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Skyforge: Keeping the Dialog Open About Monetization
SBFord
Former Associate EditorMember LegendaryPosts: 33,129
Skyforge's community manager Maeron has taken to the official forums with a strong statement about the ongoing discussion of the game's monetization strategy. The statement was penned in response to players "pasting" the P2W accusation on Skyforge. According to Maeron, such allegations damage a game's reputation before it has a chance to launch and that players must place some level of trust in the developers creating the game.
Maeron's response is part of the "Will NA/EU Have the Same Cash Shop System as RU?" thread.
Monetization in free to play is often a source of endless debate involving different parties, ranging from the “core freeplayers" to the “compulsive buyers".
One of the challenges of developing a "free to play" is addressing the demands of each party. Once you've formalized and implemented a plan, however, you're still not done.
You often have to communicate with your members and explain the underlying mechanisms of your design – and doing so usually dissipates most concerns and leads to better feedback from players. Over time, both the developers and players grow a better understanding of sustainable commercial practices.
However, these days it's no longer possible since too many people are prone to pasting the term P2W onto pretty much every situation. This behavior is extremely harmful, in the sense that it damages the image of a game before it has even had a chance to reach to its community. One must trust the developers' vision.
It also weakens the dialog between the community and the developers of the game they play.
For these reasons, we will strive to provide answers to our members in need of details regarding our monetization - but in turn, we won't tolerate the word P2W as of today, nor tolerate oversimplification of monetization in topics.
Members participating in the forum this early in the game project ought to allow its community to grow with a sense of responsibility and communication practices that don't undermine their relationship with the skyforge team.
We'll still ask you to respect our rules out of respect for the community that will establish here and align with the developers' views. Once OBT opens in our territories, everyone will have a chance to check the monetization aspects of Skyforge for themselves.
Please note that repeated failure to comply shall result in the removal of your forum rights and beta access.
Check out the rest of the thread at the link above.
What do you think of Maeron's statement? Is it a fair response? Leave us your thoughts in the comments.
Comments
They at least say they're willing to try and answer as much as they can for the tradeoff of not calling their unseen system Pay to Win. One could argue that this is a form of censorship and, therefore, instantly incorrect. However, for all we won't know, it won't be pay to win, and if it seems to be showing pay to win tendencies, we have just been invited to speak up and share our opinions.
Furthermore, if it ends up being pay to win, it won't be because they banned the word. If anything, that will be the time to use it, and the time for the game to really take the hit from it. I think they made a good call here, and I hope that the monetization ends up feeling fair, however they choose to go about it.
Lol @ banning the use of a word. I mean, I know that game forums can and do get toxic and developers get tired of all the explicit and implicit insults thrown their way, but this is a gross overreaction.
I think of this and I can't help getting a mental image of the Seinfeld Soup Nazi... "No discussion for you!"
“Microtransactions? In a single player role-playing game? Are you nuts?”
― CD PROJEKT RED
I know nothing about Skyforge, but if they're introducing items into their cash shop that give a clear advantage to people that pay for them vs people that don't, it's P2W, plain and simple.
Apparently they haven't finalized what's going into their item shop yet so maybe some people are jumping the gun, but it's clear that a majority of people do not want things that can be seen as P2W in the cash shop and the devs have to at least acknowledge that feedback, regardless if they act on it or not.
Its just like they said, it weakens dialogue between the developers and the players giving feedback. This is also beta forums and not regular forums like say here. The main purpose of beta forums is for players to give true feedback about the games mechanics and issues.
Claiming the game is p2w and its going to be terrible and its ArcheAge 2.0 does nothing to help nobody. It only serves to create a disturbance and brings in the sharks to tear at the meat which will keep others away from the scene because of the mess.
I don't think this is an overreaction because its not like they're literally banning the word p2w. They're simply saying if you go on their beta forums, and start blasting them saying they're p2w because f2ps with a cash shop are always p2w or Russian has this so this is p2w or etc, then you're not really giving any feedback and you're not welcome in their beta forums anymore. Also seemed pretty clear it was aimed towards "repeated" offenders.
It is an overly public overreaction. They can warn and ban anyone for any type of toxic behavior - and it's not just the P2W discussion that is toxic. But they should do it the way everyone else in the world does it, discreetly and quietly without a lot of fanfare.
All this does is feed into the P2W discussion frenzy that will just now move to other places they can't control and where it will do more harm... stupid is stupid.
“Microtransactions? In a single player role-playing game? Are you nuts?”
― CD PROJEKT RED
That is true... but ultimately it is just a smoke screen to an even bigger issue...
When people start nit-picking a game to death... it's not because the game is good...
A good game will rise above such things on it's own... a not so good game will succumb to it.
If the developer is worried now, you already know what the outcome will be.
One thing stuck out to me in reading this article.
"One must trust the developers' vision."
