Howdy, Stranger!
It looks like you're new here. If you want to get involved, click one of these buttons!
Quick Links
Why did Archeage go down this path?
I think back to when i had to decide if i should pay 150 dollars for Archeages pack for alpha. I did a lot of research back then and once i got it and got into the game, my god was it amazing, the perfect sandbox themepark in my eyes. It was wonderful, nui tears, tokens for exploring and sight seeing, good labor regen. It was nice, it was worth it.
Im so happy i did it, that i paid for alpha, because for me, that what the game was really supposed to be, not what it is now.
Why did they choose to go down this path, removal of tokens, removal of proper labor regen and addition of cash shop items to keep the payers on a boosted scale above everyone else. Why did they do this?
I understand it, im sure a lot of people understand it, Sandbox and F2P doesnt mix. Buy to play is perfectly fine, Guild wars is doing perfectly fine with their model. They didnt need to do this to the game. They didnt need to make it an ingame economical disaster, gold seller palooza, hacker palooza, labor pot palooza, we didnt need this. Why the rumbeling saplings, why......why.
Just like SWG, i paid to experience an exlusive game, in which would not be forever, sadly, all good things dye i guess.
Why did it have to be this way?
On the flip side! iv now realized, and playing, the only sandbox left that hasnt sold their soul to the devil is CCP's Eve, Wooooooooooo Spreadhseet sim, Awesome! ..........lol, youv got to be fucking kidding me.
Comments
the missing link in a chain of destruction.
All spelling and typographical errors are based soely on the fact that i just dont care. If you must point out my lack of atention to detail, please do it with a smile.
I've often asked myself this same question. Even though about writing a letter to Trion, but it would fall on deaf ears. It could have been one of the best games out right now, but for the same reasons you mentioned, and a few others make it just not worth it.
Alpha was by far the best experience with the game. Especially before they introduced the cash shop. Archeum drop rates were fine, TS trees were okay. Easily worth a subscription as well as buying the game. But the direction XL decided to take the game was similar to that of a casino, as opposed to a game for the players.
Agreed with the above 2 posters,
Never have i played an MMO so addictivly, and took my time leveling up also. The last time that happend to me it was SWG or the begging of WoW Vanillia. I thought i hit that sweet spot with Archeage again, but nope, the cash shop came in and changed how the game functioned forever.
I didn't play the Alpha but from everything I read about it and about the asian version I found it to be really interesting and I was excited to get into it once it opened up to the masses.
But I found out quite quickly that AA wasn't a game I would spend much time in, such a shame to hear that it went so downhill so fast.
Unquestionably one of the best games I have ever played. So many things done so well, totally decimated by the cash shop and incompetence dealing with the cheats.
Everyone considered TRION the ideal distributor with a good record of how to effectively manage a F2P game. How wrong we were. Their total incompetence and disdain for a playerbase whose warnings fell on deaf ears time and time again, made me realize that TRION are, infact, utter shit.
"True friends stab you in the front." | Oscar Wilde
"I need to finish" - Christian Wolff: The Accountant
Just trying to live long enough to play a new, released MMORPG, playing New Worlds atm
Fools find no pleasure in understanding but delight in airing their own opinions. Pvbs 18:2, NIV
Don't just play games, inhabit virtual worlds™
"This is the most intelligent, well qualified and articulate response to a post I have ever seen on these forums. It's a shame most people here won't have the attention span to read past the second line." - Anon
This, and it is to some degree not trions fault (they still made tons of mistakes, horrible company)because the devs made this design decision. The new patch is reverting some of those changes but it is still a cash shop game compared to alpha.
Asians desing their games around how many money youcan make per user, not about fun gameplay or innovations.
Just look at Black Desert, same story. Going away from sandbox to themepark and p2w
Alpha state is not a product and neither a relationship company to customer.
it is a relaion between software developer and software tester.
OP (and seemingly most other too) mismatched their software testing duties with "playing a game".
Regardless of, if someone thinks their business model is ok or not ok, at the time of release in which tester become customer the business plan someone had to subscribe to was clear. This is much better then changing business plan on a running and released product. In archeage case it was announced prior to release and people had the choice to not buy the product.
tldr; they announed the change of businness plan way before release the product, so everything is fine with it.
PS: i admit i never been a alpha tester and joined at release date, 1 month later i subscribed as patron and do so till this day.
Best MMORPG of the last decade. Best MMORPG since SWG 2003- 2005 (PRECU)
So? This is just thread for feeling sad about the path a potentially great game took.
Probably fortunate you did not play the alpha, you are still able to enjoy the game because you never knew what you missed or how good this title actually could have been.Sometimes ignorance really is bliss.
"True friends stab you in the front." | Oscar Wilde
"I need to finish" - Christian Wolff: The Accountant
Just trying to live long enough to play a new, released MMORPG, playing New Worlds atm
Fools find no pleasure in understanding but delight in airing their own opinions. Pvbs 18:2, NIV
Don't just play games, inhabit virtual worlds™
"This is the most intelligent, well qualified and articulate response to a post I have ever seen on these forums. It's a shame most people here won't have the attention span to read past the second line." - Anon
^This. The game is built to be a long-lasting, slow-growing gem, but they treated it like a cash cow and milked everything they could from day 1.
Trion's indifference and incompentence towards cheating is what made me leave. They clearly didn't care about lasting implications of cheating when they gave 1-day bans to people who ruined the economy.
