In the survey that was released today, two things came up that were a bit frightening. The first was the “additional purchases,” and then the question of “If you could buy one perk…?”
Devs, is this game going to become a Pay-to-Win?
I was looking forward to the challenges of this game, but if the guy with the bigger wallet is going to blow away my months worth of work, own the economy, and dominate PvP (as happens in most P2W games), then this game is done for those who actually like to play the game and earn their place.
If your funding is not going as planned, have you considered other options such as:
a Steam sale (as mentioned by others)
Merchandise (upon release)
Update all your advertising. Your Steam video still shows old textures.
Giving us a sneak peak at the “exclusive” tools and gear in the higher account tiers.
Getting already funded features (like characters) finished that will make people want to come back.
Sorry Devs for complaining at you, but I’ve played way too many games that no matter how hard I work at them or how good I can be, I’ll always be beaten by the player with more money. Please be about the Players, not the Payers.
I’m putting this in general chat to see other’s opinions, even though I’ve read other threads that are also against P2W. But maybe someone else has other funding ideas too.
i still hate p2w games.i had played some p2w games and it makes real no fun, if you play pvp and the only thing what make diffrent is if you have pay for your items or not.
I think it was mainly asked to the the fact that the Long term funding topic as been blowing up lately
That is mostly just saying if the rented servers are unable to pay for the game what to do then and honestly I don’t believe there are a lot of options that would do great and fit with the modding aspect which would effect just about everything when it comes to wants, needs, and creativity
So have more faith that rented servers will pay everything lol
Yes, this has been discussed a lot, and I think everyone agrees that P2W is a terrible idea, makes it not fun, etc etc
It seemed that most players are also in favor of pay-to-skin (hereafter referred to as P2S), in other words, a constantly-updated library of inexpensive, premium 3d models for weapons and armor and vanity stuff, that doesn’t impact the gameplay at all, just lets you look extra cool; e.g. hats in TF or let’s not forget LittleBigPlanet
EDIT: Hey, had a random thought, I’ll post it in the other thread.
when i looked at this i thought of perks as in the stuff in backer ranks for example world builder, exclusive weapon, exclusive armour etc, so i done 1-2 week extra access to new worlds before non backers come in
I read that question as a ’ which of the above mentioned addons (skins, pets, server) would you be willing to pay for?" I think the rented server option has a lot more appeal than many are assuming at this point
Yes yes it does and if they can be modded like the MC servers I think people can make lots of great mods XD
the other topic i believe was if they couldn’t manage to bring in the income to support the game development which i really hope they do cause having a shop with mods seems pointless id just have multi characters on different servers get everything i want enjoy the game and have it all free lol
From everything I’ve heard about this game it will definitely not be p2w. First off, I’ve been in favor of a more skill (how good you are at playing) based game, and the devs half agree with that, and in skill games there is no such thing as p2w. Secondly, all of the perks the devs have suggested are not p2w perks. Owning a server or private world may give you a materials boost, but that’s nothing major / game breaking. Additionally, I’d like to point out that private servers will most likely be the most popular source of income for the game. People love their MC servers, and are willing to pay a lot of money- A similar crowd will definitely be attracted to oort.
As you are saying, there are many other options too, if the game is running low on cash.
I find it incredibly unlikely that this game will ever be P2W, and I think you’re a little crazy for even thinking it might be, as all signs say that it wont be P2W.
I agree though, that P2W should be avoided at all costs. I’m just not worried we will ever come to that point.
In my case i plan on having a fairly large server, which is going to be built by me so all major cities, towns dungoens etc will be built but there will not be build perms for new users so it will be more focusing on the non building player progressing part but there will be lore, and adventure to this world, more of a rpg type world rather than sandbox,
I recently left a game that used to only have vanity items, in fact I owned a few, but then the game released a “complete all your campaigns” item that, at $50 each campaign, would finish all storylines for players and actually put them ahead of me when I had spent three months each working on those campaigns. I don’t know where that game turned from vanity items to “pay to beat the game for me,” but it was a major deterrence and I, along with several friends, quit playing.
World of Warcraft even has a “instant level 90” service. And that store also used to be just vanity items like pets and mounts. So I guess now my fear is that if we support vanity items, at what point will it become P2W?
But maybe ya’ll are right and the server rentals will cover the long term cost. It’s just the way the question was presented that made it sound like you can pay for added benefits or “perks” (the very definition of P2W).
Personally I think you’re blowing this WAY out of proportion
The devs have publicly stated their firm and universal opposition to P2W
I think that this would be things like purchasing a character reset or skills respec
then there’s also the part that says
The questions are deliberately designed to be provocative. They’re
phrased to force people into selecting a preference. This doesn’t mean
that the alternatives are dropped. It just means that we can collect a
clear indicator of the direction the majority of players prefer.
