The Repopulation devs talk stealth, skill lists

@smartstep
oh well, not the answer I was hoping for, but here is a post from one of the devs. That'll be a pass for me as well.
..............................................snip
Re: Subscription or RMT
by xerves » Fri Oct 14, 2011 4:04 pm

We envision more of the kind of micro-transaction system you see with DDO and LOTRO. I am personally a fan of subscription services myself, but we have to drive as many people to/into the game as possible seeing how we are a very small outfit and not a company with double or triple digit amount of employees. There will be no pay to win types of deals where someone can purchase high end equipment or anything like that, but it will mostly be around the traditional "leveling" enhancements and features. Many of which will be included as part of the subscription monthly plan if you choose to go that route.

@Deliverator
as a side note, keep them coming Jef. Pretty soon I'll just be able to use your RSS feed instead of the site lol.

@Deliverator
To clarify, if you click the Sandbox tag 11 of the 15 articles that come up on the page are by Jef

@Deliverator

Haha, well I write as much sandbox news as I can find (though Brendan handles most of our EVE stuff).

Hopefully there'll be more to write about in 2012.

@Deliverator

ty for info.

Yeah ,bit of a shame about business model.

Especially in sandboxes , cash shop and microtransaction based is not acceptable for me.

@Jef Reahard

Agree with Deliverator , I am uterly bored with themeparks (I was playing them for few years and was having fun I admit) so I am interested in sandbox info :)

@valdi313
I understand your point, and actually I feel kind of bad outright dismissing an indie sandbox because of their model - we need more indie innovation.

However - LotRO is not a good example. Freemium utterly gutted that game's crafting and feeling of accomplishment. They go so far as to sell Legendary items after starting out with promising the items in the shop would be "cosmetic only" and LotRO isn't even PvP (centric). Crafting is pointless, there's no player economy and all of the things that made Middle Earth come alive have been pushed to a back burner- hobbys, music creation etc.

WB is a large company though and did that on purpose to make even more money off of an already successful product. The thing about an indie game using the model is that indy companies are always just shy of bankruptcy, especially starting out. The temptation to make a quick buck focusing on items is too great IMHO. With PvP thrown in the mix it becomes even more important that everyone be on equal footing and they not fall into the P2W trap where your RL income affects the game world.

The game looks cool, and I hope they succeed - it'll be without my $$ unless it's sub-only though.