I’ve been a loyal customer of the in game shop since launch. I firmly believe in supporting games that I enjoy and more specifically, games that are worth supporting. That said, with the recent article touting 800k players, and AGS themselves saying that RMT is worth barely a slap on the wrist it has become blatantly obvious to me that AGS/SG no longer fall into the “worth supporting” category. They’ve allowed the game to be dominated by bots. They’ve allowed their real customers to get choked out chasing Steamchart stats. They have opted to do nothing despite knowing about this for months. Why should we support them? The bots are working harder on this game than they are. I don’t think AGS will get another penny of my hard earned money until they fix this problem. Why should they? I’ve been paying $10/month for Crystal Aura like an idiot. I’ve been paying full price for skins and other things in the shop to support my character. Have they protected my gaming experience? No. Will they fix this problem anytime soon? I doubt it.
Now, take a look at this. This is the game the AGS/SG has built.
When we give AGS/SG our money it’s $9.99 for 30 days. Honestly this is very reasonable in my opinion. I’ve paid more for less in a monthly sub game. I’m happy to pay it. Though, take note that you can also buy 30 days for 420 Blue Crystals.
This is the current exchange rate on Mari NA-W. So for around 3420 gold you can buy 30 days of Crystal Aura.
Lastly, this is the current lowest price for gold on a well known website that deals in this sort of thing. This means that by supporting the bots instead of AGS/SG we can buy 90 days of Crystal Aura for the same price (around $10) they sell it to us. They have built this economy. They have profited off allowing the bots to proliferate and destroy this game all while doing nothing.
Suggested fixes:
- 3 Day RMT bans are nothing, this is a slap on the wrist. Make it 14 days at minimum on the first offense, 30 second offense and permanent ban on 3rd offense.
- Add priority queues for paying customers. If you buy Crystal aura with cash from AGS (not crystals), this means you are rewarded with lower wait times by supporting the devs not the bots.
- Hire actual in game GMs to manually sit in zones and issue bans. Bots are incredibly easy to spot, if they can’t fix it with coding (I don’t believe this for a minute btw, I think they have intentionally not fixed it) at least this could be a temporary stop gap.
TLDR; 30 days for $10 through AGS, 90 days for $10 through the bots
Disclaimer: I won’t be spending money on this game in any capacity until this is fixed. I am simply stating the facts as they are now. I have never RMT’d and I will never RMT. That said, I HAVE spent hundreds of dollars in the AGS store. That will be stopping.