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Is it me or GW2 PAY 2 WIN game?
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Well I'm not a troll.
Sometimes people are just joking, heh.
In all seriousness, the magnitude of the temporary advantages gained through regular cash shop spending seem minor enough to not be an issue.
To truly eliminate it, you'd have to eliminate the gems ---> gold ability but I think that'd be a shame. It's nice having the ability to buy cash shop items/currency from other players with in game currency, just to have the ability to get the cosmetic toys that you find fun.
why this is still open?
It is so odd that in this very same thread you posed:
"I'm done pushing too hard on it though, as I don't really follow it much anymore once I decided I wouldn't be buying it. I used to be way more informed than most of its die-hard-fanatics back when I was more actively debating it, but once I figured out the nuances of their cash shop and how deeply ingrained they were making it, I completely lost interest."
Yet here you are, still hard at work, arguing about an issue you have no real stake in because as you've said many times, you haven't played a BWE nor do you intend to purchase it. Yet how many of your posts are about GW2? Does this make sense?
"Loading screens" are not "instances".
Your personal efforts to troll any game will not, in fact, impact the success or failure of said game.
Probably because you don't get banned for whining, but you definately get banned for being an asshole. I've proven that.
All of my posts are either intelligent, thought provoking, funny, satirical, sarcastic or intentionally disrespectful. Take your pick.
I get banned in the forums for games I love, so lets see if I do better in the forums for games I hate.
I enjoy the serenity of not caring what your opinion is.
I don't hate much, but I hate Apple© with a passion. If Steve Jobs was alive, I would punch him in the face.
Let them continue, please. I didn't laugh so hard long ago.
Is it me or does this OP look exactly like dozens of others that came before it?
President of The Marvelously Meowhead Fan Club
I know absolutely nothing about the CS in TSW as I do not play, nor have I been following that game. I was responding directly to Seridan who said that TSW's cash has only cosmetic stuff.
And I personally do not consider that P2W, though I can understand why others with different viewpoints would.
Also...why must a purchased item affect other players to be "P2W?" Can you not "win" at single player games? Is "winning" only a factor when other people are involved?
And that has been my point through this entire thread...the definition of P2W is so nebulous that every poster just twists it to suit their arguments. All I am saying is that you CAN DEFINITELY buy an advantage in GW2 with real money. I do not think that advantage will be a huge deal for the game, but it is there.
Outright denying that the cash shop will have any influence on the game is just as bad as crowing that GW2 is flat-out P2W.
Are you team Azeroth, team Tyria, or team Jacob?
Do people like spinning their wheels? Because that is exactly what is going on here.
Sure they do, but only while beating a dead horse.
Also in this same thread I posted "You guys sucked me back into the debate" so I felt like poking some fun at the defenders of the cash shop for old times sake. But thanks for responding to my last post, as for some reason it was removed from this thread by the moderators I guess. I wonder what terms of service I violated in that tongue-in-cheek response to the cash shop defenders??? Maybe I hit too close to home? Anyway, no matter. At least my post lives on in your response LOL.
GW2 "built from the ground up with microtransactions in mind"
1) Cash->Gems->Gold->Influence->WvWvWBoosts = PAY2WIN
2) Mystic Chests = Crass in-game cash shop advertisements
This entire argument is flawed, because different people have different definitions of what "win" means.
For some people, grinding in-game to get the most awesome uber loot (even if that just means the most awesome LOOKING loot) is the be-all-and-end-all of the game. That's the entire point of the game to them, and if someone else can just come in and pay for some gems, convert it to gold, and then use that gold to buy whatever rare items they want, that person has just paid to "win the game".
For other people, grinding for gold is not "noble" in and of itself, and doesn't deserve "protection". Some people have lots of time to spend farming gold, and they should be able to. Other people don't have the time to spend farming for gold, and those people should have access to all the cool looking gear in the game that the farmers have access to, because it's all for show anyway (stats are easily maxed, remember). Conversely, farmers can use this system to buy items that cost most people real money (by buying gems). Everyone gets to use whatever resource they have (time for gold, or real life money) to get what they want, so everyone wins, because it's PvE and no one should be viewing this as a competition.
These viewpoints are fundamentally exclusive to each other. People who hold one viewpoint will always be talking past the people who hold the other. There is really no way to resolve this argument. ANet has chosen its position (which is that everyone should be able to afford anything, given enough time or money, because they're not selling power so everything else should just be for fun anyway), and if you viscerally disagree with that, there really isn't much else for you to do but not play the game. There WILL be people who are playing the game who bought gold via gems, and turned it into some shiny sword. Of course, those people exist in EVERY game. ANet's just legitimizing the practice. If you can't handle that...sorry, your goals and definitions of "winning" differ from mine, and ANet's.
