HTML5..well that's interesting, most notably it should mean a significant performance increase, in a similar vein to plain flash video players vs html5 video players..with that and EoC I can see how things could cost an awful lot going into the future. These things aren't exactly close to release though, and I fear we'll still have to put up with the overwhelming problem of micro-transactions even after their release.
Despite this, the fact of the matter is that SoF effectively IS selling gold+xp, even worse, since the 10x spins update the xp rates from it exceed what's possible without it in many skills, and that severely breaks game balance, giving richer players a significant advantage, and is effectively the same as selling gold/xp in the end, just with a daily cap at a very steep/unstable price.
Add in that it's very nature is borderline illegal in relation to minors that play the game and it gets thrown in our faces in-game far far far too often - it's impossible to ignore, and negatively affects everyone that doesn't like it's gameplay as a result, and this causes many many players to quit. At the absolute minimum you have to stop throwing it in our faces with the bucket loads of limited edition items and advertising pop-ups.
Then of course there's a matter of reducing the max xp rates from it via buying spins to be BELOW (or equal to) that of in-game methods that actually require some effort - this wasn't an issue prior to the 10x spins thing..but then they went and added that, completely breaking the balance and allowing real life wealth to give a significant in-game advantage.
Then there's things like 200m prizes, that while rare, remove huge chunks of previously necessary gameplay for those few lucky (or rich irl) players - if I was randomly given 200m a few months back it would've saved me 2 entire months worth of effort to get closer to max, which in turn would mean even less reason to play.
Ultimately, SoF does immense damage to the games integrity.
29-Aug-2012 22:03:52
