This is the last time I am beating this dead horse.  My hope is to get Allods cash shop rip off out there on the webs a bit more so new players are aware and don’t waste their time.  I also want to start off with I am not demanding the developers not have a way to make money.  I am a perfectly willing paying player, but I have problems when developers break the game just to fix it by forcing players to pay.  There are many options to making a F2P game profitable without sacrificing your player base.

Allods has just come out with XP scrolls, they raise the amount of XP you receive by 100% or 200%.  Now normally I am all for offering XP items in the cash shop, but when they nerf the game to create a demand for the items, it just gets under my skin a bit.  I just want to go over for the interwebs how the game was nerfed purely to milk money from their customers.

For the purpose of this write up I am not including “buying cash shop items from other players” as “in game means of acquiring cash shop items”.  For me “in game means” is quests, NPCs etc.  Sure it can have a limit or be harder to aquire, but still available without any player buying from the cash shop.

1) Incense

This is the easiest to describe. Although Gpotato officially denies it (which makes it worse and more dishonest IMHO) player damage output has been decreased.  

But (shockingly) incense will now provide a damage buff that will bring your damage output back up to what it was before the nerf.

What does this mean?

 The damage nerf is not evident until level 20 (my next point) so this nerf has basically required level 20 and up player to use increase.

How is this different then before?

Incense used to buff HP/MP and give you the added protection from the death debuff.  It was very useful for players of max level, but not necessarily needed for players below level 40.  It also had no damage buff so PVP players with out incense just had to through extra HP of people that had the buff, but they didn’t have to contend with 150% to 250% increased damage.

In short, they nerfed damage so you would have to use a cash shop item to get your damage back up to the level it was before.

2) Cursed items

Cursed Items now replace the Fear of Death mechanic.  They say it was due to player outcry that they got rid of FoD and gave us cursed items (insert eye rolling here).  But this is like saying I have an ache in my finger so I will shoot myself in the foot in order to stop thinking about the finger.

Fear of Death was a 25% damage debuff that stacked up to 4 times.  So, you guessed it die 4 times and you you have 100% reduced damage.  This was removable by:

A) Buying Myrrh from a NPC next to the spawn point for in game gold.  

B) Waiting out the debuff, starting at level 15 for 30 seconds and by the time you get to level 40 it was a 51 min debuff.

C) buying incense from the cash shop to prevent the debuff.

I know what your thinking, HOLY CRAP that system is already bad! Talk about milking customers!  I can’t believe I am about to defend FoD, but it had a few benefits over this new system.  It could be removed by in game means (NPC with Myrrh), it had a time limit (max of 51 mins), you could get incense from daily quests so you didn’t *have to* buy it from the cash shop.

So the new mechanic is called cursed items.  When you die you have a chance of having one of your rare/epic/legendary items cursed so its stats are reversed (+17 int becomes -17 int).  This is one of the pieces of gear your are wearing.  There is also a chance that boss drops will be cursed as well.

Well what can you do about the curse?

A) Buy Holy charms from the cash shop that protect your items.  They are consumed on death so even if you do not get a cursed item you still use the charm.

B) For those who didn’t have a charm or got a cursed item from a chest drop, there are purification scrolls, the higher the item quality (rare/epic/legendary) the more they cost.

But what does it all mean, man?

Cursed items are permanent, if you don’t get the curse removed you lose the item. Period.  Prevention and removal items are only available through the cash shop, there is no quests or NPCs that that will help you with cursed items.

This is the second game nerf that was put in place to create a demand for cash shop items.  Not only did they remove any way of dealing with the death mechanic via in game means, it was made into a permanent ”debuff” so people are forced to use cash shop items if they don’t want to lose their stuff.

3) XP Scrolls

I know, I know, all F2P games offer XP scrolls.  And that is cool, man! I am down for the XP scrolls.  What I am not down for is tripling the amount of XP it takes to get from 20 to 40, not providing enough quests to get to the next level THEN bringing out XP scrolls that give bonus XP for 30 mins and cost $28 for a 20 stack.

Are you F-ing kidding me??

That is $28 for 10 hours of increased XP play time!

But the real kicker is you didn’t *need* the XP scrolls before the nerf, the game was perfectly balanced to get to max level with no grinding if you used the fatigue system correctly.

I know the game is still in “(charging players to test) beta” but they are really taking a game that was quite near to being balanced and unbalancing it just to charge the players to bring the balance back.

1) Nerf Damage, charge players to do enough damage to kill a monster that is the same level

2) Make death penalty permanent, charge players to prevent/remove penalty

3) Triple XP required to level, charge players for XP scroll that increased the XP gain

I just want to point out there has been hundred of suggestions to add items to the Cash Shop that did not break the game in the process, yet the Allods Online team has decided the most profitable way to continue to develop this game is to punish players to choose not to use that cash shop and unbalance the game in favor of those with money.  They should not market themselves as a “completely free to play” game if they are not offering methods to make the game free to play.