Please make it paid game without microtransactions

[DEMOLITOR]

Title

[Meowish]

It's a free to play game with microtransaction since 2019.

But you should be able to finish the game in a short time period, similar to Journey. In fact, it plays just like Journey but in a MMO environment. Once you finished the game there really isn't much to do other than collecting cosmetics (which are the ones that cost money and grind time). The main game itself is free, you can easily finished it in a few hours game play.

There are contents and areas locked behind a pay wall as well. And most of those are time limited and will either require you buy a cosmetic item or Real Life Goods during a certain period of time to gain access to those areas or will need to find a "friend" in game that owns those items so they can bring you to see those areas, there really isn't much "game play" in those areas other than some extra lore or theme to fit certain platforms the game is released on, so you can easily take a quick view of them on youtube and get over with it imo...

As for whether or not there are "cosmetic" items that comes with certain ability that may break the game balance... well... there is. Umbrella is one that can protect you from the rain forest (So one can consider Umbrella a Cheat Item for the forest area). There are both paid and free versions, but the paid version is easier to get our hands on (it's not always available for both version), and the free version might require you to wait a full year for the correct NPC to show up depending on your luck (and the time you join the game). So certain "pay to win" aspect still happens in this game.

[Clint Cannon]

Originally posted by Meowish:

It's a free to play game with microtransaction since 2019.

I don't quite think this game falls into the pay to win category, it is a live service game that is free, and has a season pass that changes at regular intervals that unlocks always a new zone, and a bunch of new quests and items, the items from the season passes come back occasionally with the returning spirit for a limited time for everyone so you can get their items without paying money, although the candle price is pretty steep, (i think it is on a bi-weekly timer, and can be any one spirit from either of the season passes), there is an order to them so you can find out and predict when the spirit you want items from is due to appear and make plans accordingly.

The base experience is like you said, quite similar to journey, and is a complete game in itself, however, if you want to hang out with the people you meet along the way, and make friends, you can, and the only real incentive for the company to make money is through cosmetics, of which you can get a respectable amount playing free and not paying a single cent.

[Meowish]

Originally posted by Clint Cannon:

I don't quite think this game falls into the pay to win category

If you haven't noticed. There are areas and zones that are only accessible by teleport using specific paid cosmetics or real life goods scan code. Which means free players are in the mercy of the paid players if they want to access these zones, because their only hope is to get a paid player to bring them there, there's no other ways to do it (except the Office area where it's open to public during some events). And no, returning spirits will not make those free, and though some of those cosmetics will come back in recurring events and sales, they aren't free. So there IS this first and second rate citizenship thingy going on in the game, just like other pay to win games. Something that works like a VIP Club in our real life. It's just not in the form of battling each other for glory, but rather in the vanity area for cosmetic and locked privilege or limited zones and areas. Power is not the only thing you can compete with money. Cosmetic/vanity, privilege/limited vip areas are all part of the pay to win mechanisms in online games as long as it promote competition and urge players to spend irrationally imo.

To name a few examples in Sky: The Office area where you gain access to a special shop, The Prince special area where you get to see all the planets, Aurora's concert, and the recent 9 colored deer special area, the 2D Nintendo home area, etc etc are all accessible by certain capes. And there are those Elder hidden areas where we can access by scanning the code from certain goods bought from the real life good shop. Yes, some areas can be reached by using the glitch/bug in the game, but not all of them and most glitches are being patched out as the updates goes.

And not all cosmetic from the season come back as free. Example the Ultimate items and emotes will not be coming back at all and is limited to the time of release only. The shop items during the seasons will come back, but they will not come back as free. Only a few cosmetic items on the Seasonal Spirit friendship tree will come back as free after 365 days (at a ridiculous cost of candles, which promote more grinding). So the paid players gain access to those 1 year earlier than free players. So there's still that win/lose thingy going on about there.

[Clint Cannon]

Originally posted by Meowish:

I am going to blur alot of this since I am talking about details surrounding the progression and ending of the game, and I truly don't want to rob the experience for anybody playing the game for their first time, I got to experience this at my own pace and the ending was quite meomrable for me at the time.

