Do cosmetic only cash shops exist in any F2P/B2P game at all?

eisberg · January 2015

Dragath wrote: »

are there really players that think pure convenience (what Zenimax understands as "convenience" will change quite a lot over time, you will see) items will make enough money for a game that desperately needs income?
as someone else said, console release will boost the numbers, but that wont last for long.
just relax, because all these threads wont change anything and see how the shop will look in one year from now.

Guild Wars 2 makes ~$11 Million a month on a cosmetic/convenience/non pay2win store system. $11 Million a month is equivalant to 733,000 subscribers paying $15 a month.

Nijjion · January 2015

knightblaster wrote: »

Bottom line -- this decision is about greed. For the company and for the players who are too cheap to shell out a sub fee which, for most people is not a large amount of money. Greed.

Well evidently it is quite a large amount of money as a lot of people have stopped paying it as deemed the game not worth it.

I don't think anyone is disagreeing about this with what you said to the bottom line of it... if they didn't make the change though they would have to cut down on quality else where. From letting go of staff, servers, less updates.

They have to think like a business, it's how the world works. I'm not happy how they *** over the hardcore players with the xp over vr14 but I understand and respect they don't want to alienate the casuals which is the majority of the playerbase.

Saint_JiubB14_ESO · January 2015

Nijjion wrote: »

knightblaster wrote: »

Bottom line -- this decision is about greed. For the company and for the players who are too cheap to shell out a sub fee which, for most people is not a large amount of money. Greed.

Well evidently it is quite a large amount of money as a lot of people have stopped paying it as deemed the game not worth it.

I don't think anyone is disagreeing about this with what you said to the bottom line of it... if they didn't make the change though they would have to cut down on quality else where. From letting go of staff, servers, less updates.

They have to think like a business, it's how the world works. I'm not happy how they *** over the hardcore players with the xp over vr14 but I understand and respect they don't want to alienate the casuals which is the majority of the playerbase.

http://forums.elderscrollsonline.com/discussion/147220/was-zenimax-stupid-like-a-fox#latest

The game may not have had any financial problems to begin with. The first post sums up the model.

Lordstarfox · January 2015

starkerealm wrote: »

Kalman wrote: »

The Secret World started out like that. Now they have a few boosters you can buy but I wouldn't say they give a huge advantage.

Secret World always had a few things in there that were non-cosmetic. Last time I checked you could flat out buy QL10 blue items in the shop. They didn't have any glyphs, so you'd have to cough those up yourself. But you could just flat out buy gear. I know at launch there were QL1 blues, but I think that was actually a preorder incentive, and not, strictly, something you could buy.

1)Ql10 blue gear in itemstore is bought with Veteran points,to get veteran points you need to be subbed to game,each month you will receive some. I think full set of Ql10 would require half year of subbing to game.
2) To equip this gear you need to have maxed out your (skill) level,so new players cant equip it straight away. There is a boost that will give you Skill points,however you cant buy it before one of your toons has reached end game,so this can only be (effectively) used by your alts.
3) in terms of power Blue gear is far from the top and someone who does PvP or dungeons can replace it with far better(purple) gear in matter of days.Not to mention blue gear is so easy to obtain that people literally give it for free.

Other non cosmetic stuff in the store,that are far more usefull;

One of the sub perk is [The Time accelerator],which gives 100% more exp for monster kills for 1hour(doesn't affect questing), usable once a day for as long as you stay subbed.
Ability point boosts, Double ability points for X time.
Inventory/bank space, only way to reach max inventory/bank space of 350 is through store,without, limit is 250 each (per character).
Signet extractor, this could be compared to extracting (extremely expensive and powerful) enchantment from gear in ESO (while keeping the gear intact).
Dimension changes
Character rename
Remote banking consumables. 20 consumables for 5$. Inventory space isn't much of a problem in tsw,for ESO players these will probably sound a lot more attractive.
Last mission of each expansion gives one purple talisman with fairly good signet. Saves you about 4 dungeon runs. You still need 18 dungeon runs+ some raid rng luck to fully upgrade it.

Potions/mystery boxes/barbershop coupons in store are pretty much worthless, not sure why anyone would buy them,but yeah,those aren't cosmetic.

Overall i consider itemstore in tsw to be pretty fair,however it does have a lot more than just cosmetic items.

starkerealm · January 2015

Lordstarfox wrote: »

2) To equip this gear you need to have maxed out your (skill) level,so new players cant equip it straight away. There is a boost that will give you Skill points,however you cant buy it before one of your toons has reached end game,so this can only be (effectively) used by your alts.

You only need rank 9, actually. Rank 10 allows you to use the 10.1 through 10.5 gear. Also, if you're planning ahead and know what you're doing, you can easily hit 9 points in a specific line by Blue Mountain.

Remember, it's not unheard of for QL6s to be swinging an auxiliary weapon. Those are (as I recall) 35 point buy ins. Getting to rank 9 (from rank 1) requires 45, and those last 10 skill points aren't THAT hard to come by.

Lordstarfox wrote: »

3) in terms of power Blue gear is far from the top and someone who does PvP or dungeons can replace it with far better gear in matter of days.Not to mention blue gear is so easy to obtain that people literally give it for free.

You're missing the critical part, however. Blue gear is required to start the Nightmare content... unless you have a 10.4 team willing to drag your alt on a guided tour and can clear the gatekeeper in greens.

The blue gear does allow someone to simply slip past that entire element of the gear grind. For people who don't get into the dungeons... either because of guild politics, or the derps that only want fast 18/18 runs, blue gear is actually pretty significant, because that stuff drops with an eyedropper outside of elite dungeons.

However you cut it, it is not cosmetic.

