Reasons why Fiesta is going down the drain....and fast

[rokaraged]

not everyone has to PVP in Fiesta... if u're looking for a PVP game u might be playing the wrong game... (considering all we've got is a guild war where results isnt even recorded.. seems liek PVP isnt highly regarded by Fiesta atm)

cash shop item really help boost the PvE scenario though... so that's the "up side" of cash shop?

i mean if non-cash players can get the same thing s cash players.. then why would cash players spend real money in game? there'll hv to be an incentive for us to pay for their salaries....

wat event thing again? the xmas event where u get random price? i said already.. i got 3 chocolate stockings from Dakkon... i dont think the non-cash players missed out on much... nor did we cash players gained much..


EDIT after reading loveless post: yeah i do hate them for promising a compensation then deleting the post and pretend they never had a fault! but.... wat can we do?

1. Pvp is still a gameplay element of the game. You can rationalize all you want saying the game isn't meant for it but the point is...its implimented but its BUTCHERED
2. Of course they need incentives....But in this rate you will feel FORCED by the game to buy cash shop later on

[Hessah]

=/ if u have to put it like that.... i drop the issue...

i'm still addicted to fiesta!

[Hyper]

I totally agree. How the hell do bots even get to Uruga without being detected?

I've heard of people buying "gold", and was even accused of doing it myself. I went farming, them showed 200s to someone who was supposedly a friend, then mocked a noob (grammar of the lazy people who buy gold) "ya iZ jus bye teh gold form sites they wrok!!!1!". I guess some people can't take a joke. And I guess some people have to tell everyone they know that I did.
That might have seemed the only way possible, since a lot of people didn't go to Uruga in CB. Whatever.

/rant

[Whudafux]

money plis hypar. :3

[Hyper]

money plis hypar. :3

LOL Someone didn't read that. xD

I have 9s and ~360c... How about I plvl you? xD

[Loveless]

Well, you have to keep in mind that though Fiesta and Bright Kingdom is the same game Bright Kingdom has had two years of experience. Therefore the contents of Fiesta will be far less than that of Bright Kingdom. But with that being said the level of customer service is intolerable. I've recently visited the Outspark site and I see in the Announcements (at the front page) a thread that is 2 months old popping up. Another time I even saw something from September there as well.

Someone (was it Hessah) said something about promising compensation and then Outspark deleted that thread. That is just wrong, you're not a politician so do what you say you will. I have used the Cash Shop as well and I wish I had spent those dollars better now when I see how horrid things are in and out of game. And I bet you that if you started a thread like this in the official forums the GMs will just turn a blind eye... let the CL deal with it.

Another picky topic about character balance. I can see how it's a tricky situation but to ask for opinions about it in the general forums is much too chaotic. Everyone is going to say their class is underpowered or another class is overpowered. But why the heck are they asking the people now when the problems listed in their polls have, in fact, been addressed more than enough times (some just a rant) on the forums. Instead of dragging on the process they should just set up a schedule and work on an actual timeline to bring players what they need most to enjoy the game. They need to show the public at least a vague outline of what they will be working on throughout the year... a list. They don't even give out what they fix in detail... or even fix what they say they would.

[rokaraged]

Bright Kingdom might have 2 years experience

But its been around 25% of that 2 years atm...and looking at the current status with all the bugs bots, game play problems, i would find it a stretch to say we have 10% the gaming experience they have in BK

[Yosei]

They probably didn't have all of that stuff developed when they released the game in Korea, but then kept developing as the game went on. That doesn't mean it should be the same for us.

[Triumph]

I expect I'll get lots of tl;dr after this, but whatever:

<Wall of Text>

Note: See bottom of post if you're that lazy.

First of all, I'll hit on the bots. The high leveled community (myself included) does not feel the presence of bots at all. There are none in Uruga, Forest of Slumber, Concealed Prison, Ancient Elven Woods, whichever map you choose. I'm aware that there are floods of bots, myself encountering no less than twenty in Sea of Greed when playing on an alt. However, it kills the game for newcomers and low leveled players, which means that eventually, like stated, Fiesta will fall.

