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Alganon Failshop... the grim details...
So Alganon has decided to go subscription free... which means you need to buy the box to play still. Fine, silly method is silly, but wait... is the game actually subscription free at all? Nope! They just changed what you are subscribing to.
"One thing that makes the Tribute Market System unique is Item Maintenance. This way players will never lose certain items they purchase from the market (ones that are not a consumable or have a finite number of charges). This allows players to buy that special mount and use their Tribute to pay Maintenance on the mount to keep it active. If it goes inactive, they can easily reactivate with Tribute instead of having to re-purchase the mount."
Read that carefully... what it is saying is that, if you purchase items in the market, you still have to pay a subscription fee (in the form of tribute) to keep that item activated. So, the backlash from Allods Item Shop didn't effect David Allen one bit, in fact he took it even further and is planning on offering items such as "Pets, Mounts, Equipment, Access Keys, Potions, Boxed Collections, Tokens" and "Boons... allow the purchase of study-time." So you can buy that shiny new armor and weapon and never worry about fighting those baddies anymore.
Congratulations David Allen! Way to seize the chance to maybe up your sub numbers and instead ruin it just a little further! I fully expect that things such as "new classes," "new dungeons," and "new races." Will all have some sort of maintenance cost as well when they are rolled out. So to keep playing your assassin of that cool new race... keep paying or else it might be deactivated.
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That's the typical MMORPG community for you: call things "fail" or "hype" without knowing the details. What happened to the last game people had an opinion of without considering the prices? Riiiiight, it went from top to bottom in an eyeblink. What did that teach us? Nothing. Oh wait, or maybe.... let's wait for the prices before we judge?
Let's play Fallen Earth (blind, 300 episodes)
Let's play Guild Wars 2 (blind, 45 episodes)
Wow i thought offering equipment was bad...with such a bad item mall i don't even know why they're making us pay for the box, imo this is a very bad move on their part.
@Maji, i couldn't help but notice that you've been defending the game on every post i even saw your reply on massively yet you never bothered to even buy the game after beta, no offense intended but how long did you even play it in beta?
For what it's worth, one of the GMs cleared up some of the confusing CS details that started this thread:
There seems to be alot of confusin [sic] about this; maintenance is a part of a subset of items in the cash shop. Already existing things in the game in no-way are tied to maintenance. The current game, as it exists, is not changed by the cash shop.. you get everything from the same place, the same way, etc.
In addition to what's currently in the game we are adding some additional items/mounts/services/etc to the shop that people can purchase if they want to. A SUBSET of these cash-shop only items are 'rented' via periodic tribute payments instead of 'purchased'. All other things in the shop are one-off purchases with no ongoing fee.
Does this clarify things..?
He adds more detail later in the thread. It's basically a description of RoM's mount (etc) CS system, where the same mount/pet/etc can be purchased flat-out, or "rented" with payments every week/month.
What you just quoted doesn't say anything similar to what you are reading it as saying.
"A SUBSET of these cash-shop only items are 'rented' via periodic tribute payments instead of 'purchased'."
This doesn't say you can purchase or rent it says you rent instead of purchase. Lets be honest, it will be the major items that will be for rent. Things like extra bank space, in game housing, new classes, maybe even items like high end armor (or heirloom armor), mounts and perhaps the ability to use the Auction House System more than X times. You will probably be able to purchase cheap armor, 1 times buff effects, dungeons, and the such. Major purchases though will be rent only because it will keep income constantly flowing rather than one time purchases.
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Part of the original concern stated at the beginning of this thread was marketing's apparent poor choice of words regarding their "rented" CS items. The subscribers collectively soiled their armor when they read that as well. The post I quoted, as well as this one, a few replies down:
In the case of things like mounts I believe we will also have a higher cost version which would be a one-time purchase. Some people like paying a small amount periodically, others don't mind paying larger sums up front and be done with it. This model suits both ends of the spectrum.
was solely meant to alleviate such concerns...assuming QOL follows through, of course.
I certainly agree that some portions of CS offerings must be rented (inventory space, as you mentioned, comes to mind) or priced exorbitantly to keep a steady stream of revenue. But that's sort of the point of a CS, so why raise alarm over it? As a side note, the devs claim that the "free" CS money you earn simply by logging-in (also in that thread) will hopefully cover maintenance items. That seriously begs the question of potential profitability, but I'm not sure anyone understands how QOL intends to make money at this point.
