I absolutely agree with Richard Garriott, what happened?

But the reason that it's less often lucrative... now... is because the market has for the most part shunned it their preferred method of paying for their entertainment.
The gaming industry follow the market... We are the market... We are responsible for it no longer being the preferred method of paying.
And I use We in the largest possible sense. As stated previously, I prefer the subscription model.

 

One can see them coming quite easily, a post on RAW about it, then a post here by a new account. Good times.

 

And posted at 2PM on a Saturday to stir the pot and avoid moderation for the longest possible time.
But, as I posted, the premise of the argument is flawed... Not that does or ever will matter to the RAW 'community'.

 

Uh, sorry, nope. I am enjoying the development of the game and it's progress and I don't want them to fail "taking a shot".. What does that even mean, spending all their money ? lol.

Enough of that fake news. They were supposed to be dead already according to the doom and gloom narrative. like a year and half ago.

 

It is a tough situation. One that could have been avoided with a few key decisions made differently in the beginning,

That said, F2P is rarely just that with no shop. Also, you're figuring that the existing items in the shop are going down in price. I believe what they said is there will be new items more suited to microtransactions on offer in the future.

 

Big difference between Archeage and SOTA is that Archeage is PTW, while SOTA has avoided that so far (thankfully).

 

I think the fake news jab was a bit harsh, but we are all entitled to an opinion. My opinion is Port would not have made all of the QoL and store changes over the past six months if they were happy and thought 100k a month was considered good progress and all they wanted for the foreseeable future.

Taking a shot means changing the trajectory of this game; it may well mean failure quicker than just keeping the status quo. I have no doubt they can continue for a good while getting the current funds. Maybe Richard and Starr are in your boat and are just happy with $1-$1.5 million in revenue a year and having minimal staff though.

 

Ok.

So let me get this right.

You're saying this is yet another new player coming in an saying the same thing.

But instead of acknowledging the problem, you poo-poo it away saying there is nothing to these complaints.

I believe, you sir, and those that continue to ignore the writing on the wall, are the problem.

No one is saying the game sucks. I love the game. They're saying there is still inequity. They're trying to tell you what the problem is.

And you're telling them they're wrong.

Edit to add: the OP wasn't even talking about P2W. She was talking about funding methods. We brought up P2W somewhere along the way.

I can understand frustration over the subject getting hijacked.

 

From what I've seen of other games with premium currency or something similar like selling subscriptions for in-game gold, this is actually quite revolutionary. Most of them restrict the trade of such things very strictly. And that's not even going into if they restrict what you can do with other stuff that you buy from their cash shop. With the exception of things that affect your character or account (emotes, bank upgrades, etc.), every item you buy from the store can be traded away to other players.

We can't forget the problem of lack of advertising, and the (apparent) failure of what advertising was attempted at official release. While there are many things that have caused new players to abandon the game, and the devs have been working on them, there's still little awareness to get enough new players to try it out. But it's not an entirely bad thing if a big inrush happens after many changes have been made.

B2P was almost F2P anyhow. It was based on the idea that a significant number of customers would want to play the offline game. In the end it turned out that there was little interest in offline play outside the initial kickstarter crowd, and it was an impediment to getting customers for the online game.

 

Now let me cause a real kerfluffle and suggest that maybe a bit of incentivising of social media shares might be a good idea.

A screenshot sharing to FB or the others method, with some COTO's going into your inventory for it?

Huh? Right? I just started something here?

In case you hate the idea....



at S Mart! We have them in back by the sauna.



In case you like the idea, COTO's for everyone!

 

I'm saying that I've seen this pattern.

New forum member comes in. First couple posts they make they're making a post about PTW.....

All of a sudden a flamewar erupts, and certain very vocal players start complaining every time about so called PTW aspects that are, in a world where 7,000 dollar castles are being bought and sold, and players have 50,000 dollars or more in the game, now all of a sudden those things like buffs are a major threat and a freak out ensues.

Thread is hijacked, everyone attacks each other, and those that don't agree with that and stand up against it, they get told THEY are the problem.

Uh uh. No way, no how ! It's just not true.

But you keep doing you Alleine.

 

That's actually a pretty great idea.

 

Welcome to SoTA @Asari lol

 

YOU get COTO's!

 

I've seen it too, but Alleine is right, we need to give the benefit of the doubt.

Just no one freak out! We can handle this. And if you do... we have pitchforks for sale by the sauna.

 

It is - maybe with something other than cotos though or with crazy strong controls in place. I could see a lot of FB Manipulation if cotos were on the table

Bringing back a solid streamer program is never bad idea either (can’t recall if official support still exists in any form these days). Most of my game discovery is from twitch, and I am an old fogey!

 

Their whole problem is manpower issues for oversight. It's just not there. We had suggested a player-run Marketing team while at SotACon and they were all for it. My request to have someone at Port be our liason was the problem. Total bandwidth issue.

 

Pitchfork and sauna are unnatural inhabitants of the same sentence.

 

Yeah it's one of those nights.

 

Since I come from the land of the trolls, seeing this persons first post and specific topic just made me laugh..... because I immediately knew what they were trying to do.....