At the person above me: see, the reason that you're so vitriolic about this is (looking at your sig) that you think that the cash shop is going to significantly affect WvW. To this, I have two observations:
1) If true, that means that even without the gold -> gem exchange, teams would be able to achieve a significant advantage in WvW via gold farming. Is that really that much better?
2) Look at the influence boosts you can get in WvW. They are absolutely tiny. If *that* is the extent to which P2W exists in GW2, I can't imagine getting upset about it. Population disparities will affect WvW waaaaaay more than influence spending will.
So would it also be ok if the cash shop sold a sword that gave you those same "tiny" performance boosts?
GW2 "built from the ground up with microtransactions in mind"
1) Cash->Gems->Gold->Influence->WvWvWBoosts = PAY2WIN
2) Mystic Chests = Crass in-game cash shop advertisements
For me, it would be perfectly okay.
+1
I'm going to applaud you as soon as I finish typing this.
President of The Marvelously Meowhead Fan Club
Right, because every single game out there with a cash shop didnt say before release that the cash shop was just about "items that dont affect the game" and then give it 6 months items that do affect the game start popping up :P Its completely unheard of, but I am sure ANet is different they are only doing GW2 for the love that they have for other people.
I'm still trying to figure out what the "win" in P2W means in GW2. What do you "win", even if you can buy all the best gear out of the cash shop? Does having all he best gear mean you "win", when everyone else can get equal gear any number of ways that do not require money?
Even **if** they put such gear in the cash shop, and even **if** you defined "winning" as "having the best gear", at best it would be a "Pay 2 Tie" cash shop.
Perhaps you define "winning" as being able to dominate in PvP? Or PvE? How is that going to happen when you only have the same power gear as others, and in GW2 it's far, far more about skill than stats or gear?
I'm not sure the people who make thse kinds of threads or comments really understand the GW2 game design.
The guy who made the comment in orange hasn't played either.
The TSW CS is 100% cosmetic. No cash to gold systems, no BoE items, not even XP pots. The GW2 CS and the TSW CS are very different. This should be expected though. One is a sub based game the other is B2P.
That is a philosophy question and applies to any game, even if you can buy a weapon that can one shot everything in your line of sight in a pvp game, what do you win? If you use Wallhacks and aimbots in an FPS what do you win? "winning" is always gonna be subjective under any circunstance.
Like you said Win is subjective. P2W is mentioned when I can achieve something by paying that someone else needs to achieve through playing the game longer than the time it takes me to put in my credit card details, it doesnt mean you win a medal, it means you have achieved the goal of getting something that took someone else considerably more time.
The highlighted bit, you go on to say that all the gear has the same power, then on the next few words you say that skill matters more than stats, which is a contradiction, you either have the exact same stats on everything or you dont, if you have 1 more stat on something over the other then, gear doesnt have the same power, because two players playing at the exact same skill level the one with one more stat point is going to have the advantage.
So then that gear with 1 more stat point is an advantage. So player A levels up does a few of the dungeons and gets a piece of gear with one more stat point, player B levels up and through the cash shop gets ingame money that allows him to buy the piece of gear with one more stat point from another player, he has now paid to win, it doesnt matter if he is actually going to win against anyone for all we know he might not even know how to play the game, but he still paid to win ( acquire ) something that took someone else more time to achieve through in game means. This goes for anything, even if its just a feather you add onto your hat.
Edit: In case you havent noticed P2W the Win doesnt mean you are going to win a medal it means you acquired something, for cash rather than through in game means, someone killed 1000 goblins and won a feather to put on their hat, someone took their credit card out and won a feather to put on their hat, the latter paid to win something, that the earlier had to play to achieve, so that cheapens the experience for the player who actually went and got the feather to put on their hat in game.
Not really the same thing. A +10 sword is always going to be more powerful and useful than the +9 sword. Even if it doesn't make a difference all the time, there will be occasions when it does, just by the virtue of the fact that you're using it over a long period of time. Given that all other gear (no matter the source: drops, loot, dungeons, karma, etc) is normalized to the same stats, one can easily say that gear is supposed to be "balanced", and that the +10 sword would upset that balance.
On the other hand, WvW isn't balanced, at all. You're never going to be participating in a "balanced" fight. In this context, the pathetic stat bonuses you get from influence (+40 to an attribute that will be over 1000) are literally negligible, because they're just going to vanish in the noise of all of the other WvW unbalancing factors which will have a FAR greater affect on the game. Gold farming is going to matter more than influence spending. Population imbalances are going to trump pretty much anything else.
