You know that loot you just got from a boss? Yeah you'll have to buy a labor potion from the store to open it or wait for about half an hour to open the loot bag.
That mine node? Yeah labor potion.
Those fishing worms? Yeah buy the patron status so you can farm the worms without your farm being taken for ransom by a troll.
Sell your excess worms on the AH? Patron status.
Not P2W you say? You keep saying that, but you don't seem to understand what that means.
What's really interesting is Defiance patch today, Scapes got his grubby hands on that patch and now just about everything is in the store, anything that was remotely F2P is so outrageously expensive it's stupid. I'm personally watching what happens with Rift 3.0. If Rift 3.0 comes down and suddenly progression is linked to the store bought item, then my fears will have been confirmed.
No Tricks No Traps indeed. smh
Lets see where to begin:
You know that labor potion you have to buy? that's 1000 LP and can be bought off the AH (you can buy even as a F2Per) for some gold (expect it in release to be fairly cheap). Now if you are an ADHD riddled teen who has to have everything this minute and cannot fathom doing something else instead of waiting then yes it sucks but then again you know those dungeons take 20-30 minutes minimum, right? Mhm.
That mine lode? Yeah LP, you can do other stuff and let your LPs build up like explore around, then do a bit of mining (better you get in mining less LP it costs, mmmmhm).
You know that exploration you did? revealed spots on the map less traveled, maybe even a remote island no one has settled, worms be farmed.
Selling on AH? Make friends with patron status you can trust or earn enough money to buy with in-game gold patron status (if you think no one's gonna be selling it you are hopelessly optimistic).
P2W you say? Here have a helping of Gunbound, Forsaken World and just for good measure SWtOR.
you are not even defending the game anymore...you are defending LP, which should be considered a crime to humanity. I guess you would like to see LP in every game?
You know that loot you just got from a boss? Yeah you'll have to buy a labor potion from the store to open it or wait for about half an hour to open the loot bag.
That mine node? Yeah labor potion.
Those fishing worms? Yeah buy the patron status so you can farm the worms without your farm being taken for ransom by a troll.
Sell your excess worms on the AH? Patron status.
Not P2W you say? You keep saying that, but you don't seem to understand what that means.
What's really interesting is Defiance patch today, Scapes got his grubby hands on that patch and now just about everything is in the store, anything that was remotely F2P is so outrageously expensive it's stupid. I'm personally watching what happens with Rift 3.0. If Rift 3.0 comes down and suddenly progression is linked to the store bought item, then my fears will have been confirmed.
No Tricks No Traps indeed. smh
then do a bit of mining (better you get in mining less LP it costs, mmmmhm).
That's kinda cool I s'pose. I understand why their are limits, I still don't like it though. To be fair, it's hard for many of us (if not most) who haven't played extensively to grasp the LP system. You have to admit, at a glance, it does sort of sound like some facebook-esqueue F2P-cashrop money grab.
You know that loot you just got from a boss? Yeah you'll have to buy a labor potion from the store to open it or wait for about half an hour to open the loot bag.
That mine node? Yeah labor potion.
Those fishing worms? Yeah buy the patron status so you can farm the worms without your farm being taken for ransom by a troll.
Sell your excess worms on the AH? Patron status.
Not P2W you say? You keep saying that, but you don't seem to understand what that means.
What's really interesting is Defiance patch today, Scapes got his grubby hands on that patch and now just about everything is in the store, anything that was remotely F2P is so outrageously expensive it's stupid. I'm personally watching what happens with Rift 3.0. If Rift 3.0 comes down and suddenly progression is linked to the store bought item, then my fears will have been confirmed.
No Tricks No Traps indeed. smh
Lets see where to begin:
You know that labor potion you have to buy? that's 1000 LP and can be bought off the AH (you can buy even as a F2Per) for some gold (expect it in release to be fairly cheap). Now if you are an ADHD riddled teen who has to have everything this minute and cannot fathom doing something else instead of waiting then yes it sucks but then again you know those dungeons take 20-30 minutes minimum, right? Mhm.
