Ingame store

It would make modding easier for noobs if they had a bunch of redundant unit models to repurpose. There was a joke thread a while ago about how one could make a whole faction out of the custom commander models that people got through the kickstarter.

That said, I think that a microtransaction store would mostly just make people mad. Most mods that players write will probably come with the microtransaction items unlocked or disabled anyway.

Or maybe just be better than whats in the store.

Mike

AHA...the poll has spoken...in a word:

NO!

Well, with webkit UI it should be fairly easy to establish in-game store for particular server. You make some client mod as requirement to play on particular server. This mod downloads and shows new ACU models/skins/whatever. It could be done and without in-game store (via external store). Quite a probable thing to make server hosting economically viable for big gaming sites. UberEnt may implement this as well on their servers (for same reason), but that's probably not they thing that should take any effort now.

Servers, on other side, may sell models from steamworks (actually, it could be fairly easy to integrate steamworks into servers, as they are now crossplatform enough) and receive some partnership money from Valve in exchange (no need to model new units/ACUs).

*Looks at poll results* "this is the reason governments don't like referendums"

Voted "No, i hate that"...

you can blame "the warZ" for that opinion

the problem with ingame stores is, once the door is open is not likely to close again.
Most of the time starts with just "cosmetic items", but often enough it doesn't end there. Later on, also functional items start to appear, and so on.

So, from my perspective, just starting a shop is a bad idea.

They make games for two reasons, 1. they like games, 2. they can make a living out of it.

Giving away free content is not profitable, they wont make a living out of it.

Free content will SHORTEN the support for the game since they spend funds on as you put it in your next part "cosmetic crap".

Wait what? More pay for content equals more man-hours available.

They wont lose funds if they spend it on cosmetic crap that people pay for, they will earn more funds that they can use ("cosmetic crap" is profitable, allways have been) and those profits would not be used exclusively for more cosmetic crap (Thats a very unrealistic view). The funds earned would be used on support and other content too (like developing a expansions).

Its free content that you asked for that drains there funds and man-hours for nothing. Free content is the enemy of any gaming company and any gamer dedicated to said game.

Cant realy argue with that, i dont think it would lead to anything else then cosmetic items, but its not like i can see the future and its not unknown to happen.

You claim that an ingame store would mean more man power yet an ingame store will need a lot of content to stay profitable(costs on every transaction and such) so they need more and more content to keep going in turn they need more and more people dedicated to cosmetic content creation thus taking away time from working on code to actually make the game better.

A day has 24 hours of which you generally work 8 hours of during a work day if they had a team of 20 people working on the game thats 160 hours a day that they spend on a lot of coding and graphics now if an ingame store was to come into play they would have to take a lot of that time away from say making updates or expansion packs(I hate dlc's) that are worth it to buy it thus slowing expansion of the game itself.

Lets look at a really old game called knights and merchants it had 1 expansion pack yet even now 15 years after the game came out people are modding away at the game and there is still support for it from the original developers(granted if you can find them)
It might not be the right example but it goes to show that not every game and their dog needs to have an ingame store to stay viable.

Now take say the command and conquer series(Not counting the recent games that ea classed as command and conquer) some of them had 3 expansions and where supported for over 10 years by their developers they had new content released in the form of actual expansions and not mini updates that everyone calls dlc's i remember buying those expansions when they came out for 50 dollars a piece and they where worth every bit of it as they added so much content that it was a whole new game almost.

That is what any developer should focus on releasing a core game that is so great that patches to fix bugs and minor balance changes incase of overpowered units are the case is all that is needed and then they use their gained revenue to work an other year on an expansion and maybe a other one and grow a community that loves the game not for its constant new constant but for what the game is an epicly made game that does not require weekly new content to be fun.

Look at league of legends all they do is release new champions and overhaul items have you looked at their map? they make it seem like they have planned to have 20+ maps to play on all with their own styles of playing but because they focused on money first they stuck to 4 maps and 109(including the new one about to be released) champions each with atleast 2 skins if you want to buy a new champion directly with skin combo it costs you 15 dollars or you play the game for about 8 hours and buy the champion for free.

Because of that everyone buys champions as they want to have the latest of the latest as they tend to be op and they want to have an edge to be able to win so they spend money, For the fun of it go read back into early beta of lol what they had planned to have 10 different maps and about 50 champions by the end of 2012 what do they have now? 108 champions and 4 maps because their champions is where their money is so they only focus on that and spend no time on anything but that.

Same is going on with almost any MOBA game or mmo game the developers love the money to much so they dont spend time on what does not make money now id rather have a game that releases an expansion that adds a whole new campaign or a faction with its own story line and pay 50 dollars for it then spending 50 dollars on buying 12 new missions that came out 1 at a time every week and then having to pay a other say 20 dollars on a new faction.

Or in what you wanted say 5 dollars or 1 dollar for a skin for a unit when this game will have modding capabilities and in turn will allow you to get any skin in the store for free anyway if you really wanted to so they wont run a profit on this.

If uber made the base game and then released 10 epic expansion i bet they would gain more money out of that then having an ingame store with 2000 skins for 50 units as that is what riot is doing right now pumping out skins that are only half decent and champions they claim have been in production for a year+(elise was in production for several years but most arent as some are nearly copies from other champs from other games) that do not fit with the current champion selection.

So really no an ingame store would shift away the focus of what they want to create here as if they wanted an ingame store do you think they would have done a kickstarter? I think they would just have gone to a big producing company and showed them the concept and said "It prints money via ingame store" and hope that the guys that work at that company agree to it.

Okey, heres the thing, coders dont work on models and textures. Sure they would most likely be some code that needs adding to, but that would be a minor part of the work in such new content.

So saying that less people would be working on code becuse they are doing cosmetic dlc's isent realy correct.

Yes they might offer support for PA for a very long time even without a ingame store, but its much more likely to happen if they have some sort of ingame store so that they continue to profit.

Im not saying a ingame store is a must for a game to get continued support or expansions, im just saying that it makes it more likely if they have one.

Im gonna go out on a limb here and say that they can do both.

Buying game changing content (or boosts to get game changing content before the curve) and cosmetic packs is two wastly different things, as i have said before. Im 100% against any dlc thats not purely cosmetic.

Okey, once again, cosmetic dlc versus non cosmetic dlc. The cosmetic dlc im talking about is more along the lines of the special model/texture packs buyable for dawn of war II. Not mini single player missions or new factions.

The difference being that others cant see your mod'ed skins and aloot of people dont want to hassle with mods at all.

Ingame stores with micro transactions tend to be very profitable (Thats why more and more games add them), so i doubt it.

Producing companies dont do risks willingly, PA is a risk. Even if they hade marketed it with a ingame store i doubt anyone would give it funding it other then the gamers.

Besides, the store wouldent be in the hands of some money hungry producers that dosent have any interest in understanding the game and just wants more money, it would be in the hands of the game developers.

While said devs would still be money hungry i would like to think that we can put alittle more faith in them (to not mess the game up) then in a publisher.

Unless the items for sale are player mods.

That, my good sir, could be quite the 'tiger-by-the-tail' to tackle, and really should get it's own thread, frankly I'm not even sure how I feel about it to be honest.

Mike

You may see any item is micro-mod. Unit pack is bigger mod. As I've told you I'm fairly sure it may end up with selling user-made models via steamstore. But this depends on modding license, actually. Uber may forbid any commerce or even claim all rights for all user-made content.

I was more so referring to user backlash and potential difficulty of keeping pirated mods in check, frankly unless there is already a F2P style shop seems liek it'd be way mroe trouble than it's worth.

Mike

FOR THE LOVE OF GOD NO