that, really. GW2 did that, but charged for the software, so got a bundle of cash up front.
I think what we are seeing is a clash between the emergent F2P/freemium model in the MMO space, on the one hand, and the expectations of gamers here in the West, on the other, which is that cash shops are fluff like WoW's or GW2's or what have you. The problem is that a pure fluff store will not generate nearly enough cash to make a free to play game profitable. People seem to have the same expectations of a cash shop as they would in a game they had to pay $60 for to begin with -- that isn't this game.
Subscription based games don't work economically for the developer unless (1) the playerbase is huge (WoW), or (2) the game was cheap to make (EvE Online) and has a sizeable enough playerbase to cover its costs, even though it is modest in comparison to WoW's, due to the game being a multiple niche game (space, sandbox, loot PvP).
No other MMOs have been successful with a sub model in the last ten years. Every single one needed to go F2P in some fashion. The reason is that a 3d ground-based MMORPG costs a lot to make and to continue to develop. The subscriber market is fragmented among many games, and (1) people don't want a 6 month grind to cap so (2) games are designed to cap relatively quickly, which means (3) most people move to a new game after a couple of months at the most. It is that way in EVERY game. Sub model does not work economically other than for Blizzard and, by sheer luck of being a trifecta niche game, CCP.
The MMO community needs to get smarter about the realities of the competition in this game space, and what it takes to actually produce games other than on a charity basis here.
Very true, which is why I stopped doing betas around 4 years ago. It almost always ruined my enjoyment of the launch game.
This ^^ Doesn't take the sting away, and doesn't mean the situation doesn't suck...but the sooner people realize that this is business and business is to make money, the less QQ we will be witnessing. It's the law of F2P, we've all seen it, and this is nothing new.
True. But I never said it was economically viable, just in the case of subscription games, the game-related (not economic) interests of both developers and players were better aligned.....
So what we see is a weekly updated store with stuff which was already made some time ago and extra content which is rolled out after developers consider the players are fed up with the same over-and-overs.
It is OK for me. I am waiting for new stuff and playing tera atm.
One thing to Cryptic though.
I played quite many F2P games and many of them lack normal quality stuff in the cash shops.
You, guys, are on a right direction with visually appealing stuff.
Make it diverse, interesting, visually harmonious but don't forget about quality and functionality.
You get sloppy - people notice.
If Cryptic was all about the money, STO and NeverWinter wouldnt be as free 2 play as much as it is.
With STO when im playing free 2 play and paying player, there is almost no difference, and NeverWinter is the same way.
Perfect World with Cryptic are my only favorite and best gaming site, in my personal opinion.
"This is Fleet Commander BumBle!..
Vice Admiral of the U.S.S. Prometheus!..
I order you to lower your shields and weapons or ill be forced to fire upon you!!!"
Cosmetics, mounts, items that offer more convenience, this I'm all for.
There are plenty of other things that could be provided in the store.
Well lets look at those points. The game is just out, and you cant expect it to have content? Can you think of any other games that launched with content, perhaps a game that launched with no less that eight fully stocked starting areas with resident quests and a storyline for each race? Not to mention the rest of the world with raid and leveling zones. And this is at launch. Not some soft launch beta oozing into a live status apologetically pocketing money the whole time as exploiters turn the economy into their own personal ATM.
While all games may be in it for the money so are pickpockets and con men but I would not put them on the same level as a grocery store or car dealership. Its not how bad they want your money, its what they do to try to get it out of your hands. Are they trying to develop an interesting environment where you can see many things that you will feel good paying money to have? Or are they trying to catch you not paying attention and snatch a few dollars on a bad trade, backing you into a corner where you can either pay them or face the fact that you have wasted your crafting time so far.
Is this the sort of behavior you want to encourage or would you like the companies to rethink how they go for your pockets? In the end it up to you. If you quit buying for the heck of it, they will start getting better as asking even if that means being nice to you.
You have the power... unless you spend it on vaporware.
I do wonder where this comes from. Is there a thread where we SHOULD be discussing this rather than this one or is this just a general censorship? The mods have generally been open to erring on the side of discussion rather than preemptively quashing it. Is that a trend which is coming to an end?
That would be unfortunate.
This is an excellent post and something that all players need to keep in mind when 'investing' any quantity of time and/or money on F2P MMOs. The focus of the game will always be on exploiting that portion of the player base that is willing or able to spend real money on cash shop items and gambling packs. The developers hunt the whales, the rest of us freeloading gannets trail in their wake screeching for scraps. That's the deal. Don't expect much more.
You seem to have a highly distorted perception of reality.