That mine lode? Yeah LP, you can do other stuff and let your LPs build up like explore around, then do a bit of mining (better you get in mining less LP it costs, mmmmhm).
You know that exploration you did? revealed spots on the map less traveled, maybe even a remote island no one has settled, worms be farmed.
Selling on AH? Make friends with patron status you can trust or earn enough money to buy with in-game gold patron status (if you think no one's gonna be selling it you are hopelessly optimistic).
P2W you say? Here have a helping of Gunbound, Forsaken World and just for good measure SWtOR.
you are not even defending the game anymore...you are defending LP, which should be considered a crime to humanity. I guess you would like to see LP in every game?
No he made good points. Plus we are talking about real property within the game world, not gold sinks like other themeparks. There HAS to be limits. Instead of Trion saying, OK "only 1 farm per character", or "only harvest 3 trees in a day" or "you recently completed a trade pack please wait" they made an LP system. The LP system keeps a more level playing field. Otherwise people who don't play as often would get left in the dust. Not everygame would work with LP just AA and the way it was designed.
At least in AA as a free player i wasn't spammed with "It costs this many of our real $ currency to do this, and this, and this, and this" similar to SWTOR or Neverwinter or Perfect World or any of those actual P2W games.
The day Swtor made me pay $ to hide my helmet, I shall never forget that feeling.
Now Playing: Bless / Summoners War Looking forward to: Crowfall / Lost Ark / Black Desert Mobile
You know that loot you just got from a boss? Yeah you'll have to buy a labor potion from the store to open it or wait for about half an hour to open the loot bag.
That mine node? Yeah labor potion.
Those fishing worms? Yeah buy the patron status so you can farm the worms without your farm being taken for ransom by a troll.
Sell your excess worms on the AH? Patron status.
Not P2W you say? You keep saying that, but you don't seem to understand what that means.
What's really interesting is Defiance patch today, Scapes got his grubby hands on that patch and now just about everything is in the store, anything that was remotely F2P is so outrageously expensive it's stupid. I'm personally watching what happens with Rift 3.0. If Rift 3.0 comes down and suddenly progression is linked to the store bought item, then my fears will have been confirmed.
No Tricks No Traps indeed. smh
Lets see where to begin:
You know that labor potion you have to buy? that's 1000 LP and can be bought off the AH (you can buy even as a F2Per) for some gold (expect it in release to be fairly cheap). Now if you are an ADHD riddled teen who has to have everything this minute and cannot fathom doing something else instead of waiting then yes it sucks but then again you know those dungeons take 20-30 minutes minimum, right? Mhm.
That mine lode? Yeah LP, you can do other stuff and let your LPs build up like explore around, then do a bit of mining (better you get in mining less LP it costs, mmmmhm).
You know that exploration you did? revealed spots on the map less traveled, maybe even a remote island no one has settled, worms be farmed.
Selling on AH? Make friends with patron status you can trust or earn enough money to buy with in-game gold patron status (if you think no one's gonna be selling it you are hopelessly optimistic).
P2W you say? Here have a helping of Gunbound, Forsaken World and just for good measure SWtOR.
you are not even defending the game anymore...you are defending LP, which should be considered a crime to humanity. I guess you would like to see LP in every game?
You do love falling into the Nirvana fallacy,don't you? And if given the choice between paywalls you can only pay $ to pass and ones you can pay either time or $ (not both) I would choose the latter always ergo yes I would choose LP in every game as it is a good solution to the F2P-P2W issue though it still has its flaws.
Ok so I've seen this topic present so much lately I feel the need to address it too.
LP is a cool way to control progress. It will limit bots, it will differentiate patrons, it will make everyone budget activities a little, will reward team play, etc. No one has anything against the LP concept itself I presume. But...
