[Nobody]

Ever since the Aion Cash Shop was announced, there has been a certain amount of controversy surrounding it. On a subscription-based game, what items should be sold in a cash shop and should players be allowed to have an advantage for using the cash shop's services? This question is at the heart of the controversy. While everybody agrees that with a free-to-play game, cash shops need to make a profit, what about a subscription-based MMO game?

So far, most players have agreed that it is ok to pay in order to change a character's looks or gender (many games offer these services for a fee), but there were those that called the first dye sales in the NCsoft Store a "rip off" and commented on how the Koreans were able to get a wider variety of dyes from contributing to their own Powerwiki rather than through payment. Of course, the cash shop has now changed for Koreans as well and it sells a wide variety of both decorative and game changing items.



The cash shop has slowly and quietly expanded in the NA/EU region version of Aion. It includes a variety of clothing and emotes for characters, commonly sold only for a short period of time. Some claimed that the economy of Aion would be ruined by the weapon skins, which could be purchased, used as a skin, and then resold at a profit. When the dust settled, it appeared that the 34 trillion kinah bug had a much bigger impact on the economy of Aion and that enchantment stones were still a more popular sales item when compared to light saber swords.



The swords were really the first item that gave NCsoft Shop customers a true advantage, although it could be argued that the shop followed the Aion Magazine in doing so. Following the swords, 2.0 brought a variety of pets, including an alarm pet into the store. Since the pets didn't really work well and were available outside of the store, they were an acceptable store item for most people.



Recently, the Aion cash shop's expansion has started to include more and more items that give advantages to those that use the services of the cash shop. The Worg Pet was an interesting addition as it is currently the only auto-looting pet available to pre-level 50 characters. Looting does take time and so cash shop users can buy themselves out of some of this time through purchasing the pet. It doesn't loot all items (such as quest items) though, so some have questioned how much time it actually saves.



The most recent item of interest has been the Inguin Candy as the candy gives a +3 attck, +15 mb, and +3% attck spd and cast spd boosts. This has caused a bit of controversy on our forum, which has now been added to by the following information, regarding the soon-to-be sales of manastone 100% socketing supplements in the cash shop:

Quote

Yes, it is true that we will be running a promotion in late September to sell the supplements. These items are already sold in Korea on their store, and I believe there may be some other territories already selling them as well. They were designed by Korea specifically to be a cash item.

Now, to many people who are frustrated with the manastone socketing system, this could be mana from heaven, even if it's fairly expensive per stone. As quoted, Korea does sell these items in their cash shop and they do allow individuals with the cash available to socket with 100% reliability, even when they are unlucky.

The question does remain though, is this a reasonable method for the company to make money in a subscription-based MMO game? We are certainly used to these types of systems in the free-to-play market, where the system helps to monetarily support the development of the game, but what about subscription-based games? What is the subscription paying for and what should customers pay for on top of the subscription?

We'd like to hear your thoughts on the matter either pro or con.

Cheers,

Nobody

[ninjarabbi]

How do 100% enchantment supplements work? Can you use a l50 on a 55 eternal and it will 100% work? Same for a l30, l10? Does the stone become just a placeholder?

[Quasimodo]

This is Pay2Win plain and simple. Instead of increasing success rate of the manastones or increasing their drop rates they are charging us extra as if it was a Free to Play browser game, not one that was supposed to be AAA MMO purely supported by subscriptions.

www.facebook.com/AionPay2WinProtest

[No,you.]

ninjarabbi, on 28 August 2011 - 10:10 AM, said:

How do 100% enchantment supplements work? Can you use a l50 on a 55 eternal and it will 100% work? Same for a l30, l10? Does the stone become just a placeholder?

There are only 100% suppl for manastones.


Also I checked the Kr A-style shop today and I didn't found the suppl' or the enchant stones bags, did they removed it or something ?

[Nobody]

oh-oh, I thought I'd seen it somewhere. Maybe I should remove that part if it's not there.

Edit: removed that phrase as I went searching in the Aion Armory database and couldn't find anything that related to enchantment stones for 100%. So that was my bad for mis-remembering. I thought I'd seen something like that somewhere, but I must have imagined it. They will only be selling 100% manastone supplements.

Double edit: it exists, but I still don't know if it's a 2.7 thing or what it's called in the db.

[.Rast]

It's good and bad at the same time.

