Kind of sickening to see so many players convincing themselves that paying real money for in-game advantages is OK if it isn't that much of an advantage. The corporations have you people trained well.
As the years go by, the gaming population will continue to be educated by corporate marketing strategies on what is acceptable and not acceptable, pushing the limit a little further with each clever marketing milestone that actually catches on with the public.
I feel quite discouraged by all the readers of this post who will slap their foreheads and genuinely think I'm stupid for not understanding that GW2 is NOT PAY TO WIN, and give an emotional response to defend what they've been conditioned to believe. The fact of the matter (and not opinion) is that GW2 allows players to get an in-game advantage by paying money. You can spin it off as a trivial advantage and keep telling yourself over and over how little the advantage is until you feel it's no advantage at all, but the game lets you pay for an advantage. If you can't see that, then you're walking the path that game marketing has cleverly laid out for you. You're the ripe crop of the gamer world for corporate exploitation.
I'm not innocent myself, because I've pre-purchased Guild Wars 2. I want this game to be fun and I want it to succeed. I won't be spending any money on in-game advantage items, but I may spend money on vanity items like character outfits. However, the fact of the matter is that I'm supporting a game that has in-game advantage items when I made my purchase of the GW2 box. And I know it. And every time we support one of these games, then another batch of games will keep trying their own spin on a similar pricing model, pushing what can be bought and can't be bought just a little further.
Many of us can see the darkness on the horizon that approaches with F2P models. The future of online gaming is changing rapidly, and the concept of a game universe where everyone is born equal is fading further and further into obscurity with each passing month. GW2 has a shadow cast over it, and while the shadow seems like little more than a passing cloud, it's still a shadow. If you can't see this shadow and feel that everything is a fine sunny day, then congratulations. You're helping pave the road for the future generation of wallet warriors by justifying this kind of pricing model.
[mod edit]
I didn't sell my mom, but I was faced with the option of preventing my house from being forclosed on versus purchasing 5 more CEs. I went with the latter. I want whatever little money I have left to go to Anet. I'll just get a small one bedroom appartment and decorate it with Rytlock Grimstone statues.
Originally posted by timeraider The OP is misleading people .. these things cant be bought in the cashshop.. these things come from mystic chests... and yes, you can buy mystic keys in the cashshop.. BUT you can also get them from mobs, special pve events and special pvp events so the OP is yust misleading everyone by leaving out the whole mechanic
What is misleading with saying "only available via the cashshop or via an amount of grinding that simply can't be classified as reasonable."
Over 120 hours of playing in the BWE I have gotten a total of 3 keys. That is a 40 hour grinding investment per key. And that is simply not a reasonable time-money exchange.
Compare the karma boost that gives 50% karma increase for 1 hour. That means I have to grind 30 minutes more if I don't have it. That is a reasonable time-money exchange.
Um, I had 3 keys by lvl 17 on one char... and 2 of them were from my personal story... and I am not sure if I had even finished the personal story chain up to my level, actually...
So 120 hours... what were you doing during that period?
Originally posted by timeraider The OP is misleading people .. these things cant be bought in the cashshop.. these things come from mystic chests... and yes, you can buy mystic keys in the cashshop.. BUT you can also get them from mobs, special pve events and special pvp events so the OP is yust misleading everyone by leaving out the whole mechanic
You are the one misleading people. You can get the key from one quest in your personal storyline. Other than that, you can expect to see one drop perhaps once every 30-50 hours.
You also have people selling them for gold on the AH...
And in MY experience, it was a lot more frequent than 30-50 hours...
Kind of sickening to see so many players convincing themselves that paying real money for in-game advantages is OK if it isn't that much of an advantage. The corporations have you people trained well.
As the years go by, the gaming population will continue to be educated by corporate marketing strategies on what is acceptable and not acceptable, pushing the limit a little further with each clever marketing milestone that actually catches on with the public.
