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Allods Online: In Defense of v1.1.0
SBFord
Former Associate EditorMember LegendaryPosts: 33,129
The Allods Online team has posted a response to the vociferous commentary raging all over the web in reaction to the v1.1.0 patch implemented recently. Players have been very vocal about the fact that they feel Allods has become a 'pay to win' type game. In the v1.1.0 patch, several potions were added to the cash shop that eliminate penalties and item curses incurred in a variety of ways. The potions are only available in the cash shop and one of the more common complaints is that players must have the potions and their effects to level.
In response, Allods Online devs say, to paraphrase: Cash Shop items are not necessary to play the game to its fullest extent.
First paragraph, enters make new paragraph, shift+enter make brWe know that players are most concerned about the cursed items, incense, and the leveling experience. We acknowledge that these changes may be unappealing to some players because they require players to use items that originate from the Item Shop, and players now feel that buying Item Shop items are necessary.
However, we want to assure you that the game has not become Pay-to-Play or Pay-to-Win. At the core of Allods you can still enjoy the game without ever having to worry about spending money. Yes, Holy Charms, Incense, and Scrolls of Purification are only offered through the Item Shop, but they can be purchased from other players and the auction house. It’s important to reiterate the fact that in order to play Allods, no game purchase is required and we do not ask for credit card information in order for you to play. We assure you that the majority of active Allods players do not pay a dime and are still able to experience everything the game has to offer.
The full team response is on the Allods Online site.
Do you agree with players' complaints? Are potions required in order to effectively level? Do you agree with the developers' position that potions aren't really all that critical to the game's enjoyment? Let us know!
Comments
it's actually pointless. No matter what developers will say people will be complaining. Allods really isn't that bad when it comes to item shops. There are a lot of other f2p games which require you to buy as much BUT in Allods developers decited to mess with peoples equipement. That was their mistake.. for some reason people simply can't stand the tought of loosing items.
They could have added like 300 mounts in Item shop each priced 20 $ but the moment they started affecting people equipement they lost.
Must be serious if they have todo a rebuttal..Just like the Dev Said >>In response, Allods Online devs say, to paraphrase: Cash Shop items are not necessary to play the game to its fullest extent..
So lets face the fact in order to really ENJOY the game to its fullest extent..You need the Item Mall..
So they made it that you need the item mall..The game it self is free with limitation..So that really means the game is not free to play..Free to play is what it is..Free with no hold bars and no limtation..
If they really need money then they should a went Pay to play and stay out of the free to play market...
I do feel like you need to actually use incense to play now that i cant even do the same amount of damage as i was pre patch. so yes me having to pop an incense everyday just to play simply makes the whole playing for free worthless.
Also cursed items? even the GM's had a problem with that but then again they would agree to keep people "happy" that game is BS now im just gonna be subscibe from now on CS games are over priced anyway.
like someone said: "I don't earn enough money to play f2p games" and these words are so true. To play Allods you need to spend about 20 $/euro monthly (keep in mind that most stuff you buy is only for 1 character). Paying so much money for "beta" stage game is for me a joke...
Why do they keep pushing their CS to be more and more mandatory in order to enjoy the game?
Typical nonsense from these run of the mill f2p producers. They protest vociferously that you don't need the item shop to play their game, yet behind the scenes they purposely design the cash shop items so you can't do without them.
It would not be too bad if you could spend a little a month on the game and be successful, but oh no, to be successful you have to lay out the big bucks.
This is exactly why pay to play games are not going away.
Walks like a duck.
Quacks like a duck.
So we're whinning because we're paying Developers to develope the games? If you really wanna cry, go try RLC with their volunteer lead dev team. Yeah, the production values suffer. Get over yourselves, it's a game. Stop crying, start playing, and you might actually accomplish something.
Allods playable at the lower levels but once the death penalties kick end and you also risk getting cursed items on (blue) rare or higher equipped items that’s when CS becomes necessary.