Ncsoft west obviously doesn't have developers of any kind, so they are not able to produce new or change current game content, even if they could they probably would not because it could be problematic when patches come flying over from korea with the old game mechanics in mind.

So, we have a game wich is build on RNG, something Koreans like. Also there is the fact that koreans pay per hour/3hours/30hours, and not per month. So, In a pay-system like that it's not weird to have a large cash-shop with tools to solve the RNG-issue.

But, we don't have that here, we don't even have the choice of paying per hour. We are paying a fair amound of money per month, even if we barely play. Yet still we encounter the exact same problems like the koreans do, not being able to socket/enchant your gear if you don't play often.

Ncwest sees this as a win-win, and tbh, some people might agree with it, to a certain extend i do too. Because it enables people who are working to get close to the same level as younger people with alot of free time.

Think that concerns me is the same concern i've felt with every F2P mmo, they INTEND to make the game hard by breaking it, by making it RNG by default, THEN offering you things in the cash shop to solve it.

That's a certain standard i expect and tolerate in a F2P mmo, wich is the reason why i started playing aion, to pay a fair amount of money to not have to deal with all the f2p crap. People might argue that some mana stones and enchants won't change a whole lot, but it's just testing the water, if this proves succesfull, ncsoft won't even try to make this game more comfortable for people in the west, it'l keep on embracing the errors and rng for the sake of their money.

The only way i would agree with this item to be sold, is if there was a way to obtain these items in-game. Be it events, because that's the only way ncsoft west can actually give us items, and not just 5 of em by some picture contest.

Just like pets, those 100% socket/enchant stones should be made (hard to get tho) available by doing something IN-game aswell so the cash shop is just there for people with work/school etc.

my 2 cents.

[SethGod]

Rastekkel, on 28 August 2011 - 11:59 AM, said:

The only way i would agree with this item to be sold, is if there was a way to obtain these items in-game.

^this

...but I guess they are too retarded to think like that... or just plain ignorant :\

[Quasimodo]

They claim they are going to sell them for our convenience, to remove the frustration of socketing.

The problem is same thing can be achieved by increasing socketing success rate and/or manastone drop rate.
Both solutions are extremely easy to implement and would cost us nothing.

NCSoft made a decision: instead of fixing a problem we will make players pay extra for a workaround.
This workaround will not be really optional in competitive gaming: top players rarely win against each other by a huge margin - the extra 200 hp can make all the difference.

The argument they will be selling something you can just achieve in game is flawed as well:
Socketing full PvP armor is now insanely expensive. Socketing a single piece of PvP armor requires as many as 100 mana stones, let's say an average of 50 (most likely a too low one) - full set 250 + weapon 300-350.
Manastones cost in excess of 2 million a piece. So it's pay NCSoft $$$ or get 700 million kinah in game - that's about 400 hours of grinding - 3 months, 4 hours a day - not really an option for most of people - they will have to pay.

I could easily afford to pay to socket every single piece of armor I have on all my characters and it wouldn't make much of a dent in my budget even if stones were sold at 5EUR a piece, but I believe I shouldn't have to. I already pay 13EUR a month - which is pretty much standard for AAA MMO, Premium Quality MMO, one that does not pull cheap tricks from free2play games.

www.facebook.com/AionPay2WinProtest

[Mihomine]

Quote

Also I checked the Kr A-style shop today and I didn't found the suppl' or the enchant stones bags, did they removed it or something ?

Quote

emoved that phrase as I went searching in the Aion Armory database and couldn't find anything that related to enchantment stones for 100%. So that was my bad for mis-remembering. I thought I'd seen something like that somewhere, but I must have imagined it. They will only be selling 100% manastone supplements.

http://www.aionsourc...06#entry2635206

As stated on my thread, koreans did sell supplements for both manastones and enchantement.

There are also a lot of cash shop item that you can only see by logging on their website, only the promoted ones are visible.

[MightyTemplar]

I personally dont mind the fluffy crap in the ncstore as it dosnt give any advantage over other players, but the manastone thing is just plain wrong. It puts aion down the "he who has most RL $$$ wins" path. So those players who are only just surviving on in-game kinah, trying to purchase better stones and failing to socket them 99% of the time are going to get screwed over and over compared to those players who can afford to spend RL money on 100% success manastoning solutions. Just plain wrong IMHO.

[Aurion]

I don't mind their initiative to fix the lame RNG on socketing/enchanting at all. I think it's great. I just wished their solution didn't come from our wallets.

