Tree of Savior Forum

A Plea for No Publisher

General Discussion
#1

So, despite how everyone thinks that IMCgames is self-publishing tree of savior through steam. I can’t help but feel some fear that IMCgames might be still having talks about possibly having an NA publisher take up the game.

All I have to say is, dear god, please do not let a third party publisher handle this game. Steam integration is plenty good enough to fulfill our needs! Steam integration has everything you need, reviewing system, discussion forum, screenshot sharing, video sharing, and even screenshot sharing. You can also simply add friends through steam to get in closer touch with them.

There’s no need to take up a publisher… every time there’s a publisher, it’s always an awful experience. NA publishers are typically incredibly incompetent (Like Nexon NA). I only know of TWO publishers that I would be… fine with I guess.

NCSoft is… just kind of acceptable… but En Masse (from what little Tera I played) is much more preferable over NCSoft.

But overall! I would much prefer to be no publisher! You guys are doing a great job already handling the game as is. There’s no need to have incompetant, clunky, and rude publishers who are too lazy or cheap to staff themselves properly to manage your game. You are doing fine by yourself. You do not need a third party publisher. Computer nerds HATE publishers. We hate publishers with a passion. We hate it so much, we’d rather CROWDFUND a game through kickstarter or patreon and shove THOUSANDS OF DOLLARS to keep the game alive (sometimes millions). Look at Star Citizen for effs sake! No publisher, and they’re doing just fine with the ridiculous millions of dollars they gained.

You can self-suffice with just us. You don’t need anyone else. Please, trust in your player base… trust in us. We will be more than willing to shove our hard earned sheckles into your game to keep the publishers out of it. Publishers are like poison to gamers. We’re not here for En Masse, NCSoft, Perfect World, Aria Games, or Nexon NA. We love IMCgames and we love Tree of Savior! We love things the way they are now!

20 Likes
#2

They use publisher for MONEY

:< no solution exept leave the game coz cash shop gonna kill him and serveur will alway crash

f2P huu… P2W <3

Publisher <3

Only Riot is a good and TRUE F2P

riot have to publish tos :cry:

#3

It’s not whether or not we want a publisher, it’s if they need a publisher or not.
Oh and Steam is a publisher so they already have one.

Plus Star Citizen didn’t succeed because there wasn’t a publisher, they succeeded because people enjoyed the game enough to throw money at it.

There is no trust until the money is already sent. Lots of organisations start printing T-shirts after some demand only for no one to purchase one, what’s the saying for this again? “Don’t count your chickens until they hatch” or something.

I mean overall I agree, I wouldn’t want another publisher on top of Steam, I mean just look at what happened to Spiral Knights. That doesn’t mean I’m completely against publishers though, just against those publishers that have ruined games.

#4

I actually didn’t know steam was considered a publisher. Anyway, steam is fine. Stay with steam… please stay with steam… I beg you guys.

#5

Steam isn’t a publisher, it’s a publishing platform. IMCGames can self-publish their game through Steam; it will get the advertising it needs when launched and keep them in control of what they want in their own game.

#6

I also wouldn’t mind if it just settled into Steam and Steam only.

I’ve only experienced a few publishers through MMO’s myself,but I’d say Aeria and Nexon were the worst offenders.Aeria would essentially guarantee this game is laced and weighed down with tiers/wheels/boxes;essentially greediness shoved in your face constantly.Nexon not as assertive,but more frequent with the way they seem to handle cash shop items.The community and it’s in-game economy are often shaped by a combination of rare drops,and cash shop items.You want those to be handled smoothly if you want a long living game.

#7

[quote=“mirioki, post:1, topic:36023”]
En Masse (from what little Tera I played) is much more preferable over NCSoft.
[/quote]You mean that En Masse that censored the crap out of the game because they were afraid of some pixel underwear making people rape children? Every playable character in ToS looks underage due to graphics style (except for the artwork), imagine what would happen if they published it! (I’m only half kidding.)

#8

Honestly, i’m going to have to disagree and say that none of these publishers are going to do much to save the game from being p2w. Enmasse isn’t much better than nexon or any other large publisher when it comes to their cash shop, albiet a little less noticable, there are plenty of p2w aspects in Tera’s cash shop. If IMCGames wants to keep this game from collapsing on itself in a cash shop environment, they’ll continue to publish the game a look towards the DoTA2 Marketplace as a large influence on their cash shop. Many TRUE f2p games simply have cosmetics that make people go nuts and quite frankly, i’m more apt to spend money knowing that its all to change the character’s looks not the overall aspect of gameplay.

My 2 cents

#9

I’m not even going to debate whether or not any publisher is acceptable or not… because, honestly, “tolerable” isn’t exactly acceptable. I think I could tolerate certain developers… and even swallow pills of disgust in order to play a game I love (just like Mabinogi). I’m a die hard fan now, and you can inject me with as much poison as you want (and I will never spend money to support your game).