Absolutely the game uses a great amount of "fomo" to entice players to spend some money through a feeling of urgency, I would not even try to debate against that, every game of this nature does this, as is their right for providing essentially a free game, and please understand I have no ill will towards you but I think you are using the term "pay to win" quite liberally, this game has a start and an end point, and no pvp elements whatsoever, you start in the isle of dawn, and the end is when you finish eden and the credits roll, you finish your run and get to spend the hearts on whatever you would like and also gain the permanently upgraded cape based on the children of light you have rescued in eden. This is where you win, technically there is no way to purchase your way through eden.
There is literally no "winning" going on at the office, or in the nintendo area, or any other place than eden at this point, unless there are children of light in any exclusive zone that i cannot recall, which might give you a marginal advantage during the final events of eden.

Exclusive areas and cosmetics are part of the course with all games of this nature, it is quite literally how the developers keep their office open, pay to win has negative connotations because it indicates that you can pay for substantial advantages, which this game does NOT have, unless you consider community held fashion events the "end game", I wholeheartedly agree that this game does have many ways in which it entices you to pay, but none of them are mandatory to experience the core features of the game. Also, many of the zones are being updated without asking for a single dime, having played the game since it came out on android I know that the amount of explorable zones avaiable now versus then is just absurd, and its all for free. I have spent a couple dollars, I am not one to do daily candle runs on a hot streak, but when I played actively I usually had candles for what I wanted as long as I remembered that I can't have it all.

Finally, yes, there is a first and second rate citizenship, you can usually tell if someone has spent money on the game or not, but I don't think this has to be a bad thing, I have friends in the game that have decked out their avatar and not even finished once, and I have friends that have spent incredible amounts, and still prefer to remain pretty basic in terms of customization, in the end it is all cosmetic and while I can enter the nintendo area on my own, and my friend can't, I don't really see what there is to miss, there is nothing hidden there that will help your progress in the game, and while the link hair and nintendo cape might be cool it is in no way making me "win" by using it.

[Meowish]

Originally posted by Clint Cannon:

Finally, yes, there is a first and second rate citizenship, you can usually tell if someone has spent money on the game or not, but I don't think this has to be a bad thing, I have friends in the game that have decked out their avatar and not even finished once, and I have friends that have spent incredible amounts, and still prefer to remain pretty basic in terms of customization, in the end it is all cosmetic and while I can enter the nintendo area on my own, and my friend can't, I don't really see what there is to miss, there is nothing hidden there that will help your progress in the game, and while the link hair and nintendo cape might be cool it is in no way making me "win" by using it.

As for the game play itself, this game do not require you to grind Eden for advantages. You can access any open public area easily without going to Eden at all, and is able to fly easily without the need of max level nor the need to collect all the winged lights in the game, Wing buffs are just a "Status of Grind" for players who wished to "Show off" their time spent in the game, it's not a free player only thing, everyone can do that as long as they spend "time" in the game. Which is not needed for the game play itself. You get to the ending of the game as soon as you reach Eden, anything more by that point is a repeating grind in the game that isn't in the "fun" nor "refreshing" zone anymore. A lot of Veteran stops playing the game right on this point and get on to the next game in their lives. This is another gimmick of the game to cut cost, so they do not plan to "keep the players for a long time" in the first place. On the business perspective, keeping free players and veteran players that no longer spend money is simply a liability to the servers which TGC is unwilling to spend too much money in. Jenova Chen, their boss, wanted a system that will constantly brought in new blood to the game, getting to wider audience that have never played the game before, but they do not plan to keep these players, and old players leaving and opening up new slots in the server for new players is the intended design. So don't expect the system to be "friendly" to those who didn't plan to cough up money in a long term relationship with this game, it's not designed for them in the 1st place. The whole grind mechanism is there just to tell you it exist for free, but a veteran gamer in his/her correct mindset often knows when to quit when it's time to quit. Having 20 wing flaps doesn't let you reach more areas than having 5 wings flaps in this game. So a free player who "Grind" do not get advantages over a paid player who doesn't grind. In fact paid player do not require to grind the game at all and is able to get whatever cosmetic the free players is getting with money, we are given the option to pay for those free cosmetic items that the free players needed to do candle grind to get, the only part that needs grinding is Eden run for friendship tree unlocking, which, like you said, has nothing to do with game play.

