You may feel like that, and as i stated, for some people that's a big no-no.  I'm not trying to convince you otherwise.  However you, and several others, seem to refuse to acknowledge that the opposite is tru, for some people that is perfectly fine, justified and they are willing to use it.  and then others are simply OK with it as long as they don't have to use it.

it's pretty simple.  I'm totally sure not all, and likely not even most, of the cost of a car goes into actual development.  And that extras cost extra.  And find the CS model FC use ok, as long as i don't have to buy from it.

By your statement most developers are greedy and immoral.  The reality is that it's a business, and as with always, if people is willing to pay, they will sell.  it's quite simple, and unless you are forced to pay for CS items the claims on morality are silly, too.

Originally posted by Gargola

You might not equate them, but then you shouldn't consider people doing some crafts, people selling the paper, shinning shoes and a LOT other stuff either.

 

joust cause you personally decide to think something it doesn't mean that things work like this.  Creation of art assets in games is expensive, it's part of the business, and there's a whole lot of people that works exclusively in doing so.

 

the whole "employ a lot of people" go against your idea of supporting small business, even.

 

FC has 300 or so people working in TSW, they all are employed based on the revenue model and projections, and those include the additional revenue form the additional items in the cash shop.  thei'r art department, and other departments that need to work with this are adjusted to this model, so the whole thing (box price, sub, any additional revenue from the cash shop) is adjusted according to that.

 

The money you spent on any game is a waste, for people that doesn't game, but i'm sure most of them actually know it is all part of the economy, and it actually helps it directly and indirectly.  Some won't, and will only "see" that it has no value, as they don't equate making games to any sort of "real" business.

 What the hell are you going on about?

I said I didnt equate cash shops with games or movies

I pay $60 for a game that 200-300 people worked on for 2,3,4 years I have no problem with and if the developer's couldnt make a profit from that, games wouldnt be $60. There is a ton of value added in movies. The list is a hell of a lot longer then the credit's.

$5, $10, $25 for some pixel pant's, ponies or whatever, that some one spent a day or maybe a week to produce and then just pump em out with basically ZERO overhead cost's.Cash shops are about milking money for a very small investment. $5 $10 for pixel clothing someone drafts up and it's done, no raw materials, no processing. You can buy real pants for that price, not your brand names but you can. You know... someone designed them, someone made them, someone grew or made the raw materials, someone shipped them and someone sold them and they all made some money for the same fucking retail price.

Shining shoes? Crafts? Paperboys? Small Business's? Lots of value added there as well, alot more then a cash shop and they work a fuck of a lot more for a fuck of a lot less.

My comment's were about wishing people would support their local economies more, instead of giving shit loads of easy money to a cash shop.

And I wonder how much of the cash shop content is or will in the future, be farmed out to east asia to maximise profit's even more.

These comments are directed at the P2P cash shop model as a whole and not singling out TSW.

When you buy a car, you can buy the base model, or the car with extras. Its an informed choice where you know how much the extras will cost on top of the base model.

When you play a F2P game with a cash shop. You get to pick which items you want to spend money on, its an informed choice and the developer will use the money it gains to produce more items that people are willing to purchase, or content for them to be used on.

When you play a P2P game without a cash shop, the developer spends all its development time into making sure the customer keeps subscribing by providing new content for that subscription fee.

When you play a P2P game with a cash shop. You have no idea what your money is doing. If you are particularly hopeful you could suppose that the company will divide its development according to how much money each portion makes.  Although with pretty much all of these games you will notice that the cash shop items get churned out much faster than new content and in-game appearance items. So its a pretty safe assumption that instead of making in game items with your subscription fee these companies are just adding them to the cash shop instead.

but unlike what you assume, FC is actually adding new content less than a month after launch, with 7 new missions, as well as using this patch cycle to fix and complete other features.  So, at this point, the money is being mainly reinvested in non cash shop stuf.  and also stuff that's not fluff, but actual game content.

You don't like cash shops in this model (or the model) and that's ok, but then others do, and that's the whole point, you can try all you want to put it as if it was unacceptable and as if it should be universally shunned, however, that is not the case.

It's obviously not for everyone, but all your arguments against it have their oposite argument in favor, and all you have to try and dispute it, on both (or all) sides is personal opinion.

To be honest, i would have prefered them to use ingame advertising, they did it very well in AO, completely unobtrusive and in a modern world MMO it would have been more fitting.  however that, which didn't represent any direct extra payment from the users, busted cause it really didn't generated much interest on potential advertisers, after the initial "boom"

Movies have become much more expensive, developing games is not cheaper now, all forms of entertainment have had their cost increased, but MMO's, we pay still roughly the same that we did back then for the ones using sub model and the preemium acocunts on freemium games.

I can't really blame any dev team for trying to raise their revenue without screwing their players, which is what FC is doing.  I wouldn't call them more greedy than the bakery that now charges 2 more bucks for a pie than they did 4 years ago.

7 missions and stuff that should have been in at launch hardly prove that they are on the ball with subscriber content.

