Dev Update: Update 10 part 2 | Forums

[hypercuber314]

If it would cost more, that would be even worse. I dont understand the Point you're trying to make unless you're implying that ppl don't know how to count, the Price would still be to High changing nothing.

there wasn't really a point. more curiosity. some people are completely against microtranactions and would say no, some people have been asking for more items to spend their in game money on, ect. i wanted to clarify peoples views in terms of what people don't like about it by comparing it to a similar idea. from your comment i would say the price is the main issue for you, for other people it could be lack of grind-ability or something completely different. my only other point is what i said in the previous comment, that the more expensive items seem to be designed to be fairly rare like the more expensive cosmetic items in games like TF2.

[I-Fazo-I]

Well i'm complaining about the Price because they already said that its going to be next to impossible to Grind out everything. Meaning not even the best of the best will get it forcing you to spend Money if you ever want to own One of the more expansive items.
I wouldn't care about the Price at all if that wasn't the Case.
So improving the grind-ability would be just as good as lowering the Price.
At the Moment anyone that will own that super rare item will just be 'that Guy that spended 10 bucks on One Outfit'.

I know nothing about tf2 but i assume they have lots items that are no where near 10 bucks.
But like i Said im just guessing and don't really care for tf2.

[En0-]

I will answer more things later, but I can just answer this one easily/quickly.

Well i'm complaining about the Price because they already said that its going to be next to impossible to Grind out everything. Meaning not even the best of the best will get it forcing you to spend Money if you ever want to own One of the more expansive items.

When we say "can't grind out everything", it means it will be nearly impossible to grind the 30+ new items altogether. but grinding the most expansive ones will be possible if you focus on getting this ones and not the smaller ones.

[I-Fazo-I]

I will wait and see how everything turns out. Most likely i won't care about most items anyways and if i manage to get the things i want this might not be as Bad as i thought. Cheers

[En0-]

Hello,

Let's try to answer everything.

i also never said that you guys were greedy in general but having one outfit cost 10$ (even if its just one that cost that much) IS imo a bit greedy no matter how you put it.
it would be much easier for me to spend more money on the base game if that meant you would have more reasonable prices for this. i don't know how anyone could buy those outfits without feeling a bit weird.

There will be lot of items (including some outfits) with more reasonable prices.
The reason why there is a few objects with a higher price is to make them more rare as it is what some players want.

Cheers,

[En0-]

Hello,

Well im against microtransactions in all forms. I think its a better long term solution to focus on growing your fanbase rather than milking your current fanbase for more money. While microtransactions might be commonplace on mobile and to a lesser extent on PC, there is still a huge stigma on console which I assume is the primary source of income for redlynx.

Can you explain why you're against? First it doesn't milk the fanbase. It's the same for everyone and the ones who will get the more free acorns (by playing the game and participating to some community events) are actually the players of the fanbase. Then, I really want to understand why players are against. My opinion is that they associate it with other practices (Pay2Win, recurring payment, micro-transaction required to progress etc...). However, in our case, the virtual currency is just a flexible way for us and the player to deal some customization object. It wouldn't have been better for players if we would have just put it in some big DLCs.

If you are dead set on putting them in fusion then I think it needs to be handled in the least obtrusive way possible.

I agree and I believe it is the case. I don't see how it is obtrusive as it is totally optional. I don't see how we can do less obstrusive.

As other have mentioned, making the items easily obtainable through gameplay is a good way of doing it.

Obtainable through gameplay is important.
"Easily" is relative (what is easy for a core player may be really difficult for another player). Also, if it's easy to get it for free, why would people buy it?

The smart way to do it in my opinion is to launch microcurrency that is essentially worthless and virtually nobody would even consider buying. Then as time goes on start introducing more expensive and harder to obtain items. You know, let people dip their toes in the pool before shoving them in the water.

No, that's manipulating players brain and that's not how we want to interact with our community. We want to be fair and transparent. We explain how we do it and why we do it and why doing it that way is the best way to go for them and for us.

But I want to say again, I think microtransactions at this phase are an all around bad idea. This is the first trials game available on playstation, you are just beginning to establish a fanbase on that platform. There is plenty of money to still be made via traditional sales. Things like microtransactions should be reserved for when you can no longer grow through a traditional sales model imo.

Playstation 4 is our biggest player base on Fusion. Trials is a game that we call "ever green" meaning most of the sales don't happen in the 2 months after launch. The game is sold steadily on the long term. However, we are now 16 months after launch and if the sales are satisfying, we still need to renew the stream of revenue by releasing a DLC and integrating micro transaction.

Maybe im wrong but I was under the impression the trials series was doing well for itself. These types of monetization practices just seem out of place and unnecessary at this point. Unless redlynx is hard up for cash and layoffs are looming. This just seems like a case of a business trying to grow too fast.

RedLynx is not hard up for cash and layoffs. In terms of business with Trials Fusion, our goal was to expand the brand as a real cross-platform HD brand through a quality game. We didn't reach the 90+ at launch as did Evolution but the score of 80 on metacritic reflects the quality of the game at launch. Now, even if not everything is perfect, we believe we reached a great quality and the indicators (retention, playtime, season pass sales, etc...) are in-line. The sales are also much stronger than on Evo. However, the budget was much bigger as well because working cross platform for the first time is expansive and the game is also much bigger/more complicated than the previous ones.

