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Is SoE encouraging pay to win?
hercules
Member UncommonPosts: 4,924
I play eq2 from time to time and though i think its the best mmo out there at the moment ,I feel SoE indirectly is encouraging pay to win.
Basically in most mmo i played in other to win an item you have to be present at the kill.this can be a drawback for people who are willing to pay to win because the raid has to create a slot for you,you probably have to spent time following them and they hope you don't do something to wipe them and more importantly the price is fixed before you go in .all very troublesome for those selling and buying looting rights.
In EQ2 its not so.Raid does its buisness and then puts in auction channel the loot and anyone can bid for it get zoned in and out ,and they don't even have to be there for the kill.
This was something a looong time ago SoE actually planned to fix but then stopped suddenly.Same time they stopped what is called the plat run which also was meant to be fixed.Plat run means 2 guys can go into an old zone and wipe it which was originally meant for 24 ppl and get loads of plat aka gold.
What this has lead to is now raids are boxed by 1 or 2 ppl who sell this looting rights and in return people buying it sell back game card and station cash which can be used for exp potions,actual 30 day subs,mounts etc .
This is done openly .
I was in an instance with a freshly levelled 90 guy who had pretty poor gear.Next day i see him selling 25 gamecards for plat aka gold in channel.Same day i see him making high bids for raid loot.Few days later the dungeon finder pair us up and he is decked in gear which all comes from hard mode and some easy mode but highest raid zones.
His story is common and i can't help to think while people do buy their way to best loot and wins ,SoE actually thru error or intentional but certainly plan to keep the system has made it so easy and open to be able to deck a character in best gear if he is willing to shell $400+ to them.
They gain because raiders who sell this loot rights now use 6+ accounts each rather then the single one they pay for previously and the raiders get their accounts paid for buy people like this dude.
Comments
Huge blemish on the game and it shows the true face of gamers.This problem has not been complained about ,hence why it is not fixed.This is because the players like anything they can exploit and would rather cheat/exploit a system than complain about it.SOE's main focus is cash shop,they coudn't care less about the game.If you have been paying attention you would have noticed they made a lot of VERY average items legendary just so bronze players can't use them unless they step up and pay.
NONE of the big names can design a good game anymore,so now i pin my hopes on Asian devs like XL games [ Archeage] or 38 studios [mr.Schilling].
SOE is actually going to get worse,they will implement more and more cash shop ideas,i can just imagine what they will produce for EQ3,it will be laughable.
Never forget 3 mile Island and never trust a government official or company spokesman.
actually it was complained about a few times and once there was even a offical blue response on the forums .something like " we will not stop it but if you lose your plat we will not help you " answer.
I think nowadays people just stop complaining and either just ignore it(have to switch off the auction channel for that because of the spam ) or go with the flow.
like you said SoE is making a huge amount from the cash shop+ exploit so they will never fix it for sure.
Its a shame on gamers,developers and sad to say spoils a otherwise lovely game Recently sad to say even my guild a mid raiding guild has suggested we start selling looting rights rather then do what we usually do pass them to alts.Thankfully i can only raid on weekends thats hard mode which we ourselves need.
Smedley seems to be so taken by this microtransaction that he tends to implement it in all future soe games clearly he seen the bank balance from all this and can see people will pay a lot of money to play to win.If that dude bought 25 gamecard/sc for $425 and will do it for next toon and when next xpac hits in a few months spent even move then that(new loot will cost more money) thats probably over $1000 from him alone assuming he only decks up 1 toon per year x2 if another and there are many like him.
His sub is merely $120 and he spends about 10 times on that to soe for cards which in turn feeds the countless bot accounts which have been created now for raid farming and with multi box its becoming dead easy to be able to do such as long as your bot team geared higher then the raid zone.
sad state but this certainly something smedley like to see rather then boost the image of an otherwise great game.
Yep, it's out of control. SOE is basically gold sellers of their own gold, just doing it in not so obvious manner
Obviously SOE's main goal is money, so we shouldn't expect any decent behaviour from them. They will do ANYTHING to get more money.
If there's anything more they can sell in cash shop, not losing subs and players, they will do it and try to convice people it's OK.
The only thing that would stop them is if they start losing subs because of that and actually lose money. Well, it goes for all big game companies.
Then don't fix it cause SOE is transforming to f2p model and fixing it would be counterproductive - they WANT their current playerbase getting used to buying in-game things for $. Just in future SOE itself will be selling. Maybe not raid gear (well at least not soon) but many other things.
