Oh boy, I really haven't played this game in a while. And wasn't on this forum for a while as well. And I also logined just to post this, so I would be really pleased if anyone reads this crappy big-*** comment I'm about to make :C
I've played quite a lot of different MMORPG's in my lifetime, popular and not very, but I've seen only a single one of them to meet a really tragic end. That was my first and favorite MMO game at that time as well. Warhammer Online: The Age of Reckoning, the game made by EA Mythic (Same guys who made Dark Age of Camelot) and distributed by Electroic Arts (Obviously).
A little info about the game.
It was REALLY fun back in the day. Massive RvR (realm vs realm) battles with fun castle/capital sieges, pretty fun PvP, PvP scenarios and different PvP modes, four original classes per race and six races to chose from. And on top of that, everything was based on Warhammer lore. How cool is dat, eh? On the downsides, it lacked PvE content, but people were fine with it. Nobody played that game for PvE anyways (If you're interested, you can take a look at this site. Fans are desperately trying to revive the game). Some people even called this fun game "WoW-killer", heh.
And now let's talk about business model of the game.
I'm not sure about ingame purchases, since this was so long ago, but I remember that this game was B2P with montly subscription. I believe that at launch (2008) the game didn't have any sorts of demo's or trials, so I've bought it right at the moment it was released. I believe it cost me about 30-40 USD at my place (It also probably was 2x times of the actual price, since I lived in Ukraine back in the day). That package had the base game and 30-day subscription. If I recall things right, 30-day prepaid cards were around 20-30 USD at my place as well. Still, I was happy to have it.
Thing is, before abandoning this game, I've only played around three months. Those were fun times were I met new people, made my own guild and was having fun while besieging castles and murdering people. But at some point, pretty close to the endgame, I've understood that I'm bored and this game isn't fun for me anymore. I've understood that this thing doesn't cost those money I pay for the subscription and so, I've abandoned it. At least until they add some major new content.
And they did. Some major content patches went live. One of them added undead egyptian-themed location, and I even tried getting back into the game. But once again, it became boring pretty fast, since there wasn't that much content in there in the first place, so I regreted spending so much money instead of actually buying something for myself D: At that point, I've completely dumped the game.
I was happy to see that at some point the game went "F2P" like I thought at the time. "Play for free. Forever" (or something like that) was stated on the main page. But in reality, that was just a big limited trial with more than half of the game content taken out. That made me think that EA is in desperate need for some new players, since that was a pretty "nice" move for a big evil corporation :^)
But that didn't help. The game was closed in 2013, because EA was too greedy and refused to make the game go F2P till the very end (And it probably was too late as well). People abandoned it just like me, since the game just didn't cost that they were charging, became obsolete and there were other new F2P (and B2P subscription free) MMORPG's to chose from. Guild Wars 2 was one of them.
This is how you kill a game. You just refuse to rework your marketing strategy and lose faith of your playerbase. You stop actually making something new for the game and it dies. Just like that. Although, to be fair, I'm quite impressed it managed to hold out for 5 years.
And now let's compare it to a newer MMORPG, a japanese one, made by SEGA. The game's name is Phantasy Star Online 2(or PSO2).
It's a completely different game, an MMO dungeon crawler, focused only on PvE content, and it has fast and action-packed gameplay with bossfights that feel and look like ones in Monster Hunter. Considering that two games are completely different, it may sound silly if we try to compare them, but hey, why not?
Let's look at business model of the game.
The game is completely F2P, it has cash shop and something called "Premium account". But I must say that SEGA did a pretty decent job with their cash shop.
It has different vanity items which make your life easier to a certaing degree, just like "Premium account" does. Nothing too luxurious, "Premium" just gives you increased storage, ability to trade stuff/buy rare items, bigger player home and some minor boosts (most of these things are easily obtained for free). 30 days of premium cost less than 10 USD. On top of that, the game has something known as "AC scratch".
Basically, imagine having a golden chaos chest with new items (accessories, costumes, skintypes, haristyles. Pretty much anything for your character customization + really helpful things to enhance gameplay) and old "revived" items for something under 2 USD. For around 4-5 USD you can get a bigger chest that will give you a whole random SET of items. That sounds cheap, right? It totally does for me. You get pretty much awesome HIGH QUALITY models/effects/animations/skins for a cheap price (here's an example of an AC scratch), and new scratches come out at least 2 times per month (and special scrathces come out on major holidays).
