The worst of all is that they have turned this game into a cheap F2P game. It has lost all interest for me.
Good bye. Moving to something else.
Haha, are you messing around or for real?
If thats the only thing that stops you from playing this game I want to say. cya, bb, we wont miss you.
how pathetic, i really don't get people like you...
Quite the mature response to someone who is expressing their displeasure, but GW2 fans have now passed even the pre SWTOR rabid fanbois.
Didnt said it was mature, its just stupid to say its a F2P game while he knows sh*t about it and how it will be eventually.
It just bothers me people are crying so much about a game while this game will be awsome, nomatter what.
Beside that, I dont like negative people..
It's only your opinion that this game will be awesome no matter what and attacking someone else for having a different opinion is immature.
I am convinced there is only one way to eliminate these grave evils, namely through the establishment of a socialist economy, accompanied by an educational system which would be oriented toward social goals.
The worst of all is that they have turned this game into a cheap F2P game. It has lost all interest for me.
Good bye. Moving to something else.
Haha, are you messing around or for real?
If thats the only thing that stops you from playing this game I want to say. cya, bb, we wont miss you.
how pathetic, i really don't get people like you...
Quite the mature response to someone who is expressing their displeasure, but GW2 fans have now passed even the pre SWTOR rabid fanbois.
Didnt said it was mature, its just stupid to say its a F2P game while he knows sh*t about it and how it will be eventually.
It just bothers me people are crying so much about a game while this game will be awsome, nomatter what.
Beside that, I dont like negative people..
It's only your opinion that this game will be awesome no matter what and attacking someone else for having a different opinion is immature.
Did I attacked him? hmm I said I didnt get people like him and I will not miss him.
Its like saying, here you have a Ferrari, and you say "well i dont like the rims on it, so I dont want it"
I just don't get that negative attitude.
You either called the poster or the poster's opinion pathetic, that alone is immature. Simply state why you agree or disagree, no need to use loaded language to try to make someone else look bad, since all it does is make you look bad instead.
I am convinced there is only one way to eliminate these grave evils, namely through the establishment of a socialist economy, accompanied by an educational system which would be oriented toward social goals.
The worst of all is that they have turned this game into a cheap F2P game. It has lost all interest for me.
Good bye. Moving to something else.
Haha, are you messing around or for real?
If thats the only thing that stops you from playing this game I want to say. cya, bb, we wont miss you.
how pathetic, i really don't get people like you...
Quite the mature response to someone who is expressing their displeasure, but GW2 fans have now passed even the pre SWTOR rabid fanbois.
Didnt said it was mature, its just stupid to say its a F2P game while he knows sh*t about it and how it will be eventually.
It just bothers me people are crying so much about a game while this game will be awsome, nomatter what.
Beside that, I dont like negative people..
It's only your opinion that this game will be awesome no matter what and attacking someone else for having a different opinion is immature.
Did I attacked him? hmm I said I didnt get people like him and I will not miss him.
Its like saying, here you have a Ferrari, and you say "well i dont like the rims on it, so I dont want it"
I just don't get that negative attitude.
You either called the poster or the poster's opinion pathetic, that alone is immature. Simply state why you agree or disagree, no need to use loaded language to try to make someone else look bad, since all it does is make youlook bad instead.
Well it was not my intention to use loaded language to bring him down or something so I apologize for that. I just gave my opinion about his reaction. The way he just said it annoyed me.
I see there are plenty of threads on the positives of the gem system, but I wanted to provide the counter agruments of the positives and add negatives of the system. I don't really know how the gem system will be in the long run until we start seeing items, prices, and it's effects on the economy firsthand. I'm not saying the system is necessarily bad either, as there are plenty of positive aspects of the system, but there are problems with the system that are worth discussing here as the bias seems to be overwhelmingly positive right now:
1. It doesn't remove illegal RMT trading and botting, just reduces it.
While it will greatly reduce gold seller spam, it doesn't completely get rid of illegal RMT trading. People are still likely going to buy powerleveled accounts. Account sellers are still going to bot said accounts not only to powerlevel them for experience but to farm the in game currencies. Account sellers are still going to want to get as much gold as possible for those accounts so they can buy gems on the account, which will make the accounts more valuable. Hacked accounts with lots of progression and currency are going to be just as valuable if not more so than they were before.
