Because if I understand it right, what nick wanted was to let one player pay real money for OCH then "gift" it to his friends. Not direct purchases with energy. Just like in steam.
What I dont know is that if they cant achieve such ideas, they should do it like the asians.
The Elevator Pass is also buyable with ce there too.
Ask gamecyber.
True to fact that the publishers will have some rights over the game. Sega would most likely try to find some way to earn money, OCH is one. Gamecyber may have some different mindsets etc.
The word you are looking for is called "profit". If people don't invest in the game how can they work and feed their families?
Okay, so Operation Crimson Hammer is a purchasable DLC that was intended to be acquired through purchase and subsequently gifted and/or traded to other players that would rather use in-game currency. While the latter has only partially been achieved I don't see it being such a bad thing as some make it out to be. If Three Rings make more money, more can be put into developing the game and who knows, with enough money they might be able to expand the team and *gasp* increase the frequency of updates. I know, it's a wicked concept but it's one I'd be willing to contribute to.
I am hoarding quite a bit of CE right now, I dunno what is so different about CE... and that CE is for Crimson Hammer and the supposedly upcoming new one, as I got nothing I want to alchemize already. I have stored something that people paid for, what is the matter?! You got your money already OOO, can I have what I want with those other people's money?
I'd just like to point out that people keep saying -spend more money- so this game can get new content faster. That is a true concept but you need to realize one thing... Three Rings/Spiral Knights is no longer an indie company. They are owned by Sega America.
To make it simple. Spending more money on this game may not give you more updates. While Three Rings does need to keep staff and servers running Sega America is taking a chunk of the money they make. Also they would need more staff to make said updates faster.. whether they have that kind of money or not is depends on 3 things.
How much players spend
The bills they have to pay to keep running
How much Sega America takes from them
oh and I forgot one thing.. how much Three Rings spends on that fancy pants office they have. I wish my work place was that nice.
I play on the Asian server, and being able to buy OCH with CE ain't as good as you guys think it is,
Due to OCH being free, rocket hammers are very common in lockdown, and the cheena players
over there abuse auto-aim to the max, causing a lot of rage to me and my fellow alliance guild members.
I think that OCH should stay a paid DLC, unless you want more striker hammers zooming around LD.
Because the Asian servers are not the American servers.
P.s. i haf a dinosaur crotch
@Trabias
Has Alliance become such a serious guild? How terrible. I miss my GM position even less now.
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I'd like to explain some conjectures.
Crystal Energy must be bought to alchemize more powerful gear. As long as people are playing, Crystal Energy will be bought. If the crown to Crystal Energy exchange rate becomes too high, then there is greater incentive for players to purchase Crystal Energy with money. This will constantly cause players to buy Crystal Energy, allowing a steady flow of income for Three Rings. If any hiccups in this pattern are experienced, promotional events may be implemented to further spur consumption.
Now, OCH. I suppose Three Rings has determined that not allowing it to be CE purchasable is a good business tactic. Any other mindset is beyond my current reasoning ability.
However, if OCH was CE purchasable, it would simply make the market more free in terms of buying OCH. Exchanges would be more liquid, which should increase consumption, due to non-steam players' difficulty in obtaining the DLC. Theoretically, profits would not drop for OOO, due to the crown-CE market's self-righting mechanism. Thus, I have assumed that the self-righting mechanism is not as strong as I had previously though. This would offer some explanation for skyrocketing exchange prices. Making OCH independent of CE may have been a prudent decision, as it could ultimately be more profitable, along with lessening inflation in the CE market. Also, this could be because of disagreements with steam.
These are some of my thoughts on the OCH question.
P.S. I did not edit my post. Forgive me for any faults of style.
Isn't the Asian server affiliated with another company? I forgot the exact details, but I think it may have to do with another company and stuff like that.
And then there's also Steam.
What really grinds my gears is that OOO won't issue a statement concerning this obviously controversial topic. Almost a year ago they told us they were working on making DLC tradeable between players in the official client. So far only Steam Knights can get the DLC while still being F2P, effectively keeping the content out of the hands of a significant amount of players.
I just don't understand why OOO won't let us purchase the DLC with CE, they don't lose any money that way (from my naive point of view). All CE spent by players, no matter if they're P2P or not, has to be bought from OOO for real money. I understand that there might be difficulties with Steam (although they shouldn't mind whether they get their share from selling DLCs or from selling CE.)
So you're saying you rather want a few player with overpowered and annoying weapons not everyone has access to rather than everyone getting access to said weapons and thus forcing OOO to actually balance them so other weapons remain viable in LD?
@Etendue
Would you mind elaborating further? As I see it, OOO could benefit from selling OCH for CE, not taking any problems with Steam into account. From the top of my head I can think of a few positive effects this would have for OOO:
On the other hand, I'm completely happy with OOO not selling elevator passes for CE. This could have terrible consequences on the market, I'd rather not jump to conclusions though. Can someone tell us how that works out on the Asian servers, how much CE sells for (in real money and in Crowns) and how stable the market is?
