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"Time-saving Convenience items" and "Time Skippers". The new PAY TO WIN.
Interesting
Member UncommonPosts: 972
You spend money to acquire something that ultimatelly allow you to bypass time and effort.
You spend money to acquire something that has value, thus generating value for you out of thin air.
The value you acquire translate into power. The time you skipped, translate into progression. Progression is power.
In the end, anything that is sold on CASH SHOPS that POTENTIALLY allows players to SKIP a portion of TIME AND EFFORT in the game to PROGRESS, ends up giving them a chronologically power advantage over others.
MMORPGs are designed so time is never enough. By design, there isnt a CAP at wich point spending more time does not provide any more material or subjective advantage to a player. By design players can always get more and better resources, gear, valuables.
In that sense there is always a chronologic race for progression and acquisition of resources, equipment, valuables or whatever that can be acquired through time and effort.
Under these designs, selling TIME SKIPPERS or TIME-SAVING CONVENIENCE ITEMS are an indirect way of selling power, WHILE AT THE SAME TIME, benefitting from the power bait on the cash shops and evading the criticism that our mmorpg community has grown to evolve and label by "Pay To Win".
Time savers affect the chronologic progression and position of power one holds at any determined point in time.
The main problem is that TIME SKIPPERS, CONTENT SKIPPERS, TIME-SAVING CONVENIENCE ITEMS, whatever the developers name it in their interviews END UP AFFECTING THE INTEGRITY OF THE GAME.
This causes a chain effect that start from the core design of the game, when rates of progression, amount of time and effort required to accomplish certain activiities is decided. Games end up being designed so that the default rate of progression or amount of repetition or attempts, or number of enemies killed, whatever activiity it has, ends up being artificially increased/slowed down in a detrimental way. While for the payers who are envisioned to benefit from the so called "time-savers" end up having a completely diference experience, one whose progression feels more acceptable and natural (as opposed to the artificially "tweaked" one).
This is clearly observed when games started to go from P2P to F2P.
When the factors of power are not subjective (relative to the character: such as levels, classes, skills, unlocks), but material (derived from equipment, upgrades, enchants, resources, whatever currency can translate into direct power), players are misguided into believing that the "progression is fast" or that "the level cap is easily reachable within a short time frame anyway", when in reality in these games the FACTORS OF POWER derive from the material branch. In other words, what commonly we call as "gear grind".
So today I saw the announcement about GUILD WARS 2 RMT and I died a bit inside when I saw the same rethoric speech by ArenaNets' O'Brien about offering "Time-saving convenience items". As if adding the word convenience to it would somehow disguise the pay to win nature of time-saving. And all that disregard the fact that real money will be directly translated into virtual value.
Each day the ethic principles that I grew up as a gamer is shifted into a new ethical paradigm. To me, adding money into the factor of gaming is unethical. Its not ilegal because we the consumers are unorganized and the moving force behind legislation lobbies wants more consumers spending their money and it will take a few years untill the society embraces this virtual social consumerist phenomn and start to treat us like "real life" consumers are.
I believe that what we can do, as I have written before years ago, is that creating a PREJUDICE, by LABELING NEGATIVELLY SOMETHING WE FEEL STRONGLY AGAINST, such as "PAY TO WIN" (as in "this game is pay to win, wich is bad, therefore it sucks" that became automatized in our mass conscience as modern gamers) is a way to VOTE. Is a way to CRIPPLE, is a way to CHANGE and CAUSE EFFECT. We have seen that smart developers ARE TRYING DESPERATELY TO STEEM AWAY FROM THE "OUR GAME IS PAY TO WIN" LABELING.
Now what I believe we must do, is start to impregnate the "TIME-SAVING", "TIME SKIPPERS" IS BAD! In the same way we managed to do together against Pay to Win. We must reject RMT MODELS THAT AFFECT THE INTEGRITY of our games.
That is the best we can do and we can easily spread this idea by just repeatedly applying the negative label filled with prejudice against the "time saving convenience items". In the end, they are as prejudicial to the games as the original pay to win, but this time, they are being camouflaged, masqueraded to bypass our perceptive filters.
You can pm me to discuss more if you want, or you can keep this one bumped for great justice somore people read. I know that the dark forces of censorship are strong on this one and even legitimate complaints may be misinterpreted as trolling, but may the light shine with you.