I feel quite discouraged by all the readers of this post who will slap their foreheads and genuinely think I'm stupid for not understanding that GW2 is NOT PAY TO WIN, and give an emotional response to defend what they've been conditioned to believe. The fact of the matter (and not opinion) is that GW2 allows players to get an in-game advantage by paying money. You can spin it off as a trivial advantage and keep telling yourself over and over how little the advantage is until you feel it's no advantage at all, but the game lets you pay for an advantage. If you can't see that, then you're walking the path that game marketing has cleverly laid out for you. You're the ripe crop of the gamer world for corporate exploitation.
I'm not innocent myself, because I've pre-purchased Guild Wars 2. I want this game to be fun and I want it to succeed. I won't be spending any money on in-game advantage items, but I may spend money on vanity items like character outfits. However, the fact of the matter is that I'm supporting a game that has in-game advantage items when I made my purchase of the GW2 box. And I know it. And every time we support one of these games, then another batch of games will keep trying their own spin on a similar pricing model, pushing what can be bought and can't be bought just a little further.
Many of us can see the darkness on the horizon that approaches with F2P models. The future of online gaming is changing rapidly, and the concept of a game universe where everyone is born equal is fading further and further into obscurity with each passing month. GW2 has a shadow cast over it, and while the shadow seems like little more than a passing cloud, it's still a shadow. If you can't see this shadow and feel that everything is a fine sunny day, then congratulations. You're helping pave the road for the future generation of wallet warriors by justifying this kind of pricing model.
[mod edit]
I didn't sell my mom, but I was faced with the option of preventing my house from being forclosed on versus purchasing 5 more CEs. I went with the latter. I want whatever little money I have left to go to Anet. I'll just get a small one bedroom appartment and decorate it with Rytlock Grimstone statues.
FtP + PtW is going to be the wave of the future. Get on board and ride the gravy train! However, I'm HOPING that this game does not fall to far down the rabbit hole. The current monetization scheme is far from toxic, and I've never been one to ascribe by the 'slippery slope' mentality.
That being said....ANet has brought Crystin Cox on board as a Monetization Producer. Her goal is to obviously bring in the 'cha ching' that the developers have not thought about. This definitely would include the changes made to definitions in the corporate statement dealing with microtransactions (which date around the time she came on board). There are going to be sparks flying behind the scenes in the board room of Anet, to be certain. Whether Anet can hold out against the parent corporation on this will only be observed over time.
In GW1 they had caps - one could only get so much armor bonus, so much movement speed, so much fast casting time, etc. The only way to break this cap as if a single effect granted over the cap.
The increased movement speed ws capped at 33%. Two sources giving 25% would only give 33% ims, One skil giving 50% would grant 50%.
I see no reason for these caps to not be present.
Currently playing: GW2 Going cardboard starter kit: Ticket to ride, Pandemic, Carcassonne, Dominion, 7 Wonders
Yeah random drops suck. The thing is I got two during the stress test, 5 during the last BWE and 4 in the one before that. I would consider it grinding if i had made it my purpose for killing mobs. Since they dropped in the course of just wondering around doing DE's and story missions it won't be grinding to me, or indeed most players.
Let me guess. You did story missions on multiple characters. That is the only way you could get that many keys
You won't be so happy 2 months into the game when the only viable way to get keys will be to reroll level 1 character and grind up to the personal story mission that gives the key. I guess that it is what I will do come release. But seriously, that is as much fucking grinding as rerolling characters in ddo. But I guess that is what you have to do to stay competitive in GW2.
Just don't whine, when the evitable "people without bonus buffs" need not apply starts to crop up.
I got 6 keys and 2 chests without doing a single story mission in BWE3. Thats how RNG works.
I don't think the rate of chest drops is enough for those buffs to be a significant game changer in WvW, and they arent usable in sPvP, so I don't think it will be a big enough issue for me to worry about.
