Allods Online Forum

_____Hi. Gonna introduce myself first. I am an old player, by old I mean real old, I started somewhere in 2009 on russian realm during open beta, then switched to european realm ISA somewhere in feubrary 2010, when they launched open beta there. Since then I been playing allods more or less actively, sometimes did breaks, but I did always return to this game because it indeed had unexplainable charm. I've seen community developing, guilds raise and fall, people come and pass, every major update, every change in game, publisher change, monetizing policy change, I know pretty much everything in history of this game, or at least it's path in western world. Today I am here on this forum to most likely waste my time and to state obvious things that nobody wants to discuss, to give yet one another feedback from regular player perspective. I do realise that most likely this feedback will never be read by anyone of those officials who can really make the difference and take decisions, or at least have any influence on those guys in russian headquarters who rule game policy. However, a man tend to hope, and wasting 20 minutes of my time for posting this will not kill me.
_____So, what is the current situation on f2p realms: they are literally unplayable for 99% of regular players, yes they are and you know it. No need to go for those excuses "nobody forces you to play on top level, play pve and be happy". Yea, no. Those are just excuses, to be actually useful in endgame and not have mister Dickenson in your mouth permanently you have to invest AT LEAST not less than 2000 euro. This number is very approximate and I am not going to discuss it, but yet it is very informative, it gives you very clear picture. So, to join to top tier endgame, the only tier where you supposed to find real competition and fun, you inevitably have to pay fee of 2000 euro. You will never get there through currency exchange, with current exchange rate you will never do, period. So, how many new players you expect to see on f2p realms, really? Take into consideration that game is almost TEN years old. You can answer to this question easily. Alright, I see you brought a Premium bonuses! But it wont make any difference, keep this argument, it does not really change those values above to the level where it would become acceptable. So, I'll make a summary of this: f2p will keep slowly decaying and only those addicts who already invested thousands will keep playing for some time, then they'll get sick of each other and start leaving too. I personally have lost any kind of hope for f2p and it's future. Came here randomly to see new class and reworked Novograd(found just 6 new trees and new borders, feel scammed) and I am pretty sure that population decreased significantly since my last visit. Next thing that normal man would think of is p2p server, but according to the forum p2p population is close to 15 people in League and zero in Empire. What a joke.
_____So here I am, in hope to see things change, because if they dont then the game will only constantly keep going down, and I believe that it still has some potential. It hurts to see where it all has come, but it was expected, the direction was pretty clear and it was never changed. I'll try to give you an idea of why nobody wants to play on p2p and what keeps old players from returning to the game and inviting their old fellows. I keep believeing that at least someone still care.
_____Things that instantly turn old and new players away are very simple and few:
_____Most important thing here is that p2p players cant access most content that you can have on f2p: costumes, mounts, boosters, additional rubies, runes, weapon skins, ability points, stat points, nearly everything that is sold in boutique. So this is how it feels from player perspective: you have to pay for the game monthly but you get just half of content, like a person of second sort, you get worse quality for your own money, you literally feel humiliated and discriminated as a customer, like if you would go to grocery shop and buy liter of milk and vendor would spit in your face because you did not buy 10 liters. Pretty obvious, I guess you know it too.
_____Second thing that turns away old players who know the game and would want to return but cant because of part one: players tend to stick to their characters, they invest hundreds of hours into them and its very unlikely that they would accept an idea of starting all over again somewhere else. What can be done here? It is very simple: you have to allow one way f2p -> p2p characters transfer. Why it wasn't done before? Because of part one, f2p and p2p content differences. But now when you solved part1 there's nothing on your way.

_____I'll give a short summary here for those who not managed to climb over text wall.
Things that I suggest to do:
- Remove premium content differences between p2p and f2p. All existing on f2p items should be accessible through ingame activities.
- Allow free one way character transfer from f2p to p2p realms.
- Enable faction switching to let people play wherever they want instead of quitting.
- Run some advertisment event related to this change, like giving bonuses to people who returns in groups, giving bonuses to people who spread this new and reward them for every player they managed to return.


_____Epilogue. I honestly tried to make it shorter but not managed to, my apologize. The game on its own is not bad, it has potential, who is to blame is marketologists who decided to pick marketing strategy similar to what drugsellers use, relying on few addicts rather than on thousands of normies. I'll give you random example here. Not so long ago there was Breast Cancer Awareness Month, and one known game developer company, known as Blizzard(not advetising) managed to gather 12 700 000 dollars(this is public number) for charity by just selling ONE skin for one playable character in one of their games. And they didnt even get those money, they was spent for charity. How did they do that much? It is very simple: their games are played by MANY people. One of those M's in abbreviation MMO stands for 'massively", just so you know. How many do you get from selling your scamboxes? 50k per event? Am I too optimistic? One skin. Yea, no.
Greetings.

This is hilarious how much local staff is scared of people speaking truth freely so they even put pre-moderation on my messages and dont dare to let me post my replies. Truely european quality of service.

Quoted from "Drakdish"

2) It's not possible to mix p2p and f2p players, because they have paid for different content.

Speaking of legal side of this, none of f2p players 'paid' for content, all transactions(except, maybe, collector edditions) are donations(yes we don't want to pay taxes, that's not a new), and donations are only sent by free will, not matter if donators being rewarded in one or another way for it. It's more about what publisher/developer want or don't want to do, I believe it is even stated in agreement which players sign upon entering game that characters and accounts are property of my.com and player only rent it for unlimited amount of time(I might be slightly mistaken, but I'm pretty sure it was mentioned in one of versions of agreements), along with that publisher/developer have unlimited rights in controlling characters/accounts and can take any action over them which they find necessary without any explainations. So no, I disagree that it is 'not possible', but I can believe in that publisher/developer don't want to do that. I don't see why, however. I don't see how it would harm anyone, and again, it's less likely that all those people would pay attention to p2p changes without this important part. So what's the difference what they 'paid' for if they quitted once and for all already?

Quoted from "Xrade19"

thats vvhy not posible, imagine you transfer p2p to f2p and got 8 runes, he left cuz another are stronger then him, take f2p to p2p and take his all times he "donated" for, he vvill left cuz for not that he "donated", it's logical reson

First, I did suggest only f2p to p2p one-way transfer only, no other way around. Second, I did not mean that upon transefrring character from f2p to p2p any of it's items should be removed, that is why first part of my suggestion is there and that is why they supposed to only work together. To let people who quitted months/years ago because of cash shop policy return to the game but without need of making brand new character on p2p, without losing goods that they invested time and money into. For example a man with 7th level runes and green-blue-purple ruby scrolls would transfer to p2p and would only need to farm from 7's to 13's and only rubies above purple. And nobody forces anyone from f2p to transfer to p2p, people who are fine with current system can keep playing there, why would anyone quit then?