As one person on Steam put it, UW Origin's business model is very heavy on pay to be lazy.
Imagine if, in WoW, you could directly warp from wherever you are to anywhere else in the game world, but it would cost you $1 every time you did it. You never had to do such a warp for anything, as you can get to where you want to go by other means. But you could pay up to warp instantly. I'm expecting UW Origin to have a lot of monetization like that.
Yeah it looks like you need to do all three to get past lvl 20, also some peeps are seeing the game not available to them in their country.
Seems according to steam db package, it's not available to - Belgium - South Korea - Netherlands - Vietnam
Guessing Belgium and Netherlands is due to lootbox laws.
Just installed the game and oh lordy it uses nprotect gameguard.....
Oh dear..... on game start up read the TOS and this optional thing from marketing:
LINE Games may collect and process the information of your device in order to send you push notifications about in-game events. You may withdraw your consent at any time, even after you have consented to the collection and processing of your personal data.
Brenics ~ Just to point out I do believe Chris Roberts is going down as the man who cheated backers and took down crowdfunding for gaming.
Now that I can see the item mall, I'll say that it's really not what I was expecting.
They're pushing hard for season pass type of things. You can pay some money to get red gems. Or you can pay the same amount of money for a season pass that will give you about the same number of red gems if you complete it, plus a bunch of additional rewards along the way. And there are a bunch of different season pass types of things that you can buy. I'm not sure if they expire or if you're guaranteed to get the full reward eventually if you play long enough.
There is also a gacha for mates. I'm not sure if any mates are exclusive to the gacha. Other than the special gachas to get one particular mate guaranteed if you spend 4000 red gems (about $45), I sure wouldn't want to rely on the gacha as a way to get any particular mate.
The mate gachas do list the probability of winning particular things. There are literally hundreds of things in each gacha, most of which have a probability below 1%, and often far below 1%. They do give you some free plays as login rewards. I'm not sure if the mate gachas other than the special ones that guarantee a particular mate would be useful even to whales, though.
There are some items that you can buy directly with red gems. It looks like it's generally pretty low rank stuff. I think that the main use of red gems is for a bunch of little things that you can buy to speed things up as the game goes along.
Just trying to live long enough to play a new, released MMORPG, playing New Worlds atm
Fools find no pleasure in understanding but delight in airing their own opinions. Pvbs 18:2, NIV
Don't just play games, inhabit virtual worlds™
"This is the most intelligent, well qualified and articulate response to a post I have ever seen on these forums. It's a shame most people here won't have the attention span to read past the second line." - Anon
Aha there it is, the "golden" type ship like for example the "golden" hansa cog has better stats than say the regular hansa cog.....however you can lvl ship up to lvl 20 BUT regular ship types like the hansa cog can be built just using in game methods by mats for it in game.
However the golden hansa cog requires special BP etc only avaliable in the item shop or black market where ever that is.
I am guessing its gonna be a hassle and a half to get the "golden" ship lvl up all the way to 20 unless you open your wallet!
Brenics ~ Just to point out I do believe Chris Roberts is going down as the man who cheated backers and took down crowdfunding for gaming.
I have by no means gotten very deep in the game yet but its very mobile like gameplay wise with the standard mobile type daily etc.
it's also much more auto centric than UWO in that you can just auto sail and fight etc, even go places in town is super easy auto move.
Game was really made for mobile and it shows.
Going places in town being auto move makes sense. There's nothing that could go wrong on the way, so forcing you to move manually would just be a nuisance.
The old console game had auto sailing to ports, too. That doesn't mean that you won't get attacked on the way. In the old console game, auto sailing actually made it more likely that you'd get attacked, as it would put you on exactly the paths that other ships followed.
Aha there it is, the "golden" type ship like for example the "golden" hansa cog has better stats than say the regular hansa cog.....however you can lvl ship up to lvl 20 BUT regular ship types like the hansa cog can be built just using in game methods by mats for it in game.
However the golden hansa cog requires special BP etc only avaliable in the item shop or black market where ever that is.
I am guessing its gonna be a hassle and a half to get the "golden" ship lvl up all the way to 20 unless you open your wallet!
