A Ray of Hope for Allods Fans

Thank you Keen for clearing this up. At the time of my post yesterday, I had already read about this. Anyways glad to see you didn’t turn on the game completely.

I hope each race gets its own mounts. The horses are cool, but I wanna see more mounts. Maybe even make Allods the first game to have mounted combat. LOL wouldn’t that be great F2P? game beating Blizzard to mounted combat?

I really hope they turn it around, it’s such a great game with so much potential. If they can I’d start playing again for sure.

The cash shop prices alarmed me but what is really worrisome still to me is the changes they sound like they plan on making to FoD

Write your constructive criticism here, they started the thread and requested our feedback about the CS. This is what I wrote:

Some of this is self evident. I am sure that you do not need an involved explanation of why we think that a $20 bag with 6 extra slots is too much, especially when it sells for $2 on other servers…

The price is not surprisingly ~10 times too high for most items. You guys really need to be more savvy about price fixing. Did you not expect people to feel insulted/gouged if there is the exact same item on a different server for dramatically less; you did not show respect for your NA players and consequently they lost respect for your project.

Asian markets may differ and I have read interviews that the traditional F2P model involves massively overcharging ~10% of the “hardcore” people while expecting the other 90% to actually play for free. I believe the interview cited a game called Puzzle Pirates as an example of this model, to which I respectfully respond, …never heard of it; hopefully the creators of Allods aspire to something greater than this. I think that there are inherent problems in trying to apply this model to a NA server.

IMO it actually underestimates the amount of money you could make if people wouldn’t immediately balk at the high price points of the items. I have traveled in SE Asia and seen many of the F2P players in mass internet cafes paying virtually nothing for computer time. Well over here a kid’s monthly allowance id often greater than a head of a household in Laos or Cambodia. A slow, but steady siphoning of the vast reservoir of NA disposable income is best accomplished insidiously, $1 or $2 at a time. Also for the charge to be insidious the player’s attention shouldn’t be forced to focus on it repeatedly, say punitively every time he dies?

This of course brings us to the biggest acknowledged problem with the Allods business model, in general the obvious and purposeful breaking of the game to support the cash shop; in specific the FoD mechanic and class nerfs not involving class balance fixes. I am sorry if this comes off as Western arrogance, but players over here are too savvy to not see right through this and immediately recognize your statement “you can play the game for free if you choose to.” as disingenuous, again undermining their respect for your product. The fault lines created this artificial breaking of the game are readily evident and work against a seamless feel of world immersion.

I would not assume that 90% of people will actually play for free if you are clever (try hiring an industrial psychologist) in designing a variety of fun yet addictive promotional offers; $1 pumpkin hats at Halloween, $2 to learn the robot dance, collectible sets of non-combat pets some of which are rare, try running a weekly lottery for a powerful item that lasts 30 days, charging $1/ticket or $5 for 7 (if the server isn’t flooded by these items then the overall game balance isn’t thrown off and these items become even more desirable given their rarity). Come on show some of the same creativity in marketing that you demonstrate in game design. Exploit the hell out of exp potions and let the impatient pay for power leveling to the cap, just don’t buff them in the process.

We don’t want to be exploited with an iron hand, exploit us with a gentle caress. Which would be better received by the NA player, spending $15 to be able to rejoin your raid group free of a debilitating Astral Nival handicap, or spending the same amount for this month’s collection of promotional kittens of the Orient collectible pets?

Bottom line I will walk away from Allods and not look back if FoD is enacted. Bad releases can cripple a game’s potential profitability. It is much easier to win over players from the start and keep them than to create an oppressive environment and later offer a 10 day free trial to lure them back. Drop the prices by 10 fold and I will make an effort to support your product through purchases; make us feel like we have a hand in making a game that we come to love a successful alternative to WoW, instead of feeding another slapped together Asian money making beast.

…and remember made in Japan used to carry a negative stigma until they decided to get serious and dominate by shifting to even higher workmanship standards than the West.

oh, and excuse me for doubleposting, but saying “No, its false” is not debunking a rumor, it proves absolutly nothing,specially considering that gPotato is known for being nothing but smoke and mirrors, and their credibility is in the negatives.

Whats even worse is that some people already pointed that was a spin, no one claimed that the developer company changed, which is what gPotato refers to.

