Sony not doing enough about H1Z1?

http://www.forbes.com/sites/erikkain/2015/01/18/sonys-no-questions-asked-h1z1-refunds-dont-go-far-enough/?partner=yahootix

Sorry for not linking... On my phone atm.

So, I've been following this story a little and in my news feeds articles keep popping up about how shady Sony is being with the unmitigated disaster that is H1Z1. Namely, that this games micro transactions are in direct contrast to statements Sony made leading up to the early release on steam.

"The refund follows revelations that, contrary to statements from SOE in the days and weeks leading up to the launch of the game on Steam Early Access, microtransactions would be offered for items like guns and ammo."

Despite Sony coming clean with a full refund over the misleading description of this game - out of their own mouths... Shouldn't we as a gaming community be more up in arms about these types of tactics and inexcusable duping of the gaming community at large?

The article go's on to say...

"At this point, game developers are running out of excuses when it comes to releasing poorly implemented free-to-play elements in their video games. This is even less excusable with a game that you actually have to purchase in the first place (in Early Access at least.) Enough mistakes have already been made across the industry that these sorts of issues shouldn’t even come up in the first place.

Good on SOE for issuing (limited) refunds, but it doesn’t change the fact that their claims leading up to the game have been tantamount to false advertising. I imagine plenty of other gamers will purchase the game without having read about its revenue model after these refunds are no longer available."

So I'm curious... Should Sony be doing more? Should they be held further accountable?

Also, and this is obvious, if this were a Microsoft developed game the Internet would be afire in a witch hunt for bill Gates ass.... Gaming double standard?

Haven't followed this much at all but can honestly comment on your last line in your post and it's a Huge Yes, Double Standards FTL. :(

Are you allowed to be refunded for a game you kickstarted, and didn't turn out well? How it is with Early Access?

@SecretPolice: funny, because I was reading about this on N4G initially and the comments section is where I first read gamers reaction that if this were a Microsoft game the reaction would be much more aggressive...

My point is they all do shady things... Tis necessary to acknowledge.

I wonder if the idea for pay2win drops was already in the back of there minds or is some greedy **** in a suit hobbled it in during the later stages of development.

Thought this might have been about bird flu but was disappointed I'd misread the title. Pay to win is gross. Not against mirco-transactions per say if they let some one who works compete against someone who can grind 15 hrs a day, but grinding should give you an equal chance not a disadvantage.

Desperate times for Sony.

They need money. Please understand.

Well at least they are refunding money microsoft did nothing about the broken mess that was MCC except "please understand"

To me they are doing to much. Its an early access game so of course like every early access game there are bugs. SOE has said many times the guns and ammo in air drops were a bug and they are working on fixing it. Just like the air drops falling at the feet of the player, another bug they are working on. So to me they shouldn't give money back; if you're dumb enough to pay for an early access game and not expect issues then shame on you not them.

inb4 wasdie clowns all u fools. its early access for god sake, wtf did u all expect

Thank you. People hurt my brain some times

@getyeryayasout:

https://games.yahoo.com/news/2015-stop-preordering-video-games-once-183056936.html

Some media outlets are already claiming it's demise....

Side note, I bought more day one games this past year than I have in my gaming life which started in about 1982. I've never felt I wasted more money than I did in 2014 in this hobby... Coincidence?

@blue_hazy_basic: actually not a bad defense for Sony fanboys to take... "stop picking on my precious Sony and start focusing on the real issues... Bird flu" :P

The fact you can buy guns the drop to you without any intervention from other players, for real world money, is a pay-to-win scenario and defeats any interest anyone should have in the title.

I'm fine with the idea of paying for early access, but the idea of paying to get more powerful weapons delivered to you in a game where they are supposed to be rare or difficult to get is just asinine.

lol *waits for heil to use this one*

No if this happened with any company and they refunded the gamers who played it, then all is well, it's not the mistakes what matter, it's the way they deal with these mistakes which should matter.

A lot of people forget that it's a early access game. Things may or may not change. However, the ability to steal air drops should be implemented. Who wouldn't want to steal a air drop from some pour soul that paid for one?

I don't know how many of you have actually played the game, but I have. It's not terrible, but it was pointless before they patched the loot spawn problem.

H1Z1 shouldn't be F2P. SoE's F2P policy is preventing them from making great games. They have to worry too much about monitization. As they learned with Planetside 2, cosmetics alone do not make them enough money. This prompted them to implement more pay-to-win mechanics into H1Z1.

The problem with F2P is it doesn't translate well to a lot of genres. Survival is one of those genres. There is no natural way for them to monetize the game. Cosmetics can't make enough money since this is the type of game where flashy cosmetics that scream "look at me", like they usually do for MMOs, directly contradict the gameplay.

