Dimitri Molchanov said:
I think you may be basing your thoughts on a limited scope of information available to you, Gadheras, and once again you try to pinpoint all issues that you perceive to game economics, specifically people who choose to make in-game purchases to speed up their progress. I have responded to that point in another thread and see no reason to copy paste the responses. But as for your question itself, Stormfall is due to see a number of new features introduced in the near future. The main block right now is the Flash Player, but that is something our developers are working on at the moment. Once that particular obstacle is removed, you will see new features introduced frequently.
My first experince with browser based online games was Planetarion back in year 2000. It became so popular that AOL shut down the pipe access at a time because players used to much of their bandwith. Before that I played diversity of games online where the cost was in the actual dial up and not so much the games itself.
I played and experience many games since then. Some with good business models that was player friendly and then others that wasn't. Heck, I started play EVE-Online back in 2003 and still playing it.
I have no issue with a game have a business model that want players to spend money, as long as it doesnt make the game a PAY TO WIN game. Plarium games is not f2p, they are p2w. The ability to destroy other players and entire leagues efforts a the swipe of a credit card is why this game is in such an awfull state it is. Modest coiners and f2p players they just can't compete. The slow process of train new units after a wipe is ridicilous. You can raid as much as you can to get resources but when your build queues ends up months long. You are basicaly out of the game. Where someone else throw cash at the problem and hit the revive or just buy new units.
Look at the ingame shop for like SWTOR and ESO, you won't find any pay 2 win items what so ever. Vanity items and boosters of all kinds.
You can blow smoke and mirrors all you want, chant about the work together and make allies. Yeah well. Money talks and that is the only language in the game.
And don't bother talk about features. When the players been asking for things on the forums before, suggested changes and so forth, we been told so many times, oh no that can't happen because of ballance. then sometime later down the line a version of what the players asked for ends up as a "feature" with a price tag, because, well BALLANCE doesn't apply for those that spend enough cash.
The only ballance required in any online game is "time and effort" need to compete with spending. When it can't, you have a bad product that will just bleed players (like we currently do). Funny enough the very same players that help cover your pay check.
