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ArcheAge - Perfect example of a The Best Worst Game.
Dauzqul
Member RarePosts: 1,982
The ArcheAge game-play is indeed fantastic. From the World Size / World PvP to the risks of Crafting / Trading, the game (in beta) felt like a living world. If AA launched with the classic "Buy the game and pay the monthly fee" subscription model, it would be well respected.
Now that ArcheAge has launched, it has been completely destroyed by not only the farmers / economy, but mostly by the developers themselves.
Small example:
The best two mounts in the game"
Carrot Dash - The fastest trade-pack mount in the game.
Racing Zebra - A blend of the two best mounts in the game (elk + horse).
The only way to get either of the above mounts is to pay $5 for a "gambling box". The odds of winning such a prize is equivalent to obtaining The Spectral Tiger mount from the WoW trading cards (sells for $1k via eBay). If you are lucky enough to win one, they sell for about 4,000 gold (or $300 USD). The developers are also constantly putting "limited time" on these gambling boxes to entice players to buy-n-try.
You can buy just about anything on the Marketplace, e.g., mounts, double-xp items, labor regen, etc. They even sell "Apex" tokens that can be traded for real gold. While the developers claim that you can purchase these items from the Auction House with gold, they fail to mention that with the economy the way it because of the constant farming and gold selling, legit players will have to grind and grind and grind and grind just to be able to afford the lower-end stuff. You can, however, bypass the grind and just pay real money if you wanted to.
Everything about how this game operates is around real money. It's a virtual strip club. The community is the worst I've ever seen. It completely kills the fun, the immersion, and the competition.
Is this our future of MMOs? This?
Comments
I disagree about the amazing gameplay. Combat is a crucial part of gameplay and this asian key spamfest with over exaggerated anime animation leaves much to be desired.
I do agree this is the best worst game I've seen in awhile. It's a prime example of how much you really lose when a game is "free."
In terms of Cash Shop i hope not, i never liked the way it was implemented. I pay monthly fee and still need to buy inventory/bank spaces with real money or give my gold to the cash shopers it was a disgusting change from pre 1.0.
About the game itself i hope so, more games come in the line of AA and theres alot of space to improvements.
Even i hate the CS and the way is in game, i just ignore and play the game without it. Dont care about the whale next to me have allready things that i might take 6 months to reach there.
But yeah, agree with you in the CS critics, but not in community. Play in EU-Eanna, might be diferent, dont know.
"The problem is that the hardcore folks always want the same thing: 'We want exactly what you gave us before, but it has to be completely different.'
-Jesse Schell
"Online gamers are the most ludicrously entitled beings since Caligula made his horse a senator, and at least the horse never said anything stupid."
-Luke McKinney
Did you even play ArcheAge or just felt entitled to make this post?
Either way, legit players can easily get cash shop stuff from AH, even after 1 month after release.
Also you say only wait to get things is from the boxes, then a few lines later you say you can get them from the AH...at least be somewhat consistent when you write a thread.
Funny guy aren't ya?
How about some consistency in reading? you conveniently ignored the part where he said you might as well as pay real life cash instead of grinding for gold to buy cash shop items from AH.
Trion needs to take some lessons from SWTOR on how to do the whole 'buying cash shop items for AH' right. The way game is designed you are better off chewing iron than grinding for gold.
"The problem is that the hardcore folks always want the same thing: 'We want exactly what you gave us before, but it has to be completely different.'
-Jesse Schell
"Online gamers are the most ludicrously entitled beings since Caligula made his horse a senator, and at least the horse never said anything stupid."
-Luke McKinney
They are not fluff items. I know what I'm talking about.
Double-XP?
The fastest combat mount in the game? There are none that are faster outside the Marketplace.
The fastest trade-pack mount in the game? There are none that are faster outside the Marketplace.
The ability to pay taxes?
The ability to instantly regenerate your labor?
etc etc etc etc
I've played ArcheAge for a long time.
Explain to me how a new player can make money. I'd like to hear this.
Oh? So the payment model is a fail because you can get stuff with gold; but it actually takes some effort so better pay with rl money?
Isn't that the whole point, and the reason why the model is good? If people don't want to spend money they don't; but they have to work for their stuff. Or do you want everything handed to you for free and instantly?
You make absolutely no sense to me.
"archeage gold free to play"
5 words, 5 seconds, google. It's not hard belive me!
That's all it took to find 6-7 guides....
You played AA for a long time, so i guess you are at least a founder? Have you played as f2p? Or just assumed things and felt the need to defend them?
I've 2 f2p friends and they are having a blast without patron, since patron is useless when you can't have land; might aswell just buy pots.
Personally, I feel there is a lot of things wrong with the game. If it was just what the OP described I could live with it. I play MMOs for action, and this definitely lacks action.