TL;DR;
If such business tactics are not questioned, OOO has no reason to think again before building more paywalls. In the Battle Sprite thread Nick has failed to acknowledge any questions concerning P2P-only Battle Sprites, harnesses or skills. In my opinion this doesn't bode well for a game claiming to be free to play. This is not how I like to see the Freemium model implemented, unfortunately not many other people seem to share that opinion.
To allow OCH to be buyable with CE, Three Rings would have to:
1) Somehow syncronize the games function of spending CE ingame to instantly add OCH to your steam library. Currently the only way to add items to your steam library is by opening up the steam checkout interface. Either this or:
2) Wait for steam to implement a feature that allows players to spend an ingame currency to purchase Steam Library items.
Since elevator passes and OCH can only be bought through the steam interface with real money, Steam's "hacker alert" buzzers would be going off the charts if suddenly games started popping up in your steam library without any steam transaction going on.
The whole issue is the expansion's compatability is with the Steam Shopping and Inventory crap. Since Spiral Knights isn't even really managed by steam, (I mean, look at that standalone launcher whenever there's an update, wtf?) the seperation of the two systems is really crippling when it comes to something like this that requires the two to work together.
@ianeria I personally prefer less hammers than more hammers, even if they are nerfed
@etendue Y u no play on asian server nao? D:
Where you can buy DOTA 2, L4D, TF2 hats and multiple other things with CE, thanks to the wonderful off-game trade system
I have gifted OCH to my friend for 1.49$ on Christmas, thanks also to Steam Holiday Sales for the reduction!
It is working as intended. You only need to use Steam to get their promotional sales on EVERYTHING they own. Guardian Pack = 10$ and OCH = 1.49$
*pop*
sorry to burst your bubble, it works on NA server too
Edit: if you DO have Steam but has not linked SK to Steam yet, check out the discussion section about SK, it's only for trading off-game currency.
Here's a snapshot of today Steam discussion... As of 26 January 2013 at 9:40 AM (Eastern Time)
http://i50.tinypic.com/r2kozr.png
As you can see, people are selling others games for CE
Where you can buy DOTA 2, L4D, TF2 hats and multiple other things with CE, thanks to the wonderful off-game trade system
The thing is, you don't buy those items with CE, you gift CE to other players using the store gifting system and they gift you the items that they have bought from the Steam Store with real money.
You cannot take the CE directly to steam and buy those items with it. That would be like farming GP on RuneScape and then trying to use it in Walmart.
@Hexzyle
I don't know much about the Steam API, but even if validating an outside purchase is not possible, I could think of a workaround right away. Steam users buying or trading the expansion in the official client are supplied with a key they can redeem on Steam so the DLC is added to their library. This is slightly more cumbersome for the user but I think it's justifiable effort if they can't or won't use the trading feature in Steam. Even if that might not be a feasible idea, OOO at least could tell us why they won't make good on their promise. In almost a year they could at least have found the time to tell us that what they were looking into is not possible at all.
@Shamanala
Not everyone can or wants to use Steam. As far as I know you can't link all accounts to Steam (e.g. Armorgames, Kongregate and Newgrounds accounts) and I don't know if SK is already available for Linux users on Steam. We're talking about quite a few people here that might not even have the possibility to use Steam without starting over. Even if they can, there are several who regret moving their account and there's no way back. There is a price to pay for using Steam (I'm not talking about money here, TINSTAAFL) and not everyone is willing to do that.
I think at this point, we can assume that the OOO team can implement CE purchases of the DLC. Technically speaking, I don't think it's quite as challenging as coding other aspects of the game.
So, why are they not?
My guesses:
1. Steam related complications. This to me is the main technical difference between the Gamecyber server and the main server. Either allowing OCH to be CE purchasable would invalidate it as a DLC, or there are other issues brought along with steam. At this stage, I cannot adequately guess whether these issues are resolvable.
2. Less profit. This is probably linked to Steam, as having the DLC on Steam was always good publicity. Additionally, it's possible that the crown-CE market is too unresponsive to market forces: people just don't buy enough CE. This explains some of the insane prices for CE. Making OCH CE purchasable could aggravate this inflation, or simply cause OOO to lose the stronger, and more profitable alternative of making OCH cash only.
I would love to hear an OOO rep speak out on this topic, it's been quite a long-running concern.
Because of the excuse of our Spiral Knights being on Steam and the one ran by the asians not on Steam. But really don't take what I say because I don't understand why Spiral Knights can't sell their own things however they want since some games featured on Steam are also sold on PS3/Xbox 360/Wii etc etc.
Maybe its the whole "free to play" thing and Steam wants to actually make some money if they have to feature this game on their site and program.