BlueEyedAngel said:
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.
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.