Same thing made me leave Neverwinter when it became clear that so many were so better geared because of cheating.
I found no point in playing anymore when the only way to catch up to the cheaters was to cheat myself or (stupidly) pay an assload of money to catch up to people that didn't even pay a dime.
I agree, it was a great game ruined by poor business choices. I subbed for 6 months and then found myself not playing so my labor could regen or just logging in to tend my farm and being out of labor points so logging off and playing some other game. I got tired of "paying" a monthly fee and yet feeling restricted like a F2P person. What is the sense in paying for that? Pair the low labor point system with the less than half a percent drop rate of TS trees and then add the cash shop with its 10% chance of TS through rumbling trees and that was just too much greed for me in one game.
They went down this path cause this:
http://www.gdcvault.com/play/1016417/-100-000-Whales-An
As stated in the pros and cons, things like RNG enhancement rates and energy systems means you get more money at the cost of lower player retention and game life span. ...I'm sure most business executives stopped paying attention after "more money"
@DMKano
Noone's really questioning the game's mechanics or patches. Seems like everyone here loves the game. It's the monetization model that has always been the problem. That and Trion's inability to firmly take care of cheating. I actually logged in the other day to what was previously an extremely popular server, and it felt like a ghost town. Noone was talking in chat, and even the players there said that most of the players left. Only a few dedicated players remained.
Edit - Server was Ollo / East
In Alpha, things were pretty good with how they were handling Labor and Archeum, things were challenging and good, the grind was bearable by the majority. You could actually play the game and accomplish a lot without worrying about progressing through the cash shop or an insane RNG grind (what AA turned into unless you shell money). Alpha state isn't a finalized build nor environment, this is understood. But you could definitely see the greed coming from Trion/XL after playing Alpha > going into release and it got worse from there. When requesting answers about it, Trion usually back-peddled into the static answer of "It's not our fault, it's XL's fault".
So now you see them changing bits to what it used to be like in Alpha but again a lot of damage done that could of been avoided. I am guessing most of the whales in the game have quit and now they need more regular people to come back in.
I have to agree. The monetization schemes probably drove many people away. Labor points was the major culprit though. It was woven into the fabric of the game, tied to too many activities. It was even required to unlock loot and crafting. The game had serious potential as an alternative. It might have been better as a B2P game instead, to discourage bots with multiple accounts, and also cheaters. It looks like Black Desert is making the same mistake too.
It is interesting. I have played SEVERAL games in what would be considered "alpha state" today (they USED to call it closed beta back in the day -- these days getting into a game a year early would be pushing the "alpha" name) and I find the games have almost ALWAYS been more fun in such a state than at release.
Even being a little buggy, not having everything in place yet, placeholder graphics, etc, the way the game treats you during an alpha before everything is tuned and balanced to death (and cash shopped in the case of a FTP -- but the significant majority of high end early beta I have been in has been for subscription games). The community is tons better as well.
It just seems like through alpha the game is trying to provide the most fun, and then the developers get down to things that make the game less fun but more within the vision they want.
Agree with both. Ended up leaving because 90% of the people around me were bots. It got to the point where I spent most of my time online reporting the botters around me rather than playing. They would just reappear in droves and I would be right back at it again. There were 'bot trains' in the game. I haven't seen bot trains since Ragnarok Online.
Yup.
The other fact is that Trion and other Asian producers are mistaken in how much cash shop funneling and insane grind Western audiences will accept.
Same deal with Age of Wushu or whatever it was, decent enough game, but the grind was silly and the cash shop way, way over intrusive, even when paying a sub equivalent.
Artificial gating of player behavior (and not buying sparkly ponies and such), for people paying a sub or sub equivalent, is a huge game management fail.
And it is all based on greed.
150 here
and we all knew it was eventually going to happen
and it happened rather quick
theres reasonable profit and just plain greed and mismanagement
first 3 - 6 months was actually fantastic
(alpha then launch
Don't think that. I have written a few letters to publishers/developers and think it matter. In more than one occasion I made suggestions that made it into the next iteration of the game. Now I never know if my letter made any impact, or if they would make the changes without it; but writing a letter is not useless.
If you are going to write a letter though. Make sure it is very professional and make sure you don't go out of your way to flame or troll the game.
I highly suggest everyone write letters more often. Congress, chain stores, game companies, ect. The only power we have is our wallet, but the only way they know why we stopped spending is if we let them know.
--John Ruskin
I didnt pay for alpha, but i did pay for patron since launch untill this day im writing here.
ArcheAge is still a exclusive experience in the world of mmorpgs, a unique and good experience for me. Alot of problems? yes, there is.
L2 C3, C4 was the best time in a mmorpg for me, now is second, ArcheAge in Blood Company guild in Eana server is the best moments i had in a mmorpg, and continue to get better every day.
Most of our guild is normal patrons, im sure some spend a few extra bucks with some stuff but nothing huge, we fight "golden credit cards" alot, and yes its hard on land, usually we lost, but our main fight its over sea where credit card has less impact and we normally win.
3 weeks ago i finally ended my magnificent gear (those who knows AA know this is nothing), something that alot did last year, i dont care, i play my game and go slowlly in progress, but thanks to the guild im in, the experience is the best i had get in last 10 or more years, and im a casual player, 2, 3h a day.
So yeah, AA its a unique experience and the best to me untill now in a mmorpgs.
Like i said millions of time: hope the future bring more games like AA, and if a better payment model that was amazing.
just my current experience, cheers