They claimed that all the talent and direction Allods originally had left the building.

If you want an example of how important this is: Mythic.

It might be called “Mythic” still, but all the talent and direction behind DAOC left years ago, they just kept the low end programmers,and the suits that took all the glory for DAoC but never made jack shit themselves (Mark Jacobs).

the outcome? WAR

I have to agree with Curious George, there is still a lack of trust on my part, and this rumor would have to be a significant change in their price model for me to be a fan. I refuse to pay-per-hour to play an MMO, and without changes to death penalty, buffs, and mount-that-eats-money policies I can’t support their game.

Come to think of it, watching them speak in PR half-truths isn’t helping either.

While I truly support the followings that developers need to get onto fixes, this game has only been in Open Beta for a week now and people are already expecting it to be flawless. There is a reason some of the mechanics are shot and that is the reason it is still in B E T A. If they made an official statement for every little problem, very few people would ever read to the end.

Yeah the “open beta” designation is just a cop out in case of the highly unlikely event a major blunder were to occur (is there such a thing as a sarcam emoticon?), and then they could say, “but we are still in beta!.

They are live and taking money from anyone silly enough to be paying these prices…

To me the funniest thing is they don’t really have a minimum production cost for the items they are going to sell. They are virtual items so it doesn’t cost them anything to make more. They just need to make enough off the CS to cover production and upkeep. I think this is a situation where they should strive for volume of sales.

“Volume of sales here guys. It doesn’t even take a background in economics to realize this either. It’s just common sense.”

Especially for a digital commodity, selling a million potions versus 1 potion, they only had to design that item for the game once.

I’m just getting into the game since Sunday. I am someone who can’t spend a lot, but I could see myself putting in up to $5-10 a month potentially, if there was a feature I really wanted. A player like me would be out of the picture if anything I wanted in the game were higher.

Considering that those who *do* have backgrounds in economics *coughBernankecouch* have screwed things up BIG time, I think an appeal to common sense is wholly recommended.

And yes, common sense suggests that you don’t wallop subscriptionless MMO players with big ticket items or harsh changes/mechanics. You help them love your game, and then make it easy for them to give you money. That’s the Three Rings (Puzzle Pirates) philosophy, and it’s served them very well:

http://www.penny-arcade.com/2008/9/29/

GP wrote that they want us to give them feedback on the CS prices.

I had wrote why ask for feedback now when its been posted a dozen times before, and you all have stated you were reading these posts. What happened that you couldnt take that feedback and use it BEFORE and AFTER the CS prices were out of control?

GP replies with because we want this thread to be positive and having flames takes the thread out of control for feedback.

Someone else responded to this by saying “so you did read those posts yet you refused to do a simple copy and paste from the constructive posts that were in these threads? You really werent taking the feedback seriously enough to make a list to show those who had the power to change things, is this what your saying?”

His post was soon deleted.

But he made a good point. We as a whole had been making threads after threads of organized changes and thoughts on how the CS/gameplay/mechanics should be fair before they released their statement, yet they obviously werent to concerned or they wouldve at least copy and pasted the best parts of those threads for the powers to be to see where the community stood.

This tells me they DONT read any of our input and this latest attempt is just a way to buy time so they can leave their overpriced CS open for “several weeks” and see just how much they can make before the game finally tanks!

With the new patches heading our way it wont matter if the prices are reasonable as we will now have to buy double, possibly triple the amount of CS items just to make it to endgame alone.

This isnt counting what its going to cost per raid, per death, and so on once we do explore the Astral. The new patch contains a hell of a lot of ninja nerfs that are now making their way into the public, and there not good by any means.

In the end its not GP we have to worry bout so much now, but Mail.RUs control over this game and how fast they are sinking it! I think in a nutshell GP sees this game going under and they are desperately trying to get as much back on their investment as fast as possible before it does tank!

If we want REAL change, we have to be able to not only force GP to be fair, but we also have to address Mail.RU, who is in complete control of this project, and let them know we are not going to support the ninja nerfs that are heading our way!

The only way to do that is not support the CS at all and to make it clear to Mail.RU that we will not support a game that makes the use of CS required every second we play, period! Thats not how the F2P Model works in real life folks! Dont buy into their rendition of how a F2P model is supposed to be!

