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

[Hessah]

We shouldn't be. Firstly they opened the cash shop. People are paying for items and services. This is no longer a beta - and if outspark still thinks it is, then this company is in for a real surprise when they see people rollbacking cash charges.

I just thought i read an announcment recently that at the end they said "enjoy the open beta"... but i cant find it >< so either they took it out (which i wont be surprised) or i was imagining things....

they never announced that its no longer beta... but i reckon they did that on purpose to give them room to make mistakes.... which is rediculous but that's wat they're doing...

i think everyone else pretty much have the same point of view as me...

[Yosei]

=/ They seem to be acting unprofessional. Even if it is on a forum, its still a business, and a service, and if they're going to post something, they should keep it up there. I coulda swore I read some kind of announcement update thingy afew weeks ago, I can't remember what it was..*gone goldfish* but I went to look for it, and I couldn't find it anywhere @.@ Guess they deleted it.

[Loveless]

It's possible you saw an update annoucement but the date was probably old. I've seen it happen several times where for some reason old annoucements or event notices pop up in the front page.

@Hessah: I'm sure I saw that too about enjoying open beta... my ass I'll enjoy a thoroughly bugged game. *eyeroll*

[rokaraged]

Unfortunately hessah i believe thier keeping the term " open beta" just to hide behind because of all the bugs...

[Hessah]

yeah i know... that's wat i meant =D

[Ralath]

=/ They seem to be acting unprofessional. Even if it is on a forum, its still a business, and a service, and if they're going to post something, they should keep it up there. I coulda swore I read some kind of announcement update thingy afew weeks ago, I can't remember what it was..*gone goldfish* but I went to look for it, and I couldn't find it anywhere @.@ Guess they deleted it.

Obviously, the only remedy for this is to start a Screenshot Police. Starting now, we screenshot every single important announcement. @_@

*rolleyes*

[rokaraged]

Everyone has tried posting screenies constantly

ITs questionable whether they listen or not though...

*watches fiesta get shut down by Outspark KGB*

[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.

[Spirit]

As bad as I hate to, I have to close this thread, because of the age. Please check out the links below. It is considered necroposting if the thread is more than a month old. However, I will discuss it with the other mods to see if it can be reopened, since you brought up some very good points that could be discussed.

http://www.fiestafan.com/forums/announcement.php?a=1


http://www.fiestafan.com/forums/showthread.php?t=4813

EDIT: Open for discussion.

[Miles_Glorioso]

^^^ Sorry, first time posting on here. This thread actually brought me to fiestafan.com and I really wanted to put in my 2 cents!

Perhaps instead of re-opening the thread you could move my post to a new thread? It's just a thought, either way suits me.