Now, let's look at the ingame economy.
Because of how affordable cash shop is, I could buy pretty much every costume/decoration I liked from the player market on my first week of casually playing the game. Things are CHEAP (most of them. Prices range drastically on certain items). People buy AC scratches, get new items and if it's something they don't want - they just sell it on player market. Considering pricing of those things - players still earn lots of profit even if they don't get what they want. And if you're lucky enough to get something extra popular - you're instantly getting very rich. Affordable prices and new things two times per month. That's why with each patch players spend dozens of dollars. They want new awesome things. And they know that they won't lose anything by spending those money, since you can still sell anything with ease.
Why am I even bringing PSO2 here? Because, although completely different, it has a pretty big thing in common with Trove. Character customization.
Basically, character customization in PSO2 is one of it's major things. It has one of the best customization engines in MMO's period. Not to mention SEGA provides new things to customize your character with few times per month. That's one reason for people to absolutely love this game.
Trove, although, once again, being completely different sandbox MMORPG, has a great and diverse character customization. Costumes, weapon skins, masks, hats. Community does a great job, bringing all those awesome items into the game. But what if devs actually followed SEGA's way on top of that?
Doing a lot of small things and additions between large patches (mounts, wings, non-radiant auras and effects, new costumes and recolored old ones, new sets of weapon skins and accessories. Anything of that sort) that people will like/want and making them affordable, yet random. Won't that make people spend more and actually be happy with it and also stabilise the player market a tiny bit? I mean, it's not like it's harder to make a voxel model instead of an actual 3D model with all those textures and everything. It takes dedication and some work, yet still, it's possible even for a small dev team. Modders also do a lot of work on that part of the game as well. And they would be pretty glad to help improving the game, I bet.
To clarify, I love Trove and don't want to see it having the same fate as other cash-heavy MMO's had. I want it to develop and improve, if anything. Even if it's something as small as deco-items. And I don't think that placing more cash labels on existing items is going to help in any way.
What do you guys think of that? And how would you like to see cash shop in Trove?
I've played quite a lot of different MMORPG's in my lifetime, popular and not very, but I've seen only a single one of them to meet a really tragic end. That was my first and favorite MMO game at that time as well. Warhammer Online: The Age of Reckoning, the game made by EA Mythic (Same guys who made Dark Age of Camelot) and distributed by Electroic Arts (Obviously).
A little info about the game.
It was REALLY fun back in the day. Massive RvR (realm vs realm) battles with fun castle/capital sieges, pretty fun PvP, PvP scenarios and different PvP modes, four original classes per race and six races to chose from. And on top of that, everything was based on Warhammer lore. How cool is dat, eh? On the downsides, it lacked PvE content, but people were fine with it. Nobody played that game for PvE anyways (If you're interested, you can take a look at this site. Fans are desperately trying to revive the game). Some people even called this fun game "WoW-killer", heh.
And now let's talk about business model of the game.
I'm not sure about ingame purchases, since this was so long ago, but I remember that this game was B2P with montly subscription. I believe that at launch (2008) the game didn't have any sorts of demo's or trials, so I've bought it right at the moment it was released. I believe it cost me about 30-40 USD at my place (It also probably was 2x times of the actual price, since I lived in Ukraine back in the day). That package had the base game and 30-day subscription. If I recall things right, 30-day prepaid cards were around 20-30 USD at my place as well. Still, I was happy to have it.
Thing is, before abandoning this game, I've only played around three months. Those were fun times were I met new people, made my own guild and was having fun while besieging castles and murdering people. But at some point, pretty close to the endgame, I've understood that I'm bored and this game isn't fun for me anymore. I've understood that this thing doesn't cost those money I pay for the subscription and so, I've abandoned it. At least until they add some major new content.
And they did. Some major content patches went live. One of them added undead egyptian-themed location, and I even tried getting back into the game. But once again, it became boring pretty fast, since there wasn't that much content in there in the first place, so I regreted spending so much money instead of actually buying something for myself D: At that point, I've completely dumped the game.
