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In this week's Devil's Advocate, Victor takes a look at the recent F2P announcement from Trion Worlds' Rift and why it's a good thing all around for everyone.
Trion Worlds has to be one of the most outstanding companies in the MMO world today in terms of treating customers right, however, so while I expected RIFT to shift its revenue model eventually due to market forces and feedback, I didn't expect the degree of clarity to which they maintained a particular vision for their revenue model shift.
Read the rest of Victor's The Devil's Advocate: Loving RIFT's Shift.
Try to be excellent to everyone you meet. You never know what someone else has seen or endured.
Comments
A sure sign that you are in an old, dying paradigm/mindset, is when you are scared of new ideas and new technology. Don't feel bad. The world is moving on without you, and you are welcome to yell "Get Off My Lawn!" all you want while it happens. You cannot, however, stop an idea whose time has come.
GJ once more TRION. Already me and some guild m8's from wow and gw2 are back to RIFT.
Thx for the real F2P model
"The problem is that the hardcore folks always want the same thing: 'We want exactly what you gave us before, but it has to be completely different.'
-Jesse Schell
"Online gamers are the most ludicrously entitled beings since Caligula made his horse a senator, and at least the horse never said anything stupid."
-Luke McKinney
If you had followed the reddit conversation on the game they have already said there will be gear in the store, it will only be gear that is only available through vendors, and it wont be the top tier raid gear, so expect dungeon token gear to be in the shop.
well I see 1 P2W item in the store already
they 10% permanent mount speed is a must purchase for all players, especially pvpers
I'll reserve judgement until I see the implementation, but I will continue my subscription for now.
I'm not against cash shops. But typically they offer things I don't want or need. Hopefully Rift will offer some fluff that I can't resist.
I currently subscribe to Rift and even I can see this cash shop is a p2w move by Trion. P2W does NOT only imply being able to buy end-game gear in the cash shop. P2W means being able to buy ANY item that is not cosmetic and affects your stats in combat, whether it is gear or skill boosts. Anyone who thinks otherwise is just fooling themselves.
I used to think that Lotro had the worst P2W system out there, but it looks like Trion wants to get greedy too. Cash shops should be ONLY for cosmetic items. The inability to fill the cash shop with enough cosmetic categories only lends to the impression that the devs lack in creativity.
You're right and Trion showed as much too in the livestream today on Twitch.
It takes one to know one.
These guys are awesome. I love Trion!
All these other Devs have described themselves as gamers who understand gamers and know what they want, but Trion is the only company that actually delivers on that phrase. The rest are just posers.
But I'm also one of those filthy casuals who could care less about the raids so...
Playing: TSW, D&D NW, Defiance (more the tv show than game >.> ) LotRO, DCUO
I don't know where all of you guys are coming from with the ''we were already doing this indirectly'' .... You guys were paying REAL money to other players for gear ? Wtf people ? I've never done nor seen ANYONE do that in a real no cash shop game...
And saying that they will sell expert-level gear so you cannot go straight into raiding is false. They will sell the second best tier of gear; meaning if T2 raids are out, then it's T1 raid gear in the shop... That's been established already...
Soo good that they fired alot of their employees. (up to 80% if you believe some of the reads, which I don't) If this ain't dying its pretty darn close.
Got the 6 month subscription when Rift first came out it was a decent game but I only played for 2-3 months before becoming bored of the rifts always popping in the same place on a timer with the same mobs. (to me thats not dynamic)
I wish it all the luck with the F2P crowd (ie the type that tends to demand more while all the time paying nothing or very little from what I've seen.)
Absolutely this is P2W! I have played Rift since Beta (with a moderate break for personal reasons) and I knew Trion was in trouble when they laid off a good chunk of their employees. So I guess that this is to be expected, but P2W is too much, I'll miss Rift.
As long as the expert dungeon gear remains as easy to obtain ingame as it is at the moment, I wouldn't be concerned about any P2W going on. I mean, planar gear, PvP gear and raid gear are all better than it. Expert dungeon gear is the base level 60 gear, well chronicle gear is the basic with ED gear just above it. It won't let anyone skip the dungeons either.. because you can get raid gear tokens for running random dungeon dailies if you choose to.
I'd rather they didn't do it, of course, but I don't think it's going to affect anything. Really though, it's more like pay to get started at endgame. The only reason you'd need to do that though is if you straight up levelled a character with only Instant Adventures and had no gear. If you played normally, you definitely wouldn't need to buy any gear... you'd be pretty stupid if you did.
As for the Patron status. I too think it isn't worth it. They sent out a questionnaire to subscribers asking about the patron status. Hopefully they will listen to some people. Once my 12 month sub is over I won't be subbing again if there are no changes to it... just can't see the point.
Rift
You really think the range of patronage benefits are generous? It's basically some boosts in a game where XP and such is easy to come by and some items that most veterans have. Even the boosts at 10% are hardly worth the cost of entry. And given that you do not get a shop stipend it doesn't seem like a very worthwhile deal.
As a subscriber since launch I will be ending my subscription as it doesn't seem remotely worth the money. I suppose I should be happy that now I won't have to pay but I fear it will go the route of LoTRO and it's ever present pushes to give them money. At which point I will leave.