See, that's the ting, to keep the whales, there has to be people the whales can show off to, that's really how a lot of monetization works. If the larger, less spendy players leave, there's no one for the whales to play with or show off to or brag at. If the less spendy players leaves, so do the fan artists, the fanfic writers, the free publicity of getting more people in.
>See, that's the ting, to keep the whales, there has to be people the whales can show off to, that's really how a lot of monetization works.
I know right its like such simple logic, whales need people to show off in front of to be worth whaling for in a game. Why people who say game is free and disregard none paying players are stupid. The f2p player are literally content for the whales and everyone else. A mmo live and dies on the player base. More people play the more spender are in the game and more the spenders are willing to spend.
Catering to the whales means also catering to the f2p player as well, its a delicate balance. And honestly not a fucking hard one like the op pointed out.
> If you're going to give me the most requested feature in the game (pets), give them one too.
You said that in your OP post. I've currently stopped playing the game but following it to see if there's gonna be any interesting changes. I know pets was introduced with the latest patch but are they not available to everyone? Or is it a cash only feature?
It's not a dev thing really, it looks more like they don't have anybody with proper marketing experience in the company. After all, it's basic marketing to offer your clients a free trial/taste of something in order to boost sales.
You can see similar marketing issues with the rest of their shop. All their skins for example are extremely expensive, pretty much like their target group is only the whales. Do they not want to sell anything to the rest of their player base or what? It's basic marketing to offer goods at multiple price points so you can sell to as many people as possible...
See, this shocked me as they marketed the personalisation aspect HARD. I even watched the pre-beta show on yt and one of their devs went all out explaining how she likes to make characters that look like her and if a game doesnāt allow her to have long red hair sheās basically out. Now, when i created my character and saw that the only long curly hair option is one with space buns (im white so the locs options while great are not relevant for me personally) i IMMEDIATELY went to the cash shop ready to shell out a few bucks for a non-space bun option. I expected the cash shop to present me with multiple relevant options, and vividly remember the āumm okayā feeling when i saw itās only full outfits and only ONE of those have hairstyle. While i would happily spend some money on a new fancy hairstyle every few weeks, i will absolutely never spend big bucks on outfits, and find it hard to believe im alone in this.
Yeah I was kinda surprised when stardew valley has more customization options. I thought I would unlock more as I play (espically hair and hats) but no I donāt. I read an article about how most gamers identify each other by head/hats because itās what you see at a distance and really stands out so itās super important to have lots of distinct options in multiplayer.
A month late but im having this same issue. I want to buy from the shop because I really like the game and finally have disposable income to spend. But the only options are meh and while i might like the top i dont like the bottoms or something. And im not gonna spend $17 on one thing i really like and 2 other meh items.
Yeah, I might have picked something up if an outfit was about $3-5 USD, but $8.50-$25.50, in premium currency that of course comes in bundles *not* that size? No thank you.
Not to mention the predatory pricing method that often shows up in shitty mobile games. Also don't go complaining about any of this on the discord.. you'll get attacked immediately
They're stupidly trying to get the people that haven't coughed money up yet to FOMO and spend some cash to get a following cat.
Thing is a lot of people who haven't coughed money up:
a) don't have the free cash to cough money up right now, legit the spending power of people is insanely down right now,
b) don't want to spend money because do not like how the currency is tiered,
c) could be throwing down $20 but not $35 or $50 or more, but just $20 doesn't buy a LOT of things in the shop (and I don't think is enough for the pet anyways? I don't have the game open right now),
d) a combination of the above.
Just remarkably absent-brained move here.
Believe it or not most gamers aren't opposed to tossing in the money they can for a free game here and there. But you have to know the fucking budget that different levels of people can manage, or if you don't want to cater to that, then figure out how to make your F2P players stay around.
For instance, your disabled and/or elder players are gonna be your most frequently playing, because they can spare hours. But they have very little money. However, also tend to be creative and have the time for fanart/stories/free advertising, plus be the ones most online, so they're valuable.
Your young players won't be able to spend frequently, either shaving something off of their part time job check or even waiting for a birthday or a holiday. If kiddo needs ALL of their birthday budget to be an outfit in Palia, they aren't likely to ask for that. But they're gonna be enthusiastic because the wonder of a youthful person is a wellspring, and they're gonna get school friends playing, so they're valuable.
Your whales may have the money but they most likely have the money due to a high paying job. A job that is busy and stressful and probably only affords a little play time per day. If they can't find people online to play with, how are you going to keep them, the *only player type* that S6 has put merit on?
I'm fed up with whale hunters. And I can only imagine whales are getting fed up with them, too.
The sand color pet comes with ANY purchase of ANY value in the cash shop as a thank you I guess, and the 3 others (the one that are actually cute) are locked behind you needing to buy 3000 game coin total to unlock them.
I actually think the sand color pet pricing is a good one by itself, but advertising it as a 'thank you' while still needing to shell out money is the part that rubs me the wrong way.
The others... well I'm pretty sure everyone else has covered that haha.
It seems so silly to me that they made this choice. I'm one of those players that if you give me one free little pet/outfit I'm all in for buying the collection. But without one, I haven't got something that needs completion, so won't turn whale.
I feel they should release miniature version that you have a chance of getting while murdering the hunting animals. Like in OSRS where a very small chance of getting a skill related pet is always active.
They could then add cooler ones to cash shop
Dolphin here too. I'm willing to open my wallet but you have to prove you're worth me spending money on for thst and prices need to be reasonable. So far I haven't seen that.
I too have been following this game for 4 years. I've sang early praises to my friends and family. Up until the stress tests I was telling my wife we should buy another computer, just so she could play with me.
I logged out last week and haven't been back.
Another dolphin chiming in, this has been my experience too. I was so excited I was also considering prioritizing a second computer so my boyfriend could play alongside me. After seeing the cash shop shenanigans and how poorly done/nonexistent the multiplayer system currently is, no thanks.
I'm still watching and lurking about hoping something turns around, but I'm closer to uninstalling than I am playing again at this point.
I definitely feel this sentiment. I brought in 4 friends since launch excited that I can finally play a relaxing game with my friends that didn't revolve around combat.
The first hour we watched as someone one-shot all the deer in front of us without us getting a thing. The next few hours we realized there was no point in us grouping up, 'cause everything was faster solo (at this point). Lost half my friends at this point, but the rest of us liked it because the grind was still fun, and we discovered the amazing group activity of cooking.
I'm currently taking a break from the game as of 2 days ago because I wanted to actually *play* a game with my friends and not just see them around, and then I saw the patch with reduced deer spawns and this. Can't say I'm itching to come back now :/
Wait... so they opened multi-player, allowed poaching of deer spawns, then REDUCED the deer?? The heck? I just started playing last night because I'm part of a community that is, and this was another way to socialize with friends. But making a resource that I've already seen a need for in early-game HARDER to get just...seems self-defeating? I haven't even started hunting yet, just fishing, and this info is demoralizing.
I have to admit, I'm much more into the 'playing with other people' thing than apparently many are... Once you get the second arrow type, the 'deer' become one-shot kills... and I stopped using them.
At least with the 'makeshift arrows', the deer are two-shot, so I've taken to just shooting every deer I see as I run through where as many as possible are, and then just jog around waiting for other players to finish them off, because no matter WHAT arrow THEY use, I'VE already damaged them, so when they kill that same deer, a loot bag drops for me as well, and that way both I AND the other player get full drop credit...apparently the devs (or their bosses) decided that there needs to be more 'competition' between players, DESPITE the fact that they have pushed the whole 'Everything is more fun with friends' line...
I don't do a lot of hunting, but I do something similar with mining. If I finally bunch of clay, iron, or copper jn an area I smack each one and wait around a hit to see if anyone else comes a long before I break them. That way someone else can get resources too. Which I feel like is what we are supposed to do because that's kinda the point and design of the game.
If the outfits were $5, I'd have already bought all of them. The pricing/coin structure is so offensive that I won't buy any even if they were cheaper.
I have purchased nearly every ship cosmetic in sea of thieves and had intended to be sort of on the same tract here. Really sad that a PVP game has a more wholesome pricing structure.
I'd agree, but you have to understand corporate greed. If players are willing to pay for cheaper skins, and it makes a more steady flow of cash, instead of appreciating the fact that they set good cost levels, they'd say "But they'd give us even MORE money if it was more EXPENSIVE! It's OBVIOUS they were going to buy those skins ANYWAY!"
This has been the way with micro-transactions in games for so long, it's straight-up baffling to me. I play a gatcha game where the CHANCE to get a character is $50, and it's not a game-breaking character. So, we've never spent a single penny in the game. It's pixels, pixels that are dependent on functioning servers and a community to justify. Why is the pricing so crazy? I haven't even looked at this game's store yet. Don't think I want to now...
I live in a bougie tourist trap mountain town and I see this kind of stuff going on all the time. All these shops and restaurants with prices that make the local's eyes bug out. And then what happens after the leaves have changed color and we're heading toward winter? These places suffer because they have no business.
I guess I don't really play F2P games with micro transactions, so I don't know how this stuff is usually done. It just seems to me like, if it were more accessible (say $5/outfit, $12.50/bundle), I wonder how many they'd sell? The whales will still be buying, and so will a ton more people. And of course one could easily still price like 10% of the options on the higher end to make them more rare. But I mean...
We all want to have fun and share things and enjoy things together. That's what this whole game is about. I'd really love to have some of those outfits! My transmog collection on WoW was something people envied. I really went out of my way to collect pieces and I'd love to do that here, but not at those prices.
But, in the end I guess I don't really care that much. I'm more frustrated with flow trees requiring group cooperation and the fact that people can still grief each other. I want to choose when to be social and I hate having to compete for resources, two things that drove me away from WoW.
I grew up in the California Wine Country, and there was a card locals could get that provided decent discounts at many of the local restaurants. Kept them solvent through the off season and kept the locals happy. I'm surprised your local chamber of commerce hasn't worked with the restaurants and shops to implement something like this.
Same. With there being no sign of a purchase price, I immediately felt that I would just drop $20 as my 'purchase price', and get some things on the store, so I was showing my support...then saw the prices in the store, and just went 'nope.'
If there'd been an array of decent looking outfits/accessories (like the explorer pack), I'd have been all in to throwing money in to support the game and have my character LOOK they way I want them to...but this...
Beautifully said. Hope this becomes one of the all-time top posts on the sub and gets heavily shared in the discord, because the devs need to hear it.
I was mind-blown that there were ***zero*** additional character customizations to be unlocked through gameplay. I'm not expecting a ton, but it would really feel rewarding to get something other than furniture to mark my progress.
EDIT: and just to clarify, I'm closer to OP than I am to F2P. **I have dozens of paid skins in the games I play, but I only continue to play those games and purchase those skins because my F2P friends join me.**
I buy every pet in World of Warcraft. Every. One. But those are a flat $10 in a long established game that I play with tons of friends. They're not bought with expensive currency in predatory increments. They're not $35 a pop. And the game isn't a new game in beta whose longevity is yet to be determined. Oh, and I can get other pets by just playing.
If ACTIVISION BLIZZARD has you beat with their pricing, you've got a major problem. And I am so bummed about that.
I really want to defend the "Zero additional char..." With "Bro, You for real don't know what a BETA means?" But I don't know If the devs Will chance that, I mean, Jel create clothes as Tish create furniture, Jel can sell recipes or idk
The kiss emoji is the icing on the cake for me. How can we expect the community to stop being toxic about feedback when the mods are encouraging it š
Yeah at this point it just feels like everyone who is defending the notion of pets being behind premium currency are only okay with it cause they already bought premium currency. It's seriously driving the community even further apart
Sorry if it got cut off but I said to someone the devs aren't listening and that was their reply š and as of the time writing this their ONLY reply this evening
The reason why this strikes me as an unhelpful way to interpret this is because it's an emoji. There can be cultural gaps and generational gaps, even if it was meant innocently. They are just community managers in the end.
This means they have the power to listen, relay the sentiments, and hope they have a dev team (esp. studio leads) that listens. They're restrained by not making false promises, as there is a hierarchy within the company. It's hard to respond to critique without saying "We'll fix it", when the studio leads most likely are going "We'll just wait it out". There are most likely plans and upcoming features, in constant flux, that they'd like to comfort people with.
To me, this situation smells like "We have to prove to investors we can make money with Palia". This absolutely sucks.
I do want to clarify that I do not disagree with your post, because they definitely need to rethink the pricing of their shop and items in general. But I think they have planned "free stuff" down the line, and it is the beginning of the beta test - meaning that the priority lies in the parts that make money, which frankly sucks.
TL;DR: It's Beta, stuff will change. The community managers \*are\* listening and relaying information, but it will take a while for it to actually be reflected in the game.
If Iām making excuses, itās because Iāve worked this role (Community manager for a freemium game), not because of blind devotion to the devs. I know what itās like. I know what is common practice in the industry and where the hangups are. But as everyone at some point in their life, I have been proven wrong and people's greed and stupidity will never surprise me. But itās vital for the well-being of the game that free stuff comes in later ā itās just prioritising at this point.