SOE actually is company that pionniered many things like that in western maket. It was first or one of first companies that brought in western mmorpg mainstream market things like ability to RMT between players, cash shops in P2P games and other microtransaction stuff.
One of the reason I don't play any SOE game and I don't plan to play any future SOE game (Planetside 2 and EQNext included).
Seriously SOE approach to supporting games (Vanguard, SWG anyone?) + business practices(monetizing everything) just don't sit well with me.
Fortunatelly mmorpg gaming is something I do on my leasire time, - it is not work or real life matters - so I have comfort I can choose what to play and what to not play totally on my own even weirdest or most idealistic principles.
thats essentially the crux of the issue - and I agree with you
EQ2 fan sites
So you can spend a lot of time in game earning the gear, or you can spend time in real life earning the money to buy gear. Either way you get the gear and those who spend a lot of time in the game get free game time. So, what's the downside?
Oh, oh, wait, I get it! "I don't spend either time in the game or time to earn real money and I'm OUTRAGED that those who do have better gear than me! Ban them! Whhaaaaaaagh!"
Cry me a freakin river.
Well here's part of your problem right here OP. (talk about a "WHOOOOOOOOOOSH")
We really need separate forums for every newly launched game. There can be the anti-<MMO> one and there can be the 'what general discussion should be' one. All the lamenting can happen together where each can find solace in like minded can't-move-on-ers leaving the rest of us to actually move forward and discuss meaningful and relevant topics.
There is nothing wrong with that 'per se' I just don't want to play with people like you on same server.
I just want a server without possibility to transfer into (call it rp or whatever) that won''t allow buying stuff for $.
Then you can go to all the other servers and buy all gear and other pixels for real $ all you want.
I thnk they are just noticing the massive market for free to play games now .
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Anyone else notice hercules and Wizardry being the same person.. now that's sad.
Pay to win means your $$ is going to a good cause. I'm all for pay to win as long as it isn't too over the top.
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I don't understand how this game is Free to Play!
This is more like an extended trial.
No one should play any SOE games because of they are such a (insert negative word here) company. Look at what they did to (insert SOE or Non- SOE MMO here).
All SOE wants to do is make money, unlike (insert MMO developer who doesn't want to make money here) , they make MMO's because they are artist who view the medium of MMOs as there canvas, and they love puppies.
(insert MMO made for for the sake of art and not profit here) is the game everyone should play because (insert narrow minded opinion that has no room for other opinions here).
""But Coyote, you could learn! You only prefer keyboard and mouse because that's all you've ever known!" You might say right before you hug a rainforest and walk in sandals to your drum circle where you're trying to raise group consciousness of ladybugs or whatever it is you dirty goddamn hippies do when you're not busy smoking pot and smelling bad."
Coyote's Howling: Death of the Computer
Yeah, curse those players who expect others to earn their in game items by doing in game activities.
I'm currently playing EQ 2 and didn't really understand what the whole selling of looting rights was all about. OP is right, on Freeport there's one or two people who sell looting rights every evening and in one auction last night I saw the bids for a piece of gear up at 750P, which is stratospheric levels to a player like myself who at level 45 has accumulated the small forture of... 30 P.
Does it really affect my gameplay? No, I'm not likely to raid ever either, but it is sort of disheartening to see this going on and I understand why many people wouldn't support a game that permits it.
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Just trying to live long enough to play a new, released MMORPG, playing New Worlds atm
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"This is the most intelligent, well qualified and articulate response to a post I have ever seen on these forums. It's a shame most people here won't have the attention span to read past the second line." - Anon
I completely and utterly disagree with you on this part.
I'm sorry that that you've never been exposed to an MMO with a better economy than EQ2 or whatever other games make up you "most games played" .
There used to be a day and age when all the items in MMOs were tradeable. Which is how it should be. If i own a sword, i should be able to sell my sword. It's the basic principle of how the real world (and any world with an economy) works - when you own something, you can sell it. Trade, barter, exchange, economy - it's the basis of society. I was shocked coming into EQ2 to find this ridiculous notion that if i got an item, i cuoldn't sell it to someone else. It makes no sense whatsoever. And it ONLY seems to apply to adventurers, so there is a double standard.
If i'm a weaponsmith and my job is to make swords, then i can make a sword, sell it for money and buy myself something else.