I don't know anything about the golden ships yet. But comments that I've seen from Steam made it sound like it's basically an extra ship for you to start with, but will be useless and obsolete pretty quickly. Imagine playing WoW and being gifted some level 10 epics for signing up. They're not going to still be particularly useful at level 20, let alone endgame.
After some more thought on the mate gacha, I think that what they did was to take every mate in the game, and put them into at least one of two gachas. That turns the gachas into effectively an in-game database of all the mates, giving you names, pictures, stats, and skills. It doesn't tell you where to recruit mates, but if one mate knows Nahuatl and another knows Tagalog, you have a pretty good guess of where in the world they are, or at least you will if you look it up.
They call it the mate gacha, so mates are probably the most important thing in there, but there are a lot of other things, too, like ship parts.
I only played 10 minutes and I can already see the game is not for me. It doesn't appear to have any kind of actual sailing model, like modelling the effect of wind and currents. In that age, wind was the most important thing for sailing.
I saw two ships coming at each other, both at a dead run with the wind at their backs.
The graphics are cartoons, not to my taste.
Auto sailing? So it's not really a ship that sails, just a mass of pixels to move around on the screen.
Aha there it is, the "golden" type ship like for example the "golden" hansa cog has better stats than say the regular hansa cog.....however you can lvl ship up to lvl 20 BUT regular ship types like the hansa cog can be built just using in game methods by mats for it in game.
However the golden hansa cog requires special BP etc only avaliable in the item shop or black market where ever that is.
I am guessing its gonna be a hassle and a half to get the "golden" ship lvl up all the way to 20 unless you open your wallet!
I don't know anything about the golden ships yet. But comments that I've seen from Steam made it sound like it's basically an extra ship for you to start with, but will be useless and obsolete pretty quickly. Imagine playing WoW and being gifted some level 10 epics for signing up. They're not going to still be particularly useful at level 20, let alone endgame.
Yeah no, you get one free at the start but there is golden ship variants you can build but need item shop BP to do so etc
Sure you can lvl up other non golden ship but the idea is if you lvl up a golden variant it will beat out a non golden variant.
Brenics ~ Just to point out I do believe Chris Roberts is going down as the man who cheated backers and took down crowdfunding for gaming.
I got stuck in a darkened screen unable to do anything - and people say NW was bugged at release ? The voice overs are... ridiculous. Worst being that lady peeping like some rat or something. Graphics are what they are. Cardboard characters on a boat... yeah ok.
Respect, walk, what did you say? Respect, walk Are you talkin' to me? Are you talkin' to me? - PANTERA at HELLFEST 2023
I only played 10 minutes and I can already see the game is not for me. It doesn't appear to have any kind of actual sailing model, like modelling the effect of wind and currents. In that age, wind was the most important thing for sailing.
I saw two ships coming at each other, both at a dead run with the wind at their backs.
The graphics are cartoons, not to my taste.
Auto sailing? So it's not really a ship that sails, just a mass of pixels to move around on the screen.
Maybe could be good on mobile I guess.
Yes and no. If you're hoping for a game that is to sailing as Kerbal Space Program is to rocketry, this isn't it.
My understanding is that it does something akin to UW Online: it has horizontal sails, vertical sails, and galleys for rowing. Galleys don't care about the wind. Horizontal sails are better than vertical in tailwinds or sidewinds, but useless in headwinds. It doesn't model it at a level of ships zig-zagging back and forth into headwinds the way that real-life ships would, but there is some underlying consideration of the wind.
Been looking at some steam, reviews and threads and sadly the game looks to be heavily p2w.
I mean enjoy it while you can but don't waste money on this. The gacha system apparently is exclusive to the global launch, mtx is quite expensive as the red gem to cash ratio is terrible.
Don't take my word for it though go read up in the steam forums, now that some peeps have gotten a bit further in it has gone mostly negative.
I will keep playing it f2p but once I hit a paywall that kills my fun I will uninstall.
There a wall when traveling, you need certain company lvls to be allowed to sail to certain areas..... don't remember if this was like this in UWO.. I do not recall it being this way.
Post edited by Asm0deus on
Brenics ~ Just to point out I do believe Chris Roberts is going down as the man who cheated backers and took down crowdfunding for gaming.