2. It supports unfair items on the cash shop since you can always use the agrument that anyone can earn it in game.
Ever play Allods Online? The game is a perfect example of this. You could earn much of the cash shop items in game; however the cash shop was horribly pay to win and that's a good reason the F2P lost a lot of it's popularity once information on the cash shop and the reality of it sunk in. Just because you can earn the items in game, whether through quests, the cash shop items being BoE, or currency trading doesn't mean it's fair. Non-paying players may have to farm for obscene amounts of time to earn enough to earn an item, meaningwhile the paying player simply bought said item and doesn't have to worry about farming. The paying player basically wins in this case. Other examples are facebook apps like Mafia Wars, where the paying players have a huge advantage over the non-paying players, even though most of the paid items are tradable with others and there are methods to earn them in the game.
3. Paying players (the whales in particular) have greater control of the economy.
Let's throw out some theoretical numbers here. Let's say there are 10,000 active players daily. 5% of those players used the cash shop that day. Out of those 5%, 10% used the cash shop to buy gems which they are trying to auction off for gold. That means 0.5% of the active players, or 50 players that day placed gems for gold on the auction house.
Player A, a whale spends an extraordinary number of money on gems. He sells the gems regularly and is now has the equivalent of the top 3 richest people in the world of in game currency.
Player A now decides that he doesn't like the conversion rate of gems to gold. Player A buys out all the gems of the 50 players selling gems that day with his amassed fortune. He now places the gems up for the new rate of his choosing. The player continually monitors the auction house in order to control this rate, by buying out any other gem to gold transactions that attempt to undercut him. Player A now controls all the supply of gems to gold.
The demand of gems doesn't halt. Many players that wanted to buy gems before simply can't afford it now. Other players are forced to buy gems at the newly set price. Eventually if Player A continues this, this becomes the norm. The demand doesn't go down, and now that Player A controls the entire supply and it's more difficult to obtain said gems the demand actually INCREASES as long as Player A doesn't set a completely absurd price, because less people are now able to obtain the gems yet the amount supplied remains the same.
Now, Player A is making an even bigger profit and has even more wealth. Now say there are valuable consumables for sale on the auction house / trading post. What's to stop Player A for controlling the economy on those too? Where does it end? Eventually valuable items will be so overpriced that only paying players will be able to afford them.
I'm not saying this will happen. This is a nightmare scenario. It's just that it simply COULD happen.
4. It causes developers to build around the cash shop more, causing more inconvenience.
Now that everyone can buy gems how do you make the gems more valuable? Valuable enough that people will want to purchase them and not simply farm gold. You need to increase demand that's how! How do you do that? Make gold less valuable and gems more valuable. The best way to do that is to make it inconvenient to farm large amounts of gold while making it very convenient to use gems. There are plenty of ways to do this as we've seen in lots of cash shop games, even ones with "fair" cash shops. Limit inventory and bank space so people will want to increase it. Make gold difficult to farm and used in everything so people will want to trade those gems in for gold. Make travel a pain or harsh penalties so consumers will want items that remove said penalities and make things more convenient for them.
Now we have a few counter agruments you might be able to understand why some people might be upset about this. I don't expect Anet to go the route where they'll intentionally inconvenience players (we already know they are doing a lot to make the game enjoyable), I'm simply just offering up counter agruments here. Don't take it the wrong way and flame me or call me a troll for it. A lot of these are theoretical worst case scenarios that probably won't happen.
1. You can't totally stop RMT transactions... however, this system is a severe blow to RMT companies and making money from the game may be so much more effort due to them being limited to hacking and powerleveling that they may give this game a pass.
2. Pay2Win IMO implies an advantage in PvP scenario. PvP currency is seperate from other currencies and is unaffected by the cash shop. However, gear is purely cosmetic in GW2. What is there to buy that would give you an advantage over others if gear and weps are pretty much just skins? I'll tell you what you probably can buy, since they were in the cash shop in GW1, expansion packs and character slots. So you can play this game and upgrade it to the next xpack if you want without spending a dime.
3. The auctions house is multiserver. It is not limited to one server. So there is no way one play can amass enough wealth to buy all the gems.
4. Again... badass looking costumes, xpacks, characters slots. Thats really all you need to make money. Worked in GW1, they would put out some sick looking reaper costume skin for halloween and everone would buy it
"Don't mistake a fun game for a good game... Checkers is fun to play but its not exactly the highest point of gaming design... and definatly not worth $60 plus $15 a month"
1) So basically, it makes things better but not perfect than not having such a system. And that's a negative?
2) ArenaNet might make a pay to win cash shop with the gems system in place. Or they might not. And you could say exactly the same without the gems system. How is that a negative of the gems system?
