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GW2 China will be buy to play. . . with mandatory VIP.
moosecatlol
Member RarePosts: 1,531
From the information posted yesterday.
The Album of screenshots for the lazy.
It is important to take Kongzhong's PR with a grain of salt, as they often will just say things that people want to hear, E.G. LeagueCN.
What to take from this.
Traits locked behind pay-walls, unid dyes cost gems to identify, and they went back on their word about not having a VIP system.
More information for the lazy:
| 1 | Weapon Skill #1 & Healing Skill |
| 2 | Weapon Skill #2 |
| 5 | Profession (F1) Skill |
| 7 | Offhand and Two-handed Weapon |
| 9 | Use of Down State and Rally |
| 11 | Vistas |
| 14 | Equipping Masterwork Equipments |
| 15 | Use of Salvage Kits |
| 16 | Creating and Joining of Guilds |
| 17 | Trading Post |
| 18 | Use of Asuran Gates |
| 20 | Traits |
| 21 | Jumping Puzzle |
| 27 | Weapon Swap |
| 50 | Elite Skill |
Taken from the reddit.
The general consensus is that "ANet is infallible and it was all NCsoft's fault." or "Sucks to be Chinese." Even though this was a direct quote from the Eastern Female Colin Johanson, "After conducting exhaustive research on multiple aspects of the market and working closely with ArenaNet, KongZhong has decided to respect the users opinions and choose the same business model that has made the game the fastest-selling MMO in western history."
What does this all mean? Nothing, and even if it did mean anything or was going to affect you some how, what would you do about it? Groan? After all what do you care?
Inb4, but-but-but-but-but IT'S BETA! Keep telling yourself that.
Comments
The Chinese will be Chinese and the people there will know what works there. I don't see everything being hidden behind a paywalls. When everything is there at level 40, people react like, "Why play on? There's nothing left to unlock!". And when they stretch out those Level unlocks a bit it's OMG look at that, level 50 before the Elite Skill! That sucks!"
Sheesh!
WoW has a very different revenue model in China as compared to the West, even if Blizzards like to just count those as subs too. Does that mean it sucks to be Chinese? I doubt it a lot.
If in the West you can get players to buy the whole game in one go, then great. If you need to nickle a dime the Chinese a bit more in small steps, then why the hell not?
There's a lot of question marks out there, if it's a blattant rip-off I'm sure it will crash and burn. And if it does Anet/NCSoft will have made a huge mistake. I think they know more about the Chinese market than the people replying to that post.
Just some general responses on the NON-KongZhong forums, because astroturfing is real.
??????????.?????????????!!!!
??2???~????KZW~?????????????~??????????~??????~
*Welp should've known.* Check the Teiba.Baidu forums.
I don't see why people are trying to attribute responsibility to Arenanet or NCSoft since it is Kongzhong the responsible to publish and run GW2 in China.
NCSoft will only collect royalties from GW2 China and the lion share of the profits will go to Kongzhong.
Currently playing: GW2
Going cardboard starter kit: Ticket to ride, Pandemic, Carcassonne, Dominion, 7 Wonders
Gdemami -
Informing people about your thoughts and impressions is not a review, it's a blog.
Gdemami -
Informing people about your thoughts and impressions is not a review, it's a blog.
Some of this is actually wrong, or based on misunderstandings.
A little research goes a long way to clearing it up. :T
It's not actually as bad as it looks on a lot of it. Like you can WvW at level 2, you just can't go there straight from the menu. YOu have to take a physical portal until you are either level 35 or WvW rank 2.
It's not so much you CAN'T do some of those things, as the game specifically introduces them to you at certain levels. Supposed to be a better tutorial with more handholding all around since there was a lot of complaints about how undirected people felt, and a lot of people seem to like lots of direction. <.<
... and the VIP packages are basically just bundles of stuff the US people =already= can access in the cash shop.
There's some stuff I don't like, but a lot of it makes more sense in context.
P2W?
So now unlocking stuff at certain levels is P2W, even though you can't unlock it by paying?
Or do you mean getting your name in a different color and having some kind of symbol before your name is P2W?
"Argh his name is purple!" *heart attack*
Or do you mean "lets stretch the inventory in the VIP picture to pretend it is bigger, even though it is bag based and the regular is showing 23/40 instead of 28/29 of the VIP" is P2W?
Or maybe more hairstyles is P2W?
The stuff people come with...
Almost 2 years after people are still desperately trying to say GW2 is p2w.
Currently playing: GW2
Going cardboard starter kit: Ticket to ride, Pandemic, Carcassonne, Dominion, 7 Wonders
The movement of goal posts and logic twisting to not say 'this is a bad thing' is pretty hilarious.
So we went from 'why blame ANet?' to 'Well, it isn't P2W anyway!'
And seriously? Gem ID being blocked by the gem store is somehow good? Really? REALLY?
I mean.. wow..
Actually, are you Crystin Cox?
