I’d taken a long break from playing as I had other things going on and I wasn’t liking the skill tree at that time.
When I came back 2 weeks ago and saw The Exchange menu, my knee jerk reaction was to get ticked off about seeing both the Gleam Club and Cubit Purchase options and I would’ve left a bad review as well if I’d not played into it further. For a new player, you shouldn’t throw monetization right in their face as part of the tutorial process.
I suggest the following:
Until a player gets further along in the game, The Exchange menu should only have 2 tabs: Rewards and Plots. Once further along in the game, the other tabs show up.
Further along in the game could be one of two things: completing the tutorial objectives or reaching a particular level (10?).
This gives them time in game to realize they’ll get cubits per level and that beacon fuel eventually runs out, thereby allowing them to more easily understand the value those monetization options have.
Look, it sucks, but the snowball has started, as I predicted it would, this means Boundless is going to have to wait until the December sales to push out a big update and regain consumer trust.
Like I said for a month, perception is all that matters. The cash shop may be fair, but it LOOKS bad.
There aren’t enough fans of this game to take down a negative review with 700+ upvotes or they would have already.
I really like the suggestion to mask the cash shop relationship and focus on how the free cubits are used, before introducing the option to get extras with cash.
It highlights how the game works with no additional cash, but maintains the revenue model (assuming almost nobody is spending significant cash through the exchange before ~level 10, which may be a bad assumption).
Let’s not forget one thing, No Man Sky made a comeback with 1000x worse publicity, so Boundless can too, but it wouldn’t be in this mess if they hadn’t put the Exchange in with a 40$ price tag, and added cubit crates that LOOK like gambling loot crates, or named things like “Skill sets” making people think you could literally buy skills in the cash shop…
I’m not sure if you know this, but the servers the mmo runs on have to be paid for whether you play or not. Your items in world just by sitting there the bill is running. Thus they still have to collect revenue whether your playing or not to keep the worlds online. It is different if it is self hosted multiplayer, or single player. They just used plots to shift the financial burden from everybody (sub) to the power players but to make it work they had to add incentives which is why see the backlash.
please don’t throw around assumptions like that. I’m not an idiot. I know how things work. you asked me for my reason and I gave it to you. I am also pretty tight on cash. If i could give them more money I would, it is a fantastic game. and because of that, there will be plenty of people that will gladly pay for gleam club and renting servers and future people buying the game. I am simply one of the people that would gladly pay more money up front than have to pay continuously.
The world is not ending. Perception is not a sole driver of sales, despite what the keyboard warriors want to say.
In general, a game with a higher review score will sometimes sell better. There is a correlation that can be drawn, but there are huge swings of outliers which push the averages close together.
In truth, we have no idea how those reviews will impact sales…even analysts that review the data don’t know.
What we can do is update our steam reviews and be thoughtful.
Anything else is pure speculation/imagination. Just update your steam reviews and let the dust settle. All the decisions have been made at this point.
Edit:
Disclaimer for everyone to lazy to do their homework before posting:
My comment was a reply to this thread. NOT to the Exchange which was btw. introduced 3 months later.
The damage was done when they made everything focus around the exchange. There is no indicators that you gain cubits per level, and you are immediately asked within a few minutes of starting to “buy plots with cubits”.
So more then likely the damage has been done. Which i’m fine with, I felt there were too many people around lately. Especially bomb miners.
