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  1. Default Free-to-play schemes could be unlawful, warns OFT


    http://www.computerandvideogames.com...-fair-trading/

    I wanted to post this in the Maplestory Discussion, but I feel this applies to all most F2P games in general. I'm not surprised if this becomes illegal, which could be big trouble to companies like Nexon, but honestly exploiting children for all they got just to be in an advantage over people who hasn't paid is wrong.

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    Default Re: Free-to-play schemes could be unlawful, warns OFT


    Honestly, i can see some of the practices as plain gambling, but instead of getting money for money, you use money for the chance of get some good items that you may or may not have to change in the future or keep gambling away for better stats.

  3. Default Re: Free-to-play schemes could be unlawful, warns OFT


    This article was nothing that I expected or was hoping to see. I thought it would follow the Korean one that implicated these games as nothing more than gambling devices. I don't know anything about the other games mentioned, but the only "pressure" I see to buy NX is from other players and comparing ranges and whatnot. There are very few, as the article describes it, direct exhortations or "buy nows" in Maplestory, unless you want to count "limited" CS Sales, which I do not. Something I would consider in this category is the the very popular mobile strategy of pay-for-more-turns.

    The outcomes as described are hardly outcomes at all, they wouldn't change much, at least from a Maplestory perspective.

    Overall, the investigation seems tailored to the 7~13 year old demographic in protecting children from advertising. Maplestory has little to fear unless they are attacked using a gambling gambit.

    Also, I don't want to be a snob but did anyone else wince a little when they saw the word "haters" not used in a direct quote? I hope it was maybe implied but seeing it there as a choice was distracting.

  4. Default Re: Free-to-play schemes could be unlawful, warns OFT


    Would be nice for people to just put "lolboxes" in-game.

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    Default Re: Free-to-play schemes could be unlawful, warns OFT


    I'd honestly like for Fair trade to step in and at least force Mmo companies to reveal the ratios of all gacha-style cash items publicly on all games. So people spending money know exactly what their odds are.

    There's absolutely no way to even make sure that some 'great prize' in an advertised cash event is even actually there. For example.

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    Default Re: Free-to-play schemes could be unlawful, warns OFT


    Ha ha that'll make gambling illegal too.

  7. Default Re: Free-to-play schemes could be unlawful, warns OFT


    What about the fact that you can't do most of the bosses without paying, a fact that everyone knows? You need to pay out the ass to even have a hope of dealing with bosses like Chaos anything, Empress, Akyrum, Pink Bean, or hell, even Horntail to a small extent.

    The "buy nows" are the ability to actually play the content the game adds. "Want to be able to fight Empress? Just buy 100k in Cubes and hope for good stats which you probably won't get!"

  8. Default Re: Free-to-play schemes could be unlawful, warns OFT


    Lets not go overboard. I'm absolutely sure you could do horntail with a single party without ever buying cubes. Can you solo it? Maybe not. I'm relatively certain you could do Pink bean too, given the constant power creep. But the "ermgerd THE ONLY WAY TO DO ANYTHING I MAPLE IS SOLO" is one of the worst things about maple now.

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    Default Re: Free-to-play schemes could be unlawful, warns OFT


    Unfortunately,
    Not something everyone knows, not something implicit in the way new bosses are, but only the literal "Buy NX now!" at the bottom of every web notice. So they'd have to rephrase that, big deal.
    I completely agree with Chilly, this is a very weak attack on those companies. To really change something they'd have to go after the gambling aspect.

  10. Default Re: Free-to-play schemes could be unlawful, warns OFT


    Hence the "to a small extent" explicitly for Horntail. You're not doing Empress or Pink Bean on a non-paying group. You went into a soloing tirade when I had no such thought even on my mind.

    I read the direct exhortation and "buy nows" as two different things, not him rewording the same thing. I suppose it really is the same thing.
    Although the best chance is the following,
    Hopefully they might be able to determine the gambling aspect being marketed to children, which might end them in the right spot.

    Kind of a far leap though.

  11. Default Re: Free-to-play schemes could be unlawful, warns OFT


    This is ridiculous. Even casinos don't have to show the odds of winning something. They only show you what they pay. Nexon is doing exactly that.

    Unless, of course, you're comparing gachapon to the lottery or keno. But then the correlation doesn't work. Not everyone is a winner with lottery/keno, but everyone "wins" with gachapon.