Well with FFXIV announcing their cash shop recently every major game has one now. Only choice left seems to be whether you want to play a F2P game like AA that aggressively tries to monetize you at every turn or pay a sub to be somewhat less aggressively marketed to. The days of "Pay one price, get access to everything and everyone who pays the sub is on a level playing field." seem to be over sadly unless people somehow stop using these crappy cash shops and there's another paradigm shift.
IT IS the future of MMOs. If you support the game, you support their business practices. They don't just sell you the mount outright, they make you "gamble" for it. They started doing this in Rift, where you could get high end raid gear if you "gambled" and bought these treasure boxes off the cash shop. Like I said, you play this game, you support these companies and their ridiculous cash grab schemes.
AA isn't the future of MMOs. For that to happen, AA would have to be like, you know, successful. While the jury's still out on the western version, the other versions of AA got a niche-sized playerbase at best.
Unless you mean it's business model (upgrade items for equipment in the cash shop, best mounts in the game in random lottery cash shop boxes, patron subscription, costumes, labor potions, etc). In which case, AA's business model isn't the future of MMOs because that business model is already here and already has been here for a long long time. AA's business model is basically the same as many many MANY Facebook browser games out there right now, some of which are arguably MMOs (if really really low-quality ones). The only thing remotely new about AA's business model is that it takes the typical facebook game's model and then applies it to a much higher-budget game.
You make a good point, I stand corrected.
Stating that patron is unimportant tells me that you don't know much about this game or its economy.
Patron is extremely important due to the max labor and regen. That is crucial and virtually the only way to make money in this game.
What would another publisher be looking for to deem this worthy of using this business model for themselves? I don't think Trion lost any money in this venture, not by a long shot.
Except they were both temporary mounts with no 'advantage' over other mounts. You can't obtain either any more.
I have several non patron friends who are top PVPers and have PLENTY of money.
No offense but maybe you aren't playing 'smarter' you're playing 'harder'.
Try sport fishing?
To get patron you need ~240g atm, for what? 2880 labor if you are online 24h straight or 1440 labor if your are offline 24h. With 240g you can buy ~20 labor pots which is 20k labor. Let's go back to the 24h.
F2p can have 2 char slot at the start so 2 pot every 12h, 4k labor/day 48g/day. That's a very steep price to begin with, so 1-2k at the start is more then enough.
Buy mats on ah (very cheap), craft packs and trade, trade, trade. Trading is the best way to make money (apart from playing AH), for both patron and f2p.
With 1k labor you can easily make more then what it costed you; so repeat till you hit the cd.
Patron is a must if you want land, but it's not if you just want to make a few bucks or can't have land.
You can't compare the success stories of NA AA to foreign AA statistics. I mean... NA players want to play Monopoly, while Asians etc are more content with something like... Candy Land.
Labor pots can only be used every 12 hours. This means you can only use 2 labor pots per character in your said 24 hour example.... may want to redo your math.
Good thing I wasn't comparing NA AA to the others then (that's why I explicitly said the Jury's still out on it).
2 character 4 pots every 24h
I play AA and bought a Founders pack. I have a regular mount and a regular donkey. I used credits from my founders pack to expand my inventory slots and still have some credits left. I'm having fun.
What does pay to win mean? I don't have the best of everything in this game and never will. I also don't feel like I have to in order to enjoy myself.
Is it the wrong of the devs to offer cash shop items that give a slight "advantage" or more like "convenience" to players that are willing to pay real life cash for it?
It doesn't bother me at all that the guy next to me has a faster mount. It in no way impacts my fun.
Is it the fault of some players that feel like they have to be the best or "keep up with the Jones's" to enjoy the game?
Who is the winner in any MMO?
A guy like me that enjoys the game immensely with what I have or the guy that feels envious of what they don't have and rages?
I don't understand.
When continental trade runs on your donkey is a primary means of earning gold (especially for East players doing the Rookborne-Falcorth over the mountain route) then this donkey allows you to flat out earn more money for less time spent. It's faster than anything possible in game and that's a fact. That's not fluff, that's literally pay to win. When the mount allows you faster gold earning, in a game where gear wins battles, and gear can be purchased with gold, along with game winning consumables, yes it's P2Win. A lot of the cash shop and Apex system is Pay 2 win.
Beyond that, there is way too much non-combat activities in this game. It's fun to live in the world but when you have to spend all night riding a donkey, or on a boat, or tending your damn farm, just to earn some gear to prevent you from dying in a 3 second stun, you lose interest fast. Then there's the massive grind to get gear and the massive amount of RNG involved, the insane reliance on gear to win battles, way more than a good build or player skill. Not to mention that launching without the northern continent meant that Archeum, an essential ingredient to crafting gear that is supposed to be easy to get, is currently very scarce and very expensive. And none of this even begins to talk about the bots, hacks, and gold farmers.
Too many issues here.