You misinterpreted my post entirely. He asked why didnt they cut the best parts of PREVIOUS posts about the CS BEFORE they threw another thread asking for feedback! The simple fact is they are not listening, and they are not relaying nfo back ot those who have the power to change things.

If you told everyone before this debacle that you were listening to everyone about their feedback, then turn around and hike prices up, did you actually listen to anyone? No!

Asgenar = Jayge

He asked a simple question why they didnt listen to feedback before the debacle and simply take the best of those posts to those who could change things.

She dismissed him and deleted a simple and honest question cause the fact is she or anyone else wasnt actually paying attention to previous suggestions about the cash shop or anything else about the game! Now they want feedback when they say they have been reading feedback all along? Its a cop out.

If they know we dont like the prices, why would it take “several weeks” to “consider” changing them to start with, and why would they still leave the CS up in game knowing all this?

We have time and time again have had suggestion threads that didnt turn into flame wars with real solutions for prices, for mechanics, for systems, and for gameplay in general, before the CS debacle, yet they never bothered once to copy and paste the best portions of those threads to show to anyone TILL everyone boycotted the CS? Come on man, thats a cop out and even you know that!

Figured I’d toss this out here, interview with I think he was the Gpotato associate producer about the cash shop fiasco.
http://www.massively.com/2010/02/24/massively-speaking-episode-90-allods-onlines-cash-shop-intervi/1#c25745222

Listened to the entire interview on Massively, and its actually pretty good news for allods fans.

The gpotato guy admits that they made a mistake by pricing items like a traditional f2p game (where 5% of customers spend 95% of the money), and they want to revise that downwards to make items accessible to more people.

He also states that he thinks FoD is too strict, but adds the disclaimer that any change would have to be done by AN. I didn’t make one, but if anyone finds a transcript I’d like to read one. kids screaming etc.

Good enough for me that I’m not uninstalling it. Might be all smoke but the words and tone of the gpotato exec tell me they are at least going to try to keep people like me as customers.

I am with you keen, but seeing as I hope to live for a long time, I don’t mind waiting on the sidelines for a new F2P that will revolutionize the market to be honest. There will be one, maybe even an Allods like game and we’ll all rejoice and dance around the bonfire and laugh at Astrum Nival and Gpotato’s when it happens.

@howclever

1) They say they STILL will follow the cash shop model, where a minority pays the bill.
Dont expect getting something similar to a P2P experience for 15-20 bucks a month, they will aim for the sweet spot where cash shop price are still abnormally high, but inside more people’s budget.

“so $100 weekly to play Allods made my playerbase angry?
lets try 25!”

and sorry to tell you, but for $25 a week, MANY idiots that dwell the F2P genre, with more money than common sense will buy their way to the top, and gPotato wont think twice about it, it will “prove they were right”

moan all you want, thats not going to change

2) Saying that AN is in charge of that is the same as saying FOD will forever be a gamebreaking issue and theres no way around it. FOD and its GAMEBREAKING effects are set in stone.

And just wait for the next patch with 2h FOD, they cannot dodge it…

see,i start to feel bad for GPOTATO, because the uproar with this game is not their fault,its the playerbase’s fault.
Mos specifically, its the P2P-background crowd that thinks everybody paying 15 bucks a month is fine, and fueling this backlash.

GPOTATO only made a small screwup with the cash shop. The screwup was that their cash shop items are expensive even for those 10% hardcore playerbase that pays the bills in all their games.
They are fixing it and the cash shop will have prices that those 10% can easily afford, and which still be too much for the freeloaders and the people used to subscription games

If GPOTATOcould address us with 100% honesty, Im sure they would say something like:

“P2P players in Allods. get out.

no, seriously, get the f*** out. we dont want you, we dont need you.leave. now.

We have always relied on 10% people paying outrageous amounts of money and 90% people leeching us. It works for us, we dont care a f*** about what P2P publishers do, we dont care a f*** about what you think is better.

So please, because we never had your market in mind, and this game was never supposed to cater to gamers like you, quit already and stop making noise”

The longer people play and hope the situation will improve the longer they will leave the prices in place and the more inconveniences they will patch in to drive you to the CS.
That’s why this is taking so long: they are planning not just new prices but new ways to virtually herd you through the gift shop.