Just trying to live long enough to play a new, released MMORPG, playing New Worlds atm
Fools find no pleasure in understanding but delight in airing their own opinions. Pvbs 18:2, NIV
Don't just play games, inhabit virtual worlds™
"This is the most intelligent, well qualified and articulate response to a post I have ever seen on these forums. It's a shame most people here won't have the attention span to read past the second line." - Anon
Steam reviews are, mostly negative, along the lines that the game is heavily monetised and they are not micro transactions, but macro transactions, seems the publisher is greedy af, i can see this one being a fast burn out, its a shame really because we do need more 'sailing' type of games.
I just had to look at the game to see if it was as bad as people were saying, if anything its worse, there is no character creation just choose from a few generic archetypes, which isn't necessarily bad although even Maple Story has more and better character creation than this and i am really not joking about that, its bad! The graphics, are zero effort late 90's 2d which barely is able to compete with RPG maker! abysmal is putting it lightly, then when you first log in it pretty much demands you pay up £33 for some kind of beginners package, and it doesn't get any better after that either. This is one to avoid like the plague, i mean i am not sure exactly what i was expecting, but it wasn't anything like this! its horrendous! Definitely blacklisting the company behind this, so many red flags that they must be dodgier than a plastic gnome that fell out of the back of Arthur Daley's van! We need more sailing MMO's but not like this!
I only played 10 minutes and I can already see the game is not for me. It doesn't appear to have any kind of actual sailing model, like modelling the effect of wind and currents. In that age, wind was the most important thing for sailing.
I saw two ships coming at each other, both at a dead run with the wind at their backs.
The graphics are cartoons, not to my taste.
Auto sailing? So it's not really a ship that sails, just a mass of pixels to move around on the screen.
Maybe could be good on mobile I guess.
Yes and no. If you're hoping for a game that is to sailing as Kerbal Space Program is to rocketry, this isn't it.
My understanding is that it does something akin to UW Online: it has horizontal sails, vertical sails, and galleys for rowing. Galleys don't care about the wind. Horizontal sails are better than vertical in tailwinds or sidewinds, but useless in headwinds. It doesn't model it at a level of ships zig-zagging back and forth into headwinds the way that real-life ships would, but there is some underlying consideration of the wind.
Water currents are probably ignored, though.
Comparing it to PotBS. Smaller ships turn faster. They get up to speed faster.
If the current is with you, you go faster.
Square-riggers are great downwind, not good upwind. Lateen rigs are better upwind, not as good downwind.
You can use all this and the wind to control the battles, just like in real sailing. Tacking into the wind is a viable strategy.
Not sure about ammo, but in PotBS you have three types: heavy shot to go for the hull. Grapeshot to go for the crew. And bar shot to rip at sails and rigging. Use bar shot to immobilize the enemy first. Just like in real sailing.
It's not a real sailing simulator, but sailing skills definitely make a difference. I didn't see anything like that in this game.
I'll keep watching. I don't really base my decision on initial reviews for a number of reasons. A lot of times, games have to sort things out after launch because of problems that they may not have been expecting or aspects they need to refine based on overwhelming feedback. Also, I find that often, there is an initial wave of complaints very early. In fact so early, I'm pretty sure they are from people who already had a problem with the game and are chomping at the bit to sink it as soon as the game launches.
I'll wait and see. Give it 5 or 6 months and see if it straightens out.
The two big complaints about it being pay to win on the Korean servers are both disabled on the peace server. Not just toned down, but completely disabled. It's not just that they disabled PVP, which has an obvious way to make it pay to win. They also disabled using red gems for investment, which was the other big complaint.
The problem is that when you start a game and see stuff for sale for real money, it's hard to tell the difference between: 1) important stuff that you can buy, but it's easy to get just by playing the game 2) stuff that you can buy, but probably shouldn't because it's useless 3) important stuff that you can buy, is technically possible to get by playing the game, but so hard to get that way that basically, you have to buy it to get it 4) important stuff that comes only from the item mall, so that the only way to get it without paying up is to buy it off of a whale for in-game goods
As I see it, (1) and (2) aren't a problem. (3) and (4) are the problem. UW Origin certainly has a lot of (1), and probably has a good bit of (2). I haven't yet seen any evidence that it has (3) or (4), though I'm not far enough in to have a good gauge on that.
