ptw and player numbers going down?

[Butterfly Ƹ̵̡Ӝ̵̨̄Ʒ]

2 questions:

Is this game ptw and what's your reasoning for your belief on whether it is or not? thanks in advance for your input :)

From nearly 17k to 1.7k as of this moment of the post http://steamcharts.com/app/442080#6m
that's a 90% drop in player pop

Reminds me of devilian http://steamcharts.com/app/407510#All which is currently at a 99% drop in pop 10k to 100 current players (ish)

Or even neverwinter is at a 97% drop in pop too from 15k to about 1/2k atm http://steamcharts.com/app/109600#All

What's your take/explanation on this? thanks in advance :)



(for the record: I have started this game recently and havent spent a penny despite usually buying things and being okay with that as long as it's not heavy ptw, just dont want to get invested in a dying game even though so far this game has been amazingly fun imho)

[Butterfly Ƹ̵̡Ӝ̵̨̄Ʒ]

thanks for your input :)

[WyattWade]

This game was against pay to win, they tailered this game to fit our market, and our market hates pay to win. Like most games the instant the player base drops they suppliment the loss of income by including pay to win elements. It used to be not Pay to Win, now it kinda is.

I don't think it overly matters so much in this game, coming from Archeage where pay to win was heavily promoted and everything you did in the world impacted everyone else. This game even if people are 'paying to win' there isn't much impact on other players outside of the pvp zone which is dominated by big guilds anyway.

The worst thing going for this game is the heavy dependence on RNG... absolutely everything comes down to RNG and it is incredibly frustrating.

Outside of pay to win and heavy rng impacting this game in a negative way, the biggest reason people have departed from it is the staggered release of the game, maps, and character levels. This creates an enviornment where players hit the wall and have nothing to do till the next update. This would be ok if it was only one or two walls, but every month or two you will hit the wall, so too will your guild mates, and one by one you will all look to other games to fill your time.

My biggest worry for this game is the final wall... at some point the character will max his levels and have done all the quests and dungeons in every zone, then what? PvP is not the focus of this game and you can only introduce so many familiars, the vast majority of them reskins. So what is the final wall, and how does this game prevent everyone from slamming into it? No idea, can't figure out what the end game to this will be exactly and that is my biggest worry for this game. Sure it will lose players at every wall, or cause of pay to win or rng, but the game has the potential to completely die at the final wall, and that should concern anyone looking to invest time or money.

If you are going to spend on this game cause you can and cause you are playing it now, I would suggest becoming a premium player, the benefits are worth and its only about twelve dollars a month, there is no real need to spend anything beyond that.

I had such high hopes for this game, but the frustrating RNG, introducing Pay to Win and slamming up against too many walls has left me feeling lack luster...

WyattWade

[Butterfly Ƹ̵̡Ӝ̵̨̄Ʒ]

Thanks for your input Wyatt :)

[Ruse]

Yes it's pay to win. Yes the game is dying.

[Butterfly Ƹ̵̡Ӝ̵̨̄Ʒ]

bummer it's so fun at low levels at least, thanks for your input Theresa :)

[Scar]

It's not pay to win, you dont buy gear/weapons/skills with money, paying is optional but its really not paying to win, hell what are you gonna win anyways apart from PvP where not many people go, theirs no competition between each other.

i spent £15 on a november care package and it helped me sell stuff for gold (because i didnt want to run dungeon back and forth to build up lots of gold.

i can solo the first 3 dungeons on heroic tier 5, (im level 40 assassin), 4th dungeon (Cavern of the veil) i can solo on elite tier 5, but for heroic and the future dungeons a party is recommended

the each dungeons have 4 difficulties, Story, Elite, Heroic, Legendary, so far i havent done legendary with a party but its really hard lol, but the game is F2P give it a go and see what you think, but i promise you its not P2W, only cosmetic stuff generally or packages

[Scar]

as for the game dying, im not entirely sure, i mean its fun and i have like over 300 hours in it, it is fun, and even more fun with other players, but it depends on servers, peoples time zones and so on

[hjfcwvgwrvhg]

Hey Butterfly, been playing for a while now as an assassin, and I can tell you that this game is NOT pay to win! I have spent at most $10 for a mount pack, but that is all. As a sin, I have achieved the maximum DPS the game could offer at the moment without buying anything, because Nexon doesn't offer gear packs or legendary items/gear. I can out dps/perform nearly everyone in my server just from playing the game regularly and doing end game raids/dungeons.

