I just started this game, and my first impression was exceptionally good. I even wrote positive reviews on hungarian pages about how good this game is. I am paying monthly fee (patron) and I wanted to support this game beyond that so I bought tokens for 150 EUR.
I finished Egypt, hit lvl 50 and I wanted to invest some time to leveling my signets and talismans so I tryed out Occult Defense. I successfully finished the first two round, the third one was too hard. Reward was not very impressing, but well, I can repeat it many time (I thought). So I repeated it a few times, then suddenly there is the popup to buy key for being able to open chest.
I was like âAm I dreamingâ? I am paying a monthly fee and I still need to pay for every single dungeons and whatever? Funcom probably donât know about this, this must be a new bugâŠ
Then I realized, this is a scam. Sorry guys, NO! I am not going to pay for every single activity, so I have no other choice than deleting this crap from my ssd.
âBuy keysâ, yes. For Marks of Favour, which is a currency you earn in-game. If you check the CTRL-L menu you can see your daily allotment of reward chest keys (which replenish at the same time challenges refresh). Paying for Patron gives you 1.5 times more keys for dungeon chests and scenario chests, and doubles the amount of lair chest keys. Plus you can spend MoFs you got from challenges and selling stuff on the Marketplace to buy additional keys.
Yes. This is exactly what I wrote. Even if you pay the monthly fee, you are not allowed to have freedom in the game. You get like 3 scenario keys (about 12 minutes playing), then you are forced to pay dollar, or pay with your valuable time (it is tipical in korean grinders, but it is quite strange when you pay a monthly fee).
Iâm confused as to why you feel that anything less than infinite keys is a scam.
Even as a non-subscriber, you can do a couple of scenarios, a dungeon or two, and a lair⊠every day, without spending any Marks of Favor or Aurum. And as a subscriber you can do even MORE of each of those. You need a couple of hours to run through all those keys, and youâre earning more Marks of Favor while doing so.
The fact that you canât just do one thing in a game endlessly isnât too shocking a thing tbh.
The currency used to buy more keys is the same one used on the Auction House, and is gathered by completing challenges in game - which are very basic and easy to complete. The Patron benefits are pretty good for the amount you pay, but they arenât full on Pay to Win. The way the keys work isnât new at level 50 either, itâs the same for dungeons which are accessible early on.
âIâm confused as to why you feel that anything less than infinite keys is a scam.â
Because this is one of the most aggressive paywall I have ever seen in any game, and I tried many.
Most game doesnât torture paying customers, they usually give them the freedom to do every content, to have fun. In this game, they are still restricting the content even for customers. Although the generous paying customer can spend infinite money for unlock weapon skill, weapon skin, run speed, upgrade weapon quality, fusion, costume, and of course the potions,but seems like it is not enough, they want to milk you by force.
At the actual conversion rate $1 will get you 27 more scenarios far as I can tell, not 1.
Itâs mostly not there to encourage paying real money though, itâs a currency sink because free players can get 10k Marks a day so the quantity increases quickly.
I think dungeon loot keys reset daily. Some MMOs do a lockout. You get X number of keys for dungeon loot per day included. Anything more than that is optional and some people are willing to pay for that, but itâs not necessary. There is a lot of other things to do in the game, repeatable quests, dailies, story, etc.
I think the OP is mad that he canât just run scenarios to his heartâs content. I have been a patron before, and felt it was always worth it. I look at the restrictions as ways to keep people from getting gear too quickly. Its like back when wow gave out those badges/marks when you ran heroic dungeons, but you couldnât only get them once a day. If you killed the same boss again in the same day, you didnât get more badges. I prefer this method to throttle gear/economies.
Frankly Iâm a bit confused. When you click on the patron button it tells you exactly what you sign up for, and nowhere does it say that you can open everything for free. Either the OP is trolling or has reading comprehension issues.
Thereâs absolutely no scamming going on here. You get exactly what it says on the tin. Donât base your assumptions on what other games are doing.
I believe this is quite different. They donât want to limit you, they just request another payment.
Yes, definitely do that! Compare this game to other games to be able to decide if you got what you paid for!
But you did get exactly what you payed for. Itâs right there in the same window where you buy the patron. The alternative to keys, is limiting how often you can run something, with a timer.
Besides you can go as crazy as you want. IF you spend so much time on this game that you need more keys than given, then you can also spend that time getting MoF, in which case it should be no issue buying the chest keys.
The fact is you got exactly what you payed for, even if you didnât take the time to actually read what you were buying.
Caveat emptor. 
I didnât expect such zealous defense of the horrible monetization Funcom implemented for swl. This type is usually reserved for f2p mobile games. It is not a logical system to combine with a monthly subscription.
The reason FC implemented this, is because of the legacy of the lifetime patrons of tsw. OP will not know that before âsecret world legendsâ, there was âthe secret worldâ and funcom sold lifetime membership for that game. They then rebooted tsw to swl and changed the model.
