New Guild Halls...too expensive

i liked the article- thank you. it sounds like something most f2p games set out to achieve, but got derailed along the way. most still cater to whales. and make the mistake of thinking that most of their players fit that bill

Thank you for the update, Bloodguts.

It would be really nice if this sort of thing had been documented and released when the halls went up for sale.

They didn't test the guild halls, as far as I've seen. No documentation available.
XD $350 to $400 for a copy pasted partial zone with a copy pasted dragon that gives copy pasted and slightly modified EXP vial that wasn't even tested....
fantastic... /sarcasm off

So to sum up, it's more geared towards people who want to buy plat with cash DBC, but don't want to pay for Krono? And yet they keep ignoring my /feedback to allow DBC to be brokerable. o.0

According to some of the folks that play on Test in Homeshow channel, the halls were never put on Test at all. Apparently in the internal preparation for release no one thought to place an item on the grass to see what happens (given the well known and reported issues with housing elevation) or what happens when you purchase an amenity, and the owner of a brand new costly hall winds up with an unmovable giant ship at the zone in.

Sometimes you defend the games you love, even in the face of all logic. And sometimes you're left stunned and thinking... I can't even. This, along with the recent gimmick-over-substance trends, is the latter.

You posed a lot of questions (etc), so you will get a lot of answers (etc).

You assume wrongly.

I do not know, nor do I claim to. Unless the Devs responsible for it tell us, it is a mystery. I would be surprised if it was a lot, but that is just an assumption.

I have already provided a detailed reason as to why I believe the pricing of the new Guild Halls is not beyond the measure of reason. I have not seen any evidence from you that warrants changing my position on this topic.

If the monthly subscription fee was raised to $64 a month, at the same time FTP was abolished, I would agree with you. But we are talking about a fluff purchase. No one needs a new Guild Hall to play the game, and it provides no tangible advantage beyond an intermittent EXP boost for random alts of the guild.

I am not concerned with what you posted on other topics. I am content to discuss this topic, on the merit of the facts people bring to the table. I have provided my facts, and look forward to seeing yours.

True on both counts.

Actually, I believe complaints about the new Guild Halls would be more credible if the new Guild Halls did not require upkeep. In the name of keeping the new Guild Halls as fluff items, rather than pay to win items, I absolutely defend the decision to have them charge upkeep. I truly hope you can understand why?

Looking forward to your counter-view.

So, we bought this guild hall.

It had some new amenity.

The new amenity appears to be a single time claim exp vial, that at level 100 fails to even give a single tithe point.

It gives less exp than 2 minutes spent killing solo monsters.

It's an amenity useful for level 5 characters, but provides ABSOLUTELY no benefit at 100.

Not only that, but you can't place items outside of the main vertical axis, therefore, no building outside like you can in every other guild hall.

We bought it, and honestly I think our old t3 was superior. 400$ to find out that we couldn't even place things outside of the tiny shaft that is the central courtyard, and an amenity that does nothing.

Ways to fix it ->

Unlock the restrictions in regards to placing items. Allow us to build out to that outer ring over the nothingness.

Change the amenity to be something that has some QoL benefits. Two suggestions are below ->

A 24h buff that triples flight speed? It would allow people to fly to zones faster, without ever changing anything about combat.

A portal that allows us to teleport to any/all current tier zones, directly from the guild hall. That would save time and lag from zoning to contested zones and getting everyone in the same instance.

Just, something. We spent 400$ to downgrade our guild hall. Feels bad.

For comparison, I bought my EQ1 guild a "Palatial Guild Hall" (or whatever the largest available size was) for $25. A guildmate bought us a neighborhood zone (a zone with plots for the exteriors of a few dozen houses and a guild hall) for another $25, if I remember right.

To anybody that these two guild halls appeal to, I would like to invite you to my yard sale that I'm having next weekend. Weather permitting of course. If you'll pay $400 for this you simply won't believe what you can get for $800 from me.

You find the price high then don't buy it. It has nothing to do with greed of the daybreak. It's not a mandatory purchase. You don't call tesla car manufacturers greedy because it costs $100K. You just don't buy it.

That expensive and still requires upkeep? Reminds me of a joke:

Kid puts up a lemonade stand on the corner. His sign reads, "Lemonade, $10 a cup". Woman walks up to him and says, "Kid, that is some expensive lemonade. How many cups do you expect to sell with a price like that?" "This way I only have to sell one!"

This brings to mind a Dave Chappelle skit about him walking around the mall of "The Internet" walks into a room because a hot chick asked him if he was interested and he leaves the room a little later with a goat on a leash and a look of disgust on his face. Gotcha *****!

Yes spending 5 years inventing a luxury electric car is completely comparable to copy-pasta an existing zone and slapping a price tag on it.

Anybody who doesn't see how a $400 GH affects players who don't buy it, is just completely naive.

You probably thought the same about $25 mounts. But then they add BL for $25, Mercs for $15, Reforing for $10, Tradeskill Apps $10, which you never would have considered paying on top of your $40-120 expac and $15/mo subscription, but compared to the $25 mount it starts seeming more reasonable. I can reforge my gear for less than 1/2 the cost of a stupid looking mount? count me in!.

Edit: Oh cool check it out, i can get a Noble Aerakyn + Heroic Character + slot for only $77, this will go great with my new $400 GH

Now that they've set the precedent for $400 fluff items, you don't think they're going to start pushing the envelope on $30 account features?

Not to argue the rest of your post, but at one point everything you list above was available in the Age of Discovery for $40.

You can thank the exchange of in game currency and items for real money. Then add the inflation and boom prices go through the roof and some will buy them at that price because they already have 70+ kronos, what else do you need?

If people started playing after aod was available to buy, if they just bought the current available expansion, do they get access to it? Or is it only the people that had the original expansion that didn't have to pay extra? I was just curious because I wasn't sure.

Sure, but you've always got all previous expacs when you buy the current expac. Except for Age of Discovery they decided to nickel and dime us for the features afterwards.

"Because people are paying $25 for mounts, of course they'll pay $10 for game features" which really just lends a lot of weight to my whole argument to begin with.

Well said, Jaden. You offer a very excellent post and I was being flippant.

The difference is Teslas work and have a lot of testing under their belts before they are released to be sold. I totally disagree that this has nothing to do with the greed of Daybreak. This item offerred for purchase is EXACTLY about that greed.

True, you don't have to buy it.

In all fairness eq2 used to charge use for adventure packs separately. I don't see how paying for AoD is any different than when we used to have to buy 3 adventure packs at 15 dollars each to have all the content.

I also could have sworn I remember buying an expansion that didn't come with the one just previously, but I can't find any information to back that up. I may just be remembering wrong.