Mount 30-40$ = HUGE advantage in pvp( I stopped playing this game after I realized how much P2W this game really is// played all CB weekends purchased 200 and 50 packs -.-. Stupid me, didn't research what PWE is about. Won't happen again, will not recommend any of this company products)
This is JUST ONE example. Now you are going to say: " But you can buy everything with ads which you can farm." .....Yeah right...enjoy farming for a couple of months to be able to play pvp.
Pretty much all reasonable(competitive) players/people have figured that out long ago and discontinued playing this asiagrinder cashgrab. The people left playing either don't care don't comprehend or are bots.
Have a nice day
But if it isn't economically viable, there is no game.
Frankly, that is where the rubber hits the road.
Eh ... so people put sweat equity into creating a game, and you have the RIGHT to play every single aspect of it for free just because you want to?
I honestly think many of you think that developing a game like this is about as time consuming as making a Foundry mission, and is done in the spare time, and therefore should only generate some spare change.
Honestly folks. Most of you pay nothing. Given that, how are they supposed to make money if the only thing they can "legitimately" charge for is silly hats and garter belts??
Really??
I've been saying for a while now, and people are obviously starting to see it, all PW cares about is money.
True but Guild Wars did pretty well and that has a one-off payment only...
Right, but again that is $60 more than the vast majority will ever spend on this game.
I think it comes down to this: people in the West don't like this model (mmo players I mean). But the alternatives are either the GW/GW2 model (B2P) or this one (F2P). Sub model is dead, to be honest, other than for Blizzard and CCP. I'll agree that Arena's model for GW/GW2 was great. Perhaps people can lobby for that -- cash up front and guaranteed cash outlays for new content with a cash store for fluff and convenience, rather than a truly F2P game.
What an interesting term, sweat equity. For those of you that don't know already, it refers to a product that gains value as its owner does work to improve it. I find it so interesting because I have long believed that the engine this game runs on was just pulled whole cloth from the rack and put into action with any meaningful configuration or tuning.
Considering this game has suffered some of the most amazing and, in some cases, newsworthy breaches of its code in the last few years, made some of its exploitersthousands of dollars, made a notorious slide from paying beta to paying live on the backs of a gutted economy, its hard to really see where the sweat went.
I might also mention that no one is talking about rights here. I'm talking about business. And I think that if Cryptic and PWE cannot entice me to pay for something then outright extorting me isn't really an option I can respect. And I encourage others to reserve their respect for any company if they feel they are being tricked, bamboozled, confused, misguided or otherwise misdirected.
Its a hard fall for Cryptic because I remember City of Heroes. I remember how amazing it was and how much I loved playing it. Even when it went to it purchasing company, the caliber of the game was still such that I wanted to play it and when the marketplace went into effect I wanted to buy some thing there not because I had to to keep playing the game but because I wanted to.
So if a business wants to make money they have to treat the consumer like the real commodity, not just the dollars in their pocket. If a business can't do that they they don't deserve to make money. Don't try to make a bad business model my problem because its not. I don't owe them for making the game and neither do you.
If cryptic didn't want free players they should not have offered it for free. If you don't want free players in your game take it up with the company. If they don't wont people pointing out the obvious sleight of hand then they should censor the forums (more than they seem to be doing now).
You are a customer whether you pay or not. If they want your money demand good treatment and a quality product. If you don't get it, don't pay. And don't worry, they will come up with a better way if you make them think about it for a moment.
I fail to see where reminding you that P2W discussions are not allowed is having a distorted perception of anything.
Great Weapon Fighter: Because when is today not a good day to die?
PC and PS4 player. Proud Guildmaster for PS4 Team Fencebane. Rank 5 Officer for PC Team Fencebane. Visit us at http://fencebane.shivtr.com
Having reviewed the RoC and the PWE ToS, I can't find any mention of P2W discussions. Is this just something you personally don't like or perhaps an initiative from some other front encouraging you to censor discussions?
I have always been impressed that the moderators would err on the side of discussion in so much as they could and still maintain order with only a few exceptions.
Does this mark an end of that trend?
This argument fails to account for the game being developed actually having to be good. It's always some excuse other than the games themselves just aren't that good. The pay model, players, dev time, blah blah blah. The bottom line is in 10 years, the MMO's that have come out other than WoW and a small handful of others just plain suck. If a chef wants to be the next Gordon Ramsey or Mario Batali etc they actually have to make their food GOOD!
There is no shortcut or other excuse, talent is required, and the truth simply is the mass of developers who just want to make games as their job lack passion and talent, then make excuses for why their games didn't sell, instead of realizing that their <font color="orange">HAMSTER</font> game is the problem, and until they do take that responsability, they will not improve, and the good will of gamer's to tolerate that has worn thin.