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Pay 2 win becoming legitimate? Have we really lost our way this much?
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You people clearly live in fairtale lives "anime pun intended". You forgot about hackers? Are they fair? Are hackers forgotten in most games? They rule and reign in mmofps and mmorpg all the time. Hackers modfiy and violate game clients and terms of service to get ahead. You have the common hack , a botting script that "exploits" your keyboard and mouse while you can go to sleep and wake up fully leveled. You got people who violate terms of service and "Account share". Gold farmers are best to describe for this. So to contend with illegal jewel, gold, item, skill, power leveling outside of the game, companies went pay to win.
What is pay 2 win?
A solution to the hackers, farmers, and black market that "exists" for almost all games whether it be solely targeted for Asia, or for any other region in the world. To counter powerleveling they invented EXP boost. To counter Gold Farmers they invented Drop boost. To counter hackers, you can buy rare things in cash shop that might tip the scale for you. To make money, millions of dollars that hackers took away from the game, they invented the cash shop as a counter mesaure.
Are people blind to this or just plain dumb? You really think they want to hack your piggy bank broke? They want to kill the hacking, bleed the hackers dry, bleed the gold farmers dry, put them out of existance. Still, with Cash Shop players now have a fighting chance, but this community is the WORST supporter of hackers I have ever seen. I have been on pure game exploit forums, from packet hacking to full client reversing, to in game gm command manipulations and STILL they weren't soo SUPPORTIVE of hackers and gold farmers as you fan boys are.
The cash shop is there in case people run into these so called "cheaters". A pvp potion to boost you up, improving your chance of beating the hacker and his hacked status. A rare mount to beat the hackers fly and teleport hackers where he can illegal teleport from point A in zone 1 to point Z in zone 54 in a matter of microseconds. Some items to refine your armors because the gold farmers farm 24/7 in spots for items to upgrade their ultra rare drop armors, while you come on 4 hours a day to try to find that item they already have +50.
You forget the age of hacks, script kiddies and morons who like to break the law to win. So you can either be overdosed with hackers in every game, or you can have a cash shop devoted to helping you atleast try and compete with the hackers. You can ingore them but they wont go away. It's like ignoring YOUR money problems, they only get worst until you solve them. Also, if you are "compelled" to buy everything over and over again in cash shop, you need help. Cash Shop is like gambling and beer, stare at it long enough and you'll buy it.
I'm done advocating with people who don't understand a bloody thing. You claim cash shop and big business is evil and yet your posts clearly support hackers. You don't want people on par with packet hackers, script kiddie botters, and illegal black market item and gold sellers. Ok, support one or the other, and saying you don't support either then don't play any games. It's like being a capitlist or socialist, you can either support that money is needed to enjoy life, or live in utter poverty under a bridge and live like a dog without money. No, you won't have a owner to take care of you, becuase remember you don't want anything to do with trade currencies.
So in truth, you support something or you support its opposite. There is no middle ground, because deep down your just a idiot that really supports one thing or another yet you claim to be undecided.
I struggle not with life, money, emotions, and world, but against old mindsets and selves to be proven obsolete in a age and time of rapid changes. Go create fun, so you can have fun.
Game studios should just release "normal servers" with item shops , gold selling etc , and put cheaper subscription on it (like 5-10$) or f2p.
AND
some "hardcore" servers with subscription for like 20$ /month and no item/cash shops.
No character transfers between "normal" and "hardcore" servers.
Everybody can choose what they want and ultimately get what gaming experience they want. Game stuios gets access to more consumers. Consumers have choice and are happy.
Problem solved.
@redpins
You're delusional. Hackers, gold farmers and all sorts of that lives , breath and have a good time on f2p / cash shop games as well. Get out of a cave and don't be naive.
I've good job, family, kids. I can say i have way more money than free time. Still, like OP said, buying directly gear is like applying cheat code in old single player games. Whats the point of playing game when i can just buy best gear ? It's like skipping whole game to watch end game movie. Where is the fun of actualy PLAYING the game ?
There are other ways which decent F2P games allow ppl with less time to compensate, like speeding leveling etc. No good game allows you to directly buy power and thats just exactly whats D3 with real money AH does. For me, it defeats the purpose of playing the game, any game, not just D3.
BS... the games that are most often hacked are the F2P ones.. because the amount of work put into the games in the first place isnt enough to protect them... no way are the items in the cash shop just there to 'help' against the hackers.. if a game is hacked.. then it means the game is poorly coded and protected.. for a game to be continously hacked is a sure sign that whoever runs it.. doesnt know their own coding well enough to close those loopholes in their own coding. which in itself is a sign that their not interested in their players and only in whatever $$ they can squeeze out of them.
Looks like to me EvE is becoming pay to win, starting out slow and telling everyone its only cosmetic, time will tell.
MAGA
How is diablo 3 going to be play to win? Everything about Diablo was pretty much RNG and farming bosses because of said RNG. Winning wasnt the issue with Diablo, it was a loot farming game for most, outside of the pvp and hardcore crowd.
