VIP system : What do you think ?
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@benseine well yes but with an exchange rate more abhorrent than Venezuela's current economic situation it's not quite as convenient as it might seem, proven by the fact that there has never been so much as one whimper anywhere about it ever creating any measurable powergap, naturally that ties in to the games progression too, but that does not subtract from the former said.
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are you able to pay for an advantage? yes, as you can pay to have a boost to the knowledge point gain and learning slot increase. those that get rank 1 faster will be able to rank them faster thus giving them an advantage.
if the knowledge point and learning slots were removed i wouldn't be as pressed against it. I'd much prefer that the cash shop and cosmetics just look really good and DS creates some supporter packs instead of a sub. put some cosmetics behind certain events, like killing 15 named mini-bosses or such.
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@kralith I agree we are to quote the saying putting the cart before the horse with this argument. Since we really don't have any idea how the VIP subscription will affect the game.
I've played many different versions of games: Subs, f2p with vip sup, straight f2p, and f2p with cash shop. I've enjoyed each of them for different reasons. I'm not playing most of them now again for different reasons. I think the VIP subscription has merit for those that have the financial ability to pay. In any game I play I've never looked at as I'll never reach xx goal unless I pay. If that's the case I'd probably move onto another game rather than pay so it doesn't provide any revenue or incentive for the devs to go that route. However, if they do then that's their choice as this is their game and their business that they need to support.
I think we need (as painful as it is) to wait and see what the over all affect will be before we start leading the riot with pitchforks and torches.
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Hum... I didn't followed all the post here. I hope I'm not repeating someone.
What I understood it's the following :
Learning slot and knowledge acquiring are based on INT (so not equal for each character by definition), so you could have 40, 60 or 35 slot not really matters (or at a very high level of play... and it's to be demonstrated yet).
Let's assume we have 7 casting slots on hotbar to use :
Questions : if you have 35 slot memory how many skill permutation you could have ? 6 724 520 !
if you have 60 memory slot at disposal : 386 206 920 permutation !So please ^^ If the VIP didn't give a casting slot it's not an advantage, it's a drop of water on the ocean.
Remember spotlight #3
if you’re afraid Talents create a power wide gap between new and experienced players, you can stop worrying already! Talents are certainly an important complement to a character build, and we’re sure different setups will be widely debated in the competitive crowd. However, they’re just that: complements. The main strengths and weaknesses of your character are established when you create it!
Ps : it could be possible to have useless gameplay permutation but it's still high and it's not 1 or 2 memory slot who change anything.
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@gofrit Memory and learning slots are different things. And gaining knowledge has nothing to do with stats.
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I think games need to pay bills. Its one thing to offer subscriptions or you can call it free to play. I would rather have a purchased game with a vip model where you only gain medium level upgrades so if things get tight for a couple months its not a night and day difference.... like you are completely wasting your time without it.
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It works well enough at least. It looks like with a little time most people will be at about the same playing field with a difference in flexibility which while not ideal, is much better than the majority of other ways this could go.
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VIP/Subscription on a game is nice if it's the only game you play. I like to play a lot of different games and if i would needed to pay a subscription for each of the online games I play I'd be spending over 200 euro a month, if not more, on subscriptions.
So therefor if a game requires a subscription, I walk away from it, without even looking further into the game.
I don't care about VIP either, as long as it doesn't become P2W, like some games where VIP allows you to reset dungeons or some other time gated mechanics and giving you an unfair advantage.
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@gofrit Your slots on the hotbar have nothing to do with the learning slots. Also, the developers haven't said anything about INT affecting the number of learning slots you have, only that attributes affect the time it takes to learn an ability.
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Interesting heated discussion.
I could write up a long posting, but decided against it and just mention a few quick points.
If VIP is supposed to be a long term monetary support for the company (after the initial purchase), it would have to be a long term effect, else people would 'cancel it', hence defeating the 'but people are going to cap out fast anyway' response.
Another noteworthy point would be, that some people plan to play with different play-styles (different planets), so a short term advantage is still an advantage on a PvP planet, since you can't decide when you enter a fight (after reaching a 'cap') to these.
Last, but not least, nobody seems to ever mention the influence of knowledge on attribute gain and I wonder if people forget that, simply are unaware of that, or don't care for some strange reason.