  12. Default Re: Free-to-play schemes could be unlawful, warns OFT


    I need Spongebob doing the rainbow thing with it saying "Power Creep" instead of "Imagination" at this point. This is similar to WoW, but at least in WoW I never had to bust 250 dollars to get the next tier equipment. The fact that you pay $4.50 for a "Slot Machine styled 'WHEEL OF MARVELS'" that could "Potentially" give you "Amazing" items, but 9/10 you get sh'it. If this isn't related to gambling then I don't know what is.

    And it's like @Fiel; says, since everyone is a "Winner" you're not exactly losing out, you're just not getting the best things the wheel has to offer so you keep trying till poof~ You're out of money. You either profit hard, or don't profit at all.

    But do you see 13-17 yearold's gamble on slots at the casinos?

    (Jesus ever since the actual person I looked up to for inspiration quit, Lim Goon, I keep finding reasons not wanting to go back anymore :|)

  13. Default Re: Free-to-play schemes could be unlawful, warns OFT


    Honestly I don't understand why cubing and gachapon are so hated. No one is forcing you to cube or gach, it's in no way necessary. Before someone says "oh well unfunded players can't kill Empress", why is that such a problem? If every level 200 that was mildly funded was able to solo emp a lot of people here would be crying bloody murder. There's nothing wrong with cubes or gachapon or marvel machine. They offer a way to get to the top of the heap without a large amount of work. Same as if I decided to buy the best possible items in WoW, I could get all the power without any work what so ever. As much as people seem to think it's impossible to get anywhere without buying tons of NX I know that's not true. Many of my friends have gotten fairly wealthy in MS simply due to hard work and merching. For those against the gambling aspect of cubes/gach/etc, let me ask you a question. I remember a while ago MSEA sold perfectly scrolled weapons for real money. Would you rather have that?

  14. Default Re: Free-to-play schemes could be unlawful, warns OFT


    Money should not equal power. Ever.

    Money equals time. EXP boosts and Drop rate boosts are fine, because when you're spending money on a game for said boosts you are usually spending cash you earned from working a job. Just like working the job to get the money, money equals time in games as well as in real life. That's why games without a P2W scheme are still able to survive without creating a power gap like we have here. Any way you look at it, having money equal to power is bad. All you suggest is replacing one scenario of that with another.

    Even with Gacha giving scrolls, unless the scrolls are otherwise unobtainable it's fine. You're giving yourself a chance at an item you'd normally have to grind for. Still money equals time. But when you add the cube system and all this other money equals power bullpomegranate, you create the problems we have here.

  15. Default Re: Free-to-play schemes could be unlawful, warns OFT


    There is nothing inherently wrong with a pay to win system. It's the same anywhere. If I can afford to send my child to private school, they have an inherent advantage over children who attend public school. If I hire a tutor with years of teaching experience, that's another advantage I have over those who can't. Aren't those real life examples of pay to win? If you have the resources and you put those resources towards something, you deserve an advantage over those who didn't put the same amount in. Those who buy cubes are able to get to the top faster, those who don't rely on slower methods such as crafting, merching, or drops.

    You say plenty of games are able to survive without a pay to win system. I agree. But name one game that is like MS. Games that work without P2W have either unique gameplay, vibrant communities, or are filled with advertisements. MS has none of those. But the P2W system it does have is effective and it's not alone in realizing that.

    Ultimately a casual player can enjoy 95% of the game money free. They might never go on an empress run, but they can enjoy the vast VAST majority of the game completely free. The only time when cubes or any of those things you have a problem with matter are at the very top. Yeah it's pay to win but it's completely free to play. No one is forcing anyone to buy NX. The only people who think buying NX is mandatory are those who want to be at the top. And if you want to be the best, why does it surprise you that you have to work damn hard or pay?

  16. Default Re: Free-to-play schemes could be unlawful, warns OFT


    Firstly, this was ultimately a gaming perspective. You will lose customers for having a pay to win system, and they do every day. People won't play games that are pay to win, it's one of the first things people ask about games that are new, "It's not pay to win is it?" We're not talking about real life situations and even in them:
    Private School: I know private schools that suck, and public schools that don't.
    Tutors: I've had personal experience with tutors(not my own, never needed a tutor, which brings up another point altogether) that have no idea what the pineapple they're talking about.
    Just throwing your money into everything that comes around that might give you an edge ultimately results in failure, especially in this scenario. Most pampered kids are failures, with the wrong ideals about life and cannot live on their own without serious retraining.

