Svenn

It's been a while since I've used it, but on Playstation 4 I believe you can just purchase the exact amount needed to buy a game or DLC or whatever item. It's a system, not a game... but same idea. I generally avoid spending money in most microtransaction games so I can't think of specific game examples off the top of my head, but I'm pretty sure I've seen a couple games that let you specify a price, or at least if you pick an item in the store let you just purchase that exact amount of microtransaction currency. How about this for a system that would make players more likely to purchase I think: You pick an item, or add a bunch of items to your cart, and on checkout if you don't have enough crowns it asks if you would like to buy the exact amount of crowns. If you're going to keep the bonus crowns (which I still think is a mistake) then just give the player the ratio of whatever tier they are past. ie. I add 2750 crowns to my cart, go to checkout. I have 125 crowns. It offers to sell me 2625 crowns at the 115 crowns:$1 ratio (the same as the $20 for 2300 crowns package), so $22.83.

Thank you! This really should just be the standard in PC games. Customization is a big part of PC gaming.

Please make sure that all of these interactions are changeable in key bindings! No hard coded commands!

They release at minimum 1 expansion a year (typically one giant expansion and a few mini-expansions per year-ish). At this point they are up to 10 acts (they added SIX acts last year in one update), and a crapload of other content. They do about 3 leagues a year with unique rulesets too. And it's all free. Boggles my mind. Definitely one of my favorite games, one of my favorite companies, and absolutely the best cash shop in any game ever (enough that I've willingly given them close to $1000 without actually even specifically wanting anything from the cash shop). Sorry, got a bit off topic here.

Actually, Path of Exile sells "Points" that you use to purchase stuff. $5, $10, and $20 bundles equal 50, 100, and 200 points. Items range from about 10 points to a few hundred points, in increments of 5. It's a pretty simple system and you can easily buy exactly whatever you need (or close enough), assuming you are spending at minimum $5 (which is fine, I get that less than $5 and it's not worth it with the processing/credit card company fees). This is very important. Microsoft Points were originally set up this way long before there were any rules about obfuscating purchases behind points systems, and it was incredibly exploitative. It was impossible to spend all your points because the numbers never lined up. It's a cheap psychological trick to get people to spend more money than they want to. And while we're on the subject... the idea of bonus crowns for spending more money is also an awful practice. It sounds harmless enough, it's a free bonus! But what actually happens is that psychologically the best price (135 crowns/1$) becomes the "baseline" and people that buy smaller packs end up feeling like they've been punished in most cases. People then either feel like they've lost value for buying a smaller pack, save up for the large pack instead of making lots of smaller purchases, or other similar situations which actually end up worse for both the players and ACE. That's another thing that Path of Exile does right. $1 = 10 points, always (the exception being some supporter packs, but that's because you get a bunch of unique cosmetic stuff, sometimes physical stuff, and then points equal to the dollar amount, or $5 less than the dollar amount, you spent on top of all the other stuff for your supporter pack purchase). A good cash shop (from the payment standpoint, not the content end) will make it obvious what the value of $1 is without having that fluctuate, allow players to buy exactly what they want without overpaying, and not leave random unspendable points. That's how to treat your customers fair and not make them feel like they are being exploited.

That's been there for a little while. I assumed it was stuff like connecting Facebook, Twitter, Twitch, etc for any sort of integrations they have with those.

Thanks! I'll wait and see. I'm definitely keeping the KS one, and I'll decide about buying the other after we see the final models. That reminds me, will there be a point where you cut off buying that stuff for KS backers so we can't buy the older designs at some point? I just wasn't sure if those were placeholders or what and didn't want to spend the money/crowns until I knew for sure what I'd be getting.

I got over 10k crowns from the conversion, not too shabby. Question: How representative are the mount pictures for the final versions? There are multiple nightmares from different years, and I have the Kickstarter one... but is the 2016 Nightmare actually going to have purple flames while the others are orange/red?! If so, I might need to pick that up...

ESDF SUPPORT! THIS IS THE GREATEST PATCH NOTE EVER! Surprised you guys had never heard of ESDF users before. There are dozens of us! Dozens! (There's even a condescending website about it.) It's home keys, it opens up more keys for binding, you don't have to move your hand to type, and it's just more comfortable. Keyboards are set up for your hand to be on the home keys, so everything is based around that. It just makes more sense. I honestly can't even play with WASD at this point it's just so uncomfortable.

Yeap, we're still looking! I just got your application and am reviewing it now.

This all sounds amazing. I love the idea of day/night cycle actually having effects! Also a big fan of the Vampire/Werewolf idea. I'm very curious to see how those will work. I'll agree that 40 minutes doesn't sound like a lot of time for the full day/night cycle, but I expect that'll get worked out over time.

Still recruiting!

I'm more just confused about what aspects of this you think remove consequences compared to what was initially planned? It's still a time based skill tree. The trees were honestly never that interesting to begin with. Honestly, this was my least favorite part of the game at the start because I felt like there weren't any interesting choices in the first place (and I was never a fan of time based training in general, but I can live with it). So, I'm genuinely curious what choices/consequences have been removed? I don't doubt there's some stuff I'm just not thinking of or minor losses in terms of choices based on the reorganization of trees, but most of this seems more like ease of use things versus actual simplification of the system. What made me feel better about choices was seeing all the other things that had actual interesting choices and consequences (as mentioned before, Gear, Vessels, Advantages/Disadvantages, Disciplines, and everything else that is actually way better at customizing a character instead of the generic skill trees).

The skill trees were never really great at giving different and interesting character progression. It's the other stuff that will make for interesting character building. Disciplines (this is the main one), Advantages/Disadvantages, Gear, etc.

I see you got my feedback! Thank you! I'm loving this. I love the double dipping fixes! Not only did it fix double dipping but it made the whole thing easier to understand. I agree with @Durenthal that it's a bit sad that I can't train two different fighters or two different mages at the same time, but it's not that big of a deal and one I'm totally okay with in return for no double dipping and an easy to understand system. Great update!