3) Won't happen. Can't happen, unless the game flops badly enough for discreteness to play a huge role (think <1000 players online at peak times here). You don't understand how supply and demand work. An obscenely rich player could force the gems price to stay well above the usual equilibrium, but it would be by buying a lot more gems than he sells. If he later tries to sell the gems back to the market, it would push prices down, and he'd sell them for a lot less than he paid.
4) You really think the gems system will cause ArenaNet to put things into the item mall that they wouldn't otherwise? I don't, and it could just as easily work the other way around.
I see there are plenty of threads on the positives of the gem system, but I wanted to provide the counter agruments of the positives and add negatives of the system. I don't really know how the gem system will be in the long run until we start seeing items, prices, and it's effects on the economy firsthand. I'm not saying the system is necessarily bad either, as there are plenty of positive aspects of the system, but there are problems with the system that are worth discussing here as the bias seems to be overwhelmingly positive right now:
That statement makes the rest of the argument moot.
The major / glaring problem with this thread is it still bases it's criticism off of an assumption / implication that simply doesn't exist.
With the example used of Allods, while the two systems do sound very similar on the surface, they are quite different (and managed differently). The main reason Allods lost popularity was two-fold. 1) It designed itself to push players to buy things from the cash shop, and did so fairly aggressively. Want to respec? Buy a cashshop item. Want a mount? Cash shop, or get lucky during one of the events. Epic gear? Cash shop. Extra bag space? Cash shop.
The only things in Allods cashshop that are similar to GW2's are the exp scrolls and vanity items, none of which are the biggest sellers.
Now, for GW2's system:
- Gold, Gems, & Karma all buy different things. Gems are mostly vanity items (and will most likely include things like dungeon packs, skins, extra character slots, and exp scrolls).
- Gold is mostly used to travel, repair equipment, salvage items (to get materials to craft new items), etc.
- Gold (as reported so far in beta) is not that difficult to get.
- Karma is used to buy ALL of the best loot in the game / unique items / etc.
So.. take the example of the market whale that tries to stranglehold the game w/ his amassed wealth. He will successfully have:
a) Burned a substantial hole in his walet
b) Reduced the amount of players with unique costumes
c) Gained no real advantage in the game
So... this market whale would basically need to be a troll of such extent, that he is willing to continuously drop real money into a game (much more than the standard 15$ / month) just to grief people out of looking more unique than what the game currently has to offer. On top of this, he would need to make multiple accounts, as players will be able to simply switch server if they don't feel like dealing with such a person.
Really, all this on top of the fact that Anet can simply just BAN the person if they are breaching the EULA (we don't know what's in this yet), it doesn't make sense for someone to really try this, and it's not a substainable action either. If some idiot wants to waste 100s if not 1000s of $$ to grief a video game for no real benefit, go for it. I'm sure Anet will be delighted to take his money.
The major / glaring problem with this thread is it still bases it's criticism off of an assumption / implication that simply doesn't exist.
Isn't that the whole point of troll posts like these?
These posts are all pretty much baseless. I kidded about people posting stuff like "the grass is too green, or "the cities are too big. Which is pretty much what most of these are right now.
The system is what it is, we won't know the full scope till it's nearly gametime. There are questions that raise eyebrows about what will be in the game, but most of it is not only logical and sensible, but they are also still under review by Anet. They even said this beta weekend is to test the cash shop issues. I hope they look at the Guild influence system to enhance karma and at least answer about the elite skill bought in the CE version.
Other than that, the only people whining about the gem system, are wallet warriors who are mad because gold can't by them uber stuff and/or people not really understanding or having the full set facts.
3. Paying players (the whales in particular) have greater control of the economy.
Let's throw out some theoretical numbers here. Let's say there are 10,000 active players daily. 5% of those players used the cash shop that day. Out of those 5%, 10% used the cash shop to buy gems which they are trying to auction off for gold. That means 0.5% of the active players, or 50 players that day placed gems for gold on the auction house.
Player A, a whale spends an extraordinary number of money on gems. He sells the gems regularly and is now has the equivalent of the top 3 richest people in the world of in game currency.
Player A now decides that he doesn't like the conversion rate of gems to gold. Player A buys out all the gems of the 50 players selling gems that day with his amassed fortune. He now places the gems up for the new rate of his choosing. The player continually monitors the auction house in order to control this rate, by buying out any other gem to gold transactions that attempt to undercut him. Player A now controls all the supply of gems to gold.
The demand of gems doesn't halt. Many players that wanted to buy gems before simply can't afford it now. Other players are forced to buy gems at the newly set price. Eventually if Player A continues this, this becomes the norm. The demand doesn't go down, and now that Player A controls the entire supply and it's more difficult to obtain said gems the demand actually INCREASES as long as Player A doesn't set a completely absurd price, because less people are now able to obtain the gems yet the amount supplied remains the same.
