Further Impressions

Reposted from the official boards:

I've now played several characters through Corsica and Earthrise, trying to take in as much as possible and I've gotten a few characters to Anglorum and even to Camelot. Update 01/19/2010 - I've now played several characters up to 20, though Anglorum. Update 07/29/2010: I've now played several characters up to about level 25 through a couple of areas in Europe. Here's are my further thoughts:

Skill system

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  No skill trees - yay!!!!
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  Free respecs, at will (that I've seen so far - please correct me if I'm wrong) - yay!!! Update 01/19/2010 - respecs are free up to a certain level, but only cost coin, thereafter.  You don't need to pay credits for a respec, nor do you have to complete a quest. Update 07/29/2010: Respecs are no longer free at any level.  Instead of charging coin for some skills, respecs now have a scaling monetary cost.  That cost is, IMO, prohibitively expensive if you only want to swap out a single skill, however, since it's for resetting all ability points.
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  Multiple tiers of skills, unlocked at specific levels - pretty standard
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  Multiple levels of skills, unlocked at specific levels - fairly common (think adding points to a skill to increase it's effectiveness, a la Runes of Magic)
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  Skills specific to and usable only by their core classes - pretty standard
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  Skills specific to classes, but usable by all.  Want to be a  knight who casts a druid spell to pull? Knock yourself out!  I'm very interested to see how this works out.  Theoretically, this will allow for interesting hybrid builds, but how effective will the hybrids truly be due to stat system limitations? Update 01/19/2010:  there are some skills that can be used by other classes, but will never be as effective as when used by the primary class.  Then again, there are some that are very effectively used by other classes.  One negative, IMO, is that there are prerequisites for some skills.  For example, I was excited to use the Druid skill "Deathly" on my Knight at level 20.  Deathly adds a death damage buff to my auto-attacks.  That's great!  Unfortunately, I needed to take two other skills I was never going to use in order to unlock Deathly, even though I'd reached the appropriate level to use it.
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  "classless" healing spells - woohoo!  Anybody can heal Update 01/19/2010: anybody can heal, but those with high Spirit (in other words, druids) do it best.
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  "classless" travel spells - yippeee!
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  weapon specialization - a nice touch for a little extra bonus to damage Update 01/19/2010:  Available at level 30.
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  "classless" buff/debuff spells - very nice!
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  Reagents - some spells require them (buffs, debuffs and transportation spells), others don't.  I think this is ok, but I worry about players charging others for buffs and ports

I'm pretty impressed with the skills system.  Overall, I think it's one of the best features of the game!  It's deep, allows for tremendous customization and, while I think there will still be "cookie cutter" builds for damage, I think there will still be variety in the builds.