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Comments
Which is quite appropriate, as I was doing some navel gazing earlier when looking in the GW2 microtransaction shop. And I want to buy a world-megaphone - so that I may be the first to say something witty about Chuck Norris to the entire server.
Now, let's make a rhyme with the word "orange." OP - you start.
Re: SWTOR
"Remember, remember - Kakk says 'December.'"
A lot of rambling for nothing. Explain to me how someone hitting the level cap sooner than you gives them that much of an advantage? There will always be someone better than you no matter what. I could understand people getting worried if they were selling items or stuff only obtainable via gems (which isn't the case), but obviously people have no clue what the definition of "pay 2 win" is.
That's like telling someone they can't play more than 2 hours because that's all the time you have, and if they do they'd be at an advantage, which they wouldn't really. MMORPG weren't meant to be races to level cap.
Have to say I really disagree with you. I am the type that usually waits a couple months before jumping into an MMO. That being said, everyone is ahead of me level and time wise. Does this mean that they are more powerful than me? Not really. If someone wants to biy something that offers them a quicker way to a means I don't bunch that in with P2W or more power. People will continue to disagree on what P2W is to them but I don't think you can just look at a gamesCS and say the game is immidiately P2W. Kinda depends onthe games overall design really.
Example would be GW2's CS since this is the first thing that came to mind. Everything scales one way or another so getting those exp boosts for an hour means absolutely nothing to others. By your reasoning GW2's shop is P2W and I just don't see it the same. While I respect your views, I don't agree.
RIP Jimmy "The Rev" Sullivan and Paul Gray.
I completely agree OP, time is what you use to achieve things in games, time convenience items are P2W imo. Developers will keep testing their waters to see what they can get away with until gamers make it known to them that it will hurt their revenue by doing so. I will not support any form of money for power RMT in games and never have, if it becomes the norm then I will stop playing the mainstream games.
I'm willing to pay more for a game without a cash shop, where power is earned by time spent in-game.
Yeah, to me cash shops are pay-to-not-to-play. And one of the reasons I don't like cash shop driven games is I don't like a game that is being developed by devs whose primary focus in game design is to figure out how to get me into the store rather than figuring out how to make the game enjoyable enough to keep subbed.
Then you would never have supported Guild Wars 2 in the first place. The progression is horizontal, the leveling curve is flat, and up/down scaling in power is common place in this game. Without the cash shop.
I stopped there. How long have you been following Guild Wars 2?
Then please explain to me your view of why they have a cash shop with items that are not purely cosmetic?
My view: It's there so people can pay to achieve things faster, bypass game mechanics and gain a competitive advantage by spending money.
Would the game be worse with only cosmetic items in the cash shop in your opinion? Why?
Guild Wars 2 is not a game dependant on vertical progression. There is no carrot. The largest run of vertical progression is leveling to 80 on a flat leveling curve, and means absolutely NOTHING in the COMPETETIVE PvP in Guild Wars 2.
That is my view.
There's no advantage you gain competetively over any other player by getting to 80 faster. You just get access to more content at your level quicker. Any lower levels can be sidekicked in base stats to max though so there's already ways to bypass content built right into the game. And a player who started 3 days before you has the inherent advantage on that field anyway...
Edit: Answer to your last question: I don't care either way. I won't be buying these conveinence items in the cash shop because I'm not forced to to enjoy the game. I'm just as competetive having payed 0$ after initial purchase as someone who spent $500 billion in the cash shop.
How To Guild Wars 2: The Economy - General Discussion - Guild Wars 2 Forums at MMORPG.com
Read this a few minutes ago. Has a video link that explains how the system in GW2 works (as of what we know right now)
I'm sorry but the only one saying anything about the second coming is you. Fans of a game accept its flaws and strengths.
I dunno. I used to absolutely hate cash shop idea in any game. And when they took LoTRO F2P and added in the cash shop I was the front of the line as hater on it. But after a couple years of being aorund it, and it having cosmetics stuff mostly, but a few things which aren't (scrolls for xp, potions, stat tomes), really it doesn't do jack to the playability of the game. Ok so LoTRO doesn't have real PvP, only MP, so it may make things a bit shakie on that front. But dont count this as a seriously super duper bad thing until you see how it plays out. You may end up hating this game for no reason at all when it might not be that big of a deal in the long run.
