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No Cash Shop
There is no cash shop at launch, it has been stated many times, if there is don’t buy the game its clearly pay to win. The cash shop is there to continue to make money from those who have already donated to the Kickstarter (this has its own issues).
3 Month head start
Forget that the 3 months head start is supposed to be to create a ‘nicer’ world for the people at launch. There are a couple of more important reasons why the head start is not a true advantage:
Souls – Souls are your passed lives (its why the permadeath system is not really permadeath), having more souls means when you train something you previously had experience in your training goes a lot faster. On creation of the first soul there is a chance you get an old soul that has had up to 4 life times which means these characters are far more powerful than the 3 months head start of a single soul. Get lucky with a soul and you will be more powerful than the majority of head starters after a couple of weeks.
Talents – Talents are special abilities affecting ~5% of the population. Again talents are randomly distributed at character creation and these can make you more ‘special’ than other players who had +3 months without a talent.
Death – Most of the player base in the 3 month head start are settlement runners or higher this means they have more influence (at the start), influence directly impacts life span of the character so expect the majority of head starters to die after 9 months, including the +3 months head start. So once you’ve been playing 6 months the head starters are all dying leaving you to be the most skilled people for 3 months while they all start a new life. So the people who paid only for the game get to play for 3 months playing the most powerful characters. I hope its also clear that in 3 months after launch the new player base will be young adults in their prime while the head starters are getting weak and wrinkly (actually a mechanic).
People Paid to King!
As with everything there are already winners and losers, some of the kingdoms are going to be heavily populated and well structured and some are not purely as some kings have been successful in establishing a player base and some have not. This means if you’re coming into the game with a large, organised player base behind you there will be plenty of opportunity to establish yourselves quickly, and for good or ill, take over a low populated kingdom within 6 months – It takes 28 days to take a town, then 28 days for the county, a further 28 days for the duchy and finally 28 days for the kingdom. A guild of 100+ organised players will easily have the opportunity to dominate some of the current kingdoms on any of the planned servers.
If you can lead a 100+ player guild you deserve to take the spot of someone who paid $10000 and didn’t have the skills and charisma to do the same.
I don’t have 100+ players to dominate this game with but I
want to run a town, county, etc...
As above some of the kings are successful and some are not. There will be opportunities to run a town if that’s what you want, there will be so many towns and counties with npc leaders that if you expressed an interest and showed some modicum of intelligence then only a fool is not going to support you. Come with a few friends and the more unsuccessful kings will be lining up to give you a settlement and probably the surrounding county too.
But the rich kids are buying up legendary weapons!
Probably the most difficult to argue against but let’s follow the previous facts and stuff the devs have said. Combat is mainly based on player skill so if you have no skill it doesn’t matter what weapon you use and if you have skills you can win with a stick. Stat gains are extremely low. The people with these items in less populated kingdoms are likely to lose these items quickly. The items in question are tied to quests which will take months to unlock and probably owned by people who probably can’t leave their settlements to go off and complete said quests.
The people in the successful kingdoms are going to have a better chance of keeping hold of these things but let’s look at what that means: A rich king who paid $10000+ to buy their position has collected many sought after items in their kingdom. If you hate the idea that this system is in place rally against that kingdom, take over the kingdom of one of the weaker kings, consolidate your position then crush the stronger kingdom, it’s probably one the most rewarding end games of all time.
In summary, the game is not pay to win and really is pay to build, pay to lose what you paid for when you fail and pay to suck 6 months after launch. You truly can be anything you want to be by buying this game at launch and don’t worry about the 3 months head start, they are just your content.
Comments
Well played.
"classification of games into MMOs is not by rational reasoning" - nariusseldon
Love Minecraft. And check out my Youtube channel OhCanadaGamer
Try a MUD today at http://www.mudconnect.com/All time classic MY NEW FAVORITE POST! (Keep laying those bricks)
"I should point out that no other company has shipped out a beta on a disc before this." - Official Mortal Online Lead Community Moderator
Proudly wearing the Harbinger badge since Dec 23, 2017.
Coined the phrase "Role-Playing a Development Team" January 2018
"Oddly Slap is the main reason I stay in these forums." - Mystichaze April 9th 2018
"classification of games into MMOs is not by rational reasoning" - nariusseldon
Love Minecraft. And check out my Youtube channel OhCanadaGamer
Try a MUD today at http://www.mudconnect.com/When that happens in real world, can't expect all people to hate it in a virtual world.
It's full of contradictions.
Just check out the first sentence already:
There is no cash shop.. it's been said often there will be no cash shop!
But yeah if they keep the cash shop then nvm..
Most of his points can easily be shot down so no real reason to address, particularly when one of the "kings" in the game has expressed concerns that the current design gives his "team" an insurmountable advantage.
I suspect he will one day regret his remark as he basically painted a target on his kingdom which several groups will feel compelled to prove him wrong.
In some ways I feel it is a mistake to take down the P2A items at launch. If they were still there at least others would have an opportunity to buy similar advantages as the early starters did.
They really should go full monty on this and cater to those accepting of the model and stop trying to convince people its not P2W, they are never going to believe it.
Now if a year or so after launch their design actually proves to not provide any real advantage they may actually start to convince people like me to join, but I'm going to wait and see.
"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
I think it comes down to does the plan make sense? I don't think it does in CoE. But that's more of a view of how players will respond to it than the merit of the mechanics. People, for some reason, are far more inclined to reject any perceived inequity in play than they are in their everyday lives. You're far more likely to have a negative view of a friend who cheated at a game of golf than you are if he told you he cheated on his taxes. I thought Caspian had a psychology degree, and yet he doesn't even seem to display common knowledge about human social behaviour.
Apparently, that won't be a problem, because everyone assures me there's no advantages in starting early...
And I don;t think Caspien is saying that anymore. I think he is now saying that the people who start at launch won't notice the advantages that the P2W crew got because the P2W crew will only be 5% of the population.
Yup... here is his quote:
Consider this: If we're able to reach our minimum goal of 200,000 players, then the couple thousand gentry, aristocracy, and nobility that exists across all our servers is as little as 5% of our total player-base. That means those people at launch who care about exposition or our EP store is extremely small!
-snip-
To 190,000 people, the fact that Exposition even existed is irrelevant. They're never going to know, and never going to care.
All time classic MY NEW FAVORITE POST! (Keep laying those bricks)
"I should point out that no other company has shipped out a beta on a disc before this." - Official Mortal Online Lead Community Moderator
Proudly wearing the Harbinger badge since Dec 23, 2017.
Coined the phrase "Role-Playing a Development Team" January 2018
"Oddly Slap is the main reason I stay in these forums." - Mystichaze April 9th 2018
All time classic MY NEW FAVORITE POST! (Keep laying those bricks)
"I should point out that no other company has shipped out a beta on a disc before this." - Official Mortal Online Lead Community Moderator
Proudly wearing the Harbinger badge since Dec 23, 2017.
Coined the phrase "Role-Playing a Development Team" January 2018
"Oddly Slap is the main reason I stay in these forums." - Mystichaze April 9th 2018
Anyone who has ever developed games knows that what has been talked about the game and what is actually delivered is going to be quite different, that is of course if the game does release.
So post all the nonsense you want about this game, most of us will wait until it is released to see what they actually deliver.