Now, Player A is making an even bigger profit and has even more wealth. Now say there are valuable consumables for sale on the auction house / trading post. What's to stop Player A for controlling the economy on those too? Where does it end? Eventually valuable items will be so overpriced that only paying players will be able to afford them.
I'm not saying this will happen. This is a nightmare scenario. It's just that it simply COULD happen.
*snip*
Since you know Allods Online, have you ever tried to undercut the shard NPC in that game? The gem NPC buys shards (the equivalent of gems in GW2) at a high fixed rate at first. Once he has a certain amount of shards, the price drops a bit, more people sell, prices drop and drop until the NPC has enough gems to start selling shards. The less shards the NPC has, the higher the selling price will become again.
Selling shards on the auction house has been made virtually extinct with this NPC. Selling them at a higher rate is useless since they won't be bought by anyone. Selling them at a lower rate would be dumb, since the NPC will give you more gold for them than you'd ask from another player. Tough system to beat if you're trying to control the market.
If Anet implements a gem selling NPC your nightmare scenario has little to no chance of ever coming true. If they keep gems on the auction house only, then there is room for abuse. Your nightmare scenario is a sad reality in many games and I hope Anet is aware of this problem.
OP reads like: Wah wah wah, those with time investments won't have complete control over the economy any more. I won;t be able to snort at people from atop my level 3,000 epic space donkey mount. The playing field is equal... but it cannot be! I am superior! Thus, I must quickly portray this as evil to time investors so that we can maintain our control.
Seriously, not falling for it. To me, it clearly creates a level playing field between time and money investors, and it doesn't allow either to outright control the economy.
This ignores the fact that worldwide those with the least amount of money also tend to have the least amount of free time. So this system screws them over coming and going.
Exactly. In a subtle way companies makes us believe that:
- People with money have few time and then will spend in the game.
- People without money have a lot of time and will invest time in the game
- We as a company are so kind that we will bring the two together with our benefical system.
And that is simply not true.
There are also
- students who study a lot and can play little time, but yet thaey have no money to spend on games
- there are kids playing who might have time, but which are brought to a marketplace not to a playground whenever they will log in and play
I'm really pissed by this f2p-cash shop-real trade market trend.
I want my old p2p sub fee model back, i play to relax and enjoy my free time, not to go back to job or to put any children into a market, while the company should take care of the service with my sub money and profit only on it, period.
Then play the game and enjoy it instead of worrying what other people are doing with their accounts.
Those students that don't have time to play would still have a problem without the cash shop you just added them in for a "think of the children" emotional response.
I urge people who worry that they have neither time nor money to spend on acquiring goods in GW2 to look at the press videos coming out of the last beta, and again this coming beta, to see the leveling speed and the speed at which gold is accumulated.
While the game is still in beta and therefore subject to change, I think it is erroneous to assume that GW2 will be like other games and stunt the speed at which leveling and goods are obtained in order to make a push toward the cash shop. If you witness the fact that the press managed to level into their teens without XP boosts whilst rolling multiple alts and spending hours in WvW and in dungeons, and given the fact that ANet has already released their diagram of their leveling curve which shows an early power plateau, it's safe to say that "hell levels" or "grind walls" will not exist in this game.
I understand that based on past MMO releases there is a healthy tendency to be skeptical, but unless you believe ANet to be fundamentally dishonest and for the entire foundation of the game to change THIS FAR in development, try to imagine what possible disadvantage you could be in by not being able to partake in small XP boosts or an excess of gold in Guild Wars 2's paradigm. Not LOTRO's paradigm, not WOW's paradigm, not Star Trek Online's paradigm... Guild Wars 2's paradigm.
I urge people who worry that they have neither time nor money to spend on acquiring goods in GW2 to look at the press videos coming out of the last beta, and again this coming beta, to see the leveling speed and the speed at which gold is accumulated. While the game is still in beta and therefore subject to change, I think it is erroneous to assume that GW2 will be like other games and stunt the speed at which leveling and goods are obtained in order to make a push toward the cash shop. If you witness the fact that the press managed to level into their teens without XP boosts whilst rolling multiple alts and spending hours in WvW and in dungeons, and given the fact that ANet has already released their diagram of their leveling curve which shows an early power plateau, it's safe to say that "hell levels" or "grind walls" will not exist in this game. I understand that based on past MMO releases there is a healthy tendency to be skeptical, but unless you believe ANet to be fundamentally dishonest and for the entire foundation of the game to change THIS FAR in development, try to imagine what possible disadvantage you could be in by not being able to partake in small XP boosts or an excess of gold in Guild Wars 2's paradigm. Not LOTRO's paradigm, not WOW's paradigm, not Star Trek Online's paradigm... Guild Wars 2's paradigm. How would you be at a disadvantage?