Well consider the OP's reason to P2W, isn't subscription the same idea to P2W then?
Step 1: Everyone buys the box game, everyone is on equal plane
Step 2: Subscription - You pay more money to sub, you get longer time to play the game, you get higher end gear. As oppose to players who sub on and off, means less time to play the game, means lower end gear.
Isn't this the same as P2W? To me B2P will always be the fairest of them all
Considering time is more valuable than money, I say they, by theory, are the same thing. As for the paying to skip the game argument, I never will consider gear grinding as part of the game, it is the grinding part so you can participate in the game.
Traditionally, you own a product when you purchase the product, you do not require any extra cost in order to play a game, but for MMO, buying a product only means paying for the entry fee, you get to experience the product for 30 days before you have to cough up more money. Its like paying $50 for a 30 day trial of the game.
How much WoW could a WoWhater hate, if a WoWhater could hate WoW?
As much WoW as a WoWhater would, if a WoWhater could hate WoW.
Giant CA$H Windows and items destroy immersion, I don't like to RP but I like to feel like the world is solid and complete within itself. Immersion and world interaction is dead, we've enter the age where games are becoming a virtual billboard for addition sales and advertisements.
Currently playing - FF14ARR
Previous games - SWG, World of Warcraft, ShadowBane, Warhammer, Age of Conan, Darkfall, Planetside Asheron's Call, Everquest, Everquest 2, Too many.
I have not seen legions of Pay to Win games being produced. At least not in the Western market.
I have not seen a bunch of people endorsing Pay to Win. Not even on these forums.
It seems like the OP is confusing all item shops with Pay to Win. i.e. anything that isn't a subscription is a Pay to Win scenario. If this is how you wish to see it, good luck playing any games in the future. You'll have a very small list of subscription games available, and a very large group of games that will be Free to Play with some sort of item shop or real money auction house, etc.
I can not remember winning or losing a single debate on the internet.
That's a flaw there. Maybe if you work 80 hours a week, or have two kids, or are a CEO of a company. But for majority who choose to play MMOs money is more valuable than time. Majority have a quite a while to play, but not that much money to spend $20+ a week buying things from a cash shop.
Like it or not. There is a difference between a rich kid whose parents spoil him and he buys all the top level items in the game with real cash and becomes the most dangerous player in the game VS a rich kid whose parents whose parents spoil him and he then buys a top level character off of a black market site that is the most dangerous player in the game but he gets caught and banned the next week.
The problem is that people think leveling faster = pay to win, Diablo III's RMT only means you acquire better gears faster, but doesn't mean get to be more powerful than people who doesn't use the feature.
Traditional Pay to Win concept is that paying customers has an unassailable advantage over non-paying customers, leveling just isn't part of that concept, so is power leveling = Pay to win now?
How much WoW could a WoWhater hate, if a WoWhater could hate WoW?
As much WoW as a WoWhater would, if a WoWhater could hate WoW.
AMEN
D3 is get PAID to win as far as I'm concerned. If they would only allow offline play....but I can see why they don't. Harder to mod and hack the game files if it has to be online and monitored all the time. With the RMT built in...thats a real concern.
Well, I work about 60 hours a week, have 3 children but they are all grown up now, (the wife is far more consuming of my time) and while not a CEO I am a VP for a major financial institution and I know many adults from all walks of life (landscapers to medical doctors) and I disagree that "the majority" of MMO players have more free time than money.
My son is recently graduated from high school and about to start college. He holds two jobs and will be balancing all of this vs his MMO gaming. So doesn't matter what your age is people can be very busy and not have a lot of free time.
Who says MMO's always have to cater to the majority anyways. I was a working adult by the time MMOs came along, so I've always had to grit my teeth and bear it when other folks advanced much faster or farther than I ever could because they had the luxury of more free time than I.
I'm currently playing EQ2 and was glad to see I could pay for a nice mount right up front instead of having to grind 20 hours to earn the gold to buy it. I'll have no qualms buying master crafted gear from the station cash shop either (once they put them back, disappeared for some reason, probably being retro-fittted)
Not saying all MMORPG's have to be like this by the way, I think there should be options for players like me, as well as for those who prefer to compete against people with more free time than cash.
"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
Two points: one Diablo 3 Cash Auction House CANNOT make you real life money. You CAN NOT 'cash out'. Ever.
Second, the majority of games with a cash shop have nothing in them that is game breaking. +10% to exp for 3 hours is hardly necessary to have. DDO is an excellent example of a good cash shop system. You can earn Turbine Points; which can be spent in the store. Since DDO has gone F2P, I have earned enough just by playing the game to buy most of the content without spending a penny.
Well said. I'm usually against companies selling items directly to the players, but I understand completely where you are coming from and agree there should be options for different lifestyles.
I like the idea of a RMAH more then a Cash Shop.
If you had a choice of purchasing the same items for the same price, would you prefer it in a Player to Player auction house, or a Company to Player Cash Shop?
"I swear -- by my life and my love for it -- that I will never live for the sake of another man, nor ask another man to live for mine."