In any case, we're going to end up arguing over semantics shortly. We agree that F2P cash shops require maintenance purchases to see a financial return. I'm just pointing out what they claim they meant on the most recent car of their flaming train-wreck of marketing releases.
Hmm yeah !!>
I didn't play the beta, I just played the free trial.
Defending the game? I wrote a longer review stating my opinion about the game and why I wouldn't buy it but why I can imagine that other people would have fun playing it. But you are right: I'm no friend of bashing games in general. Many people sway either towards totally hyping a game or bashing it constantly.
For example all the people who say, if you ask them about their favorite MMORPG, that graphics ain't important. Yet, 5 minutes later, they claim they wouldn't even try Alganon or similiar games because of their bad looks.
I make my opinion about games, and when I think that the game is hyped too highly (Allods Online before the cash shop or Aion), or bashed too much (Alganon) then I state my opinion in threads where it seems appropriate. And bashing a cash shop without knowing the prices, while hyping other games without mentioning their cash shops, is in my opinion stupidity.
Let's play Fallen Earth (blind, 300 episodes)
Let's play Guild Wars 2 (blind, 45 episodes)
You are probably correct -- but ultimately here is the rub: The game is not F2P. You must purchase the box to begin with. Which is a complete turn off to those looking for F2P games. Then you end up having to purchase cash shop items to keep up -- and lets be honest, they will make it so the average person will spend at least $10 a month (rented items, new dungeons, classes and so on) to cover the original subscription cost anyway. Hardcore players will probably buy all the classes, all the expanded areas, all the dungeons, will purchase more study time, and possibly any potions/buffs that are short duration but high powered multiple times over. Spending at least 3x the original sub fee. Of course then again David Allen said he didn't like cash shops... so I guess that changed quickly when the Angel Investors came knocking for their money.
David Allen: "Right now, the industry standard is to squeeze as much money as they can out of players by introducing cash shops, and forcing them to pay for things that ought to have been part of the game. We don't want to do that. We want Alganon to be a service. You pay us a subscription so we can continue to develop and run a game that you enjoy playing. It's not a product where you hand us money and we hand you a vanity pet, or mount, or epic sword and then walk away. "
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I didn't play the beta, I just played the free trial.
Defending the game? I wrote a longer review stating my opinion about the game and why I wouldn't buy it but why I can imagine that other people would have fun playing it. But you are right: I'm no friend of bashing games in general. Many people sway either towards totally hyping a game or bashing it constantly.
For example all the people who say, if you ask them about their favorite MMORPG, that graphics ain't important. Yet, 5 minutes later, they claim they wouldn't even try Alganon or similiar games because of their bad looks.
I make my opinion about games, and when I think that the game is hyped too highly (Allods Online before the cash shop or Aion), or bashed too much (Alganon) then I state my opinion in threads where it seems appropriate. And bashing a cash shop without knowing the prices, while hyping other games without mentioning their cash shops, is in my opinion stupidity.
Maji, you seem to be missing a huge piece of context here: no one is bashing the pricing of Alganon's Item Shop. I was pointing out the fact that certain items will be only made available via rental. That you will never have full access at all times to those items in game unless you maintain paying for them. In other words, what should be a nominal purchase say, extra bank space, which in some F2P games costs $2 and in others as much as $6 may very well end up being $.75 every single month in Alganon.
I am not saying that we know for sure what items, or what prices will exist, I am saying the method by which some will exist is meant to maintain a subscription based game under the guise of "subscription-free." It will be items that most players will find necessary that will most likely require a "maintenance" fee to keep active. So if you want to argue about the validity of my claim, do so using the same context I used. Tell us why it is silly to worry about items that require maintenance to keep using instead of those that you can purchase straight out.
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Also Maji, most people does not care for graphics that much in an mmorpg, but in 2010(2009) you do expect a certain level of quality, just as you would expect things to look better and different in 2000 compared to 1995. But alganon does NOT look good compared to what year it is, and when it tries to look like another famous mmorpg but kinda looks worse many years later, I fully understand why people why make that and issue, and rightly so.
It's funny how bad sales and subscription numbers can change the direction a game goes huh?