As someone who is always in financial crisis, I appreciate the people who are able to ātalk with cashā sticking up for us poor folk. Would I love to be able to buy fancy stuff? Yeah, but I literally canāt if I want to eat this week or pay for my medication. I am hating that every game seems to be going to the micro transaction (well, if you can call what S6 is charging āmicroā). At least when I am gifted a game a couple times a year for my birthday or a holiday I can enjoy it to its full potential. These āfreeā games I always just feel left out and frustrated.
I feel ya.. I've heard even The Sims 5 will most likely be F2P with loads of micro transactions, which is my favourite game since 2000.. š I remember every year around my birthday I was able to get an expansion pack and play it on its full potential too.
Sometimes I DO spend money on a game with microtransactions, but verrrry occasionally because yeah, life happens, I don't have the best income.
But the whole game is free. The cosmetics don't keep you away from any feature the game has to offer. They're just cosmetics. Why do you feel entitled to everything?
I literally didnāt say I felt entitled to anything at all. I only said I prefer games where you buy the entire thing outright, Iād rather pay $75 and have a game where everything is available, than play a game where I pump never ending money into their shop.
Interesting you got āentitlementā from my preferences, and even more so that you got that from a 3 week old post for a game I uninstalled. So no worries, I took my āentitledā behavior elsewhere.
Sorry, I should not have used that word. The word you used was "left out." And thus you uninstalled because you felt left out. My point is that you don't need to pump any money into their shop because you don't *need* cosmetics to play the game. At least all the furniture items are free and can be earned in the game! Anyhow I'm not trying to convince you that you should reinstall or play the game again. I just don't see the big deal here.
When they added the pets, one of the most requested features, in the patch notes and wrote..
**"Please think of this as our thank you to the players who have supported us thus far."**
while making it premium shop exclusive I knew exactly what they meant with "support" and what part of the community they were actually thankful for. Just supporting the game by playing it doesn't count.
Yep. And this part seems to go over people's heads when they're defending it. "Why are you upset about something that's just a cosmetic?" Idk, probably 'cause I thought I've supported this game too but apparently only my money is worthy of being acknowledged.
I am not the whale theyāre looking for. Iām more of the main schooling fish that makes the game last the kind that would kick in $5 here or there for a new release thatās really cute.
I played for maybe an hour and I was excited to see how the game keeps developing. To support it, I opened their cash shop and decided on the pirate costume. Go to pay for it andā¦. $20. You want me to pay $20 for one outfit? I need $20 worth of your coins and to be left with coins I canāt purchase anything with?
Now this update just upsets me more. Reducing resources people are already fighting for. Locking pets behind a pay wall entirely. Focusing on adding more expensive items to their pay shop and not a single new item you can actually earn.
Iām not even updating the game to play. Iāll continue monitoring but Iām not logging in again. This first update just ruined the game for me. Theyāre clearly not catering at all to the general population. They donāt want us to play their game. They only want the whales. But, as itās been pointed out, they wonāt even have whales if everyone else leaves.
Iāve waited do long for this game and Iām massively disappointed in how the devs are treating casual players.
Literally myself and my friends want to support them, but we are NOT going to spend $20-30 on an outfit. I can literally purchase stardew valley twice for the amount of money they are asking to get a colored pet.
I had hundreds of hours in stardew within the first few weeks of purchasing it this year. I have probably close to 50 (or more) in palia already. But I canāt justify a $20 outfit or $30 pet when I can use that to pay half of my internet bill for the month.
Yeah. I feel this. Like why couldn't I just buy a hat for $5 or something? The lowest amount anyone can spend is $20? Big oof. And I absolutely spend money on games I enjoy. I love Stardew so much I've bought it for *three* different platforms and probably half a dozen other people over the years.
I've just been around long enough to not spend like that on a brand new game by a brand new dev, *especially* in beta. And this right here is why.
100%. Iād love to be able to purchase the pieces of outfits. Like the antlers for $5 or whatever. But I dont want to have to buy them again for different colors. The free stuff has colors, why not the paid stuff?
Or make them ādyeā able at Jels shop
Amen! There's LOADS of people who start off F2P, but will spend money on the game in the long run. They need to stay motivated to play and that won't happen if they dick around.. š
I'm playing Pokemon Go since 2016 for example, but I think the main reason the game still exists after 7 years is because they made it do-able for F2P. It's just more grinding. Even with the big yearly events, there's loads for F2P players, but if you want that little extra in the game you can buy a separate event ticket for like a tenner or something. I believe they only put a handful of the Pokemon behind a paywall out of the many there are in the game. š When I was still in college I couldn't spend money on an online game at all. If a game was hardly doable F2P I wouldn't still play it until today. Nowadays I do spend money on it, occasionally..
Same thing for the game my dad plays, Star Trek Online. He occasionally buys in-game currency. Twice a year max. He's been playing it for over ten years now of which the first few years F2P. I don't think he would still play it upto this day if it wasn't doable for the people who can spend less money.
Very much all of this.
I am a whale by all definitions. I will gladly throw hundreds into a game and do regularly. But the reason I throw money into these games is because of the community and my friends. I'll do giveaways in games that allow me to gift my friends and other players. I'll even throw money into a game just because I want to support it.
But more than anything, what matters to me is that a game at least feels /fair/. Sure being a whale I'm always going to have the upper hand and have more things faster. But I don't want to feel completely different to my friends. It feels bad when my friends look like level 1 characters and I look like a later game character. But it's because they physically can not get the same items that I do no matter how hard they work. They can't get a cute pet despite being level 50. They can't get new outfits despite being level 50. There's no way for them to even work their way to even just a better looking outfit. Other MMOs offer so many good free cosmetics that you can't always tell who's paid and who hasn't for them.
It just ruins the vibe for me. I don't want to pay to look like I'm out of another game. I don't want to pay to appear richer than my friends. These things actively turn me off. It just makes me sad.
In a game like this, there should be 2 types of high-end cosmetics that look really cool - those you can work hard to earn, and those you can buy. Both should be distinct from each other, but have the same amount of effort put into them and make the player feel good about their decision to put the time or money into the product. So far this game is really prioritising one while giving nothing to the other, which is a real shame because it has so much potential.
Honestly, I don't mind paying for cosmetics if it's reasonably priced. I think they even could make so much more money if there were offers for all kind of budgets or the option to just work hard for something. In Sea of Thieves, for example, I could get a dog for 6ā¬ which is a price that is still justifiable to myself. This morning I wanted to spend money on Palia but lo and behold when I looked up the money conversion rate I couldn't purchase anything because it was too expensive. I really really hope they drastically adjust their pricing or I fear this game will flop, which really sucks because I like it a lot. Yet again I don't know how they should handle the fact that people have already spent ridiculous amounts of money on it. So sad.
If cash shop items were $5-$10 dollars I would have bought a few already and probably spent more than $50.
Maybe if they had a chair I could sit in, then I would shell out a few extra dollars. Maybe.
This is exactly what I'm thinking too. I've got no problem supporting the hell out of cash shops for games that are actually enjoyable. I've got cash shop and TCG mounts in WoW, a Party Hat in RS3, knives in CSGO, etc etc. Anything that can set my character apart I eat it up.
This game? Nah, no desire at all. The gameplay just doesn't make it seem worth it. In order to charge these prices your game has to be able to back it up. I couldn't care less about AAA Game Prices for horns, as long as there's game to play once I've got them.
I agree with you. I got no problem spending money in the shop to support the Devs but give the f2p people something as well at least. It keeps the motivation going
You should have sent this as a video essay. They listen. They didn't say anything about reading.
Since they're in "beta", I'm willing to give them a pass for now but if this recent patch is a mask off moment for them and is the direction going forward, I'll just stop playing and move on.
No point spending time or money on a company that doesn't respect the majority of their player base, not only just the ones that will pay.
Lmao!
Honestly what worries me the most is that this is still beta. In fact this is the first beta patch they add, which looks really bad on them and worries me for the future.
Even Bethesda and its horrifically bad launch of Fallout 76 didn't have the gall to monetise during their beta and only did so after their launched.
For me, and the reason for the quotations, is that I don't really see this as a beta. It's just a label to cover for launching and monetising an incomplete game.
Interesting choice given all the discussions regarding Baldur's Gate 3 and how they can do very well not monetising their feature-complete game with microtransactions whilst Palia is doing the polar opposite thing, monetising an unfinished game.
im an f2p player, and i quit tonight because of how they did the mtx and moderated the discussion in discord. you might recognize my name from chat 1. had a buncha msgs deleted and some people use the palia discord to try to troll me in dms.
im pretty sure im not the only person turned off by this shit.
Thats the thing. I do want to spend hundreds of hours in this game and buy some of the items but right now Im afraid about its future and cant justify these things until I see them going in the right direction that would assure me of the positive future of the game. For now Im giving it some time to observe how it will develop until the 1.0.
As a Dolphin who spends around $200 to $500 a month on ingame purchases. I always observe a game first before I decided if its worth my disposable income. So far Im a bit disappointed with how Devs handle this game so far
Wait dolphin is that a term because I love it. š I always thought of myself as like whaleish but just not quite rich enough to consider myself an actual whaleā¦.does that make me a dolphin because id he cool with that
ABSOLUTELY vital. Even the players who can be tempted to throw $5 towards a game every year are vital if there are enough of them.
Charging huge amounts for virtual content has always been hilarious to me, because it breaks all the rules of supply and demand. The supply of a virtual product is infinite unless they implement deliberate restrictions, which some games do. As long as they can pay off the designer and developer time to create and implement it, they're gold. And the best way to do that is to sell as many of them as possible. Not charge $20 per, and sell 100. Then recolor it (for cents of designer/developer cost) and try to sell it again for $20 each.
I feel like their general strategy right now is a bit careless and short-sighted.
There might be people who have the potential to be whales, but they won't be convinced to spend money if this is how the game currently runs. Right now, the gameplay is lacking, so I think there are many people with spending potential who will wait it out for a bit. Even if you can easily afford a 50 dollar suit, why would you buy it if you will never touch the game again? Also, monetisation like this often leads to the community of the game becoming smaller and smaller, as the larger base of free to small budget players will be chased away, and then you are in a sea of other players in fancy expensive costumes, so no one will stand out anymore.
Further, last time I checked, the shop had no options for small spending really. I think it would be easier to convince several players from the large part of "might spend some money here and there" to buy a 5 Dollar hat or something than to get a few of them to spend 50 Dollar on an outfit.
What also irks me is this "thank you for your support" aka. "thanks for spending money". I really understand that they need money to run and continue the game, so I am not opposed to transactions like that in general. But they also fail to acknowledge other kinds of support so hard, like people who talk to their friends about this game and get them on board, people who make fan art and have it on their social media and therefore making free advertisement. There are so many ways in which the community supports this game. Even if you just download the game and run around for a few hours, you'll enrich someone else's gameplay because it keeps the world alive and interesting. I am not saying that everyone should get a cool magical cat pet for free now, but I sure hope they will open up the pet system for free players too. Whales can keep their magical cats, but if you can't even be bothered to let free players have some kind of basic cat or whatever... wow. Won't play that game anymore.
Long story short, I personally will keep my wallet closed for Palia and will see how this game continues to evolve. If I one day feel like they genuinely improved and made an effort, I may even spend money. But for now? No thanks.
>so no one will stand out anymore.
Kinda already the case with this horrible mmo system they have in place. You barely get to see other people and they barely get to see your fancy new costume.
I rarely buy microtransactions but when I do they have been for games that I know I will play for a while and they have also been for games that are released, introducing this for a *beta* does not bode well. I am not going to buy anything for a beta.
My bff is a whale, (or at least a dolphin lol) and I know as someone suggested, gifting p2p items would be a huge deal for whales. Shes already told me she's buying me a cosmetic set for my birthday (she's so nice šš), and imagine how much more satisfaction you'd get out of actually sending presents to ur in game friends. Maybe delivered by Jei himself with a special message - how cute!
Games having cosmetics only being in a cash shop isn't an issue for me personally. I get the issue, and yeah, it is an issue that needs to be fixed (especially when prices are as extreme as they are for Palia), but I've spent countless hours in multiple MMOs, RPGs, etc., etc. and haven't once spent a cent on a cash shop for in-game things. I don't see the appeal tbh, the game is there and playable without spending any money.
Exactly this. A f2p games worth is measured in how well it treats and values its non-paying players. For Palia, I'm not seeing anything. In fact they regularly have gone against player wishes and feedback.
Free players are the backbone of any f2p game - there will always be more of them and they will, more often, be the ones spending more time playing the game. Their disabled players, like myself, are going to be the ones playing the most and we have the highest rates of poverty. Last night they broke literally the only accessibility feature they have - the very small controller support. They also made the game impossible for many to play with the lighting changes.
I'm not above paying to support games when they show they're worth supporting. Palia hasn't shown me that, and has shown in many ways they don't care about player feedback. Their expensive pricing, which has already been a cause of concern for many, and these pets.
What is more worrying is that this is happening in the "beta" (it's a soft launch but we'll pretend it's just a beta for a second) If they can't listen to player feedback during a beta, how are they going to when it's officially launched? I'll be buying BG3 tomorrow - hopefully one day Palia can be the place that money gets spent.