This type of monetization is the best for the player and for us. It's the most flexible and the fair way to do it. Please propose something that is fair for both parties and flexible

I think its an unnecessary risk, and I think it has a good chance of backfiring.

It won't backfire because it has been done by respecting players: partially easily grindable for free and totally optional (only cosmetics).

EDIT: And En0, even though I vehemently disagree with you on just about everything. I gotta give you credit for engaging with everyone, microtransactions are a particularly tough sell.

Thanks for this.



At the moment, I believe that people who are against this change don't go further in the reflexion than "Micro transaction are bad" and I disagree with that. There is a good way to do it and a bad way to do. We did the good way.

Cheers,

[En0-]

Hello Puddinsworld,

Hi all,

I love Trials. I suck at it, but I love it. It absorbs more of my time than is healthy, but I don't care. I loved evo, I love Fusion, and I love Frontier. They are all great. Sure there are some problems now and then, but Trials is the only game I have that has kept me interested for years on end playing every week.

Thanks for underlining that, that's something really important.

Keeping Trials going is partly our responsibility as a community, and partly RedLynx. They are not going to make if we are not playing it, and they also aren't going to make it if they lose money on it.

Totally true.

Most games at this point would be done - DLC out, sales cycle done, next game lined up. I know many may think this would be good for Trials too, but I would much prefer Fusion to last 5 years with continuous updates and a way of financing those than to put out a new games every 12 months / 2 years with the inevitable problems we have seen. Part of that is DLC - but DLC almost acts like a circuit breaker for the casual triallists who can't play most of Track central due to DLC components. So we are left with a few options - we either turn Trials into a yearly subscription service (which I don't think would work), or implement something that unfortunately seems to work..... microtransactions.

So Trials games are community based games, this doesn't fit really well with new releases that split the community. That's why we want to keep the game alive as long as possible.

One point I would like to add is that if Tourny's are the acorn earning method, can we please change up the tournaments? I feel like they have been the same since Tourny's started....

I think we will do these special "acorn" tournaments during the week end and they will always be new.

Cheers,

[En0-]

Hello booped,

I'm a great fan of keeping things simple, listen to what your customers want, build it for them and sell it to them.

When trials has micro transactions and unicorns obviously this process has not been followed.

The core community is a small part of the player base. We do things for this community but if we don't want to have to milk them, we also have to care about the rest of the player base.

I also disagree with the "do what your customers want", yes we have to do that but we don't have to do ONLY that.

As said, the unicorn didn't aim to satisfy the core players. For this, we did the "RedLynx vs All Stars" event. The unicorn is here to bring the game towards a more "stupidly fun and aventure" aspect which appeal to new players.

The micro transactions are not supposed to appeal to anyone (obviously) but if we communicate them well and explain why/how and why doing it that way is the best thing for the players and for us, I believe it can be positive at the end. If we do it the right way and are transparent about it, I am sure the community will understand.

Cheers,

[En0-]

Hello skycamefalling,

Well, sorry for all the fuss. Everything's fine, as far as I'm concerned.


To get back to topic...
I don't have anything against microtransactions in general, as long as there are a few things considered:

1. they should be purely cosmetic (which they are)

2. it should be possible to earn them in game, which they kinda are, but the conversion of ingame earnt $ to acorns should still be considered, since the ingame money gets totally worthless at some point pretty "early on" in the game. Like I said, a conversion rate of anywhere between 100/1 to 1000/1 would be nice, whereas the first one would be a really awesome gesture of the Redlynx team, but is probably (understandably) not going to happen and the second one would be on the other end of the spectrum, a little harsh, but I would still think of that to be fair. Meeting somewhere in the middle or 3/4 of the way would be the appropiate thing to do, I guess.

3. half the price would do as well, in my opinion, 10$ really does seem a bit much. On the other hand, if there will actually be a conversion of the ingame money to acorns and the conversion rate is fair, the pricing might be acceptable, given that you have a realistic chance to earn the acorns and people who don't want to wait/put that much time into the game can just buy it.

The reason why we don't do a conversion is because the initial economy of the in-game $ was not designed for that and it's totally broken from that point of view. But we'll do something for this in-game $ currency as proposed by iBlubbil.

The 10$ price is the highest price for some objects, 95% of the objects are much lower than that.

Cheers,

[En0-]

Hello,

i agree except, i think a 5 year cycle for fusion is a bit long, maybe a 3-4 year cycle would be better. however i can perfectly understand why people that have been asking for more bike and rider customization feel frustrated.

I don't think we'll go on a 5 year circle though In terms of community management and events, we may go on a 3 years plan (which is already huge). In terms of new content/feature, I think we'll have at least 1 feature update before the end of the year and some new content (customization objects) until October/November. This will bring us 20 months after launch which is already an achievement to have been able to support the game so heavily for such a long time.

After that, I hope we'll be able to do 1 big thing for Fusion somewhere in 2016 but I don't know exactly under which form yet and if we will be able to do it. I really hope, that would be great.

there are a few things to consider, first is that it's the only place a system like this can be fairly implemented (i know many of you would prefer it not to be implemented at all)
secondly from what i understand the more expensive items are designed to be rare, an in game status symbol of sorts.

This is correct.

i second the the idea of new tournaments, they were fun at first but they have got very repetitive. that being said i am really looking forward to the new update and DLC, they can't come soon enough.

For the tournaments, I think we'll do them during the week end and they will be new tournaments everytime. I hope we'll also be able to make the UGC working in tournaments properly for everyone.

Cheers,