A few weeks ago, I posted my impressions of the fresh start (boosted) server for ArcheAge Unchained. Now that the first 30 days has come and gone, the population drop off has taken place (since some were subbing 30 days at a time, and there are many who didn’t believe it was worth continuing).
Basically, the “boosted” aspect of the server was already haphazard at best, but CM’s made it clear there are no more additional boosting events being planned for the remainder of this servers lifespan (which closes on December 8th). For those who focused on gear, the top 100 on NA-Stormraw are between 14K-16K equipment points. Life skilling was mostly useless given most timers weren’t modified. Manastorm crystal acquisition was also problematic since they were also unchanged (except for earlier event giveaways amounting to around 1K of them; still not enough given the unchanged costs in the marketplace).
And despite giving away a free full kit 24×24 mushroom house, the vast majority of housing zones were still empty (only the desirable locations were full) highlighting that while this fresh start was still populated at the beginning, still represents just a small fraction of how Unchained started off 3 years ago (when Gamigo launched it back on October 15, 2019), and how Unchained itself, represented an even smaller fraction of how original ArcheAge launched in 2014 with Trion.
The game is catering to a very small niche (and as I noted earlier, this was my first time participating in a fresh start server, and will be my last for awhile), where an even tinier version of that niche, enjoys going through this fresh start ritual. Even a partially boosted fresh start server cannot hold most of these players over 30 days though (without more freebies or potentially better graduation rewards).
As it stands, it doesn’t make sense to invest too much into housing since it seems like nothing will be full kit. Kakao hasn’t yet announced all of the details regarding the transfer and closure (like specifically how inventory and warehouse will be handled; that’s an issue because most players already have more stuff that they cannot store on their characters inventory already), but players will likely need to take care of packing up their property and full kitting it themselves if they don’t want to rebuild from scratch (also not clear yet if players will simply get back the designs if they don’t demo their property before the closure, of if it goes poof). Players will be allowed to start transferring off beginning October 27th. I expect the results of that will determine how Kakao Games Europe will handle future transfers.
A recent survey they did asked players if they preferred the current fresh start being made permanent, that future seasonal fresh starts would transfer into. That to me is a question and decision that should have been made before this one began. IMHO, that would’ve made more sense. Players would still be able to transfer to the existing EVO if they wanted to (but allowing EVO to transfer to this shouldn’t be allowed). As for the fresh start server that Kakao opened when they took over the publishing, they should force transfer players from that to the existing EVO (merging these two doesn’t make any sense given the low activity on that older fresh starts where it would end up disrupting faction base activity along with an unneeded land rush; land rush makes sense when the game has a large population to contest for what is then a limited resource).
I know that the lack of a full kit demo for housing in closing out this first seasonal fresh start, is going to dissuade a lot of players in future ones, from putting any time into building out properties; it just doesn’t make sense given the short time frame, and limited Manastorm Crystal acquisition. Like I’m making sure I have enough crystals to buy the 12 building management titles (I do) I will need to full kit demo my raised mushroom (I only remodeled to a raised house on my main account since the task jar and additional seed beds were useful).
This was the first time I remodeled the base mushroom home using the changed system in the global build that was implemented when Kakao Games took over the publishing. It’s a hell of a lot more “expensive” to upgrade it since it required 40 building management titles (600 Manastorm Crystals worth or 80K vocation badges worth for just 1 title which makes that route infeasible on this fresh start) since they are no longer craftable (previously before this global build, you could purchase a building management permit from the general merchant for 150 gold, and then use 50 bound tax certificates to create a building management title).
It’s also not clear yet if we will get to keep the fresh start full kit farms since they’ve normally been limited to one per account (we were allowed to buy 3 each of the 16×16 and 8×8 farms from a fresh start server exclusive product tab in the fresh start server cash shop). There’s basically a lot of details that was not spelled out from the start (for obvious reasons since Kakao Games Europe wanted to maximize participation to juice the numbers).
But just from observing the drop off after the initial 30 days (with those who initially subbed that way, and decided not to commit additional time), I have my doubts now that their planned rapidfire cadence will work out without a wholesale re-evaluation of the boosting (because as it stands, life skilling is generally unrewarding without it being boosted appropriately). IMHO, launching the next boosted seasonal fresh start right after this one closes, is going to be a mistake without evaluating data and feedback from this first one, and making appropriate changes.
