The Elder Scrolls Online

Utnayan_sl said:

/\/\ And there is that as well. And the only difference between people being pissed off at Gold Farmers and ANet, is that Anet now has a way to realize the revenue. Meaning, it's thesame thingfrom an ethical stand point. They brought the gold farming in house and added a layer of complexity to disguise the same thing that everyone here has been bitching about happening for the last 10 years.



I don't care how many "numerous" ways they give you a chance to get it. You can buy it and bypass all progression!

Holy fucking slippery slope. Just because I disguise the living shit out of a Pay to Win shop, take stats off something, or try another one trick pony to avoid a stigma of P2W, it still doesn't negate the fact that in this instance this is 1) Sought after. 2) Can either be acquired in the game through a tremendous grind, or just simply purchased.

Why even fucking play the game? Why go through the challenges of the content? (They fucked up there too because it isn't a challenge, it's a grind)

This is a huge middle ground that publishers are just waiting to capitalize on. How to find a middle ground between cosmetic items and not crossing a boundary where you give a player an advantage. In my eyes, this is even worse. What is the point of acquiring items and sought after things in the game, regardless of item strength, when you can just log in and purchase it? And if you are using sought after cosmetic items as your end game carrot, you shouldn't be able to purchase them either. Because regardless of stats, that's what people are playing for.

Here is what happened:

"Hey guys... Public perception is that it's pay to win if we offer a statistical advantage to gear offered via a cash shop"

"Ok let's just take off the stats and still have the gear itself sought after - they should be dumb enough to fall for that one"

"Nice spin! Jeff Hickman sure does know how to make a recommendation!"

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You completely have no idea how GW2 works I guess? I don't know how else to take this post.

Utnayan_sl said:

I am fine with XP Potions. I am not fine with using gear awarded to content consumption and progression able to be purchased, nor am I fine with cash gold shops.

So if this what the genre is becoming, I just won't play the games any longer.

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GW2's shop does not sell any gear that has stats. XP pots are just another way to eliminate grind, so is buying gold. It's all the same in the end, time = money. Since you have taken the extreme position already then you need to be against XP pots too.

Yep. That about covers it. You can't buy the best gear with gold, since you still have to grind dungeons and other things for it. But you can buy gear almost as good. Pretty standard cash shop.

And I understand your point. You just haven't taken your argument to it's logical conclusion is my point.

I think you're also missing the point that this game has zero progression except for your own personal sense of entitlement, there is zero content that requires better gear.

At least to me, a pay to win cash shop is stuff like the games where you have to enchant something to +10 and each point has a 1% chance of happening but if you buy our enchant stone for $5 it's 90% chance. Shit like that. Otherwise, GW2 is not pay to win, that's a ridiculous statement. I'm not even sure if all the gear you would want is available on the AH anyway. Does the shit you can buy with laurels available for gold purchase?

One thing you are missing is that not all items in GW2 can be sold on the auction house. Ascended items can only be obtained through running fractals, trading daily earned laurels, or guild achievement tokens. And right now that is currently the "top tier", barring legendary for weapons. You just cannot get ascended items for gold.

As for the xp boosters and such, you get tons of those just by leveling up and completing achievements.

Utnayan_sl said:

A cash shop where players can purchase gems and transfer that into gold ... buying all purchasableprogression gear to bypass gearing content/make someone a better player (lol). Except now Anet realizes the revenue in the transfer process and controls rate.

Does that pretty much cover it? What would I be missing?

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At what point do you sit back and breathe, and admit that this time, you've no leg to stand on. You're complaining about P2W, meaning that someone uses real life cash for anadvantageover others. You've decided that this advantage is time, in this case because the GW2 devs have decided to bypass the black market in RMT and have just said fuck it, you want the best shit, throw 2k at it, and it's yours. The player sits back, and realises that for 2 grand, he can have a sword with a few stat points greater (and I really do mean "a few") than a drop he can acquire from killing a few event bosses, or... he can grind out the same uber sword over the course of a month or two.

The dumbshit with too much money and not enough time will buy the uber sword and STILL WON'T BE RAPING THE SERVER WITH IT. He won't be topping DPS meters, and no-one is going to give this guy invites to guilds or Fractals based solely upon his ownership of the uberest sword in the game.

In contrast the other dumbshit that spends of a few months grinding out the components will get his sword and STILL WON'T BE RAPING THE SERVER WITH IT. He won't be topping DPS meters, and no-one is going to give this guy invites to guilds or Fractals based solely upon his ownership of the uberest sword in the game.

At what point do you consider either of these people to win? The guy that forks out 2k walks about happy, the guy that grinds for it, walks out happy. The chinese gold farmers cry like little bitches because there's no market for them anymore.... and Arenanet net some extra cash for providing the game and said ubersword while sticking a fork in the eye of the black market.

As long as there is the black market, I can't see the problem with offering an exchange to gold. (seriously, have a look, it's over 2 fucking thousand dollars to buy up all the components for a legendary).

... and finally, two people on the ends of the spectrum with the same uber sword, and a guy that crafted his exotic greatsword for under 4 gold, or a nights farming and does the same damage,has the same stats(at least very similiar, I do remember there being a difference though) ...it just doesn't look as cool.

If this is Pay2Win, I'm all for it. It's a win for the players, it's a win for the developers and it's a loss for the gold farmers.