Problem 1: The main problem people have with LP however is that it is forcefully mangled by Trion in EVERY aspect of the game. Do you really need to spend LP to look at "loot"? Do you really need to spend LP to die in peace? Do you really need it to get quest rewards? Sure, make it a way to control crafting as a way of limiting how much of BIS can be obtained really fast (though some intense crafters would say you are un-naturally limiting their ability to play, when the natural way of limiting crafting should be the ability to obtain resources, but EVE has the same concept hidden in the number of jobs you can start/research/etc and EVE has INDUSTRIAL level operations so people find ways around it). But TRION is limiting everyone and everywhere. And for f2p this is beyond limiting cause on top of the natural limitation, we also limit ourselves even more cause some of us try to hold on all the LP cause we are new to the game and don't know where and how much LP we will REALLY need. So doing even less with it trying to stockpile for that "important" quest or something. It is a decently frustrating experience for brand new players. But this is TRION's business model management and I'm sure they've run the numbers on how much money this will generate against how many ppl will just quit because of this.
Problem 2: Selling it on shops. A lot of people argue and I do agree with them that this underlines the fact that TRION acknowledges this to be a bottleneck (hard not to when they have actively created it) and the solution to it is to milk some more cash. Forcing people's hand is usually not the right way to build a long term relationship.
Is this p2w? Yes it is. And yes most games have it. People come and say it is not relevant how much cash you put in if you lack skills and organization. That is absolutely true. But when they'll get off their high horse they will understand that their competitive guild will be stomped by an equally competitive guild that also spends RL cash. And many people will think it is futile and quit after giving their best and being beaten by RL money. People come and say this is a MMORPG and ppl don’t need to rush to level 50. Well the way I understand the concept (with my very limited visibility on high level stuff) is that you need to get that castle and you need to get that money to keep it and you need to get highest gear asap in order to defend your holdings. Even basic farming is limited by LAND availability so getting there fast matters (it is even a big bonus of the founder packs, speed is promoted even by TRION at the highest product/marketing level). So something that actively and considerably helps you with that speed is p2w. If you get a one week buff that makes you shoot 20% faster you call it p2w, but if you get LP that allows you to get much faster than your competitor a bow that shoots 20% faster suddenly that is not p2w anymore... and differently from eve your ultimate weapon is not destructible. It's there to stay and make you 20% faster till people catch up.
Is it something unbearable? I would think not. I do believe that long term you will need more people with skills and dedication than money. And the natural falling of empires will happen, either that they spend RL money to claw to their power or not. But we should remain honest and call it what it is.
I think it comes down in the end to determine from the sum of skills + knowledge + organization + tools + gear + team play + numbers + politics how much the gear represents as a percentage for success. And that will be, in my humble opinion, the percentage the LP store is making this game p2w.
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Ok so I've seen this topic present so much lately I feel the need to address it too.
LP is a cool way to control progress. It will limit bots, it will differentiate patrons, it will make everyone budget activities a little, will reward team play, etc. No one has anything against the LP concept itself I presume. But...
Problem 1: The main problem people have with LP however is that it is forcefully mangled by Trion in EVERY aspect of the game. Do you really need to spend LP to look at "loot"? Do you really need to spend LP to die in peace? Do you really need it to get quest rewards? Sure, make it a way to control crafting as a way of limiting how much of BIS can be obtained really fast (though some intense crafters would say you are un-naturally limiting their ability to play, when the natural way of limiting crafting should be the ability to obtain resources, but EVE has the same concept hidden in the number of jobs you can start/research/etc and EVE has INDUSTRIAL level operations so people find ways around it). But TRION is limiting everyone and everywhere. And for f2p this is beyond limiting cause on top of the natural limitation, we also limit ourselves even more cause some of us try to hold on all the LP cause we are new to the game and don't know where and how much LP we will REALLY need. So doing even less with it trying to stockpile for that "important" quest or something. It is a decently frustrating experience for brand new players. But this is TRION's management and I'm sure they've run the numbers on how much money this will generate against how many ppl will just quit because of this.
Problem 2: Selling it on shops. A lot of people argue and I do agree with them that this underlines the fact that TRION acknowledges this to be a bottleneck (hard not to when they have actively created it) and the solution to it is to milk some more cash. Forcing people's hand is usually not the right way to build a long term relationship.