Lordstarfox wrote: »

Other non cosmetic stuff in the store,that are far more usefull;
One of the sub perk is [The Time accelerator],which gives 100% more exp for monster kills for 1hour(doesn't affect questing), usable once a day for as long as you stay subbed.

Ability point boosts, Double ability points for X time.

Inventory/bank space, only way to reach max inventory/bank space of 350 is through store,without, limit is 250 each (per character).

Signet extractor, this could be compared to extracting (extremely expensive and powerful) enchantment from gear in ESO (while keeping the gear intact).

Dimension changes

Character rename

Remote banking consumables. 20 consumables for 5$. Inventory space isn't much of a problem in tsw,for ESO players these will probably sound a lot more attractive.

Last mission of each expansion gives one purple talisman with fairly good signet. Saves you about 4 dungeon runs. You still need 18 dungeon runs+ some raid rng luck to fully upgrade it.

Potions/mystery boxes/barbershop coupons in store are pretty much worthless, not sure why anyone would buy them,but yeah,those aren't cosmetic.

Overall i consider itemstore in tsw to be pretty fair,however it does have a lot more than just cosmetic items.

Yeah, the item store isn't TSW's issue. That the developers thought they had discovered that the secret to a successful game was to copy Dark Souls' difficulty, without really understanding what that meant, and a pathological obsession with grind content... really? You're going to force us to pay for and play a horde mode minigame for two months to advance the story?

But, the item store isn't the issue. It's also not cosmetic only, which is what I was referring to at the beginning. And, for someone who doesn't play the game, it's a lot easier to simply point them to the QL10 blues, rather than... say, explaining how the mystery boxes contain augments, and how that's one of the only ways to get them outside of grinding horde mode, or about the game's politics with getting into dungeon raids, and explaining that without that progression basically stops at QL10 unless you pay them money to run the DLC packs... and then you get a single 10.1 for one slot... Or, you know, they literally sell gear in the shop because that's understandable to an outsider.

BlueIllyrian · January 2015

No, and B2P is just to ease us into F2P and milk consoles, ZOS would be daft to keep the B2P entry paywall once the cash shop is polished enough and consoles dry up.

BlueIllyrian · January 2015

RianaTheBosmer wrote: »

DDuke wrote: »

RianaTheBosmer wrote: »

Since when is an MMO competitive gaming. That's ridiculous. You are not winning anything at all, even in PvP. From the sounds of some of the people on this forum, you'd thinking gaming is your second job. It is not.

Spoken like a true casual, well played.

And again you throw insults around. You have no idea what my gaming is. I'm hard core PvE/raider in another gaming. I still don't consider it winning. I'm competing against myself and supporting my team. Keep your insults to yourself. I swear this community is as vitriol as WOW's is.

Yes, well, you know, WoW is ultra casual for awhile now. Hardcore there is gone with WOTLK.

Knootewoot · January 2015

SWTOR. there are only "empty" weapons and armors in the store. You still need to earn/buy the mods to put in those weapons/armor. And they cannot get better then other modable armors. They are orange and purple found ingame is better.

for the rest SWTOR has mounts/emotes/pets and some other customizations.

So yes.. they exist.

BlueIllyrian · January 2015

Knootewoot wrote: »

SWTOR. there are only "empty" weapons and armors in the store. You still need to earn/buy the mods to put in those weapons/armor. And they cannot get better then other modable armors. They are orange and purple found ingame is better.

for the rest SWTOR has mounts/emotes/pets and some other customizations.

So yes.. they exist.

SWTOR is F2P on paper only, it has a very limited trial option mislabeled as F2P with the aim to frustrate you enough to you to subscribe.

So no, they don't and GW2 was built to be B2P and not some horrid mish-mash later date conversion.

So no, they don't.

Knootewoot · January 2015

Yes they do. My wife plays it F2P. She only bought some unlocks with some cartel coins like some flashpoint access and inventory increase. But she plays it for free and used the cash shop. I think it works pretty well.

But of course i look at it another way maybe. I think, since teso had not much players anway, this will be good for the game.

Wolfshead · January 2015

Lord Xanhorn wrote: »

I've never played a B2P game consistently so I am not sure but the promise of non pay 2 win leaves me skeptical. Does anyone run a cosmetic only cash shop like ESO is purposing? Or should we all easily be able to see through this thin veil of lies?

Yes SWTOR have alot of cosmetic in there cash shop and i can say be one that have play SWTOR it is not as bad as people think and there last expansion which went live in december everyone that have a subscribe did not have pay any extra for it heck the even gave extra bonus on exp so you could lvl up all your low lvl char so the was ready for expansion

BlueIllyrian · January 2015

Knootewoot wrote: »

Yes they do. My wife plays it F2P. She only bought some unlocks with some cartel coins like some flashpoint access and inventory increase. But she plays it for free and used the cash shop. I think it works pretty well.

But of course i look at it another way maybe. I think, since teso had not much players anway, this will be good for the game.

Logic isn't your your strong point, is it?

She paid to play for free so how is it free then?

Oh and few ala carte items unlock only a fragment of things you need to play the game and you get those with a sub OR literally hundreds of bucks worth of purchase.

So no, they don't.

Grapdjan · January 2015

The short answer is yes, most of them. Pay to Win is a misnomer, the convenience items and yes, gear, available from most cash shops is inferior to endgame ingame shinies.

BlueIllyrian · January 2015

*

Languish4567 · January 2015

Miszou wrote: »

Languish4567 wrote: »

-- words --

You could always help them instead of sh!tting on them from your Ivory Tower..?

Just because someone doesn't want to theorycraft their DPS meters until their eyes bleed, doesn't mean they don't deserve to play.

Theorycraft till their eyes bleed oooooor google.com you know either way, like I said lazy.