Let's put this on the Real Life Scam example. A group of salesmen gathering up senior citizens who have nothing to do and gave out "seminars" twice a week for free. They even give these seniors a card to stamp, so that when they completed the card they get a small "free gifts". This is a sort of real life "grind" that filter out those who are willing to grind from those who aren't. And those who got the free gifts will be happy about it and they will spread the news and brought in their friends to the seminars. So what's the catch? Well, the seminars have different topic each day, sometimes about health, sometimes about cooking, sometimes about quality of life stuffs, and they sell those items after the seminar at a price higher than normal market price, Or is selling a similar looking replica at a slightly cheaper price than the real branded ones. Sooner or later, those who "decided to stay" will hit the topic they like and spend money, and new comer that isn't experienced in these are the 1st to spend money without a second thought under the spell "oh this has to be good", and that doesn't help when the rich neighbor who brought them to the seminar kept saying stuffs like "I bought that, it's really good!". And to top it up, there are staffs from the company hidden among the audience, and they let out loud voices saying stuffs like, oh this auntie bought that last week! Oh i own that one!, voices to manipulate the crowds.
If you see the pattern, it's exactly what online games are trying to do, and Sky isn't an exception here.

Also 2nd rated citizen ship is a win/lost thing by itself. I may walk in all the ultimate gears i wear around without lighting up another player to show them off, and able to get access to those secret areas can be something discreet if we want to kept it that way. But that doesn't make us even with the rest of the players. Though i don't go around saying "why not go get an umbrella yourself?" to another player when i am standing in the rain chilling and watching another player rushing for cover, it doesn't make me in the same boat as them because i paid and have the privilege they don't. I might not be feeling i win, because i am not in the mood to compete with another player. But that doesn't mean i didn't win in the eye of players who didn't own the stuffs i do, watching me standing in the rain and they have to run for cover.... The real fact is, i did not win, the one who got my money wins in my eye. But that's not what those who didn't get the item feels. Sad fact is, not all 1st rated citizen have the passion to give a deep thought for the 2nd rated citizens around them. And in this game, you need to be proud of your 1st rated citizenship to be able to continue loving the game, if not, its magic wears off on you and you start finding it dull sooner or later. Which means, paid players tends to stay more than free players. Just like those real life seminars, you need to be caught in its magic to keep attending.

But again, even in that aspect there's win/lose, a real paying players have more choices than Sky because they can spend the money on buying better games, on the other hand, free players who have limited choices are forced to play the same game over and over again for a longer period. That's why if a free to play online game didn't adjust their design, they ended up with tons of free players on the server taking up server slots where they can use it for potential new customers. That's why "anti-grind" design is a trend nowadays, they deters free players from feeling too welcome in their games. FYI, anti-grind design exist in Sky, there's a limit of stuffs you can collect per day. So free players can't have tons of candles compared to paid players, then again, in some countries, online spending limit is presented by law, so when it comes to those countries, paid players have limited spending daily as well... lol. It's sad that it requires law to prevent irrational spending, but that's how things are nowadays i guess.

[D:\side\]

It'd have to be single player or peer-to-peer then or it wouldn't be sustainable. Single-player would be a whole different game. Peer-to-peer would be wildly unstable and likely ridden with cheaters. Pick your poison, figuratively speaking.

I'm not even sure it's sustainable as it is. It probably is, but given the technical issues that show up, ongoing maintenance seems to be hitting limits quite regularly, which would indicate the team probably can't afford more development/QA capacity.

[Meowish]

Originally posted by D:\side\:

It'd have to be single player or peer-to-peer then or it wouldn't be sustainable. Single-player would be a whole different game. Peer-to-peer would be wildly unstable and likely ridden with cheaters. Pick your poison, figuratively speaking.

I'm not even sure it's sustainable as it is. It probably is, but given the technical issues that show up, ongoing maintenance seems to be hitting limits quite regularly, which would indicate the team probably can't afford more development/QA capacity.

The game is already hack-able as it is, there's no anti-cheat, and a great part of the process are done local sided. Hackers can change their appearance and unlock the whole cosmetic wardrobe local sided (it won't be shown on the server, so other players will not see what the hackers are wearing and see him/her as a default moth, but the special abilities and key function of those special capes are valid, they can unlock gates and teleport to secret areas with them), wings can be hacked to be unlimited as well (again, this only shows on local and other players will not be able to see the difference other than a 1 wedge player flying high up in the sky, which itself is hard to notice by the majority of players). Position memorize (for fast teleport) and stuffs like lighting up all candles in the instance and auto gather all candles are there as well...