- John Galt
I find it very amusing when someone makes uninformed statements as facts
"I am not a robot. I am a unicorn."
Actually, that's one of the selling points, you can cash out as soon as your auction is sold, you get to decide whether you put that money on your bnet account (that way you don't get to cash out once the descision is made) or cash out right then and there. Only thing still not clear is which third party will be responsible for bringing you your money, palypal or someone else.
http://www.mmo-champion.com/content/2397-Diablo-3-Auction-House-Announced-Spend-and-Earn-Real-Life-Money!
"How do I cash out from the currency-based auction house?
As an advanced feature, players will have the option of attaching an account with an approved third-party payment service to their Battle.net account. Once this has been completed, proceeds from the sale of items in the currency-based auction house can be deposited into their third-party payment service account. “Cashing out” would then be handled through the third-party payment service. Note that this process will be subject to applicable fees charged by Blizzard and the third-party payment service. Also, any proceeds from the sale of items in the currency-based auction house that have been deposited into the Battle.net account will not be transferrable to the third-party payment service account. Not all regions will support this advanced feature at launch. Region-specific details, as well as details regarding which third-party payment services will be supported and the fee that Blizzard will charge for the cash-out process, will all be provided at a later date."
OP THAT is what made you think the genre has lost its way?
It hasn't been the ! and ? floating over a character's head with pretty different colors based on the difficulty so you don't have to interact with anything in the world besides what will get you from one quest to the next?
Perhaps the huge circles that appear on your map as soon as you get a quest so that you know exactly where to go and what to do requiring no thought?
Or the arrow that appears just in case you aren't capable of pressing the hotkey to open a map on your own and actually look?
Or loot now being thrown at you just for crossing a virtual street? Granny dropped her glasses across the dirt path and her walker is broken. She is in need of a hero to gather the missing parts and return them to her. You will be rewared with a nice purple epic for your troubles!
The difficulty of dungeons being scaled down because it requires some coordination rather than simply spamming two or three hotkeys that do the best AoE dmg? How many times have you heard this "I'm just going to pull the next few groups, so please hold off on heals and dps."
Maybe it was when dying became just another form of fast travel.
It is my opinion that the people that will endorse the pay to win model are the instant gratification asshats that have ruined a genre that some of us once loved. "I don't have the time" they say. I've got a family, house, 2 cars, and 2 degrees to pay for. I have less time to play now than I did ten years ago, but that's no reason for me to want to see what I once loved watered down into the disaster it has become. It's about being lazy and having that need for instant gratification. Less time required + greater rewards.
Yeah, the genre has just now started to lose its way . . .
/rant
You can go ahead and thank all the idiot "free to play revoution" guys for this one. They seem to forget nothing is really free in this world and MMO's do cost money to run.
For some odd reason people seem to think the idea of "pay to win" has caught on outside of Korea and Americans just like the idea now and it is pretty far from the truth.
I'm not sure who exactly you're trying to blame here. The players? Or the F2P Developers? F2P started as an incentive for players to play lesser hyped MMOs. Players took the bait, because the only thing they lose is time. To the majority of gamers time isn't really the issue, because games (by their nature) are time sinks (or passtimes h/e you wanna call it).
- That said, all this talk about the value of time vs. money is really irrelevant. If you are playing a game for practical value, then you would do better to play a game with more real-life rewards. (markets, stocks, trade, gambling, etc.). When it comes to the issue of 'B2W' the only real issue is whether you want the winners of your game to be determined by skill, time invenstment, financial investment, or a combination of the 3.
Personally I prefer games in which the top players are generally the most skilled. Games with too steep a time invesment I usually don't stick around for, and play for story / content w/e until it gets boring. Games in which the 'winners' are winning their wallet I usually try to avoid, unless the game isn't too skewed in their favor (in which case it can become quite an amusing challenge, beating people who are paying at the ass without spending a dime).
The way I see it, if you're going to battle with your wallet, you might as well be battling for something that could potential yield a return on your investment. Otherwise you're just mindlessly pissing money down a black hole. Might as well just give the money to charity or something.
I blame all the people that jumped on the band wagon and caused this. ZOMG LOTR F2P must play now and they see a undisclosed profit increase. So everyone starts to jump on the band wagon.
AoC went F2P and that game got rushed. LoL is F2P and they have 15 million subs. People seem to be forgetting how companies make money with these games. If a game like GW2 just guts WoW's population and takes off you will see far more MMO companies looking at the B2P/F2P model.
So essentially we're just going to repeat the ancient "Don't Buy Gold/Why Not?" threads all over again?
Self-pity imprisons us in the walls of our own self-absorption. The whole world shrinks down to the size of our problem, and the more we dwell on it, the smaller we are and the larger the problem seems to grow.
No only do I find the 15 million number exceedingly dubious, but I must point out that the net reseult of going purely F2P would be zero "subs".
Self-pity imprisons us in the walls of our own self-absorption. The whole world shrinks down to the size of our problem, and the more we dwell on it, the smaller we are and the larger the problem seems to grow.