I currently have a level 40 Brute Tank specs’ Orc wearing mostly epic gear and since the patch the game is un playable for me unless I’m fumed using a CS item. Cost is bearable = $3.50 every 21 days. Having the anti curse items equipped is also cheap. But what is really frustrating for most is the direction the patch has taken the game.
Before patch once you reached 40 you could run 4 different Heroics once a day. If you wore blue or better gear game was challenging but solo able except Heroics and World Bosses. The Astral was fun to explore if you were lucky to own a finished ship and the Large Allods Islands where not to difficult to find with a little bit of exploring.
Now after patch with unfumed you get a -200% debuff to your damage. As a pure Tank I can barely survive more than 3 mobs at once against mobs my same level. Now I will have to respect my Tank with only an item I can purchase off of the CS. Mind you that the GMs keep stating you can also buy CS items off of the Auction House. If you’re lucky to find any items that is and also afford them.
Only one Heroic instance is available, you have to run rep quests to unlock them which could take up to a month to finish. Astral was changed for the worst, now you can’t find a large allod island to explore. The risk out ways the reward or time spent.
The more popular zones are almost deserted and a lot of guilds are now losing players left and right.
What ever happen to the Customer was right: I feel Allods is on a downward spiral if they continue with their current plans.
At least offer a Water of Death at a reduced price and open up the Heroics then at least we can better prepare for the next bad patch.
Allod Dev's If you want to profit off CS put some dam ship items in the store and tweak your prices to better meet your customers purse.
I will admit ,right off the top, I have never played this game.Too many bad reviews sent me elsewhere. Now I am glad I did not.
When you go messing with people's equipment, you kinda are ruining one of the major points of the game,lol! As people level up they aquire this gear and it is the often the only outward way of showing their accomplishments.
So when you design the game to make their accomplishments useless, unless they spend money, you are taking away any point to playing the game.
The article has not changed my feelings towards this game one bit. In fact, I kinda feel sorry for those that did play this game and got this as a response.
If we fail to change the things of today, they will become the lucid nighmares of tommorrow.
i Play allods i have a lvl 35 tank and affter this last patch mobs i could kill without cash shop items i can no longer kill EVERYONE was nerfed .....you need to buy the incense just do have the dps you had b4 the patch...i was really enjoying the game alot now.....o and my whole guild some 50 player and there alts all up and quit it really sux
nvm, read it wrong.
would it be ok if pizza hut started charging $100 for a large pizza? we're paying them to make the pizza, so your logic says we HAVE to be ok with the insane price because they're the ones making the pizza.
sounds stupid right? that's what i thought when i read your post. and last i checked nobody was crying this...
"Players have been very vocal about the fact that they feel Allods has become a 'pay to win' type game"
It was a 'pay to win' game the day it was released. I don't understand why people are up in arms. If you don't like it, don't play it.
Cash shop games are designed to get assloads of money from a few hard core players with more disposable income than sense / real-world outlets for that income. Why would Allods be any different? They need to stay in business, and giving people huge advantages for huge amounts of cash is how they do it. Again, if you don't like that, don't play cash shop games.
They changed the death penalty by removing FoD which ppl wanted. However, FoD was removable with an item you could purchase from a vendor in game. The new item to cure cursed items is only available from the item shop and at a ridiculous price in the AH because it's needed by max players as much if not more than by lower level players with less money. That = p2p in my book.
This doesn't even touch on the facts of the damage nerf to players and the buff to monsters.
Steam: Neph
Sounds like I can now delete it off of my hard drive!
I was bored with the grind anyway, especially because I could only fight monsters that were lower level as my character! Every time I tried higher level, I would end up in that weird place!
the patch that killed the russian game kills the us eu game who knew rofl fail 11 years of building this to kill it before its even outta beta?
The should just add a subscription option and add permanent effects to the pay-to-play accounts that give them all those potion/flask bonuses/buffs etc for as long as he subscription is active.