I'll also note that, while there is a mate gacha, the odds of getting any particular mate are extremely low. Even the premium one has odds per mate of about 0.2% for each S-rank and A-rank mate, and under 0.4% for B-rank mates. At about $4.50 per pull, that's not the intended way to get mates. It does give a blue whale who is willing to dump $1000 into the game to get several high rank mates without caring which ones a way to do so, but that's about all that it's there for.
Meanwhile, the best mates aren't even in the mate gacha. The best mates are admirals, that is, the main characters. They have higher stats than S-rank mates, and much higher than A-rank or lower. Once you get further into the game, you can unlock more of them, and then when you're playing as one, you can use the others that you have as mates.
I'm actually wondering if UW Origin did roughly what LotRO did (albeit in a very different way) and made it look like the game is a lot more expensive to play than it actually is.
I think some people go into games like this early on, and put blinders up and ignore obvious issues hoping that if the game is amazing down the road, all the other stuff is not as important. What they find is the rest of the game is exactly the same quality or worse of the other early problems.
I like getting in games early, but I am starting to think that waiting to hear some real reviews is best. Luckily I did that here.
I'll keep watching. I don't really base my decision on initial reviews for a number of reasons. A lot of times, games have to sort things out after launch because of problems that they may not have been expecting or aspects they need to refine based on overwhelming feedback. Also, I find that often, there is an initial wave of complaints very early. In fact so early, I'm pretty sure they are from people who already had a problem with the game and are chomping at the bit to sink it as soon as the game launches.
I'll wait and see. Give it 5 or 6 months and see if it straightens out.
I don't think it's so much an issue of whether the game fixes problems as it is one of people getting further into the game find that the possible problems are severe or imaginary. Right now, you have a bunch of people freaking out about gacha and mobile and so forth, giving the game a negative review, and quitting. Certainly, that doesn't make a good first impression, but it doesn't really tell you anything about whether the game is good or not.
Waiting a while until others dig in far enough to see of the monetization is actually predatory or benign is quite a reasonable thing to do.
Comments
Imagine if, in WoW, you could directly warp from wherever you are to anywhere else in the game world, but it would cost you $1 every time you did it. You never had to do such a warp for anything, as you can get to where you want to go by other means. But you could pay up to warp instantly. I'm expecting UW Origin to have a lot of monetization like that.
- Belgium
- South Korea
- Netherlands
- Vietnam
Brenics ~ Just to point out I do believe Chris Roberts is going down as the man who cheated backers and took down crowdfunding for gaming.
They're pushing hard for season pass type of things. You can pay some money to get red gems. Or you can pay the same amount of money for a season pass that will give you about the same number of red gems if you complete it, plus a bunch of additional rewards along the way. And there are a bunch of different season pass types of things that you can buy. I'm not sure if they expire or if you're guaranteed to get the full reward eventually if you play long enough.
There is also a gacha for mates. I'm not sure if any mates are exclusive to the gacha. Other than the special gachas to get one particular mate guaranteed if you spend 4000 red gems (about $45), I sure wouldn't want to rely on the gacha as a way to get any particular mate.
The mate gachas do list the probability of winning particular things. There are literally hundreds of things in each gacha, most of which have a probability below 1%, and often far below 1%. They do give you some free plays as login rewards. I'm not sure if the mate gachas other than the special ones that guarantee a particular mate would be useful even to whales, though.
There are some items that you can buy directly with red gems. It looks like it's generally pretty low rank stuff. I think that the main use of red gems is for a bunch of little things that you can buy to speed things up as the game goes along.
Brenics ~ Just to point out I do believe Chris Roberts is going down as the man who cheated backers and took down crowdfunding for gaming.
"True friends stab you in the front." | Oscar Wilde
"I need to finish" - Christian Wolff: The Accountant
Just trying to live long enough to play a new, released MMORPG, playing New Worlds atm
Fools find no pleasure in understanding but delight in airing their own opinions. Pvbs 18:2, NIV
Don't just play games, inhabit virtual worlds™
"This is the most intelligent, well qualified and articulate response to a post I have ever seen on these forums. It's a shame most people here won't have the attention span to read past the second line." - Anon
Brenics ~ Just to point out I do believe Chris Roberts is going down as the man who cheated backers and took down crowdfunding for gaming.