Don’t call the fire service without a fire to extinguish
The devs probably just want to go out in the open to have a first opinion from us to their future long terming funding plans ( I know it is probably said more than a thousand of times…)
I’d like to see something similar from GuildWars 2 where it doesn’t affect the gameplay experience that critical
Ahh… Why does everybody get such as knee jerk reaction, for the love of god man -.-’
im sorry to say but you are blowing this way out to hell, funding have been discussed alot and if you had actually looked around you would see that they are against pay to win. you seem to miss the entire picture or the point of the question saying ‘‘if you arent getting funded enough to this’’ (which they most likely are already doing) it is for after the game gets funded and launhed.
i am personally in favor or a cashshop, i like being able to give a little money to the devs from time to time, most games just uses skins and regret items (name changes, character recustomization… etc…) and not pay to win.
i am sorry, but you just seem plain out clueless and seem to make a match into a forest fire, i can understand why you would be against it, but you just seem to assume that it is gonna be pay 2 win, simple because it asked for alternatives ways of funding (which was asked by the other community members) i think the questions this time was really poorly worded, but thats that
Maybe rental servers will be enough. however they might not be, i think its a bit of a shame everybody who dismisses the idea of funding by saying ‘‘we will have rented servers’’
i would like to make people think for a bit, again, apologies that you find me rude. but basically
this is their job, the money need to pay for the entire team + servercosts + development + more
while some people might forget it, game making is also a bussiness meaning that they need money too, if there arent money then they might have to close down or do something drastical.
eventually the payment they get is what the guys at wonderstruck use to feed themselves and their families
Dont get me wrong, the game should definately not become pay to win, no game should, its horrible, i would prefer it did not become pay to skip either. however can we atleast have the decency to not call witch trial on the devs as soon as they mention money?
I don’t really think this is the intention. After all, they were asking us. As my answer I put Custom designed brick skins, made by the buyer. This way, if you wanted to make a build look unique with a style that didn’t exist such as metal with rivets or with small glowing flecks, you can do. You could shell out a small cost to give your builds a completely unique design. I don’t have any problem with in game purchases as long as they aren’t big and ridiculous such as “£25 for this sword which does 10002 damage and meows when you swing it!” or “a dragon which you can ride and breathes fire, only £99.99. Oh and by the way, the fire CREATES CASTLES FOR YOU!”…
OK I went a bit far but you get my point…
By the way, I am not opposed to dragons or mounts as long as we can tame them in the wild or something cool like that
Oort Online is not going to be ‘pay to win’ game . We know this is a really sensitive subject, and we’re giving any additional purchases a lot of thought. We are planning on offering some totally optional pay-for purchases after finishing the core of the game to offset the cost of running servers for a subscription free MMO.
Things we’ve talked about offering:
Additional vanity and visual customisation options (you can even get some of these by buying a higher package on oortonline.com right now)
Additional Beacon space (you can even reserve additional Beacon space by buying a higher package on oortonline.com right now)
Private Worlds for $/m. You control who can/can’t place Beacons on your world and what it looks like.
In order for these to be considered ‘pay to win’ they’d need to have an effect on what it means to win in Oort Online. ‘Winning’ in a sandbox game is a bit of a fluffy term, for example: some people only want to build or explore, there’s not really an explicit win condition there .
It seems overall the real pinch point when it comes to pay-for items is anything related to combat or stats: kill faster/better, mine faster/better, build faster/better, explore faster/better and so on. We’re not planning on adding pay-for items that would have an effect on stats or character balance. We’re also no planning on borking features to massively incentivise purchases: if you don’t buy items you’ll still be able to customise your character, you’ll still get multiple Beacons and room to build big things.
Being completely transparent here, hope it’s helpful .
Are there any pay-for items you’d like to see in game that wouldn’t be considered pay-to-win?
Things such as Name changes, for me this would be great duen to the fact i picked the wrong name at the start and i need to be renamed to ‘Dyspa’,
Worlds like you said but these worlds have to be reviewed by a dev in order to be added to the main universe of worlds, this is so a kid can’t just create a world builder world filled with oort stones then sell the oort stones on the main worlds.
Character re-customization maybe (from one race to another being able to customize the entire look of your character buuuuuuuuut you would lose all your previous perks from another race.
In my mind i am open to things that preserve the balance of the game for example you could buy a vanity pet which is a dragon yet it will still have the stats the bunny has. don’t give mounts more speed etc as this makes it unbalanced you want them to pay for looks not things they can be better than others with.
EDIT: Possible texture packs maybe, so we don’t just have the one but if we want to can buy a different one (this would be aimed more towards the builders in the game)
this is what i can think of so far but ill try to think of more
vanity pets for certain events and achievements, also buyable vanity pets. but most of all, i beg you on my knees, if you make vanity pets it would be epic if you gave everybody who got the game before character models a lester vanity pet. it would be so awesome to see somebody running around with it xD
as i just mentioned in the long term thread, if you do dyes i think you could sell exclusive dyes (if they are unlockables you can use as much as you want) the most important thing is prob the prices, i know you have thought about that ofc, you guys are the devs. however i have seen it time and time again that the devs makes waaay too expensive stuff which makes people go nuts xD
EDIT: as kerpie just mentioned, the classic ‘‘regret’’ items, (name change, character recustomization, face recusomization, gender change etc)
On the matter of balance of the connected worlds there could be a point buy system implemented in the world builder. The more ores you want to have the more points it cost, which then can be balanced by stronger monsters or by making other precious mats rarer on the world. I think James already mentioned something vague in that direction
I also would like to have items which transfers the skin of one item to another. May be such items are also rare drops ingame or gain by archivements but if you want more of them you habe to pay them
Nobody panic! 
. We know this is a really sensitive subject, and we’re giving any additional purchases a lot of thought. We are planning on offering some totally optional pay-for purchases after finishing the core of the game to offset the cost of running servers for a subscription free MMO.
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