re: Pax Dei - Early Access testing starts soon

quote:

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Say you spend the extra $$ for more land plots in EA. Later youll have to pay monthly to keep your plots.

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At this point, yes. The current stance is there will be a flat monthly sub (no word on F2P aspect at this point) which will include 1 plot. Additional plots will be an additional charge (not the full sub, probably something like an extra $1 or $2 per plot per month). If your subscription lapses, after an unspecified amount of time the plot will become open again and the things constructed there can be harvested/taken or left to decay over time.

What's unknown at this time is what happens if you re-sub after being away for an extended period (a year, for example). It may be that they keep the footprint of your structure for you to replace elsewhere (if your original spot isn't available), they may allot you the items/resources needed to recraft it (allowing for you to change it as you go) or something else.

The idea seems to be to push a world where the users are actually invested and involved with the world to the point where their presence/absence makes a noticeable change in an area. As yet there are no merchant NPCs nor ingame currency so the economy would be a barter system (there may be plans to include a very few specialized merchant NPCs, but that's still just speculation).

In the recent free preview I ventured a good bit to place my plot out from where my clan was building a massive site as well as moving farther out from where others had claimed plots. When I claimed my plot there were maybe three others plots within viewing distance which had been claimed with only one being seriously worked on. I worked on my plot all evening then went to sleep.

The next day I logged in around noon and there were at least 10 claimed plots in view with almost all of them having some progress made in construction. By yesterday there were nearly 3 dozen plots claimed within view and pretty much all of them were either by a large group who was continuing to build or by a lone builder or two who never added anything after their initial attempt.

Without the decay system, over the course of months or years the transience of players would create vast amounts of empty houses and plots. As plots cause resource nodes (except for, in some cases, trees) to either become inactive or move to an unoccupied space, leaving static structures would impact resource gathering as well (which is going to be a big part of the game). They could set it just to log-in activity, but then you run the risk of people logging in just to keep their spot and/or sell it for real-world $$ (people do that with character names in DCUO, for example).

With what they look to be trying to make, the subscription model makes the most sense but it's not going to draw players in (as evidenced in this thread) so they'll likely eventually need some F2P aspect (unless they can somehow foster a permanent subscription crowd large enough to keep the lights on and keep developing, like EQ).