Secondly, gold sellers. RMTs, as they are commonly known, are annoying for those who work hard for their gold. The figures aren't quite correct here, it's around $3 USD for 100s, and $30 USD for one gold. Can they be assed to do it and check? No, that's "grunt" work, and GMs are far above such "grunt" work. Not much more I can say here, let's move on.

Thirdly, the lack of new players is largely due to the absence of caring GMs, CMs, or CSRs. Don't give me some bullshit answer that they are active; they aren't. Simple as that. I was a Closed Beta 1 tester, and Bla~ahs was too. I'm sure she can confirm that Outspark staff are about 1/100 as active as they were during testing. I understand that they have other pressing concerns, but I highly doubt it's necessary to remain in invisible mode the whole time. Break, Guntrix, dschang, Kezzerdrix and the old crew are rarely seen, if at all, by Fiesta players. Kezzerdrix left Outspark, that's understandable. Break posts more frequently in Technical Support and Secret of the Solstice, Guntrix is gone too, and dschang never posts anywhere.

Some of you may argue that Jagex Ltd, the creator of Runescape, is active.

They're not, see below.

Q: "Jagex is active! They ban bots daily!" How can you say that?
A: Jagex only talks to those "chosen" few, their Player Moderators. Yes, they give constructive feedback to them, but only them. They have secret meetings that only Player Moderators can attend, and if partycrashers show up, they get teleported somewhere else. These secret meetings are called "surgeries." Bet you didn't know that, did ya?

How do I know this?

Once upon a time, I was a Runescape nerd, and yes, I was a Player Moderator. One of the first 200, if I recall correctly.

Fourthly, all companies have that drive. I'll use numerous examples to prove my point. The game many find pathetic that people play, Runescape, was run by one of such companies, which is named Jagex. In an effort to "protect" their users from RMTs, Jagex created a trade limit. In short, players were not allowed to trade if one trader's offer differed by a value 30k gold of the other's offer. The limit of 30k is the equivalent of 3s in terms of Fiesta currency.

That sounds confusing, so I'll redefine into Fiesta terms.

Assume a +9 weapon is valued at 900s. However, the NPC value is worth 30s. Thus, you would only be able to purchase it from a price range of 27s-33s.

Sounds stupid, doesn't it? They implicated it anyways.

Another is ijji. For those of you from MAIET Entertainment, aka GunZ: The Duel, the GunZ service was once upon a time good. Then they signed a contract with ijji to host. Now, ijji plays a tune very similar to Outspark: if you want to make your life easier, spend about $100 USD and you're set for a year. Armor sets are roughly $10 USD for 3 months, and if you factor premium meds, there's an additional $5 USD you spend for 12 months. Also, the best shotgun in the game is worth $12 a year, and in a game where just about everyone uses shotguns, many people buy this. So basically, your yearly payout comes down to the following:

4($10) + 12($5) + ($12) = $112 USD. I was optimistic, I guessed less.

If you stay around that long, you pay another $112 USD, and so on. They don't care if you quit, they've made your money already.

Conclusion for the lazy people:

1) Bots running around unchecked gradually decreases the new gaming population. Does Outspark seem to care? Not really. They have "better" things to do than merely "banning" bots.

2) Outspark bans RMT trading, but they can't be assed to do "grunt" work, which involves running around in the three servers banning gold spammers, and can't be assed to check IPs for those people who suddenly gain gold with no apparent work.

3) Outspark staff inactivity is as low of that of Jagex, ijji, Nexon, Gala-Net, or whatever company you pick. It's inevitable, just hope that Outspark doesn't develop their present illness into a disease.

4) Money makes the world turn around. Fact of life. Outspark has to make money somehow. Notice the ads? Or how much a mount costs? It may not seem like much, but you pay $6.54 for a raccoon a month.

No, I'm not encouraging a boycott, or trying to be a martyr, or being a badass, or trying to force my opinion upon you. I'm laying the statistics out for you, and I'll let you judge and make your own opinions. Yes, there will be biased comments in there; it doesn't matter what you read, you'll end up with biased comments from the author.

</Wall of Text> <run flamingcomments.exe> <run flameshield.exe> <run tl;dr>

[Miles_Glorioso]

Okay, I have some points I'd like to both agree and disagree on a few points.

