Allods Online Forum

Again, if you say something like that you didn't try p2p yet or even endgame. Nobody said you need to farm 24/7 and you can do as much as anyone else on 2-3 hours a day on p2p.

What if you only have 30-60m available each day? Except for raid times when you're able to squeeze out 2 hours?
Then what?
Do you fall behind?

I'm not trying to be a pain in the ass, more like Devil's advocate, because some people legitimately love gaming but only have a very limited amount of time, not 2-3 hours a day like you have stated and that is where the f2p server comes into play. You CAN get everything done in 30-60m with a bit of cash each day.

You don't play 30-60 mins a day if you want to play 'endgame' not even on f2p unless you just spend 15k euros.

Oh...okay.

um actually 30-60 min a day comes pretty much to the sum an endgame player plays i mean ok sunday its 2 hours for dom but on other days you only do guildquest so it balancing

what i dont understand is why ppl dont just accept the fact some ppl give a fuck about a bit of money you dont need 13 to be competetive in pvp lol and all the new items which come out in the last time cost about 10-20 euro as they are temporal so not rrly expensive in my eyes... one of the good things on f2p is when you have the expensive stuff you have it forever (as mentioned above nowdays there are temporal items yes but they are not the strongest and they are cheap)

so let ppl play what they prefer

Ofcourse everyone prefers what they play, I just don't like all the lame excuses people use or like say stuff about games they never even tried playing. Both these servers have pros and cons imo, it's just easy to say something is crap if you really never payed attention to it.

iam still in for a hybrid server beetween p2p and f2p montly payment ok but a few cs items are just a must have in my eyes and seeing as how easy it is to finish gear you could count the few cs items as additional gear

and how does upgrading works in p2p? i mean for me its just unthinkable to farm all this dust O.o

@Blue : Hmmm, only temporary items cost 20 euros, maybe. To be (really) competitive, you need at least 10-11 runes and a huge amount of other items. It costs far more than 20 euros xD

Otherwise, if you have nearly everything, the new items are cheap, yes.

Anyway, I'm not especially a P2P fan either. F2P is astonishingly expansive and I can't imagine any reasonable person buying all of those items. For P2P, the price is good, but the content of the game itself is very poor so.. Mah.


Well, generally speaking, just play the server you feel more comfortable with. But if you are ready to spend thousand euros or more in this game (or any other game), then it's silly.

All the talk about p2w, cash shop items being good or bad etc. really never leads to any joint agreement, because people feels different about it. Some like the idea of being able to pay in order to be stronger than others. The question is though, is it fair to say that a game is balanced and fair for all people when a game has these p2w elements (meaning you can buy items which makes you stronger)?

I mean, look at games like Wildstar or TERA for example. 90% of the stuff in the cash shop are just vanity items, and the other 10% are convenience items like exp boosts, potions etc. Nothing that will actually make you stronger. These games are successful with a much bigger player base than Allods. This type of cash shop plan has worked for the devs/publishers of these games. They get enough money to keep the game in development with new frequent updates, and maintain a good player base.

My theory is that they can still earn good money by keeping players happy and the game balanced and fair for everyone. A lot of people who are satisfied with a game will put some money into it at some point, and then there are still a lot of people who loves vanity items and will spend lots of money on it. And then there are people who values time more than some money, so they will simply buy convenience items.

This keeps the game at a balanced and fair level and there won't ever have to be any discussion about p2w. I think this generally appeals to many more people, only a very low percentage of people actually wants the p2w elements in a game. You can easily tell that by all the negative discussions around p2w in so many game forums, including Allods. That's also simply why many devs of the latest games keep saying they will do their best to make the game NOT p2w, since that's what most people wants to hear.

Important to note though is that the p2w aspect of a game only bothers people who wants to be able to play competitively, or at least feel like they should be able to be at the same level as everyone else without having to pay. Now please don't say the very common and tiring line "but you can get everything for free if you exchange gold for crystals", because this doesn't work for the majority of people who can't spend more than 1-3 hours a day playing due to work, school or other real life duties. It doesn't work that way. The majority of players don't want to spend years and years of just farming gold.

