Make in-store items purchasable with tokens

[Agrik]

There is a difference between vanity stuff and convenience stuff. More hats or hats for tokens most likely would not harm the game, except maybe hat trades

There is a difference indeed. "Convenience" stuff affects those who play with numbers and actions, and "vanity" stuff affects those who play with design and looks. I mean, people trying to make place or (more likely, "and") their char to look nice, eye-comforting or at least interesting, well, they play a game too. A game consisting of combining visual elements. Maybe musical and so on as well.

This interest in visual elements may be integrated in the gameplay, spinning the wheels of activity, popularity, income if you wish. A wish to have a dark wooden furniture may send some friend-wanderer into far lands where Plane grows, a wish to be a king (or queen btw) with no less than a shiny golden crown may be a reason to establish and defend a settlement in a rare place which has at least traces of gold, but otherwise useless and uncomfortable. And everybody would know that unusually good look costs quite an effort. On the other hand, selling such "vanity" things in a shop would both start to compete with in-game activity and devalue skills in style and decoration. Mostly because no sane person would try to sell items that look worse than in-game ones. So, instead of making the game better, such decision would make in-game design parts pale in comparison.

I won't dispute that this would increase income at least for some time, but nevertheless this would be trading a game quality for an income. When you can add this to the game and to its price if you feel your expenses being justified.

Convenience items do give economic advantage and are inevitably P2W.

And vanity items do give style advantage thus being pay-to-win-in-style. Unfortunately. Simply as that: people do not pay for nothing, they buy items they consider somehow meaningful.

Then you should argue that any form of convenience attached to a subscription (or the account verification) is bad for the game.

Generally, yes. But if we want to give players some kind of trial access before offering a deal, we inevitably need to set a difference between free and paid accounts, the only question is how to make it to have an impact on the gameplay as small as possible.

The second fairiest thing I can imagine after having no trial at all is what I've seen in W8, IIRC, when free trial was simply limited in time, but otherwise had no disparity with paid access. Unfortunately, available payment methods were quite limited then, and the change to a more wide spectrum coincided with a rework of subscription bonuses, so even the devs probably weren't able to distinguish what affected what.

So what, exactly, is the difference between having a game representation of that action (the token) and not having one?

The ease to not distinguish what is game and what is RMT, and to misstep on the slippery slope of the latter.

have you ever done the research on the economics of f2p games

What is called as such? The sheer percentage of f2p games being p2w makes me fear that this "economics of f2p" consists of p2w tricks and excuses to the same extent.

It's so they have something else to spend tokens on.

Why? They are not satisfied with the game they get for their money? Or what else they paid for?

The trouble with trying to get more money is that you have to be sure your goods worth what you're paid. Or you can find yourself in a situation when you take a generous payment... and later the customer announces you to owe him and asks for things you had no intent to sell.

[MagicManICT]

So what, exactly, is the difference between having a game representation of that action (the token) and not having one?

The ease to not distinguish what is game and what is RMT, and to misstep on the slippery slope of the latter.

They are all game items. There is no "slippery slope." I'm not getting into a long winded argument with you just like I'm not getting into one with Kaios. This thread has gone from being a simple request to some crazy discussion on the morality of the integrity of a virtual world. And that argument has lost all bounds of philosophical merit in this thread, and probably on the Internet as a whole.

The trouble with trying to get more money is that you have to be sure your goods worth what you're paid. Or you can find yourself in a situation when you take a generous payment... and later the customer announces you to owe him and asks for things you had no intent to sell.

This is a tangential debate on what the value of a subscription token should be if some people have more than they could possibly spend on a character for the life of a world.... or the life of what they'll be interested in here, and maybe a comment on the lack of anything of value to resell the tokens back to other players at a profit.

[Agrik]

They are all game items.

Well, tokens technically exist in the game, but I meant that they are not part of the gameplay, they're are unrelated to the in-game activity. You can't really "play" with them, because from the game viewpoint they're dummy items one only can move from one slot to another, drop, take, give. Even toads ant sand fleas have gameplay purposes, while tokens don't. But tokens have purposes as the means of representing and exchanging real money and real services (subscription), i.e. RMT. That's what I meant by differentiating items into "game" ones, gameplay-related, and RMT items.

This thread has gone from being a simple request to some crazy discussion on the morality of the integrity of a virtual world. And that argument has lost all bounds of philosophical merit in this thread, and probably on the Internet as a whole.

Not all topics are as simple as some may see them. Monetization of games is an incredibly complex topic being a part of "Is it socially acceptable to sell X" eternal discussions.

This is a tangential debate on what the value of a subscription token should be if some people have more than they could possibly spend on a character for the life of a world.... or the life of what they'll be interested in here, and maybe a comment on the lack of anything of value to resell the tokens back to other players at a profit.

I have to admit my English skills are not good enough to understand the message of this comment to my words, but maybe my understanding is not really needed.

[Kaios]

They are all game items. There is no "slippery slope." I'm not getting into a long winded argument with you just like I'm not getting into one with Kaios. This thread has gone from being a simple request to some crazy discussion on the morality of the integrity of a virtual world. And that argument has lost all bounds of philosophical merit in this thread, and probably on the Internet as a whole.

Dude go suck a fuckin dick then because you’re being an asshole. The discussion goes beyond the morality, I truly believe tokens are negatively influencing this game’s economy and I’ve stated my reasons why I believe that. We’re not having a debate with you because your only argument is that everything is fine. Go moderate instead of posting in this thread if you have nothing useful to contribute to the conversation. What the fuck is wrong with you?

[Ants]

Not all topics are as simple as some may see them. Monetization of games is an incredibly complex topic being a part of "Is it socially acceptable to sell X" eternal discussions.