The current "capacity over" is due to players from China are trying out the demo and it boost the game's population higher than usual. When NetEase started to release their own PC version for the Chinese region, this population will reduce. So don't expect TGC to upgrade the servers just for this temporary surge. When the EA come out next month, it's going to be worse imo. Well until NetEase release their PC version, which i am not sure if there's a date yet, they're probably waiting for a stable version of the global to be released.

[D:\side\]

Originally posted by Meowish:

The game is already hack-able as it is

Yup. And with peer-to-peer it would get much worse since cheaters would be in posession of a good chunk of game server code as well. Right now they're getting by using only network traffic.

Originally posted by Meowish:

The current "capacity over" is due to players from China are trying out the demo and it boost the game's population higher than usual.

Note "development/QA capacity". At the latest season's launch spirit quests were locking up the client inside cutscenes (fixed). For a few days there was a red "new notification" dot stuck on the gear button with no new messages in the inbox (fixed). NVidia users on PC have been unable to take screenshots for months now (not fixed). And reports of failure to launch with no useful error message keep coming in (not fixed). And I haven't even looked at their bug tracking channel on Discord, there's probably dozens (if not hundreds) more issues reported over there.

[Meowish]

Originally posted by D:\side\:

Note "development/QA capacity". At the latest season's launch spirit quests were locking up the client inside cutscenes (fixed). For a few days there was a red "new notification" dot stuck on the gear button with no new messages in the inbox (fixed). NVidia users on PC have been unable to take screenshots for months now (not fixed). And reports of failure to launch with no useful error message keep coming in (not fixed). And I haven't even looked at their bug tracking channel on Discord, there's probably dozens (if not hundreds) more issues reported over there.

Bugs not being fixed is well known for TGC anyway. Flow, Flower and Journey still have bugs up even till nowadays.

Originally posted by D:\side\:

Yup. And with peer-to-peer it would get much worse since cheaters would be in posession of a good chunk of game server code as well. Right now they're getting by using only network traffic.

Peer to Peer mean's partly local, but it has its limit due the hacker's code only works when it's the host of the game during a peer to peer connection (normally set up when an instance is born with 4~6 players). But for games that are doing things local sided, you only need a memory editor to edit the stuffs for things to change. There are quite a lot of modern online games using this design to cut down server cost, but they also added a 2nd layer security by using a 3rd party Anti-Cheat to prevent hackers from hooking up the game with a memory editor. But once that AC is disabled or by-passed by the hacker, they can still hack the game easily as they would on an offline game. Most modern games only keep the economy stuffs server-sided to ensure revenue isn't effected, some went extra measurement if it's worth the server burden vs revenue outcome. The old school mmorpg that have everything on server-sided do not require a 3rd party AC, but they ended up needing to create a datacenter for the game itself, which is super costly, both to run and maintain, but back in the old school days, online games are subscriptions based, every single player in the game contributed to the maintenance cost of the servers.