I was happy to see that at some point the game went "F2P" like I thought at the time. "Play for free. Forever" (or something like that) was stated on the main page. But in reality, that was just a big limited trial with more than half of the game content taken out. That made me think that EA is in desperate need for some new players, since that was a pretty "nice" move for a big evil corporation :^)
But that didn't help. The game was closed in 2013, because EA was too greedy and refused to make the game go F2P till the very end (And it probably was too late as well). People abandoned it just like me, since the game just didn't cost that they were charging, became obsolete and there were other new F2P (and B2P subscription free) MMORPG's to chose from. Guild Wars 2 was one of them.
This is how you kill a game. You just refuse to rework your marketing strategy and lose faith of your playerbase. You stop actually making something new for the game and it dies. Just like that. Although, to be fair, I'm quite impressed it managed to hold out for 5 years.
And now let's compare it to a newer MMORPG, a japanese one, made by SEGA. The game's name is Phantasy Star Online 2(or PSO2).
It's a completely different game, an MMO dungeon crawler, focused only on PvE content, and it has fast and action-packed gameplay with bossfights that feel and look like ones in Monster Hunter. Considering that two games are completely different, it may sound silly if we try to compare them, but hey, why not?
Let's look at business model of the game.
The game is completely F2P, it has cash shop and something called "Premium account". But I must say that SEGA did a pretty decent job with their cash shop.
It has different vanity items which make your life easier to a certaing degree, just like "Premium account" does. Nothing too luxurious, "Premium" just gives you increased storage, ability to trade stuff/buy rare items, bigger player home and some minor boosts (most of these things are easily obtained for free). 30 days of premium cost less than 10 USD. On top of that, the game has something known as "AC scratch".
Basically, imagine having a golden chaos chest with new items (accessories, costumes, skintypes, haristyles. Pretty much anything for your character customization + really helpful things to enhance gameplay) and old "revived" items for something under 2 USD. For around 4-5 USD you can get a bigger chest that will give you a whole random SET of items. That sounds cheap, right? It totally does for me. You get pretty much awesome HIGH QUALITY models/effects/animations/skins for a cheap price (here's an example of an AC scratch), and new scratches come out at least 2 times per month (and special scrathces come out on major holidays).
Now, let's look at the ingame economy.
Because of how affordable cash shop is, I could buy pretty much every costume/decoration I liked from the player market on my first week of casually playing the game. Things are CHEAP (most of them. Prices range drastically on certain items). People buy AC scratches, get new items and if it's something they don't want - they just sell it on player market. Considering pricing of those things - players still earn lots of profit even if they don't get what they want. And if you're lucky enough to get something extra popular - you're instantly getting very rich. Affordable prices and new things two times per month. That's why with each patch players spend dozens of dollars. They want new awesome things. And they know that they won't lose anything by spending those money, since you can still sell anything with ease.
Why am I even bringing PSO2 here? Because, although completely different, it has a pretty big thing in common with Trove. Character customization.
Basically, character customization in PSO2 is one of it's major things. It has one of the best customization engines in MMO's period. Not to mention SEGA provides new things to customize your character with few times per month. That's one reason for people to absolutely love this game.
Trove, although, once again, being completely different sandbox MMORPG, has a great and diverse character customization. Costumes, weapon skins, masks, hats. Community does a great job, bringing all those awesome items into the game. But what if devs actually followed SEGA's way on top of that?
Doing a lot of small things and additions between large patches (mounts, wings, non-radiant auras and effects, new costumes and recolored old ones, new sets of weapon skins and accessories. Anything of that sort) that people will like/want and making them affordable, yet random. Won't that make people spend more and actually be happy with it and also stabilise the player market a tiny bit? I mean, it's not like it's harder to make a voxel model instead of an actual 3D model with all those textures and everything. It takes dedication and some work, yet still, it's possible even for a small dev team. Modders also do a lot of work on that part of the game as well. And they would be pretty glad to help improving the game, I bet.
To clarify, I love Trove and don't want to see it having the same fate as other cash-heavy MMO's had. I want it to develop and improve, if anything. Even if it's something as small as deco-items. And I don't think that placing more cash labels on existing items is going to help in any way.
What do you guys think of that? And how would you like to see cash shop in Trove?