I would prefer that they didnt exist, but I don't think it is enough to cry foul over.
Edit: Ah I see the chests. I didn't open enough of those to see any of those particular boosts. All I got was a crafting one and a magic find one.
Just had to fix that one, sorry.
I stand corrected. Is there also a kill streak one as well? Or is that only from chests too.
There is. I believe you have to kill a mob every 30 seconds to get more and more exp.
Adjustment to your language...the killstreak bonus is a fixed percentage. It only lasts as long as you can keep kills up though.
Given that I normally had a handful of boosts in my bags at any given time from Black Lion chests (they renamed them, dunno why), PS quests, and such, I don't see it as a worry. Especially since none of them, to the best of my knowledge, can be used in pvp.
I have not found it in game OR in the cash shop..anyone esle find this anywhere?
I got one as a Norn during BWE2 as a reward for helping out near the snowball fight area, not sure if it was a random reward or a set one from the storyline, I was doing a lot of stuff at the time and didnt notice I had recieved one until later when I was checking my bags.
Aren't Black Lion Keys tradeable? I'm sure the marketplace will be filled with them. The wiki doesn't say they're soulbound.
If in 1982 we played with the current mentality, we would have burned down all the pac man games since the red ghost was clearly OP. Instead we just got better at the game.
since you can't use these things for PvP or WvW, I don't see the impact at all. Dungeons? To be honest, if you're looking for consumables, take a look at cooking, cooking buffs, make those cash shop buffs look pathetic. And guess what, you get that through the game. People just look at one spectrum of this game and don't realize there are alternatives to getting access to similar buffs.
People have to pull their head out of the sand regarding the Cash Shop and look at ALTERNATIVES in producing the same results with resources already located in the game. Seriously, all the "ANet's Cash Shop is a Let Down" Threads are getting tiresome.
EDIT: Oh I wanted to point out that a lot of these buffs are available at level 15-25 which does not require much time if you have been harvesting the entire time you have been playing + some of the ingredients can be bought in bulk easily for a small cost using karma or copper (depending on the rarity). As far as I see, the OP's point is null and void considering you can gain access to these buffs at a relatively low cooking level.
I have not found it in game OR in the cash shop..anyone esle find this anywhere?
I got one as a Norn during BWE2 as a reward for helping out near the snowball fight area, not sure if it was a random reward or a set one from the storyline, I was doing a lot of stuff at the time and didnt notice I had recieved one until later when I was checking my bags.
I got one in a story quest...I wanna say during BWE? Or 3, forget when. But they drop.
I don't think that extra damage (+10%) and mitigation (-10%) will make a player better. Bad players will stay bad players no matter their equipment, they won't make the dungeons a lot easier, proper playing and character building is still a lot more important than a damage boost.
So what happens if both players are just as skillful and 1 has the boosts while the other one doesn't have??? TELL ME.
Yellow: No two players are ever the same. Please don't use semantics to create a closed-system scenario where two theoritical players are essentally equal, whilst ignoring the element of reality, thus resulting in only one possible outcome. No scenario, is ever "closed", no two players are ever the same (talent, skill, good/bad days), and there is never only one possible outcome.
I've played in all the BWE's and in all the stress tests. I have mainly focused my gameplay in WVW, so as not to spoil PVE surprises (my peronsal choice - to each his own). In WVW, I have played against players who had obvious advantages over me, higher level (if you pay attention it's easy to tell), better gear and even buffs. Not once was I automatically defeated just because other players had said advantages over me. Yes, I died a lot (mainly cuase I'm overtly aggressive and find myself in difficult situations to get out off), but I also killed a lot (I've become very good at pvp'ing in wvw; i.e. combat strategy, not hiding behind other player's skirts).