But if i'm an adventurer and my job is to go out and defeat "great evil" and take their swords, i can't sell sell that sword and buy myself something else. How the f**k does this make any sense?
"oh you had to be there to kill the dragon in order to have the sword!" Why? I didn't have to be there to forge the sword that i bought from a weaponsmith.. i didn't have to be there to grow the wheat that my bread is made of...
My job is to kill dragons and get swords. Your job is to bake bread. You sell bread to me, then buy sword from me. I sell sword to you, then buy bread from you.
Everyone does whatever their job is and then we exchange stuff.
EQ2 is one of the few games where you can actually buy some useful stuff with your plat. I would never want to see that changed. If anything, they should just remove the "no-trade" flags from everything so it can be done through broker. It's an MMO, it has an economy. It has "in-game wealth". That's a good thing. People buying and selling plat for cash is a bad thing and i neither condone it nor would ever participate in it. However, it is an unfortunate part of being in an MMO with an economy. as long as MMOs have currency and stuff to buy with that currency, they'll be people that want will be willing to pay $$$ for that currency.
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I think arieste has some very good points . I agree with them.
I am sure that paying for ingame items is something we are going to live with in the future,all game companies want to earn money. The question is if we who play those games are going to accept this system, lets say you buy an uber armor for your charakter for 20$ and 3 weeks later this kind of armor can be found as loot from regular mobs and your 20$ armor is worth nothing anymore so you have to buy another set of expensive gear.It is all upto us gamers if we suport this kind of marketing.
What I have seen so far in Sony's Item shop is cosmetic items, has little real effect on the game play, just a lot of eye candy which, for some reason people spend money on. I have heard in some cases up into the thousands. To each their own, this is not for me, putting a pay to win system is unfair to the people who have kept this game alive until F2P, so stick with cosmetic's or xp boosters, etc, and don't sell things that well make you OP and all is well in the item shop world.
I don't because I've seen exactly what he's talking about. It's exactly how that guy in EQ got started with selling virtual items. I think it should be exactly the opposite. You can't trade any item period. No items, ever. Zero. Gold sellers dead. Think about that. I would rather deal with that then companies ramming RMT down our throats, taking a cut from the sale and telling us it's good for the game.
,,I,, them. I am so sick of people thinking they are entitled to everything in a game without having to put forth any effort to attain it. I am so sick of game companies selling you a box (game) then trying to sell you a key to open the box on top of it. If my 15 bucks a month dosen't give me the *opportunity* to get everything in the game through my own time spent playing it, I don't want it and I probably won't play it.
RMT through the same company which owns the game is going to kill this genre and most of you can't even begin to see it.
Yes those were the days!
Imo, one of the most fun part of those older mmo-games were the trading items. Huge part of the social system in the games turned around trading,nowdays you grind same boss over and over again to eventually maybe get the item you want,back then you found something and traded it for what you wantet.I made lot of ingame friends vile trading in for exempel AC.
The problem with a game in "this genre" as you see it is that only 3 players, you included, are going to play it.
How are companies ramming RMT down your throat when buying is optional.
The only people I see feeling forced to buy anything are those who feel they must have the biggested and bestest loot to fill some need in their empty soul.
""But Coyote, you could learn! You only prefer keyboard and mouse because that's all you've ever known!" You might say right before you hug a rainforest and walk in sandals to your drum circle where you're trying to raise group consciousness of ladybugs or whatever it is you dirty goddamn hippies do when you're not busy smoking pot and smelling bad."
Coyote's Howling: Death of the Computer
To be absolutely honest even during Everquest days I never could understand this need for people to get the best loot and the ensuing drama. I just make do with I can get always played that way. Probably why I cannot see the problem here to be honest and nor the issue with RMT. I feel it is all about supply and demand. As long as people are willing to pay for this it will happen and I think the minority will lose out in the end. Me I just adapt and play and if I don't I just lose out the games I really enjoy.
back at launch (1999) EQ had all items tradeable but once the planes were added for raiding (also 1999)
the planar drops were no-trade
Brad Gordon discusses player economy at this link - section 22.4.1
http://silkyvenom.com/pages/faq.php?faqid=413
I dont think mmo raid loot should be tradeable to anyone in game (outside of the raid) but thats my opinion
EQ2 fan sites
just you since we are not the same person.looking thru out posts we don't even post on same topics till this one .so sad you can't even do a basic check before talking.now THATS sad!