I recently left a game that used to only have vanity items, in fact I owned a few, but then the game released a âcomplete all your campaignsâ 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 donât know where that game turned from vanity items to âpay to beat the game for me,â but it was a major deterrence and I, along with several friends, quit playing.
World of Warcraft even has a âinstant level 90â 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 yaâll are right and the server rentals will cover the long term cost. Itâs just the way the question was presented that made it sound like you can pay for added benefits or âperksâ (the very definition of P2W).
Personally I think youâre 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 thereâs also the part that says
The questions are deliberately designed to be provocative. Theyâre
phrased to force people into selecting a preference. This doesnât mean
that the alternatives are dropped. It just means that we can collect a
clear indicator of the direction the majority of players prefer.
Donât 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 timesâŚ)
Iâd like to see something similar from GuildWars 2 where it doesnât affect the gameplay experience that critical
Ahh⌠Why does everybody get such as knee jerk reaction, for the love of god man -.-â
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 ââif you arent getting funded enough to thisââ (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⌠etcâŚ) 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 ââwe will have rented serversââ
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 donât 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 didnât 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 donât have any problem with in game purchases as long as they arenât big and ridiculous such as âÂŁ25 for this sword which does 10002 damage and meows when you swing it!â or âa dragon which you can ride and breathes fire, only ÂŁ99.99. Oh and by the way, the fire CREATES CASTLES FOR YOU!ââŚ
OK I went a bit far but you get my pointâŚ
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 âpay to winâ game . We know this is a really sensitive subject, and weâre 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 weâve 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/canât place Beacons on your world and what it looks like.
In order for these to be considered âpay to winâ theyâd need to have an effect on what it means to win in Oort Online. âWinningâ in a sandbox game is a bit of a fluffy term, for example: some people only want to build or explore, thereâs 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. Weâre not planning on adding pay-for items that would have an effect on stats or character balance. Weâre also no planning on borking features to massively incentivise purchases: if you donât buy items youâll still be able to customise your character, youâll still get multiple Beacons and room to build big things.
Being completely transparent here, hope itâs helpful .
Are there any pay-for items youâd like to see in game that wouldnât 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 âDyspaâ,
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 canât 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. donât 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 donât 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 ââregretââ 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
I agree with these big changes. WoW had a similar system.
Other MMORPGs also make you pay to respect your character, which is death to a new player who probably speced wrong to begin with. Things like this donât need to be charged for.
But as what was concluded earlier, the server rental should cover the long term cost of the game. Although I still wouldnât mind some merchandise like a cool Oort T-shirt.
now this is a curious statement, do you have anything to cover it up? how much the dev team is paid? the cost of running the servers? the cost of the software and hardware they use? at the very least you must have a precise number on how much their office costs to rent?
Or maybe you dont have any numbers? this is what bothers me a bit, people who just states ââi dont want to pay, therefore i will state now that the team doesnt need moneyââ you might say that you are not gonna buy anything from the cashshop which is fine, however stating something you have absolutely no knowledge about as fact is just the peak of ignorance
EDIT: on further thought you might not have meant it like that and just phrased it pretty poorly, you should at the very least say ââhopefully server rental will be enough to cover the long term cost of the gameââ as i mention in the other post about funding, i find it a bit sad of people to dismiss cashshop using the argument ââbut people can rent serversââ
Why does he need to know this numbers to make his statement? Even if he knew their expenses we would not be able to compare them to anything since we donât know how much money rented servers will generate.
You are also just assuming that a cashshop will cut the bill without knowing any numbers. You are both just making assumtions.
Just because one dislikes the idea of a cashshop doesnt automatically mean that he wants the game to be free. I havenât read a single post that said âI donât want any additional expensesâ. You just summed up all posts that disagree with a cashshop and suggest a different approach to the long therm game founding as
Not at all, i think not wanting a cashshop is okay. but when you say ââthis one thing will make enough moneyââ it seems a bit odd. sadly you got me, it is quite the hypocritial statement from my side.
the reason as cash shop is what i mention is because it can be as big or as small as you want. a cashshop is not just 1 thing, but can be everything from small regret items to regret items, blocks, skins, unique items, titles, vanity pets, costumes, minigame items etc etc. i personally would also like merchandise
but by all means, please do suggest something that isnt just server renting and merchandise, which can not be counted as cashshop, name change? can be thrown in a cash shop, server change? cash shop. vanity pets? cashshop. it is just a general term.
i can understand why you find it hard though. as you said ââi bought the game so i want to be able to get everything without extra paymentââ which is a fair opinion.
i believe the devs will find a solution, i just dont think you should say ââthey only need this thing to stay aliveââ cause in the end what would you rather. pay 5 euro a month for a skin or two, or see the game get shut down?
Well with cashshop i had the standard f2p MMO cashshop in mind which includes purchases that i dislike like armor/weapon skins(ok for MOBAS but a no-go for MMOs), mounts and boosts.
I always thought about things like character rename/remodel and servertrans as an account service and not as a cashshop item, so maybe thatâs why we kept arguing^^
How would you define unique items? Maybe something like the fun-items in WoW? For example a stone that transforms you into lester for 1 hour a day? (thatâs something I´d love to see )
Since we are talking about cashshop options: What do you think about different animations for your character? You donât like the way your character performs /sleep or /sit or the idle standing animation ? For x bucks you can buy a different one.
Yes merchandise would be really awesome. I donât know why this isnât a think yet since they have pretty handy artists (and already 1 or 2 T-shirt designs would get the merchandise started) . Maybe because organizing the shipping/printing would be too much effort? Well I´m sure there are plenty of 3rd party companies that would handle that for them (but thatâs a thing of company policy if they want to outsource such things).
Nice job taking that completely out of context. (Even using half the sentence.) The exact sentence was âMaybe yaâll are right and the server rentals should cover the long term cost of the game.â This does not exactly reflect my views because if it did I would not be concerned about buyables to begin with.
Which actually brings me to the reason for a new post. I have an idea from this:
What if we had a Recruit-a-Friend system? What I mean is having an incentive program for getting more people to buy the game, such as:
Recruit 1 person - Earn custom item
Recruit 5 people - Earn additional beacon space.
And so onâŚ
Well I would point to valve games as successful examples of vanity items not slipping into p2w. Tf2 / CS:GO are still two of the most lucrative games in the world, and theyâre still just selling hats and skins. Iâm noticing that skill based games hardly ever slip into p2w kinda things, where games based on accumulated play time / resource / whatever tend to slip into those traps. Just another reason to have a skill based gameâŚ
Nobody panic! 
. We know this is a really sensitive subject, and weâre 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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