Nexon does offer powerfull seals from monthly packs (october/november lucky boxes) but they can be countered from seals that you can easily obtain from within the game. Idk i just never felt like the game forced me to throw money at nexon just so i could increase my DPS, that reason is because there is no need to since seals and gear items are easily obtainable from just playing the game.

Now starting out as a fresh player is a little bit rough, i suggest power level to max asap and optimize the little ♥♥♥♥♥ gear you have so that you can do dungeons with randoms or with guild members.

Also I do want to make clear that the game is not dying, it is just regular population fluctuations that the game experiences everytime the players burn them self out when new content releases. Pop #'s usually increase after mjor updates.

[Scar]

Originally posted by Yunan:

Hey Butterfly, been playing for a while now as an assassin, and I can tell you that this game is NOT pay to win! I have spent at most $10 for a mount pack, but that is all. As a sin, I have achieved the maximum DPS the game could offer at the moment without buying anything, because Nexon doesn't offer gear packs or legendary items/gear. I can out dps/perform nearly everyone in my server just from playing the game regularly and doing end game raids/dungeons.

Nexon does offer powerfull seals from monthly packs (october/november lucky boxes) but they can be countered from seals that you can easily obtain from within the game. Idk i just never felt like the game forced me to throw money at nexon just so i could increase my DPS, that reason is because there is no need to since seals and gear items are easily obtainable from just playing the game.

Now starting out as a fresh player is a little bit rough, i suggest power level to max asap and optimize the little ♥♥♥♥♥ gear you have so that you can do dungeons with randoms or with guild members.

Also I do want to make clear that the game is not dying, it is just regular population fluctuations that the game experiences everytime the players burn them self out when new content releases. Pop #'s usually increase after mjor updates.

it confuses me how the few trolls above says this game is P2W though, although i agree with everything your saying

[WyattWade]

pay-to-win

Games that let you buy better gear or allow you to make better items then everyone else at a faster rate and then makes the game largely unbalanced even for people who have skill in the game without paying.

So is this game Pay to Win?

Subjective based on this definition

For me, anytime you can take twenty dollars, buy something from a games marketplace or shop, and sell it for gold... which gives you an extreme advantage to someone who doesn't and just plays, that is pay to win. This game had heavy restrictions for the shop items, trading or selling, until recently!

Again, I don't think it really matters as the only time it matters is in PVP, and that is practically non existant in this game.

[Scar]

it helps get gold sure, and its an easy method to get gold, but its not mandatory, your not getting anything you cant from playing the game.its just hard to get gold, from 3rd dungeon you can get 10-15 gold easy, but reset time for heroic is an hour, CoV is almost similar concept roughly 10 gold, so it does take time, but you can easily get gold by other methods

[Kletsches]

I'd suggest you to experience the game for yourself as it's f2p, it's imo the best way to enjoy it if you start your journey without too much opinions :)

Concerning the p2w: It all depends on how you define p2w.

You can't buy gear directly to set yourself directly above others that don't cash. However that would be too obvious anyway :) Even Premium that you can buy to get 20% more xp, 10% Taming success and more monster drops, i don't really consider p2w. However there were 2 things that made things a bit more delicate. 1st: NX Plus, a new tab in the shop that lets you buy ellun boxes/premium that are tradable and 2nd: In the latest black friday deals they sold special boxes that were tradable ingame. Technically nothing that gave you a huge advantage but you could sell it for much gold in the auction house. With that gold you can buy the gear you want in AH and the circle closes ;)