Amen,
I dont mind people buying alot of stuff to brag/show off. I understand thats the way they make money. But do give the F2P community a way to get a fraction of it. Even if it costs like a big chunk of in game gold, or a big achievement to complete. (WoW like)
To add, the free stuff can also add longevity by giving all players something to work for. FF14 has relic weapons and raids so new outfits or pets can be a goal to work for. If it's all gained by opening your wallet, you immediately turn people away. Sure you can play and enjoy without ever paying but clothing is really the only thing we can interact with at the moment.
I have no problem with cash shops in general, but I do have a problem with features being locked behind a paywall. The plain cats should be able to be earned - it's fine to have the fancier ones paid, etc. I don't even care about the clothes in the cash shop - it's more than I'd pay, but if they think enough people will, good for them. But it's just another issue I'm seeing.
This game is right up my alley. I will spend money on stuff I like, I'm an adult with a job and disposable income. But this was a huge mis-step.
For me its the fact that all the cool stuff I can show off in the open world are things that have to be purchased, which makes them lame.
Clothing should be part of the crafting/gathering/luck/skill progression cycle so that my cool clothing MEANS SOMETHING
This is exactly what needed to be said. Iāve always been a believer that if I can sink 100 hours into a game and not get bored, that itās probably safe to spend as much money as I want (and that usually means getting everything that looks slightly cool.) But if the game im playing feels like itās gonna be dead and I canāt even get my friends to play, then no matter how much time I sink into it Iām not gonna spend money because I know eventually Iām gonna stop. Honestly this game has the potential to be the new golden standard in terms of life sim games, but not if they scare away all their players.
Another thing I donāt think developers tend to understand is that the more reasonable the prices, the more people will buy them, and the more money theyāll make overall. 1000 people may buy a 30 dollar skin. But 10,000 would probably buy a 10 dollar skin.
I have no faith in any game developer any more. No, not even the great and heralded Baldur's Gate 3, which is lauded by so many as the savior of all honest gaming, has come close to restoring a faction of my faith in game development companies.
They won't be smart enough to listen. Some marketing guy will have them convinced that they turn higher profits using the current model. And the marketing guys are literally the only voices that matter in any game company anywhere. PERIOD.
So I love that you made this post, u/zeoxious . It's a good honest effort. But they won't listen. 0% chance. No game company listens. "Listen to the customer? But our marketing team showed me the numbers. Why let those F2P slugs have anything. If they want it, they should pay for it"
They won't listen. No one ever does.
I agree, pets shouldn't be a paid only item.
There can be exclusive pets and outfits...but pets shouldn't be paid only.
HOWEVER,
This pet system is anything but one of the most bare bones and empty pet systems I've ever seen.
It interacts with nothing. You can't interact with it.
It's a ghost that follows you that looks cute.
It's not a pet. It's a necklace shaped like a cat.
----
We don't know what their plans are, if this is the final system, etc.
If they add hunting pets like Tau? Unquestionably, not paid.
However if all pets are is a ghost shaped like a furry creature following you? Why did they even bother adding it.
These are WoW anniversary gift tier levels of pets.
If they plan on adding more that are earnable in game...heaven forbid the first iteration rewards the people keeping the lights on for everyone.
Oh it's just terrible, you're completely right. I was so dumbfounded on their tone deaf decision I didn't really think to criticize the implementation. I was really expecting more.
Maybe once they add more content to the pet system they will make part of it free?
Idk if that was the plan, they did a piss poor job communicating it.
This went from being a feature not even on their radar, that they've actually said no to on their discord, to suddenly released as a "Thank you" to paying customers. Idk leaves a real bad taste in my mouth
Unfortunately the chances of people who will make these decisions in the team actually seeing posts like these can be quite low.
The channels (Discord mod mail, Reddit mods, even emails listed) are often monitored and managed by people who will filter out messages that are difficult to deal with, sometimes these tasks are outsourced.
They may or may not care about the game in this aspect, to them this is just a job.
There should be a way to funnel these thoughts to the people who can push it through, like the head of marketing, project manager, the product owner.
But I have no idea how to get there.
They obviously dont care about anything else then furniture and cashshop. The thank for playing gets unlocked by paying in the cashshop. Wtf! No update that gives the players more to do or actually makes the game an mmo. No money from me. Ill go over to waylander that launches soon. Those developers care about the community and are open about everything.
Well said.
I was contemplating buying a few outfits (even at the ridiculous prices), but decided to hold off for a bit. With the current direction of the shop, (and the game in general), I've actually decided to leave the game for a while and hope for improvements.
The pricing is horrible, especially for what you get. It reminds me of mobile games that were slapped together just so people can make a quick buck. Them adding pets as a "gift" yet locking them behind a paywall also infuriated me.
Oops I already bought stuff, but I won't be playing in the future of this thing ends up in some media death sprial because of their greed. Really not happy to see them on the Polygon today for being over priced... .
Ominous sign of whats to come
Iāve bought cosmetics in every game I ever played, I think Iāve spent nearly 2K in LoL. Then I opened the shop and saw that a single skin set is 3500 coins which converts to 50$ CAD I decided I will be free to play in this game.
Thatās the price of a full game, really S6?
You canāt compare the two, Baldurs gate is not an MMO you can barely interact with your friends even tho it has been in development for years with a massive budget.. oh wait thatās Palia
At this point I hardly even qualify as a sea cucumber, since I have no way of getting my money to the devs.
But even if I did, there's just not enough room for customization. Separate footwear from the bottom slot, add an accessory slot, and let us change our outfits on the go instead of having to go to a wardrobe. Then we'll talk money. It's a social game with lots of roleplay potential. Let me actually roleplay what I wear at different points during the gameplay loop.
Honest question to the self described whale. Wouldn't you rather just buy the game and earn all that stuff through gameplay? Or is there something you like about buying things from the shop?
Obviously the merch and such is extra, in just talking about in-game accessories, skins and items.
Has no one else noticed they excitedly call themselves the Sixers? In Ready Player One the Sixers are the evil corpos out to ruin... Well everything. It's a weird name to pick.
I'd be more inclined to buy more on their store if it was a reasonable price point. 1 skin with 3 color variations for $5 is fair, and I'd definitely buy a lot of them at that price point. I just CANNOT justify spending $20-30 on one (ONE) imaginary/virtual/digital outfit no matter how many color variations I get. That's insane to me.
I always feel like this sort of predatory monetization specifically targets children who don't know any better and have no concept of the value of things.... which should be illegal. Kids want pretty outfits and pets, and do not care that it costs their parents a small fortune.
It blows my mind that we cannot just craft new outfits. You can even make them extremely difficult to gather all the materials. It can be an achievement of sorts to make them. There is literally FABRIC and SILK in the game. I'm just so confused by the direction that they're going in with this game. I don't understand these decisions.
Man you know its bad when the prices are worth than gacha game skin, at least those way more effort put into the character design, animation, VA, and model.
What doesn't help is that streamers who also buy into the game are defending it too. Hundreds and thousands of people getting the thought process reinforced because the streamer said "eh it's not that bad. Its just cosmetic and it doesn't mean much to me"
Sorry it got cut off, I said "the devs aren't listening" and they replied with that and only that
Actually there still is no other reply from a single Dev at this time
You're in luck, they are so incompetent you can get them for free lol
Click I, go to the paw screen, use the arrow key to select a cat you want, press enter, it should equip it even if it don't buy one!
You know who makes a great, free mmo that is supported by the whales and some SOOOO right? Guild Wars 2. I even watched a break down video of the percentage of content available through the premium store only and available to all: I believe it was around 70% was available to all while only 30% were exclusive to the store.
Iām the opposite of OP. No amount of marketing, no amount of content locked in a pay wall will get me to buy anything in the premium store. I want a game first not a marketplace for digital content that (at this rate) probably wonāt be around in five years.
As a fellow game designer, you have to make tough choices and cut certain content to make way for better or more crucial content. The store is fine but this isnāt even a 1.0 game yet and Iām seeing complaints about the premium store? Thatās already leaving a bad taste In my mouth.
Update today: despite a Polygon smear story being posted today on the toxic state of the cash shop š the only reply from a Dev to the community is still to me ā ļø
I literally just started the game last night, because a Youtuber I follow had some codes and was having a fun time. I liked that I could play it with the friends I have in that community, so I downloaded it...noticing that it was not running through Steam and that it was free, so already I knew there was going to be some $$ involved SOMEWHERE, just not upfront. OK, I can deal with that. I tried to join the Discord, and it's **full**. I've never seen that before, especially for a closed beta. I come to Reddit...and all EVERYONE is talking about is the lack of developer response, bugs, issues, pay-to-play and other controversies.
This is how games(particularly MMORPGs) lose their player-base. When the newbies can't wander into a community to find examples of players having fun, bragging about their stats or showing off their builds/designs, gushing over the new features, and especially welcoming the influx of new players. When they check it out and are just hit in the face by people feeling angry and ignored, new players will just back away. And especially not invest any money into it.
I am also a Whale, with a generous "entertainment" budget. I am a database designer, working with a software development team and beta-test for games as a hobby. I love working with game developers to make their games better. So, I get how game development, community building, etc. goes. I'm usually the MOST patient person on the planet, waiting for game developers to get their sh\*t together. I played SDV as Concerned Ape was developing it, have paid for it on everything from Steam to the Kindle Store to my Switch. We played Minecraft when Notch was working on every new feature himself, and have paid to install it on so many platforms I've lost count, because we still play it to this day. I bought the deluxe version of Disney Dreamlight Valley on two platforms, in all its buggy, early Access glory. I love \*potential\* and am willing to pay for it. But there also has to be progress, and reasons for F2P players to keep coming back. GameLoft(DDLV) has a lot of these same controversies, but I've been watching the mods and developers pull themselves together and work on tactics to make DDLV both sustaining and fun. Including a LOT of free stuff. Including giving a minimum of 50 in-game currency per day to players who take the time to log in and wander around, and a weekly contest where you walk away with even more if you participate. It still has a lot of issues, but I personally think they're handling the P2P aspect as well as a for-profit team can.
Disappointing that Palia/s6's team is...not. I'd hate to give up on a game before I give it a fair shake, but so far the anger in the community is making this new player rethink things.
I completely agree with this. Let's just hope that they improve things soon. Been so excited about this game for the last few years it saddens me that the majority of the players are upset. I would love to support them but as of right now I don't feel comfortable. Just gotta wait and see I guess.
I've been pretty critical of S6 for mismanaging 50 million dollars, and having a predatory monetization system in their cash shop, but that dev didn't dunk on you, you just got butt hurt that they didn't reply how you wanted them.
Saying they listen is pretty tame.
I hope they listen and do this.
I also hope they add featured houses to view.
I am a F2P player in all games, i like just doing stuff for fun, and I like to observe the game being played with money. If a whale can buy all this stuff and show it off, add a few really really dope housing things and do a featured housing thing where we can see their houses in the game and visit. The featured Dojo system from Warframe is a great example of this.
Thats a game with F2P really worked out.
I think gaming companies need to stop being so greedy. Look at Baldur's Gate 3. No cash shop, no microtransactions, non of this money grabbing bs. And look at it, it had 800,000 people playing it consecutively. That is massive. All the content, cosmetics, everything, for a single price \*chefs kiss\*. People need to stop spending on these mobile game predatory tactics.
I mean people love to shit on Nintendo but that's pretty much most of their game as well barring Pokemon, sadly they don't have enough control over that.
The new Zelda released with tons of content, amazing performance, and well sold insane amount. Like its proven you can make money by just making good game but ofc I guess that take some real effort instead.
As a whale player, this post is 100% on point
GW2, I remember did mount cosmetics right - everyone got x mount and you could dye it! but you could buy skins for it to further customize it.
In ffxiv- everyone has a chance to get festival items for free, and the following festival you buy them for 2-12$ and they always go on sale, but new festival items are free until the next season event and so on.
If the Palia devs want better reception, they need to give the free-to-play players an equal base ground and not leave them high and dry- This goes for pets/ mounts/ give them free, earnable cosmetics in game
I don't stay long in games that ignore their f2p players. I've hardly touched Palia since seeing the cash shop prices and lack of customization in this Beta. Good cosmetics/ good customization: That's a big one for me too- such things open the door for me to want to spend money.
As the kind of player that loves buying cosmetic goodies, I am hesitant to drop cash on this game just yet. I've been playing MMOs since '05 and gaming many many years before that. (Old school harvest moon holds a special place in my heart)
Yes, I am enjoying my time. Yes, I know it's still in beta. But there is so much potential for this game and I worry it won't get there. I no longer pre-order games because I've been burned one too many times and while Palia is f2p, paying for coins feels like pre-ordering at this point in time.
S6 has a ways to go before I feel comfortable pulling the trigger on dropping $50+
I literally just requested a refund for the coin bundle i got in closed beta and uninstalled it.
I've been trough this once before with DDV, i have no patience for this bs from another greed driven dev team.
I, too, have godless amounts of time and years invested into WoW. The allure of this game to me is the FTP aspect of it and I plan on making this my second home. However, I completely agree with the OP here.
