I've posted my thoughts to to your comments about trolling here: viewtopic.php?f=5&t=122517&start=390#p4324478 Apologies if you were offended by the word 'melodramatic'. I was trying to convey that I think there is a lot of value in the items and suggesting that it's leading us down a terrible path feel a little over the top to me. Clearly you feel otherwise, and I can only ask that you keep an open mind as we roll out the rest of this feature. In regards to the value of the boxes, you only opened 1 box. Why didn't you open all of them? Also that means you got 19EC worth of value for free. The EC value is not intangible it's also attached to the same stat / EC value as past Stat items. We've also stated that we are making them re-giftable, upgradeable and recycle-able. Which gives them even more value.
Thanks! I appreciate it, and we'll do our best to give you more great items for EC. In the mean time though I hope you guys enjoy the free boxes!
I was saying charging EC for every aspect of the game going forward is a terrible path. I've played almost 3 years. You used to be able to get the top avis by devoting time, and maybe a cat, to a hunt. Now in order to get the high stat avis, you MUST do flash cat cafe, costing a cat/s and hundreds of dollars in dn. I started playing when there was a limit of 6 dn per party. So, no, I don't think its melodramatic to say that making the entire game about EC only (with the couple of "super generous" freebies thrown in, with the only purpose of getting us "hooked" and buying ec to finish). I think that's a terrible path. There should be some cheap decorations, an ugly picture, a bland shag rug, etc for cash. Make people choose between that 5T dorm room and an ugly painting of dogs playing poker. Makes it interesting for those who don't want to pay, but still has people buying cats to make enough cash to pay for everything. And yes, everything in this game is intangible. The only thing tangible is the cash that we fork over (FYI in·tan·gi·ble inˈtanjəb(ə)l/ adjective 1. unable to be touched or grasped; not having physical presence. A yellow paint for an app room wall is intangible. Ecs are intangible. The game is intangible, for in the end, you have nothing but money you have spent, gone. Same is true of every online game. Not something to get defensive over, I'm assuming everyone realizes that eventually this game will end and you don't take your avatar, stat items, and dorm room with you into the real world lol) And you talk about the stat value, but you've also said that besides the possibility of offending someone and them farming you, there will NEVER be a point in stats. There will be no more wars (the Sunday wars from long ago used to be one of my favorite things, but whatever). I just think charging ec for everything is bad. Gives most people no goals, because they arent going to buy ecs regardless (just as there are those who will buy whatever you put out there). You should have cash goals, a few high dollar cash items, so that people log on and play every day. You need people to play your game, even if they aren't giving you money. You should acknowledge them when you add features. You said absolutely not. In no way, shape, or form will there be cash items. Ec only. That's basically telling a large portion of your players they aren't worth anything. That's a terrible path. Inclusion gives you a community. Exclusion gives you... this thread with people "whining" and feeling marginalized.
If we only get to use one furniture key a day, you guys should extend the time we have for buying keys. Like you did with the candy buckets
So I've been trying to read all comments since I last checked this thread but I couldn't go any further, they're too many! Basically I agree with Daisy, I don't see anything wrong or bad in the new addition, but be careful with what you take away. As tweak said, you're pretty much making a whole new game completely different from what it was at start and I'm not sure that's the best idea... :?. I'm not too old here, I missed iwars but as I was very interested in them, I moved to KaW, got eventually to enjoy them... Just promise me you're not taking them away from kaw, at least. Tbh, I used to join system wars organized by players here in the past, but after warring regularly in kaw iwars, I found pimd system wars flat and boring, so eventually stopped participating in them. Not because I don't like iWars, simply because KaW ones are way more exciting. Anyway, right now my fav game is smash, xD.
You lot do realize Mark is one person out of a whole company? Does that fact weigh in your minds when you're ripping one person apart? Don't become playground bullies just because you didn't get your way. The game dynamic has been changing for a long time now, we all watched it happen so you can't throw a tantrum and act baffled every time a new update comes out. A lot of us are unhappy, yet we're all still here. As for my personal feelings, I couldn't word it better than BlueEyedAngel. Nailed it hun.?
