Some people want to support the game because they want to see it being successful. There hasn't been a decent, highly social, extremely hard MMO for well over a decade now. If you want something bad enough you are willing to pay that price. Personally I'm hyped as hell for this game and I really hope it succeeds.
Pantheon: Rise of the Fallen - MMO on Kickstarter
- Thread starter Brig
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Some people want to support the game because they want to see it being successful. There hasn't been a decent, highly social, extremely hard MMO for well over a decade now. If you want something bad enough you are willing to pay that price. Personally I'm hyped as hell for this game and I really hope it succeeds.
Soldato
Some people also make a lot of money streaming the latest game, so 1k isn't too much of an issue for them to be one of the limited people to stream this game and get money that way. Smart idea imo
Soldato
Even more fools parting with their money. I mean, giving shouty idiots wads of cash so you can watch them play a game is even more retarded than stumping up a grand or so to beta test said game. The absolute state of gaming these days just beggars belief at times.
Scary isn't it. Truly cannot get my head round why the hell anyone would pay a stranger for behaving like a **** whilst playing a computer game. Are these guys like rock stars to kids these days?
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i would probably treat streamers more like entertainers, so i don't see the issue when people pay them x amount of cash.
at the end of the day you can watch twitch streamers for free, so it's up to each person themselves if they want to support their favorite streamer or not.
Soldato
honestly i love watching certain streamers, very few, but the ones that are good, are amazingly good to watch. i can't understand why people watch some of these dumb ass streamers that do nothing funny, nothing entertaining, yet they have 1+ million subs.
i paid to subscribe to my favourite twitch streamer. was $5 per month and i was happy as i watched it more than tv, watched him play games i didn't have time to play while i was working, learned new games i'd never have seen and since bought and played a lot, as well as not bought games i had planned to once i'd seen how boring they are from this streamer.
it does seem weird to watch someone else play a game, but then how many people do that with football every week. watch a millionaire kick a ball about, while they get fat drinking beer on the sofa. yeah that's smart....
i paid to subscribe to my favourite twitch streamer. was $5 per month and i was happy as i watched it more than tv, watched him play games i didn't have time to play while i was working, learned new games i'd never have seen and since bought and played a lot, as well as not bought games i had planned to once i'd seen how boring they are from this streamer.
it does seem weird to watch someone else play a game, but then how many people do that with football every week. watch a millionaire kick a ball about, while they get fat drinking beer on the sofa. yeah that's smart....
accept they probably get a 1k copy for free
The fact there are only MMOs like BDO/GW2 out there is exactly why they are making the game. Regarding the cost, it's $50 for entry lvl so you are gambling with the fact it may never release, but if you want to support them you can and at no actual inflated cost because it is simply the price of the game. Even the $100 I think gives 2 copies of the game.
The reason for the inflated cost of Alpha and Pre-Alpha is simple - if you look back to the earlier days they were much cheaper (in fact I believe 2 copies of the game and Alpha Access was $100, and Pre-Alpha was a few hundred) however, as they are actual genuine test phases and not simply early access, once they reached their desired 'quota' of testers they announced they would be shifting the price range of the test phases because they did not want an overabundance of testers for these phases (too many cooks and all that) they gave people a final opportunity to buy at the original prices and then moved them to the higher tiers and restructured the pricing.
The community for Pantheon is pretty big and is extremely popular amongst people who are looking for this type of game.
The devs have always made it clear that Pantheon is not intended to be a mainstream MMO. It has always been marketed to a very specific niche of MMO players and so far everything they have said leads me to believe that they are doing a really good job when it comes to achieving their goals.
It'll be a buy the game and pay a subscription payment model. Hopefully it'll keep out the toxic elements of the MMO community and only the serious and community driven players will end up playing it.
Pantheon is all about the community.
I doubt it would go f2p anytime too soon. It's already going to be niche due to the targeted audience - an audience who despise f2p, b2p and all the modern MMO crap. If the game struggles, going f2p would achieve very little because it would lose the fanbase the game was designed for and not gain any new audience by losing the sub - the type of people who hate subs in general are not the type of people interested in an old school MMO challenging enough to require dedicating decent amounts of time to it.
Either it will have enough of an audience or it will go into life support before eventually disappearing. I mean Vanguard was $30+M and dropped to 'dead' levels of audience within months (40K or less players) and it still didn't go f2p for 5 years.
I think if the game were to go onto life support, due to the gamer type it is attracting and the style of game it is they would recover/gain more money by simply keeping the servers running with a skeleton crew and keeping its audience until they run out of things to do than they would gain by trying to go f2p (which is likely the same reason Vanguard did not turn f2p for so long, only after they reached numbers that couldn't even sustain 'life support' did they try f2p as a last ditch effort before closing) because they would know what fanbase they did have would walk away and insignificant new numbers would bother coming to try it as f2p.
Don't get me wrong, I am not naïve enough to think 'oh, they'd never go f2p, they promised' ultimately it will come down to finance, but I think in this particular case, as with Vanguard, the business sense would likely lean towards remaining subbed for as long as possible
Either it will have enough of an audience or it will go into life support before eventually disappearing. I mean Vanguard was $30+M and dropped to 'dead' levels of audience within months (40K or less players) and it still didn't go f2p for 5 years.
