Update: Get free coins while you still can!

[PlayfulDavid]

Greetings! We wanted to give you guys some advanced notice on the fact that the free daily coins button in the store will be going away soon. So everyone get your free coins while you still can!

The button was always intended to be a temporary measure for us to experiment with the store and give you guys a chance to try it out. As part of our preparations for getting the game ready to become free, it's time for that temporary solution to come to an end.

As a reminder, everyone who purchased the game will get $20 dollars worth of in-game currency as soon as the game becomes free!

Update: To clarify, the coins you collect now will persist after the game goes free. So no harm in saving up for a rainy day!

[InhumAnts]

By the sounds of all this its going to be like Project Spark! Get a free "base" game and Pay for every little peice of content that comes out afterwards.... im glad i skipped this one.

[Striderplus111]

Αναρτήθηκε αρχικά από GamertagIsAnt:

By the sounds of all this its going to be like Project Spark! Get a free "base" game and Pay for every little peice of content that comes out afterwards.... im glad i skipped this one.

The store will only feature cosmetics according to the devs and so far it seems they don't have any intentions of doing anything otherwise.

[xent]

I have taken some time to read other people's thoughts on the removal of the daily free coin button and the fact that for some its beginning to sink in that this game is gonna be F2P.

Here is my 2 cents on it:
I started playing this game when it was still in R9 and i understand that this game was gonna be F2P on release. The ability to collect free coins everyday was confusing, yep fun while it lasted, but strange because lets face it, we each get 200 coins for buying and where gone get 200 more on release, so why spoil us with extra free coins for so long, but i understand this was in the interest of testing out the shop.

On the note of how i feel about paying for blocks depend on what your selling, even now you never discussed the value of coins so everyone just have the make there own math, so lets do this one then:
200 coins=20€/$
3 blocks=50 Coins=5€/$
When doing this calculation it turns out that you only get 3 blocks for 5€/$, that very expensive don't you agree? Then that means that the Floating Island blueprint cost you 11.5€/$
Now iam happy to support you devs with micro transactions if this means you can use this money for paying for server upkeep and using the money for further development, but you need to be reasonable.

Of course keeping the "Daily Free Coins" in the game will earn you nothing, i think everyone can see this if they think of this in a logical way. In the end it's up to you Playful to find a balanced way of earning profits and still give the player the illusion that when they buy something out of the shop that they get a feeling that it was worth the money spend.

[Laryagar]

Just as a note, I also paid for this game when it first reached Early Access last year and there were notices then that it was going to be Free to Play on release, but people buying the game while in Early Access received coins up front and were told that they would receive coins on release. Even though there has always been heated discussions concerning the Free to Play model, in the end you are essentially prepaying for the coins to get the game. The initial buy-in was to ensure people that wanted to play right now were truly interested so there was a minor hurdle placed in the way of having a price. Personally I would have paid either way if it was a fair price and to me it is a fair price. I am down to about 34 hours before I reach 2,000 hours played.

In the above comment it refers to blocks, those are block recipes I am assuming. That means infinite ability to make those block styles and they follow you across worlds so it is essentially a one time purchase, the value goes up for me to have that. The blueprints though are world only so they should be cheaper since they will need to be repurchased for each world a person wants to use them in.

[Elegant Caveman]

Αναρτήθηκε αρχικά από xent:

On the note of how i feel about paying for blocks depend on what your selling, even now you never discussed the value of coins so everyone just have the make there own math, so lets do this one then:
200 coins=20€/$
3 blocks=50 Coins=5€/$
When doing this calculation it turns out that you only get 3 blocks for 5€/$, that very expensive don't you agree? Then that means that the Floating Island blueprint cost you 11.5€/$
Now iam happy to support you devs with micro transactions if this means you can use this money for paying for server upkeep and using the money for further development, but you need to be reasonable.

I agree with this 100%.

It's something I've been thinking about since I first started playing (during the free week, so admittedly not that long) and have been considering writing about. I just... don't know what to say about it.