As for SPVP, it won't matter because all players will be equal and in PVE eveyone is playing/working together (especially in dungeons). The only area where there is the possibility of an "unfair advantage" is in WVW; and Anet devs have already told us (SPOILER ALERT) that WVW will be unbalanced and "unfair". Catch is, the point of WVW is not competitive pvp (balanced pvp, we have SPVP for that), the point of WVW is to have fun beating (and yes, getting beaten) players from other servers; sure, even with a certain element of competition (server rankings). If players really want to be serious about their PVP, they should stick with SPVP (not that WVW is serious), but if players want to have fun in various ways (zergs, small team raiding, and major/minor siege warfare) then WVW is for you.
Just my two cents... cheers!
Just like you didn't bother to answer my question and instead wrote a wall of text, i'm not going to read your wall either.
We both know the answer for my question, you are just too scared to admit it.
So I repeat my question (in case some sane person wants to answer):
So what happens if both players are just as skillful and 1 has the boosts while the other one doesn't have??? TELL ME.
Well, the tl;dr version of what he posted is: It will never EVER happen... and I agree with him.
But lets accept your assumption that in some remote parallel universe it could happen, just for the sake of argument... And I will tell you what I think would happen... Exactly the same thing as would happen otherwise.
If 2 players are exactly as skilled and no one else is intervening it would most likely wind up like watching a pair of resto druids duke it out... I actually had one of those in sPvP earlier during the stress test. It just kept going back and forth, and with creative use of terrain, dodging, and skills we were just going back and forth... until the other 4 players on the other team rolled past us and tilted the table on the way past.
10% damage or mitigation won't make a difference.
It's the same thing as me taking a 10% damage trait or adding a 5% damage sigil, vs. not... *shrug.
Lets ask it a different way.
What happens if two players are just as skillful and one has 5% melee damage from traits and 5% melee damage on his weapon from the sigil, and the other one doesn't?
Originally posted by timeraider The OP is misleading people .. these things cant be bought in the cashshop.. these things come from mystic chests... and yes, you can buy mystic keys in the cashshop.. BUT you can also get them from mobs, special pve events and special pvp events so the OP is yust misleading everyone by leaving out the whole mechanic
What is misleading with saying "only available via the cashshop or via an amount of grinding that simply can't be classified as reasonable."
Over 120 hours of playing in the BWE I have gotten a total of 3 keys. That is a 40 hour grinding investment per key. And that is simply not a reasonable time-money exchange.
Compare the karma boost that gives 50% karma increase for 1 hour. That means I have to grind 30 minutes more if I don't have it. That is a reasonable time-money exchange.
Pretty sure you weren't actually grinding just to get the keys, you were probably playing and doing the hearts etc. and you happen to find 3 keys on drops. So without even thinking about the keys and enjoying the game you can randomly stumble upon one and be like "Hey I can use this to get (enter some boost here), I didn't even think about it!" That is if you happen to find a chest as well, though.
Personally I don't think 10% boost is much to argue about, its not that much. If people want to pay for it, do it. There will most likely be potions or etc. items in the game that do the same thing, maybe a little less.
Originally posted by Nailzzz Actually OP, I completely agree with your position. I also find some of these item shop buff items a litle disconcerting. the only reason i havent really pressed the issue much myself is that given the cost vs. buff time length, it doesnt seem very worthwhile and i suspect the vast majority of the players will simply ignore these items except as an occasional drop or in game reward/chest drop rather than actually purchasing them from the gem shop. Im hoping such an outcome would self-correct the issue voluntarily from the players side. But we will just have to wait and see how it plays out.
I am hoping that as well. But those four items really do give me a bad taste in the mouth.
Read through the thread and it might taste a bit more like icecream.
No it tastes like %hit dieing to a guy with 8% hp wondering if he was using a str. buff.
