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Shops and Token Grind: What ruins MMOs
Elikal
Member UncommonPosts: 7,912
Ok, I felt like I had to say a say about stuff that in recent years bothered me more and more. And among my top priorities are Shops and Grind, or more specifically Token Grind.
I go with Shops first. We all here talked about shops often enough. Per se I don't mind shops. But recently both the prices have exploded, and the amount of stuff in shops seems unlimited now. Where once a shop like the early EQ2 shop had just a few cosmetic items, now shops from games like Neverwinter or Guild Wars 2 are FLOODED with stuff. Sorry, but I just can't stand it anymore. I take both Neverwinter and GW2 as especially painful examples. For Neverwinter, you could only barely play the game without the shop and BOY are their items expensive. A new bag alone costs a small fortune!
But it even more hurt me in GW2, partially because I had so hugh hoped ANEt would AVOID the shop and grind stuff. I just dont get the "city clothing" stuff at all, for instance. They have so cool costumes, and all you can do is stand around 2 minutes in LA, look cool and then it vanishes. And 10 Euro are down the drain. Same with haircuts, makeovers and whatnot. Everything costs dollars/euros. Yes you can grind money and convert that into crystals and buy with that, but being the Grind, that just replaces one bad idea for another. I remember when getting a new haircut or appearance was a feature of a Player Class, and it was called Image Designer in SWG! I had an Image Designer, and people tipped me for a new haircut or new look. It was fun. Or the millions of ingame credits I spent on clothing. All totally without shop, driven by PLAYER ECONOMY.
I guess ANet really must earn money left and right with that shop, like all companies. It's like a liscenece for money printing. And it makes me sad. You see in the old days, we all paid a fee, and then we all had the same stuff: what was in the game. End of story. And there was no difference between rich players and poor players. RL didn't come into play. Only what YOU achieved IN the game. But now, we have the poor have-nothing people who are poor have-nothings in the game too! And sorry, but that just sucks. So if you are an unemployed fool in RL, it will LOOK in the game. And if you earn lots of cash in RL, you can show off. And that... is just PLAIN WRONG. Now if those skins in GW2 would even apply to real combat stuff, all of it, and the prices were lower. But the cost of stuff is WAY too high for anyone with little money, and the result for me is, I see tons of stuff I simply will never have because I cant afford it.
Second. The token grind. You know the idea: go there, kill Boss X 200 times to far Boss Tokens and exchange it for 1 of 20 necessary parts for 1 of 6 gear pieces. The goal: keep player playing while the game has ran out of content. So instead of taking a year to reach max level, as it was in the past, we now RACE to max level in a week, and instead of more content we get more tokens to grind. It is really painful, and sorry I must blame WoW for this, because they introduced this horrible mechanic. I loathe it. I really profoundly loathe it. Kill 100 Elder Dragons to get one Legendary weapon. Didn't ANet PROMISE there would be no grind like in other games? Sorry, but these things just infuriate me. I understand some difficult to get gear should exist. Take the Carpet of Majdul in EQ2. When it was introduced it was hard to get from a long, difficult series of quests. That was good. Now, all is tokens tokens tokens. I am mostly pissed at GW2 and Anet about this atm, because I mostly play GW2 now, and Anet so promised THEY would NOT do that sort of grind. But now we keep people playing with legendaries and ascended gear and whatnot, just to keep people busy. Oh and a new Halloween zone, welcome, and go farm 50 seeds. I am sorry, but... that's just the exact grind I didn't want. It just drags me out of the game, it breaks the immersion if I have to grind Dungeon X 100 times to get one piece of whatnot.
It is sad to see these developments, because they are my main reasons MMOs are not so cool as they used to be or could be. I reall loathe these two developments, and alas I fear we just see more of them because the item shops is a gold mine for companies and the token grind is the cheapest way to keep players busy for a long time.
Not fun.
People don't ask questions to get answers - they ask questions to show how smart they are. - Dogbert
Comments
Preach in brotha. Spot on. On both points.
