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Flyff: Interview with Yoon Im
Dana
Member Posts: 2,415
The Producer of Flyff (Fly For Fun), a Korean MMOG recently brought to the West by GalaNet, provides us with an update on the game's progress.
;) MMORPG.com: Considering there are a lot of pay to play games on the market, what gave you the idea of your system?
Yoon Im: The free to play system has been very popular in Asia, and we anticipated a similar reaction from the Western market. We also believe that a user should have the right to preview and play the game before investing any of their hard-earned money. Yes, there are plenty of games that offer free trials, but many of these gimmicks still require you to submit payment information up front. And what happens when you accidentally forget to cancel the 'free preview'? Whammo - got yo money, foo! You will never see anything to the likes of this in Flyff. Not only is the game free to play, we allow our dedicated users to enhance the quality of their gaming experience through the purchase of premium pay items. These items not only provide the user with a great variety of options to raise the overall fun-factor, but it also helps support the Flyff team. It's like donating to a website that you thoroughly enjoy perusing - same exact concept. Still, in the end no one is ever required to pay a single dime to play the game. In doing this, I think Flyff will appeal to a broader demographic and will help us increase and strengthen our community. |
The full interview is here.
Dana Massey
Formerly of MMORPG.com
Currently Lead Designer for Bit Trap Studios
Comments
Just out of curiousity, I wonder what kind of numbers they have for users. I've taken a look at this, SpaceCowBoy and Silkroad and the games "appear" to be literally packed with players. I haven't spent any real amount time in any but I wonder what the "real" size of the Free to Play crowd is. I will go out on a limb and say it appears to be substantially larger then many pay to play games.
Anyone have any insight on pops/user numbers?
Flyff is a game that offers monotonous hack and slash, selling in a shop, and flying around. Beyond that, there is nothing more to the game. There are very few dungeons or content that you can do with your guild. I understand the Asian market may like games where all you do is hack and slash for levels all day long but that is not what the majority of American players want. They want a variety of goals to work towards...something that offers good treasure for your efforts or for solving a specific dungeon quest.
Also, since playing their new game Rappelz, I haven't had any interest in going back to Flyff. Rappelz has some much potential as a much better game with way better graphics. It already has a lot of quests. All they need to do is add more dungeons.
Unless they can add more content and things to do in Flyff, they have lost my interest. I couldn't care any less about having a dog running around with me as a pet or buying a buff scroll for $5 in their "cash shop" just so I can get 1.5X EXP for an hour. I would rather pay for more content in their cash shop rather than paying $30 for some suit that makes me look like a ninja.
I think the focus of the people who run this game is in the wrong direction. It should be less on frivolous items like pets and masks and more on quests, content, and translating to English properly.
step things up, albeit slowly. They've added Guild Sieges for example,
which are basically multi-guildwars that occur on a weekly basis. Also,
grinding was never the only option in the game as there is always the
PVP arena and PK server (although the PK system is a bit dismal, and
puts too much emphasis on level). PVP is not the best, but it still is
better even than in many commercial games.
On top of that, the grinding gets much easier if you are in something
called an advanced party. Towards the high levels, you'll likely be in
an advanced party 24/7, as exp is ridiculously low otherwise. Another
benefit of an advanced party is an increased drop rate through the
Spiriture Fortune and Gift Box party skills. Basically, if you can't
find good parties in this game, you're likely to level slower and get
less of a cash flow than someone who could, but it's always possible to
solo.
I'm not defending the game or anything as I'm well aware of its almost
mechanical grindfestedness, as well as the horribly botched priorities
of the developers. I'm just offering my experience.
I had to create an account here on MMORPG just to respond to this. I usually just come here and browse and never created an account but yeah.....I wanted to respond.
Flyff is Free to Play, but to upgrade armor you pretty much have to purchase cash shop items to do it successfully without breaking a piece of armor you just spent 30 million on. The price of these cash shop items and what their called is Scroll of Protect, and from the cash shop it's 500 Gpotato for a stack of 5 Scrolls, in game if you don't have access to a credit card or paypal account, it's between 1.5-2 million a piece for these scrolls from other players. (The conversion of Penya to Gpotato used to be 1 mil per every 1000 gpotato, but that dosn't exist anymore).
Just as an example, 1000 gpotatoes is 10.00 real american dollars. It goes up from there. Most scrolls are around 400-800 gpotates, but then you get into cash shop items that add Dex, or Str and they are upwards of 2000 gpotatoes for one single cash shop item. And that's 20.00 real american cash yet again. Or like someone else said, you can spend 5700 gpotatos, yes kids that's 57.00 real dollars, for a whole outfit so you can look like a spy, or like a princess as you weild your huge swords in high heels.
Yes, you can successfully play the game without ever purchasing a single cash shop item, from other players or from the actual shop itself if you have access to a credit card or paypal account. But your going to be doing alot of equipment and item searching in order to afford those things. Let alone setting up a shop overnight to sell them all and having a guy who's a cash shop user standing next to you setting up his shop that says, "Cheaper then this guy"
The point I'm trying to make is that there is a huge problem with the economy of Flyff. Partly because Hackers have figured out the core code of Flyff and are duping items and selling them for way below their value. While players who genuinly have that item and it's legit, can't sell it for the correct price and are forced to sell for lower. Not to mention the people who are playing the game who can't tell what's hacked and what's not hacked, so it's come to a point where you don't want to purchase anything from anyone else until this gets resolved.