I will tell you this though, cash shop is the way of the future, so ya best get used to it now. I know people in LoTRO who still dump $30+ a month on cash shop stuff, even while they are a life time subscriber in a free to play game. No way companies out there see this and not want thier piece of the pie.
Ya but I'm not sure everyone is talking about Guild war 2. Basically gear and money in guild war 2 ins't very important, at least compare to other games. At least that's what most people think at the moment.
So if gear and money isn't important, and level cap is easily reached, that take away the problem.
At least that's what we hope happen. If there is gear progression and more meaning to gold itself, your theory would be off, and that's hope it dont' happen.
I made the thread longer by providing the difference between material and subjective sources of power.
All I saw was people providing counters to the subjective sources of power, ignoring the fact that the games they are defending are designed also with material sources of power as carrots.
Ah, then it's my folly because this is in the pub. /facepalm Kneejerk reactions tothe OP's "convienence item" touting. :x
Sorry, my post was in error. I am having troubles using my phone as a forum device.
Death is nothing to us, since when we are, Death has not come, and when death has come, we are not.
I think the discussion would be a lot easier to respond to if there wasn't a blanket definition for all MMORPG's. Pick a specific games cash shop that you want to discuss, and someone who knows how it works will respond appropriately, hopefully. Because, as pointed out with my previous examples, selling "convienence" on games with different forms of progression and "material sources of power" will have different impacts on the game, and don't need to be righteously vindicated like your OP would suggest.
I have to agree with the op. However, some of you either didn't read it or dont understand the point of his post. The cash shops selling anything more than purely cosmetic items is A DETRIMENT TO THE INTEGRITY OF THE GAME. A game is supposed to be balanced and game creaters/developers with the intent of making a true game should do as much as they can to reduce the outside influence's effect on the virtual world. Obviously they can't do anything about the gamers themselves in terms of personality, playstyle, skill, time, etc., but they can refrain from allowing people to use external resources like $$ to influence things in the game.
And in regards to the question a previous poster asked: Why are they selling xp boost items if the leveling curve is entirely horrizontal and people that are higher than you in progress and level are at no advantage? If its true then the xp items in the CS have no purpose and therefore no one will buy them...
MMOs Played: FFXI,Age of Conan, Aion, Rift, SWTOR, TERA, TSW, GW2
Playing:None
Waiting For: Wildstar, The Repopulation, Archeage, TESO, Warhammer 40K:EC, EQN
I lied, I hadn't actually stopped there. He mentions that he'd just saw the anouncement of GW2 using RMT, which prompted him posting this. My mistake for being so blindly aggresive in defense.
Oh I gotcha. I honestly didn't even notice he was talking about until I woke up. No seriously, the guy put a lot of time and thought into it and he has a point about some things.
At first I thought he was talking about all games with cash shops.
Death is nothing to us, since when we are, Death has not come, and when death has come, we are not.
There's no hidden purpose there. They're selling them for the exact reasons they said they were, for time saving and conveinence. If I want to get an alt to max level because I want a max level character faster, I can pay real money to get xp boosts and make my experience in game much faster than normal.
In a horizontal progression game, I'm not hampering anyone elses play experience unless they get deflated knowing there's someone who's a higher level than them.., but when they do eventually get to max level, the money I spent means nothing because both of us are now on equal power footing. I just got there faster.
If someone elses money spent that has virtually no impact on you violates the integrity of the game, then I guess that's the problem. Their money spent, as far as I can tell, has little influence on the actual games in question, unless this is a game where time actually translates into power. Then purchasing time with real money and, by extension, power, has a large negative impact on the integrity of the game, in my view.
Race ya.
We really need to start applying new terms to things.
So what you are basically saying is that you got no job and want to be the meanst bad-ass in GW2?
I mean, get freaking real. Talk about making investments into the game in terms of time and effort. Now I have a major in finance and I'll give you a hint in the right direction.
TIME IS MONEY.
So when time is money, why shouldnt you be able to use both inorder to progress in GW2? - [Mod Edit]
I am NOT in the beta, but.....I heard that the megaphones were being removed. Tough luck you two.
President of The Marvelously Meowhead Fan Club
Agreed, but I'm still a little confused what the OP means by "material sources of power". Coin, BoE, actual crafting material, experience?