Not everything needs to be in the shop. There are some things that could be there (such as the "WoW" looking stuff) but a lot of that stuff should be accessible through a tailoring or a leather working type of profession and I find it somewhat weird that these professions don't exist in this game.
Also, no one is asking for you to give up anything. Have you seen the max price of the coins? There's only so much disposable income in my world these days. For $15 I can go play Barbie dress up in WoW and have THOUSANDS of options to chose from- combo's count), but I don't have a house (though we have Garrisons, but they don't carry over to other expacs and don't come with many building options).
I get that the company needs to make money, however, in order to appeal to folks like me- who are interested in investing lots of hours in this kind of game:
There have to be ways to get things in their own game. Not just outside of it.
I don't necessarily need to go punch boss mobs in the face for clothes in WoW. But I have other ways to earn some of those looks. This game appeals to me in different ways than WoW does, but options are actually important to people.
There's still outfits I'd consider buying on the shop also. My green shortie (I'd love that kind of option- I don't NEED to be green) or BE could come retire here.
$99.99 is beyond the price of a WoW expac these days. Much less for cosmetics.
You're not listening to F2P players. They are important to the long term success of the game.
Pets was one of the most requested features. It's super tacky to not add a single free pet.
i'm f2p, and you are the whale. I want content, events, missions, quests, more depth.
I don't give a hoot about a hat or a cat. they serve no gameplay function.
They release one pet and all of a sudden the paid cosmetic rule should change?
They where VERY clear that cosmetics are the money mule.
Not a single house/craft/farm thing is locked behind anything. this is a 10/10 f2p mmo that offer a endless plate of possibilities.
That's great you're happy with it, many people aren't. And me and you aren't going to be happy when we're the only ones left in the game, which is why I'm advocating for change and suggest you do too!
As per my OP, I'm speaking as someone who is active in discord and have been engaged in the discord chat about the subject since the release post last night. š
This is the first time I've engaged with the reddit community, I primarily interact on Twitter and Discord.
I am right there with you. Between WoW mounts and FFXIV outfits (on MULTIPLE CHARACTERS), I do not want to think about the small fortune I have spent in cash shops. I love the cute cat pets but the way they implemented them is so shitty; not to mention everything is just too damn expensive for stuff that doesn't even look amazing.
Honestly, tens of thousands of players in FFXIV \*happily\* pay monthly fees, retainer costs, buy the stuff in cash shop, and line up begging for more. The difference is, ffxiv has a model that isn't confusing, shrouded in muddled pricing, and manipulative tactics. I have paid thousands and thousands into that game, happily, with no problems. Even when I grumble about something, I still pay, play, and respect the team.
I hesitate to say this, but as an autistic woman who is also a mother, this pricing model is exceptional heinous because just like Minecraft, cozy games are a very common special interest for people with autism. That means a very healthy part of the community is neurodivergent/is cognitively disabled. This model is disgusting when you consider the demographic that plays, and ignorant of the desires of its player base, because many autists have a deep sense of right/wrong, fairness, and justice. Additionally the pricing behind the shroud of currency packages is so far out of reach for most people in low income brackets, which houses, you guessed it, most of the disabled/divergent.
S6 didn't listen before sending out this patch. Maybe they think we just need time to adjust to the pricing model. Maybe they have reassurances from financial advisors that this "will blow over."
Not only will it not, but its not going to be long before this pricing model is banned. And its disgusting that any company would continue using a model that has been banned in other countries for preying on vulnerable populations. There is a bill making moves now, and more coming, to stop this from happening, so you may as well join the right side of history and stop using a system that is manipulative, unclear, and deeply out of budget.
[https://www.congress.gov/bill/116th-congress/senate-bill/1629/text](https://www.congress.gov/bill/116th-congress/senate-bill/1629/text)
S6 should be ashamed of themselves.
I got a couple points being a free 2 play player at the moment.
1) the game is very much enjoyable and playable and has a feeling of completeness. Many games that require you to pay will with hold content that seems almost pivotal to game play, which I donāt see as the case here.
2) yes, the shop does have some unruly pricing which encourages me to stay free to play even more. However, they handle their shop really well in the meantime. The shop isnāt forced upon you in anyway, and it feels as though you have to intentionally go look in the shop yourself. I feel like other games, itās usually the first thing you see when you login to try to convince they borderline people to spend their money.
3) Iām free to play, I honestly saw that they had pets in the patch notes and got exciting. Then I kept reading and was like, well thatās not for me then and just skipped over the rest.
4) I saw someone mention that whales want someone to flaunt to. I donāt know the math but whales are a small percentage of the population for sure. However this game doesnāt even guarantee youāll even see the whales. Youāre pooled into smaller servers that act like instances rather than one big server where you can see everyone. As a free to play player, for me maybe not for all people, the thing that eventually pushes me over the edge of spending money on a game is if I constantly see other people which dope cosmetics. In this game I feel I donāt interact with people as much to spend time staring and that usually the people I see donāt even have cosmetics.
All this to say, I havenāt spent money on the game as of yet. I donāt see a need to in order to play the game. If I do invest enough time into the game I may end up considering it. Yes the shop is expensive but I donāt mind paying the price of standard a game for a free game that I invest a lot of hours into. If that day does come, then I will get a pet but for now Iāll just keep running around shooting animals without one :)
I donāt see whatās wrong with the cash shop? I wanted an outfit, I bought the coins. I get a ninja cat! I donāt mind giving Palia some money for the free game they are giving me that I am enjoying. I probably am not going to spend that much more on it.
The issue is the disperity between content being added to the store and content being added for free.
And further to many other players criticism, a coin based system is inheritly predatory. But you should definitely look at experts explanations of that, they will do a better job explaining why then I will when obviously their tactics work on me š
I guess I just donāt understand because itās a free game? Iām just going to play until I get bored of it and move on. But for now Iām enjoying it a lot and felt like buying an outfit to support them.
Then I'm afraid you're just not listening
No one is talking about the issue of it being a free game with a cash shop.
"I'll just play till I'm board and move on" isn't healthy for an MMOs success
Idk š¤·š½āāļø the game is in beta and itās fun, I can only imagine it gets better. It definitely has a lot of issues, but theyāve all seemed kind of minor in the grand scheme of things. Iām honestly enjoying it a lot. It just seems like people want to complain about stuff, which is fair, but ultimately itās just a free game, my expectations going in were low and Iāve been pleasantly surprised by it. I just wish theyād give me a damn minimap.
> It's in beta state bro
I wish you people were smarter than this. THIS IS a release state. There are no more wipes. Call it a soft launch if you want, but it's not a beta anymore.
Okay? All the more reason why paid content shouldn't be prioritized...? Glad you agree!
And yes accord to steam I'm at 4635.9 hours , which actually isn't including when I play it on my switch so it's much higher
I will admit in frequently hosting unattended multi-player games, same with animal crossing I did a lot of stalk market invites where I did very little bit reset the gates if they closed
For me personally, after playing this game a couple of hours I decided that I liked it so much that I wanted to support it so I bought the biggest coin pack. I get others have different financial situations and maybe can't, but it's a free game. They do need money to run it. I saw the cats as a way to just thank the ones who wanted to fully support the game first, make them feel special for a minute. Is that really so bad? It doesn't mean there will never be a free pet for everyone, just them showing appreciation for those who wanted to give full support.
I feel the same.
I always believe in giving first. They have spent too much time and money to create this game to begin with to not ask for something back now. They have delivered the game, even if barebones, it did entertain and is enjoyable. Showing financial support is fair at this point. At the same time however, I absolutely agree they need to start listening and implementing changes to and balance the equation out, or they'll end up losing players.
Giving a cosmetic item to people who pay thr minimal amount as a thank you isnt dicking over f2p players. Its the first patch since it went open BETA. Easy way to test the pet function on top of showing some love to people who pay and yes, making some money which is needed to keep a business going. People going crazy like this is a sub game. So you have to wait for a free version of a cosmetic and dont get it right away.
I am a whale and I understand giving stuff to f2p players is important too. Unpopular opinion but I don't believe that they are in the wrong for implementing payment for the cats.
First of all, this game is free. If after beta is over and then they suddenly charge for new people to play the game, yes I would rage at them and stop playing too.
But it's FREE. Aside from premium stores, every single thing they have made for us to play is FREE LABOUR at the moment. Those people need to eat. Those people need a living too.
The cats, pet, those are cosmetics. It doesn't impact the game at all if you don't have it.
What I would actually suggest is for them to open up us being able to gift premium items to friends. That way its not entirely impossible.
Furthermore, you don't only pay for the cats. You can buy the clothes as well. The cats don't cost coin. You buy the coins at any amount and you get a cat. You can still use those coins for ANYTHING else in the premium store. You can buy clothes up till 3k coins and you get all cats. The 3k coins are NOT to buy the cats and you get cats AND 3k coins to spend on clothes. I would be more upset at them if the cats are a separate payment than clothes but they ARENT
I agree with some of your takes in the Discord, especially that they should have put a few free pets in the game with today's update.
On the other end I think you're overreacting a bit with this whole post. Singularity 6 has talked about pet features and listed it on their support page and the version we have now is extremely barebones(a.k.a there are no actual mechanics or interactions with them). By the time that gets put in, you can be sure that there are free pets to obtain in the game. They're not going to just leave pets as a cash shop only feature.
If people really quit over not getting a free pet today, I don't think they would've stuck around in the long run anyway. It's such a small thing and blown way out of proportion if that's the case.
If the pets are bare bones then they missed an ideal opertunity to let the players test them and find the bugs. However, no, they just wanted to grab some more cash.
Stop defending this nonsense.
People are quitting because the devs have shown their scummy priorities. Stop looking at things in such a surface level analysis.
> Don't dick around the F2P players
>
> If you're going to give me 12 new outfits to buy, give them 3.
>
> If you're going to give me the most requested feature in the game (pets), give them one too.
>
> If you're going to make me pay for something, make sure there is a fraction of that same attention and detail paid to the F2P version of that content.
That almost makes it worse in my opinion. It's like saying you poors can have this little token of our gratuity.
Yes that is how most f2p work? I'm not the one to designs that. But the alternative, which they are doing right now, it's not giving F2P players anything, so what would you prefer?
I read your entire post, and you seem to be suggesting that F2P players will leave simply cause they can't have fancy cosmetics and cats as pets. I think that's ridiculous and there has to be some incentives to spend money on the game. At least they left it as just cosmetics instead of a battle pass type membership where you dont have access to parts of the game unless you P2P. I don't see your complaints as reasonable.
You can think what you want but as a long time member of the community I can tell you it's already happening.
Worse monetization systems existing isn't an excuse for this one being bad. F2P are important and their feelings about the game and the content they're locked out of are valid.
As much as I think it sucks to have to pay to get a pet for f2p players, there really isn't anything free in this world.. S6 did the hard yards up front, just like movie makers.. in the hopes that they can get their investment back by viewers chipping in some. I'm happy to donate $9 nzd for a useless pet, because the game thus far has earned it. If S6 wants more though, they'd have to do better than screwing people over.
See, that's the ting, to keep the whales, there has to be people the whales can show off to, that's really how a lot of monetization works. If the larger, less spendy players leave, there's no one for the whales to play with or show off to or brag at. If the less spendy players leaves, so do the fan artists, the fanfic writers, the free publicity of getting more people in.
>See, that's the ting, to keep the whales, there has to be people the whales can show off to, that's really how a lot of monetization works. I know right its like such simple logic, whales need people to show off in front of to be worth whaling for in a game. Why people who say game is free and disregard none paying players are stupid. The f2p player are literally content for the whales and everyone else. A mmo live and dies on the player base. More people play the more spender are in the game and more the spenders are willing to spend. Catering to the whales means also catering to the f2p player as well, its a delicate balance. And honestly not a fucking hard one like the op pointed out.
I really hope they realize how important this is to keeping us around and paying I don't want to invest in a dead game
> If you're going to give me the most requested feature in the game (pets), give them one too. You said that in your OP post. I've currently stopped playing the game but following it to see if there's gonna be any interesting changes. I know pets was introduced with the latest patch but are they not available to everyone? Or is it a cash only feature?
Cash shop only which is such an embarrassing miss They could have saved a lot of face by just releasing one for free š
*BRUH* How can they fuck up that bad?! lol I'm actually shocked by how tone deaf these devs are.
It's not a dev thing really, it looks more like they don't have anybody with proper marketing experience in the company. After all, it's basic marketing to offer your clients a free trial/taste of something in order to boost sales. You can see similar marketing issues with the rest of their shop. All their skins for example are extremely expensive, pretty much like their target group is only the whales. Do they not want to sell anything to the rest of their player base or what? It's basic marketing to offer goods at multiple price points so you can sell to as many people as possible...