Gdemami -
Informing people about your thoughts and impressions is not a review, it's a blog.
Can you remind me who said that it was "ncsoft/anet decision to partner with a p2w publisher"?
So by your logic that I'm moving goal posts you just moved your own goal posts - first you said it was a p2w publisher but in fact after I've shown how ridiculous it is to call p2w to stuff like hair styles and colored name tags (but maybe guild wars 1 prophecies was p2w as well since if you bought the collectors edition you got a special aura) now it is bad because it is Anet allowing it?
What is the problem of selling a title, hair styles, armor skins, colorful name tags?
Does it interfere in anyway with game play?
And you say "Gem ID being blocked by the gem store"?
The IDs aren't being blocked by the gem store - they simply sell different colors to display your name tag.
But it must be unheard of.
I mean they don't even sell special license plates that spell names or whatever in the real world.
Currently playing: GW2
Going cardboard starter kit: Ticket to ride, Pandemic, Carcassonne, Dominion, 7 Wonders
So Mike is lying?
Gdemami -
Informing people about your thoughts and impressions is not a review, it's a blog.
It still is that model, that's why WoWs sub numbers in total are balony
Gem... ID? I assume you mean dye ID?
If your argument is 'The publisher for the game in China seems a bit greedy', that's one thing, and harder to argue with, but you said P2W, specifically. Which is a much more difficult argument to pull off.
And you can't really blame Arenanet. You could blame NCSoft to some extent, but Arenanet has absolutely no leverage over what NCSoft picks as a publishing partner in China. The fact they have to PICK a Chinese company in the first place is really due to Chinese legislation, anyway. Unless you'd like to blame Arenanet for how Chinese law works? I suppose that's a possible argument, though I'd love to see the arguments you need to make that work.
The 'traits locked behind pay-walls' is based off a misunderstanding. Today's blogpost on Traits Unleashed demonstrates how even the US version is getting a change in how traits work. It's not 'only a few trait points and then the rest you have to pay money for', it's that everybody (China, US and EU) gets less trait points, but they do more.
What is he lying about?
"In the NA/EU launch version, the game only properly introduced a few systems, but mostly it provided everything with no introduction at levels one and two: downed state, profession abilities, off-hand weapons, underwater, crafting, gathering, map completion, fast travel, banking, trading post, PvP, and WvW. In the China version we spread out more of these so we could provide a proper introduction of each.Note though that advanced players can still skip ahead: they can work on various aspects of map completion, travel with Asura Gates, and join PvP or WvW, before the level at which these features are introduced.
In the NA/EU launch version, the game introduced a new personal story step every few levels, so after completing each story step the player was expected to do some leveling up before attempting the next. In the China version story steps are grouped together so that players can complete an entire section of the story at once.
In the NA/EU launch version, the game provided a skill point, a trait point, and some attribute points on each level up. These were very incremental changes that were difficult to notice or appreciate. In the China version the game provides rewards in bigger batches so that players can immediately notice and appreciate the difference. For example, one level you get five skill points at once, another level you get a big boost to your attributes.
In addition to improving the new player experience, we also made changes that we think are right for the long-term play experience. The biggest of those must be the change to the dye system. In the NA/EU launch version dyes were character unlocks, whereas in the China version they're account unlocks. With this new system you only need to collect a dye once and you can use it on any character. This is more convenient, but it means demand for dye will go down, so we're also reducing supply. Dye unlocks now come only from crafting and from the gem store.
Actually NA/EU players have been asking for dyes to be account unlocks for a long time and we'll want to make essentially this same change for NA/EU. The differences will be in phrasing. In the NA/EU version players purchase dye packs from the gem store; in China players purchase dye identifiers from the gem store. Either way you purchase something and it gives you random dye, permanently unlocked for all characters on your account.
Getting back to the question, I have provided a sampling of changes we made for the China version but this list is by no means exhaustive. A lot of our work went into changes that seem detailed or hard to notice, but to us, those details matter a lot. We re-implemented every hint in the game. We made the game teach itself and removed the old ineffective help system. We added a content direction system so that the game always points you to something you can do next. We even made behind-the-scenes changes, like changing the way the game stores its data on disk, and rewriting critical back-end servers to prepare for launch capacity."
Not cash shop related (aside dyes). Not VIP related.
"We think that unlocking weapon skills by level is a better system. It's simpler, it gives players more time to learn their first weapon, and then it means that they have all skills unlocked immediately when they find new weapon types later in the game.
To answer your question more generally, when we talk about keeping the versions synchronized, our core concern is to ensure that players can experience every new Living World episode and every new Feature Pack when we release them at about the same time in each territory. Thus it's important to us that the territories shares common core systems so that new content we introduce works the same everywhere in the world.
Going back to the example of weapon skill unlocks, it doesn't particularly matter to a player's enjoyment of Living World episodes or of a new Feature Pack release whether he had originally unlocked his weapon skills through combat or through leveling. Either way, the skills are unlocked. So we made that change for China because we think it's right for China, and we have plenty of time to decide later whether we should bring that change back to NA/EU too.