Originally posted by Nailzzz Actually OP, I completely agree with your position. I also find some of these item shop buff items a litle disconcerting. the only reason i havent really pressed the issue much myself is that given the cost vs. buff time length, it doesnt seem very worthwhile and i suspect the vast majority of the players will simply ignore these items except as an occasional drop or in game reward/chest drop rather than actually purchasing them from the gem shop. Im hoping such an outcome would self-correct the issue voluntarily from the players side. But we will just have to wait and see how it plays out.
I am hoping that as well. But those four items really do give me a bad taste in the mouth.
Read through the thread and it might taste a bit more like icecream.
No it tastes like %hit dieing to a guy with 8% hp wondering if he was using a str. buff.
How to grief a WvW PvP player? "Haha..you just died to a 10% buff to strength! Noob...hit the CS!" The most wonderful thing about this trolling? There's no way to know if they're lieing! So either the losing player rage quits or buys a buff!
Originally posted by Nailzzz Actually OP, I completely agree with your position. I also find some of these item shop buff items a litle disconcerting. the only reason i havent really pressed the issue much myself is that given the cost vs. buff time length, it doesnt seem very worthwhile and i suspect the vast majority of the players will simply ignore these items except as an occasional drop or in game reward/chest drop rather than actually purchasing them from the gem shop. Im hoping such an outcome would self-correct the issue voluntarily from the players side. But we will just have to wait and see how it plays out.
I am hoping that as well. But those four items really do give me a bad taste in the mouth.
Read through the thread and it might taste a bit more like icecream.
No it tastes like %hit dieing to a guy with 8% hp wondering if he was using a str. buff.
Only problem is that these buffs can't be used in PvP.
So cash shopper could potentially keep those buffs all the time, while I have a low chance to get ONE of those buffs once every 30 hours??? Everything fanboys said about cash shop just got thrown out of the window.
B2P:
No boosts
P2O:
x extra health regeneration (amount unknown)
-10% damage taken
+25% speed boost
+10% damage
On a serious tip, the orange alone is enough to wtfpwn the b2p guy. Add in the 25% speed and the battle is not remotely fair.
Originally posted by Nailzzz Actually OP, I completely agree with your position. I also find some of these item shop buff items a litle disconcerting. the only reason i havent really pressed the issue much myself is that given the cost vs. buff time length, it doesnt seem very worthwhile and i suspect the vast majority of the players will simply ignore these items except as an occasional drop or in game reward/chest drop rather than actually purchasing them from the gem shop. Im hoping such an outcome would self-correct the issue voluntarily from the players side. But we will just have to wait and see how it plays out.
I am hoping that as well. But those four items really do give me a bad taste in the mouth.
Read through the thread and it might taste a bit more like icecream.
No it tastes like %hit dieing to a guy with 8% hp wondering if he was using a str. buff.
Only problem is that these buffs can't be used in PvP.
its a shame that bcbully didn't know this before typing. The more he knows.
Originally posted by Nailzzz Actually OP, I completely agree with your position. I also find some of these item shop buff items a litle disconcerting. the only reason i havent really pressed the issue much myself is that given the cost vs. buff time length, it doesnt seem very worthwhile and i suspect the vast majority of the players will simply ignore these items except as an occasional drop or in game reward/chest drop rather than actually purchasing them from the gem shop. Im hoping such an outcome would self-correct the issue voluntarily from the players side. But we will just have to wait and see how it plays out.
I am hoping that as well. But those four items really do give me a bad taste in the mouth.
Read through the thread and it might taste a bit more like icecream.
No it tastes like %hit dieing to a guy with 8% hp wondering if he was using a str. buff.
Only problem is that these buffs can't be used in PvP.
Originally posted by Nailzzz Actually OP, I completely agree with your position. I also find some of these item shop buff items a litle disconcerting. the only reason i havent really pressed the issue much myself is that given the cost vs. buff time length, it doesnt seem very worthwhile and i suspect the vast majority of the players will simply ignore these items except as an occasional drop or in game reward/chest drop rather than actually purchasing them from the gem shop. Im hoping such an outcome would self-correct the issue voluntarily from the players side. But we will just have to wait and see how it plays out.