So, the conclusion of this long post is:
If you are a casual player and can't spend more than 1-4 hours a day playing or simply don't want to spend years farming gold, want to be able to play competitively on an equal and balanced level and you simply do not like the p2w aspect, you should play the P2P server. There's no exception to this, the P2P server would in this case make your experience in Allods a lot better, at least in the long run.

If you do not care about competitive play, or you have many hours to play every day to farm enough gold in a shorter time, or you actually like the p2w aspect and do not care to spend lots of money on the game, the F2P server is where you belong!

-I'm out.

Quoted from "Quinz"

I mean, look at games like Wildstar or TERA for example. 90% of the stuff in the cash shop are just vanity items, and the other 10% are convenience items like exp boosts, potions etc. Nothing that will actually make you stronger. These games are successful with a much bigger player base than Allods. This type of cash shop plan has worked for the devs/publishers of these games. They get enough money to keep the game in development with new frequent updates, and maintain a good player base.

Wildstar being even remotely successful is not exactly the truth. After first one or two patches it lost most of its playerbase and as far as I'm aware lot of people have been fired as well. The patches were not even only poor quality but they quickly became delayed a lot.
Adding it to steam helped for a very short while, but I'm pretty sure by now it's down to the standard lower numbers. While the game isn't considered a complete disaster, it's far from being successful and it still performs pretty much like trash even on decent PCs after 2 or so years.

As for F2P Allods I'd say the problem isn't the power/money creep alone. Hell, it'd probably make a pretty decent game if only everything were significantly cheaper, even with all these things in cash shop. There's a reason why some versions of Allods which probably shouldn't be mentioned on here forums are so popular and people are willing to spend fairly decent amount of money on it despite how easy it is to get those things.

Quoted from "Hiren"

Wildstar being even remotely successful is not exactly the truth. After first one or two patches it lost most of its playerbase and as far as I'm aware lot of people have been fired as well. The patches were not even only poor quality but they quickly became delayed a lot.
Adding it to steam helped for a very short while, but I'm pretty sure by now it's down to the standard lower numbers. While the game isn't considered a complete disaster, it's far from being successful and it still performs pretty much like trash even on decent PCs after 2 or so years.

I knew someone would make a comment about the examples I made I'm not fully aware of the population numbers etc. of these games, and I don't know exactly how successful or not they have been. My point is that they were, and still are, more successful than Allods as they obviously have a larger player base and broader reputation, and that these games are considered by many to have a very decent and fair cash shop, and that a game actually can go win-win by following this cash shop plan.

I'm not trying to say though that going non-p2w is what made these games more successful, only that it most likely makes a big difference. So take Wildstar for example which is apparently not doing so well at the moment, they may have been in a worse situation than Allods by now if they actually had the same p2w aspects in the game.

On a side note, Wildstar got an increase in population when it was released as F2P, as it was B2P before. At least they have had some successful ways of getting more players. I'll go ahead and say that Allods has failed quite badly at this. Advertisement has never been their strong suit either.

Quoted from "Quinz"

Take a game like World of Warcraft for example, it's the same principle as Allods P2P server, you pay a monthly fee and then everyone have the same access to items and features in the game. Nothing can be bought from a cash shop. What do you think this game is about? Same thing as Allods P2P server, you farm gear, do different types of quests, achievements, PvP, raids. All the same but of course it obviously may have some features in the game that differs from Allods.

My point is, how come WoW is the most successful MMORPG in the world, if the P2P feature is so bad as you say?

WOW has a solid "baseunivese" which is / was very wellknown and it also was the 1st broadly known MMORPG
as for "nothing can be bought from cashshop": right. thats why ppl buy from 3rd parties instead. result is the same except that the money goes not to the ones running the game
the one who pays does not care for WHO he pays, he gets his goods anyway, from the publisher or the chinafarmer/goldseller

Quoted from "HIppycrates"

do the thing is good for you.

exactly!

Quoted from "homerosi"

You don't play 30-60 mins a day if you want to play 'endgame' not even on f2p unless you just spend 15k euros.

i had some time where i could only spend about 10 minutes / day, did regular customers and set bids / placed sales, thats it
i would have gone crazy if i had bought a subscription seeing the time elapsing without using it!!

Quoted from "Bluescarlet"

what i dont understand is why ppl dont just accept the fact some ppl give a fuck about a bit of money

or time! we are all old enough to decide on what to do
also, why ppl cant just be happy there are others funding their game/servercosts?