And yet you would urge us to assume that a company would go to the effort of inserting a shop into the game and then dis-incentivising us to use it, I for one am rational and will wait to see the system in action before making a blind judgement based on my love for a publically traded company of which I am not a shareholder.
I read through most of the thread, but I don't think anybody actually countered point #3 yet. the OP's original assertion is that a single person (or persons) with a lot of cash reserves (real or in game) can control the supply of a single commodity (in this case, gems).
So lets say I buyout all the gems out there, and relist them for sale at 4x the normal price (lets say I relist them for 400 gold each). Now every gem/gem stack listed for sale is at least 400 gold each.
Now you come along wanting to purchase gems. You could either pay the absurdly high fee of 400 gold each, or you could post a buy order, offering to pay 370 gold/gem for up to 10 gems. You've just effectively undercut his price, and he cannot do anything about it.
Now somebody else (person C) comes along. C has some gems to sell, and he has two choices. He could list his gems under the 400 price (probably 399 gold/gem), or, if he wanted money right now, he could accept my your buy offer at 370. Neither of these options works out well for me, the guy trying to control the market. If he picks the former, I'm going to make 1 gold, if he picks the later, i'm cut out completely.
So in what way is it profitable to spend huge capitol purchasing all the gems (or any commodity for that matter)?
I read through most of the thread, but I don't think anybody actually countered point #3 yet. the OP's original assertion is that a single person (or persons) with a lot of cash reserves (real or in game) can control the supply of a single commodity (in this case, gems).
So lets say I buyout all the gems out there, and relist them for sale at 4x the normal price (lets say I relist them for 400 gold each). Now every gem/gem stack listed for sale is at least 400 gold each.
Now you come along wanting to purchase gems. You could either pay the absurdly high fee of 400 gold each, or you could post a buy order, offering to pay 370 gold/gem for up to 10 gems. You've just effectively undercut his price, and he cannot do anything about it.
Now somebody else (person C) comes along. C has some gems to sell, and he has two choices. He could list his gems under the 400 price (probably 399 gold/gem), or, if he wanted money right now, he could accept my your buy offer at 370. Neither of these options works out well for me, the guy trying to control the market. If he picks the former, I'm going to make 1 gold, if he picks the later, i'm cut out completely.
So in what way is it profitable to spend huge capitol purchasing all the gems (or any commodity for that matter)?
Yet if the game has a global economy, it would simply be impossible for one person or maybe even a few people to control the gem market. We are talking out of a million plus active players, worldwide.
This just made the game pay to win. Now anything of value in game can be purchased by REAL MONEY. WHY YOU ASK? Because these GEMs are tradable for in game currency. Meaning you can buy max in game currency and anything in game for REAL MONEY.
Though this may or may not lower RMT sales of in game currency.
It 100% just made it a pay to win game.
Welcome to the end of GW2. I would have preffered a p2p monthly fee then this system.
Hero Evermore Guild Master of Dragonspine since 1982. Playing Path of Exile and deeply in love with it.
This just made the game pay to win. Now anything of value in game can be purchased by REAL MONEY. WHY YOU ASK? Because these GEMs are tradable for in game currency. Meaning you can buy max in game currency and anything in game for REAL MONEY.
Though this may or may not lower RMT sales of in game currency.
It 100% just made it a pay to win game.
Welcome to the end of GW2. I would have preffered a p2p monthly fee then this system.
You are not alone.
Even, if it just becomes a "Pay to Win the beauty contest", I still dislike it a lot and would have prefered a straight p2p monthly fee. Heck, even a double p2p monthly fee would have been better for me.
This just made the game pay to win. Now anything of value in game can be purchased by REAL MONEY. WHY YOU ASK? Because these GEMs are tradable for in game currency. Meaning you can buy max in game currency and anything in game for REAL MONEY.
Though this may or may not lower RMT sales of in game currency.
It 100% just made it a pay to win game.
Welcome to the end of GW2. I would have preffered a p2p monthly fee then this system.
So... where's the power you can purchase with real money that makes it so you win? Hint: There is none. All gems do is allow for gold distribution from people with a lot of time to gather it to people without the time to gather but the money to purchse gems. Gems redistribute gold, that's all. Hell, the people with the gold to sell ultimately wind up with the gems anyhow.
