Fair enough. Being the lazy guy that I am, I'll take your word for it. Yeah, the iOS is definitely a damn great thing. Let's not keep going back to FFIII in any case. There'll be a sale on it as soon as FFT: TWoL is out since FFIII recently fell off the charts. Just get it then.
I think this really is a bit of a stretch. It's indeed an interesting sentiment seeing something like Dead Space drop down to a dollar, but like you said, EA really could care less. In fact, EA was honestly the key player in spearheading the race to bottom. Gameloft only followed suit so they wouldn't be terribly beaten down by the direct competition offered by EA, which eventually happened anyways. It's true that many developers have left the iOS market, but I really don't believe that there are less quality games now. It honestly feels more like for every developer that left the market, two more joined. It does feel selfish when you portray it that way, or when you see people flooding threads of games that were just released with comments like "I'll get this when it's a dollar," but if just keep it to themselves, I think it's fine. It's just when people seem to brag about the kind of thing that disturbs me more than anything. Also, arguing for a moral point of view won't get us anywhere. Frankly, some people just don't care. We all know it's wrong.
Ah, good ol Final Fantasy Tactics, that brings me back to the PS One days. Great game...Ha, I always think of the text during the "cut scenes" - how it would scroll across the screen at a snail's pace. I'm done with my FFIII complaints, it's kind of turned into old news. I want some FFT and Chrono Trigger.
Chrono Trigger, for me. Heck I'll pay the same price as FF3 if they were to release the iOS version in 3D. But that's asking too much, I reckon. But if they do release it with the same 2D sprite graphics (revamped for higher res ala SoM) at the same price of FF3, then screw it. I'm happy with my SNES (which still works after all these years, unlike iDevices which has the lifespan of a deer living close to a highway). I agree with natedogg213, and would like to remind these sell-them-higher fanboys that iPod Touch and iPhone didn't start out as a gaming platform and the platform has been embraced as one only recently. Back then, the competition is healthy, because devs are trying to figure out the best selling price for their apps as those who start the trend get to decide the general pricing trend. In two years, it has become somewhat established that the pricing of apps in the App Store is somewhere between free to $9.99 (US dollars, as I've pointed out, we who live in Australia pay higher due to the oh-so-fair Apple's currency policy). Along came big developers, we didn't invite them, did we? We were happy playing wee games for less than $5 a piece. Crappy as they may sound, some of them were quite enjoyable and some were even made to look, feel, and play like a console game, but these big devs started to push the limit of the hardware, surely Apple is more than happy to oblige which is why in later years, we see more powerful hardware and features being introduced to the iDevices. Then what comes next is you people wanting more and more big devs to come and make iPhones (initially a phone and organizer hybrid) and iPod Touch (entertainment iPod, iPhone without the phone) into a proper gaming platform. BUT! Look at the reality of things, please! Is there a way for you to keep your saved games in your iDevices? Maybe in the future, we don't know. As it is, we don't have that kind of feature and what kind of a gaming platform doesn't keep save game files? If it was a nokia organizer, thing wouldn't be the same, right? Apple got extremely lucky with iDevices and you sell-them-higher-please-oh-developers type of gamers don't realize that you're like bots sending more money to Apple and bigger devs while all of those pioneering devs who started the pricing trend on iOS a few years earlier die out and forgotten. So this is why I don't understand why people can't see that they have fallen victim to a classic case of capitalism. Some even think that capitalism is the best thing that ever been invented by humanity! Sad... I'm sad...
I am really interested in Final Fantasy 3. And while the price is not the only thing stopping me from buying it right now. It's a big factor. Sure, I believe that we as consumers are developing a weird sense of value from such cheap games, and that we should not forget how much we used to pay for similar quality in the past. I think the worst thing though, is it makes us value a game less. I would feel far more obliged to play through and make the most of a game I have spent a lot of money on over one that I picked up in a bargain bin for a couple of dollars. Though despite this, I've paid nearly $100 for a game (standard price in Australia at the time) for a game I played for a few days and threw in the cupboard. I've paid $17 for MGS:2 from a bargain bin and played it for months. Segways aside, I hope that developers continue to feel comfortable putting a lot of effort into their games and pricing them accordingly, as there are many buyers out there willing to pay more for good games.