What a laugh. Why should we as customers trust any developer these days when they keep giving us these half ass pieces of garbage. I will trust a developer when they stop pushing garbage and actually have passion for their games instead of what can we put in our cash shops that will make us the most money.
If you build a great game people will play it, it is just far to easy these days to put out *&^% and call it a game.
The forum censoring alone wasn't enough, they just deleted all posts around the cash shop from the reddit page aswell, so much for 'Open Dialog'.
I've never seen more red flags around a mmorpg before, I advise anyone interested in the game to do some proper research on it first.
They (the skyforge team) aren't in charge of that, I am. I fully admit to jumping the gun and removing them while I tried to figure out what was actually going on after getting numerous reports on the threads. One of them (to keep the discussion more centralized) is already back up though!
I have not been a follower of this game and I know almost nothing about it but... In my 20 years of online gaming experience, a heavily moderated forum is the first sign that this isnt a game I would enjoy.
I agree that they have an oddly draconian system of policing their forums I never liked that system I still don't There are several things in the GW2 forums you simply cannot say otherwise the thought police come swooping down with their version of their draconian policies.
However, we don't know the billing model they plan to use yet, for people to jump on the P2W bandwagon before anything is released is foolish and I've seen this happen.
Additionally I've seen it happen where people simply cannot accept that a system of progression is A: not equal and B: tied directly to the developers being their own gold sellers as we've seen in games like GW2 with their DR loot system preventing farming a legit passtime in every mmo to date save theirs.
So I wonder what they'll do. Will they continue the Mobile Market takeover of the genre or will it be something good like we've seen in Rift?So we'll see what comes next if it's a seriously messed up loot system hidden behind a cleverly designed currency conversion economy in which even the economist denies that the addition of outside currency coming into the economy is bad then I'd say that everyone's fears are justified but we don't know yet.
People may hate me for doing this but i am going to put my neck on the line and say more than likely this game with be P2W firstly it comes from the allods team and the starter packs didn't cost much and i doubt they covered the cost of the game so they will need revenue come from else where.
The only thing i just hope they don't do like they did with allods they really nerfed farming gold imo i am not sure when it happened as i took a break it may of been when they brought out the currency converter so you could change your gold to cash shop currency.
I was interested in the game because i did play the allods game and loved it, i quit not because of P2W but for other reasons and when i heard a game was coming out made by the allods team it raised my interest but sadly i will not be trying the game i just don't like this action combat call me boring but i love my tab target 123 xd and it wasn't the possibility of it being P2W as i don't mind P2W games.
Actually something similiar happened a couple of years ago a game called dragons prophet was coming out when i first heard about the game i was interested as it was from the creators of runes of magic and i loved that game but sadly again i lost interest because i found out it was action combat and it doesn't interest me but i remember at the time i said this is definetly going to be P2W and what happened it did i may be wrong and someone may correct me but when i went back after the game had launched and cash shop was set up i am sure i saw the currency diamonds to purchase stuff from the cashop just like runes of magic.
Anna xx
The misrepresentation of this games actual features, along with the misleading forums posts about the cash shop not allowing you to bypass weekly caps, really makes me question the ethics of the developers.
Also, to begin the gross over-censorship of multiple forums before the game even launches, completely deleting whole threads, and banning users for using (common) terms like P2W seems like a very draconian way of running things.
If ever there was a reason to not trust a company, this is it!
EDIT: The mere fact that they are censoring the WORD P2W and its DISCUSSION should be a huge red flag on how P2W it really is
Why can't more developers be more honest like R2Games is? R2Games outright said for their business model, "Pay to win is acceptable." (they even had it as a bulletin point in writing in their presentation!) and they STILL make money hand over fist.
Come on, Developers. If your game is pay-to-win, stop making excuses and just embrace it like R2Games did. Apparently it's not going to hurt your revenue anyways (if anything, it'll attract those big bloated whales that love paying to win in the first place).
And if you can't see that being able to buy a ton of in-game EVERYTHING above and beyond the caps that everyone else can is pay-to-win, then......... um, oh well. R2Games sees that as pay-to-win and they make millions a month. Other developers who already do the same thing but try to pretend they don't might as well embrace that fact and make millions a month too.
The Community Manager Maeron apologized:
"In no way did we intend to censor anyone. We respect all opinions and are open to all feedback from our community. Closing this topic and our post above (now strikethrough) was a mistake and we apologize. At the same time we want you to note that we would like to address any question you have and would love to know your personal impressions of the game after you have played it.
We appreciate your feedback, please keep it coming!
Thank you"
That was fast! My first question that came into my mind: Is it P2W?
(Link: http://sf.my.com/us//forum/index.php?page=Thread&threadID=8469&pageNo=2&s=b86c45757f2c8014d36af361b8cc87059a0a5447 )
See you space cowboys
the skyforge team didnt check themselves before they shrekt themselves
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Streisand_effect
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