Its a new game, you are free to give them the benefit of the doubt, although I suspect they will go down the same path as Age of Conan.

The bakery has to purchase raw material for a pie. If the price of the raw materials rise's so must the price of the pie. Cash shop's and game development require no raw material, they are not subject to supply and demand commodity prices.

I enjoy TSW. I'm happy they are adding more content, thats what a % of my $15 a month is for and I hope they will impress me.

Originally posted by evilastro

7 missions and stuff that should have been in at launch hardly prove that they are on the ball with subscriber content.

Its a new game, you are free to give them the benefit of the doubt, although I suspect they will go down the same path as Age of Conan.

You would love that wouldn't you? people like you who were waiting for another AOC and AO launch disaster are already dis heartned so now you are pinning all your hopes on FC failing post launch. Gotto love your persistent and resiliant nature and obsession with failure of FC.

By the way what content they are releasing should have been part of launch? i was in closed beta and no content was cut off to be released at later date. Whatever we got in CB is now in release version.

Originally posted by lifeordinary

Originally posted by evilastro

7 missions and stuff that should have been in at launch hardly prove that they are on the ball with subscriber content.

Its a new game, you are free to give them the benefit of the doubt, although I suspect they will go down the same path as Age of Conan.

You would love that wouldn't you? people like you who were waiting for another AOC and AO launch disaster are already dis heartned so now you are pinning all your hopes on FC failing post launch. Gotto love your persistent and resiliant nature and obsession with failure of FC.

By the way what content they are releasing should have been part of launch? i was in closed beta and no content was cut off to be released at later date. Whatever we got in CB is now in release version.

I can confirm this. I was also in closed beta. No content was left out for the launch.

The game is on track, and it seems they are working on new content as we speak. Ragnar (the game's creator) has planned ahead for SEVEN years of future content for this game. He's been working on it for the LAST SEVEN years as well. This game is his baby, and he's gonna stick to it. It's pretty much his life's work right now.

AND -- since this game has had a better launch/release than any other Funcom game in recent memory, I'm pretty sure Funcom will let Ragnar work on this and push content out for the customers. I mean... how else is Funcom gonna make money if not through THIS game? You can bet they'll be putting a shit-ton of resources into making this game financially work for them. And how do you make a subscription MMORPG work? --> You add content regularily!

Originally posted by Bhorzo

Originally posted by lifeordinary

Originally posted by evilastro

7 missions and stuff that should have been in at launch hardly prove that they are on the ball with subscriber content.

Its a new game, you are free to give them the benefit of the doubt, although I suspect they will go down the same path as Age of Conan.

You would love that wouldn't you? people like you who were waiting for another AOC and AO launch disaster are already dis heartned so now you are pinning all your hopes on FC failing post launch. Gotto love your persistent and resiliant nature and obsession with failure of FC.

By the way what content they are releasing should have been part of launch? i was in closed beta and no content was cut off to be released at later date. Whatever we got in CB is now in release version.

 

I can confirm this. I was also in closed beta. No content was left out for the launch.

 

The game is on track, and it seems they are working on new content as we speak. Ragnar (the game's creator) has planned ahead for SEVEN years of future content for this game. He's been working on it for the LAST SEVEN years as well. This game is his baby, and he's gonna stick to it. It's pretty much his life's work right now.

 

AND -- since this game has had a better launch/release than any other Funcom game in recent memory, I'm pretty sure Funcom will let Ragnar work on this and push content out for the customers. I mean... how else is Funcom gonna make money if not through THIS game? You can bet they'll be putting a shit-ton of resources into making this game financially work for them. And how do you make a subscription MMORPG work? --> You add content regularily!

 

I dunno, one of my guildmates who said he was in the earliest closed betas said there used to be more sexual action in the game, include some sort of "oral" action encounter that is no longer there at present.

I purchased the lifetime sub for TSW and get a discount on cash shop items.  The shop is just cosmetic and as others have said, there is no advantage gained from the items.  The game has had a wonderful release. The bugs I have found have been quickly dealt with by GM's.  Even the questing bugs have been resolved in game. No waiting for the patch to fix a story mission. The GM;s are far more helpful than in other games I played. 

Originally posted by MrXincosti

I purchased the lifetime sub for TSW and get a discount on cash shop items.  The shop is just cosmetic and as others have said, there is no advantage gained from the items.  The game has had a wonderful release. The bugs I have found have been quickly dealt with by GM's.  Even the questing bugs have been resolved in game. No waiting for the patch to fix a story mission. The GM;s are far more helpful than in other games I played. 

how much does it cost for a lifetime sub?

Originally posted by SpottyGekko

Originally posted by Sorrow

Actually game maintance, support staff, even bandwidth have all come way down over the last 10 years if anything subscription prices should be coming down.

 .

Really ? So admin staff, customer support staff, developers, technical people and graphic artists are all being paid less now than they were 10 years ago ? That's shocking. 'Tis no wonder modern MMO's all suck.

 

Welcome to the gaming industry :D

You are so lucky to get a job here !

