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What crosses the line on Item Shop spending?
Ozmodan
Member EpicPosts: 9,726
The reason I ask, Perfect World has a special pet the venomancer class can get that can cost between $230-460 depending on if you manage to swap with other players.
I just find that approaching the level of absurdity from my point of view. That is 6 months of internet cost for me. Maybe that I am too frugal, but heck that is a really nice new video card that I have my eye on.
The scary thing it is not uncommon to see these pets in the game. I am rather amazed so many people throw money around for such a minor thing as a different looking pet.
Maybe I am not looking at this objectively. What do the rest of you think, am I overreacting?
Comments
I would say anything from about 1p upwards would be blatant scamming.
yeah Perfect World sounds like a pretty thorough rip-off.
in terms of items that cross the line...anything that affects the Combat Skill of your character, ammo, weapons, pre-leveled characters etc.
anything that ensures that an unskilled player can play at the same level as a skilled player, based solely on how much money he spends at the Cash Shop.
I've become pretty tolerant of cash-shop games (I used to fear them, but then having tried some I realised all the things I thought would be problems were for me no big deal) but there is one thing that still angers me, a kind of bait and switch. For me it is presenting a particular piece of content as free (or having a certain cost) but in truth the cost is higher.
I am ok with pricing content ("this special dungeon is 10$ to play!"). I am ok with having content where it is public knowledge it will need cash shop items ("this is the hardest, most unfair dungeon in the game. To even have a chance, expect to spend 10$ in cash shop items.") To me the above two cases are sorta equivalent. If anything I've come to prefer the latter, if it is designed as "this dungeon is unfairly hard. If you play perfectly, you can get through spending 5$. IF you play sloppily, you can get through having spent 15$. The better you play, the cheaper the dungeon." I've even come to view free content this way. "This free dungeon is free to play. IF you play it perfectly, it's free, and you'll win. But if you are sloppy, you'll fail, unless you pay x$, where x depends on how sloppy you are."
However, I am NOT ok with something secretly requiring cash-shop items. A special quest costs 10$ to do.... half way through you come to a dungeon that is literally impossible to beat using normal means... but by spending another 10$ you can have a chance to beat the dungeon and do the second half of the quest.
So for the pet example, I'm ok with 250$ pet. IF advertised as such, its the consumers choice. I'm not ok with a 100$ pet, who turns out needs to be fed 10$ items every day for 15 days or it dies. That's decietful.
My opinion is pretty simple:
If it becomes necessary to use the cash shop to enjoy the game, it's crossed the line.
Cash Shops should only ever offer timesavers and fluff.
Playing: EVE, Final Fantasy 13, Uncharted 2, Need for Speed: Shift
Anything over 14.95 a month is over the line. If you buy the pet, then don't buy anything else, but play the game for another year and a half, that would be ok.
A year subscription of a typical AAA MMOrpg AT 14.95 A month is only $180.00.
It'd be nice if Cash Shops also offered a monthly payment option, for example.. sell something for $100, but take that payment in 10 monthly instalments of $10.
Playing: EVE, Final Fantasy 13, Uncharted 2, Need for Speed: Shift
I think charging more then $20/month to enjoy a game is too much. Spending over $50/month for decorations is ok with me as long as they are not necessary to enjoy the game. Now charging over $200 for a limited time pet is robbery.
It's called supply and demand, if you know your customers are willing to pay that amount of money, you'd be nuts not to charge that price for it.
For those people who actually like to spend such huge amount of money on a pet...all I'll say is that i'm glad it's not my money.
Well, I think that if the game has no subscription fee, it's reasonable to spend about 15 bucks a month. If the game has a subscription fee, I don't think there should be extra charges at all.
I, myself, never buy from an item shop even if a game is F2P. Maybe I'm a cheap bastard, but I think item malls are a terrible thing.