I am hoping that as well. But those four items really do give me a bad taste in the mouth.
Read through the thread and it might taste a bit more like icecream.
No it tastes like %hit dieing to a guy with 8% hp wondering if he was using a str. buff.
Only problem is that these buffs can't be used in PvP.
Would you be upset if they can be?
But they can't, so it's irrelevent. The buffs that can be used in PvP, from food and such, are freely available in the game and do not require any cash shop purchase.
Edit: also the food buffs are a much better than the cash shop boosts anyway. So if you're really serious about playing GW2, which you probably are not, instead of a whining about cash shop buffs which cannot be used in PvP, invest into some cooking and wtfpwn the cash shop users.
Kind of sickening to see so many players convincing themselves that paying real money for in-game advantages is OK if it isn't that much of an advantage. The corporations have you people trained well.
As the years go by, the gaming population will continue to be educated by corporate marketing strategies on what is acceptable and not acceptable, pushing the limit a little further with each clever marketing milestone that actually catches on with the public.
I feel quite discouraged by all the readers of this post who will slap their foreheads and genuinely think I'm stupid for not understanding that GW2 is NOT PAY TO WIN, and give an emotional response to defend what they've been conditioned to believe. The fact of the matter (and not opinion) is that GW2 allows players to get an in-game advantage by paying money. You can spin it off as a trivial advantage and keep telling yourself over and over how little the advantage is until you feel it's no advantage at all, but the game lets you pay for an advantage. If you can't see that, then you're walking the path that game marketing has cleverly laid out for you. You're the ripe crop of the gamer world for corporate exploitation.
I'm not innocent myself, because I've pre-purchased Guild Wars 2. I want this game to be fun and I want it to succeed. I won't be spending any money on in-game advantage items, but I may spend money on vanity items like character outfits. However, the fact of the matter is that I'm supporting a game that has in-game advantage items when I made my purchase of the GW2 box. And I know it. And every time we support one of these games, then another batch of games will keep trying their own spin on a similar pricing model, pushing what can be bought and can't be bought just a little further.
Many of us can see the darkness on the horizon that approaches with F2P models. The future of online gaming is changing rapidly, and the concept of a game universe where everyone is born equal is fading further and further into obscurity with each passing month. GW2 has a shadow cast over it, and while the shadow seems like little more than a passing cloud, it's still a shadow. If you can't see this shadow and feel that everything is a fine sunny day, then congratulations. You're helping pave the road for the future generation of wallet warriors by justifying this kind of pricing model.
But they can't, so it's irrelevent. The buffs that can be used in PvP, from food and such, are freely available in the game and do not require any cash shop purchase.
This image would tend to suggest that they can be used in PvP (well WvW anyway).
Originally posted by Nailzzz Actually OP, I completely agree with your position. I also find some of these item shop buff items a litle disconcerting. the only reason i havent really pressed the issue much myself is that given the cost vs. buff time length, it doesnt seem very worthwhile and i suspect the vast majority of the players will simply ignore these items except as an occasional drop or in game reward/chest drop rather than actually purchasing them from the gem shop. Im hoping such an outcome would self-correct the issue voluntarily from the players side. But we will just have to wait and see how it plays out.
I am hoping that as well. But those four items really do give me a bad taste in the mouth.
Read through the thread and it might taste a bit more like icecream.
No it tastes like %hit dieing to a guy with 8% hp wondering if he was using a str. buff.
Only problem is that these buffs can't be used in PvP.
Would you be upset if they can be?
But they can't, so it's irrelevent. The buffs that can be used in PvP, from food and such, are freely available in the game and do not require any cash shop purchase.
Even then I think they are removing that from SPvP, a friend of mine tried to use a piece of Eda's Apple Pie (which gives a flat +20 power) before entering a sPvP server in today's stress test and when he entered the match the buff was removed.