I've been meaning to offer some feedback/suggestions on the game, but want(ed) to be a bit more experienced before I did that.

Since it's been brought up though... yeah... that's a big concern. And I guess it's time for me to unleash that rant I've been saving...

At best, we can look at it as 400 coins = 20$ (200 coins now and another 200 when the game goes F2P), which makes 3 blocks worth 2.50$. That's already better, but that's still too much.

Αναρτήθηκε αρχικά από Laryagar:

In the above comment it refers to blocks, those are block recipes I am assuming. That means infinite ability to make those block styles and they follow you across worlds so it is essentially a one time purchase, the value goes up for me to have that.

Yes, those are "infinite" recipes, but that's still way too expensive. You need to look at things in context. Creativerse does not exist in a vaccuum; it has to be looked at/considered in context of all the other games out there.

I'll take myself as an example. Perhaps not an "average" gamer, but still far from being a rare creature on Steam.

I have over 1000 games in my Steam library. A large majority of my games have been purchased during sales or bundles.

Over the last few years, though, I've spent more on kickstarter/crowdfunding projects I "believe in" than I have on "normal" games (i.e. from big publishers). This is because I'm unhappy with the present state of the games industry and I believe in "voting with my wallet".

Because of this, yes, I'll sometimes buy interesting indie games for 20$ on release, to support the devs and encourage what I consider to be an interesting project, taking into account that a game's first days/weeks are very important.

But that said, I don't like spending more than 10$ on AAA titles, usually waiting months or years after release so I can purchase the "super complete deluxe collector's director's cut edition" with everything included at a steep discount. Especially these days, with devs having started to release stand-alone "complete" editions so they can charge more money, instead of simply offering a bundle, DLC or a patch... off the top of my head, Square Enix (Deus Ex, Sleeping Dogs) and Deep Silver (Metro) seem rather fond of this tactic.

I've been watching Creativerse since it first launched on Early Access last year, but I only bought it recently (the free week was an excellent move on the devs' part, getting to try it for free first is what made me decide it was worth buying for 10$).

Ever since it first launched, I've had concerns about the F2P aspect.

The fact that devs have decided to only offer cosmetic items is the only reason I've even considered giving them money, though considering the present prices in the store (5$/2.50$ for 3 blocks, potentially a lot more for "blueprints"), I don't have much faith that their business model is a sustainable one.

I gave them 10$ because I like what the game is right now, and as I said, I "vote with my money". For what it's worth, though, if there wasn't a 50% off sale during the free week, I wouldn't have bought this game for 20$.

I'm loving Creativerse (it's probably my favorite game among my recent acquisitions), but it's nothing that special.

I know a lot of people are going to hate me/get angry about this next statement, but: to me, Creativerse is "a prettier Minecraft, on Steam, with teleporters".

Don't get me wrong, I see that as a good thing. It's why I bought the game. That's something I want and am willing to pay (a bit) for. But by the same token, I also don't understand how so many seem to defend it so vehemently when someone says it's like Minecraft.

This is the closest game to Minecraft I've ever seen.

There are many "Minecraft-like" games out there, but I can't think of any others that are this close. Then again, I also can't think of any others that are this good. The others tend to be broken/deficient/"lacking a certain something".

Point being, though I'm loving Creativerse and hope it has much success, I don't see the present monetization model as one that has much hope of succeeding.

Let's take a look at what's in the shop right now:

- BLUEPRINTS

Wishing Well: 20
Treehouse: 50
Floating Island: 115
Tower Castle: 60
Gazebo: 35
Traditional House: 50
Pigsy Statue: 40
Wooden Fort: 95

BLUEPRINT TOTAL: 465 Coins

- RECIPES

Fireworks Pack: 50
Romanesque Pack: 50
Stained Glass Pack: 50
Decorative Stone Pack: 50
Decorative Lava Pack: 50
Ceramic Pack: 50
Moroccan Pack: 50
Chiseled Limestone Pack: 50

RECIPE TOTAL: 400 Coins

GRAND TOTAL: 865 Coins

That means that, as things are, if the game was F2P, it would cost 86.50$ (or 43.25$) to buy the "full" game (and that's assuming one purchases each blueprint only once, which isn't really fair, since they're world-locked).

