Gold Crowns of the Obsidians

Howdy guys, I just wanted to chime in on what we knew would be a hot topic.

So first off, we have always said we would be using something like Guild Wars 2 model. So GW2 model is that you can buy secondary currency for real money or you can buy it in game for gold. How much gold it costs varies based on how much is being bought. You can’t exchange secondary currency and secure item trades are forced through a trading post.

We obviously have always wanted a more open economy than GW2 so we went a slightly different route. So first, the premium currency will drop in game at a rate that will be throttled based on server concurrency. The throttling is largely a security measure so in case some exploit comes up, we don’t have to worry about the server being flooded with premium currency which would obviously be devastating.

Since we have it in game, we also chose to make it tradeable and sellable. Why? Because unlike GW2, we didn’t want to set the value for them, we want the player economy to figure out what they are really worth. We also wanted them tradeable so players in game can give them to others they think are deserving. For example, I already suggested that our in game radio stations could set up in game donation boxes for people to give crowns to.

We had a value of 2500 gold on them which we thought it was so low that it would not compete with players but due to the sudden, large influx of crowns from pledge rewards driving down the player value, the price was way too high. We’ll be dropping their vendor sellable price to 250 or 500 in the next server push. Our intent was not to make these something players would want to buy and sell for gold as obviously, that would cause some serious inflation in the long run.

So, the debate seems to be raging as to whether or not we are pay to win and the answer is obviously yes. Not the answer you were expecting from me? (and yes, I know some will quote that out of context for months to come.) So technically, anything at all that can be converted into some in game advantage, no matter how small, is pay to win.

The truth is though that people who are thinking of pay to win as some type of binary system with it being either true, pay to win, or false, not pay to win, are either not thinking it through or are just looking for something to argue about. Pay to win is not some binary switch, it is a scale that goes from near zero impact to Zynga/Clash of Clans.

So for example, for us to be zero pay to win we would have to prevent players from having second accounts. Why? Because that second account is an advantage you pay for. We would have to have only one single price and no in game rewards no matter how trivial. If you want to get right down to it, all games are pay to win because someone who pays more for a a bad ass computer, macro keyboard, and big monitor has an advantage over someone who is playing on their mom’s laptop and someone who pays for GB fiber has an advantage over the guy using 512kb/s dsl.

So the core principal of a profitable free to play design(not us!) is make an addictive, repetitive game, get them hooked, and then add a bunch of artificial pain points and then make people pay to remove those artificial pain points. Our goal was and will continue to be to make the best game we possibly can that people can play for a single up front cost. We have not designed in any artificial pain points that we are making players pay to remove. (I know some people are currently screaming “CROWNS FOR REPAIR” at their screens right now but I’ll get to that in a minute)

So my goal for crowns was to make them something that gives small benefits that would not unbalance the game and to use them to help steer the type of economy we want in game. What would I describe as a small benefit? 10% experience bonus is a good example of a small benefit. I have seen people screaming bloody murder about how this is pay to win but if you play 10 hours a week, you’re basically paying a crown per week to get 1 extra hour of experience.

So the difference we’re talking about is the exps you would gain in 1 extra hour of play but not the gold or loot. In my judgement, that is not a significant amount of advantage. If you look at what that equates to in terms of actual power, you’re looking at significantly less than 1% power advantage in the long run. It is the difference between someone being level 20 or being level 20.9 if they paid for that advantage the entire time! Yes, really, less than one level difference. Why? Because every level is about 10.5% exps more than the last one. For the mathematically challenged, that doesn’t turn into level 80 and 83.6, it turns into 80 vs 80.9. As for other buffs that exist now and will be added, I have been very careful to make sure none felt like significant pay to win elements.

So back to the crowns for repairs topic. First off, let me jump right in on what our crafting model is and was always intended to be. We want our crafting to be challenging enough and a significant enough investment of time and knowledge that crafting can be a career all in itself. We don’t want every person to be so good at crafting that they don’t need specialists. We want to make it possible for there to be a group of people who make their living buying raw resources from other players, turning those resources into meaningful items, sell those meaningful items to other PLAYERS (not merchants), and then using those profits to start the loop over again.

There are several threads on crafting I have resisted jumping in on purely due to a lack of time but I’ll speak up on the issue now. We are not WoW. In WoW, everyone crafts and the items you make SUCK except for a few of the final items which are no drop. The crafting system was never intended to be a lifestyle choice but rather just a really long, grindy, boring quest with the result being gear. That isn’t what we’re making so stop trying to compare us to that.

So crowns for repair and max durability in general is the most contentious element and definitely one we will consider changing or rebalancing. In this case, we are truly doing it to push players into not eternally repairing gear and instead buying it from crafters. Yes, it conveniently makes money for us but that isn’t the goal. The real goal is to drive people into the player economy to avoid having to spend secondary currency. This has already been debated pretty heavily but if secondary currency doesn’t do the trick then we try something else. As I’ve said probably 100 times, we’re not here to make a bad game. If it truly breaks things, we’ll re-evaluate it.


Ok, I really need to go spend time with the family now so I’ll wrap this up with my usual tl;dr version:

• We are making a game that will be fun with or without extra money being spent.
  
  
• Paying more money will give you less than a 1% combat advantage over someone else
  
  
• We didn’t add crowns to be used for buying gold and I’ll be dropping the vendor price by 10x
  
  
• Crowns are to push players to buy more from crafters, not an artificial pay gate. We’ll keep our eyes on this to make sure it is doing what it is supposed to and if not, we’ll change it.
  
  
• And most important of all, we’re all here to make a great game. Our belief is this system will help the game in the long run without taxing those that don’t want a subscription or to spend another penny.

I probably won't have time to defend the points in this post much so please keep feedback constructive and I'll say it one more time, if something is truly broken, we'll fix it. We're here to make a good game that will last decades, not some flash in the pan game to milk money out of people. Also, feel free to chat me up with PM in the forum or on Discord.