Acceptable Cash Shop Items: Suggestions!

[Skull_Angel]

snip

I don't see any of that information popping up in search engines, but if it was only on their official forums it would be nice to have links. I would also like references to other P2P games that failed because of the inclusion of cash shops that didn't offer P2W elements.

Nice way of stuffing words into others' mouths by the way, keep it up

[Malamasala]

There are many ways to do cash shops. And every cash shop that offers unique "you can only buy it" merchandise, is going to end up making people quit that want it, but do not agree with the price. This is why it is beyond insane to suggest vanity cash shops.

People quit TERA because half the appeal of the game was the Elins. (There is a reason they just released a new class that was Elin only). And cash shops where horribly abusing these Elin players. (25 dollars for ONE swimsuit, account and character locked)

Scarlet Blade was also going downhill fast because the company insisted on selling 200 dollar vanity gear or 10 dollar RNG boxes. Every weekend it was "Spend 200 dollars this week, and get a free vanity suit". Can you imagine that? They expected you to pay 800 dollars per month, if you wanted to enjoy vanity. 8 freaking hundred dollars.

People hate being ripped off. People hate paying for their items of interest while others get them for free. The only way to make a cash shop that does not bleed customers, is making sure it only sells in-game character/account bound items. Like for example Ifrit weapons, 5 dollars.

[Ikeda]

snip

You don't see that information popping up in search engines because those were the old forums. After the switch to F2P they opened up new forums and had the old forums deleted. But here is a few links showing people's discontent with the current state of the game:

http://tera-forums.enmasse.com/forum...I-was-lied-too
http://tera-forums.enmasse.com/forum...ve-ruined-TERA
http://tera-forums.enmasse.com/forum...your-customers
http://tera-forums.enmasse.com/forum...at-a-cash-grab

Apparently the game is even worse off now than I thought it was. As you can see what started out as a purely vanity cash shop, quickly devolved into P2W among many other things. Back when TERA was P2P and even during the time it was F2P the game had a system sort of similar to FFXIV's glamour where you could put the looks of a piece of a equipment over one that has better stats. According to one of those threads they recently removed that system entirely to force people to have no choice but to buy the costumes on the cash shop if they want any sort of vanity content. Also if those threads are anything to go by it would be impossible for me to provide a link because those threads would fall under that forum's rules of "threads that have to be deleted" which they very likely were deleted long ago if they weren't already deleted with the switch to the new forums.

I can't provide a list of other P2P games that failed despite only adding a vanity cash shop because as far as I know there hasn't been a single other mmo that only added a vanity cash shop without going down the P2W route which as you can see even TERA itself devolved into the P2W route after a while which simply shows that according to history there is pretty much zero chance for a P2P game to only add a vanity cash shop and stick to only being vanity because the greed is simply too tempting for the companies.

[Bloodclaw]

Hell, when I was still playing DCUO, there were even a few QOL items in the cash shop, like a one-use Summonable Repair/Mail/Bank NPC, and I don't see anything wrong with those either, because everyone has access to those same things if they go into towns.

I sort of see an issue with this because time management is a game mechanic. Your paying to spend more time in the thick of it the good content. Sort of like paying for skipping lines at a roller coaster.

In an odd way it would be like power leveling. Paying cash to level faster with not needing to go back to town.

[Skull_Angel]

snip

Those links seem to support what I've posted, everything crumbled when the community realized the game was headed away from a P2P model. The cash shop was added and people seemed to [more or less] accept it initially, but when they started removing content and/or gating it behind it (the cash shop) the community basically bailed.

I know Blizzard has successfully offered vanity items for WoW through it's store without destroying it's community; yes, it did ruffle a lot of feathers, but most that left because it challenged their ideals did return. I'm not too keen on what they're doing now with buying boosts to lv90 though, and don't personally agree with it.

[HakuroDK]

I sort of see an issue with this because time management is a game mechanic. Your paying to spend more time in the thick of it the good content. Sort of like paying for skipping lines at a roller coaster.

In an odd way it would be like power leveling. Paying cash to level faster with not needing to go back to town.

There's a bit of a difference, at least with DCUO vs FFXIV. In DCUO, quests were largely controlled via communicator and could be turned in the same way from anywhere in the game world. In FFXIV, you always have to turn in quests at an NPC with very very few (if any) exceptions, so you always have to go into town. In fact, the best kind of leveling (at least for DoH/DoL) is through Leves, and you're always in town that way.

Mail isn't used frequently at all unless you're an RPer or transferring items from one character to another or something, so that would be virtually harmless.

Repair NPCs would be a huge boon for folks who do raid or run EX Primals, because there's always that one guy who didn't repair their gear before they went in and, 9 times out of 10, if the group leaves the instance, at least two or three people will just flat-out drop the group, possibly ending the run altogether, because of that one guy who didn't repair gear first.

Bank NPCs... fair enough, those would probably not be a great idea.

