Celtic Heroes

I think you should look at pocket legends as an example of a highly successful mmorpg. Although not entirely the same concept as Celtic heroes (instance based rather than world based), look at how their system works. They basically require you to pay money to get to the premium, highest end content. In the beginning of the game, you literally had to pay for 80% of ingame content availability. Now I think it's a lot cheaper, because the game has grown so much and the devs are seeing income. In Celtic Heroes I think that top- end gameish content should be paid for. Whether this means unlocking new levels with money, or by making it very difficult to have fun/be easy without money, either way money money somehow to get the best content.

Developers are not going to get a steady income of money if people are purchasing platinum to get visual perks. Visual perks need to come after the steady income which is created in a game by almost every steady player eventually purchasing some platinum to keep playing.

The system is:

First play content= hook new players
Middle play content= get them educated, and see a desire of buying platinum for stuff.
High plat content= ok now i like the game, I am staying with it, time to buy to keep going more easily (without platinum it feels boring, or TOO challenging)
Froofroo content= I am superficial and have too much money and complain a lot about how ugly the characters are (and boy are they butt ugly) so I buy new looky stuff, vanity items basically. (this is icing on the proverbial money cake)

I see absolutely nothing wrong with the system as it is, although certain classes might be weighted differently on the desireability of purchasing platinum at higher levels. I only see it annoying that 50$ is so much platinum, and yet I see no big incentive to buy it (where in pocket legends I eventually did). Especially if platinum isn't all characters throughout the game type of a thing.

As I stated earlier the only concern of mine is the skill slots. I am not saying all items in the game store should be free, and I fully support one thumb mobile making money, however when there is a large separation of equality between players I draw issue. Yes, it is possible to level to 60+ with only 3 skill slots, but the in-combat strategy is faulted since it takes time to switch skills, and some classes are heavily relient on having many skills immediately available. My main conern is not the current gameplay, but rather when pvp is introduced. Celtic Heroes is the only game that I know of that requires players to purchase extra skill slots, and I believe it was a poor decision.

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I also know of some players from Arawyn who are younger and can't purchase platinum for whatever reason. Perhaps they have a itunes account but there is no Credit apple associated and they only use a gift apples but don't have one. Like Xlegion I think the main functionality should be free. The things that cost should be the stuff that is cosmetic, time-savers and the like. The slots IMHO are very important and do make a big difference in game play. Like Xlegion, I also believe that the developers should be rewarded! I think our comments are for those players who can't or won't purchase the slots.

Another thing that you may consider is that the more time and effort you put into this game, the more likely you will be to purchase platinum. This is true for me. With all slots you will most likely continue further in the game without being frustrated. Thus I also argue that giving this functionality may also bring about more monetary gains for the developers.

In response to Pordune's comment: yes I have played Pocket Legends from when it was a new release. At first I was hooked as the game was new, refreshing and just plain cool. I paid $5 for the first expansion so I could keep playing, then got bored as no new content became available. After several months I went back only to discover that what I had paid for was not only now free, but also an old area. They have also implemented a way to obtain platinum for free.

Games like Dungeons and Dragons Online gave partial rewards for leveling characters, after you level x amount of characters you have enough currency to buy the next area. My only issue with that system was that the areas were too expensive, and lacked enough content to keep players interested.

Like Raven said, the more time you spend leveling a character, the more likely you are to buy something for it in the game store. Don't under-estimate the fund gaining ability of "froo-froo" cosmetic items. Games like Perfect World got their start with nothing but that for purchase (then graduated to other things to buy).

I played pocket legends when it came out in April 2010 an played til the one year anniversary but after that order and chaos online came out an then this game I hav never looked back pocket legends is more of a child's game now an the devs are money hungry they hav said their selves we hope to fatten our bank accounts with money by the use of platinum space time studios jus came out with another star legends I played it for bout 10 minutes an deleted it as pocket legends liked the old pocket legends when it was apple then they added all these other phone then it got political it got policed then they started banning players but those developers don't care they say they care but they don't they only care about ther bank accounts I like the platinum prices I hav bought several for sigils an skill resets and an slots plus backpacks etc