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The Term "Pay2Win" Just... Annoyes me.
WellzyC
Member UncommonPosts: 599
Can someone explain why people continue to use this Inaccurate phrase? Or am I misunderstanding the meaning. How is someone "paying to win" in Guild Wars 2...
Someone isnt going to do better in a dungeon because they have a cooler costume.
Someone isnt going to beat me in a duel because they have more gems in their pack.
Someone isnt going to take my keep because they have a double exp bonus for one hour.
Someone isnt going to take the clock tower from me because they have more bank slots... I could go on but I think my point is made.
The way mmo's were: Community, Exploration, Character Development, Conquest.
The way mmo's are now : Cut-Scenes,Cut-Scenes, solo Questing, Cut-Scenes...
www.CeaselessGuild.com
Comments
I don't like the term either. But before GW2 announced xp boosts many more people had a problem with them than do so now.
How rare/expensive will buffs be, in wvwvw were not all equal, it depends slightly on gear, but you got buffs. But if a buff cost 50gold for instance, and you gain 30gold well doing wvwvw for the two hours the buff lasted, your down 20 gold. now you could just continue but your down 10% on dps, or you can take a trip to the store, buy some gems and then sell them. Bam you have 200gold and can get your 10% buff.
Another problem is if the buffs will take a lot of grinding to get, and you need them to be competive, or you just sell gems and buy them straight of the ah
people complain about it because they ignore the fact that in GW2 lvling isn't all that important. They remember WoW and the like.. OMG NEED TO LVL UP FIRST TO GET THE PHAT LOOTZ! GOTTA BE MAX LVL TO PWN SOME NOOBZ! that mentallity.. They try and compare the leaked GW2 cash shop items to F2P games with similar items but in those games leveling up fast matters.. and it matters greatly. XP boosts in grinder games really are P2W.. but in this case its just a candybar at the cash register.. an impulse buy. Those F2P shops also usually offer items like armor or items required to make arom actually good(nothing at all like this in GW2 leaked items). I can't wait to see if the cash shop is in the BWE's so we can see what changes they have made because we already know they removed a few things during the last beta. The only thing I remember for sure was the megaphone because that was a personal hated item for me =P
Is 'Free2Lose' more acceptable?
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The person who is certain, and who claims divine warrant for his certainty, belongs now to the infancy of our species.
Challenge Accepted:
Costumes: Depending on the limitations placed on these, a person can safely hide what type of class they are. For the initial battle, at least, they will have the advantage of surprize. Thought that was a caster class and rushed in only to realize it was a strong melee type? Sometimes just the slightest messup is the difference between a win and a loading screen.
Gems: While for now we are only aware of costumes and xp pots, what is there from stopping them from adding Health Pots? If this were the case, then yes, they will beat you in a duel due to having Gems.
Exp Pots: The experience pots themselves will not win a location. However, those with the level advantage will also have abilities that those at a lower level will not. This in turn gives them an advantage over those that progress through the game at a normal pace. The more people at a higher level that the opposing team has, the higher the chances that they will be the one to capture and keep the keep.
Additional Bank Slots: Maybe I am wrong here, but in order to keep certain locations, don't you need to carry provisions and other items (like the blueprints to siege weaponry) to the fight? The more slots you have the better you can manage these different items. I would even dare to say that engineers would be much more effective with a large amount of slots to play with. And a good team of engineers will be able to support an attack or defense of strategic captures.
Of course, these are just a few of the things that a Cash shop can provide. We are not even discussing other items, like ressurection scrolls, stat boosts, mounts and a myriad other things that could be added that in appearance only seem harmless, but could very well change the tide of battle.
Inspite of all this, GW2 looks like its going to be a fun game to play. Remember that NO GAME IS PERFECT, and if the only thing wrong with GW2 is a cash shop that has some slight P2W items, then it is going to be a massively good game indeed.
Pay to win,that is real live,some people walk to work they cant afford to buy a bus ticket vile other people dont have to go to work becouse they are rich.Some people earn loads of money so they can take a taxi to work, some people fly airplains to work.SOME people complain that games are not realistic enough.
I guess real live things are more and more growing into our games.
XP boosting doesn't make you more powerful at your level. It is the items and mechanics other free to play games have available on their cash shops that are part of the gear scaling grind (or direct buffs not available in game) that make you more powerful than the next person that makes a game pay2win.
A popular mechanic used in many cashshop games is one where you have a tier system where you combine items you can enchant your gear with. Eg. tier 1 + 1 tier = 2, tier 2+2 = 3 etc etc. This scales exponentially thus making the highest tiers take massive investements of time or money to make. The issue with this is that the ability to make such high tiers is typically nigh impossible in game as it is usually linked to dailes or incredible time/in game money syncs BUT *shock and awe!* is also available in the cash shop! So someone can play the game and take a year to make a high rank buff or pay $1000 and insta-pwn your ass.
In may pay to win games there are some players who have litterally invested thousands of dollars into their characters. The entire cash shop model is built from the ground up to have the greatest influx of cash from 20% of the playerbase (they call it the 80/20 rule where 80% of the income comes from 20% of the playerbase ... typically 2-5% of those 20% pay the most as well). They purposely make it hard for casuals (minor CS investors and true free to play players) to obtain these levels of power in game in order to force those few players willing to pay big money to go ahead and pay big money.
