Howdy, Stranger!
It looks like you're new here. If you want to get involved, click one of these buttons!
Quick Links
GW2 cash shop vs other games/MMOs
Derpybird
Member Posts: 991
Many, many threads critical of GW2 hone in on their cash shop as being "pay to win". While the only information that we have about it seems to have been leaked from the last beta (against the NDA) and not final, many people have used this as a rallying cry against GW2.
I question whether or not there can be a reasonable discussion about the question that I have. Nevertheless, I am curious about the following:
Based on what we know at present about the cash shop, is it more or less "offensive" than the proposed transaction fee for the real money auction house that Blizzard is planning on implementing in Diablo 3, or the BOE pets that people buy and can post on the auction house in World of Warcraft?
My understanding, based on a late Feb build of D3 beta, that Blizzard was looking at $1.25 transaction fee per item. So not only can you buy items to get an advantage in gear, but Blizzard designed this to make a fairly significant amount of money off each transaction. And people purchasing a pet to sell on the AH in WoW seems to be a way to simply buy gold. I am sure there are other examples of this in other games (TSW is offering microtransactions and a sub, but I am less familiar with this).
So I wonder if the people most vocal about real money influencing games are targeting GW2 specifically (for whatever reason) or if they are angry about the entire practice which seems to be either implemented, or going to be implemented, in some extremely popular games?
"Loading screens" are not "instances".
Your personal efforts to troll any game will not, in fact, impact the success or failure of said game.
Comments
Great, another thread on the cash shop. People will really like this.
But on to your question: I don't think you can compare the two as they are so different. In D3 you'll be playing in your own shard of the world and whatever anyone else is paying cash for doesn't really impact you anyway.
GW2 has multiple ways where players directly compete with eachother in the same world; naturally that makes potential P2W systems in the CS have a much bigger impact.
My brand new bloggity blog.
Only people complaining about the cash shop are the people that can't read or don't understand what "p2w" means, just like most don't know what sandbox means.
This. This. A million times this.
May as well close the thread now
Only people defending the cash shop are blatant fanboys that dont understand that spending real $ to get things in game leads to a P2W mentality. Whilst GW2 may not actually be pay to win, you can certainly gain an advantage by spending $, which is a bad thing™
Cluck Cluck, Gibber Gibber, My Old Mans A Mushroom
*sigh*
I think they should just sticky one thread with everything cash shop related and then delete all other cash shop threads and posts.
How are ya'll not tired of talking about the CS yet?
If you don't like it, then send Anet a tweet.
I guess it's easy to make accusations about other posters claiming that they don't know what P2W is, when you yourself are entirely clueless about exactly what was in the CB1 cash shop.
could you link a source on the flat fee for D3's transactions.. I thought it was a percentage as it is modeled after paypal. Or is that info in the beta build? I never looked at it in game I didn't think it was in.
For the gem to cash.. there is nothing wrong with it.. its like EVE's system and people have nothing but praise for that system.. why is it offensive here? The items that we have seen in the GW2 cash shop.. which from feedback was changed greatly even though we do not know into what.. aren't even remotely pay to win. Leveling faster in a game where lvl doesn't mean a whole lot is NOT pay to win.. then you add in that those items are able to be received in game without spending any gold (again this is before any changes that were made from feedback.. going purely off initial leaks). People hated the megaphones and rez stones, I have heard they were both removed.
Overall there seems to be a HUGE hatred towards any cash shops these days either pay 2 win or not. I would agree that the D3 AH had a large hand in this uproar. This was also amplified by EA/Bioware's greed in SWTOR/ME3 and recently by Funcom's released info on TSW's cash shop which I have heard has P2W elements.. This uproar DOES affect GW2.. how could it not? People are pissed at EA & Blizzard and then Anet which many many people looking forward to GW2 do not know.. they didn't play GW1 and they only know NCSoft as being some Korean company with grindfest games and more recently cash shops with P2W elements (the games that went F2P). On that note I wonder how many know that Lineage 2 gave FREE expansions until it went F2P.. free... it was a sub game that was cheap to buy and gave free content and not a small amount of it.
I just wish that those afraid of cash shops would do some reading up on Anet and GW1 and actually follow up on the P2W scares from the leaks... just about every one has been laid to rest.
FYI I am NOT an NCSoft fan.. in fact I had some bad customer service issues with them in the past.. but from my newest experiences they have changed quite a bit and though it is too late to mend those past issues they have been a great help with new ones
People that dont like the advantage cash shops in all other games already on the market will not like one in GW2. No surprise at all.
It appears the CS in GW2 will be more or less the same as the CS in several other games. Again..no surprise. Its a business model that a lot of companys prefer. And it must follow some basic principles and ideas to be profitable. All very obvious.
Of course some details can be different. Every company will try to find the right balance. But the basics will be the same.
Yeah, the ah is in beta. As of right now it is 1.25$ for each sold item, and it is only deducted from sold items. As of right now there is no fee for listing an item or a fee unless the item sells.
It's clear that many posters in this thread didn't actually read the entirety of your post, OP (likely just knee-jerk responses due to a poor choice in thread title).