Lastly: the influence system is a fundamental part of the guild system. Until release, we really have no idea if the influence costs for these upgrades are going to be high enough to warrant buying gems to buy gold to buy influence. There are only 61 outposts in WvW, and not all of them are really worth spending influence to get these tiny boosts (because the fighting won't consistently happen around them). If it turns out that large WvW-focused guilds are capable of holding keeps and paying for upgrades without resorting to buying gold, then the entire premise of influence allowing for P2W falls apart. There is a maximum cap for how much influence (and, ergo, gold) you can spend on WvW boosts, because each boost takes quite a while to research. Therefore, if the rate of influence acquisition in a large guild is sufficient to pay for these boosts on its own, there is no possibility of "P2W", because buying extra influence won't make a difference in the slightest.
And those bought and paid for WvWvW boosts won't make a difference all the time, but there will be occasions when they do, just like that +10 sword. The reality is WvWvW has a pay2win component in Gw2. At least some of you don't deny it, but most simply ignore this fact and go back to their "But, but, but, how can purple hat affect PVP?" That is being oblivious to the fact that you can buy WvWvW boosts with real life money.
GW2 "built from the ground up with microtransactions in mind"
1) Cash->Gems->Gold->Influence->WvWvWBoosts = PAY2WIN
2) Mystic Chests = Crass in-game cash shop advertisements
And should someone be convicted because of other people actions?
Addictionally Anet has a history with GW1 cash shop,
When/if they sell something else, then one can bash them.
Currently playing: GW2
Going cardboard starter kit: Ticket to ride, Pandemic, Carcassonne, Dominion, 7 Wonders
No sPvP advantage.
Negligible advantage in WvW with 10,000 USD spent (about 64 hours worth of boosts if someone buys mystic keys, get's "boosts" from Mystic Chest, and spreads them across 50 people). I make the HUGE assumption that they have already bought Mystict Chests without RL Money)
Possible advantage in PvE with 10,000 USD spent (XP boost is negligible due to only working on kills, can purchase about 3200 hours worth of statistical boosts if they purchase Mystic Keys and already have ALOT of Mystic Chests. Again, HUGE assumption).
The advantage in sPvP is non-existant. The advantage in WvW is possible, but not probable, especially for matches lasting 336 hours with guilds only able to hold one keep at a time. PvE has a possible advantage with 10,000 USD spent, with enough statistical boosts to last 8 characters from level 1-80; they player could even spend as little as 2,000 USD on Mystic Keys and get enough boosts to last an ample amount of time.
However, anything less than 5000 USD spent exclusively on Mystic Keys should not yield tangible results in WvW. Could it possibly effect a 1v1 or 5v5 battle? Of course. However, because of its scale and duration, it is simply not probable for multiple people to spend 10,000 USD to win a 2 week battle with slight rewards going to the victor. There really is extremely little incentive.
In PvE, someone could spend alot on statistical advantages (boosts) and be stronger for an extended duration. However, the content of GW2 is designed for players without boosts. No, I have not completed the entire game. However, what has been shown has been able to be completed without any sort of stat buff. In addition, mobs hit hard enough to the point where SKILL is going to be the primary factor in battle, not a boost. There is the possibility that someone may complete PvE content faster than you, but GW2 is designed without traditional endgame AND scales people down to the level of the content around them; there is little incentive to simply rush through to the end.
It comes down to this:
Can someone pay to have an advantage in GW2? Yes.
Is that advantage tangible or significant in WvW? No, not imo.
Is that advantage gamebreaking in PvE? No, not from the content that I have seen and partaken in.
Can you complete all the content in GW2 PvE and compete in WvW/sPvP WITHOUT BUYING ANYTHING? Yes.
Is GW2 pay to WIN? No, not imo.
"As you read these words, a release is seven days or less away or has just happened within the last seven days those are now the only two states youll find the world of Tyria."...Guild Wars 2
You are right, and I agree, but we shouldnt also be blindly trying to pretend that the cash shop isnt a way for them to make additional profit since the game is B2P and nothing sells better than direct advantages ( whatever they might be, better looking gear, in game money, unqiue pets ). So as someone that understands that a business is primarily there to make money I am quite skeptical that they will not sell anything that will increase their profit margin.
I am not judging ANet as the game hasnt even been released, but saying "No, the game is all balanced, they will never sell X or Y" is just the same as blaming them now for something they arent selling yet.
Have you seen the cost of those boosts?
Do you understand you still need to capture a keep/fort before the boost having any effect?
Do you understand the effect is restricted to an area around the structure the guild controls?
Do you understand that 1 guild can only control 1 structure at a time?
Do you understand that you need to research those boosts?
In theory you can buy those boosts with money, the reality is that it doesn't matter - buying the boosts with money is the least efficient way to do it, the boosts themselves offer negligible advantanges.
Currently playing: GW2
Going cardboard starter kit: Ticket to ride, Pandemic, Carcassonne, Dominion, 7 Wonders