Do you see how insane that is?

And this is what's wrong with F2P in general. There's the illusion of a good deal with "Hey, it's free!", but when you actually look at the total cost of all the individual extras, prices grow very quickly. And again, this is with what's in the store right now. Obviously, there isn't enough in the store yet to properly support the game if it was actually F2P, and more stuff will be added, so the "total price" will rise even higher.

This is the same problem with "free" mobile games where people end up spending thousands of dollars on, or the "recent" thing we're seeing with AAA games where they charge you a premium 50-60$ for a game but then add 100-200$ more in DLC and microtransactions.

The big "defense" to all this is "Oh, but it's optional!". Yes, of course it is. But in all these cases, it's not like a complete game is made, and then after that, it's decided to add extra content a year later or whatever. These are choices that are made early on, which affect the core design. So even if content is "optional", it ends up affecting the rest of game design.

To be fair, I don't think this is quite what's happening with Creativerse. To some small degree, maybe, yes (it's unavoidable), but for the most part, I think Playful are more interested in making a good core game, and the microtransactions is them trying to find a way to monetize/fund their game long-term.

I appreciate and respect that. If I didn't believe this was their intended approach, I wouldn't have bought the game.

There is still an inherent problem with this , though. There are very few "good" (i.e. non-♥♥♥♥♥♥♥) F2P games out there that are actually successful. Granted, one of them is League of Legends, which is basically the very definition of success, but that's a fluke more than anything else. Certainly not something to count on or base one's business model around.

For a game to be F2P, successful, and non-♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥, a very tight rope has to be walked to balance adequate free content with interesting & fair paid-for content that entices players to actually pay for it without making them feel like they're being cheated. This is extremely hard to do.

So on one hand, you can make paid-for content "meaningful", which usually means pay-to-win/pay-to-advance/pay-for-convenience (which is all filthy, filthy cancer on the industry) or, on the other hand, you can go for relatively-meaningless cosmetics, which becomes "acceptable", but then you face the problem of not enough people caring/wanting to buy it.

And that's the thing: in the best of cases, F2P "done right" is merely "acceptable". Not "good"; never "good". And even these "F2P done right" instances are very rare. Off the top of my head, the only ones that come readily to mind are League of Legends, DOTA 2 and Path of Exile. There are probably a few others (TF2, I guess? Maybe? I don't know), but F2P is generally a genre I stay away from like the plague (I've played and enjoyed PoE; I've also tried LoL briefly out of curiosity though it's not my kind of game; I haven't tried DOTA 2, but I assume it's quite similar to LoL in terms of monetization).

The decent ones are the exceptions. The rule for F2P, on the other hand, is soul-sucking filth. 99.9% of the time, a game's core design suffers from being F2P.

"Acceptable" is the best case scenario. Who wants to settle for "acceptable"? When the best case scenario is "Eh, fine, I accept this... but I wish I could just pay for it once and get rid of this ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥", there's something wrong with the model overall.

Taking Creativerse as an example:

Are blueprints a neat idea? Very much so! I love the concept. But I would never spend real money on one, not unless they were insanely cheaper (as in, less than a dollar). What about recipes? Do I want prettier blocks? Absolutely! But I'm not spending as much money for 3 block skins as it would cost me to buy a full AAA game (that's a few years old) during a Steam sale.

It's about context. And this is why I don't think Creativerse's monetization scheme, however well-intentioned it may be, will be successful without massive changes and some extremely tight balancing.

What is the logic for this game being F2P instead of being a one-off purchase? The cost of maintaining servers?