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@Logain I think most of us let smoke their brains to imagine how a game can work with all this what Dynamight promised.
And i think we all think about possibilities how it will influence the gameplay.
And all this things will get discussed, when Prometheus has the time to clear up, as he mentioned, they are busy with preparing the kickstarter, they have dates to fullfill.We really need to be a bit more cooled down and patient.
This game is far from being ready and will have much of this discussions in future.
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no vip imho
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Would it be ok if you can exchange ingame gold with Dynamight Gold and buy the timesavers with that aswell?
So ppl can pay €10 euro's for a month of extra learning slots or pay 1000 ingame gold a month.
Isn't that how gw2 and EVE Online do it?
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@Target and @specter said in VIP system : What do you think ?:
@gofrit Your slots on the hotbar have nothing to do with the learning slots.
@specter : Hotbar is where we put our skill to use it I know that. Learning slot is what you have to use in the final step to learn the skill (with book and hours spending), I know that also ^^.
@specter said also :
Also, the developers haven't said anything about INT affecting the number of learning slots you have, only that attributes affect the time it takes to learn an ability.
True the number of learning slot is purely my supposition
. But it's what I understand because of the spotlight #5:Intelligence
Intelligence is a measure of the learning capabilities and magical power of a character, determining its memory,
Resting
The resting mechanic is quite straightforward. When you start a resting phase, your character sits on the ground, and you are presented with a menu through which you can re-assign your talent points and choose the spells and abilities you want to memorize for your next adventure. The amount of memorized abilities is not fixed, but is positively influenced by the Intelligence of your character.To me a measure of the learning capabilities would have an impact on the number of learning slot. but like I said is purely supposition. So if I right adding a learning slot is not a big deal. If I wrong, You could speed up a little the skill learning (at condition to have many books and lot of hours perhaps)...
- we don't know the time to make a book,
- we don't know the average time to spent to learn a skill
- the type of resources/steps to learn a skill.... are unknown
So to me the VIP membership don't give a "free pass" to a pay 2 win... Probably a little boost and yet with lots of conditioned steps.
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and INT might not have anything to do with the Learning Slots.
I will call the VIP a Pay to Advantage. I'd much prefer if the fighting mechanics, including knowledge and learning slots, were equal for everyone.
I just hope that DS learned to explain things better before dumping information on us. While I don't need a full spotlight on Learning slots or Knowledge points a paragraph or 2 explaining them would have been nice to have. If they wanted to post a spotlight on those specifically, after the little explanation, then it would have been fine.
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@jetah said i
are those games out yet? can i download camelot unchained, dual universe or ashes right now and pay a sub to play them? or are these games still in development?
i remember swtor, wildstar, eso and others that started as a mandatory sub, yet look where they are. so clearly it isn't working. we look to the past to predict the future. now of those 3 you mentioned, I can see CU being the one that survives and IF it does then it'll the second MMO in 5 years that has debuted as a sub and maintained it.First of all, all three are a huge success at kickstarter. This means that sub2play did not deterrent people from backing them. As a matter of fact, players were asking for sub2play to come back for quite some time. Just go at any MMO site/venue and see what is the preferred payment model when the players are asked to fill a questionnaire or poll. There is no doubt that the players want the sub2play model. There is no doubt that the sub2play model can create a stable income for the game, if the game is good.
Will either of these three games that I mentioned succeed? That remains to be seen. In my opinion Dual Universe will fail because it incorporates RMT to its mandatory subscription model, which means that this RMT will have pay2win potential because DU has a player driven economy. And that brings a question, again, about Fracture's VIP system. Will there be a VIP in-game token tradeable in-game, or will the VIP be un-tradeable in-game? Cause if it is the former then the VIP will be even more pay2win. I asked that from the first go and I still don't have an answer. Ashes of Creation will not only fail, but it won't even launch. My guess is that late this year (2018) to early next year the game will cease development. Camelot Unchained will launch, will deliver, but whether it will appeal to enough people remains to be seen. Regardless, none of the aforementioned games will fail because of the subscription.