Is this p2w? Yes it is. And yes most games have it. People come and say it is not relevant how much cash you put in if you lack skills and organization. That is absolutely true. But when they'll get off their high horse they will understand that their competitive guild will be stomped by an equally competitive guild that also spends RL cash. And many people will think it is futile and quit after giving their best and being beaten by RL money. People come and say this is a MMORPG and ppl don’t need to rush to level 50. Well the way I understand the concept (with my very limited visibility on high level stuff) is that you need to get that castle and you need to get that money to keep it and you need to get highest gear asap in order to defend your holdings. Even basic farming is limited by LAND availability so getting there fast matters (it is even a big bonus of the founder packs, speed is promoted even by TRION at the highest level). So something that actively and considerably helps you with that speed is p2w. If you get a one week buff that makes you shoot 20% faster you call it p2w, but if you get LP that allows you to get much faster than your competitor a bow that shoots 20% faster suddenly that is not p2w anymore...
Is it something unbearable? I would think not. I do believe that long term you will need more people with skills and dedication than money. And the natural falling of empires will happen, either that they spend RL money to claw to their power or not. But we should remain honest and call it what it is. I think it comes down in the end to determine from the sum of skills + knowledge + organization + tools + gear + team play how much the gear represents as a percentage for success. And that will be, in my humble opinion, the percentage the LP store is making this game p2w.
Here, I will give you a Dragunov Anti-materiel rifle and I will pick up a 9 mm side arm, my guess is even with the superior gear you won't be the one who wins (you are talking too much about ideal scenarios... as I pointed out earlier in EVE the scenario you said has happened already quite a few times and the ones who get curve stomped are the ones who are weaker in organizational capability not monetary power... https://wiki.eveonline.com/en/wiki/Northern_Coalition_%28Player_coalition%29 that's one of the more recent examples).
I was RAWR at the time so I don't need to read the wiki
But if you give that weapon to a person at a level similar to yours, who do you think will win till you get more friends or that person gets bored and quits the game? What about better weapon, better armour, faster move speed, bigger health potions (just random examples)?
(btw I have no idea what game you are reffering to since neither eve or aa have 9mm side arms ( I think))
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I was RAWR at the time so I don't need to read the wiki
But if you give that weapon to a person at a level similar t yours, who do you think will win till you get more friends or that person gets bored and quits the game? (btw I have no idea what game you are reffering to since neither eve or aa have 9mm side arms ( I think))
Similar=/=same, there's no ideal circumstances in real life, if you are looking for me with the sun in your eyes, if I am better at moving silently than you are at spotting,etc, you lose and this goes for EVE and any game where the deciding factor is player skill not player e-peen ( Mittani stopped playing EVE some time ago yet he's still running Goonswarm... do you get what differences skill could make in a guild vs guild area? Not every guild is going to have a Sun Tzu, a Mircea the Wise, a Richard the Lionheart, etc, most guilds won't be structured well and fall apart when kicked in too hard, most of the remaining will decay in time anyway, you point blank cannot talk about assets as determining factors with all of this put into consideration because the sheer odds of 2 perfectly equal guilds meeting each other in their respective peaks with mirrored playerbases are so infinitesimally small you would be daft to even consider it an argument for P2W when offering gold in WoW after you made that gold selling that cash shop pet to get people for a raid is more probable and equally P2W).
And it also depends on how you define p2w! for me p2w is having BiS gear in the cash shop. LP and Patron bonuses aren't p2w in my opinion, your not winning anything that will make you OP!