I admit that's a neat additon, but is it worth the cost? How many people run their own servers? I'd imagine that, for the most part, players play in other people's servers. As far as the multiplayer aspect is concerned, the whole fun to be had is by having many people play together, that means one person is the "host", and everyone else is just a guest. That means that the "main reason" for F2P is basically wasted, since there are relatively few "hosts" compared to "guests". And for people like me who prefer solo play, the whole server thing is completely meaningless.

I've seen a lot of people say they'd much rather pay once and have the whole game.

Here's an idea: if you want an ingame shop and microtransactions to pay for server maintenance, why don't you offer -that- directly instead?

With a lot of these multiplayer games where players can host their own servers (like Minecraft, DayZ, etc.), you can often find third party sites that offer server hosting for a monthly fee.

You've already got the infrastructure for dev-hosted servers, since that's what you're already doing, why don't you offer that as a paid service? I believe that's what Minecraft Realms is supposed to be? Though since it's not something I've ever had interest in, I've never really looked at it. No idea how that works or how successful it is.

Point being, if you're gonna charge 5$ for block skins to pay for the servers, why don't you just charge for the servers instead?

[xent]

If asked how i see the shop being acceptable in terms of not having the feeling of getting milked out of my money? Then here are some solutions:

One option maybe is bigger packs for the same money like 20 blocks sets for 5$. Can argue then; "but what if the store contains 20 different sets?" That will net you 100$ to have them all. Releasing 20 sets it will take Playful two years at least. to release them, So? Let's compare this with some of the other games i played and there DLC.
Fallout 4 cost 60$ + 30$ Season pass, that's 90$
The Sims 3 (Yep cow sound) 45$ + 35$/DLC(times 20)= 760$
Train Simulator 2016 (just lol) 35$ + DLC (not even gone count)= 3838$

Second option having blueprints way lower in price and be account bound because no one will ever by them for that much money.

Third option character customization Seeing that how you look in game isn't really that crucial one can say you can urn money here.

[Brainsloth]

Heya folks,

Thanks, as always, for your continued feedback. I won't get in the way of the discussion, but I wanted to drop in this comment from dleary from a thread a couple months ago that had a similar conversation going:

Αναρτήθηκε αρχικά από dleary:

Hi all,

No prices should be considered final yet.

That said, we weighted prices to the high end of where we expect to land for now. The primary reason for this is that in the long run, after release and once we're free, we expect to run frequent sales, discounts, promotional coupons, etc. - for instance, "this recipe pack is half price this weekend" or "all blueprints cheaper this week" and so forth. It is much easier to lower costs on things after release than to raise them. :)

We certainly value any feedback about value and relative value you all would like to add to the thread, though.

[AvilerED]

Well, as a gamer of many years (but not as many as some), I've put money into various games I've been interested in in pretty much every existing business model that someone has mentioned in one of these threads talking about pricing and F2P. From the buy once of console (I miss my Atari 2600 days, sometimes) and early PC games, to F2P done P2W, subscription based MMOs, and F2P done F2P. Personally, subscription based games are more of a greedy cash grab than the F2P Playful is trying for. Why? Because the whole game is locked behind a paywall that you have to pay every month. You absolutely have to pay if you want to play the game at all. Now some of those have changed a bit (World of Warcraft, for instance, now apparently can be played free, up to a certain level), but there is still the recurring charge for core gameplay features. Creativerse core gameplay is (going to be) free. I believe the point is that if you enjoy the core gameplay enough, you will be willing to drop a few bucks here and there for completely and totally optional stuff. And I'm one of those who is willing to do just that thing.

Not a complete game? You feel entitled, much? That's all I have to say on that.

Blueprints. While I'm willing to spend money on this game, more than the 20$ I've put in already, the way these are implemeted currently is kind of a sore spot for me. The block recipies are good, they stay with your player. The blueprints being world bound start feeling like a money grab. I do play on multiple worlds, and having to choose which one world to build a particular blueprint on feels limitng. Maybe now I'm feeling entitled?

