I’d like to think you haven’t had much experience with games, or mmos in particular then. Because in nearly 20 years of mmo experiences I’ve seen and experienced way more malicious, shady and predatory monetization methods. This one is harmless and a lot of the p2w and monetization mechanics were altered to cater to the western audience.
Because of the phoenix feathers? Because all they allow you is to revive on the spot, you can just revive at base and walk back. so it’s really just convenience, but doesnt give you an advantage and I dont see that many people actually using them. You can’t even use them in battles where you dont get a revive chance anyway like Abyss dungeons.
You can craft all battle items in your stronghold, I dont get your problem with this. Due to this fact there isnt even incentive to buy them from the cash shop unless you have tons of disposable income and are extremely lazy.
I’ve never been prompted an offer to buy honing materials after failing an upgrade. But ultimately it isnt exactly worth it. You spend way more for it than you get out of it and the game has a natural ceiling anyway so all it does really is saving you time, someone who doesnt pay will get there too eventually, just by investing time, and the return value for spending money on quicker upgrades/gearscore is abysmal considering that the game has a ceiling. It would only be worth it if there was no GS ceilings.
It’s a common thing in MMO’s but please know that you can also use the currency exchange market to get the crystalline Aura without spending a dime of real life money. All depends on whether or not you play the market and capitalize on opportunities to make ingame gold. You do not have to spend money for this, nor for anything else.
Yes but it’s just convenience too, theres a weekly max you can buy of these and they dont give you that much life energy either, plus you arent the only person that has limited life energy so this just creates another supply and demand chain in the player market, which is good. its how it should be. tradeskills should be worth investing time into. and the money you make from selling battle items that you crafted with the lifeskill energy you spent to get the materials will then allow you to currency exchange for blue crystals, with which you can buy crystalline aura.
Again just convenience, you dont NEED to have more than 6 characters. if you want to have more then thats a personal choice and preference, but realistically you wouldn’t even have time to play more than 6, because more than 2 alts will already make you feel like this game is a fulltime job.
Yeah or you just let rest-bonus accumulate for bonus rewards, so you don’t actually have to buy these tickets. Someone who’s an actual hardcore player, will very likely plan their dailies around what real life schedules they have to upkeep with and the casuals probably don’t even care about missing out on one or two sets of dailies. So it’s just boiling down to convenience again.
Ultimately you don’t have to spend a dime, and the game almost always offers you a f2p method of obtaining these items, with the exception of character slot tickets.
- Need battle items? you can craft them without having to spend any real money, and you can sell your excess on the market to fuel gold into other things such as crystalline aura if you wanted.
- don’t have time to do dailies? NP you can do special dispatch missions in your stronghold to get partial rewards, or you can let rest bonus accumulate for the next time you have time to play.
All of the points you brought up are convenience items that offer free solution counterparts for those who don’t have or dont wish to spend money. They are timeskips yes, but they dont give you a real advantage as opposed to buying BiS gear with real money for example (yep theres games which do that, and even worse they gate it behind RNG and the boxes are ridiculously expensive most of the time, and to top it off the stats on those gears will usually make you so strong that anyone that doesnt spend money will never get anywhere in the game, and you really believe this game is malicious-intended on money? lol)
Lastly keep in mind that games are not the wellfare. They are never here to cater to the player. games are real businesses with a real intend to make profit just like any business in this world. Keep in mind that game developers and publishers are not doing this as a hobby, this is their job, this is how they put food on the table. This is not voluntary work. They have families to feed too. Plus part of the profit goes back into the development process to work on future content.
How would you feel if your boss told you tomorrow you dont get paid anymore for your work because the customer/consumer thinks its malicious to pay for your work/service?
Nothing in this world is free. Games aren’t free. If you cant get behind this, then you probably shouldn’t be playing games, or at the very least not play multiplayer games/mmos.
If you think this is really blatantly greedy and malicious, oh boy do I have news for you…
Seriously, look at some other games (mmos specifically) these days and their monetization options and how many of them nerf very specific aspects of the game to purposefully inconvenience you only to then go on and sell you the solution in cash shops. And guess how many of them offer you free alternatives at the cost of extra time? Hardly any unfortunately.
A lot of games these days are specifically designed around milking the cash cow throughout its first year, with the expectation that the game will die off after that time if not less and this is kept in mind throughout the development process too. This is often noticeable by shallow, badly thought through game mechanics/core loops, because it’s only purpose is a quick penny so nobody really cares to create good gameplay mechanics and core gameplay loops.