Quoted from "Bluescarlet"

so let ppl play what they prefer

thumbs up on this

Quoted from "Katerina"

Well, generally speaking, just play the server you feel more comfortable with

thumbs up for this too

Quoted from "Quinz"

is it fair to say that a game is balanced and fair for all people when a game has these p2w elements (meaning you can buy items which makes you stronger)?

its not the fact these items are offered for $ openly, its the fact they exist!
so your final question is "do you want to have such a large amount of possible improvisations for your char?"
if not sold "officially" then on black market, those who are willing to pay always find a way
in games without tradingoption there are complete accounts sold - and no this cannot be detected by the company running the game if done correctly

Quoted from "Quinz"

Now please don't say the very common and tiring line "but you can get everything for free if you exchange gold for crystals", because this doesn't work for the majority of people who can't spend more than 1-3 hours a day playing due to work, school or other real life duties. It doesn't work that way. The majority of players don't want to spend years and years of just farming gold.

it may sound harsh but thats their problem; in a progressive game that is how things run
those who play more are superior to those who pay less
the game already offers to option to catch up instantly for $ to balance things in favor of those who do not spend a lot of time
but spending neither time nor $ wont get you far - thats how things run here

but hey, in allods even this has been solved as for a small price you can go equal with all others on subscriptionserver if this is your desire

Quoted from "Quinz"

So, the conclusion of this long post is:
If you are a casual player and can't spend more than 1-4 hours a day playing or simply don't want to spend years farming gold, want to be able to play competitively on an equal and balanced level and you simply do not like the p2w aspect, you should play the P2P server. There's no exception to this, the P2P server would in this case make your experience in Allods a lot better, at least in the long run.

If you do not care about competitive play, or you have many hours to play every day to farm enough gold in a shorter time, or you actually like the p2w aspect and do not care to spend lots of money on the game, the F2P server is where you belong!

same as i said in my summary already
we provided so much info on the forum already everyone who is really insecure can get a definite conclusion now without even playing the game 1 time lol
honestly, i think its a great thing we discuss this topic so actively as it helps covering all possible questions that may come up, even for passive readers

Quoted from "Hiren"

There's a reason why some versions of Allods which probably shouldn't be mentioned on here forums are so popular and people are willing to spend fairly decent amount of money on it despite how easy it is to get those things.

in the same run you should mention that in these "versions" random bans are issued quite fast sometimes
and other this the server connected to the development-team and a well going company which has a secure future, p-servers do not

Quoted from "ALLODS-ONLINE-PLAYER"

in the same run you should mention that in these "versions" random bans are issued quite fast sometimes
and other this the server connected to the development-team and a well going company which has a secure future, p-servers do not

And the point of the whole post seems to be escaping you.

Quoted from "Quinz"

On a side note, Wildstar got an increase in population when it was released as F2P, as it was B2P before. At least they have had some successful ways of getting more players. I'll go ahead and say that Allods has failed quite badly at this. Advertisement has never been their strong suit either.

Technically Allods should have about more active players currently than Wildstar if we're including the Russian version as well. The fault is of gpotato/my.com for having awful pricing in NA/EU, zero advertisement and some terrible choices in the past.

Quoted from "Hiren"

Quoted from "ALLODS-ONLINE-PLAYER"

in the same run you should mention that in these "versions" random bans are issued quite fast sometimes
and other this the server connected to the development-team and a well going company which has a secure future, p-servers do not

And the point of the whole post seems to be escaping you.

Lawl, isn't that why people reply on forums XD

Quoted from "ALLODS-ONLINE-PLAYER"

WOW has a solid "baseunivese" which is / was very wellknown and it also was the 1st broadly known MMORPG
as for "nothing can be bought from cashshop": right. thats why ppl buy from 3rd parties instead. result is the same except that the money goes not to the ones running the game
the one who pays does not care for WHO he pays, he gets his goods anyway, from the publisher or the chinafarmer/goldseller

And now you're making very false statements. WoW was far from being the first broadly known MMMORPG. Before WoW there were big titles like Dungeons & Dragons, EverQuest, Anarchy Online, Ultima Online etc. Even Runescape is said to have had more registered players in total than WoW, and it was released before WoW as well.