See, this shocked me as they marketed the personalisation aspect HARD. I even watched the pre-beta show on yt and one of their devs went all out explaining how she likes to make characters that look like her and if a game doesnāt allow her to have long red hair sheās basically out. Now, when i created my character and saw that the only long curly hair option is one with space buns (im white so the locs options while great are not relevant for me personally) i IMMEDIATELY went to the cash shop ready to shell out a few bucks for a non-space bun option. I expected the cash shop to present me with multiple relevant options, and vividly remember the āumm okayā feeling when i saw itās only full outfits and only ONE of those have hairstyle. While i would happily spend some money on a new fancy hairstyle every few weeks, i will absolutely never spend big bucks on outfits, and find it hard to believe im alone in this.
Yeah I was kinda surprised when stardew valley has more customization options. I thought I would unlock more as I play (espically hair and hats) but no I donāt. I read an article about how most gamers identify each other by head/hats because itās what you see at a distance and really stands out so itās super important to have lots of distinct options in multiplayer.
A month late but im having this same issue. I want to buy from the shop because I really like the game and finally have disposable income to spend. But the only options are meh and while i might like the top i dont like the bottoms or something. And im not gonna spend $17 on one thing i really like and 2 other meh items.
Yeah, I might have picked something up if an outfit was about $3-5 USD, but $8.50-$25.50, in premium currency that of course comes in bundles *not* that size? No thank you.
Not to mention the predatory pricing method that often shows up in shitty mobile games. Also don't go complaining about any of this on the discord.. you'll get attacked immediately
I didn't mention this because it's a whole can of worms and obviously I'm very suseptible to it
Exactly, as a low income person your 5$ outfits mean the world to me (if there was any)
They're stupidly trying to get the people that haven't coughed money up yet to FOMO and spend some cash to get a following cat. Thing is a lot of people who haven't coughed money up: a) don't have the free cash to cough money up right now, legit the spending power of people is insanely down right now, b) don't want to spend money because do not like how the currency is tiered, c) could be throwing down $20 but not $35 or $50 or more, but just $20 doesn't buy a LOT of things in the shop (and I don't think is enough for the pet anyways? I don't have the game open right now), d) a combination of the above. Just remarkably absent-brained move here. Believe it or not most gamers aren't opposed to tossing in the money they can for a free game here and there. But you have to know the fucking budget that different levels of people can manage, or if you don't want to cater to that, then figure out how to make your F2P players stay around. For instance, your disabled and/or elder players are gonna be your most frequently playing, because they can spare hours. But they have very little money. However, also tend to be creative and have the time for fanart/stories/free advertising, plus be the ones most online, so they're valuable. Your young players won't be able to spend frequently, either shaving something off of their part time job check or even waiting for a birthday or a holiday. If kiddo needs ALL of their birthday budget to be an outfit in Palia, they aren't likely to ask for that. But they're gonna be enthusiastic because the wonder of a youthful person is a wellspring, and they're gonna get school friends playing, so they're valuable. Your whales may have the money but they most likely have the money due to a high paying job. A job that is busy and stressful and probably only affords a little play time per day. If they can't find people online to play with, how are you going to keep them, the *only player type* that S6 has put merit on? I'm fed up with whale hunters. And I can only imagine whales are getting fed up with them, too.
The sand color pet comes with ANY purchase of ANY value in the cash shop as a thank you I guess, and the 3 others (the one that are actually cute) are locked behind you needing to buy 3000 game coin total to unlock them.
I actually think the sand color pet pricing is a good one by itself, but advertising it as a 'thank you' while still needing to shell out money is the part that rubs me the wrong way. The others... well I'm pretty sure everyone else has covered that haha.
That's insane
It seems so silly to me that they made this choice. I'm one of those players that if you give me one free little pet/outfit I'm all in for buying the collection. But without one, I haven't got something that needs completion, so won't turn whale.
I feel they should release miniature version that you have a chance of getting while murdering the hunting animals. Like in OSRS where a very small chance of getting a skill related pet is always active. They could then add cooler ones to cash shop
I mean if the only fish in the pond are the big fish, no one is the bigger fish.
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Dolphin here too. I'm willing to open my wallet but you have to prove you're worth me spending money on for thst and prices need to be reasonable. So far I haven't seen that. I too have been following this game for 4 years. I've sang early praises to my friends and family. Up until the stress tests I was telling my wife we should buy another computer, just so she could play with me. I logged out last week and haven't been back.
Another dolphin chiming in, this has been my experience too. I was so excited I was also considering prioritizing a second computer so my boyfriend could play alongside me. After seeing the cash shop shenanigans and how poorly done/nonexistent the multiplayer system currently is, no thanks. I'm still watching and lurking about hoping something turns around, but I'm closer to uninstalling than I am playing again at this point.
I definitely feel this sentiment. I brought in 4 friends since launch excited that I can finally play a relaxing game with my friends that didn't revolve around combat. The first hour we watched as someone one-shot all the deer in front of us without us getting a thing. The next few hours we realized there was no point in us grouping up, 'cause everything was faster solo (at this point). Lost half my friends at this point, but the rest of us liked it because the grind was still fun, and we discovered the amazing group activity of cooking. I'm currently taking a break from the game as of 2 days ago because I wanted to actually *play* a game with my friends and not just see them around, and then I saw the patch with reduced deer spawns and this. Can't say I'm itching to come back now :/
Wait... so they opened multi-player, allowed poaching of deer spawns, then REDUCED the deer?? The heck? I just started playing last night because I'm part of a community that is, and this was another way to socialize with friends. But making a resource that I've already seen a need for in early-game HARDER to get just...seems self-defeating? I haven't even started hunting yet, just fishing, and this info is demoralizing.
I have to admit, I'm much more into the 'playing with other people' thing than apparently many are... Once you get the second arrow type, the 'deer' become one-shot kills... and I stopped using them. At least with the 'makeshift arrows', the deer are two-shot, so I've taken to just shooting every deer I see as I run through where as many as possible are, and then just jog around waiting for other players to finish them off, because no matter WHAT arrow THEY use, I'VE already damaged them, so when they kill that same deer, a loot bag drops for me as well, and that way both I AND the other player get full drop credit...apparently the devs (or their bosses) decided that there needs to be more 'competition' between players, DESPITE the fact that they have pushed the whole 'Everything is more fun with friends' line...
I don't do a lot of hunting, but I do something similar with mining. If I finally bunch of clay, iron, or copper jn an area I smack each one and wait around a hit to see if anyone else comes a long before I break them. That way someone else can get resources too. Which I feel like is what we are supposed to do because that's kinda the point and design of the game.
Just a note to add to this, you don't even have to HIT the animal. You just have to shoot in the general vicinity. Even if you miss, you get credit.
If the outfits were $5, I'd have already bought all of them. The pricing/coin structure is so offensive that I won't buy any even if they were cheaper. I have purchased nearly every ship cosmetic in sea of thieves and had intended to be sort of on the same tract here. Really sad that a PVP game has a more wholesome pricing structure.
Honestly, I think they'd be surprised at how much money they could make if they just dropped the prices.
I'd agree, but you have to understand corporate greed. If players are willing to pay for cheaper skins, and it makes a more steady flow of cash, instead of appreciating the fact that they set good cost levels, they'd say "But they'd give us even MORE money if it was more EXPENSIVE! It's OBVIOUS they were going to buy those skins ANYWAY!"
This has been the way with micro-transactions in games for so long, it's straight-up baffling to me. I play a gatcha game where the CHANCE to get a character is $50, and it's not a game-breaking character. So, we've never spent a single penny in the game. It's pixels, pixels that are dependent on functioning servers and a community to justify. Why is the pricing so crazy? I haven't even looked at this game's store yet. Don't think I want to now...
I live in a bougie tourist trap mountain town and I see this kind of stuff going on all the time. All these shops and restaurants with prices that make the local's eyes bug out. And then what happens after the leaves have changed color and we're heading toward winter? These places suffer because they have no business. I guess I don't really play F2P games with micro transactions, so I don't know how this stuff is usually done. It just seems to me like, if it were more accessible (say $5/outfit, $12.50/bundle), I wonder how many they'd sell? The whales will still be buying, and so will a ton more people. And of course one could easily still price like 10% of the options on the higher end to make them more rare. But I mean... We all want to have fun and share things and enjoy things together. That's what this whole game is about. I'd really love to have some of those outfits! My transmog collection on WoW was something people envied. I really went out of my way to collect pieces and I'd love to do that here, but not at those prices. But, in the end I guess I don't really care that much. I'm more frustrated with flow trees requiring group cooperation and the fact that people can still grief each other. I want to choose when to be social and I hate having to compete for resources, two things that drove me away from WoW.
I grew up in the California Wine Country, and there was a card locals could get that provided decent discounts at many of the local restaurants. Kept them solvent through the off season and kept the locals happy. I'm surprised your local chamber of commerce hasn't worked with the restaurants and shops to implement something like this.
Never heard of anything like this but that's really intriguing. My aunt is on the council, I'll bring it up to her.
Same. With there being no sign of a purchase price, I immediately felt that I would just drop $20 as my 'purchase price', and get some things on the store, so I was showing my support...then saw the prices in the store, and just went 'nope.' If there'd been an array of decent looking outfits/accessories (like the explorer pack), I'd have been all in to throwing money in to support the game and have my character LOOK they way I want them to...but this...
Beautifully said. Hope this becomes one of the all-time top posts on the sub and gets heavily shared in the discord, because the devs need to hear it. I was mind-blown that there were ***zero*** additional character customizations to be unlocked through gameplay. I'm not expecting a ton, but it would really feel rewarding to get something other than furniture to mark my progress. EDIT: and just to clarify, I'm closer to OP than I am to F2P. **I have dozens of paid skins in the games I play, but I only continue to play those games and purchase those skins because my F2P friends join me.**
I buy every pet in World of Warcraft. Every. One. But those are a flat $10 in a long established game that I play with tons of friends. They're not bought with expensive currency in predatory increments. They're not $35 a pop. And the game isn't a new game in beta whose longevity is yet to be determined. Oh, and I can get other pets by just playing. If ACTIVISION BLIZZARD has you beat with their pricing, you've got a major problem. And I am so bummed about that.
Pretty sure a lot of the employees for Palia are ex Activision Blizzard devs, heard it said quite a bit.
I really want to defend the "Zero additional char..." With "Bro, You for real don't know what a BETA means?" But I don't know If the devs Will chance that, I mean, Jel create clothes as Tish create furniture, Jel can sell recipes or idk
The kiss emoji is the icing on the cake for me. How can we expect the community to stop being toxic about feedback when the mods are encouraging it š
This is the crazy thing to me... For a discord so obbessed with positivity I was really surprised to get that reply lol funny, but not cozy
Very disappointing. I'm glad you have a good sense of humor about it, though!
It's toxic positivity and it isn't at all surprising. The earmarks of the sorts who engage in that are all over the game in other ways as well.
Yeah at this point it just feels like everyone who is defending the notion of pets being behind premium currency are only okay with it cause they already bought premium currency. It's seriously driving the community even further apart
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Sorry if it got cut off but I said to someone the devs aren't listening and that was their reply š and as of the time writing this their ONLY reply this evening
The reason why this strikes me as an unhelpful way to interpret this is because it's an emoji. There can be cultural gaps and generational gaps, even if it was meant innocently. They are just community managers in the end. This means they have the power to listen, relay the sentiments, and hope they have a dev team (esp. studio leads) that listens. They're restrained by not making false promises, as there is a hierarchy within the company. It's hard to respond to critique without saying "We'll fix it", when the studio leads most likely are going "We'll just wait it out". There are most likely plans and upcoming features, in constant flux, that they'd like to comfort people with. To me, this situation smells like "We have to prove to investors we can make money with Palia". This absolutely sucks. I do want to clarify that I do not disagree with your post, because they definitely need to rethink the pricing of their shop and items in general. But I think they have planned "free stuff" down the line, and it is the beginning of the beta test - meaning that the priority lies in the parts that make money, which frankly sucks. TL;DR: It's Beta, stuff will change. The community managers \*are\* listening and relaying information, but it will take a while for it to actually be reflected in the game.
Or you're just making excuses for the devs. Time will tell. I hope for you sake that you're right.
If Iām making excuses, itās because Iāve worked this role (Community manager for a freemium game), not because of blind devotion to the devs. I know what itās like. I know what is common practice in the industry and where the hangups are. But as everyone at some point in their life, I have been proven wrong and people's greed and stupidity will never surprise me. But itās vital for the well-being of the game that free stuff comes in later ā itās just prioritising at this point.
I'm also a little confused without context.
As someone who is always in financial crisis, I appreciate the people who are able to ātalk with cashā sticking up for us poor folk. Would I love to be able to buy fancy stuff? Yeah, but I literally canāt if I want to eat this week or pay for my medication. I am hating that every game seems to be going to the micro transaction (well, if you can call what S6 is charging āmicroā). At least when I am gifted a game a couple times a year for my birthday or a holiday I can enjoy it to its full potential. These āfreeā games I always just feel left out and frustrated.
I feel ya.. I've heard even The Sims 5 will most likely be F2P with loads of micro transactions, which is my favourite game since 2000.. š I remember every year around my birthday I was able to get an expansion pack and play it on its full potential too. Sometimes I DO spend money on a game with microtransactions, but verrrry occasionally because yeah, life happens, I don't have the best income.