In some cases we have allowed the versions to diverge because there's a change we can make for China that would be very difficult to bring back to NA/EU. I'll give an example. In GW2, guilds can exist across multiple worlds. In the NA/EU version, guilds earn influence separately and spend it separately on each world that their members play on. In the China version, guilds have a single pool of influence, and the upgrades they purchase with influence benefit members on all worlds. Obviously the China system is better, but it's not easy to take a system like that back to NA/EU where guilds already have different unlocks on different worlds.
In some cases we couldn't allow even a temporary divergence without threatening our ability to ship new Living World releases and Feature Packs globally. I'll give an example. At launch in NA/EU we had long queue times for WvW, and WvW is only getting more popular over time, so we expected very long queue times in China. It was important for us to fix the WvW queuing situation before launching in China. But this was not something we could allow to diverge, so we ensured that we released the new WvW map, Edge of the Mists, in all territories prior to the launch in China.
Keep in mind, we'll be releasing a Feature Pack after CBT3 but before the launch of the game in China, so you'll see more of that type of global change then."
Not cash shop related. Not VIP related.
"In China also, players can enter WvW at level 2. We don't think that's a very good experience, but it's there for advanced players.
You're seeing a partially implemented system in CBT3. Here's how it will work: the WvW button will appear at level 35 or when any character on your account has earned a single rank in WvW. So if you want early access, you can use an Asura gate to travel there at level 2, earn a single rank, and all of your characters will get the WvW button."
Not cash shop related. Not VIP related.
"As developers, the important thing to us is that we hold true to our standards of what should be and what shouldn't be purchasable. You may have read my 2012 blog post on this subject. For those of you who haven't, I'll summarize. We think it's right that players can spend money on items to provide visual distinction or customization, and can spend money on account services and time-saving conveniences. We think it's right that players can trade gems for gold and vice-versa, such that players can keep up with other players and be on a level playing field, whether they use their time or money to do so. But we think it's never ok for players to buy a game and not be able to enjoy what they paid for without additional purchases. And we think it's never ok for players who spend money to have an unfair advantage over players who spend time.
These are our guiding principles. They're obviously different from what you see other developers doing. Particularly in China it seems common for games to have VIP systems that make characters more powerful than they could ever be without VIP. That's not a level playing field; that's "pay to win".
We believe the royal title system in GW2 is absolutely not a “pay to win” system. It certainly is a loyalty system: it gives you a reusable package of convenience items, plus gifts, plus discounts on everything else in the gem store, and the more you play the game the more convenience items you get. But the things it gives you are almost all things you could purchase with gems anyway. And they're convenience items, not power. There's no "pay to win" here.
I know that players everywhere are skeptical of microtransactions after having seen them abused in other games. So I wouldn't ask you to take my word for it; I ask you to see for yourself. In talks with KongZhong we've decided to expand CBT3 and allow players to experience the game soon without a CD key. I hope to see you there."
Evil evil Anet, NCSoft and Chinese publisher!
Currently playing: GW2
Going cardboard starter kit: Ticket to ride, Pandemic, Carcassonne, Dominion, 7 Wonders
China just happens to have to many mmo's that are better or on par with GW2.
I think it wont be doing that good in that market.
Sometimes i just became jalous on those chinese gamers :P
All the goods from Korea / Japan / Asia as a whole and we have to wait YEARS to get our hands on only a select few of them
Altough GW2 kep tme going for many times worth the purchase i just missed healing so much i started to hate the whole zerging around style of play.
And thats also a major concern with EQN, but thats a totaly diffrent topic :P
GW2 was the #2 most anticipated game in beta in China, until Blade & Soul came out. Then it was #1.
They're having a ton of players playing the beta. No idea how well it'll do in the long term, but it looks like it'll do at well at least in the short term.
Also, China has tons of very bad MMOs.
It hasn't really had much luck exporting their games either.
US and Korea have both done much better with exporting their games to other territories.
I'm not sure what these many wonderful Chinese games you're talking about are, but they certainly haven't had any luck getting them to sell much out of their own country.
1. Not going to quote your post as I generally don't like stealing other people's content via copy-paste onto a forum.
2. Did we move the goal post AGAIN?
So we went from 'Not ANet's fault' to 'Not really P2W anyway' to 'It is only titles and not anything else'?
Did you miss the part in his interview where Dye ID's require Gems?
So which is it?
Did Mike lie or was your post about 'titles' not entirely truthful?
Gdemami -
Informing people about your thoughts and impressions is not a review, it's a blog.
Most anticipated doesn't always translate to most played though. And so far except for WOW no other western MMO has been able to break into Chinese market with success.
Yes i am sure they must have very bad MMOS too but at the same time they have some good Asian MMOS too which suits their playstyle more. It is going to be cakewalk for GW2 to break in Chinese market when they already have the juggernaut WOW.