But I don't think it would be like power leveling. Not really. And for most players, many of these QOL things would be a waste of money.

[Ikeda]

Those links seem to support what I've posted, everything crumbled when the community realized the game was headed away from a P2P model. The cash shop was added and people seemed to [more or less] accept it initially, but when they started removing content and/or gating it behind it (the cash shop) the community basically bailed.

I know Blizzard has successfully offered vanity items for WoW through it's store without destroying it's community; yes, it did ruffle a lot of feathers, but most that left because it challenged their ideals did return. I'm not too keen on what they're doing now with buying boosts to lv90 though, and don't personally agree with it.

They didn't start locking content behind the cash shop until AFTER it went F2P. While the game was P2P the cash shop had nothing more than useless weapon skins, they didn't even have costumes in the shop. Useless weapon skins were enough to get enough of the remaining players to quit to the point that it was forced to go F2P.

Blizzard is the ONLY company to successfully offer vanity items and the ONLY reason it survived long enough to continue doing that is the sheer amount of subscribers it had. WoW with it's 8 million+ subscribers had enough subscribers to withstand a few hundred thousand to 2 million+ lost subscriptions due to the cash shop. FFXIV and many other mmos that only have a few hundred thousand to 2 million+ subscribers DO NOT have enough subscribers to withstand the inevitable loss of subscriptions.

Also those players that left and returned only did so because the mmo market literally consists of a massive sea of clones of WoW that have less content than the original. When their only choices are either play the game that's ripping them off or play a copy of said game that has far less content of course a few of them are eventually just going to say screw it and go back to the game with the most content and ignore the cash shop. Other mmos DO NOT have that luxury because they are those clones with less content.

[ReiszRie]

Those links seem to support what I've posted, everything crumbled when the community realized the game was headed away from a P2P model. The cash shop was added and people seemed to [more or less] accept it initially, but when they started removing content and/or gating it behind it (the cash shop) the community basically bailed.

I know Blizzard has successfully offered vanity items for WoW through it's store without destroying it's community; yes, it did ruffle a lot of feathers, but most that left because it challenged their ideals did return. I'm not too keen on what they're doing now with buying boosts to lv90 though, and don't personally agree with it.

Don't bother, he is too stuck in his own warped logic that he will never attempt to understand or accept the arguments of another and even reasoning no longer matters to him.

It has been going on for quite awhile now and he still couldn't produce a single shred of evidence to support his baseless accusations of cash-shops being the prime cause of MMO failures.

I've learnt to just ignore him and let him carry on his inane rant as no one really takes him seriously.

[Skull_Angel]

snip

First of all, there was no definitive timeline of events posted in any of those threads or anything I could find. Thank you for clearing it up, but I find it hard to believe that TERA lost mass subs only because a cash shop was added, more had to be going on and a lot of testimonies point to activity suggesting the game was headed to a F2P being the cause. I can believe a portion of the player base being unhappy with the inclusion if the cash shop and of them some leaving due to idealism, but to say it was the reason the majority left does sound out of place.

As for Blizzard, I don't agree that WoW's sub. numbers was the only reason that offering vanity items didn't make the player base tank. Only a small portion of the player base cared and out of those, only a smaller portion left. A lot of people did talk about it at first, but it quickly turned into a forgotten novelty by most. IIRC, this all happened around the time that F2P MMOs were high in popularity and P2P was scarce, most of the people that I knew who left clamored about F2P games and shortly returned not only because of the lack of content, but the lack of quality and support (and they missed their friends, haha).

[Bloodclaw]

There's a bit of a difference, at least with DCUO vs FFXIV. In DCUO, quests were largely controlled via communicator and could be turned in the same way from anywhere in the game world. In FFXIV, you always have to turn in quests at an NPC with very very few (if any) exceptions, so you always have to go into town. In fact, the best kind of leveling (at least for DoH/DoL) is through Leves, and you're always in town that way.

Mail isn't used frequently at all unless you're an RPer or transferring items from one character to another or something, so that would be virtually harmless.

Repair NPCs would be a huge boon for folks who do raid or run EX Primals, because there's always that one guy who didn't repair their gear before they went in and, 9 times out of 10, if the group leaves the instance, at least two or three people will just flat-out drop the group, possibly ending the run altogether, because of that one guy who didn't repair gear first.

Bank NPCs... fair enough, those would probably not be a great idea.

But I don't think it would be like power leveling. Not really. And for most players, many of these QOL things would be a waste of money.

As I said before, I have a very ridged view of games and mechanics. Every restriction is an obstetrical designed to challenge the player to deal with. Time management in included. In ESO people are pissed because horses cost a shit ton of gold and the areas are huge, making getting anywhere in the game take time. This is pushing people to pay the $20 for the free horse.

Time is what makes the difference between a player have 4 level 50 classes and 8 level 50 classes. So when you start putting convince items to be bought, you mess with the time aspect of the game, taint it even, as you are paying to win it. I just could not agree with these in a cash shop.