Cool, I'm glad we could have a dialogue about this because you have some important points I'd like to address. Point 1 - Things used to be cheaper. Maybe, that's the way you remember it, I can't argue with that... but we also are constantly adding new features and the game has changed over time. There are way more people playing now and some of those people will play hard and spend a lot to get top items. The top items are for top players. If everyone could get them they wouldn't be exclusive. We're also digging into the economy in general to try and make progression better for everyone. Point 2 - The nature of virtual goods being intangible Your points are fair enough, and I'd rather not get into a discussion about the nature of virtual goods. My point was more that we gave them this value based on design for them to be tradeable and have progressive stats. Point 3 - Stats are pointless without wars Stats on items have a lot of uses, but I think you are right that we need to give them more meaning. Also something that we are working on. Point 4 - Furniture for ECs not cash The problem is that cash has a variable exchange rate. So players who are further in the game get more cash for less effort and for cheaper. So if we want to add an item that has value to all players, it becomes increasing difficult to balance if it's available for cash. On the other hand we have a pretty established EC/Stat value on items. So yeah we could have had crappy cash items for non paying players and make them feel like they only deserve crap items unless they pay. But instead we decided to make them all nice and to all have good stats and lots of EC value, and to give out a bunch of them for free. In the current design, when a non paying player gets a furniture item, they know it has awesome stats. The boxes are also super generous and fairly random. Some folks in this thread have even pointed out they got the desk which is a high stat item. This is a rare item that we could have put in the hunt only for the top players, but instead we've given a ton of them out at mostly random, for free. In the future, we'll probably have events that have some exclusive furniture, but right now a lot people have gotten the rare rewards for free from the boxes. The neat thing about this design, is that a hacker desk and a princess desk have the same EC value and hence the same stats. It means that you can choose what you want your room to look like and not HAVE to pick one item over the other because it has better stats. We are also planning to make the upgrade materials for each slot the same, so if you want to upgrade your princess bed to a super high level, you can do that. And you can break down the hacker desk and use the parts to upgrade your princess bed.
I will admit, I do and don't get the money thing. You say people who spend thousands of dollars deserve better items, but then say its not fair to the divide to have very expensive cash items. Isn't it fair that people who have been playing for years, deserve special items, just as people who drop tons of money deserve special items? Why is it discriminatory to base it on time and effort, but not on how much money we have to spend? I think people who have 2T worked hard (or spent a lot of real cash) to get that 2T. People who started playing last week will have a goal. May take a month doing flash, or a year doing regular parties but saving their money to buy that dorm item. Either way, hard work was given. You're going to do things you're way, and trust me, I understand you're a business and should definitely have making money your top priority. Servers, staff, etc costs a lot of money. I just think making lesser quality and stat items to give people goals (during which they are playing your game, rating your game, watching your ads) is a nice incentive to play the game faithfully. Also, I hate random. All these people around me getting 300ec desks or whatever...I get 19ec yellow paint and 29ec shelf. That's always my luck on this game. But that is a completely separate "why me, not fair" foot stomping, arm crossing tantrum post lol. I don't disagree with making things cost ec. I support it. I hold the hope that the more successful you are, and the more prosperous you are, the more you will put back into the game. But just don't get too distracted by making money that you neglect the people who can't/won't pay. They still deserve a place at the table, no?
Agreed about players who worked hard getting rewarded for their effort and a ton of the game is structured that way. But this feature is a little different because we want to make every item be valuable and exciting so we give them good stats and charge less for a key (15EC) than the cost of the cheapest item you can get (19EC). It also let's us have potentially thousands of items, and they will all be useful and valuable. If there were crappy cash items and you got them from a box that you paid EC for that would be worse in our opinion. Also, this is just V1 of the feature, and based on this balance we can start giving out items to players who are super ahead in the game. For example, perhaps we have a furniture item that only drops when you unlock a high level dorm room. If it were cash based, the stats per cash would have to be crazy high to make it worthwhile, meaning we wouldn't want to give it out to low level players and so making it tradeable would risk unbalancing the game if a high level player gives it to a low level player. In our current system that item could be given to a low level player because it has the same base stats as the item they can buy for EC. As we move forward we will implement a ton of ways to get items for your dorm room. One of those ways will always be for ECs, others will be based on progression and some based on randomness. Also trading is going to be rad.
Your explanation makes sense and I will reserve judgement to see where it goes. I do have one final comment on the room. I'm going to be "that" person. The underwear. Not everyone comes here to rp or find a relationship. And a pair of underwear is usually just a pair of underwear. But given the nature of the game, and the fact that we are required to have our "dorm" public, many of us would appreciate not inviting the comments from that article. Maybe a small change in code, and for free we can choose if we want underwear, socks, a hoodie, etc. Yah. It's petty. But for some of us, we prefer not having the comments made about our "underwear", especially considering so many people are here just to find...romantic conversation ::cough:: rp ::cough:: just a suggestion. The underwear should be changable to suit the particular users intentions in the game. Just my opinion as someone not looking for internet romance, and would prefer not to have a mandatory dorm room with (men's) undies on the floor. I saw a few other people in this thread express the same opinion.