The devs want to get money for their hard work. Making the game subscription only didn't work (see:W8), but this works. Can you think of a better solution?

When the game was 100% free to play, they got bored and stopped updating the game for years. At least this guarantees frequent updates. EDIT: Nevermind, I was wrong. They didn't get bored, they just started doing things that could provide them with real income instead of focusing on Haven. My bad.

[MagicManICT]

When the game was 100% free to play, they got bored and stopped updating the game for years. At least this guarantees frequent update

Uhh... No? Game development proceded up through w3 or so when they were initially contacted by Paradox about doing a similar game they could publish. (My time for when they were approached may be off.) Development up through the start of w6 was going as normal, but this is when they announced they had been working on a game for Paradox--Salem. Shortly after that, closed alpha testing for Salem started, and that's when work on Haven pretty much stopped until the middle-ish of w7, when they got out of their contract with Paradox, and had received the offer to hand off production of Salem to Mortal Moments.

I'm not entirely sure of the exact time frames on work on world 8 (new Haven) and the Paradox offers other than what can be gotten from the archives here. They never quit development "because they were bored," they put it aside as necessary to work on "day jobs" to make money they needed to continue to support the game. Also, very early on in Salem development jorb had said many things would be imported back into Haven, so you could even say that Salem development contributed to working on Haven.

[Granger]

One upside of tokens being able to buy verification would be that traders (who have excess tokens) could permanently upgrade the inventory of their bots without further real world currency cost.

[Agrik]

The devs want to get money for their hard work. Making the game subscription only didn't work (see:W8), but this works. Can you think of a better solution?

To start, I don't see your name being neither jorb nor loftar, yet you issue statements on what devs want and whether they achieved it. Were you authorized to speak on their behalf?

I can imagine this as said about some theoretical devs... but I see two different meanings of "to get money" mixed. First part about "getting money for work" makes sense only in terms of being paid or not paid at all, because one can't justify some specific amount of money by calling the work "hard". "Hard" is relative. Not to mention that many people, e.g. real miners, farmers and fighters, would likely object to programming a game being recognized as a hard work. And then in your second phrase you state that X didn't work for this. But they did get money. So now you speak about getting money as some particular quantity... which wasn't justified in the first place.

I can imagine that the expected revenue was not achieved... but there could be many different reasons for this besides subscription, obviously. I wonder why pinpoint it. Moreover, subscription isn't at all a guarantee to get as much money as you wish. Besides wrong price, the situation may be that society in general can't afford the work you are doing. It isn't about getting profit personally, it's about making a fair deal for everybody.

I'm sorry, this attempt to make a short answer to a complex topic seems to fall apart.

As for a better solution, I can think day and night about better solutions to problems common for others and me. To a game design, for example. But you seem to focus on getting more money for the same thing? It is not a problem that two sides of a deal share, it's an action against the other side... And I'm obviously not going to help in such a selfish activity. Only a note: a desire to get more money leads to the shady area of confusing and misleading other people, even if unintentionally.

At least this guarantees frequent updates.

It doesn't guarantee anything besides things the devs get money exactly for, i.e. new caps.

[MagicManICT]

The devs want to get money for their hard work. Making the game subscription only didn't work (see:W8), but this works. Can you think of a better solution?

To start, I don't see your name being neither jorb nor loftar, yet you issue statements on what devs want and whether they achieved it. Were you authorized to speak on their behalf?

It's an obvious conclusion given that they are the ones that set up the current fee and sales system. Also, there is clearly a history of them doing what is necessary to make ends meet. Prior to world 8, they relied on donations only, and took a contract with Paradox to develop a different game*, with Haven development severely suffering in the process. Subscriptions were attempted world 8 as Ants notes. It didn't work as planned. (Not sure if value, "free" version lacked enough value, the community being "less affluent" than other game communities, or some other reason, or a combination of all those.) World 9 added the current "verification/subscription" model in use. I don't recall exactly when game tokens were added in, but I don't recall it being right away. (It'd be in one of the patch notes in Announcements.) One of the things they've always said is they want to commit to Haven first and foremost in their lives, but they wanted to have some semblance of life, not starving artists, so they were going to do what is necessary to pay for the game development time, even if it means holding down full time jobs other than developing Haven.

*see my previous post (just a few above) about this period.

[Agrik]

It's an obvious conclusion given that they are the ones that set up the current fee and sales system.

This is obvious conclusion if one supposes that the devs always do what leads exactly to the desired result and always get exactly what they intended to get. Which is more obviously not the case, as they are humans.

Also, there is clearly a history of them doing what is necessary to make ends meet.

I can't judge how much the devs needed money. I only want to say that trading product (game) quality for speeding up income hampers the same income in future. I mean making gameplay less fair for a benefit of a vocal part willing to pay you more.

Subscriptions were attempted world 8 as Ants notes. It didn't work as planned. (Not sure if value, "free" version lacked enough value, the community being "less affluent" than other game communities, or some other reason, or a combination of all those.)

And I'm still unsure what is called "didn't work", now by you. What was expected from subscription that didn't happened? Subscription "works" simply: people get an access to the gameplay for some time (e.g. month) in exchange of paying you a fixed amount of money. It grants neither shower of money not media hype nor online counter surge.

Especially over the period of less than half a year (if it was only during W8). P2P vs P2W make difference over years, and mostly because of degradation of gameplay and erosion of game audience in the case of P2W, not because of some wonders created by P2P.

I want to emphasize, offering a fair deal doesn't guarantee comfortable income to live on, because it's possible that the target audience of your creation have not enough money either.