Sky here is doing something in between the two, but minimize the server-sided process, that's why the game is temporary play-able in a solo instance even during a disconnection. Even player's xyz location isn't fully real time but have a few seconds in between each update, the movement blend makes the players "move" to the location on our local screen so it doesn't look like they are teleporting like old school lagging, but if you play with another device in the same household, you will noticed the position difference on the players, and if there's a large ping burst, we will still see super speed players zooming around the screen. Emotes (flame included) and Chirps falls under the same category as the player's position as real time update. Chat on the other hand, uses a different server so we can exclude that part i guess (back then, there are chats who are linked to game command system, and hackers abused it to abuse other players, so such designs are being avoided nowadays). As for the appearance, when a friend is in the instance, or when you light up another stranger, the local client request a 1 time update from the server to download the cosmetic/appearance info of said player, if there's a ping burst or lag during that process, your friend might ended up being a default moth for that whole session until you change instance or relog, which the request is done again. Other than that, the appearance save file gets updated as soon as there is changes on the player's look, so if you can't see a friend's look, ask them to use a prop spell or change near the shrine might reset it, but if you or your friend is constantly having a ping burst, this "bug" might stay for a long while, due to the update timed out during the request. Candles, none event plants, door mechanisms are all local sided and only gets updated during an instance merge, but the switch triggering a cutscene for all nearby players itself and gate opening is server sided, so when there's a lag, lighting up doors in the forest can be super frustrating because it's lit but nothing happens for a long time. Same goes to gateway check, it's partly server sided but it only checks if you have the "key" or not, which is process local sided, so a hacker can have a key to open those gates easily even without owning those items server-sided. As long as the server is told the player has the key, it let the player and its friends pass through the gate without further checking other stuffs. So as you can see, more than half of Sky is local sided and is vulnerable to hackers due to it doesn't have an Anti-cheat system. But like what others pointed out up there, game play in Sky isn't really worth cheating, so cheating doesn't gives a big advantages over other players, well other than being able to open doors without paying i guess? That's why TGC isn't in a hurry to implement AC, nor think it's worth the cost for one imo... There isn't a lot of "game play" for the hackers to hack in the 1st place. And as their policies goes, the faster the hacker got bored of the game the better, because they will moved on and give rooms for new players in their limited server slots....

Come to think of it, the 8 players instance in Sky might very well be a p2p design, with a weird splitting and merging mechanism without the need of a "lobby", that might explain the random bad internet connection this game has. When the host disconnected, everyone in the instance split and merge up with another host when another instance have enough slots, if not, a new host is selected for a new instance. And during a merge, flags from each players are carried over and all "done/checked" flags are updated in the merged instance, causing candles to suddenly lights up and plants burst into flames.... And if the host has bad internet and ping to the players in the same instance, everyone suffers... Which means, gate opening, and validity check is also local sided (host sided), which further means, only downloading appearance save file is server sided in this game... lol... that would be a mess of cheap low cost design.... no wonder the hacker can get pass the gate with a hacked cape...

[D:\side\]

For p2p to work one of the peers needs to have a publicly reachable address. That's not a common thing even on PCs these days, on mobile that would be vanishingly rare. When no one does, they have to use a server to communicate anyway. Might as well always use a server at that point.

And considering how it doesn't try very hard ro replicate game state, giving so much authority to the clients, going ballistic with connection management seems implausible.

[Meowish]

Originally posted by D:\side\:

For p2p to work one of the peers needs to have a publicly reachable address. That's not a common thing even on PCs these days, on mobile that would be vanishingly rare. When no one does, they have to use a server to communicate anyway. Might as well always use a server at that point.

And considering how it doesn't try very hard ro replicate game state, giving so much authority to the clients, going ballistic with connection management seems implausible.

Well, with AWS they might be able to come up with something weird in mind, not a real Peer to Peer but rather something similar to a cloud instance... HiFi used to setup a similar system for their online world back then when all the cloud talk just started. And with 99% of those stuffs running local based anyway they don't really need a good server to handle stuffs, it just need to focused on managing the instances and player appearance download, which is similar to the older P2P pvp based games back in the 2014+... it's TGC we are talking about here anyway... and it somehow fits into that constant splitting and merging phenomenon they had now... due to Chinese players are on the rise, the Ping issue is getting out of hand when everyone in the room is far apart by physical distance, so that phenomenon is rising without them tinkling with the codes... And yes, the remedy is still going to be regional isolation of the players to stabilize the Ping. Well, the whole regional design thingy came up just for the P2P back then when free to play games just started and everyone is jumping on the low cost design and realized the ping problem, the ultimate flaw of P2P.... But yes, having a datacenter of its own is still the best design, all the top long lasting MMOGs out there have proven that.

As for most of the things running local based in this game, well... Sky is based off Journey anyway... and Journey can be played totally offline. And Sky itself could still be played temporary during offline, so... i wouldn't be surprise if 99% of it isn't online based like Journey. The server only checks for certain validity to prevent (over) cheats, like daily candle limit, season pass status and quest progress. As long as these are server sided, there isn't much harm a hacker can do to their economy system.

[Fulp]

you can't really impose your business model preference on to developers lol. f2p + mtx is the best earning business model they won't change it. it also helps them keep the game alive with content.