In the sandpark MMO ArcheAge, the operator Trion Worlds has changed the rules for the cash shop and directed the game towards pay-to-win, angering the fans.
The cash shop in ArcheAge was okay before the changes
The cash shop in free-to-play games is watched closely by fans. What is available for purchase? How powerful are the items? What impact do the items have on gameplay?
In the sandpark MMO ArcheAge, the cash shop was thoroughly scrutinized beforehand and ultimately deemed satisfactory. There were only a few items that had a significant impact on gameplay. Most of them just facilitated the start without influencing much beyond that. Thus, fans were able to accept it.
Although ArcheAge was also a game for which you needed a sort of subscription (the patron status) and it still had a cash shop, since the patron status could be acquired in-game and the cash shop was not overly pronounced, most players could live with it. Trion Worlds would profit from the game without squeezing them too hard or selling significant advantages directly for money.
A bit of suspicion was cast on the labor point potions, but since they were tradeable and could only be used every 12 hours, they were largely accepted as well. The only somewhat hesitant agreement came from warehouse expansions purchasable via the cash shop, but in the realm of free-to-play, there were only a few pay-to-win clouds on the horizon.
Trion Worlds changes the rules before launch
This changed with the start of the open beta. Although the changes were partly marketed as if the fans had been waiting for them. The reaction has been different. Players feel deceived and have the impression:
“Now, after Trion Worlds has my money for the founder’s package, they are tightening the screws on the cash shop.”
The changes alone would already be a reason for concern; the timing adds to it: Such changes right before the release are delicate. The players are not getting what they signed up for.
The changes in the cash shop
First, the good news: Some craftable items have been removed from the shop. This is intended to keep crafting professions attractive.
Now the (depending on perspective) rather bad news: The purchasable 1000-labor-point potions now only have a 4-hour cooldown instead of a 12-hour cooldown. This means players can consume 6 per day per character, totaling 4000 points more per day.
Since these labor points are extremely important for crafting and have so far formed a kind of “hard progress” limit—determining how far players could advance their crafting abilities per day—critics fear that having 4 more potions a day would drastically reduce the game’s playtime, essentially devaluing the difficult-to-achieve mastery in professions. Essentially, Trion Worlds would be selling the integrity of the game.
Furthermore, it is now less essential to work together in a community where one does this, and another does that. For example: If there is limited labor (and that is ultimately what labor points are for), multiple characters are needed to produce certain products. If labor is multiplied, it weakens this necessity. An intervention in the balance.
However, it is noted that the labor potions are tradeable and should not be too expensive. Trion Worlds claims to have evaluated surveys where 85% of respondents wanted to see more of these potions in the auction house. Critics doubt this claim.
Especially dicey: There are two newly introduced “chests” in the cash shop for a relatively high price that drop important materials for higher crafting tiers. These archeum particles, as the criticism in the beta went, had dropped too rarely in the game before. Closed beta players urged Trion Worlds to increase the drop rate. That these items are now found in the cash shop is a tricky situation.
Fair to say: These chests are also tradeable in-game – theoretically, they can be acquired in-game without spending real money…
At Trion Worlds, they are now feeling the backlash. It is said that the “archeum” chests were poorly named. Naturally, they should not be the “main source” for archeum. They have already adjusted drop rates and will continue to do so, as they are in contact with the Korean developer. XL-Games is extremely cautious about changing drop rates, as they understand the economy as the lifeblood of the game.
Pay2Win crisis: Creating frustration and then selling the solution
Mein MMO says: The difficulty with pay-to-win is that the operator artificially creates frustrating elements and offers the player a chance to relieve this frustration at a cost. In the pay-to-play model, the classic subscription model, the operator is primarily concerned with the enjoyment and motivation of the player in the long term because they want the player to maintain their subscription. In pay-to-win models, other components come into play and it can be beneficial to deliberately make “wrong” design decisions to entice the player into saving themselves from this frustration.
That these changes are implemented now when founder packages are no longer the main source of income, and the cash shop has become the dominant source of revenue, leaves a very bad taste. ArcheAge, like many free-to-play games, essentially relies on players completing a quasi-subscription with the patron status, meaning they pay their 13 euros in-game. When frustrations arise that can be managed through the cash shop – or when the balance of the original game is threatened by interventions, it can lead to significant backlash. And that is currently escalating across all channels.
For a cash shop, larger changes are typically designed to only affect high-level players, who have invested a lot of time and energy into the game. Through the odd conversion into a “fantasy currency”, here the crystals, it becomes difficult for players to accurately see how much an “archeum” chest actually costs in euros and cents.
[quote_right]Now really critical pay-to-win?
We have examined the cash shop of ArcheAge twice during the closed beta and have concluded that the game is not pay-to-win, at least not to a critical extent.
With these changes, after players have already invested triple-digit amounts into a founder’s package, we must revise this assessment.
If Trion Worlds had started with the current cash shop from the beginning, the game would likely have been viewed much more critically from the start. Some founders may have thought twice about supporting the game. With Trion Worlds, there is the additional factor that they have repeatedly advertised fair play, no traps and no tricks. This principle has lost credibility since yesterday.