As for the games you mentioned that started as sub2play and ended being hybrids, buy2play, f2p or whatever, I will say once more. It was not the gamers that asked for the change and the payment model was not the problem. All three were half-baked products in one way or the other. THAT WAS THEIR PROBLEM. SWTOR for example lacked content up to ~one year after launch. It started with the best launch ever, and it started bleeding subscribers immediately. If it wasn't a half baked product, the subs would have stayed. Then EA (a greedy publisher) decided to make the game f2p/sub2play hybrid with most revenue being generated by the cosmetic cash shop. And it worked, it still works. SWTOR is still making money, and as a matter of fact it is making more money now than it used to when it had all those subscribers, at launch. As I said three comments ago, f2p is the best payment model if you want to milk your customers/gamers. That doesn't make it the best payment model in general. Most of the time, the product delivered by f2p games are either crappy, pay2win or both.
So to sum things up;
- Sub2play has delivered many great games in the past and not just one, which is the best case scenario for f2p and b2p models (PoE and GW2 respectively).
That said, in my opinion b2p has much much much more potential than f2p (that has no potential whatsoever). This is why from the very start I said that Fractured should revert to a pure buy2play model, with the initial product costing $30-60 and every biyearly expansion $30. The pure cosmetic cash shop can stay, I wouldn't mind that. Anything else, like convenience cash shop (e.g. NPC carpenters), aside character slots, server transfers and the like, should not be included. The VIP sub is also cancerous, especially as described.
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While the sub2play model is the best when it comes at delivering a great game, it is not enough by itself. This means that bad sub2play games existed, exist and will exist.
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While the sub2play model is the best when it comes at delivering a great game, it is not the best model when the dev company/publisher wants to generate revenue. The best way to do that (as proven by so many years of examples) is to release a half baked bullcrap, heavy monetized f2p game.
If you want such games, sure, you have the right to support such games. I won't though.
- The majority of MMO players prefer the sub2play model, as proven by posts, polls, questionnaires, comments at MMO sites/venues.
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i'm not saying it isn't wanted, but i'm saying many sub only games have had to stop it or close down. they opted for the free or hybrid option instead. that tells me even though people were willing to pay they didn't actually do it for a prolonged period.
i don't consider a cosmetic cash shop milking customers. it is optional. unless content is placed behind a paywall (i guess expansions could meet this requirement) then it's up to each customer to buy/spend what's comfortable by them.
I only asked about the past 5 years because that's enough time for the population to dwindle and the developers switch to an alternative. i could say 10 years and still make my point. while true that a games content should hold the players the developers have to know that a sub only game wont hold them long and they need to step up the content delivery. that could be why many are switching. WoW, FFXIV and Eve are the ones with enough content that it can hold a player long enough or has enough of a following that they can maintain content with a loss in subs.
The majority of MMO players prefer the sub2play model, as proven by posts, polls, questionnaires, comments at MMO sites/venues.
they may want it but they clearly will leave it just as quickly as the polls, post, questionnaires and comments fade away.
There is no doubt that the sub2play model can create a stable income for the game, if the game is good.
I wanted to touch on this one. SWTOR proved the game being good wasn't enough. I believe the majority of those answering those questionnaires, polls, etc want to be engrossed in a game like they were at childhood or in the teen years but they've matured past that, have seen enough bs and pr stunts that they know better and know when they're being lied to by pr or devs. I'll agree that f2p (or even b2p) with cash shop is the best revenue for new games.
anyway back to the vip thing. i think they should remove the knowledge point and learning slots. that's my 1copper worth.
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@kralith said in VIP system : What do you think ?:
(...)And all this things will get discussed, when Prometheus has the time to clear up, as he mentioned, they are busy with preparing the kickstarter, they have dates to fullfill(...)
Most certainly, which is part of the reason I decided to make a short post with some quick points instead of a long post. That said, as you mentioned, the Kickstarter is coming rather close (5 workdays left) and the VIP service is going to be a main deciding factor in how much I'm going to pledge (since I am aiming at an early bird tier, I have to act on the first hours of the Kickstarter, because if early bird tiers are available to the end of the Kickstarter, it likely enough failed). Hence I provided a few points I hope Prometheus is going to include in his response, else time is going to be too short to ask for clarification before I have to decide.
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Without further info about it, It sounds like P2W feature?
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I'll be waiting for more info before coming to too strong an opinion. After Prometheus clears it up it may make more sense.