The old console game had auto sailing to ports, too. That doesn't mean that you won't get attacked on the way. In the old console game, auto sailing actually made it more likely that you'd get attacked, as it would put you on exactly the paths that other ships followed.
They call it the mate gacha, so mates are probably the most important thing in there, but there are a lot of other things, too, like ship parts.
------------
2024: 47 years on the Net.
No, I mean characters that look like they are drawn on a cardboard.
Respect, walk
Are you talkin' to me? Are you talkin' to me?
- PANTERA at HELLFEST 2023
Brenics ~ Just to point out I do believe Chris Roberts is going down as the man who cheated backers and took down crowdfunding for gaming.
Just not for me.
I got stuck in a darkened screen unable to do anything - and people say NW was bugged at release ?
The voice overs are... ridiculous. Worst being that lady peeping like some rat or something.
Graphics are what they are. Cardboard characters on a boat... yeah ok.
Respect, walk
Are you talkin' to me? Are you talkin' to me?
- PANTERA at HELLFEST 2023
My understanding is that it does something akin to UW Online: it has horizontal sails, vertical sails, and galleys for rowing. Galleys don't care about the wind. Horizontal sails are better than vertical in tailwinds or sidewinds, but useless in headwinds. It doesn't model it at a level of ships zig-zagging back and forth into headwinds the way that real-life ships would, but there is some underlying consideration of the wind.
Water currents are probably ignored, though.
Brenics ~ Just to point out I do believe Chris Roberts is going down as the man who cheated backers and took down crowdfunding for gaming.
"True friends stab you in the front." | Oscar Wilde
"I need to finish" - Christian Wolff: The Accountant
Just trying to live long enough to play a new, released MMORPG, playing New Worlds atm
Fools find no pleasure in understanding but delight in airing their own opinions. Pvbs 18:2, NIV
Don't just play games, inhabit virtual worlds™
"This is the most intelligent, well qualified and articulate response to a post I have ever seen on these forums. It's a shame most people here won't have the attention span to read past the second line." - Anon
------------
2024: 47 years on the Net.
I'll wait and see. Give it 5 or 6 months and see if it straightens out.
The problem is that when you start a game and see stuff for sale for real money, it's hard to tell the difference between:
1) important stuff that you can buy, but it's easy to get just by playing the game
2) stuff that you can buy, but probably shouldn't because it's useless
3) important stuff that you can buy, is technically possible to get by playing the game, but so hard to get that way that basically, you have to buy it to get it
4) important stuff that comes only from the item mall, so that the only way to get it without paying up is to buy it off of a whale for in-game goods
As I see it, (1) and (2) aren't a problem. (3) and (4) are the problem. UW Origin certainly has a lot of (1), and probably has a good bit of (2). I haven't yet seen any evidence that it has (3) or (4), though I'm not far enough in to have a good gauge on that.
I'll also note that, while there is a mate gacha, the odds of getting any particular mate are extremely low. Even the premium one has odds per mate of about 0.2% for each S-rank and A-rank mate, and under 0.4% for B-rank mates. At about $4.50 per pull, that's not the intended way to get mates. It does give a blue whale who is willing to dump $1000 into the game to get several high rank mates without caring which ones a way to do so, but that's about all that it's there for.
Meanwhile, the best mates aren't even in the mate gacha. The best mates are admirals, that is, the main characters. They have higher stats than S-rank mates, and much higher than A-rank or lower. Once you get further into the game, you can unlock more of them, and then when you're playing as one, you can use the others that you have as mates.
I'm actually wondering if UW Origin did roughly what LotRO did (albeit in a very different way) and made it look like the game is a lot more expensive to play than it actually is.
I like getting in games early, but I am starting to think that waiting to hear some real reviews is best. Luckily I did that here.
Waiting a while until others dig in far enough to see of the monetization is actually predatory or benign is quite a reasonable thing to do.