Every year, we will reduce your salary,

BUT we'll expect you to produce better quality work (it's 2012, so no excuse for bugs in your code will be accepted)

AND in ever increasing volume (no excuse for a game to launch without masses of content all the way to endgame).

 

The gaming industry is a magical place. It's the only branch of industry where shareholders will not demand that your annual profits increase so that they get better dividends. Investors will be happy to lend you vast sums of money at great risk. If your game tanks and you cannot pay back the loan, they'll shrug and say: "Aww shucks, better luck next time. We didn't really need that $70M anyway. By the way, how much do you need for the next project ?" 

 

Games are made by people, not machines. Labour cost is the major expense for any software company. Hardware and bandwidth for running an MMO is a relatively small part of the expense, always was.

Sadly what actually happens is that about 75% of higher cost game developers and support staff have been parking lot pink slipped right out of the industry and most development and support has been reduced to dismal levels and what little there is has been outsourced to cheaper markets like India.

On top of operations costs, hardware costs has come down dramatically due to cheaper labor, materials, competition and a huge over supply in the market.

Originally posted by MrXincosti

I purchased the lifetime sub for TSW and get a discount on cash shop items.  The shop is just cosmetic and as others have said, there is no advantage gained from the items.  The game has had a wonderful release. The bugs I have found have been quickly dealt with by GM's.  Even the questing bugs have been resolved in game. No waiting for the patch to fix a story mission. The GM;s are far more helpful than in other games I played. 

I am sorry but you must be playing a very different game than I am playing, bugs take forever to fix, some are still in game that have been there since early beta, most times when they do manage to fix a bug it usually breaks again quickly or they manage to break something else in the process. 

Granted the GMs have been working 24/7 moving people past broken quests, but frankly I did not buy the game to have a GM just jump me past all the buggy content, I actually bought the game to play WORKING content.

Man, all these analogies are not needed at all. Just ask yourself this.

How come guild wars 1 and 2 can manage without the sub?

I'm no gw fan but I hate to see people defend pure greed.

Just got the game and I'm at work. Is there a site listing the items sold in the cash shop along with their prices?

Especially the cosmetic items.

Originally posted by Elesthor

Just got the game and I'm at work. Is there a site listing the items sold in the cash shop along with their prices?

Especially the cosmetic items.

Not yet says coming soon...

Not playing as yet, but in P2P/B2P MMO's every cash shop that has game balance altering items started of as a cash shop that did not have any such items.

You can see this in Lotro, DDO, WoW etc. It takes about one year for the gameplay altering items to emerge. This is done because gaming companies know many players do not like cash shops. But the defence is then, 'well nothing in the cash shop effects gameplay'. Indeed players will mount this defence for them, as we see the OP doing here.

Much later, after the complaints are a distant memory the game altering items appear. Players like me will do another thread complianing about it, but it is fait accompli by then.fait accompli by then. 

I looked in the cash shop and saw some weird stuff that I knew I wouldn't want. Some of those titles they sell are just strange. If people want to pay money for them..more power to them.

Originally posted by lifeordinary

Originally posted by evilastro

7 missions and stuff that should have been in at launch hardly prove that they are on the ball with subscriber content.

Its a new game, you are free to give them the benefit of the doubt, although I suspect they will go down the same path as Age of Conan.

You would love that wouldn't you? people like you who were waiting for another AOC and AO launch disaster are already dis heartned so now you are pinning all your hopes on FC failing post launch. Gotto love your persistent and resiliant nature and obsession with failure of FC.

By the way what content they are releasing should have been part of launch? i was in closed beta and no content was cut off to be released at later date. Whatever we got in CB is now in release version.

People like me? Haha oh please. Dig through my post history and find all my FC failing posts. Oh wait, you wont. The only comments I have made about TSW is that:

a) I find the combat to be boring

b) I won't play a game which has both a cash shop and a subscription

Neither of these comments could hardly an obsession with the failure of FC. I knew the launch wouldnt be a disaster because I played the Beta. I just personally wont play until the above issues are resolved. FC will obviously milk the subscriptions for as long as they can, but I suspect that it will go F2P within the first year anyway.

What content are they releasing that should have been at launch?

- The nightmare modes for the two dungeons that were disabled because they were broken.

- The auction house.

I know they released an explanation for this, and that is fine, they should hold off releasing it until it is ready, but lets not kid ourselves.... it was launch content that they ran out of time for.

Originally posted by Scot

Not playing as yet, but in P2P/B2P MMO's every cash shop that has game balance altering items started of as a cash shop that did not have any such items.

You can see this in Lotro, DDO, WoW etc. It takes about one year for the gameplay altering items to emerge. This is done because gaming companies know many players do not like cash shops. But the defence is then, 'well nothing in the cash shop effects gameplay'. Indeed players will mount this defence for them, as we see the OP doing here.

Much later, after the complaints are a distant memory the game altering items appear. Players like me will do another thread complianing about it, but it is fait accompli by then.fait accompli by then. 

Bingo. It opens the door for the pay 2 win that we all know FC  are capable of (AoC PvP armor anyone?).