They actually downgraded the subscription model to make sure that lifetime patrons would have to spend money.
If I remember correctly, tsw had none of this key nonsense, and a monthly subscription gave you a monthly allowance of bonus points+unique monthly item, + stuff like bonus xp
In any case, you have a limit on the number of dungeons, lairs and scenarios you can run. If you press shift+L, you can see your daily allowance of keys and timers. You can use mofs (mark of favour), to buy a key when you open a chest.
- Dungeon chest key = 500 mof
- Lair chest key = 1000 mof
- Scenario chest key = 1500 mof
You can earn mofs in game by doing the daillies. Press shift+J to open it. Or by selling stuff on the auction house. Or by selling aurum for mofs through the auction house.
Buying keys uses a currency that you get for free in game. You can pay for more, but as a patron youâre probably earning 12k per day anyway. If you spent all that on scenario keys, you can run 11 per day without making any more payments. If you get a good drop in the scenarios, you can sell that on the AH and run hundreds of scenarios.
Most games provide a limited amount of stuff, whilst giving you the option to pay more for more. Comparing SWLâs payment options to other games doesnât look that crazy, specially as a Free-to-Play title.
I donât think anyoneâs suggesting that SWLâs monetization is perfect. The OP, however, claims that itâs a scam and that they didnât get what the paid for.
Nightmare dungeons originally had lockout timers and could only be run once a day. You couldnât even help out a friend by re-running a dungeon without looting. That only changed long after the buy-to-play transition. We then ended up with caps on how much currency we could earn.
I donât think scenarios in TSW ever had the lockouts removed at all. They just added a premium item that you could purchase that allowed you to reset them.
I think the OP does have a point. I think the monetization of SWL is quite poorly designed and makes you feel âripped offâ or scammed. Iâm not saying you donât get value for it, but that is also my personal experience. And I feel the same way about the lack of value a sub gets you. I think it should be priced about 50% cheaper, and another tier of bonuses (like the ones you talk about) provided at the current sub rate.
Idk if anyone recalls all the anger in the forums and cabals/groups on re-launch when most of us found out what the OP found out. A lot of people got upset when they found out the first time. OP, youâre not the only one. Most of those ppl left, fyi. So youâre getting somewhat of a skewed response from those ppl that are not as upset and have remained.
AWOL, would you care to give specific examples? Because my own experience is quite the opposite.
ESO has limited access to (some) dungeons unless you pay to unlock them. SWTOR limits your level, AH access, chat access, gear level and plenty more. GW2 doesnât do raids if you havenât paid. Rift gives you more daily quest allowance if you subscribe. Those are just off the top of my head.
Basically you get to play the basic versions of many games for free to hook you into playing, SWL at least doesnât paywall any content. You can get everything without paying any money at all, but your speed will be slower than if you do pay up.
The saltiness of the TSW community wasnât just about monetization. The way that we had to reroll our characters was the biggest complaint by far, the gear and combat changes were probably the next commonest issue.
There were plenty of people who left the game who had no problems with the key system, and instead had other problems with the relaunch.
The OP would seem to have similar issues with TSWâs system too - lockout timers were never a popular thing, and there were a LOT of complaints about the system in TSW (which is probably why they changed away from it).
I agree that the value could be better, and pretty obviously lifetime accounts are one of the reasons why patron doesnât offer more benefits. But you and I must have very different definitions of âscamâ because at no point have I ever felt deceived about what I get in return for my money.
Ok, I had a different experience with ESO. And sorry if I make rounding errors, I havenât played it in a while. Once I subscribed, I had access to 2x the dungeons, had unlimited inventory(!!! happy!!!), had a monthly stipend I could save up for âreally cool stuffâ (primarily housing for me, but could be turned into inventory and other QoL items if I decided to unsubscribe). So, I was happy to put my equivalent $14/mo into a sub.
I look at SWL. If I subscribe, for the same $14 or so per month, I still have inventory limits (!!!sad!!!), not much difference in dungeon access (not really SWLâs fault, but still the customer experience is not a happy feeling), and no stipend except a daily cache key that I canât save and immediately turn into something tangible with without gambing.
So yeah, I end up spending my money on ESO even tho I had likely spent far more time on SWL. And SWLâs payment:reward ratio is quite poor by that specific experience of mine. Itâs quite possible you value the offerings differently (like you put a high value on 100% content availability), but my point is that for me, the SWL payment options do look silly.
I think your counter-argument is about as accurate as your first comment, which is essentially âI disagree because I think a lot of people were more angry about other thingsâ. I highly doubt that there has been an actual data count of who complained most about what. And if there is, I would love to see it. Pics or it didnât happen.
In any case, I think itâs fine for you to disagree, but what Iâm telling you is that I have the same feelings as OP. Iâm fairly certain OP and I arenât the only ones that share this sentiment, based on direct conversations and what Iâve observed.