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Are most Item Mall games this expensive?
Mud_Monster
Member UncommonPosts: 229
I usually avoid the F2P /w Item Mall games, but for some reason Zu Online interested me. The cel-shading graphics mainly drew me in. I've only played a little bit; currently level 35 but game has 300 levels so thats still pretty low level. I was thinking I might keep playing this game til AoC or WAR are out, so I decided to check the item mall to see what kinds of things I could buy. I figued I'd spend around $15 a month like I do on most MMOs I play, but the stuff there that I'd be interested in buying is high priced. $30 to respec your talents. $100 for a pet. I know its still beta and the prices may change, but they'd have to drop to about one tenth of what they are for me to even consider buying stuff. I'd much rather pay a small $15 per month than to drop $100+ chunks of cash here and there.
Is this pretty much how most F2P /w Item Mall games are? I'd think the high prices would scare people away from buying anything. I'd think having a lot of users buy stuff at a reasonable price vs having only a few buy at the high prices would be a better business model. IGG has several games with this type of business model though, so I'm beginning to think this might be the norm. I guess I was under the assumption that F2P /w Item Mall games were for those wanting a cheaper game than the P2P games, but I'm beginning to see that it may actually be quite a bit opposite.
I know I can just play for free and never buy anything, but I like to atleast attempt to get my char as powerful as he can be, and knowing someone beat me in PvP just because he/she dropped a grand into item mall gear would bother me. I guess I should just stick with P2P games like I usually do.
Comments
Yeah all Item Mall Games are extremly overpriced.
I don't understand why people think F2P games that have item malls would be any cheaper than other games. With the exception of games like guild wars, that doesn't use item malls and gets their revenue strictly from the game and expansion sales.
The only reason those companies make their games F2P but ADD item malls is because they feel they will make more revenue this way.
I believe no game is F2P unless it's vaporware. It's naive to think they're F2P because it's a gameplay decision. It's just a business decision. Companies feel they will get more revenue by making it F2P and including item malls, making it often more expensive to enjoy than a normal MMO.
100$ for a pet? that's just insane! They are just out of their right mind.
I don't know about other games. The closest thing I know of is Second Life, and spending 15$ per month will allow you to buy many things. That would be around 16.000 lindens. An expensive item would be 1.000L, lots of good ones for 200L-500L.
A complex house it's around 5.000L-10.000L for instance, 20-40$, but that's not something you buy every month.
I think you've misunderstood something.
For 11$ you can get 200 ZU points. You can then exchange the Zu points for Gold which seems to be 5 gold per point. That's 1000 gold, which you then can spend in the item mall. You'll notice all the things has prices based on ingame currency.
Atleast that's how i understood the site, i might have misread something, somewhere though.
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Actually i play Exteel as well as a few others and I can tell ya Exteel is very inexpensive. I spent 20 dollars after I figured out I liked it since I figured I'd give Ncsoft something for a good game(always been a NCsoft game fan). That 20 dollars was more than enough oddly enough I don't really have anything I would need to spend more money for in the future.
I also play drift city and you can play it without item shop stuff pretty effectively. In its case I do find some of the item shop stuff overpriced since many of them only last 30 days. Since that is the case I simply don't buy anything that is a 30 day only item. I've put 20 dollars into it as well.
Those two don't seem too bad but alot of it is how much self control a person has. I've got months of enjoyment from these 2 games and only spent 40 dollars between the two. I also play freestyle basketball and its more expensive I'll admit. I added up the cost of it for me over the course of the last year I've played and it was around 10 dollars a month so it varies by the game I guess.
The way i understand this system, is it's just instead of having gold-farmers in the game, giving the rich people the edge, IGG just sell the gold them self, and there by get the profit, and get rid of the goldfarmers.
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I don't think you can. The game has three different currencies. Gold used for item mall stuff. Silver used on the auction house. Bones you get from grinding mobs, quests, etc. I think Gold can be turned into Silver and Silver turned into Bones but not the other way around. Atleast thats how I understood it. I could be wrong though. Would be nice if they were all just one currency though.
There are plenty of cheap f2p's, you just have to shop around. I've played tons of f2p for over a year, and hadn't spent a single penny..yea you heard it right...Not a single penny, until I play Dream of Mirror Online.
In DOMO, it costs $5 for a pet and $10 for a costume that are both PERMANENT. So I spent $20 for two pet tokens and a costume. That $20 is ALL I spent on dozens of MMORPG's I've played for over one year. Even better, these cash shop items are tradeable in game, so a pet is worth only 10k in-game-gold, which you can earn by playing the game for two days. Reset stat/skill items also cost around $5. Not bad really.
I'll continue to play some of the best f2p's until GW2 come out; only that game deserves my money imo. My suggestion is to just stay away from companies and their games that have a history of overcharging pixelated items or releasing items that break balance in game.
That does seem high. The most expensive thing in Archlord is $10. In FlyFF you sometimes get limited edition items that cost about $80, but most stuff is between $5 to $20.
I think you might have misread the currency conversion between RL and item shop cash.
I avoid item mall games like the plague. I've tried 9Dragons and it's item mall and has a VERY bad experience with it.
I don't know of any item mall mmorpg that is THAT expensive.
Micropayment games aka item shop games are designed to make more revenue than a flat subscription based game. Why do you think a lot of developers are switching to this revenue system? Do you really think it's because they believe it's more fair to players who have less time to play? Think again.
Even item shop games with less expensive items have game mechanics to coerce you to buy more of them. This fact, plus my desire to play/compete on a fair level playing field where players have to earn their way, is why I would never choose to play a micropayment game.
This is true, most of them item mall games will require you to purchase something from the item mall eventually at the end-game/top level once they got you good and addicted to their game (most players would hesitate to abandon their high level characters that they worked so hard for).
Take for example the popular FlyFF (fly for free) game, eventually to forge the best weapons in the game you have to purchase an item mall item that save your item from utter destruction even after you fail at upgrading even that it would possibly cost the player around $200+ worth of item mall purchases to make the perfect weapon (for a probability based on a random game mechanics).
Are they really accepting money transactions for point during BETA?
....
I despise microtransactions and any company/game which endorses it.
BOYCOTTING EA / ORIGIN going forward.
That's pretty much where I fall in, too.
That's pretty much where I fall in, too.
agreed, it just doesn't seem funnot to mention i would feel completely pathetic buying a virtual item with real money
i play MMOs for fun, not to get ahead by doing whatever it takes
It would be nice if it was easy to find out, it takes a bit sometimes. Maybe they need to make a list, which MMO's include item buying and micro-transactions and which ones don't.
Would be easier.
It would be nice if it was easy to find out, it takes a bit sometimes. Maybe they need to make a list, which MMO's include item buying and micro-transactions and which ones don't.
Would be easier.
try mmorpgs payment column when you goto the mmorpg list.As a note. The small studio me and a few friends opened up is planning on going with micro-payment. Its not that its "more money" or that you "trick" people into being forced to buy items. For smaller games you cant really ask people for 15 bucks or 10bucks off the bat. Its hard enough to get people to play a small game, let along pay 10 bucks a month to play in a deserted world.
Having the option to play free makes the world more vibrant and busy which attracts people. The more people you attract -> the more likely people will want to buy a pet pig for 5 dollars or w/e you can sell them.
As a design team we really wanted to make the stuff you pay for cosmetic or fun, not mandatory. Id like to think thats how lots of designers think. But its not, and were hoping it pays off and perhaps we can win over some of the people who dont like the micro-payment traditionally.
after 6 or so years, I had to change it a little...