Regarding buying gold from 3rd parties, that has nothing to do with the point I was making. It seems you just want to make arguments as you clearly keep missing the main point of things. The point I was making is that in WoW for example, or most other P2P games, you cannot buy items which no one else can get if not paying real money, or farm for years.

Even if a player buys gold in WoW, the player can only buy things ingame that everyone else can buy for gold AND collect from dungeons etc. as well. You can choose to farm gold in order to buy the item from AH, or you can try to collect the item yourself via achievements, dungeons etc. Even if you would farm gold for a specific item, it's definitely much faster in WoW than farming enough gold in Allods which you will have to convert to crystals at a (currently) ~1700:1 gold to crystal ratio, in order to buy a cash shop item.

Quoted from "ALLODS-ONLINE-PLAYER"

its not the fact these items are offered for $ openly, its the fact they exist!
so your final question is "do you want to have such a large amount of possible improvisations for your char?"
if not sold "officially" then on black market, those who are willing to pay always find a way
in games without tradingoption there are complete accounts sold - and no this cannot be detected by the company running the game if done correctly

Again, your argument is totally invalid. Like I said before, buying gold from gold-sellers or buying a max leveled account from someone won't make you better. It just shortens the time for you. Let's say you're new to the game though and buys a max leveled account, you wouldn't know a shiet about this class or how to play it. Even if you were max geared, you would have no skills in PvP etc. and thus you would stand no chance anyway, as skill matters a lot.

Quoted from "ALLODS-ONLINE-PLAYER"

it may sound harsh but thats their problem; in a progressive game that is how things run
those who play more are superior to those who pay less
the game already offers to option to catch up instantly for $ to balance things in favor of those who do not spend a lot of time
but spending neither time nor $ wont get you far - thats how things run here

This is what I mean with "is it really fair for everyone when you have this approach?". No, it's not. It's not fair for all the casual players who can't spend years farming, or who cannot or simply don't want to spend money on the game. With the possibility of collecting all these "p2w" items ingame from dungeons etc. (and not with a 0.0001% drop chance) or by simply not having them available in the cash shop in the first place, would simply make it more fair and balanced for everyone.

Quoted from "ALLODS-ONLINE-PLAYER"

but hey, in allods even this has been solved as for a small price you can go equal with all others on subscriptionserver if this is your desire

Exactly. This is the main point of the whole thread. The main question from OP is why people don't choose to play on the P2P server, and is probably mainly a question for the people who actually do not like the p2w aspect of the game and who can't or simply don't want to spend years on farming gold, but are still not joining P2P. There are different conclusions to this that have already been mentioned in this thread and one of the main conclusions is that players don't want to abandon a character they've spent a lot of money on.

If you for some reason like the p2w aspect that Allods has then that's fine, but speak only for yourself please, because the majority of players obviously do not like p2w. And I know as well that if for example all items would be available as drops from dungeons etc. at a decent drop success rate, or if the gold to crystal ratio would've been MUCH lower, or if the items in the cash shop would've been MUCH lower, the game would not necessarily be classified as p2w as much as it is today and even casual free-to-play players could've fully enjoyed the game at a competitive level. But this is not the reality, it's just dreams, and the only solution to avoid it is P2P.

Quoted from "ALLODS-ONLINE-PLAYER"

i had some time where i could only spend about 10 minutes / day, did regular customers and set bids / placed sales, thats it
i would have gone crazy if i had bought a subscription seeing the time elapsing without using it!!

If you know that you may only have about 10 minutes to play every day for a longer period of time, you should probably not buy a subscription in the first place. Since it would only be temporary, you could just take a short break from the game and buy a new subscription once you have more time again. If you would always only have 10-20 minutes to play every day then you should simply not play an MMORPG. It requires more time.

these games had more players maybe, i really dont know, but what i know is that IF someone knows a MMORPG then its wow, ven ppl who are not into computers / games / etc know it often
dungeons and dragons is also famous, but not for an onlinegame (?)
i remember it as a game without electricity at all


as for not so many items in WOW, i already wrote

Quoted from "ALLODS-ONLINE-PLAYER"

final question is "do you want to have such a large amount of possible improvisations for your char?"