Why don't you just buy this instead? http://cgi.ebay.com/FINAL-FANTASY-III-3-Complete-SNES-Super-Nintendo-/160567656244?pt=Video_Games_Games&hash=item256293ff34#ht_902wt_905
Well I bought credit mainly for the Galaxy of Fire 2 add on which I think is DLC done how it should be and I've no problem with DLC when it adds proper expansions, but I also just bought Final Fantasy 3 I have no problems paying that much for a quality title in fact I have probably most of the higher price games on the app store including the cave shooters, chaos rings (which I do actually dislike first square game I think I've hated). For me price is no object if it's a game I consider worth it but when low quality titles try to charge the same I'll be skipping them.
Seriously. I don't know what it is about iOS gaming community but the perception is that if it's over $0.99 then it's too expensive. There is this unwarranted entitlement I see everywhere. How dare they don't have end game content!! I paid $7!!! Oh NO!!! How dare they do not regularly update the game!! I paid $0.99!! Seriously people, it's economics, so anything that costs less will have less content than more expensive counterpart (console games/PC games).
While I agree with you. This game is very different then any other on the market so it does requires updates and constant maintenance and attention otherwise people won't renew their subs.
I think you're missing his point. He's all for reasonable prices (aka not $0.99), not complaining about the current price of the game..
While I won't argue that there isn't some unwarranted expectations on the part of iOS gamers, this game is downright expensive as far as an Asian developed MMORPG goes. I can go and grab half a dozen free to play MMOs for my PC right now (have a couple installed at the moment) - better graphics, more classes, more content, more equipment, tighter controls, etc. for free. They launch and maintain these games purely through IAP. Not that any of them ever held my attention for more than a couple of months, but the point is that I've downloaded and played at least half a dozen games over the past few years that took up about 20GB of bandwidth and never paid a dime.. Now, if *free* can do better than $7 + IAP, then, yeah, there is room for valid criticism when unless Gameloft just fell off the turnip truck they knew as surely as the sun comes up that some people would be trying to ding max level in a matter of days. 60 levels of killing/tagging/delivering quests does NOT make for a successful MMO and you can't just toss that off as "it's only been out a week" because nobody should have even gone live with a game where you could ding max level in a matter of days largely just doing kill/tag/deliver/fetch quests. For the money, no, it's not a big deal. I've got $12 in this game and I've had a good time with it, and because I am taking my time across four alts I hope that by the time I am reaching higher levels there will be more to do, but I would also say the writing is on the wall: If the game had been designed with oodles of endgame content in mind that's just currently unfinished and/or unreleased it probably wouldn't have launched with largely enough basic quests to get to the end, there would have been some sort of wall where players in the mid 40s would be complaining about how it was just a big grind after you hit Level 41 or whatever.
Well all I can say is that this game is a continuous work in progress, as are all MMOs, and I'm banking on new content including endgame to be released as time goes on, hopefully sooner than later. They certainly know they didn't release a 'complete' game as can be seen with from day one there were PVP Arena NPCs saying "coming soon." As far as value for your buck, I've spent a lot more on iOS titles that I don't play for more than 15 minutes and just delete from my device. And though I don't have a lot of time to play any games, the short time I've played this (probably 7 hours total) I've loved every second of and can't wait to come back for more. Hell I'd hate to add up all the console titles I bought over the years that weren't nearly the game that this is. I always think of when I got Spy Hunter back around 1985 for the NES, that was $50! And you want to talk about no end game content! Ha! Don't get me wrong I enjoyed the game but that was even shallow by 1985 standards. Anyway really enjoying the game. Taking my time with it, mostly bc I don't have much time, and can't wait to see what the future brings!
I am taking a wait and see approach. It's Gameloft, so banking on them to deliver significant post-shipment support and content seems a foolish bet at best, be a lot smarter betting on server population crashes as months go by and nothing of substance has changed. If they do deliver I'll be pleasantly surprised, but if they don't, well, it's what I expected when I bought it so I won't be shocked. Really not the point. There are devs out there that are putting out more expensive to develop and maintain MMOGs that are completely free to play without the "no trades, no mail, no nothing" limitation of O&C's free play. These devs depend on IAP, mostly of the vanity variety, to fund the games, so regardless of whether $7 and up is a completely reasonable cost for the fun and time invested in the abstract, the fact remains that it's not a valid defense for the lack of structured content. They've launched O&C with an initial purchase cost, a subscription fee AND a fair amount of extra IAP options - by the standards of lower tier MMOG standards, that's actually claiming a moderately high bar for the game and its content. I'm enjoying it too, just pointing out that critiquing the game for the complete lack of structured content and endgame content is a more than valid criticism. Compared to other less ambitious MMOGs across all platforms, O&C is charging plenty to have launched with more content in place than they did.