To answer your question, while I'm not vocal about cash shops because I'm not a competitive player I can answer it from two perspectives:
1. Quality of shopping experience: I would rank (in order) D3, then GW2, and lastly WoW. In D3 you'll have a greater variety of items available for purchase than the other two games, I put WoW last because making money in that game is stupidly easy with just a couple of completely free add-ons and the issue with pets/mounts that are only available in the CS only affects completionist and collector players, both niche at this time (although the pet issue may be far greater come the next xpac).
2. Preserving "purity" in the game: WoW, GW2, then D3. Blizzard's store IMO is the least intrusive to the game (at this time) from the store alone, but TBH they have other avenues to get greater advantages than GW2 even offers (Scroll of Resurrection, RAF) so it's a loaded question for this aspect.
Wait, what? a global horn? repair your stuff? level up a wee bit faster? soooo P2W.
The "Youtube Pro": Someone who watches video's on said subject, and obviously has a full understanding of what is being said about such subject.
grrr to me this is like everything they have done thoughout the D3 betas.. each one they remove a great feature or add something making it worse.. WTF! At this point my husband has decided against buying it but I still am just to have the campaign experience, I am sure he will play mine as well but for a while now we knew it wouldn't be a long term playing experience like D2. Heh maybe its a good thing I didn;t pay attn to the AH in the beta =P I would have been mad for months!
megaphone was removed, repair.. REALLY you have an issue with someone being too lazy to go repair at an NPC?!?!? and a 10% xp boost from killing for AN HOUR is nothing.. you don;t get much lvling done by grinding mobs AND the boosts are available in game without spending a dime or gold.
I TOTALLY misread Wolvards post but gonna leave this here because the points argue SOMEONES points!
You're making a rather foolhardy assumption that the CB1 cash shop was limited to the few things that were exposed from the leak.
[double post]
why on earth would someone go to the trouble of leaking that stuff, probably getting banned in the process to deliver only part of the stuff up there?
It could be because the more incriminating 'advantages' were hidden in the mysterious loot boxes. Just a guess...
How does it lead to P2W mentality? By that logic. GW1 would have been P2W long ago.
It silly how folks are trying to spin the P2W term in a myriad of ways just to support their argument. It is only truly P2W when there are things in game world that give you power over other players, whether it be through PvP or PvE, that is only obtainable through the cash shop. Bottom line. Nothing in that leaked cash shop screen capture, had anything fitting that category. Everything in there was either cosmestic, a convenience, or a temp buff of some sort that helped speed up character development.
Plenty of folks have tried to spin that those buffs are P2W. How are they? Or are you simply mad someone can pay some cash to level up faster? Gain crafting skills faster? Find magic items a bit more often? If you're still arguing it, then I can only surmise that you're either trolling or you have never played a true P2W game in your life. Either that or you don't want A-Net making money. If at launch or beyond, there is anything truly fitting that discription, fine, it's P2W, I'll go grab my pitchfork and join you. Until then, chill out.
Fanboy? No, I've learned from past MMOs to always be skeptical until that game is in my hand a month or two, especially with the amount of fail I've seen.
"For the Angel of Death spread his wings on the blast,
And breathed in the face of the foe as he passed:
And the eyes of the sleepers waxed deadly and chill,
And their hearts but once heaved, and for ever grew still!"
~Lord George Gordon Byron
As usual, both extremist sides of this argument are wrong and the truth lies somewhere in the middle.
For everyone saying that the cash shop is completely harmless and will have no impact whatsoever on the game...I'm sorry but no. You have to recognize that you can essentially buy GOLD with real money. This means that ANYTHING that can be traded between players can be bought by real money. I seriously don't see how that can't give players some kind of advantage. So really, I think there ARE some P2W elements to the cash shop. To deny them is to be blind.
And on the other token, for everyone saying that the cash shop will make GW2 completely P2W...I'm sorry but no. The competitive PvP will be COMPLETELY unaffected by the CS because it is ALWAYS played on a level playing field. And as for PvE...GW2 won't have an item grind as intense as games like WoW do, so even though players will very likely get an advantage through CS purchases...it won't take long for other players to catch up.
So basically...the cash shop is not all good. There are things about it that seriously bother and concern me. That said, I'm not crazy enough to believe that the CS will entirely destroy GW2 and turn it into a P2W F2P game.
Are you team Azeroth, team Tyria, or team Jacob?
we know (from leaks) what were in the loot boxes... random loot.. as in the same things the mobs drop >.< and if you mean the chests they drop the buffs and the same random loot.
Again, you're making the assumption that what was leaked covered everything. What you know is still limited to the scope of the leak.
In all honestly, I have no idea how this particular aspect will play out. Some folks have brought up Eve and it's PLEX system, but as I've not played Eve I can't really comment. Advantage? In what sense really. Will having a lot of gold give me an advantage over other players? Depends. We won't truly know the effect of such a system until after launch.
"For the Angel of Death spread his wings on the blast,
And breathed in the face of the foe as he passed:
And the eyes of the sleepers waxed deadly and chill,
And their hearts but once heaved, and for ever grew still!"
~Lord George Gordon Byron
The folks that buy gold from gold sellers in games like WOW are PTW. They are breaking their contract with the Blizzard franchise as well. If you have ever done this then you are PTW and dishonest to boot.
In GW2, everyone has the same opportunity to use the built-in mechanics of the game to succeed with their personal goals...they have CHOICE and they can use it honestly.
I'd much rather be playing next to honest folks than not.