Gems give you access to the store items. Think about it... what other game allows you to effectvely earn new character slots simply by playing the game, with no cost out of your pocket?
Simply put... there no "win" to purchase, ergo it's not pay to win. There's just a means to access the store and to redistribute gold, nothing more. Remember... anything in the store you can buy directly with cash as well if you wish, which relegates gems to solely being gold-redistribution tools.
By the way, the things of real value... the hard to get weapons and armor from explorer mode dungeons for example... no amount of gold can buy those.
This just made the game pay to win. Now anything of value in game can be purchased by REAL MONEY. WHY YOU ASK? Because these GEMs are tradable for in game currency. Meaning you can buy max in game currency and anything in game for REAL MONEY.
Though this may or may not lower RMT sales of in game currency.
It 100% just made it a pay to win game.
Welcome to the end of GW2. I would have preffered a p2p monthly fee then this system.
So... where's the power you can purchase with real money that makes it so you win? Hint: There is none. All gems do is allow for gold distribution from people with a lot of time to gather it to people without the time to gather but the money to purchse gems. Gems redistribute gold, that's all. Hell, the people with the gold to sell ultimately wind up with the gems anyhow.
Gems give you access to the store items. Think about it... what other game allows you to effectvely earn new character slots simply by playing the game, with no cost out of your pocket?
Simply put... there no "win" to purchase, ergo it's not pay to win. There's just a means to access the store and to redistribute gold, nothing more. Remember... anything in the store you can buy directly with cash as well if you wish, which relegates gems to solely being gold-redistribution tools.
Since we do not know, yet, exactly how meaningful gold will be for V8, which is supposed to be a major focus of GW2, I can for now agree with some scepticism that buying gold with real money won't give you any straight character power that will take ungodly amount of time for any non-payer to achieve.
However, for the "peacock contest", having lots of golds may become extremely meaningful. It can very well be pay-to-win in that area. I can very well imagine the most exclusive look-wise armors be very rare to obtain and go for lots of gold in the auction.
So, yes, there may very well be lots of "win" to purchase, we'll just have to wait and see in the beta.
Comments
Didnt said it was mature, its just stupid to say its a F2P game while he knows sh*t about it and how it will be eventually.
It just bothers me people are crying so much about a game while this game will be awsome, nomatter what.
Beside that, I dont like negative people..
It's only your opinion that this game will be awesome no matter what and attacking someone else for having a different opinion is immature.
I am convinced there is only one way to eliminate these grave evils, namely through the establishment of a socialist economy, accompanied by an educational system which would be oriented toward social goals.
~Albert Einstein
Which your post was, love the contradictions in the GW2 forums
Did I attacked him? hmm I said I didnt get people like him and I will not miss him.
Its like saying, here you have a Ferrari, and you say "well i dont like the rims on it, so I dont want it"
I just don't get that negative attitude.
lol, turn it the way you want
You either called the poster or the poster's opinion pathetic, that alone is immature. Simply state why you agree or disagree, no need to use loaded language to try to make someone else look bad, since all it does is make you look bad instead.
I am convinced there is only one way to eliminate these grave evils, namely through the establishment of a socialist economy, accompanied by an educational system which would be oriented toward social goals.
~Albert Einstein
Well it was not my intention to use loaded language to bring him down or something so I apologize for that. I just gave my opinion about his reaction. The way he just said it annoyed me.
1. You can't totally stop RMT transactions... however, this system is a severe blow to RMT companies and making money from the game may be so much more effort due to them being limited to hacking and powerleveling that they may give this game a pass.
2. Pay2Win IMO implies an advantage in PvP scenario. PvP currency is seperate from other currencies and is unaffected by the cash shop. However, gear is purely cosmetic in GW2. What is there to buy that would give you an advantage over others if gear and weps are pretty much just skins? I'll tell you what you probably can buy, since they were in the cash shop in GW1, expansion packs and character slots. So you can play this game and upgrade it to the next xpack if you want without spending a dime.
3. The auctions house is multiserver. It is not limited to one server. So there is no way one play can amass enough wealth to buy all the gems.
4. Again... badass looking costumes, xpacks, characters slots. Thats really all you need to make money. Worked in GW1, they would put out some sick looking reaper costume skin for halloween and everone would buy it
"Don't mistake a fun game for a good game... Checkers is fun to play but its not exactly the highest point of gaming design... and definatly not worth $60 plus $15 a month"
1) So basically, it makes things better but not perfect than not having such a system. And that's a negative?
2) ArenaNet might make a pay to win cash shop with the gems system in place. Or they might not. And you could say exactly the same without the gems system. How is that a negative of the gems system?