The article is also incorrect. Back in August they confirmed that you can indeed purchase weapons and ammo through airdrops. Only the airdrops would fall from the sky at a random radius around you and that they would attract attention so calling in an airdrop didn't guarentee you the supplies and could actually mean your death. It's a smart way to balance the mechanic in the game as the items from these airdrops do not carry over from life to life. This means you cannot purchase a weapon that you always start out with. Furthermore you may not even get the items you paid for which makes it a risk. They've also implemented a minimum amount of players necessary to be able to call in an airdrop. The last I heard it was at 100 players needed to be on the server.

Airdrops themselves are hardly pay-to-win. One of the main developers made a posted regarding airdrops and clarifying his statements made on a stream a few days earlier. He also posted the stats for airdrops themselves. The developers fixed the issues they were having with airdrops (probably a leftover from internal QA) and now there is only a 10% chance chance for the airdrop to contain a pistol or shotgun and ammo all while increasing the radius it can drop from, slowing the plane down to make it more obvious its coming in, generally giving more people warning its coming, and increasing the amount of zombies it spawns when it hits the ground. This is a far cry from the first few hours where airdrops contained an AR-15, ammo, and dropped right at the feet of the person calling it in.

The whole paid Early Access is a scheme used by a lot of devs to limit the amount of customer exposure to their F2P game while still gaining the benefits of early access. What a dev doesn't want to do is allow the masses into their broken alpha build of the game that they are getting the initial, large-scale testing feedback from. This would cause many people to write off the game completely before it's even finished. This whole launch may have generated a bit of bad press but the word-of-mouth from people will spread and what I've heard from them is that it's a pretty competent game despite the bugs. Given a few more months of Early Access feedback, the game should come out much better because of it.

All that said I have very little interest in the game since it's a survival game with a focus on player interaction (usually ganking). I'm just an SoE fanboy because of Planetside 2 and what they are doing with Everquest Next. I think the F2P scheme will mean that actual game content gets shelved often to push more microtransactions and other ways to monetize the game. We're seeing that with Planetside 2 now as they are starting to push a pay-to-win style of implants (perks) which I disagree with.

There is no witch hunting needed here. They offered a full refund for those who believe that they were lied too and then fixed up the major issues people were having in under 24 hours. It's an Early Access game with a full disclaimer that the game is not nearly finished and there are a lot of bugs and unimplemented/unfinished gameplay mecahnics as well as a lack of content. Those expecting a polished alpha need to realize that alpha and beta testing are not glorified demos like we get on the consoles, but unfinished builds of the game that actually need testing.

@blue_hazy_basic: just doing my part to keep the world at balance :D

Didn't they already fix the air drops? Now you won't get guns as easily and the drops will drop farther away. That's what I've heard from people who play it. I haven't played the game because I don't see point of paying to alpha/beta test a game that is going to be f2p when released.

It's a Free to Play game with a Price tag of $19.99 on Steam.

Clear Warning Signs were there and people still bought it.

Free to play. But you have to pay to play the early access. Harhar

I understand that it's an early access game but it's not free to play. Steam ain't kickstarter

Because they only wanted people who really want to play the game and help them test it out and give proper feedback to play the game. If the masses got a hold of the game in its current state they would mostly hate it. Doing some random lottery for closed beta testing is also not a great options since most people today sign up for betas with the prospect of getting some free gametime out of it. Putting a paywall up keeps the people who aren't serious about the game out until the game is ready. This way they'll get better, more focused feedback by people who want the game to succeed.

It's a good model that a lot of developers have been using. That's the whole point of Early Access. Early Access isn't just some new retail model for people to get cheaper games from. It's meant to help the developer by getting them people willing to help the devs make the game as good as possible so everybody can enjoy a better game. No amount of internal QA can possibly compare to a large group of fans getting their hands on an early copy, playing the hell out of it, and reporting back all of the bugs and things they didn't like. Until you get it into customers hands, your QA testing is just a guess. Small studios also cannot afford large QA and this is a good way to outsource a lot of that to people willing to help. In the end the game should benefit from the testing and fans get a cheaper game for slogging through the alpha/beta process. Win-win.

see below. the concept really isnt that hard to grasp

I'm merely just saying you got what you paid.

Well the way you said it kind of felt like you were bashing the game, which is why I responded that way.

I'm in the boat that it shouldn't be labeled Free to Play even if the intentions are just that.

Early Access or Not it shouldn't be labeled as such until then.

Fair enough.

