Zenoth
Diamond Member
- Jan 29, 2005
- 5,197
- 200
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I do prefer free-to-play over subscription-based, but sometimes the decisions taken by the developer/publisher in terms of what ends up being micro-transaction'ed in the game's cash shop is rather ridiculous. That or they make sure to remove something in the game's content, which was previously accessible to everyone, just to make sure that a "replacement" of what was removed found in the cash shop will then be targeted by the players.
A recent example, in TERA Rising (which I play regularly). Before the latest major patch the players could dye their gear as it had always been since the beta days (we still can, but keep reading if it interests you). There were dyes that could last 7 real-time days on your gear (once the gear was dyed of course). Additionally, gathering plants granted materials to craft dyes for new colors and tones, and one specific crafted dye called the "Premium Munsell" was the most popular (of the crafted ones). That specific crafted dye had Red-Green-Blue sliders with values of 25 (minimum) to 255 (maximum) for each sliders (including a "brightness" slider to adjust the vibrancy I believe).
That dye like any other dyes would only cost in-game Gold and usually sold at the Trade Brokers or of course could be traded between players as well, and not a single crafted dye was sold at the cash shop. There is a dye, however, in the cash shop called the Apothecary dye which itself cannot be crafted nor "found" in the game whatsoever, it is exclusive to the cash shop and costs basically $1.65, and if you find them at the Trade Broker (and there are) then it merely means some people bought it at the shop to sale them for in-game Gold at the broker. That dye, has the exact same RGB sliders as the Premium Munsell dye with the single difference being that the dye lasts forever, instead of a maximum of 7 days for the Munsell dye, that was it and the price difference between the two wasn't all that bad either. The Munsell dye was a good alternative for 7 days and didn't cost thousands of Gold, and the Apothecary dye was mostly used to dye gear to black forever (it has always been popular for that single purpose, although some people of course vary from others and don't care about black at all and go for other colors).
Now, what happened?
Well, first of all it was a "ninja" change and even the publisher for the NA version of the game (En Masse) wasn't aware of it and of course didn't include the change in the patch notes, most likely because Blue Hole Studios (the devs) never mentioned it in the first place. Secondly, the change in question was that they completely removed the Munsell dye from the game and cannot be crafted at all anymore (of course making the materials from plants gathering needed to dye it useless by now), and the other "regular" dyes sold at the in-game vendor NPCs now only last 1 HOUR, and there is no way to change that. Each piece of gear, once dyed, will have their original color come back on your face after one hour, at which point of course you have to buy the dye(s) again to dye your gear with an annoying GUI to do so on top of that (but that's another story).
Now here's the thing, they of course expect the community to just go numb and make their way to the cash shop blindly to just buy Apothecary dyes because Munsell dyes are a thing of the past. But the timing of it all (the removal of the Munsell dye, and the one-hour duration change for the other dyes) happens to "coincide" (except it's not a coincidence) with the arrival of the new sets of 2013 Swimsuits, some of which are dye-able and of course lots of people jumped on the sales (which of course had to end after some time probably because of some sort of a virtual "limited quantity", gosh those guys aren't subtle) hoping to get a dye-able version of the suit(s) they bought (the dye-able versions are random, in RNG boxes, so they're worth a lot in-game). But of course no one bothers to dye their gear for just one hour now so what do you think the devs hope to achieve by doing all that with a 2013 Swimsuits sales along with the removal of the Munsell dye alternative?
That's the kind of stuff I really despise in free-to-play games, it's when the micro-transaction business comes along and farts in your face expecting you to just smile at it and throw money at the screen. But other than that I still do prefer F2P games, there's one reason for that and it's simply because at the very least I have the choice to ignore it even if it frustrates me and not spend a dime when I feel disappointed by a decision from the devs, rather than feeling "obliged" to keep "investing" every month hoping that "something changes in the next update". With TERA I just frankly let things go and if the game sinks to the bottom of the ocean at least I won't be on that boat when it happens.
