I'm not opposed to spending money, but...

[Uephorias]

I think (I hope) I can speak for a lot of players in saying that the way the payment systems were laid out were not good. I'm not going to stand on a soapbox like three quarters of the forums and scream out that the game should remain free and the store shouldn't exist and Jorbtar should commit seppuku. I very well understand that Seatribe wants and needs to make money from this. They've put years of their lives into this, and it only makes sense that they should be getting something out of this, let alone not paying out of pocket to keep this thing running. I fully expected that Haven and Hearth would eventually have to turn to pay to play or buy to play eventually, but let me go over a few reasons why this could have gone over better. Reminder that I'm not trying to resolve everyone's problems, and that I'm just one voice in a mob, but give me a shot

Firstly,
As far as I understand, it was never explicitly stated anywhere that Lorbjar were planning on having a P2P system. Before I go on, yes, I understand that the game is technically "free to play" but it's limited in an odd way that really constricts anyone who would want to play for free. To my knowledge, maybe Jorflorb mentioned P2P in a thread or two relating to the hype train for Hafen, but for the grand majority of us, this came as a big shock. I know it's already happened and it's in the past, but this is obviously a huge reason why the forums immediately hit a flashpoint and exploded upon Hafen and the Store/Forums coming online.

Secondly,
I really enjoy Haven. It's a very unique game and has a feel that can't be replicated by anything else right now. That said, this game is far from being polished enough to warrant paying so much; more on the costs later. Haven has been around for (I don't actually know but I know it's more than 4 years) yet it remains in alpha. I'm not whipping Seatribe and blaming them for "not developing the game fast enough" but to pay for a game is alpha is absolutely asinine, despite how many people do that nowadays. In this specific scenario, I can understand that everything so far has come out of Lorb's pockets and it can't go on forever, but to spend so much money on something not as fulfilling as it should be is a huge turn off for me, and for a lot of others, I presume. And that leads me into...

Thirdly,
The game is just straight up too expensive. 10 USD monthly to play an alpha game? And that's not all, Australians almost pay the equivalent of 15 USD monthly minimum. I think it's safe to say that the majority of those payments are not going towards the server costs, since I doubt that whatever [cough]laughably shoddy[cough] servers they use don't need something like 1000-1500$ monthly to run. I will play devil's advocate for a minute and say that I understand that Jorbl.... Seatribe want to get a return on their investment. They have poured a lot into this project, and it only makes sense that they want something back for their trouble. There's not a damned thing wrong with that, but see the above paragraph. We're still living in the alpha...in Java. I can barely get above 25fps on a quad-core 3.4Ghz and a discrete gpu. The cost to play the game without a silly restriction on hours playable is simply too high for me to justify at this stage in the game. It's probably the biggest turnoff for me to subscribe and play right now. I know I'm going to sound like all the other kiddies on this forum who don't know a thing about running something like this, but is it that unreasonable to say that a 5$ monthly minimum to subscribe is out of the question? When the game gets further developed and maybe hits beta, or the game somehow gets popular enough to warrant a second server or something, then it makes more sense at 10$ monthly. On the devil's advocate note, I get that Haven is not a triple-A, mainstream game raking in the tens of hundreds of thousands monthly from subscriptions. When the playerbase isn't that big, of course you might have to charge more to make ends meet. I suppose that goes back to the servers and their costs. Oh, and yeah, they should really try to fix the whole currency equivalency. I'm certain Australia isn't the only country getting shafted on this.

If anyone actually bothered to read all of that, thanks for listening. I wish Seatribe the best and I do hope I can find it in me to rationalize subscribing in the future.

[nardyman8501]

Food on the table brah It would have been cool if we could just buy hours or they told us ahead of time. If they bring some way to find my ingame friends then ill pay

[MrBober]

I think the problem is not the price per-se, but the "pay to play" system. Even huge games like World of Warcraft gets bashed by tons of users because subscriptions are a thing of the past.

Another thing that upsets me is the following: they chose a subscription thing because "with Buy to Play we get the money only once and you play forever". That doesn't sound like "I want to gain something for my hard work", seems more like "I want as much money as I can get, no matter what".

Haven & Hearth doesn't have a big player base, but why? The game is pretty cool, not that hard to learn, and quite unique. But have you ever seen it advertised? There is very few content outside their website. Not even on YouTube, where there are tons of stuff for anything you can think of.. most videos there are years old.. Hell, they don't even have an official Facebook page (which is free, so let's not blame this lack of advertisement on the cost of advertising)..