1. I'm very well versed in Economics - and yes, while inflation is occuring in game, it's not because of Gold sellers. Actually (contrary to what you're saying) Gold sellers are actually helping to reduce inflation.

Inflation occurs if money is being introduced into the market (a very well known principal). The game naturally introduces more money into the market by simply completing quests and such, so the game induces inflation by itself. Real world nations induce a little inflation themselves to account for an increase in population.

But what Gold sellers actually do is they acquire money and remove it from the economy for an extended period of time until someone buys it, which is delaying the self-induced inflation, thus an inflation reduction.

What the Gold sellers are doing is metaphorically similar to closing the gap between the rich and the poor in real life societies; they're closing the gap between low-level and high level characters. The divide exists purely in the benefit of the high-level characters.

Something I thought I'd put out there - there has been a dramatic shift in which noticeably more stores are being set up to SELL things, and fewer stores are being set up to BUY things. Though I doubt there is a strong corrolation with this and the Gold sellers - anybody else find this interesting?



2. The overpopulation of the higher level towns is easily directly related to the Gold sellers. As the gap between low-level and high-level characters is closing because of low-levels buying gold and becoming over-equipped, naturally low-level players will be levelling up quicker and joining the higher-level characters in the higher-level areas. Now while this isn't necessarily the case (again, one would have to have a statistical analysis of the actual exchanges of gold for money), one thing that should be noted is how the behavior looks.

If we're detecting a decline in the number of incoming players, then we're looking at a linear regression (a logarithmic curve). If in an ideal situation every person who joined referred 2 or more friends, we'd be seeing an exponential growth. Now a game that doesn't demand payment to keep the servers running would like to see a linear regression in player population, and the reason is because after a certain amount of players join, they will have to made costly additions to the hardware components of the server. This is a RISK-AVERSE behavior which is very practical for a company like Outspark with the way they profit from their products. (It should be mentioned that staff is a constant cost and is manageable independent of player population)

Now Outspark must have known from the beginning that the player population would behave like a linear regression, or else they would be charging us money to ensure they could maintain the servers.

What I would also like to point out is that a player can have multiple characters, and typically the characters would be at different levels (not all the same level). So perhaps one can argue that Fiesta has low replayability if players tend to put more hours per day into their higher-level characters than their low-level characters?

3. Bots - As far as the chat-spamming bots, they're annoying and slow my load time whenever I go to Roumen. It won't fix the problem, but they should look at what Guild Wars has done to prevent spamming the chat interface. Guild Wars has a time lapse that prevents people from posting many times in a row. It would reduce the amount of posting a single character can make in a row, which will also help reduce the non-bot spamming that occurs also.

As I say, it's not a fix, but it would help.

Also, they should do something about Macroing. I've already witnessed a few characters that have been levelling up through Macro Software, based on odd behaviors and lack of communication. Of course I can't prove anything, perhaps the players are just odd themselves, but after seeing enough of them in other online MMORPGs, you start to recognize patterns

4. Finally, yes Fiesta is purely a cash crop for Outspark. Giving out prizes to those who have paid Outspark is their way of thanking those who contributed to Outspark's funding. This occurs everywhere in real life - Television stations that rely on public funding offer special benefits to those who actually pay.

What you should realize is that those who actually pay money to Outspark help keep Fiesta alive and without them the servers would be shut down. I wouldn't complain if they dished out a little bonus to those people now and then, they're doing all the non-payers a favor by keeping Fiesta up so the rest of us can play.

Realistically you can't complain about people spending money getting rewarded for it in game - if Fiesta is free to everyone with the option to pay, you're being rewarded by those who pay by not having to do the same. In-game rewards for paying are the things people who don't pay sacrifice - sort of a way that all the non-payers reward those who pay for keeping the servers up. This system is very fair, just those who don't pay feel limited when in fact they simply prefer not paying to paying more than they prefer better/cooler stuff (only acquired by paying) to the regular stuff.

Simple question of preferences, it's natural to feel limited, just no point in complaining about it. But yes, Fiesta is just another source of money to Outspark. If it wasn't, Fiesta wouldn't exist - plain and simple.