anonrerising | Our Noble ARR

Ive been playing for like 2 months now and I only have 9k sandust. The sandust shop items are almost all 10k+, with minimals being 80k and divine figurines being 120k. These items are "available" in the barest sense of the word.

The main way you get sandust is through completing quests, in my experience, and it's an extremely tedious and time-consuming activity. So, yeah, while technically you CAN get cash shop items, it's so boring that they clearly want you to just buy them with rlc instead.

pretty standard MMO tactic: make the f2p experience take so much time and energy that being able to pay rlc for things is practically a mercy.

add in the fact they have limited time cash shop items without any idea of whether they'll return, too (currently they have 5 retired items), and you have FOMO.

... they have 5 retired items in the Alpha? Not just gone limited with no idea of return? Retired retired?

if the wiki is correct, yes. and not to mention, several are chests containing their own items, at least one of which has 15 items in it, meaning there's more items you can only get secondhand now.

https://santae.fandom.com/wiki/SanCash

FR has its own retired items, but at least the ones we have were free and relatively easy compared to santae's long grind to obtain when they were available. the rest are rotating stock we know will return at least twice a year. i'm not counting KS items for either game, though, because we don't know 100% for sure if santae will offer theirs ever again.

Yeah. The vast majority of “retired” items are festival skin chests, and the majority of the fest skins are available in some (?) steady inflow from Joxar, so the internal materials are still obtainable. The only really challenging items to get are the Y1 familiars and apparel and some of the downtime things. Maybe 30 items over the course of 11 years? (Not counting the Kickstarter items, those are special).

That depends on if you count player-made skins, ofc.

The only items that are confirmed to be retired are the items with "Alpha" in their names. Everything else is slated to return because the owners are extremely anti-retiring items.

...

You know, retiring any items before a game is out of alpha testing outside KS items is not really a good sign. Them being supposedly "anti-retiring" items means little. If they were really that, there wouldn't be retired items.

Are they just deciding that those items don’t match their art style? I thought a lot of alpha test sites do a hard wipe and reset before beta?

Most alpha sites don't offer paid micro transactions. Normal doesn't apply here.

alpha state sites that are worth their salt would wipe and reset before beta testing. compensation for helping to test is normally given out in the full release and may include exclusive items (FR has Boolean!), but otherwise all players would start on the ground floor again.

letting players keep all their progress (items, pets, etc.) from test phases isn't great for longterm lifespan due to its effects on the economy and player retention.

Kinda curious to see how it'll all turn out, but I also feel a bit of dread at the possibility of Santae being considered a success story. 75k raised with five days left to go plus an already dedicated following even after some of these shitshow exposes? It doesn't leave me with much hope, but I suppose anything can happen after a campaign ends taking a look at previous pet sites with Kickstarter campaigns.

success is always a balance thing. you can succeed in funding, but fail elsewhere. longterm success requires competency.

FR raised 38k and has lasted over 10 years. accounting for inflation, that's the equivalent of 50k today. being able to make a petsite live this long with 4-digit concurrent players daily ever since year 1 (and rising annually) is a rare feat that only a few petsites can attest to. even considering the shortcomings we've seen, staff has regularly been able to put out content of quality that much of the playerbase finds value in, and staff is always trying to improve on how they deliver fixes to raise the quality of their product. we can bitch and moan about how they 'don't do enough' or screw things up, but they do take action to resolve their problems more than the community gives them credit.

conversely, Lorwolf raised 46k last year, and stagnates at low 3-digit concurrent players, in part because they've fumbled so much that they've likely lost most of their original playerbase. on top of that, there's other highly successful wolf-focused petsites that players can go to. they could possibly bounce back, but it's going to take a lot of fixing.

i could even go on about dead/dying/stale petsites that do nothing and go nowhere, but i've seen enough wither from 4-digit players down to 2 digits, and sometimes single digit concurrent players. i've worked on a couple where there'd be 6-digit player IDs and only 20 people online at prime hours.

i rarely ever want to see petsites fail, even if i have very heavy criticism for how the owners are handling santae so far. petsites always struggle, and very few live long enough to find actual success. i don't want to see people's investment into the site turn into nothing, and i'd like to see the players enjoy a game that they clearly want to play. it's the owners who need to fix their shit so that they can lead the site successfully.

FR has retired testing items too js

All of FRs testing items were wiped before release. No one has them to resell.

NAYRT

i believe what they mean is rewards FOR testing, at least i hope it does. if it is what they meant, they're half right: boolean and the beta vista are both retired items for beta testing the site, but they were given after the site was officially released in their 3-day headstart for players who donated during the kickstarter.

SA

where the other anon is especially wrong is that BECAUSE there's an active cash shop in testing, wiping the site before release is going to be precarious. if they do, they burn the players who bought items with RLC. if they don't, the alpha testing players not only have a unreachably significant advantage when testing is over and they move into other testing phases, and also risk players having established themselves so long that they no longer really have to play the site, which kills their metrics and threatens player retention when these established players have way less to do until something new to them happens.

I have a feeling they'll wipe that stuff and just return its value as sC. But they also haven't really released anything saying what will and will not be wiped after the beta concludes. I think it'll be similar to the alpha wipe and you'll just keep certain items, which is somewhat fair as most items were given out for updates like the adoption papers and whatnot, and that's more like a "hey, you can now have the minimum amount of slots now if you use this, also here's some thank yous for testing our game." But if they do the same as the alpha wipe, all currency will be nuked as well, so they'd be at an even playing field since nobody would be able to afford the expensive shit they have from the alpha unless they do a cross site trade.

This is not to say that having a RLC shop in alpha is good, it's pretty shady to have such a thing, but they gotta keep the lights on somehow and that's one way to do it.

then what the heck is the ks funding going towards? isn't "keeping the lights on during Alpha testing" literally what should be included as part of your funding goals???

Re: Santae Exposé

(Anonymous) - 2024-09-27 00:17 (UTC) - Expand

Re: Santae Exposé

(Anonymous) - 2024-09-27 07:14 (UTC) - Expand

Re: Santae Exposé

(Anonymous) - 2024-09-27 07:22 (UTC) - Expand

Re: Santae Exposé

(Anonymous) - 2024-09-27 15:45 (UTC) - Expand

You *could* always make a macro to quest for you, as it's just repeated motions

"We're free to play. Really." Where the free to play experience is utter misery and struggling to get even the cheapest stuff so you pay.

I don’t wanna be a part of the discourse but I started playing a month ago and have over 50k SanDust. I only play for about two-three hours a day and exclusively quest. Granted I max out each NPCs hourly payout but, if you wanna sit down and grind for a few hour when there’s nothing better to do, I’ve found it more economical and realistic than FR currencies at points.

But the Cash Shop is a yikes.

If you play every day, two-three hours isn't "only" anything lol. I envy your free time.

AYRT

If you work full time and still don’t have at least two hours of free time in your day I’m so sorry are you okay?

I work full time and even after cooking dinner and cleaning and everything I have a few hours before I go to bed.

Spending three hours mindlessly grinding currency in a single game every day for a month is a lot. I would say that's not a fair demand by the game dev, unless you are a very, very specific type of player.