https://www.shroudoftheavatar.com/?page_id=77345It's a buy once to play forever game with free to play options every month now and the option for a subscription on the way. But they still need to launch. How's this going to work being F2P, B2P, and Subs all at the same time?
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"People who tell you youre awesome are useless. No, dangerous.
They are worse than useless because you want to believe them. They will defend you against critiques that are valid. They will seduce you into believing you are done learning, or into thinking that your work is better than it actually is." ~Raph Koster
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That means they will have the game for $40.00, but also for free to level 50, and they plan to keep telethons going every month even after commercial launch. Subscriptions will even tie into the telethons. Darkstarr said they will make it possible that some subscription levels offer pre pay into the telethons so you get all the stretch goals even if you miss the stream.
Now all they have to do is make a game that people want to play. I think they have every possible payment plan covered now.
The way he says it all the subs will be optional, so if they're like the rest of the store it'll probably be just another way to buy decos. Bundles can cost many thousands of dollars, some are even $14k and those come with rare decos, weapons, and armor. Probably the subs will come with a similar setup. Chris already mentioned that the subs could cost as much as $50 a month.
Now add in the fact that the cash shop allows you to buy player run cities for $12,000. This is a big P2W piece that pissed off everyone. But it had to be done because the B2P setup didnt work with this game.
In Truth the best thing this game can do is shut down, rebuilt itself as a true UO2 replacement MMORPG. With a Subscription model that is priced about the same as UO currently is. Get rid of the current cash shop. Also no purchase price to the game. Just a Sub Only game. Yea you can do a a F2P trial that would give people a month or 2 of game time to get them into the game. But do not design the game with a B2P/F2P mind set. Do straight up P2P period.
This is coming from someone who played UO from 1998 until 2003 when SWG came out. I loved UO. The only reason I do not play UO today is the game from Pub 16 on was never the same. I was even OK with the cash shop stuff in UO 2002 with buying character level ups, because really they only took a month or 2 of time off your skill curve. I remember only getting .1% towards Provoke and Taming in my power hour.
They also need to redo the entire combat system. Having different abilities come up at different times and so on. Nope not fun. I dont like random card game combat setup.
This game suffers to a great extent from the B2P F2P crowd that does not like subscriptions but does not realize that Subscriptions for MMORPGs when the market is not over saturated like it is right now is the best way to go. This game can learn a lot from Ashes of Creation which I am more interested in than the current game.
If this game can become a very well rounded PVE sandbox MMO a lot of people would play it. You can have PVP in this as well with PVP Zones and SWG like PVP Flagging.
That's just the base costs. You don't get any land deeds or houses when you buy a player owned town, you just get the scene. Land, houses, and decorations are all extra. It was a long time ago but some folks in the forums figured out how much it would cost to load up a town with land deeds and houses and it was way over $100,000.00 and that didn't include any decorations which will set you back thousands for each house if people let themselves get taken in by the cash shop.
Porta says their towns are good for about half their profits, but that was last year. Probably now their towns are 100% of their profits since they offer a F2P option now.
SOTA was a clear B2P with no subscription and based everything off the cash shop. Its not working.
That's some wishful thinking right there.
Everything about this game is wishful thinking. They've been in persistence for more than a year, actually like 18 months now and half of the people voting on their forum poll about subs are saying no. There's no wipe before launch so basically the only people that are going to play this game are already there and half of them are saying no. They will still do it, the subs and they'll play it off and just censor the negative posts in the forums until people stop complaining. It's what they do.