Credit shop

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  Credits - 100 credits/$1 USD with bonus credits for buying in bulk.  Credits are sold in blocks for $5, $10, $25, $50, $100 and $250.  Alternately, you can earn credits by completing various requirements from advertisers (buying something, renting dvds, etc...).  I don't mind paying for credits and I'd love to see EE game cards at 7-11 and other merchants, but I despise the idea of earning credits, especially since the primary player base seems to be teens who might not fully grasp all of the issues surrounding the marketing offers, privacy concerns, spam, etc.. (Updated 04/27/2010)  I've changed my opinion on earning credits, at least to a certain extent.  I've experimented with it through doing surveys and completing an offer and have personally earned over 4000 credits (~$40 USD worth of credits).  it would be hypocritical of me to say that I didn't benefit from earning the credits.  That being said, I still have concerns about teens and naive individuals using offers, some of which inundate you with spam and texts, may actually cost you quite a bit of money and--in some cases--install very hard to remove software on your PC. I've seen so many questions and comments regarding earning credits through surveys that I even wrote a guide about it.
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  Credit exchange - players are allowed to buy credits from other players with in game gold.  This feature can be very cool, but is also fraught with peril, as evidenced by the struggles Frogster has had with something similar in Runes of Magic.  Frogster has experienced massive fraud and chargebacks related to diamond (their credit currency) purchases and the in game economy suffered greatly due to most items in the auction house being offered for diamonds only.  As a result, Frogster had to change it's policies to allow diamonds to be traded for gold only and diamond purchases are subject to a 30 day wait before you can use them for non-credit shop purchases (in other words, buy them and use them in the credit shop, but wait 30 days if you want to use them in the auction house).  If Sparkplay isn't careful, they'll suffer something similar. Update 01/19/2010:  The credit exchange is managed by Sparkplay, not players.  Players simply post the amounts they're offering or want.  Here are some screenshots: 
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  There have already been incidents where parties have tried to abuse or manipulate the credit shop, however, Sparkplay seems to have addressed this quickly.
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  Variety - six types of items can be purchased in the credit shop: Consumables (potions and tomes),  Charms (increase stats, can equip up to six at a time), Armor (looks only - you have to use an armor refashioner in game to slot stats from one piece onto the piece you purchased), Bags (so far only one, but it has 24 slots), Miscellaneous (Reagent regenerators, Grinders and Transmuters - basically convenience items) and a Last Name Change.  I like the variety, but I have concerns about they types of items and how they'll affect PvP (should it ever be introduced).  Will PvP simply become a matter of who's willing to pay more?  Personally, I can't stand that.  I'm ok with buying stat buffs in a non-competitive environment, but as soon as competition is involved the game changes, as far as I'm concerned.
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  Price - prices start off reasonable, but can get pretty pricey. The range from as little as 30 credits to 6000.  To put it into perspective, the cheapest item can be bought 3 for $1 USD, the most expensive is $60.  Please note, the cheapest items generally have very short durations (as little as 2 hours to 24 hours - all hours are real time from the moment of purchase, not elapsed play time).  What do I consider reasonable?  A 2 hour 30% boost to all earned XP when killing enemies for 50¢.  Spend 1/2 dollar and grind a way for a couple of hours.  Doesn't seem unreasonable at all to me.  What do I consider pricey?  A charm that increased two base stats by 15%, but costs $15 for 30 days of calendar time.   Subscription games that have substantially more depth only cost $15/month.  You have to be pretty committed to EE to spend that much on a single credit shop item that only lasts one month.  A permanent charm costs $60 USD, but you'd need to play at least 5 months in order to justify it's cost over the 30 day charms.  Keep in mind, that's the price for a single credit shop item.  If the more expensive items cost were halved, I think they were more reasonable, but I personally couldn't ever justify spending that much (even $15) on a single cash shop item that isn't permanent.  Bottom line - items in the credit shop are much too expensive, IMO,  especially since the game hasn't even launched yet  (yes, it's a major peeve of mine)! Update 01/19/2010:  Sparkplay has been good about listening to the player base and has lowered/ajusted prices on the most expensive items and the price that was originally suggested for extra vault space.  Prices in the game range from 1 credit (1¢ USD) for a single ability point up to 3500 credtis ($35 USD) for the most expensive item (a permanent item transmuter).  I still think prices could be lowered for some things like the transmuter, but Sparkplay is definitely listening to it's players.

Overall, I have very mixed feelings regarding the credit shop.  On one hand, I don't mind microstransaction systems.  I think they're the way of the future as a revenue model for MMOs.  My major concerns are:

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   F2P - to me, a true F2P is one you can play from start to finish, all skills, levels, quests, gear, etc... (in other words, "content") without having to purchase anything.  Does that mean I'm cheap or don't believe in paying?  No.  As I said above, I'm ok with credit shops.  That being said, I personally believe that items offered in the credit shop should not give advantages in competitive play, otherwise true competition is cast aside in favor of who can afford to pay more.   I like convenience items, aesthetic items, etc..  In my mind, you should want to purchase credit shop items (they should just be that cool), but never feel you have to.
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   Earning Credits - I absolutely loathe this.  I hate those "get a free ipod" offers where you have to pimp out your friends email addresses and subject them to spam, where you get a software upgrade by participating in an offer from a marketing partner, etc.. Hate it, hate it, hate it.  Also, as mentioned above, I have concerns about how safe this is with a young player base. (Updated 04/27/2010)  As indicated above, I've changed my stance on the issue, but still have concerns with the possible issues with earning credits through sometrics.
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   Price - yes, I know cash shops/credit shops/item malls, etc.. are cash cows.  I'm ok with it, but the transactions aren't all that "micro" for some of the items.  I'd prefer to see the more expensive item prices slashed.  No, they're not necessary (so far as we know), but they are darn expensive. If they become necessary in order to compete, I'd be very unhappy.
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   In game credit exchange - as noted above, this is a very slippery slope, fraught with problems, including massive fraud.  Following is a quote from Icarii, a Runes of Magic GM on their official boards: Update 01/19/2010: as indicated above, players never directly exchange credits for gold - the exchange is managed by Sparkplay on the main site.   That being said, it may be a good idea for Sparkplay to implemented a Runes of Magic style credit hold so that credits can't be exchanged until 30 days have passed.