EDIT: and also bcbully has a tendency to ignore answers to his questions even when they pretty much basically answer, the guy just trolls for the sake of trolling, not to bother improving the state of the game. Its sad really.
Comments
I didn't sell my mom, but I was faced with the option of preventing my house from being forclosed on versus purchasing 5 more CEs. I went with the latter. I want whatever little money I have left to go to Anet. I'll just get a small one bedroom appartment and decorate it with Rytlock Grimstone statues.
Get a butler golem...5 minutes unlimited opening of chests.
Butler Golem
I have not found it in game OR in the cash shop..anyone esle find this anywhere?
Um, I had 3 keys by lvl 17 on one char... and 2 of them were from my personal story... and I am not sure if I had even finished the personal story chain up to my level, actually...
So 120 hours... what were you doing during that period?
You also have people selling them for gold on the AH...
And in MY experience, it was a lot more frequent than 30-50 hours...
FtP + PtW is going to be the wave of the future. Get on board and ride the gravy train! However, I'm HOPING that this game does not fall to far down the rabbit hole. The current monetization scheme is far from toxic, and I've never been one to ascribe by the 'slippery slope' mentality.
That being said....ANet has brought Crystin Cox on board as a Monetization Producer. Her goal is to obviously bring in the 'cha ching' that the developers have not thought about. This definitely would include the changes made to definitions in the corporate statement dealing with microtransactions (which date around the time she came on board). There are going to be sparks flying behind the scenes in the board room of Anet, to be certain. Whether Anet can hold out against the parent corporation on this will only be observed over time.
In GW1 they had caps - one could only get so much armor bonus, so much movement speed, so much fast casting time, etc. The only way to break this cap as if a single effect granted over the cap.
The increased movement speed ws capped at 33%. Two sources giving 25% would only give 33% ims, One skil giving 50% would grant 50%.
I see no reason for these caps to not be present.
Currently playing: GW2
Going cardboard starter kit: Ticket to ride, Pandemic, Carcassonne, Dominion, 7 Wonders
I got 6 keys and 2 chests without doing a single story mission in BWE3. Thats how RNG works.
I don't think the rate of chest drops is enough for those buffs to be a significant game changer in WvW, and they arent usable in sPvP, so I don't think it will be a big enough issue for me to worry about.
I would prefer that they didnt exist, but I don't think it is enough to cry foul over.
Adjustment to your language...the killstreak bonus is a fixed percentage. It only lasts as long as you can keep kills up though.
Given that I normally had a handful of boosts in my bags at any given time from Black Lion chests (they renamed them, dunno why), PS quests, and such, I don't see it as a worry. Especially since none of them, to the best of my knowledge, can be used in pvp.
I got one as a Norn during BWE2 as a reward for helping out near the snowball fight area, not sure if it was a random reward or a set one from the storyline, I was doing a lot of stuff at the time and didnt notice I had recieved one until later when I was checking my bags.
If in 1982 we played with the current mentality, we would have burned down all the pac man games since the red ghost was clearly OP. Instead we just got better at the game.
since you can't use these things for PvP or WvW, I don't see the impact at all. Dungeons? To be honest, if you're looking for consumables, take a look at cooking, cooking buffs, make those cash shop buffs look pathetic. And guess what, you get that through the game. People just look at one spectrum of this game and don't realize there are alternatives to getting access to similar buffs.
Buffs from Cooking: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=D9toxtq72No
People have to pull their head out of the sand regarding the Cash Shop and look at ALTERNATIVES in producing the same results with resources already located in the game. Seriously, all the "ANet's Cash Shop is a Let Down" Threads are getting tiresome.