Buy to play was the way to go..

[Uephorias]

I think the problem is not the price per-se, but the "pay to play" system. Even huge games like World of Warcraft gets bashed by tons of users because subscriptions are a thing of the past.

Another thing that upsets me is the following: they chose a subscription thing because "with Buy to Play we get the money only once and you play forever". That doesn't sound like "I want to gain something for my hard work", seems more like "I want as much money as I can get, no matter what".

Haven & Hearth doesn't have a big player base, but why? The game is pretty cool, not that hard to learn, and quite unique. But have you ever seen it advertised? There is very few content outside their website. Not even on YouTube, where there are tons of stuff for anything you can think of.. most videos there are years old.. Hell, they don't even have an official Facebook page (which is free, so let's not blame this lack of advertisement on the cost of advertising)..

Buy to play was the way to go..

I think the problem with a buy-to-play model, while very attractive to players, is that eventually the money runs out. P2P allows for sustained income which means that with enough subscriptions, the servers can run indefinitely. With B2P, once the playerbase is basically at its apex, and less and less players start coming in, the devs are back at square-one with no money and servers that need to be paid for.

I do agree with you on the advertising thing. A larger playerbase, at least 2k active users, would only do wonders for them, both financially and for the good of the game.

[Gotohellcadz]

Considering how small the community actually is (let alone the under 200 population playerbase that exists once haven stagnates a couple months/weeks later and that's being generous) this game seems far from a profitable game to base your living funds entirely off of assuming EVERYONE is going to buy into this new scheme. And considering how many users are flustered about paying all the sudden this only drives my point home: haven is not a profitable game to try and make money off of. The high price was probably just lorbtar assuming that the small diehard community would just fling themselves into and make that mad cash for them to pay living expenses.

And if lorbtar are just putting the payment model up regardless just to have the convenience of making some money on the side then well...

[draktok]

I think the problem is not the price per-se, but the "pay to play" system. Even huge games like World of Warcraft gets bashed by tons of users because subscriptions are a thing of the past.

Another thing that upsets me is the following: they chose a subscription thing because "with Buy to Play we get the money only once and you play forever". That doesn't sound like "I want to gain something for my hard work", seems more like "I want as much money as I can get, no matter what".

Haven & Hearth doesn't have a big player base, but why? The game is pretty cool, not that hard to learn, and quite unique. But have you ever seen it advertised? There is very few content outside their website. Not even on YouTube, where there are tons of stuff for anything you can think of.. most videos there are years old.. Hell, they don't even have an official Facebook page (which is free, so let's not blame this lack of advertisement on the cost of advertising)..

Buy to play was the way to go..

I think the problem with a buy-to-play model, while very attractive to players, is that eventually the money runs out. P2P allows for sustained income which means that with enough subscriptions, the servers can run indefinitely. With B2P, once the playerbase is basically at its apex, and less and less players start coming in, the devs are back at square-one with no money and servers that need to be paid for.

I do agree with you on the advertising thing. A larger playerbase, at least 2k active users, would only do wonders for them, both financially and for the good of the game.

I can't respond all for now, but i will say this: It only allows for sustained income where there is a playerbase still paying. Look at wildstar, guild wars, everquest - do you think those games with f2p w/ cosmetics for laughs? It's not sustainable when the playerbase drops so small that the community keeps hemorrhaging itself in size simply due to the nature of the system. Its actually sort of depressing to think about.

[Massa]

Thank you for your overwhelmingly tl;dr opinion.

[Uephorias]

Thank you for your overwhelmingly tl;dr opinion.

Thanks for your unneccessary, derogatory bump in my thread.

[Massa]

Thank you for your overwhelmingly tl;dr opinion.

Thanks for your unneccessary, derogatory bump in my thread.

you're welcome : )

im glad this community is so nice

[Tonkyhonk]

Firstly,
As far as I understand, it was never explicitly stated anywhere that Lorbjar were planning on having a P2P system.

to be fair, i remember seeing either of them talk about it, particularly mentioning "subscription-base" at least 3 times on the forums, and more in irc. the forum search doesnt let me find the old posts somehow and i cant give you a link, but not only devs were mentioning but also quite a few players encouraged them to go for it.

Secondly,
to pay for a game is alpha is absolutely asinine

i think "alpha" is just what they like to claim as this game status. dont be bothered by the title they give. its "eternal alpha", so it wont become an official released game in the future anyways, i suppose.