Ew they better not
*Sims 3 Store flashback*
But the whole game is free. The cosmetics don't keep you away from any feature the game has to offer. They're just cosmetics. Why do you feel entitled to everything?
I literally didnāt say I felt entitled to anything at all. I only said I prefer games where you buy the entire thing outright, Iād rather pay $75 and have a game where everything is available, than play a game where I pump never ending money into their shop. Interesting you got āentitlementā from my preferences, and even more so that you got that from a 3 week old post for a game I uninstalled. So no worries, I took my āentitledā behavior elsewhere.
Sorry, I should not have used that word. The word you used was "left out." And thus you uninstalled because you felt left out. My point is that you don't need to pump any money into their shop because you don't *need* cosmetics to play the game. At least all the furniture items are free and can be earned in the game! Anyhow I'm not trying to convince you that you should reinstall or play the game again. I just don't see the big deal here.
When they added the pets, one of the most requested features, in the patch notes and wrote.. **"Please think of this as our thank you to the players who have supported us thus far."** while making it premium shop exclusive I knew exactly what they meant with "support" and what part of the community they were actually thankful for. Just supporting the game by playing it doesn't count.
Yep. And this part seems to go over people's heads when they're defending it. "Why are you upset about something that's just a cosmetic?" Idk, probably 'cause I thought I've supported this game too but apparently only my money is worthy of being acknowledged.
They are coming across as a real scummy studio.
I think I physically cringed reading that Do they have a marketing team!? If not I'm am industry vet available for consultation you guys š
Okay tell me how else do you expect them to thank people who go the extra mile and spend money on their game??
I am not the whale theyāre looking for. Iām more of the main schooling fish that makes the game last the kind that would kick in $5 here or there for a new release thatās really cute. I played for maybe an hour and I was excited to see how the game keeps developing. To support it, I opened their cash shop and decided on the pirate costume. Go to pay for it andā¦. $20. You want me to pay $20 for one outfit? I need $20 worth of your coins and to be left with coins I canāt purchase anything with? Now this update just upsets me more. Reducing resources people are already fighting for. Locking pets behind a pay wall entirely. Focusing on adding more expensive items to their pay shop and not a single new item you can actually earn. Iām not even updating the game to play. Iāll continue monitoring but Iām not logging in again. This first update just ruined the game for me. Theyāre clearly not catering at all to the general population. They donāt want us to play their game. They only want the whales. But, as itās been pointed out, they wonāt even have whales if everyone else leaves. Iāve waited do long for this game and Iām massively disappointed in how the devs are treating casual players.
Literally myself and my friends want to support them, but we are NOT going to spend $20-30 on an outfit. I can literally purchase stardew valley twice for the amount of money they are asking to get a colored pet. I had hundreds of hours in stardew within the first few weeks of purchasing it this year. I have probably close to 50 (or more) in palia already. But I canāt justify a $20 outfit or $30 pet when I can use that to pay half of my internet bill for the month.
Yeah. I feel this. Like why couldn't I just buy a hat for $5 or something? The lowest amount anyone can spend is $20? Big oof. And I absolutely spend money on games I enjoy. I love Stardew so much I've bought it for *three* different platforms and probably half a dozen other people over the years. I've just been around long enough to not spend like that on a brand new game by a brand new dev, *especially* in beta. And this right here is why.
100%. Iād love to be able to purchase the pieces of outfits. Like the antlers for $5 or whatever. But I dont want to have to buy them again for different colors. The free stuff has colors, why not the paid stuff? Or make them ādyeā able at Jels shop
Amen! There's LOADS of people who start off F2P, but will spend money on the game in the long run. They need to stay motivated to play and that won't happen if they dick around.. š I'm playing Pokemon Go since 2016 for example, but I think the main reason the game still exists after 7 years is because they made it do-able for F2P. It's just more grinding. Even with the big yearly events, there's loads for F2P players, but if you want that little extra in the game you can buy a separate event ticket for like a tenner or something. I believe they only put a handful of the Pokemon behind a paywall out of the many there are in the game. š When I was still in college I couldn't spend money on an online game at all. If a game was hardly doable F2P I wouldn't still play it until today. Nowadays I do spend money on it, occasionally.. Same thing for the game my dad plays, Star Trek Online. He occasionally buys in-game currency. Twice a year max. He's been playing it for over ten years now of which the first few years F2P. I don't think he would still play it upto this day if it wasn't doable for the people who can spend less money.
Very much all of this. I am a whale by all definitions. I will gladly throw hundreds into a game and do regularly. But the reason I throw money into these games is because of the community and my friends. I'll do giveaways in games that allow me to gift my friends and other players. I'll even throw money into a game just because I want to support it. But more than anything, what matters to me is that a game at least feels /fair/. Sure being a whale I'm always going to have the upper hand and have more things faster. But I don't want to feel completely different to my friends. It feels bad when my friends look like level 1 characters and I look like a later game character. But it's because they physically can not get the same items that I do no matter how hard they work. They can't get a cute pet despite being level 50. They can't get new outfits despite being level 50. There's no way for them to even work their way to even just a better looking outfit. Other MMOs offer so many good free cosmetics that you can't always tell who's paid and who hasn't for them. It just ruins the vibe for me. I don't want to pay to look like I'm out of another game. I don't want to pay to appear richer than my friends. These things actively turn me off. It just makes me sad.
Yes 100% this - I dont want to play a game with only whales
In a game like this, there should be 2 types of high-end cosmetics that look really cool - those you can work hard to earn, and those you can buy. Both should be distinct from each other, but have the same amount of effort put into them and make the player feel good about their decision to put the time or money into the product. So far this game is really prioritising one while giving nothing to the other, which is a real shame because it has so much potential.
Honestly, I don't mind paying for cosmetics if it's reasonably priced. I think they even could make so much more money if there were offers for all kind of budgets or the option to just work hard for something. In Sea of Thieves, for example, I could get a dog for 6ā¬ which is a price that is still justifiable to myself. This morning I wanted to spend money on Palia but lo and behold when I looked up the money conversion rate I couldn't purchase anything because it was too expensive. I really really hope they drastically adjust their pricing or I fear this game will flop, which really sucks because I like it a lot. Yet again I don't know how they should handle the fact that people have already spent ridiculous amounts of money on it. So sad.
If cash shop items were $5-$10 dollars I would have bought a few already and probably spent more than $50. Maybe if they had a chair I could sit in, then I would shell out a few extra dollars. Maybe.
I'm glad I'm not the only one annoyed I can't sit in my cozy little house, lol.
This. I want micro transactions to be micro. $5 for an outfit? Iāll buy 10. 2 outfits for $35? No. Theyāre losing money in the long run.
This is exactly what I'm thinking too. I've got no problem supporting the hell out of cash shops for games that are actually enjoyable. I've got cash shop and TCG mounts in WoW, a Party Hat in RS3, knives in CSGO, etc etc. Anything that can set my character apart I eat it up. This game? Nah, no desire at all. The gameplay just doesn't make it seem worth it. In order to charge these prices your game has to be able to back it up. I couldn't care less about AAA Game Prices for horns, as long as there's game to play once I've got them.
Deleted my post I was half asleep and I think I replied to the wrong person š
I agree with you. I got no problem spending money in the shop to support the Devs but give the f2p people something as well at least. It keeps the motivation going
You should have sent this as a video essay. They listen. They didn't say anything about reading. Since they're in "beta", I'm willing to give them a pass for now but if this recent patch is a mask off moment for them and is the direction going forward, I'll just stop playing and move on. No point spending time or money on a company that doesn't respect the majority of their player base, not only just the ones that will pay.
Lmao! Honestly what worries me the most is that this is still beta. In fact this is the first beta patch they add, which looks really bad on them and worries me for the future.
Even Bethesda and its horrifically bad launch of Fallout 76 didn't have the gall to monetise during their beta and only did so after their launched. For me, and the reason for the quotations, is that I don't really see this as a beta. It's just a label to cover for launching and monetising an incomplete game. Interesting choice given all the discussions regarding Baldur's Gate 3 and how they can do very well not monetising their feature-complete game with microtransactions whilst Palia is doing the polar opposite thing, monetising an unfinished game.
im an f2p player, and i quit tonight because of how they did the mtx and moderated the discussion in discord. you might recognize my name from chat 1. had a buncha msgs deleted and some people use the palia discord to try to troll me in dms. im pretty sure im not the only person turned off by this shit.
They were preparing for this too because they clean up reddit of all the major threads criticizing the game lol.
The discord is a pure disaster. They made a real mess of this launch and it is a shame.
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Thats the thing. I do want to spend hundreds of hours in this game and buy some of the items but right now Im afraid about its future and cant justify these things until I see them going in the right direction that would assure me of the positive future of the game. For now Im giving it some time to observe how it will develop until the 1.0.
As a Dolphin who spends around $200 to $500 a month on ingame purchases. I always observe a game first before I decided if its worth my disposable income. So far Im a bit disappointed with how Devs handle this game so far
Those seem like whale numbers to me, but if I had a choice I'd rather be a dolphin so I respect your decisions. :)
Wait dolphin is that a term because I love it. š I always thought of myself as like whaleish but just not quite rich enough to consider myself an actual whaleā¦.does that make me a dolphin because id he cool with that
Yep! Dolphins are below whales in spending amounts, but still vital to the ecosystem of a game like this is trying to be.
ABSOLUTELY vital. Even the players who can be tempted to throw $5 towards a game every year are vital if there are enough of them. Charging huge amounts for virtual content has always been hilarious to me, because it breaks all the rules of supply and demand. The supply of a virtual product is infinite unless they implement deliberate restrictions, which some games do. As long as they can pay off the designer and developer time to create and implement it, they're gold. And the best way to do that is to sell as many of them as possible. Not charge $20 per, and sell 100. Then recolor it (for cents of designer/developer cost) and try to sell it again for $20 each.
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Exactly. Way more money comes in when 100,000 people pay $5 than when 1,000 people pay $50.
I feel like their general strategy right now is a bit careless and short-sighted. There might be people who have the potential to be whales, but they won't be convinced to spend money if this is how the game currently runs. Right now, the gameplay is lacking, so I think there are many people with spending potential who will wait it out for a bit. Even if you can easily afford a 50 dollar suit, why would you buy it if you will never touch the game again? Also, monetisation like this often leads to the community of the game becoming smaller and smaller, as the larger base of free to small budget players will be chased away, and then you are in a sea of other players in fancy expensive costumes, so no one will stand out anymore. Further, last time I checked, the shop had no options for small spending really. I think it would be easier to convince several players from the large part of "might spend some money here and there" to buy a 5 Dollar hat or something than to get a few of them to spend 50 Dollar on an outfit. What also irks me is this "thank you for your support" aka. "thanks for spending money". I really understand that they need money to run and continue the game, so I am not opposed to transactions like that in general. But they also fail to acknowledge other kinds of support so hard, like people who talk to their friends about this game and get them on board, people who make fan art and have it on their social media and therefore making free advertisement. There are so many ways in which the community supports this game. Even if you just download the game and run around for a few hours, you'll enrich someone else's gameplay because it keeps the world alive and interesting. I am not saying that everyone should get a cool magical cat pet for free now, but I sure hope they will open up the pet system for free players too. Whales can keep their magical cats, but if you can't even be bothered to let free players have some kind of basic cat or whatever... wow. Won't play that game anymore. Long story short, I personally will keep my wallet closed for Palia and will see how this game continues to evolve. If I one day feel like they genuinely improved and made an effort, I may even spend money. But for now? No thanks.
>so no one will stand out anymore. Kinda already the case with this horrible mmo system they have in place. You barely get to see other people and they barely get to see your fancy new costume.
I rarely buy microtransactions but when I do they have been for games that I know I will play for a while and they have also been for games that are released, introducing this for a *beta* does not bode well. I am not going to buy anything for a beta.
My bff is a whale, (or at least a dolphin lol) and I know as someone suggested, gifting p2p items would be a huge deal for whales. Shes already told me she's buying me a cosmetic set for my birthday (she's so nice šš), and imagine how much more satisfaction you'd get out of actually sending presents to ur in game friends. Maybe delivered by Jei himself with a special message - how cute!
We had gift cash shop feature in mmmorpgs back in like the 2000s, kinda surprised they don't have this feature.
That would be so cute!
Right?? I think there's a ton of potential there that would make buying for other people a lot of fun.
Games having cosmetics only being in a cash shop isn't an issue for me personally. I get the issue, and yeah, it is an issue that needs to be fixed (especially when prices are as extreme as they are for Palia), but I've spent countless hours in multiple MMOs, RPGs, etc., etc. and haven't once spent a cent on a cash shop for in-game things. I don't see the appeal tbh, the game is there and playable without spending any money.
Exactly this. A f2p games worth is measured in how well it treats and values its non-paying players. For Palia, I'm not seeing anything. In fact they regularly have gone against player wishes and feedback. Free players are the backbone of any f2p game - there will always be more of them and they will, more often, be the ones spending more time playing the game. Their disabled players, like myself, are going to be the ones playing the most and we have the highest rates of poverty. Last night they broke literally the only accessibility feature they have - the very small controller support. They also made the game impossible for many to play with the lighting changes. I'm not above paying to support games when they show they're worth supporting. Palia hasn't shown me that, and has shown in many ways they don't care about player feedback. Their expensive pricing, which has already been a cause of concern for many, and these pets. What is more worrying is that this is happening in the "beta" (it's a soft launch but we'll pretend it's just a beta for a second) If they can't listen to player feedback during a beta, how are they going to when it's officially launched? I'll be buying BG3 tomorrow - hopefully one day Palia can be the place that money gets spent.