Sony should never have charged money for Early Access to this game. Period. For fucks sake, there is at least one game on Steam right now that is free to play in Early Access but will be a normal retail product on release and cost real money, but the developers didn't feel comfortable taking people's money just yet - they just wanted the feedback! But oh no, Sony couldn't do that, they had to get their greedy hands on as much money as possible, as quickly as possible.

The damage has been done, H1Z1 is tainted and this Early Access incident is going to stick with the game, and Sony, for years to come. Idiots.

The game was clearly put out how and when it was just so Sony could start generating money from it as early as possible.

@Wasdie: honestly I think you're making really great points, namely fleshing out some of the thought process behind the goal and risk of the drops, but I'm in complete disagreement that a company decided to charge 20$ for a playable beta in an effort to gather quality information about the game...

If they were doing a "super fan only" test run of their product they would've calculated the number of people needed to gather such information and done a public e-sign up passing out "x" number of keys to the early access and gathered the same eager people without gouging them for a twenty dollar bill.

Let me also remind you, this is a free to play video game.

@TheEroica: And you can wait until it's free to play to play it for free. There is no reason at all you need to pay the money right now to play. I'm not because I don't care that much about the game.

You do get some benefits from buying into the alpha though. So it's not just paying to beta test, there are account level rewards you are given. Getting 2 crates gives you account-level cosmetics and whatnot. Those will be paid microtransactions when the game releases.

Have they updated the keys to boxes ration yet? As in you get 2 crates (6 with premium) and 1 key (4 with premium) when you buy the basic game, so to be able to open your second crate you need spend more money (£4 per key)

It's Sony, they can do no wrong. Now if this was EA or MS, holy Shit, the internet would implode.

What sort of insane person would purchase an alpha version of a free to play game?

Welp Wasdie pretty much owned everyone who was on the QQ bandwagon

So it seems Sony has a major screw up like this once a month. Lied to again and fans just look the other way.

Eroica is right. There would be 50 pages in this thread if Microsoft had done this.

Let's examine.

Sony lied. Check

Sony feels a lawsuit so issues refunds. Check

Sony doesn't care about the gamer. Check

Sony will do it again. Check

Ahh, you get the point.

Sorry, can't feel bad for people paying 20 dollars for a free-to-play game feeling ripped off.

I think Kickstarter does have a system in place for when you do not get the product they promised you.

However, does a broken/half finished game count? And how will you get your money back when most of it has been spent ?

Also, getting a refund from Valve can be done. It's not very easy though.

a person that feels its worth it.

@FoxbatAlpha said:

i saw that recently in the offices of 343, on the Master Chief Collection drawing board.

@Krelian-co said:

@FoxbatAlpha said:

i saw that recently in the offices of 343, on the Master Chief Collection drawing board.

They wouldn't let you in 343i. Stay mad little man.

@Wasdie: yeah, I understand that along with the early access certain perks will unfold down the line, I'm just not buying that these guys are actually charging money for the sole purpose of getting the super fan crop of gamers to test and report upon their game... I think this is revenue and I think that despite the game not technically being launched lends credence to your aforementioned sentiment about allowing developers the time to adjust (after all that's what a public beta is supposed to be for).

I think there is certainly some muddled communication with the very fans who ARE actually following this game closer the you and I and it culminated with some of those people feeling that there are indeed elements in the design that they felt would flesh out a different way... Certainly I've read and can understand the position of the gamers who feel this way when...

http://loopthetube.com/#w1o1wLkbfTU&start=2442.056&end=2450.424

"...There's no way you can get ammo, you can't buy ammo, you can't buy guns, you can't get them out of a crate, there's zero way you have to find them in the world..." - Adam Clegg game designer.

... Is said 3 days before launch of the early access... Its simply confusing.

Ultimately, at the end of the day, when you pay for something it gives you the right to have opinions on its quality, but I think people need to wait a bit before being judge, jury and executioner to something that is still in development.

The devs for this game are kicking ass. Patch after patch, working over night. They deserve a damn medal as far as I'm concerned.

@Zethrickk382: no doubt people should be rooting for the game to be a success if they get their pay model right. I think the issue here is in the way information was disseminated about sensitive elements of the game and it happened with a free to play that was charging twenty dollars for early access... Perfect storm.

@TheEroica: Most of the outcry was a knee jerk reaction to guns in Airdrops. I was also taken back at first, "due to an air drop loot bug" but upon further explanation by devs, and seeing how it is in game first hand. It's anything but pay to win. They made any airdrops called fair game to anyone, and tough to get. Also add the fact that it's only a 10% chance of a non character bound handgun or shotgun with limited ammo...

Right now the main issue is container loot throughout the world. It's repawn depends on the area being devoid of players. "To combat loot camping" Which is a problem because servers have high populations so someone is almost always around the spawn points.