And how is this getting resolved? Basically Flyff says that if you are a hacker, associated with a hacker, have a hacked item, or party with a hacker, your account is being banned. So basically if you buy a hacked item, party with someone you don't know and they are found to be a hacker, your screwed.
So people aren't buying items, they aren't partying with people they don't know and people have segregated themselves within the game. Flyff's response to this? Well they came out with new cash shop items!!! WOO HOO!! I can now, for the low low price of 150 gpotates each, become a giant flying Aibaitt or a giant Leyana!! Granted I can only be these mobs for 5 minutes at a time, and I have to buy more when I run out of cute little ballons to change myself, and this has absoulutly nothing to do with playing the game, dosn't help you at all with leveling and skills. And more importantly, dosn't do a damn thing about the hackers or dupers.
Yeah, Flyff's a fun game, about 8 months ago. Now it's just grinding like any other MMORPG and the developers are more concerned with making money then updating the Acrobat section of their website, doing something about the hackers and dupers and basically just doing updates to create more cash shop items so they can make more money. WOO HOO GO GO GO FREE TO PLAY!!!!!
*End Sarcasm*
Yes, I also forgot to add the translation to English properly part as well and just re-read GuruChaz's Comment. It's funny when you buy an item and it's supposed to say "Iron of Clockwork" and it says, "Iron of Cwockwork" I mean, come on. People make fun of the way asians sound already, do they have to leave the typo's and make fun of themselves?
Or how about flying over a canyon and it saying, "Land of Fwaris" when it should say, "Land of Flaris" And Flaris is a town in Flyff. A whole, gigantic, huge town. Typo's *shakes head*
I played Silkroad Online and I remember reading in an interview quite possibly on this website, that server population fluctuated from 1-3k in a day.
While I do agree that Free2Play MMOs have a larger playerbase, a large proportion of players tend to be very casual and log in irregularly.
Basically, F2P MMOs aren't a fragfest if that's what you were thinking. The casuals that get ganked tend to leave permanently as there's no cost involved, leaving the no-life hardcore players as regulars on servers.
I really had to create an account to give my opinion about this game.
First off, every since i played six months ago, alot of the bugs and typos, and website have never been updated or fixed.
there is still the party bug. certain flying bugs. Skill bugs for certain classes ( rangers, elementers, mercenaries)
Ever since these last 2-3 weeks the game have been ovesrrunned by hacks which killed all monsters on the field and created dupes which really harmed the in game economics. The gms have never took thier time to reassure the players and keep them informed about what is happening or what effects are taken to solve these problems.
The guild warring system is unfairly designed and character classes and unfairly balanced. Currently a high lvl jester/ranger can pretty much kill every other class.
the new skill system is also unfairly balanced giving characters will small skill trees a large advantage over characters with large skill trees. This new system gives you 1 point every lvl or so i've heard from the korean version.
one example is Ringmasters have at least 16 skills ( minimum ) which needs to be mastered for them to be fully effective to the greatest extent, Elementors have 19 skills (as 3rd class) which they can choose to master or not.
Granted that maybe some skills not need to be mastered, but why are they not given the opportunity to master thier skills while other classes can?
Psykeepers have only 7 skills as 3rd class, blades have 8 skills, Jesters have 8 skills.
From what was released in the korean flyff, elementors and ringmasters are forced to pick and choose, limiting their partnering and the monsters they have to fight.
This game is wholly unbalanced and is unfair.
I suppose they are going to release a cash shop item to allow you to buy more skill points to compensate.
overall customers service is horrible, players are not told of what new updates are inputted into the game, nor are they kept aware of what is getting implemented to fix the hacks.
If things are changed and fixed, this game would be alot more fun.
they really need to put more work on their management system. in the
interview they said they got 2 web master/programmer. (US server) go
check the website http://flyff.gpotato.com. the website look like a
dead one. the top 100 ranking is out of date and they didn't update it
for about 6-7 month(the list is for lawolf server only).they didn't
make the list for 3 other server that was avaibable now(mia.mushpoie
and aibatt) the new job about acrobat,jester and ranger cannot be found
on the website too. hard to find gm online in game when having problem.
if server crash in the middle of the night no one handle the server.
because they didn't have some one to watch over the server.
this look like an advertising interview to me lol. only pop up about all the good section from the game.
I think Hero and Albatross was better.. more like $1.oo = 1,000 or 2,000 and items were like 25 - 65 for Albatross and Hero was like 500 - 1000 for GOOD items mind you
Games I've Played: SilkRoad, Flyff, NeoCron, PlanetSide, Rapplez, UpshiftRacer, Drift City, TB, Kwonho, ArchLord, AoA, Exteel, WolfTeam, Shaiyan, WoKF, FFXIV, STO, KoTR, ESO, Defiance, Mabinogi
Games I'm Playing: Warframe/STO
Games I'm Pondering: The Secret World