3) Won't happen. Can't happen, unless the game flops badly enough for discreteness to play a huge role (think <1000 players online at peak times here). You don't understand how supply and demand work. An obscenely rich player could force the gems price to stay well above the usual equilibrium, but it would be by buying a lot more gems than he sells. If he later tries to sell the gems back to the market, it would push prices down, and he'd sell them for a lot less than he paid.
4) You really think the gems system will cause ArenaNet to put things into the item mall that they wouldn't otherwise? I don't, and it could just as easily work the other way around.
That statement makes the rest of the argument moot.
The major / glaring problem with this thread is it still bases it's criticism off of an assumption / implication that simply doesn't exist.
With the example used of Allods, while the two systems do sound very similar on the surface, they are quite different (and managed differently). The main reason Allods lost popularity was two-fold. 1) It designed itself to push players to buy things from the cash shop, and did so fairly aggressively. Want to respec? Buy a cashshop item. Want a mount? Cash shop, or get lucky during one of the events. Epic gear? Cash shop. Extra bag space? Cash shop.
The only things in Allods cashshop that are similar to GW2's are the exp scrolls and vanity items, none of which are the biggest sellers.
Now, for GW2's system:
- Gold, Gems, & Karma all buy different things. Gems are mostly vanity items (and will most likely include things like dungeon packs, skins, extra character slots, and exp scrolls).
- Gold is mostly used to travel, repair equipment, salvage items (to get materials to craft new items), etc.
- Gold (as reported so far in beta) is not that difficult to get.
- Karma is used to buy ALL of the best loot in the game / unique items / etc.
So.. take the example of the market whale that tries to stranglehold the game w/ his amassed wealth. He will successfully have:
a) Burned a substantial hole in his walet
b) Reduced the amount of players with unique costumes
c) Gained no real advantage in the game
So... this market whale would basically need to be a troll of such extent, that he is willing to continuously drop real money into a game (much more than the standard 15$ / month) just to grief people out of looking more unique than what the game currently has to offer. On top of this, he would need to make multiple accounts, as players will be able to simply switch server if they don't feel like dealing with such a person.
Really, all this on top of the fact that Anet can simply just BAN the person if they are breaching the EULA (we don't know what's in this yet), it doesn't make sense for someone to really try this, and it's not a substainable action either. If some idiot wants to waste 100s if not 1000s of $$ to grief a video game for no real benefit, go for it. I'm sure Anet will be delighted to take his money.
Isn't that the whole point of troll posts like these?
These posts are all pretty much baseless. I kidded about people posting stuff like "the grass is too green, or "the cities are too big. Which is pretty much what most of these are right now.
The system is what it is, we won't know the full scope till it's nearly gametime. There are questions that raise eyebrows about what will be in the game, but most of it is not only logical and sensible, but they are also still under review by Anet. They even said this beta weekend is to test the cash shop issues. I hope they look at the Guild influence system to enhance karma and at least answer about the elite skill bought in the CE version.
Other than that, the only people whining about the gem system, are wallet warriors who are mad because gold can't by them uber stuff and/or people not really understanding or having the full set facts.
Since you know Allods Online, have you ever tried to undercut the shard NPC in that game? The gem NPC buys shards (the equivalent of gems in GW2) at a high fixed rate at first. Once he has a certain amount of shards, the price drops a bit, more people sell, prices drop and drop until the NPC has enough gems to start selling shards. The less shards the NPC has, the higher the selling price will become again.
Selling shards on the auction house has been made virtually extinct with this NPC. Selling them at a higher rate is useless since they won't be bought by anyone. Selling them at a lower rate would be dumb, since the NPC will give you more gold for them than you'd ask from another player. Tough system to beat if you're trying to control the market.
If Anet implements a gem selling NPC your nightmare scenario has little to no chance of ever coming true. If they keep gems on the auction house only, then there is room for abuse. Your nightmare scenario is a sad reality in many games and I hope Anet is aware of this problem.
Then play the game and enjoy it instead of worrying what other people are doing with their accounts.
Those students that don't have time to play would still have a problem without the cash shop you just added them in for a "think of the children" emotional response.
I urge people who worry that they have neither time nor money to spend on acquiring goods in GW2 to look at the press videos coming out of the last beta, and again this coming beta, to see the leveling speed and the speed at which gold is accumulated.