EDIT: Oh I wanted to point out that a lot of these buffs are available at level 15-25 which does not require much time if you have been harvesting the entire time you have been playing + some of the ingredients can be bought in bulk easily for a small cost using karma or copper (depending on the rarity). As far as I see, the OP's point is null and void considering you can gain access to these buffs at a relatively low cooking level.
http://www.mmorpg.com/discussion2.cfm/thread/359874/Aerowyns-Video-Compilation-of-ALL-things-Guild-Wars-2.html
Currently playing: GW2
Going cardboard starter kit: Ticket to ride, Pandemic, Carcassonne, Dominion, 7 Wonders
I got one in a story quest...I wanna say during BWE? Or 3, forget when. But they drop.
Well, the tl;dr version of what he posted is: It will never EVER happen... and I agree with him.
But lets accept your assumption that in some remote parallel universe it could happen, just for the sake of argument... And I will tell you what I think would happen... Exactly the same thing as would happen otherwise.
If 2 players are exactly as skilled and no one else is intervening it would most likely wind up like watching a pair of resto druids duke it out... I actually had one of those in sPvP earlier during the stress test. It just kept going back and forth, and with creative use of terrain, dodging, and skills we were just going back and forth... until the other 4 players on the other team rolled past us and tilted the table on the way past.
10% damage or mitigation won't make a difference.
It's the same thing as me taking a 10% damage trait or adding a 5% damage sigil, vs. not... *shrug.
Lets ask it a different way.
What happens if two players are just as skillful and one has 5% melee damage from traits and 5% melee damage on his weapon from the sigil, and the other one doesn't?
Pretty sure you weren't actually grinding just to get the keys, you were probably playing and doing the hearts etc. and you happen to find 3 keys on drops. So without even thinking about the keys and enjoying the game you can randomly stumble upon one and be like "Hey I can use this to get (enter some boost here), I didn't even think about it!" That is if you happen to find a chest as well, though.
Personally I don't think 10% boost is much to argue about, its not that much. If people want to pay for it, do it. There will most likely be potions or etc. items in the game that do the same thing, maybe a little less.
No it tastes like %hit dieing to a guy with 8% hp wondering if he was using a str. buff.
How to grief a WvW PvP player? "Haha..you just died to a 10% buff to strength! Noob...hit the CS!" The most wonderful thing about this trolling? There's no way to know if they're lieing! So either the losing player rage quits or buys a buff!
Only problem is that these buffs can't be used in PvP.
On a serious tip, the orange alone is enough to wtfpwn the b2p guy. Add in the 25% speed and the battle is not remotely fair.
its a shame that bcbully didn't know this before typing. The more he knows.
http://www.mmorpg.com/discussion2.cfm/thread/359874/Aerowyns-Video-Compilation-of-ALL-things-Guild-Wars-2.html
Would you be upset if they can be?
They can.
But they can't, so it's irrelevent. The buffs that can be used in PvP, from food and such, are freely available in the game and do not require any cash shop purchase.
Edit: also the food buffs are a much better than the cash shop boosts anyway. So if you're really serious about playing GW2, which you probably are not, instead of a whining about cash shop buffs which cannot be used in PvP, invest into some cooking and wtfpwn the cash shop users.
Sad.
This image would tend to suggest that they can be used in PvP (well WvW anyway).
http://i.imgur.com/VW3yr.jpg
This isn't my screenshot, but comes from a similar thread on another site. Visit that thread here if you are interested,
http://www.guildwars2guru.com/topic/48244-worries-about-pay2win-tendencies/
The Enlightened take things Lightly
Even then I think they are removing that from SPvP, a friend of mine tried to use a piece of Eda's Apple Pie (which gives a flat +20 power) before entering a sPvP server in today's stress test and when he entered the match the buff was removed.
EDIT: and also bcbully has a tendency to ignore answers to his questions even when they pretty much basically answer, the guy just trolls for the sake of trolling, not to bother improving the state of the game. Its sad really.
http://www.mmorpg.com/discussion2.cfm/thread/359874/Aerowyns-Video-Compilation-of-ALL-things-Guild-Wars-2.html