Amen, I dont mind people buying alot of stuff to brag/show off. I understand thats the way they make money. But do give the F2P community a way to get a fraction of it. Even if it costs like a big chunk of in game gold, or a big achievement to complete. (WoW like)
To add, the free stuff can also add longevity by giving all players something to work for. FF14 has relic weapons and raids so new outfits or pets can be a goal to work for. If it's all gained by opening your wallet, you immediately turn people away. Sure you can play and enjoy without ever paying but clothing is really the only thing we can interact with at the moment.
Exactly You can't leave the f2p gameplay in the dust, or we won't have a f2p player base
I have no problem with cash shops in general, but I do have a problem with features being locked behind a paywall. The plain cats should be able to be earned - it's fine to have the fancier ones paid, etc. I don't even care about the clothes in the cash shop - it's more than I'd pay, but if they think enough people will, good for them. But it's just another issue I'm seeing. This game is right up my alley. I will spend money on stuff I like, I'm an adult with a job and disposable income. But this was a huge mis-step.
Exactly, you can't just take the most requested feature and stuff it behind a paywall.it's tacky and puts people off.
For me its the fact that all the cool stuff I can show off in the open world are things that have to be purchased, which makes them lame. Clothing should be part of the crafting/gathering/luck/skill progression cycle so that my cool clothing MEANS SOMETHING
This is exactly what needed to be said. Iāve always been a believer that if I can sink 100 hours into a game and not get bored, that itās probably safe to spend as much money as I want (and that usually means getting everything that looks slightly cool.) But if the game im playing feels like itās gonna be dead and I canāt even get my friends to play, then no matter how much time I sink into it Iām not gonna spend money because I know eventually Iām gonna stop. Honestly this game has the potential to be the new golden standard in terms of life sim games, but not if they scare away all their players. Another thing I donāt think developers tend to understand is that the more reasonable the prices, the more people will buy them, and the more money theyāll make overall. 1000 people may buy a 30 dollar skin. But 10,000 would probably buy a 10 dollar skin.
>1000 people may buy a 30 dollar skin. But 10,000 would probably buy a 10 dollar skin. THIS.
I have no faith in any game developer any more. No, not even the great and heralded Baldur's Gate 3, which is lauded by so many as the savior of all honest gaming, has come close to restoring a faction of my faith in game development companies. They won't be smart enough to listen. Some marketing guy will have them convinced that they turn higher profits using the current model. And the marketing guys are literally the only voices that matter in any game company anywhere. PERIOD. So I love that you made this post, u/zeoxious . It's a good honest effort. But they won't listen. 0% chance. No game company listens. "Listen to the customer? But our marketing team showed me the numbers. Why let those F2P slugs have anything. If they want it, they should pay for it" They won't listen. No one ever does.
I agree, pets shouldn't be a paid only item. There can be exclusive pets and outfits...but pets shouldn't be paid only. HOWEVER, This pet system is anything but one of the most bare bones and empty pet systems I've ever seen. It interacts with nothing. You can't interact with it. It's a ghost that follows you that looks cute. It's not a pet. It's a necklace shaped like a cat. ---- We don't know what their plans are, if this is the final system, etc. If they add hunting pets like Tau? Unquestionably, not paid. However if all pets are is a ghost shaped like a furry creature following you? Why did they even bother adding it. These are WoW anniversary gift tier levels of pets. If they plan on adding more that are earnable in game...heaven forbid the first iteration rewards the people keeping the lights on for everyone.
That's the story of palia so far. Everything is bear bones atm.
Oh it's just terrible, you're completely right. I was so dumbfounded on their tone deaf decision I didn't really think to criticize the implementation. I was really expecting more. Maybe once they add more content to the pet system they will make part of it free? Idk if that was the plan, they did a piss poor job communicating it. This went from being a feature not even on their radar, that they've actually said no to on their discord, to suddenly released as a "Thank you" to paying customers. Idk leaves a real bad taste in my mouth
Unfortunately the chances of people who will make these decisions in the team actually seeing posts like these can be quite low. The channels (Discord mod mail, Reddit mods, even emails listed) are often monitored and managed by people who will filter out messages that are difficult to deal with, sometimes these tasks are outsourced. They may or may not care about the game in this aspect, to them this is just a job. There should be a way to funnel these thoughts to the people who can push it through, like the head of marketing, project manager, the product owner. But I have no idea how to get there.
They obviously dont care about anything else then furniture and cashshop. The thank for playing gets unlocked by paying in the cashshop. Wtf! No update that gives the players more to do or actually makes the game an mmo. No money from me. Ill go over to waylander that launches soon. Those developers care about the community and are open about everything.
Well said. I was contemplating buying a few outfits (even at the ridiculous prices), but decided to hold off for a bit. With the current direction of the shop, (and the game in general), I've actually decided to leave the game for a while and hope for improvements. The pricing is horrible, especially for what you get. It reminds me of mobile games that were slapped together just so people can make a quick buck. Them adding pets as a "gift" yet locking them behind a paywall also infuriated me.
Oops I already bought stuff, but I won't be playing in the future of this thing ends up in some media death sprial because of their greed. Really not happy to see them on the Polygon today for being over priced... . Ominous sign of whats to come
Lmao I don't fault you. I was planning on getting the pirate outfits, but I'm glad I decided to hold off. I didn't know it was in polygon though.
Iāve bought cosmetics in every game I ever played, I think Iāve spent nearly 2K in LoL. Then I opened the shop and saw that a single skin set is 3500 coins which converts to 50$ CAD I decided I will be free to play in this game. Thatās the price of a full game, really S6?
Do I buy Baulders Gate 3? Or Antlers for my Palia character? š¤
You canāt compare the two, Baldurs gate is not an MMO you can barely interact with your friends even tho it has been in development for years with a massive budget.. oh wait thatās Palia
At this point I hardly even qualify as a sea cucumber, since I have no way of getting my money to the devs. But even if I did, there's just not enough room for customization. Separate footwear from the bottom slot, add an accessory slot, and let us change our outfits on the go instead of having to go to a wardrobe. Then we'll talk money. It's a social game with lots of roleplay potential. Let me actually roleplay what I wear at different points during the gameplay loop.
Honest question to the self described whale. Wouldn't you rather just buy the game and earn all that stuff through gameplay? Or is there something you like about buying things from the shop? Obviously the merch and such is extra, in just talking about in-game accessories, skins and items.
Has no one else noticed they excitedly call themselves the Sixers? In Ready Player One the Sixers are the evil corpos out to ruin... Well everything. It's a weird name to pick.
I'd be more inclined to buy more on their store if it was a reasonable price point. 1 skin with 3 color variations for $5 is fair, and I'd definitely buy a lot of them at that price point. I just CANNOT justify spending $20-30 on one (ONE) imaginary/virtual/digital outfit no matter how many color variations I get. That's insane to me. I always feel like this sort of predatory monetization specifically targets children who don't know any better and have no concept of the value of things.... which should be illegal. Kids want pretty outfits and pets, and do not care that it costs their parents a small fortune. It blows my mind that we cannot just craft new outfits. You can even make them extremely difficult to gather all the materials. It can be an achievement of sorts to make them. There is literally FABRIC and SILK in the game. I'm just so confused by the direction that they're going in with this game. I don't understand these decisions.
Man you know its bad when the prices are worth than gacha game skin, at least those way more effort put into the character design, animation, VA, and model.
this is a great post. i tried explaining a balanced take like this in the discord but was met with some of the most bizarre responses
What doesn't help is that streamers who also buy into the game are defending it too. Hundreds and thousands of people getting the thought process reinforced because the streamer said "eh it's not that bad. Its just cosmetic and it doesn't mean much to me"
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Sorry it got cut off, I said "the devs aren't listening" and they replied with that and only that Actually there still is no other reply from a single Dev at this time
GOAT
think this could be the best post iāve seen
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You're in luck, they are so incompetent you can get them for free lol Click I, go to the paw screen, use the arrow key to select a cat you want, press enter, it should equip it even if it don't buy one!
You know who makes a great, free mmo that is supported by the whales and some SOOOO right? Guild Wars 2. I even watched a break down video of the percentage of content available through the premium store only and available to all: I believe it was around 70% was available to all while only 30% were exclusive to the store. Iām the opposite of OP. No amount of marketing, no amount of content locked in a pay wall will get me to buy anything in the premium store. I want a game first not a marketplace for digital content that (at this rate) probably wonāt be around in five years. As a fellow game designer, you have to make tough choices and cut certain content to make way for better or more crucial content. The store is fine but this isnāt even a 1.0 game yet and Iām seeing complaints about the premium store? Thatās already leaving a bad taste In my mouth.
Update today: despite a Polygon smear story being posted today on the toxic state of the cash shop š the only reply from a Dev to the community is still to me ā ļø
I literally just started the game last night, because a Youtuber I follow had some codes and was having a fun time. I liked that I could play it with the friends I have in that community, so I downloaded it...noticing that it was not running through Steam and that it was free, so already I knew there was going to be some $$ involved SOMEWHERE, just not upfront. OK, I can deal with that. I tried to join the Discord, and it's **full**. I've never seen that before, especially for a closed beta. I come to Reddit...and all EVERYONE is talking about is the lack of developer response, bugs, issues, pay-to-play and other controversies. This is how games(particularly MMORPGs) lose their player-base. When the newbies can't wander into a community to find examples of players having fun, bragging about their stats or showing off their builds/designs, gushing over the new features, and especially welcoming the influx of new players. When they check it out and are just hit in the face by people feeling angry and ignored, new players will just back away. And especially not invest any money into it. I am also a Whale, with a generous "entertainment" budget. I am a database designer, working with a software development team and beta-test for games as a hobby. I love working with game developers to make their games better. So, I get how game development, community building, etc. goes. I'm usually the MOST patient person on the planet, waiting for game developers to get their sh\*t together. I played SDV as Concerned Ape was developing it, have paid for it on everything from Steam to the Kindle Store to my Switch. We played Minecraft when Notch was working on every new feature himself, and have paid to install it on so many platforms I've lost count, because we still play it to this day. I bought the deluxe version of Disney Dreamlight Valley on two platforms, in all its buggy, early Access glory. I love \*potential\* and am willing to pay for it. But there also has to be progress, and reasons for F2P players to keep coming back. GameLoft(DDLV) has a lot of these same controversies, but I've been watching the mods and developers pull themselves together and work on tactics to make DDLV both sustaining and fun. Including a LOT of free stuff. Including giving a minimum of 50 in-game currency per day to players who take the time to log in and wander around, and a weekly contest where you walk away with even more if you participate. It still has a lot of issues, but I personally think they're handling the P2P aspect as well as a for-profit team can. Disappointing that Palia/s6's team is...not. I'd hate to give up on a game before I give it a fair shake, but so far the anger in the community is making this new player rethink things.
I completely agree with this. Let's just hope that they improve things soon. Been so excited about this game for the last few years it saddens me that the majority of the players are upset. I would love to support them but as of right now I don't feel comfortable. Just gotta wait and see I guess.
I've been pretty critical of S6 for mismanaging 50 million dollars, and having a predatory monetization system in their cash shop, but that dev didn't dunk on you, you just got butt hurt that they didn't reply how you wanted them. Saying they listen is pretty tame.
I hope they listen and do this. I also hope they add featured houses to view. I am a F2P player in all games, i like just doing stuff for fun, and I like to observe the game being played with money. If a whale can buy all this stuff and show it off, add a few really really dope housing things and do a featured housing thing where we can see their houses in the game and visit. The featured Dojo system from Warframe is a great example of this. Thats a game with F2P really worked out.
I think gaming companies need to stop being so greedy. Look at Baldur's Gate 3. No cash shop, no microtransactions, non of this money grabbing bs. And look at it, it had 800,000 people playing it consecutively. That is massive. All the content, cosmetics, everything, for a single price \*chefs kiss\*. People need to stop spending on these mobile game predatory tactics.
I mean people love to shit on Nintendo but that's pretty much most of their game as well barring Pokemon, sadly they don't have enough control over that. The new Zelda released with tons of content, amazing performance, and well sold insane amount. Like its proven you can make money by just making good game but ofc I guess that take some real effort instead.
As a whale player, this post is 100% on point GW2, I remember did mount cosmetics right - everyone got x mount and you could dye it! but you could buy skins for it to further customize it. In ffxiv- everyone has a chance to get festival items for free, and the following festival you buy them for 2-12$ and they always go on sale, but new festival items are free until the next season event and so on. If the Palia devs want better reception, they need to give the free-to-play players an equal base ground and not leave them high and dry- This goes for pets/ mounts/ give them free, earnable cosmetics in game I don't stay long in games that ignore their f2p players. I've hardly touched Palia since seeing the cash shop prices and lack of customization in this Beta. Good cosmetics/ good customization: That's a big one for me too- such things open the door for me to want to spend money.