While the game is still in beta and therefore subject to change, I think it is erroneous to assume that GW2 will be like other games and stunt the speed at which leveling and goods are obtained in order to make a push toward the cash shop. If you witness the fact that the press managed to level into their teens without XP boosts whilst rolling multiple alts and spending hours in WvW and in dungeons, and given the fact that ANet has already released their diagram of their leveling curve which shows an early power plateau, it's safe to say that "hell levels" or "grind walls" will not exist in this game.
I understand that based on past MMO releases there is a healthy tendency to be skeptical, but unless you believe ANet to be fundamentally dishonest and for the entire foundation of the game to change THIS FAR in development, try to imagine what possible disadvantage you could be in by not being able to partake in small XP boosts or an excess of gold in Guild Wars 2's paradigm. Not LOTRO's paradigm, not WOW's paradigm, not Star Trek Online's paradigm... Guild Wars 2's paradigm.
How would you be at a disadvantage?
And yet you would urge us to assume that a company would go to the effort of inserting a shop into the game and then dis-incentivising us to use it, I for one am rational and will wait to see the system in action before making a blind judgement based on my love for a publically traded company of which I am not a shareholder.I read through most of the thread, but I don't think anybody actually countered point #3 yet. the OP's original assertion is that a single person (or persons) with a lot of cash reserves (real or in game) can control the supply of a single commodity (in this case, gems).
So lets say I buyout all the gems out there, and relist them for sale at 4x the normal price (lets say I relist them for 400 gold each). Now every gem/gem stack listed for sale is at least 400 gold each.
Now you come along wanting to purchase gems. You could either pay the absurdly high fee of 400 gold each, or you could post a buy order, offering to pay 370 gold/gem for up to 10 gems. You've just effectively undercut his price, and he cannot do anything about it.
Now somebody else (person C) comes along. C has some gems to sell, and he has two choices. He could list his gems under the 400 price (probably 399 gold/gem), or, if he wanted money right now, he could accept my your buy offer at 370. Neither of these options works out well for me, the guy trying to control the market. If he picks the former, I'm going to make 1 gold, if he picks the later, i'm cut out completely.
So in what way is it profitable to spend huge capitol purchasing all the gems (or any commodity for that matter)?
Yet if the game has a global economy, it would simply be impossible for one person or maybe even a few people to control the gem market. We are talking out of a million plus active players, worldwide.
Also true, but I wanted to roll with the assumption anyway.
This just made the game pay to win. Now anything of value in game can be purchased by REAL MONEY. WHY YOU ASK? Because these GEMs are tradable for in game currency. Meaning you can buy max in game currency and anything in game for REAL MONEY.
Though this may or may not lower RMT sales of in game currency.
It 100% just made it a pay to win game.
Welcome to the end of GW2. I would have preffered a p2p monthly fee then this system.
Hero Evermore
Guild Master of Dragonspine since 1982.
Playing Path of Exile and deeply in love with it.
You are not alone.
Even, if it just becomes a "Pay to Win the beauty contest", I still dislike it a lot and would have prefered a straight p2p monthly fee. Heck, even a double p2p monthly fee would have been better for me.
So... where's the power you can purchase with real money that makes it so you win? Hint: There is none. All gems do is allow for gold distribution from people with a lot of time to gather it to people without the time to gather but the money to purchse gems. Gems redistribute gold, that's all. Hell, the people with the gold to sell ultimately wind up with the gems anyhow.
Gems give you access to the store items. Think about it... what other game allows you to effectvely earn new character slots simply by playing the game, with no cost out of your pocket?
Simply put... there no "win" to purchase, ergo it's not pay to win. There's just a means to access the store and to redistribute gold, nothing more. Remember... anything in the store you can buy directly with cash as well if you wish, which relegates gems to solely being gold-redistribution tools.
By the way, the things of real value... the hard to get weapons and armor from explorer mode dungeons for example... no amount of gold can buy those.
Oderint, dum metuant.
Since we do not know, yet, exactly how meaningful gold will be for V8, which is supposed to be a major focus of GW2, I can for now agree with some scepticism that buying gold with real money won't give you any straight character power that will take ungodly amount of time for any non-payer to achieve.
However, for the "peacock contest", having lots of golds may become extremely meaningful. It can very well be pay-to-win in that area. I can very well imagine the most exclusive look-wise armors be very rare to obtain and go for lots of gold in the auction.
So, yes, there may very well be lots of "win" to purchase, we'll just have to wait and see in the beta.
yeah i just relaly hope the items available on the auction are unable to make anyone stronger otherwise it is p2win.
Either way this will destroy the value of in game gold is not a good choice for ANET to make this game more popular.
Hero Evermore
Guild Master of Dragonspine since 1982.
Playing Path of Exile and deeply in love with it.