I think if the game were to go onto life support, due to the gamer type it is attracting and the style of game it is they would recover/gain more money by simply keeping the servers running with a skeleton crew and keeping its audience until they run out of things to do than they would gain by trying to go f2p (which is likely the same reason Vanguard did not turn f2p for so long, only after they reached numbers that couldn't even sustain 'life support' did they try f2p as a last ditch effort before closing) because they would know what fanbase they did have would walk away and insignificant new numbers would bother coming to try it as f2p.
Don't get me wrong, I am not naïve enough to think 'oh, they'd never go f2p, they promised' ultimately it will come down to finance, but I think in this particular case, as with Vanguard, the business sense would likely lean towards remaining subbed for as long as possible
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You both have to remember that you used to be able to get pre-alpha access for a hell of a lot less than $1,000 but it sold quickly they had two choices. Either stop selling pre-alpha access completely or increase the price. Obviously as a business they went with increasing the price. I don't blame them for that decision at all.
If you backed during the Kickstarter (Visionary Realms let people keep their early pledges even though funding wasn't successful) you got pre-alpha access for $250.
Lol no you need to remember that beta/pre alpha (which is a new word for beta) was always free, till game makers worked out how many mugs there are out there.
It's literally money for nothing.
Actually, I disagree. In the past game developers didn't let you see games until they were in a fit state for public consumption (even though they called it alpha, it really wasn't alpha it was more like late stage closed beta) and by that time most of the important development decisions had already been made and it was too late to make fundamental changes. By getting in early during pre-alpha when the game is literally changing by the week you can give feedback that actually goes into shaping the game you want to see. Just look at all the early access games on Steam. None of them are in the alpha stages of development. The general public wouldn't understand what a real alpha stage game was like.
I'm all for getting in early and helping to shape the game.
Utter rubbish sorry, I have been in more beta than I care to remember and even the last major one I was in fairly recent (Star Wars the old republic, when we joined as a guild the building,were just big white square blobs, what referred to as alpha now , I was in LOTRO when less than 50% of the world was built, and many others, they just making you pay for what's free, but hey long as players like you ready to blelive what they say they on a winner.
Early alpha or what ever they call it is the same level as it was when it was called beta now they just play with words and suck money out of you.
Considering that traditional game publishers only seem to be interested in churning out loot box filled micro transaction riddled games at the moment I'm happy to pay a game developer to make a game on their own terms based on a concept I agree with. The rewards are just gravy.
I can't remember the last game I enjoyed from a major developer. I guess it would be Skyrim or the Witcher 3.
Look at all the fuss that has been over the latest Star Wars game with all the loot boxes. That is the kind of thing the mainstream game industry is interested in these days. I'm glad developers have alternative methods to earn money these days. It gives them the freedom to do things and take risks that more traditional publishers / developers wouldn't allow.
Totally lost on what that has to do with paying for beta
Yeah me too.
Is paying £1000 for alpha/beta access a guarantee that there won't be loot boxes in the finished game? Sure they might not call them loot boxes. EQ(1) had Legends of Norrath before it had the Station Store. But - aside from the fact that LoN was actually a really good game - it was conceived as a loot box in disguise. When they realised that many players had no issue with P2Win, they closed down LoN and just sold stuff via the Station Store for $$$ instead.
I see no reason to pay £1000 for alpha beta when there is absolutely no guarantee this game will ever be released, or that it will be exactly what people want it to be.
Sorry. I wasn't being very clear.
What I was trying to say is that everyone knows it costs money to make a computer game. The traditional way a game developer can get the funding needed to make a game is to pitch to a publisher (or other business) who will then fund development in return for a percentage of the total profits once the game comes out.
The second option is that companies can use crowd funding which allows them to do things which perhaps mainstream publishers or investors might consider too be too high risk or not something they are interested in.
If the game development company goes down the crowd funding (which Visionary Realms have) then they need to think of perks to sell to their backers. The target audience for Pantheon: Rise of the Fallen in general HATES anything to do with pay to win, micro transactions, loot boxes etc etec so Visionary Realms can't give rewards that would give an unfair advantage to their early backers so they really don't have much in the way of choice. All they can do is cosmetic things, names in the credits and, yes, selling early access to the game whether that be beta, alpha or pre-alpha.
I think a lot of the people supporting Pantheon have decided to spend the money on one of the pledge packages not because of the rewards that you get in the package but because they are sick to death with the current state of the MMO industry and the perceived lack of interest in games like EverQuest and Vanguard: Saga of Heroes. I was perfectly happy to back Pantheon because I really want to see this game be made and be a success and so I put my money where my mouth is.
I understand that not everyone feels the same way as I do but after being heavily involved in the Pantheon community since February 2016 I really don't think Visionary Realms is a cash grabbing company. They are a business and they need money to develop Pantheon. I think their intentions are for the best.
Edit: Gah. I'm just rambling here. I guess you can sum it with "I don't think they are cash grabbing".
Have a great Christmas guys
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Soldato
Well said