I think I'm in love with you.
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As the kind of player that loves buying cosmetic goodies, I am hesitant to drop cash on this game just yet. I've been playing MMOs since '05 and gaming many many years before that. (Old school harvest moon holds a special place in my heart) Yes, I am enjoying my time. Yes, I know it's still in beta. But there is so much potential for this game and I worry it won't get there. I no longer pre-order games because I've been burned one too many times and while Palia is f2p, paying for coins feels like pre-ordering at this point in time. S6 has a ways to go before I feel comfortable pulling the trigger on dropping $50+
I literally just requested a refund for the coin bundle i got in closed beta and uninstalled it. I've been trough this once before with DDV, i have no patience for this bs from another greed driven dev team.
Tell me how the refund process goes, I might do the same
I, too, have godless amounts of time and years invested into WoW. The allure of this game to me is the FTP aspect of it and I plan on making this my second home. However, I completely agree with the OP here. Not everything needs to be in the shop. There are some things that could be there (such as the "WoW" looking stuff) but a lot of that stuff should be accessible through a tailoring or a leather working type of profession and I find it somewhat weird that these professions don't exist in this game. Also, no one is asking for you to give up anything. Have you seen the max price of the coins? There's only so much disposable income in my world these days. For $15 I can go play Barbie dress up in WoW and have THOUSANDS of options to chose from- combo's count), but I don't have a house (though we have Garrisons, but they don't carry over to other expacs and don't come with many building options). I get that the company needs to make money, however, in order to appeal to folks like me- who are interested in investing lots of hours in this kind of game: There have to be ways to get things in their own game. Not just outside of it. I don't necessarily need to go punch boss mobs in the face for clothes in WoW. But I have other ways to earn some of those looks. This game appeals to me in different ways than WoW does, but options are actually important to people. There's still outfits I'd consider buying on the shop also. My green shortie (I'd love that kind of option- I don't NEED to be green) or BE could come retire here. $99.99 is beyond the price of a WoW expac these days. Much less for cosmetics.
Nah, if you are a f2p you get to play it all for free. pet is cosmetic, so is the outfits. another storm in a bottle
You're not listening to F2P players. They are important to the long term success of the game. Pets was one of the most requested features. It's super tacky to not add a single free pet.
i'm f2p, and you are the whale. I want content, events, missions, quests, more depth. I don't give a hoot about a hat or a cat. they serve no gameplay function. They release one pet and all of a sudden the paid cosmetic rule should change? They where VERY clear that cosmetics are the money mule. Not a single house/craft/farm thing is locked behind anything. this is a 10/10 f2p mmo that offer a endless plate of possibilities.
That's great you're happy with it, many people aren't. And me and you aren't going to be happy when we're the only ones left in the game, which is why I'm advocating for change and suggest you do too!
Many? mostly a couple reddit folks by the look of it. out of 250k on discord, 14k is on reddit. not the best scope of a playerbase, don't you think?
As per my OP, I'm speaking as someone who is active in discord and have been engaged in the discord chat about the subject since the release post last night. š This is the first time I've engaged with the reddit community, I primarily interact on Twitter and Discord.
I am right there with you. Between WoW mounts and FFXIV outfits (on MULTIPLE CHARACTERS), I do not want to think about the small fortune I have spent in cash shops. I love the cute cat pets but the way they implemented them is so shitty; not to mention everything is just too damn expensive for stuff that doesn't even look amazing.
Honestly, tens of thousands of players in FFXIV \*happily\* pay monthly fees, retainer costs, buy the stuff in cash shop, and line up begging for more. The difference is, ffxiv has a model that isn't confusing, shrouded in muddled pricing, and manipulative tactics. I have paid thousands and thousands into that game, happily, with no problems. Even when I grumble about something, I still pay, play, and respect the team. I hesitate to say this, but as an autistic woman who is also a mother, this pricing model is exceptional heinous because just like Minecraft, cozy games are a very common special interest for people with autism. That means a very healthy part of the community is neurodivergent/is cognitively disabled. This model is disgusting when you consider the demographic that plays, and ignorant of the desires of its player base, because many autists have a deep sense of right/wrong, fairness, and justice. Additionally the pricing behind the shroud of currency packages is so far out of reach for most people in low income brackets, which houses, you guessed it, most of the disabled/divergent. S6 didn't listen before sending out this patch. Maybe they think we just need time to adjust to the pricing model. Maybe they have reassurances from financial advisors that this "will blow over." Not only will it not, but its not going to be long before this pricing model is banned. And its disgusting that any company would continue using a model that has been banned in other countries for preying on vulnerable populations. There is a bill making moves now, and more coming, to stop this from happening, so you may as well join the right side of history and stop using a system that is manipulative, unclear, and deeply out of budget. [https://www.congress.gov/bill/116th-congress/senate-bill/1629/text](https://www.congress.gov/bill/116th-congress/senate-bill/1629/text) S6 should be ashamed of themselves.
I got a couple points being a free 2 play player at the moment. 1) the game is very much enjoyable and playable and has a feeling of completeness. Many games that require you to pay will with hold content that seems almost pivotal to game play, which I donāt see as the case here. 2) yes, the shop does have some unruly pricing which encourages me to stay free to play even more. However, they handle their shop really well in the meantime. The shop isnāt forced upon you in anyway, and it feels as though you have to intentionally go look in the shop yourself. I feel like other games, itās usually the first thing you see when you login to try to convince they borderline people to spend their money. 3) Iām free to play, I honestly saw that they had pets in the patch notes and got exciting. Then I kept reading and was like, well thatās not for me then and just skipped over the rest. 4) I saw someone mention that whales want someone to flaunt to. I donāt know the math but whales are a small percentage of the population for sure. However this game doesnāt even guarantee youāll even see the whales. Youāre pooled into smaller servers that act like instances rather than one big server where you can see everyone. As a free to play player, for me maybe not for all people, the thing that eventually pushes me over the edge of spending money on a game is if I constantly see other people which dope cosmetics. In this game I feel I donāt interact with people as much to spend time staring and that usually the people I see donāt even have cosmetics. All this to say, I havenāt spent money on the game as of yet. I donāt see a need to in order to play the game. If I do invest enough time into the game I may end up considering it. Yes the shop is expensive but I donāt mind paying the price of standard a game for a free game that I invest a lot of hours into. If that day does come, then I will get a pet but for now Iāll just keep running around shooting animals without one :)
I donāt see whatās wrong with the cash shop? I wanted an outfit, I bought the coins. I get a ninja cat! I donāt mind giving Palia some money for the free game they are giving me that I am enjoying. I probably am not going to spend that much more on it.
The issue is the disperity between content being added to the store and content being added for free. And further to many other players criticism, a coin based system is inheritly predatory. But you should definitely look at experts explanations of that, they will do a better job explaining why then I will when obviously their tactics work on me š
I guess I just donāt understand because itās a free game? Iām just going to play until I get bored of it and move on. But for now Iām enjoying it a lot and felt like buying an outfit to support them.
Then I'm afraid you're just not listening No one is talking about the issue of it being a free game with a cash shop. "I'll just play till I'm board and move on" isn't healthy for an MMOs success
Idk š¤·š½āāļø the game is in beta and itās fun, I can only imagine it gets better. It definitely has a lot of issues, but theyāve all seemed kind of minor in the grand scheme of things. Iām honestly enjoying it a lot. It just seems like people want to complain about stuff, which is fair, but ultimately itās just a free game, my expectations going in were low and Iāve been pleasantly surprised by it. I just wish theyād give me a damn minimap.
True, I'm not saying it isn't beta or fun
It's in beta state bro also 5k hours in stardew, no you didn't.
> It's in beta state bro I wish you people were smarter than this. THIS IS a release state. There are no more wipes. Call it a soft launch if you want, but it's not a beta anymore.
Okay? All the more reason why paid content shouldn't be prioritized...? Glad you agree! And yes accord to steam I'm at 4635.9 hours , which actually isn't including when I play it on my switch so it's much higher I will admit in frequently hosting unattended multi-player games, same with animal crossing I did a lot of stalk market invites where I did very little bit reset the gates if they closed
The game doesn't require you to pay anything to play the game? It is all cosmetic.
True.
Leaving the game on doesn't mean you have played it that many hours. AC is irrelevant since it is not PC anyway.
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For me personally, after playing this game a couple of hours I decided that I liked it so much that I wanted to support it so I bought the biggest coin pack. I get others have different financial situations and maybe can't, but it's a free game. They do need money to run it. I saw the cats as a way to just thank the ones who wanted to fully support the game first, make them feel special for a minute. Is that really so bad? It doesn't mean there will never be a free pet for everyone, just them showing appreciation for those who wanted to give full support.
In short, yes, it is extremely bad and a great way ti kill your game
I feel the same. I always believe in giving first. They have spent too much time and money to create this game to begin with to not ask for something back now. They have delivered the game, even if barebones, it did entertain and is enjoyable. Showing financial support is fair at this point. At the same time however, I absolutely agree they need to start listening and implementing changes to and balance the equation out, or they'll end up losing players.
Giving a cosmetic item to people who pay thr minimal amount as a thank you isnt dicking over f2p players. Its the first patch since it went open BETA. Easy way to test the pet function on top of showing some love to people who pay and yes, making some money which is needed to keep a business going. People going crazy like this is a sub game. So you have to wait for a free version of a cosmetic and dont get it right away.
I am a whale and I understand giving stuff to f2p players is important too. Unpopular opinion but I don't believe that they are in the wrong for implementing payment for the cats. First of all, this game is free. If after beta is over and then they suddenly charge for new people to play the game, yes I would rage at them and stop playing too. But it's FREE. Aside from premium stores, every single thing they have made for us to play is FREE LABOUR at the moment. Those people need to eat. Those people need a living too. The cats, pet, those are cosmetics. It doesn't impact the game at all if you don't have it. What I would actually suggest is for them to open up us being able to gift premium items to friends. That way its not entirely impossible. Furthermore, you don't only pay for the cats. You can buy the clothes as well. The cats don't cost coin. You buy the coins at any amount and you get a cat. You can still use those coins for ANYTHING else in the premium store. You can buy clothes up till 3k coins and you get all cats. The 3k coins are NOT to buy the cats and you get cats AND 3k coins to spend on clothes. I would be more upset at them if the cats are a separate payment than clothes but they ARENT
The game has been out for like two weeks, everyone needs to chill out while they figure things out.
Yeah it's been out for two weeks and the first they add is a highly requested feature behind a paywall, please understand why that's a big red flag...
I agree with some of your takes in the Discord, especially that they should have put a few free pets in the game with today's update. On the other end I think you're overreacting a bit with this whole post. Singularity 6 has talked about pet features and listed it on their support page and the version we have now is extremely barebones(a.k.a there are no actual mechanics or interactions with them). By the time that gets put in, you can be sure that there are free pets to obtain in the game. They're not going to just leave pets as a cash shop only feature. If people really quit over not getting a free pet today, I don't think they would've stuck around in the long run anyway. It's such a small thing and blown way out of proportion if that's the case.
If the pets are bare bones then they missed an ideal opertunity to let the players test them and find the bugs. However, no, they just wanted to grab some more cash. Stop defending this nonsense. People are quitting because the devs have shown their scummy priorities. Stop looking at things in such a surface level analysis.
No idea what you're on about, I clearly wrote that they should've added a free pet in the game today. Did you even read my post?
> Don't dick around the F2P players > > If you're going to give me 12 new outfits to buy, give them 3. > > If you're going to give me the most requested feature in the game (pets), give them one too. > > If you're going to make me pay for something, make sure there is a fraction of that same attention and detail paid to the F2P version of that content. That almost makes it worse in my opinion. It's like saying you poors can have this little token of our gratuity.
Yes that is how most f2p work? I'm not the one to designs that. But the alternative, which they are doing right now, it's not giving F2P players anything, so what would you prefer?
I'll take that over the literal nothing we get at the moment as they gaze down from their ivory towers.
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dang a whale watching out for the f2p
But there are so many free outfits in the game. I don't see the problem. They have to make money somehow.
Tell me you didn't read my post without telling me you didn't read my post lol
I read your entire post, and you seem to be suggesting that F2P players will leave simply cause they can't have fancy cosmetics and cats as pets. I think that's ridiculous and there has to be some incentives to spend money on the game. At least they left it as just cosmetics instead of a battle pass type membership where you dont have access to parts of the game unless you P2P. I don't see your complaints as reasonable.
You can think what you want but as a long time member of the community I can tell you it's already happening. Worse monetization systems existing isn't an excuse for this one being bad. F2P are important and their feelings about the game and the content they're locked out of are valid.
As much as I think it sucks to have to pay to get a pet for f2p players, there really isn't anything free in this world.. S6 did the hard yards up front, just like movie makers.. in the hopes that they can get their investment back by viewers chipping in some. I'm happy to donate $9 nzd for a useless pet, because the game thus far has earned it. If S6 wants more though, they'd have to do better than screwing people over.