"there was no difference between rich players and poor players. RL didn't come into play. Only what YOU achieved IN the game. But now, we have the poor have-nothing people who are poor have-nothings in the game too!"
wtf right?
I was ready to read another lame f2p complaint but ....I actually agree. The prices in cash shops are getting pretty ridiculous.
F2p in Korea works because everything is cheap and everyone drops a few dollars here and there. It's not about gouging a few people for as much as they can get. It's about lots and lots of small sales. There are of course the whales who still spend huge amounts but the whole game isn't focused on them.
Greedy isn't a word I like to toss at devs but, pricing things to get fewer but bigger sales really seems short sighted and " cash grabby "
I don't think it necessarily works that way Elikal. I am sure I am not the only player with a substantial disposable income who spends nothing on cash shop items. I value my money because it represents my time and effort. Therefore I don't waste it on frivolous game tat. I suspect that there is an inverse relationship between an individual's sense of self-worth and their need for ostentatious displays of status online. There is something very pitiful about a character decked out in cash shop bling.
On the subject of tokens I totally agree. Shit like that is just a round about way of saying "game over".
Money can make you win , sure. We get RMT since start of MMO
But there are 2 kind of money throwing move in MMO.
1st is use money to summon unlimit meteors from sky by pay for "GOD" (lol) make his bend world's rule, let you win and become king.
2nd is spend your money to hide (limited) people work for you , build your kingdom and win the game.
Then what different between 2 type ?
So now you're complaining about cosmetic stuff in shops? Isn't cosmetic stuff the standard of what is supposed to go in shops? Or is that just an example of, everyone wants the stuff that is charged for to be precisely the stuff that they don't personally care about?
As for token grinding, it's an improvement over the older system of bind on pickup boss drops where you have to run some dungeon a random number of times to progress, and hoping that your guild's dragon point kill system doesn't end up scamming you out of gear. The real culprit is not tokens in particular. It's endgames with progression, as that progression has to be painfully slow in order to ensure that people don't finish it and then have nothing to do.
What's interesting is that the person all Skittled out in cash shop items very possibly doesn't or care what you think of them or their character. However, you and others in this thread have shown that virtual social status and character hierarchy is extremely important to you. So important, in fact, that you have allowed it to color your view of others, passing sweeping judgement based only on how much they spend in a video game.
Something worth taking a minute to think about.
There isn't a "right" or "wrong" way to play, if you want to use a screwdriver to put nails into wood, have at it, simply don't complain when the guy next to you with the hammer is doing it much better and easier. - Allein
"Graphics are often supplied by Engines that (some) MMORPG's are built in" - Spuffyre
Not to mention that in most f2p mmos that have "good" cash shops they may not of even spent real money on those items.
Games like TERA that let a player sell their cash shop items on the trade broker for gold means even free players are walking around in " bling"
Most of the hate directed both ways seems to say more about the poster than what they're posting about.
F2P has changed MMOs for the worse, but cash shops have been the bigger game changer, they have brought fruit machine gameplay and Pay to Win to P2P MMOs as well.
What's interesting is that the person all Skittled out in cash shop items very possibly doesn't or care what you think of them or their character. However, you and others in this thread have shown that virtual social status and character hierarchy is extremely important to you. So important, in fact, that you have allowed it to color your view of others, passing sweeping judgement based only on how much they spend in a video game.
Something worth taking a minute to think about.
Right, and a woman who buys a Coach purse or a person who is driving a Lexus, or wearing a Rolex doesn't care what others think about their appearance. Same thing with heavy bling buyers in MMOs for the most parPpt, especially for cosmetic items."True friends stab you in the front." | Oscar Wilde
"I need to finish" - Christian Wolff: The Accountant
Just trying to live long enough to play a new, released MMORPG, playing New Worlds atm
Fools find no pleasure in understanding but delight in airing their own opinions. Pvbs 18:2, NIV
Don't just play games, inhabit virtual worlds™
"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
Who cares about cosmetic items? They don't impact your ability to play the game...
Unlike e.g. LOTRO, where they sell functional armor and where you basically need the shop to optimize your legendary items too.