[ninjarabbi]

Honestly all this rage and indignation is uncalled for. If you've been playing for 2 years with the horrible RNG mechanics and taking it, just keep at it and don't buy that crap.

Complaining about other people who have more money that buy it is just childish and stupid. Do I complain about people who have more free time than me and can gring a few million kinah per day and socket everything au natural? No I don't that's life, people have different advantages. Some have free time, some have free money, deal with it.

I'm not gonna quit over this, probably won't buy that stuff either. Just ignoring it and so will most people.

[Mihomine]

Quote

Complaining about other people who have more money that buy it is just childish and stupid. Do I complain about people who have more free time than me and can gring a few million kinah per day and socket everything au natural?

Are we really comparing time and real life money ?

[Mostly]

Mihomine, on 29 August 2011 - 07:39 AM, said:

Are we really comparing time and real life money ?

Why wouldn't we compare them?

As for the topic of the thread, it's quite a joke that NcSoft "fixes" the RNG problem named Aion by ripping players off in the Cashstore. Not that it matters what anybody of us thinks, I don't think there was a single case where NcSoft listened to players, so... :P

[SethGod]

If we get that UNSUB thing happening, they might just listen to us and fix nyerk RNG without ppl having to pay real $...

Atm they dont give us RNG-free game, cause they are worried that ppl quit when "they get everything they want"... well that is really not the case, but they are too retarded to understand this.. and don't reply with "AION KOR is still #1" 'cause NCWest has nothing to do with that... devs in KOR are nowhere near this retarded/ignorant.

[Nukkies]

We all invest two things in the game and that is our time and our money. I don't see the problem in being offered the option of investing more of one than the other - especially if you are short on one of the two commodities.

Both ways offer benefits and advantages, one is cheaper and the other is more covenient but the end result is the same - we'll all have our armour/weapons socketted with the same quality of manastones.

Its not like they are selling crit +21 or attack +6 manastones in the cash shop because that would be different.

[BlackOrchid]

My previous MMORPG was F2P, during my 2 years there I saw some ppl invest way over 2000€ in items to be the best in game or to keep up with the best. RNG there was way worse than it is here, the chances of socketing or upgrading an item were like 25%. They didn't sell 100% socketing scrolls, in fact the higher they sold was 75% XD

That is the reason I turned to a P2P game so I wouldn't have to spend more than the set ammount of money and invest the needed time. I don't like the F2P model for the perversion it represents and I wouldn't like Aion to head down that alley because after all in the end we all pay each month. As far as I am concerned the introduction of the 100% socketing is just the 1st item to be sold that will give the player a leverage over other players. Next we might just see foods, scrolls and who knows even weappons and armors. It's a good way to rip off players money and Ncsoft west has been good at slowly implementing it. . .

[Mihomine]

Quote

Why wouldn't we compare them?

Coz one of them isn't affecting your in-game experience, I let you guess which one.

Why would people needs to compense time by money ? Seriously in almost all P2P I played everybody had fun "playing", Not "competiting", what the heck is wrong with you people, has aion washed your brain about what kind of feature other games have ?

If you need to pay to make your ingame experience decent dont you think that there's a problem with the game and your way of enjoying it ?

[ninjarabbi]

Mihomine, on 29 August 2011 - 10:15 AM, said:

Coz one of them isn't affecting your in-game experience, I let you guess which one.

Why would people needs to compense time by money ? Seriously in almost all P2P I played everybody had fun "playing", Not "competiting", what the heck is wrong with you people, has aion washed your brain about what kind of feature other games have ?

If you need to pay to make your ingame experience decent dont you think that there's a problem with the game and your way of enjoying it ?

Uh, what? Time and money are interchangable. I work long hours and earn a nice amount of money but don't have time to play aion a lot. Some other dude might be broke or a student but has 3 times as much time as me to play.

Part of an MMO is constantly improving your character, and a big part of it is manastones and enchantmenet stones. If person A has the time to grind billions of kinah and enchant/socket all his stuff, why can't person B use the money he has to compensate the lack of time and gain the same result? In the end they both have the same "fun" by improving their char and being better.

This is pretty simple stuff...

P.S. Setys - how can you say KOR devs are better, they have a lot more items for sale in their shops for a long time now.

[SethGod]

idk... I heard they implement more fixes or smth as in "actually giving a damn"