Hello, I’ve been following this forum and trying to catch up on all news available on the sequel to my favorite game of all time.
As we all know this game is going to be F2P and all the info we have gotten is basically "Don’t worry it’s not pay to win".
I have some concerns about this that I don’t think has been discussed and some that I think most certainly have been.
My major concern about the F2P model is the exchange rate of Station cash versus in game currency. As we saw in one of the videos (
http://img26.imageshack.us/img26/63/soestore.png) 100 Station cash is paid instead of 30,000 in game cash. I watched the movie with better resolution than that picture and manage to get the following prices:
Weapon Station Cash In game SC/IG
NC Chaingun 100 30,000 300
TR Shotgun 300 40,000 133,3
Pulsar Carbine 300 50,000 166,6
Grenade Launcher 500 80,000 160
As we can see, the value of Station Cash differs from item to item, which seems a bit odd but understandable in some degree, you want smooth round numbers for your customers and that is fine. What worries me is when companies under the F2P model price their new releases or beneficial upgrades with a superior exchange rate.
For example in Heroes of newerth, they reformed in to the "F2P" model and released a new sound pack "john st Clair badass announcer pack" the cost were 980 Gold coins (S2s Station Cash) and silver (in game) 9800.
Before this the exchange rate were allot different, you could buy heroes for 100 gold or 600 silver. Because of the high gold cost and the even higher silver cost players were forced to get gold coins, ignore the announcer pack or grind for months and purchasing nothing els.
What pissed me off and many others were the fact that it was an obvious price strategy to make people buy gold coins (station cash). I have no problem what so ever with buying content, especially not in an F2P MMO. But I want to avoid this happening again.They price the product to make it almost impossible to acquire without paying, Because i feel that it will hurt the game, the community and its possition to not be pay to win. I dont know if I'm a cheap bastard or if I have a valid point but what I want to discus is basically this:
Should the Station cash to in game currency exchange rate be fixed?
To native speakers I'm sorry for butchering your language
Thanks for making a sequel to my favorit game of all time.
TL;DR: static ratio between station cash and ingame resources.