The only thing purchasable on that page is the globs of ectoplasm, and those are easy/cheap to come by. I'm currently setting on 350 of them with the trade post value being around 19s per ecto. Laurels you get by completing the daily, getting 1 laurel per daily, and 10 laurels per monthly. Fractal relics are obtained by doing fractal dungeons at the rate of 6-12 per dungeon with a daily bonus of 20 or so. Guild commendations can be done by doing guild missions, which is largely dependent on the size of the guild, but you can get 8 per week if your guild is sufficiently big enough.

I think another thing to note about their cash shop is that they wanted it to function similar to Eve's flex but instead of getting money out of the system you trade gold for gems and vice versa I think. Someone who actually plays the game would have a better handle on it than me.

Actually I think Anet isnt P2W by Ut's definition, because while you can buy max stat items for gold and buy the gold for gems, that's not bypassing any kind of effort or achievement. Without daddy's VISA you just take your leveling-earned in-game monies to the trading post and voila, max stats gear (exotics - ascended are time gated and no more or less difficult to get with or without RMT). With the VISA, same result. Time spent? It probably takes longer with the credit card. There really isnt anything worth "being proud of" that you can buy for gold or gems, and thus nothing you can skip to P2W. If that's a good reflection on GW2 or a bad one is another question.

That and there really isn't anything to do with the gear. It's not like there is some gated progression scheme. In WOW terms, it's like doing top tier raids in heroic dungeon gear and doing just fine.

Every game is pay to win. If you do not buy a subscription you have no access to the game so I win. It is a stupid argument.
Some folks will piss away money, others will piss away time. Time is money, friend. You are all paying with a variation of the same currency. If someone blows a thousand bucks to get the best gear in the game than he will quickly be bored and leave, with nothing to show for it but a thousand dollars paid for your tears. Now which person is the bigger asshole. The douche who pissed away a thousand bucks or the butthurt wanker who got crushed 3 times in a BG and has spent the last decade crusading against the heartless asshole who never gave a second thought in the world for him.

Instead of bullshitting about F2P mechanics and ethics, everyone should take a couple hours and read up. That is, if you're interested in having a respectable and serious opinion on the matter:

http://www.gamesindustry.biz/article...-at-gdc-online

http://www.gamasutra.com/view/feature/195806/

http://www.gamasutra.com/view/featur...e_.php?print=1

http://www.gamasutra.com/view/news/2...Weaknesses.php

Utnayan_sl said:

Am I being trolled here?

Adding an extra step in the process to disguise a paywall for easy access to all items while pocketing the money is not better than being a gold farmer * or * instituting a pay to win system. And in this case, they actively did one, and passively did another.

Jesus all they had to do was throw in an extra layer of deception and you people are really this blind? No wonder everyone in these meetings these days considers the gamer consumer a sucker with a wallet.

Holy shit.

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You still have to play the game extensively to have the best gear. Anyway, this game offers zero content that requires the best gear.

Utnayan_sl said:

Am I being trolled here?

Adding an extra step in the process to disguise a paywall for easy access to all items while pocketing the money is not better than being a gold farmer * or * instituting a pay to win system. And in this case, they actively did one, and passively did another.

Jesus all they had to do was throw in an extra layer of deception and you people are really this blind? No wonder everyone in these meetings these days considers the gamer consumer a sucker with a wallet.

Holy shit.

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He is mistaken, you can't buy any stat gear from the cash shop. And you can't buy any of the best gear with gold converted from gems.You have to grind for it.And even the best gear that you grind for has pathetically small stat differences compared to the cheap and easy gear.

You don't need the best gear for anything in game. I don't have any of it and am not even trying for it. Don't need it, not going to grind for it. It's "attaboy" gear for people who play a lot.

It's been repeated many times but you went for the one time somebody wrote something by mistake.

You really should have researched this better. You are barking up the wrong tree with GW2. There are plenty of games that have bad cash shops of the type you are railing against, but not GW2.

Are beta invites going out for this, this week anyone know?


Cheers.

Ut, you literally get the gold to buy exotics from leveling. When you max your level you buy the max stat gear from the gold you got while leveling. There is zero reason to buy gems with dollars or in-game gold unless you want to buy gem shop items. Gem shop items are skins and gimmicks like the minipets, instruments to finally get the band back together, and boosters for xp, karma and so on. So you consider that P2W, that's fine, everyone has drawn their personal line. I'd prefer if the cosmetic skins cash shop thing had never happened to MMOs but that's not ever going away. Most have made their peace witht it. I cant actually think of an MMO that's not P2W under that definition but I havent tried all obviously.

That article you quoted was from november when Anet introduced the new item rarity 'ascended', at the time there was an outcry about vertical progression (only distantly related to P2W) and how GW1 didnt add new item layers in 7 years. People feared (rightfully) they would go full-on EQ and introduce new tiers of equipment every couple of months. Thing is that never happened. Even now there are only 7 slots for those items (out of like 16?), all of them gated through gameplay and NO DROP tokens (dailies, weekly guild missions, grinding fractals). And because of that you cannot P2W your way to ascendeds. Also, you dont need the ascended gear for anything but fractals themselves, and there only because of the very definition of grind: you repeat the same 9 mini-dungeons ad nauseum only they get harder, mostly because the mobs get a special dmg proc, and you can add mitigation for it in a special slot only found on ascended items. Like Draegan said you might not be aware of just how pointless GW2 is for the achiever player type.


Anyway this actually the TESO thread, so the GW2 chatter is off-topic. Lets look at a question about their release delay. Are there any rumors they want to remake portions of their game a bazillionth time to match current market trends, or are they taking the extra time to polish up the version they worked on the last year or two?