Another thing are the Ellun boxes in general, you can obtain Elluns via Dailies and achievements aswell and they also give away Elluns for daily logins (see monthly login rewards tab), but at a much slower pace than buying from boxes. These can set you above other players in this case: You can Harden/temper your armor up to +10 without problem, from +11 till +20 however there is a chance that you will drop a level if not suceeding. To avoid that you can use 10 Elluns. Again, technically not p2w as you can also farm the Elluns ingame but it's an immense timesaver. So from +10 to +20 you need min. 100 Ellun x 7 (5x Armor + Weapon + 2nd hand) and thats only to prevent the level downfall, it doesn't ensure you actually climb a level. On the latest Dev Blog - http://playicarus.tumblr.com/post/153883733806/legendary-dungeons-by-gm-dai-laiku-hi-im-gm - the GM Dai Laiku stressed the importance of tempered gear. The defence diffrence between +10 and +20 is 400% (so it's 4 times stronger, not an actuall % difference of 400% ^^), dno about the dmg but guess it's around the same. So if you want to PVP, good gear is kinda mandatory ^^

The other shopitems however are mostly cosmetics and convenience items, some potions to increase your chance for 10 mins (temper/taming) but nothing rly gamebreaking

So as said, it's not the "classic" p2w as you can, in theory, also grind the stuff yourself over weeks/months, but cashing does idd make you strong at a faster pace. (at least there are ways to do so around the corner)

Considering the dying game fear:
Well, the steamcharts kinda proved that this game lost a lot of players. Some left after the implementation of the PVP zone which was atrocious in the first weeks (now it's pretty empty aswell, but i don't do PVP myself)), others left after they announced the NX Plus tab for above mentioned reasons. Another blow (in my opinion) was the last update where they removed one of the very best features of the game: The level 25 Attaius Aerial Combat Titan 10-man Raid. They patched him to a lvl40 Raidboss and made it impossible for casuals without endgear to even possibly think of encounter and defeating him.

But the game itself isn't dead yet :D there are patches and updates on a regulary base (can't wait for 15th december ^^) and beside all that stuff this game makes a ton of fun if you don't know it yet and can still explore everything :). I do hope that some players get back to try out the new content coming mid dec. and that the devs pay more attention to the needs of a casual player aswell to now screw even more guys. It seems that they like the game and think about improving things, but sometimes they just mess it xD (at least they give sth nice here and there as compensation :P)

Yunan suggests you to rush to max level to get good gear asap, but in my opinion you only skip the best part of this game (which is clearly to explore everything) to be faster at that point where you start your grindfest (or start cashing to avoid it ^^). Maybe it's less grindy when you were on the top from the beginning and/or have a strong and active guild, mine completely left the game to start a new one :/

Anyway, now i'm alrdy 60 mins typing ^^ Simple suggestion: Explore and enjoy the game, search a helpful guild and/or mates, and when you reach that point where you saw everything and have the endcontent in front of you, then decide if you want to put an immense amount of time to experience the very endgame or cash to speed things up. DO NOT use the elluns you get at the start to revive or reset dungeons, better use them on storage expansion (Familiar places, stash places, buying 16 slot bags for your inventory) until you have enough room

I have 500+h and enjoyed 95% of it completely, but i decided for myself that i won't cash to just stay/get at the very top :) If you are seeking a good PVP mmo, this game isn't for you i think, for exploring something new however, i can recommend to at least give it a deeper try

It's a game and free2play, nothing much you can loose anyway :D

Hope it was somewhat helpful :)

greetz WK

[Butterfly Ƹ̵̡Ӝ̵̨̄Ʒ]

Originally posted by WhiteKnight:

I'd suggest you to experience the game for yourself as it's f2p, it's imo the best way to enjoy it if you start your journey without too much opinions :)

I appreciate all the input from the community :) The only problem with just trying it is many games are ftp 100% until level X once you are already hooked then it starts costing. I don't want to get my hopes up or have to quit before hitting max :/

From what I've played so far (only low levels) the game has been amazing and Ive felt no pressure to buy/spend....but wanted to see if you helpful community members could inform me of my future if I stay with this game, and I believe that has been done well - enjoyed reading everyones opinions thanks and have a great weekend all :)