Would I like it? Hardly… IMCgames hasn’t exactly finished the game yet, so the talks are definitely out there on the table. I do not doubt that IMCgames are talking about it right now… Burning your bridges before you need to make an executive decision is just poor business sense. So, we just need to showcase how unattractive publishers are to us… at least I find it terribly unattractive.

#10

ToS/RO players love hats, TF2 players love hats… This is a no-brainer.

2 Likes
#11

they already dont need any publisher since the R1 project

but too bad they already signing contract with a couple of them

publisher = bad, all they do is just milking money, they dont care about the damn bugs, players report, feedback

#12

You’re probably right. Though publishers don’t necessarily have to have any influence on the development of the game, it is certainly common but not an ansolute.

#13

It’s not even just hats, IMC would be stupid to not jump at the chance to implement steam trading cards for ToS when it goes live.

I’m not too sure how the decision to get a publisher or not works for an MMO but as long as they can get someone to do the translations properly Steam and Lord Gaben will be all ToS needs as far as distribution, advertisement, reviews, and feedback are concerned.

P.S. Inb4 limited edition dota 2/TF2 themed hats get implemented because of steam integration

#14

Hm. Well, I will say it simply.

What’s the point in greenlighting a game throught steam, making a iCBT on it, if finally you won’t selfpublish it ? I mean, Tree Of Savior is THE GAME that broke the “world record” of greenlighting time ^^’ That’s something ! And I think IMC will make use of it~

Please no NCSoft, no En Masse, no Nexon NA, no Aeria Games, no EA (LOL, WHO KNOWS), no Perfect World…

Just no. Keep it on steam, it will be perfect, for the very first time !

1 Like
#15

http://hack-engine.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/07/Aeria_logo.png

http://partnership.s2games.com/images/asiasoft_logo.png

#.#Triggered

#16

Screenshot_13.jpg752×180 23.6 KB

#17

Nah, steam has no say in the development of ToS or anything related to IMCgames. They are only there as an easy way to distribute thousands of thousands of copies to everyone for a fee ofc. The only say steam has is whether or not they choose to accept the title onto there store, which was decided by greenlight in this instance.

1 Like
#18

cosmetics… I always buy the ■■■■ out of cosmetics in games that I enjoy… however sometimes they are bit too expensive. Eg. some full skins on dota 10 e??? lol wut.
I wouldn’t ,mind paying say 5 e for a new look and idk like another 5 for 10 day 10% job/exp boost.

#19

Steam is not a publisher, Valve is. Steam is a distribution platform that IMC is using for the beta.

And you guys do not understand just what a publisher does, a publisher is a key and valuable ally to a developer.

It keeps the developer from having to rework their whole infrastructure to adapt to marketing, managing, supporting, hiring employees, dealing with outside forces, legalities, etc.

If a developer decides to publish their own game, a lot can go wrong, and when it does it will cost big bucks. Even if they don’t, all the changes they will have to make to get everything squared away will cost a lot of money. Employees are not cheap, professionals are DEFINITELY not cheap.

Having a publisher that has already established connections and all these departments takes a huge load off the developers, and will often leave a F2P game in a better condition.

For an example, let’s say they hire some lowly grunt to man a phone line for support. First of all, one person won’t be able to handle a phone line for a game, so let’s increase that number to something nice. I’ll still keep it lower then an what it would actually be.

3 people. First of all, they’ll probably pay more then minimum wage. But lets assume they aren’t. I’ll go with a nice number of $7.50.

Each one of those people will probably work around 30-40 hours a week. We’ll assume 30 cause why not.

30x7.50 = 225. Multiply that by 3. 675. They have to pay these employees $675 a week. That’s not including a benefits, insurance, or anything else. Not including equipment either, this includes a ticket system, phones, desks, computers.

That’s just one department, and a gross understatement of how much it costs. They need multiple departments for all sorts of things. Heck, that includes a department for managing other departments (HR). That’s also probably the cheapest department.

With a publisher they don’t have to deal with all this.

Just a short list of SOME of the departments they would need.

1) HR, to manage the humans.

**2)**Marketing, to manage marketing (A lot of money has to be pumped into here.)

**3)**Legality department, lawyers do NOT come cheap.

**4)**Customer Service, I’ll even lump IT support here, and feedback here. This also doesn’t come as cheap as you’d expect. It’s why a lot of it get’s outsourced.

**5)**Forums, community managers included.

**6)**And of course if you want this stuff to work well together you’ll need a building too.

**7)**Then there’s taxes.Financial.

**8)**Servers and server staff. Big cost here too.

**9)**Publishers usually handle localization too. Gotta have that staff.

Those are the ones off the top of my head, probably more tho.

EDIT 2; Also didn’t include the dev team, but yeah. Them too.

2 Likes
#20

Well, Valve has DOTA2 and is even better model than Riot’s. All heroes are free…so I think Valve could handle it pretty well if they wanted.