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Runes and Diamonds
ninjajucer
Member Posts: 219
So with the CS (cash shop) now open, it seems that greed has overtaken common sense. In terms of PvP the game has become unplayable unless you are willing to shell out some real life cash to make you items undroppable. In PvE the various items that boost this or that crafting skill, exp boosting items, permanent horses, daily resets, etc.; the list goes on. These are all game-breaking items. I would have rather seen a few items that boost exp or something and more in the way of decorative items much the way other games work their own CS's. To me this is a slap in the face, the makers of this game have clearly shown they are in it for the money, and with the current recession in the US, this game has become a money pit.
You'd have to spend many, many dollars to get the items needed to get your character the way you want it. 395 Diamonds (about $25 to $30) for a permanent mount, more for extra storage and even more for resets and the like. I'll admit that most of the people who play this game are below the age of 18 and probably do not have a mortgage, car payments, and other bills, and thus have the money to spend on this sort.
My point is that with this newest event, in which you can do the free thing of planting a rose and growing it and whatnot, but you need to spend real life cash to actually gain set pieces, or any of the other items available for reward. Add to that the many still untranslated quests and npcs, the many balancing bugs, class bugs and missing classes, and all the various other bugs, it is clear that Frogster and Runewalker have decided that the way to go forward with this game is with a game changing CS.
I could spend a monthly fee on a P2P game and get better quality than this. I doubt I will be playing this game much longer, and will probably get banned for this post, but suffice to say, I do not intend to continue to play a game whose main focus is a CS and making it so that if you don't pay, then your not going to be able to compete with the ones that do pay.
In these hard economic times, making this CS the way it is and what it has to offer is just a slap in the face of many dedicated gamers. I really did like playing this game, but, I think I'd rather find something else than continue.
This game had promise, but it has clearly become more expensive than any P2P game in the market now. Such a shame for something that held such promise.
Comments
I quitted the game 2 weeks after launch after reaching lvl 50. Finally someone realizes that this game and its CS fucking suck, you got it dude, P2Ps have better quality and you pay less.
Gotta love the cheap skates that want a quality game but don't want to pay for it.
Trust me guys, they won't miss any free loaders quitting the game because of the CS. You get what you pay for.
Ok, so your willing to shell out hundreds of dollars to get the very best in items and advantages and fully support that idea?
I played a lot of F2P games, and a lot of them had cash shops that in no way impacted heavily upon the gameplay.
My final straw was the newest event, where to get any type of prize you had to buy the rune item with real cash. That takes some major greed to put an event like that into the game.
An example of why RoM CS sucks compared to others? Perfect World has a CS. They also have a successful, yet pure grind MMO. They have similiar items that boost this or give this or that bonus. They also have one feature that RoM does not have, the ability to sell the CS items for in-game gold. RoM has made virtually everything Bound on Equip. Especially the CS items. Most of the better armor and weapons cannot be sold once used. Sets cannot be sold. Oh sure, you can buy an item to unbind the items, but again, that takes RL money and its a one use per item thing.
No, this game and its producers have shown their true colors. Additionally they pushed out the CS before fixing all the other translation, balancing, bugged skills, bugged quests, missing crafting supplies, the list goes on. This is an example of pure unmitigated greed.
you are such a noob dude, if you knew b4 talking you wouldnt trashtalk so much, i was the SECOND mage in Smatch pvp server hitting lvl 50 after rush, using cash shop and some bugged elite mamoths, but the fact is that every hgih lvl ppl around thought the same about this. The game has nothing else more to offer, 90% you see there, is what youll see in release (patched ofc). you just have to realize it, anyway, i suppose you arent lvl 50 yet.
Maybe, maybe not. The great thing about a F2P/CS game is I get to decide if it's worth me paying or not. Unlike pay to play games, you have no choice (unless you consider quitting a choice).
Also, who says you HAVE to have the "very best items"? Maybe I'm ok with the no CS items and I can upgrade slowly over time by buying a few diamonds here and there until I have enough saved up. Nobody is forcing you to go out and buy everything you need to max out your char all at once. The good news is you can spend nothing and still play.
And another thing, you can't fault them for wanting to make money off of the game. Greed? Isn't the point of every (for profit) business to make money? Does that mean every business is greedy because they won't give their products and services away from free?
It sounds to me like you want to get away with playing the game for months and months and give them very little (if any) money for the entertainment you receive. Would you rather RoM be just another crappy MMO with a non-essential CS like all the other F2P games? Yeah like there's not enough of them around.
Well forgive me but I'm having a hard time understanding your broken english and what your points have to do with the topic of the cash shop. Are you saying nobody can hit level 50 without cash shop items? We both know that's false.
Missing content is a completely different problem than what the OP is referring to.
The 500 diamond package costs $21.99, or about $.0439 cents per diamond . . . a permanent horse would cost about $17.38 (395 diamonds X .044 cents). Round it up to $.05 cents and that would be $19.75.
Dunno if I'd buy one myself, I have gotten along fine without one, but it's not $25 - $30 for a horse.
Been playing since the start of open beta, and as my 2nd month of gameplay approaches, I guess I could justify to myself that the approx $17 - $20 mount (choose whatever number floats your boat) covers those 2 months while I was playing the game . . . absolutely free. That's about $8.50 to $10.00 per month and I still have 105 diamonds left.