GW2 is not supposed to be pay2win according to the developers. What this means is that they are not following the 80/20 rule. Only games that follow the 80/20 rule are pay2win. Not all free2play games are pay2win. Hopefully ArenaNet isn't dominated by NCsoft and the pay2win concept is extremely limited in GW2. NA and EU markets have notoriously scorned pay2win models and it would be bad for business.
You stay sassy!
lately, its been P2W...pay to wait
I think if people think about things like xp-potions or stat-boosts pay to win is obvious. You need to work hard to convince people it is not. Because it really makes no sense. Any normal person will understand what P2W is. And spin and advertizing will have to be really serious to convince normal players.
In regards to your rebuttal on costumes, it wont make a difference. When you click on/tab target someone a little icon appears on their profile indicating what class they are if I remember correctly.
I'll requote myself again:
To know whether or not it is "P2W", the competitions of interest need to be defined.
For many people, PvP is the only competition of interest. Structured PvP is definitely not P2W since it puts every participant on an equal ground skill, gear and traitwise. As for World vs World: we know that there are certain buffs that can be gained through buying influence through gold, which can be gained through item mall currency; however, we do not know how hard or easy it will be for guilds to grind to gain the same buffs. If it is a matter of weeks or even months of grind required to catch-up to the spenders, and the difference if buff-power is significant, then it can be considered to be pay-to-win.
Nevertheless, for many people, PvP is not the only competition of interest. The are other types of competitions which may interest people: PvE-related competitions, vanity, wealth, crafting, etc.
For vanity and wealth: depending on the form of those competitions, they are definitely pay-to-win.
From my understanding "Pay to Win" was a term coined with disrespect of the term "Free to Play". It referred to there being a two tiered system where the game itself was free to play, but if one wanted to "win" at the game then payment was required due to imbalancing effects of cash shop items.
In simplest terms, it's an unavoidable cash shop, usually at higher levels.
I'm not offended by the term, although I feel that it is far over used and often applied in cases where the cash shop is avoidable.
is it really the P2W comment or the fact somebody said something negative about the game. Lets be completely honest here.
Talk bad about whatever but be TRUTHFUL and CORRECT in your statements.. why it ticks off fans is because 95% of the against GW2 statements are completely ridiculous and have zero merit.
There is no stat boost in the cash shop (unless you count xp as a stat). Anyone who is saying that is lying and with all the info out there knows they are lying. Why would they do this, I dont know.
Stat boost around keeps and such is paid for by guild infulance and affects EVERYONE from that server. You can buy innfualnce with gold, so that part is true, but you have to stay around the keep. If nothing is going on there, you just wasted your money... and if there is ALOT going on around there, 10% boost on one stat aint going to make you the slayer of zergs. I would guess it would also cost infulance to claim a keep, so if you are a guild of few and the only way to have that much infulance is to buy gems and then sell them for gold.. well anet thanks you for the new company jet.
I doubt being truthful or correct would stop people from being annoyed about it.
If there is any type of advantage for sale in a cash shop the game is P2W. Because someone will compete or play the game in a way that makes that advantage make a difference. If you are competing and if you can buy someting or anyting that helps you its P2W. Levelling, crafting, PvP, killing mobs...
So far they've promised not to go overboard and make the cash shop pay to win. If they ever do put items in the cash shop that make me feel as if I can't compete then I'll write all kinds of nasty stuff on their form and stop playing until they fix the game.
If they ever put things in the game that make people who don't want pay to win upset then they'll likely stop playing. If the only people who are playing are doing pay2win then they are paying for no advantage because everyone left will also be paying to win. Once the pay2win crowd realize this they'll stop playing, too.
It'll work out. It's in their best interest to keep the cash shop legit and keep us buying fluff.
Costumes - do you know you can use a transmutation stone and change the looks of ANY armor in game so it looks the way you want it to look? You can have a max level and stats armor and make it look like it's lvl 1 starting armor if you want to... The gear in this game doesn't matter much against other players, it's skill...
Even if that happens you can trade gold for gems.. I've seen you can get around 5 gems for few silver coins, so you can choose to trade it for gold and buy them yourself this way or trough the gem market it's up to you.
Bank slots aren't in the cash shop... 12 slot bags are in there but so far I've seen people getting bags as a world drops as well so it's pointless to buy it if you get it as a drop.
Resurection scroll haven't seen that or given it any attention if I did, stat boosts are not in there, mounts are not in game...
"Happiness is not a destination. It is a method of life."
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well then we will have to see when the 5% become the 95% now wont we.
This isthe kind of logic that always leads me to ask the question, define winning?
Does leveling faster help you win?
Does crafting faster help you win?
People just don't like cash shops, sot hey they like to disparage people who play these games. Always someone who wants something for nothing.
Of course, it's a derogatory term so are many of the labels used on forums such as "themepark". Get a thicker skin the names wont go away.
Most games can be described as Pay2Win depending on how you define "Win" It's not hard to see why any advantage would cause some to view a game as pay to win because many have grown up with the idea that everyone gets a medal so everyone wins! Channel that little Charlie Sheen inside you and you can be winning too.
buh, I just cant stomach another one of these
"I am not a robot. I am a unicorn."