NW, LOTRO = good examples of bad cash shops. But not GW2.
My computer is better than yours.
I took a minute to think about it. Virtual social status is not very important to me. I am simply too casual and detached as a player to be overly concerned by that. Character hierarchy - in a sense, perhaps. However, I certainly am guilty of allowing cynicism to "color my view". I dislike cash shops and I can be reflexively oppositional to those who support and encourage them. I could be more circumspect, I suppose, and take a less judgemental approach. But as you correctly pointed out, the cash-shopaholic doesn't know or care what I think of their character. I am glad for that; I have no wish to antagonise a telepath.
The OP mostly hits my own sentiments. I don't mind a little grind, I don't even mind heavy grind at times - it can be kind of a meditatioin like experience to kill 10.000 turtles. And I don't mind it when I can do it at leisure, so mostly solo or maybe with a buddy or two.
What I loathe is the same grind as forced group "content" which you must do to open the next gated "content". And I loathe it even more when you have to run an instance a ridiculous number of times and as a bandaid there is a grouping tool so you can be bored alongside a bunch of silent strangers which loathe you as much as you loathe them - all as a reflection of the abysmal lack of thought and design behind this game system.
On shops... well.. whoever spends real money on a bikini and sunshades in a high fantasy game probably deserves to be pulled over the table. And who spends real money to uncloth his toon probably deserves a spank. But in both cases there is a veritable danger that the subject might like these punishments. Those shops live off the idiots which are born every day.
Since you are not one of those idiots, what is the problem?
Personally, i don't see it as a bad thing if some other idiots (or whales) are subsidizing the games i am playing. It is a free world. They don't have to .. but if they do, i am not going to apologize for taking advantage of it.
I disagree in some ways with the OP.
Cash Shops themselves aren't the bane, it's how these are used and what items are offered. If you sell anything else than cosmetic/convenience items it's pretty much doomed to cause unbalance in the community. Also another issue is that the heavy spenders in the "bad cash shops" can really go way overboard and spend around 200$'s a month which completely outplays someone spending 20$ a month.
Again token grind itself is not killing MMOs, it's how the tokens are used in the endgame.
The original idea of the tokens revolved around getting drops/rare drops from dungeons and completing your gear with token items that would balance out players having awful luck.
Nowdays the token gear is most likely BiS (best in slot) which requires you to grind the tokens for the gear, instead of doing dungeons for actual drops.
Tokens shouldn't be a requirement, these should be an additional benefit.
Basically this wouldn't be an issues without:
Artificial progression blocking
And this my dear friends is what ruins MMO(RPG)s nowdays. You are forbidden of doing the content you want to, you are limited to certain amount of "progression" per week and you are strictly controlled in how you want to play the game. You can see this in few ways in MMOs.
1) Raid lockouts
You can only clear raid dungeons once per week and after that you pretty much need to wait for the next reset to able to do anything.
2) Special Token "cap"
You can only achieve certain amount of certain tokens that are the only way to progress your gear per week.
3) Daily quests
You can only complete these once per day and they don't stack up, so you have to log in every single day to progress and then you are limited for the day.
---------------------------------------------------------------
What would I change?
Remove lockouts, let people enjoy the content they wish. Remove token caps, let people grind 24/7 if they wish. Remove daily quests, create a "pool" of daily quests you can complete at any time granted you wil have to wait to get more dailies in the "pool".
The reason developers are so fond to these artificial limits is so that their game can hold very little content and keep people paying the sub fee while waiting for new content. However nowdays the general MMO-gamer doesn't have a lot patience and if their progress is blocked they will start to look for alternative games. So if you allow player to rush through the content in a month or two it's more likely they'll enjoy other parts of the game aswell i.e alt characters, pvp etc..
Otherwise people will/might get bored for hitting their head against an invisible wall.
THIS! I was never "too" bothered by Vanity Cash Shops in MMO´s.
It´s the Whole scandal With Lock Boxes that is currently going on in games like LOTRO, STO, Neverwinter, DEFIANCE, etc that is really taking the cake!