And, besides, what P2P games haven't gone F2P at some point anyway? It looks like only World of WarCraft can afford to stay P2P due to the mere players base it has, because otherwise I'm pretty sure that one too would go on the F2P wagon.
A recent example, in TERA Rising (which I play regularly). Before the latest major patch the players could dye their gear as it had always been since the beta days (we still can, but keep reading if it interests you). There were dyes that could last 7 real-time days on your gear (once the gear was dyed of course). Additionally, gathering plants granted materials to craft dyes for new colors and tones, and one specific crafted dye called the "Premium Munsell" was the most popular (of the crafted ones). That specific crafted dye had Red-Green-Blue sliders with values of 25 (minimum) to 255 (maximum) for each sliders (including a "brightness" slider to adjust the vibrancy I believe).
That dye like any other dyes would only cost in-game Gold and usually sold at the Trade Brokers or of course could be traded between players as well, and not a single crafted dye was sold at the cash shop. There is a dye, however, in the cash shop called the Apothecary dye which itself cannot be crafted nor "found" in the game whatsoever, it is exclusive to the cash shop and costs basically $1.65, and if you find them at the Trade Broker (and there are) then it merely means some people bought it at the shop to sale them for in-game Gold at the broker. That dye, has the exact same RGB sliders as the Premium Munsell dye with the single difference being that the dye lasts forever, instead of a maximum of 7 days for the Munsell dye, that was it and the price difference between the two wasn't all that bad either. The Munsell dye was a good alternative for 7 days and didn't cost thousands of Gold, and the Apothecary dye was mostly used to dye gear to black forever (it has always been popular for that single purpose, although some people of course vary from others and don't care about black at all and go for other colors).
Now, what happened?
Well, first of all it was a "ninja" change and even the publisher for the NA version of the game (En Masse) wasn't aware of it and of course didn't include the change in the patch notes, most likely because Blue Hole Studios (the devs) never mentioned it in the first place. Secondly, the change in question was that they completely removed the Munsell dye from the game and cannot be crafted at all anymore (of course making the materials from plants gathering needed to dye it useless by now), and the other "regular" dyes sold at the in-game vendor NPCs now only last 1 HOUR, and there is no way to change that. Each piece of gear, once dyed, will have their original color come back on your face after one hour, at which point of course you have to buy the dye(s) again to dye your gear with an annoying GUI to do so on top of that (but that's another story).
Now here's the thing, they of course expect the community to just go numb and make their way to the cash shop blindly to just buy Apothecary dyes because Munsell dyes are a thing of the past. But the timing of it all (the removal of the Munsell dye, and the one-hour duration change for the other dyes) happens to "coincide" (except it's not a coincidence) with the arrival of the new sets of 2013 Swimsuits, some of which are dye-able and of course lots of people jumped on the sales (which of course had to end after some time probably because of some sort of a virtual "limited quantity", gosh those guys aren't subtle) hoping to get a dye-able version of the suit(s) they bought (the dye-able versions are random, in RNG boxes, so they're worth a lot in-game). But of course no one bothers to dye their gear for just one hour now so what do you think the devs hope to achieve by doing all that with a 2013 Swimsuits sales along with the removal of the Munsell dye alternative?
That's the kind of stuff I really despise in free-to-play games, it's when the micro-transaction business comes along and farts in your face expecting you to just smile at it and throw money at the screen. But other than that I still do prefer F2P games, there's one reason for that and it's simply because at the very least I have the choice to ignore it even if it frustrates me and not spend a dime when I feel disappointed by a decision from the devs, rather than feeling "obliged" to keep "investing" every month hoping that "something changes in the next update". With TERA I just frankly let things go and if the game sinks to the bottom of the ocean at least I won't be on that boat when it happens.
And, besides, what P2P games haven't gone F2P at some point anyway? It looks like only World of WarCraft can afford to stay P2P due to the mere players base it has, because otherwise I'm pretty sure that one too would go on the F2P wagon.
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