That's my $0.02 for now. It's late, and I'm tired, so this didn't turn into quite the wall of text I was thinking it might.

[ravenscroftranch]

as far as the blueprints go heres the thing..

the blueprints are specificly for those who arent quite as creative as others or have a hard time getting inspired or for groups who want to do a big build .. that being said the priceing isent a issue.. personaly if i cant complete it i tend not to start it on builds though i have tryed to start large builds then get sidetracked by other things life etc if i chose to use a blueprint would be better for that as then i could jsut go back to it when i get aroudn to it without loseing momentum ...

blueprints arent nessisarily "content" as they are others builds wich wee wish to copy cause they look cool...

its a none issue for me its not content at all the block packs for decoration are reletivly cheap 10-30 coins a piece i think thats fair .. though i would liek to see more deco packs later.. all that being said that makes clear my point of view :)
or not

cheers

raven

[4evernomad]

What I would like to see in the store are larger block packs, but also I hope that we get to see themed block packs, things like tudor, wildwest, medieval, underwater, city, farm, etc.

It would be very cool to be able to build a tudor mansion with all the bells and whistles, or to build a city that could have street lights, road markings, modern windows, strip lights etc. all from specific blocks. Or break out to other items, perhaps a leather vest with a sheriffs badge or a cowboy hat for the wildwest pack.

Even adding blueprints for some theme specific buildings to go with the new block packs would be quite cool, can't figure out how to build a sheriffs office for the wildwest, get the blueprint.

The devs have stated on mnay occasions that this is building game more than anything else, and so far the decration blocks are really great, but more of them is greater. :)

[ravenscroftranch]

Αναρτήθηκε αρχικά από 4evernomad:

What I would like to see in the store are larger block packs, but also I hope that we get to see themed block packs, things like tudor, wildwest, medieval, underwater, city, farm, etc.

It would be very cool to be able to build a tudor mansion with all the bells and whistles, or to build a city that could have street lights, road markings, modern windows, strip lights etc. all from specific blocks. Or break out to other items, perhaps a leather vest with a sheriffs badge or a cowboy hat for the wildwest pack.

Even adding blueprints for some theme specific buildings to go with the new block packs would be quite cool, can't figure out how to build a sheriffs office for the wildwest, get the blueprint.

The devs have stated on mnay occasions that this is building game more than anything else, and so far the decration blocks are really great, but more of them is greater. :)

awesome ideas there i would like to see themes aswell

[xent]

http://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=540121942

[Hoki]

*skipping the last few posts*

blueprints are worldbound thats a known fact and some ppl dont like it

and now a big BUT
they can be shared within the world. its not like they gotta be bought by everyone (as long as youre in a singleplayer world). keeping that in mind i think the prices are actually good as they are even though the world bound thingy sucks

[Laryagar]

Frankly, I like the blueprints, not because I have problems building but I just like the mechanic and feels like building a 3D jigsaw puzzle inside the game. As for price breakdowns, I am never one to microanalyze the economics of such things unless I was really tight on money, min/maxing can be taken too far in analyzing value. I can see where there is an issue with setting the prices on coins and the items in the shop based on the volume of users. As a note, Playful has stated they planned to hold various sales and the like on items in the shop and that the base pricing is intentionally set at the intended higher price, since it is easier to hold a sale than raise prices later. Right now they are still working on the shop since it was only returned a few releases ago.

[DamageInc.]

I have not bought a blueprint yet, but has anyone thought that someone will buy the blueprints and put them on the web eventually? I mean you still have to collect the materials and manually place the blocks right? So why wouldn't someone take the time to put the layout on the web and then no one ever has to pay for it again.

Personally, I will never buy a blueprint, I don't care how cool it looks. If I paid $X.00 for a building, I would expect it to come with all the blocks and be able to simply drop it in my world. For example, I start a new world, buy the tree house, plop it down, and now I get to focus on gathering and other things. To me that makes the blueprint worth it. It also validates the one time use.