It is not a suprise that the creators of allods themselves would state that you do not need cash shop items to enjoy (or win) the game. This is still totally false. It was false before the advent of 1.1, and continues to be false. In this version, there are even more ways you must pay money into the cash shop in order to compete in PvP and PvE.
If you have a perfume active, you deal 250% damage at the highest level of patonage. That's pay to win. Adrenaline rush has been nerfed and now you need a mount (which can ONLY be gotten in the cash shop) in order to move at travel speed. That's pay to win. You can only handle runes in your equipment and make them above level 1 by using items from the cash shop, giving you even MORE healing and damage. That's pay to win. It's quite absurd that the devs themselves refuse to admit this fact.
In the end, the latest patch pretended to comply with the demands of the community while secretly adding even more ways to be forced to pay into it to make up for the money lost from the prefume system being changed. That's the problem. If you pay into the allods cash shop in all of the various ways that make your character the "best" you WILL end up spending more then $10 a month. It's not the fact they cost money, but the fact that cash shop items themselves have no economy and therefore they only way to compete aginst a person who pays any amount into the cash shop is to use it yourself.
If you want a good FTP mmo that doesn't screw with it's FTP people, just play Atlantica.
I actually liked this game before this patch. I logged in Tuesday, after the patch, and the debuff to damage has made this game UNPLAYABLE. I died 3 times in an hour. Screw this.Lately I only played during WoW downtime. Waiting for new MMOs like FF14, GW2, etc.....anyway.
Great way to ruin a game....I hope everyone stops playing in protest.
Either support the developers and the massive amount of money they spend to bring you a game or do not play it. It's pretty simple. If they were receiving enough money to support the game, they would not need to add extreme measures. I played the game before patch and after. I do not see what the big whine fest is about except for the people that are too cheap or too poor to support their gaming addicton.
Free to play means you CAN play for free. It does not imply anything other than that. Everyone adding all these restrictions on a fairly simple definition are obviously not playing a game that meets their needs. Perhaps you should stick to Guild Wars or Diablo. A million dollar venture with massive bandwidth usage is not something that can sit around for free.
They don't make it pay to play because they want people to try out their game and see what it's all about. Having free users gives more content to the paying users. It's as simple as that. Be glad you can decide to drop the game without worrying about canceling a subscription or complaining that you just paid $50+ dollars for a DVD coaster and move on to something that fits you more.
In the end, it is their game and their money that is being spent to keep it running. It's up to them to decide what is best to get a return on investment. Of course, they could make a bad decision but I highly doubt this is one. Game companies come and go and the new companies coming after can choose to learn from those mistakes. So, if it fails, expect to see the next company do it better. If it doesn't fail, expect this to be the norm from now on for free to play games.
Theres more to it then just the incense/curse changes.
Heroics changed, 1 heroic a day, takes 25 clears to get access to all the heroics.
Astral changed, less allods, less drops, considerably harder to clear.
Pvp non-existant.
Xp needed increased hugely
Add onto that the fact that before the patch, you didn't HAVE to pay anything, the items in the cash shop were "want" items.
I have 2 40's in Allods, a legendary geared priest and an astral epic'd Scout, with a ship. Cleared all the quests in the first new zone.. 3 bars into my lvl.. they expect you to grind out the rest, they didn't bother fixing any of the bugs that plague the game either.
Bullshit.
Sure anyone can buy the items on auction from other players, if you have billions of gold it would not be a problem.
I have a lv14 summoner and about 5 gold in my bag that isnt even near enought to get one of my equipment uncursed.
You will expend about four times as much money than you would playing WoW per month just to live and be able to play normaly.
Another problem is that now you die about five times per hour just to try and kill some mobs.
I have played this game on Russian servers and on EU server too. now I just hope they fix this because Allods was the best free mmorpg. WAS!
this horrorable!
Greedy Greedy. People will pay for things they want without complaint. People will not pay for things forced on them by trickery or dishonesty. This game was born in controversey (crooks) and will die ..... again. I really hate the con job F2P games are doing. They are flooding the market with high priced rip offs .... ARRRRRRRRGH
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