Nooooooo! I was scrolling down this thread experiencing a growing sense of anticipation and even eagerness and then…BLAM!..you come along and post this. Why you gotta kill my buzz, @SadleyBradley?
Well, at least now I can just read the thread as an uninterested observer for a year or so.
According to the Steam reviews, there’s a “premium game mode” gated by tickets requiring either paid microtransactions or mucho grinding. I’m willing to accept that there might be some nuance there, but it makes me hesitant to drop the thirty bucks knowing there are non-cosmetic purchases present. Has anyone else bitten who could provide more detail?
Also, @tomchick, you must know by now that no one simply releases games anymore! You and I get to be an active part of the game’s development. It’s like doing the job of a QA team and a balancing team, but we don’t get paid for it! It’s so much better!
Edit: beaten by sharaleo
This reminds me of that old indie RPG I think with cardboard cutout characters. Everyone was excited about the concept and then I think it came out as a F2P game or something. I don’t remember the name.
I was listening to a stream they did with Sanderson and a dev on Gamespot the other day. They said they wanted to limit access to the “Cargo Run” mode to keep the multiplayer pool healthy, otherwise all people would do is play the roguelite mode. Buying gets you 15 tickets to play, plus you earn one more every day without doing anything. As for the lootbox stuff, there’s only 41 units in the game so it’s supposed to be really fast to earn everything just by playing. It’s not like trying to complete a MtG set, or anything.
Not sure it matters, because stuff like tickets and lootboxes will immediately turn off a big segment of the marketplace. In fact, it could be a downside, because the people that WANT to grind for stuff like that could run out of things to aspire to relatively fast. Maybe trying to split the difference is not a good strategy? We shall see.
Its still going strong actually, and seems to be doing quite well.
What is it?
I can’t remembe the name either 😂but have it
Which means, that its in my steam library, and news pop-up occasionally which is how I know its still going strong. I’ll look it up once I am home.
EDIT: CARD HUNTER!
Haha, thank you! :)
To be fair, this is only the launch of early access and they have yet to even decide if the game will be free to play or not on full release. It’s a bit premature to condemn an unfinished game for its unfinished economy when devs have been completely upfront that those things are in flux, and one of the things they want feedback on.
Not really, they are asking money for it, so criticism is fair.
Yeah - this seems an odd take.
They are the ones trying to make money on this - so of course people will react to what seems like a crazy expensive model - ON TOP of a full price.
I don’t actually mind cosmetic loot boxes, even in my pay-to-play games. They’re easy to ignore, and it even makes sense in a game like this where unit customization is a big part of it. But putting any kind of functional gameplay behind a paywall (even a generous one) rubs me the wrong way.
And honestly, the “we don’t know if the game will release as free-to-play or not” messaging is frustrating too. There are good free-to-play games that have you pay for early access, and there are good paid games with post-release monetization. There are models they could follow!
I can’t find any information on their Steam page or their website about what these modes are, so pardon my ignorance, but the limited game mode is a (I’m assuming single-player) roguelite mode? And they are limiting it so that people will want to play multiplayer instead? Or do I have that backward?
I guess either way, it’s baffling. If you want players to do something, structure rewards that make them want to do it rather than lock them out of it. Or just let them play how they want.
And you really don’t want that, letting people playing what they want and having fun. Right?
Maybe if people like to play the roguelite mode, let them do it? Hell, focus the development on that instead? Limiting the pve mode so the pvp mode have more people sounds downright bizarre, or… you know, it’s just an excuse and the real reason is ‘we love money, that’s why greed made us took this model’.
Calling it “crazy expensive” for one seems like a pretty gross misrepresentation of the reality. Also, people should spend money on products advertised as work in progress if they can’t handle the work being in progress.
Yes, that’s correct. It sounded like a somewhat late edition to the game so they are not fully sure what the ramifications are for its inclusion, but they are looking at it like some of the limited access modes Hearthstone has done. Maybe they’ll find people are more interested in that then the PvP and pivot the game towards that as the primary mode of play, but right now it’s considered a multiplayer game first.
Well, that’s easy to say, but maybe not easy to do day one of your early access period. As I understand it Riot has struggled with Runeterra because the roguelite mode they added was way more popular than the multiplayer they planned all their monetization around, and they are still trying to figure out if that can be spun off into its own game.
It’s easy to say, and to do. I’m not talking of ‘refocusing the game to a roguelite’ part, but the 'don’t put a goddamn -pay to play a round- ticket system in a non f2p game in the first place’ part. Damn easy to do.
Even easier: don’t spend money on a game the devs are telling you up front may release as free to play if you’re not ok with that. “Founder Pack” bundles for free to play games are hardly unusual in any case.
Yeah, they are not really saying that on the Steam store page though, are they?
Super duper transparent.
Will the game be priced differently during and after Early Access?
“We do not plan to increase the price of Moonbreaker when we release the finished version. We will update this question when we have more details to share.”
Oh, I didn’t have that context. Then it’s slightly more permissible.
Although the whole ‘paying or grinding for premium tickets to play a mode’ reminds me of the Valve card game that ended up burning up, it had something similar. So yeah, good luck with that model.
