Most recent kTest updates:
- Buy-in shops have been removed.
- Auction house now costs TP (your equivalent of i-coins) to use. Limited duration + you must pay for extending the duration - “The minimum is 3 hours, with 24, 72 and 120 hours. It costs 2, 4, 6 and 8 TP per item listed.”
- Personal trade has been removed.
(View the changes here)
Meaning - the only way you can trade now is if you use real cash.
IMC, with all due respect, this is one of the worst possible things you could ever do to what was potentially a very promising game. Not only have you betrayed the trust of people by promising that it won’t be p2w, you have brought it to another level by limiting the ONLY way you can transact to being a cash shop feature.
Even other p2w games do not do these - yes, they limit the number of items you can list or have a premium feature, but there is never an outright ban on normal trade or other methods to avoid using the auction house.
This also makes me very uncomfortable - it shows that IMC is willing to even contemplate the most extreme forms of p2w. I don’t know if it is Nexon forcing you to do this, but I certainly hope for it to be changed soon. It is the weekend and hopefully we’ll see some better news next week.
Also, whenever something that is straightforwardly bad for the game comes up, there will always still be white knights defending it no matter how silly it seems. So I’ll preliminarily address some of their anticipated arguments to get it out of the way:
- This isn’t p2w! It is simply an optional game feature. You have no idea what you are talking about
It is. The auction house is a basic feature of trading that many other games have. It rejuvenates the economy, makes sure that people are supplied with the items they demand and overall facilitates the enjoyment of the game. So many people felt unmotivated to play with iCBT marketplace kept going down/bugged. Furthermore, you would have a stronger argument if they didn’t limit personal trade, but the fact is that they did. The obvious intention is to make it so that people have no choice but to spend money if they want to participate in the economy in any serious manner. There is no other non-cash alternative offered at all.
- The developers need to make money somehow.
There are plenty of other ways to make money in a scrupulous way that doesn’t piss off half your player base. Furthermore, even if you accept p2w, at the very least try not to use such an extreme form of p2w by limiting an essential feature to ONLY being a cash-only option.
- Cry more, I love your salty tears you ■■■■■■.
Not an argument. If your only complaint is that people like to complain, surprise surprise, people complain when they are actually care deeply about the game and genuinely want it to improve and be the best possible game it can be for the coming years. Yeah, there are probably people who whine for trivial reasons like silly things like Cleric heels being ugly, but feedback is necessary to improve the game.
- TP regenerates
Well, your wallet won’t be regenerating TP during official release I’m afraid.
- This won’t happen to us. IMC is our publisher and it’s only because NEXON is forcing them to do it over it in Korea.
Firstly, there’s no guarantee that they won’t do this. Secondly, we don’t know if Nexon is responsible for this. Thirdly, even if it won’t happen to us, we shouldn’t approve of it happening somewhere else to Koreans. We’re all players of this game and we should stick up for one another.
- Other Korean games do it too.
No excuse. TOS is better than that. Or at least it is trying to be I hope, rather than one of the others in the trash pile.
- It’s a bug, you’re worrying over nothing. Paranoia as usual.
Nope, it is explicitly in the patch notes.
- It is a good change. Prevents botters and goldsellers.
Now this I can acknowledge. However, there are other ways to do this without gimping your playerbase. I’m sure whoever thought of this must be clapping themselves on their back - not only did I figure a way to earn tons of money, I even resolved the gold seller issue. Uh, no.
And let’s consider the detriments that this new feature would bring.
- Completely destroy the market for low end items. Nobody in their right mind would list for items like Alch pots that aren’t worth the real money invested.
- Drive away and alienate a huge portion of the player base. I suspect this will be a deal breaker for many people. Nobody wants to pay for what they expect is a simple and basic game feature
- Ruin the economy: The economy is an important feature of any game that needs to be unencumbered with low barriers to entry. If you want your game to fall apart due to stagnation after 6 months because nobody can trade items and sell ■■■■ they don’t want.
- Demand side problems: People can’t get the stuff they actually need. You’ve even closed off personal trade.
- Other p2w features: If they are capable of making an extreme form of p2w like this, I don’t want to imagine what else they are willing to do.
- Shaken confidence: Game developers and Kim Hakkyu envisioned that this will be a ‘neo-classic’ game with a refreshing change from the gazillion boring generic p2w MMOs, bringing back meaning to what old MMOs really meant. Obviously this game has many problems and hasn’t quite brought back our classic MMO fields, but still, it’s trying and it has its own merits. We were promised balanced cash feature, so I think it is only fair that you actually live up to that promise.
It is December, it is still too early for April’s fools. Me and many others have been faithfully following since Project R1 and have high hopes, and still stick to the game even though there are many glaring problems.
Don’t let the dream be dead.