    But I don't think that this conversation is appropriate for this situation, so I'm going to stop with that here.

    We're talking about games. It's a completely different situation. Like I mentioned earlier, pay to win turns people away. I don't know a single person who has ever jumped at a game because it was pay to win. Most people get drawn in without knowing and then once they are there, once they have spent some money, they just give in to it. That was when the pay to win scheme was not so overused. Now-a-days games that want to succeed are not pay to win. Just look at Nexon's own financials, it's going downhill because every single one of their games are pay to win.

    It had two of three when it was new. It's Nexon's fault for never adapting to the growing MMO community, to never changing at all. That's when games should die, that's usually when games die. When the developer does not change, and keeps the game exactly the same for ten years while there are hundreds of games coming out that look a hundred times better and play a hundred times better. We had to basically fight to get them to support Windows Vista/7! What the hell is that? In all honest's truth, MapleStory should be dead. The only reason it's still alive is people who paid too much money unwilling to quit, and because of friendships and communities made in MS.

    Games that cannot survive without P2W have no reason to exist in the first place. It's that simple. MapleStory has reached that point, and really, it should be dead. The more Nexon adds the more they seal their own doom because it only gets worse.

  17. Default Re: Free-to-play schemes could be unlawful, warns OFT


    Have you actually tried playing Maplestory's competition in the realm of 2D MMOs? Wonderking (now dead), LaTale (looks worse than maple, imo, and it's currently pretty dead), Dofus... None of these games even come close to the amount of depth and community that Maplestory currently provides. It's the best 2D mmo available, and I have tried all the rest. I really have tried them.

    Nexon is thoroughly trouncing the competition on 2d mmos. There really is no competition left. Nexon either bought them out or so dwarfs them that there is no competition to be had.

  18. Default Re: Free-to-play schemes could be unlawful, warns OFT


    I have, but it doesn't change all the inside problems with the game that turns people away. Mechanically, it is the best 2D MMO to exist, but all of the massive problems with the game internally are the issue. Why did we have to wait years for a Windows Vista/7 fix? Why does the game still randomly crash for no reason? Why does the game bug out all the time?

    There's all kinds of internal issues that prevent the game from being as good as it could be, and I doubt very much that new players will ever want to deal with that kind of crap. We deal with it because it didn't happen when the game was first released. Before I stopped playing after the release of Ariant back in the day, I never had unexpected crashes, random "bot" disconnects when I didn't bot, or anything of the kind. Yet now I can't even play for a few hours straight without running into a world of issues. They never adapted to any of the new technology that has been released or anything like that. I believe the game still runs on what, DirectX7? Most of the issues could be fixed by just upgrading/updating the engine a little, but they don't.

    It's a huge turn off to people who are unsure of the game. Then you mention to them that they can't even fight the end-game bosses because you need to invest thousands (money or hours, pick one) to get the gear necessary, and is it any wonder they leave? No.

  19. Default Re: Free-to-play schemes could be unlawful, warns OFT


    its really sad that there is no real 2d mmos that can be fun like maple. I liked LaTale somewhat but i couldn't stand 2nd job being like lvl 80 and the skills of a warlord were all rehashed skills you already had.

  20. Default Re: Free-to-play schemes could be unlawful, warns OFT


    Software has bugs? A piece of software of this magnitude has bugs and crashes? Martha, quick, get the car, we need to get to the police station!

    Sarcasm aside, Vista was notorious for breaking compatibility, so obviously Nexon didn't want to upgrade to that. And then you have a huge upgrade to Windows 7. Nexon runs EVERYTHING on their stack on Windows. Can you imagine the huge backend and frontend upgrade costs that would be? Yeah, I wouldn't switch if I didn't have to either.

    I'd agree with you if they were still on 800 x 600. But take into consideration that back then all maps were made for 8x6, and now they're moving into widescreen. I think they're trying to update the game for more recent technology. And I think the game runs on DirectX 8. But what would they need anything better than DX8 for, really?

    An MMO is a time sink. It's no surprise that people would have to spend thousands of hours on it. Dollars? Maybe. If you want to. You don't have to spend money, but you have to spend time. Your argument could be used against any F2P MMO, really.

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