Vote with your virtual feet! Only when the player base shrinks and revenue vanishes will they turn off the servers, remove the 0 from the price tags and restart the servers.
If they respect their players, once that’s done THEN is the time to start rebuilding the model.

What actually surprises and scares me the most are the numbers of apologists, because it’s more than a tiny handful of trolls – how can any gamer look at a system that includes items costing thousands and even start to defend it.

Sure if the scale ran from $1 to $100 but when it’s so very extreme you have to question people’s sanity. Did gpotato think that there would be enough people who were rich, stupid or insane enough to get away with their prices?

@Saga and Marcus Dean

The thing is: you HAVE free to play games that cater to subscription players. And have affordable options comparable to a 15$ monthly sub.

Look at Wizard 101, look at DDO, look at Free Realms. And you have plenty of more examples of free to play games that don’t alienate a huge chunk of potential paying costumers.

If you owned a business would you tell someone to GTFO when they are willing to spend money on your product?
Honestly, Allods is a game built in a way that has a vast appeal to a large scope of players. The item shop should accomodate the biggest amount of players possible spending money in the game.

I listened to the interview and honestly I didn’t think it was that bad. I’ll admit once the cash shop blunder happened I was ready to throw in the towel but now that I’ve had some time to think about things it was a bit encouraging. If they can get the prices of perfume to the point where I can balance buying from the CS and doing some dailies here and there I’d be fine with that.

Here’s to hoping for some good change. 🙂

Look at any MMO and classes get nerfed then buffed, mechanics come and go. I have seen the changes on the horizon and while they are doing some things that are questionable, mechanics can always be changed around in future patches.

Look at WoW, I can’t tell you how many times a class was nerfed and 1 year later it was flavor of the month because of buffs it got. Mechanics are the same, things change over time, that’s the beauty and sometimes the curse of an MMO. I guess all I’m saying is wait and see, things might be weird now but it’s still beta. I still haven’t paid anything so it’s not hurting me to follow it.

I’m going to keep questing, leveling and plodding around casually for the time being and see what unfolds. As soon as FoD stops me from PvPing or interferes with my overall experience (or stops me playing with some degree of balance compared to others) I’ll quit and move on. It’s not like there aren’t other great MMO games coming or out there now that have better structures/plans in place.

I think the game will be very empty once they isolate the F2P players who are boycotting the CS but then find they can’t even take part in content because of perfumes. The 5 or 10 percent of the hardcore, paying players can have their ghost towns… well, floating ghost rocks…

Janedoe {Mentalist}

The Massive interview sounded to me like a guy who doesn’t understand the market. Maybe I’m hearing wrong (entirely possible, I was distracted while listening), but it sounded to me like they were angling to cater *only* to those 11/1 percent of players who spend a lot of money. In other words, from the outset, they were ignoring the 88.

That’s not how you do this model. You accept that there are the 88 percent, but you try to entice them over to the 11/1. You do that with cheap prices and impulse purchases, *reducing* the barrier to opening the wallet. It *will not* work to cater exclusively to the 11/1 and ignore the 88.

I finally removed Allods about 24 hours after the Massively interview. Talk is cheap, the cash shop is a huge problem and simply removing the offending items or the shop completely until they decide on what to adjust the prices too would of gone a long way with me but instead they’d rather evaluate 4 weeks worth of time to see who would break down and use it.

Sad shameful $$$ in my opinion. Its especially disconcerning to listen to the interview and realize they either dont know what they have even now, don’t care whats coming down the pipeline, and are utterly clueless. The only work they did on prices was “what can we get” utter PR spin.

The lie about the quests for the perfume though were really rich. I’m sorry there’s basically 1 daily repeatable and it gets you 1 perfume period. The quest that nets you 20 is lvl 15 and there’s even people saying it randomly doesn’t give you the perfumes.

Gpotatos Management and PR spinners are fail…we’re not stupid..I’ll be taking my money back to Atlantica or..*shudder* maybe Champions atleast to play Vibora Bay until something else comes along.

It’s been 5 days or so, any more news from Allodds. Still no updates or patches of any sort.. If the devs are there, other than a NDA you would think something would leak saying – sit tight, patch coming this week etc..

Hmmm