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OK, I will explain the 30 day "hold"...

 

Diamonds being allowed in the AH is something the players wanted but with that came many problems.

1. Diamond/gold sellers: They used this system to their advantage. Sure we are able to track everything but the damage they did on their own was staggering.

-Sellers would use stolen PayPal accounts (and credit cards, thats why the new CC option has a 30 day hold as well) and buy thousands of dollars in diamonds and then unload them to players. Some players knew what was going on and others were clueless.

PayPal would notify us of the "unauthorized" payments and then we would track everything linked to the illegal account. We banned everyone who got these diamonds or items from the sellers accounts. Since we couldn't just remove the "bad" items we were left with no choice but to ban.

2. Player charge backs:

Many players would do charge backs (kinda like the sellers lol) after they got their diamonds and use, gifted and unloaded every last one of them.

We would have to act the same way as we did with the diamond sellers.

Then there is those who play the game for 4 or 5 months and then quit, re roll, or w/e and they do a charge back.

All of this starts to hurt, not only our bank account but the players as well.

It is not our intention to "punish" legit players. It is nothing like that in the least. The current system gives us time to fix these issues and that is our GOAL.

This is no minor issue in our book . We are working on this and Runewaker is working on this.

   5.  PvP - as indicated above, will success in PvP be directly influenced by how much one spends in the credit shop? If so, I think it's a travesty.

To quote Matt Mihaly (Aurelius on the boards - CEO of Sparkplay) from his interview at TenTonHammer:

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Ten Ton Hammer: Earth Eternal is billed as a free-to-play MMO with paid-for benefits. Typically among F2Ps, these benefits are consumables (potions, etc.) and cosmetic items - things that don’t affect gameplay. Are you sticking pretty close to these guidelines, or will players be able to buy more with their Earth Eternal buck?

 

 

Mihaly: I don’t agree with the premise of the question, but don’t want to appear to get in an argument or disagreement with you. Most F2P games do allow for things that affect gameplay, from health potions to +xp potions to stat-altering potions, etc.

Happy to answer some variation on this question that doesn’t presume the above though. Here’s an explanation of what we sell:

“We sell a combination of cosmetic and functional items. Players can buy armor appearances which can be transferred onto any item, giving players the ability to really customize what they look like without sacrificing the stats they want.

We also sell some functional items. For instance, larger backpacks than you can buy with gold in order to expand your inventory space or speed potions that increase your running speed. “

I don't really care for the way Matt answered the question, because I thought he sounded defensive and argumentative.  I don't think the premise was necessarily wrong, so much as the context.  Yes, most F2P games do offer items that affect gameplay.  The real question is "do they affect gameplay and fairness in a competitive environment?"  In a purely PvE game, does it really matter if you can buy a "+googleplex sword of uber pwnz joo"?  No.  If your game offers PvP and one player has purchased the best healing potions, buff potions and charms and fights somebody who hasn't, is that really fair?  Will the richer player always have a significant advantage?  Assuming PvP is implemented in EE, the real question I want an answer to is "Will players be able to use credit shop buffs in PvP, thereby giving them a distinct advantage over those who don't?". I'm hoping the answer is no, they won't be able to use them (or, in the case of permanent charms, they'll be disabled) in PvP.  If that's the case, I think it's fair and am perfectly happy.  Otherwise, not so much... Update 01/19/2010:  PvP is slated to be implemented soon possibly within a few months, per Matt's New Year's letter.  There is still no clarification on how credit shop items will impact PvP. Update 07/29/2010: The first pass of PvP has now been implemented.  It is arena-based FFA PvP with no penalties and rewards.  The instances are broken  by level ranges (10 levels - a bit too broad) and each instance can only hold 15 players.  At this point, PvP is fun, but it's just a diversion.  It's also prone to leaderboard exploits (high level players teleporting to low level friends and slaughtering newbies  to rack up kill counts).

In summary, my further impressions are:

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  Skill system - yay!!!
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  Credit shop - hrrrmmmm, some good, some bad. Would like further clarification from the Grand High Poobah.

~Ripper