LOTRO has gone even a step further now by litterly implementing a daily slot machine, in which you can spend real Money to increase Your chances.
These Companies have litterly thrown any sense of morale out of the window and are "directly" targeting People With addiction problems, trying to squeeze every penny out of their wallet and run them financially into the ground without any remorse!
Not to mention that it´s a lot of Young teenagers playing these games that are confronted With these gambling schemes! Which is even worse.
I also think governments are failing on this BIG TIME!, as this is "gambling" pure and simple! And there are strict laws against that, especially regarding age and in lot of countries it´s just plain illegal!
But just because it´s hidden within an online game, it somehow seems to Escape the attention of governent agencies.
EQ introduced token grinds with LDON in 2003
players ran instances to earn tokens to buy gear / augments from wayfayer npc camps
EQ2 fan sites
Being able to buy extras directly from the devs has been present in NA/EU MMOs longer than F2P has, they just didn't have a singular name to rattle pitchforks and torches at. As for "pay to win", there is no greater example of that than the paid expansion pack, which has been here since UO.
There isn't a "right" or "wrong" way to play, if you want to use a screwdriver to put nails into wood, have at it, simply don't complain when the guy next to you with the hammer is doing it much better and easier. - Allein
"Graphics are often supplied by Engines that (some) MMORPG's are built in" - Spuffyre
Back when GW2 beta was running i had a completely different view on game and Arenanet and high hopes that crushed in first few months and seems even getting worse, so it change 100%, now i see just a cheap money grab degenerate game with grind and casshops trying to get your money thats GW2.
What they accomplish with this is i stopped playing and will never buy EVER a game from them. Good job Arenanet you failed:P
The moment they introduce that new dungeon in lion arch and later these armor grind you could have known the endless treadmill was introduced and people would endless grind dungeon for it. GW2 was already lost but that was even worse then i thought GW2 would go that route, i quit soon after mist was introduced and have not spent one eurocent in that game lol.For short while had some fun with friend but it lasted only few months then game was so fast going down the drain i quit.
Hope to build full AMD system RYZEN/VEGA/AM4!!!
MB:Asus V De Luxe z77
CPU:Intell Icore7 3770k
GPU: AMD Fury X(waiting for BIG VEGA 10 or 11 HBM2?(bit unclear now))
MEMORY:Corsair PLAT.DDR3 1866MHZ 16GB
PSU:Corsair AX1200i
OS:Windows 10 64bit
Right on, both of you.
I kind of agree on what you said about Arena Net, though I still really enjoy the zerg PVPing. I dunno why, I just get a good laugh, and my friends and I have a lot of fun.
Btw it seems many still willing to pay for grind in cashshops as long millions paying i dont see any change soon.
I doub we still have decent game that offers pure gameplay and you get only what you achieve yourself and not by buying.
Hope to build full AMD system RYZEN/VEGA/AM4!!!
MB:Asus V De Luxe z77
CPU:Intell Icore7 3770k
GPU: AMD Fury X(waiting for BIG VEGA 10 or 11 HBM2?(bit unclear now))
MEMORY:Corsair PLAT.DDR3 1866MHZ 16GB
PSU:Corsair AX1200i
OS:Windows 10 64bit
I agree with the OP. It is also one of the main reasons I stopped playing GW2. I just can't bring myself to play content only for the tokens. And if I don't do that, I will never get enough of them to actually buy something.
And their indirect gold selling in the shop pissed me off from the moment they introduced it. It makes the whole game feel so gimmicky instead of a virtual world.
There is no way to know since there hasn't been a major AAA F2P MMORPG yet. F2P in general has been what failed sub games have done for this genre. Without the F2P they would have just shut down like WAR did.
As long as games are releasing with reasonable cash shops that don't hand out BIS gear it doesn't bother me at all. The fruit machine gameplay was there before cash shops arrived though.
You are equating an expansion like Mines of Moria with the slot machine gameplay of todays MMOs? In this area though it is the cash shop rather than F2P that brought us to this. I don't need by F2P pitchfork for this one.