I have played many P2P games and over the years WOW has taken up more of my money. $50 for the game plus another $70 for the 2 expac's plus about $15 a month for over 3 years and you have a number around $650-$700. I do not mind the money as I enjoyed playing WOW, HOWEVER, with games like these, I find it more geared for the player who cannot afford to spend 40hrs plus a week to get the best items. In all honesty, it makes sense for a company to make a game where the player can purchase a few items to help them out. Every game has its haters and lovers, can't make everyone happy. Atleast with these CS games people can DL the game play it and then decide if it is worth any money to them, rather than the WOW where you have to buy the game then decide if it is worht paying for each month, then being forced to play X amount of hours to get the best items.
DDA
If I don't want to spend money I don't have too and can keep playing. It was free to download, free to play as much as you want, and how much to spend is up to you. P2P you aren't in control of your spending, you will pay or you will not play at all.
I personally like this idea, in the long run it is far cheaper for the player.
Sadly the quality of games like this is almost always less than the quality of P2P games.
When you want to be the best or try to be in the top 100 in a server in a F2P game it WILL cost you a TON of money. We are talking 70-100 dollars a month. Because you know those people are blowing money like crazy.
Personally I rather play on an Even playing field with EVERYONE else and pay 10-15 bucks montly to play the game, than play a game and be able to get some what far into it and then find out that I need to spend tons of money on it If I want to stay highly competitive in the end game. A perfect example of rip offs like this are
Sword of the new world
Cabal online
Atlantica online
Shaiya
I am sure RoM will join this list in a few years too. They will keep it quite fair and balanced for the first year or 2 then you will start seeing additions to the game that innitially seem like its to benefit the player, but you have to remember F2P companies don't do ANYTHING to ever benefit the player if they can't make money off it.
Sadly the thought that F2P games are of lesser quality then P2P is evaporating and Runes of Magic is only the first of these games sustained by a cash shop with gameplay similar to P2P. Wait until Free Realms comes out, The Agency ect..
Also it's now becoming very difficult to dertermine value of these games. If you are not into the whole must compete mentality and just want to play a game and have fun then a cash shop is great because you are also able to control your spending, if you spend anything at all.
With P2P the spending is controlled for you, until now that is. What will people do who must be competitive when cash shops are everywhere including P2P games? This is becoming a very serious topic for many because of the recession as pointed out by the OP, which is also why RoM is more popular then it would have been if it had been coming out last year. A lot of people no longer see P2P games as a great value, or will axe secondary accounts and play F2P games instead of paying for two P2P MMOs and so on.
It's a matter of perspective, a short while ago I would have agreed that with P2P you get more for your money, but SOE totally proved me wrong on that with Eq/EQ2 getting cash shops, and that is only the beginning.
QQ
(,,,)=^__^=(,,,)
Well, technically you don't have to spend money to play. There is (or will be) a diamond exchange, so you can buy diamonds with in game gold. I was reading that they took it out because they took a huge hit because of credit card fraud. But, as soon as they work out the kinks, they are going to be bringing it back.
Gold is terribly easy to get, right now. But, as soon as the exchange opens up, there is going to be a huge demand for diamonds. So, of course the price in gold will go insanely high. But that is how it usually is.
So, basically you can play for free, techincally. I say techincally, because you are not paying for the diamonds, but someone has to.
I thought this was a very interesting debate. In essence you are looking at balancing the "time rich cash poor" versus the "cash rich time poor" customer.
In reality a CS is certainly a mechanic to balance, at least some of the masses..though ofcource this will not be to the taste of many.
This is an interesting thread. Especially for this game. Im looking at the item shop right now and to be honest, there is nothing in there that is a MUST have. There are no weapons or armor to buy, consumables are mostly for exp gain or skill resets. I dont even know if the pets actually do anything besides follow you around. the only thing that could be wanted is the stuff to upgrade your armor and weapons and even those are still chance based. I could see this discussion meaning something IF they really sold nice weapons and armor in the shop but they dont. So the rest of this stuff seems kinda picky. To be honest, if the only thing they sold in there was mounts and or exp potions, people would still complain because the others that buy them could travel faster or gain exp quicker than them. Sorry, I just dont see the problem with it.
Cash shop items such as mounts don't bother me at all. That's not going to impact on your ability to compete. If others want to pay cash for mounts all good and well as that's money going into the game. I suppose players spending hundreds of dollars is a double-edged sword. On one hand it means they have all the best gear, but then it means funds to develop the game that I don't have to contribute. I'm playing PWI, AO and RoM right now. I'll see how it develops and if I need to buy items to compete as I level up.
Ok, did a little test today. Now I may have just been really lucky or the CS armor upgrade crystals are really that much better then the ones they give you in the free bag. I bought 10 and tried them on various pieces of armor and never failed once on all 10. I got 2 items to +3 and some +2 and +1 and had no failures. At one point I will try to do +6 on an item and see what happens but it definatly does appear that they work better as I was never able to get anything above +1 when I tried it with the freebees they give you due to extreme failures. Out of 10 of those you were lucky if you got +1 on maybe 2 items. I wasted 10 once on 1 item and on the last try I got a +1 out of it because it kept dropping the item on each failure. Now this isn't going to make you uber but it can definatly help with your stats, that is for sure.
Ok, did more testing today....
I got plenty of failures but it appears that you can get almost anything to +3 without any trouble. After that is when I started seeing a lot of failures. I think I was able to raise a couple items to +4 but after about 70 diamonds worth, it really didnt seem worth it to keep trying to get it any higher, especially at my level. My tests was on jewlery and armor. You seem to get much better bang for your buck with the jewlery ones than you do with the armor ones. I got two items to +25% crit chance and +25% magic crit chance each. Man that would be the bomb for a fighter type.