so this is not a question of paymentoptions but rather a question of gamemechanics in general
we already have found out some players feel overchallenged by gearing up + gaining items for improvement so for these its more comfortable if there is only gear to improve (-> "carefree plug and play")
then only skill matters, not the amount of "work" invested in farming etc

as for fairness & balance: again, this game is NOT about fairness & balance but the domination of the weak, but as it seems some players still wish for "fairplay" the subscriptionserver was introduced to make all these happy (which i think was a great move as it should make ALL happy)


as for short time: exactly thats the point, i still want to have at least these 10 min / day (even if RL leaves NO space for pleasent activities in general)
ofc this is not enough for a such a game, but i still was able to manage auctions and thus progress with runes&items due to this acting while i stopped with gear; the result is that i did not "fall back" due to RL; thankfully this stressfull time is over and i have again enough time to play this game

realizing whre i could be now regarding items runes etc,i am already "traumatized" by the fact i started this game faaar too late
(exchangerate at NPC was 1:1 once....! farming ~1,100,000 gold before this was introduced would have resulted in full 13's)

I think a lot of people don't move from F2P to P2P because they're reasonably happy as they are. There will always be things you lose if you move to the P2P server whether that means losing items; losing time invested or losing friends. I've maxed a char on P2P and toyed with the idea of moving there but decided against it in the end.

Like Bluescarlet I'd be much more open to moving if they introduced a bunch of cashshop items and costumes there under the P2P model and let me work for them in raids or whatever.

I don't have much against P2P apart from that, although I do resent the attitude of some forum posts I've seen in the past where people come in calling F2P players idiots for overspending on the game or making wild claims about how the standard of PVP on P2P is sooo much better (it isn't).... these comments are a turn off for me - I don't like being told what to do.

I think though the biggest drag factor for me personally is that I just don't really like Allods in 7.0. It isn't an improvement on 6.0 and this is going to be the same whether I play F2P or P2P. So rather than make a shift to a new community in Allods and start over, I'd be more inclined to just play something else if a game appeared that looked good.

As for the price of items on F2P I've said it again and again and its really the only reason I'm posting here: the price of old items should be dropped to the floor. Things like Leggy Jeweller Manuscript, Carnifex, Crystal Chips...slash the prices so that they are easily available for all. I bought all these things years ago and I've had the use of them and don't mind to see them drop in price so that new players can pick them up.

The Company is using a business model which I feel is flawed and doesn't take into account the merging of servers 2 years ago. Players from some countries earn far less than those from others, nevermind that a lot of players are students who don't earn the kind of money needed to buy big items. It can make the same money selling 100 Cashshop items at 30 euros as it can selling 10 of them at 300 euros. Lower prices would bring more players and make those who already play the game enjoy it more, so I think it's crazy that 4 years on from when I started playing the same items come around again for exorbitant prices that the same people who didn't buy last time won't buy this time.

As for the gold exchange I think it too is flawed. People rarely buy gold for Boutique Coins - that would make no sense. When people are buying large items they usually trade the BC they get directly for the item. This means the price of BC can only go up and that's exactly what it has done. Without even going into the arguments about how Gold Selling Sites and Exploits have pushed up the prices unfairly over the last few years; the price of BC exchange should really be linked to how much BC is bought for RL money each month instead of how much BC has been traded for gold. This would make a system that is actually dynamic and changes determined on how much money the Company makes rather than a static system that has no mechanism whatsoever to lower the exchange rate in favour of players.

Yes this would initially lose money for the game.

Yes this change would need to come first in the Russian version which has a completely different pricing scheme than the International version.

I would hope that the new players who come to play Allods when items are affordable would more than make up for any money lost at the start.

It is frustrating to keep coming back year after year and realize how little things have changed in game since I started playing. Small things that should be basic business sense to implement never have and probably never will come. We are always going to be tied into doing exactly what the Russian model has done 6 months before and there is virtually no hope that decisions will be made that focus on improving how things work on the International server.

So, for me, that is the reason P2P population is low also. First you need to attract more people to the game generally, then you can get them into P2P once they decide they wanna play. But you won't get new players by casting nets into F2P forums every month - the people there are already too stubborn to move over. If they were not then they would have switched games long ago.