I was RAWR at the time so I don't need to read the wiki
But if you give that weapon to a person at a level similar t yours, who do you think will win till you get more friends or that person gets bored and quits the game? (btw I have no idea what game you are reffering to since neither eve or aa have 9mm side arms ( I think))
Similar=/=same, there's no ideal circumstances in real life, if you are looking for me with the sun in your eyes, if I am better at moving silently than you are at spotting,etc, you lose and this goes for EVE and any game where the deciding factor is player skill not player e-peen ( Mittani stopped playing EVE some time ago yet he's still running Goonswarm... do you get what differences skill could make in a guild vs guild area? Not every guild is going to have a Sun Tzu, a Mircea the Wise, a Richard the Lionheart, etc, most guilds won't be structured well and fall apart when kicked in too hard, most of the remaining will decay in time anyway, you point blank cannot talk about assets as determining factors with all of this put into consideration because the sheer odds of 2 perfectly equal guilds meeting each other in their respective peaks with mirrored playerbases are so infinitesimally small you would be daft to even consider it an argument for P2W when offering gold in WoW after you made that gold selling that cash shop pet to get people for a raid is more probable and equally P2W).
I'm not 100% sure I follow. Your tone seems to suggest you disagree with me but seems to fully back up my conclusion
"I think it comes down in the end to determine from the sum of skills + knowledge + organization + tools + gear + team play + numbers + politics how much the gear represents as a percentage for success. And that will be, in my humble opinion, the percentage the LP store is making this game p2w."
What am I missing? Or are you saying that that percentage is so small is not even worth mentioning?
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I was RAWR at the time so I don't need to read the wiki
But if you give that weapon to a person at a level similar t yours, who do you think will win till you get more friends or that person gets bored and quits the game? (btw I have no idea what game you are reffering to since neither eve or aa have 9mm side arms ( I think))
Similar=/=same, there's no ideal circumstances in real life, if you are looking for me with the sun in your eyes, if I am better at moving silently than you are at spotting,etc, you lose and this goes for EVE and any game where the deciding factor is player skill not player e-peen ( Mittani stopped playing EVE some time ago yet he's still running Goonswarm... do you get what differences skill could make in a guild vs guild area? Not every guild is going to have a Sun Tzu, a Mircea the Wise, a Richard the Lionheart, etc, most guilds won't be structured well and fall apart when kicked in too hard, most of the remaining will decay in time anyway, you point blank cannot talk about assets as determining factors with all of this put into consideration because the sheer odds of 2 perfectly equal guilds meeting each other in their respective peaks with mirrored playerbases are so infinitesimally small you would be daft to even consider it an argument for P2W when offering gold in WoW after you made that gold selling that cash shop pet to get people for a raid is more probable and equally P2W).
I'm not 100% sure I follow. Your tone seems to suggest you disagree with me but seems to fully back up my conclusion
"I think it comes down in the end to determine from the sum of skills + knowledge + organization + tools + gear + team play + numbers + politics how much the gear represents as a percentage for success. And that will be, in my humble opinion, the percentage the LP store is making this game p2w."
What am I missing? Or are you saying that that percentage is so small is not even worth mentioning?
The odds of that percentage ever even mattering in the equation is infinitesimally small. Put bluntly you'd not care if a sinking ship's radio is slightly dodgy or if a 90 year old that is on his deathbed is slightly bald. The odds of it ever mattering are just impossibly remote (Chaos theory basically, you can look at a 0.005% advantage to group A but that advantage will be mitigated by other shortcomings like inadequate leadership, lack of staying power, etc, will that advantage be there? sure but it is small to begin with and it becomes dwarfed by the multitude of other potential issues a guild will have to deal with and while you could say two equal guilds... that's really comparing apples and oranges as they are two groups made up of two sets of unique individuals to begin with).
I was RAWR at the time so I don't need to read the wiki
But if you give that weapon to a person at a level similar t yours, who do you think will win till you get more friends or that person gets bored and quits the game? (btw I have no idea what game you are reffering to since neither eve or aa have 9mm side arms ( I think))
Similar=/=same, there's no ideal circumstances in real life, if you are looking for me with the sun in your eyes, if I am better at moving silently than you are at spotting,etc, you lose and this goes for EVE and any game where the deciding factor is player skill not player e-peen ( Mittani stopped playing EVE some time ago yet he's still running Goonswarm... do you get what differences skill could make in a guild vs guild area? Not every guild is going to have a Sun Tzu, a Mircea the Wise, a Richard the Lionheart, etc, most guilds won't be structured well and fall apart when kicked in too hard, most of the remaining will decay in time anyway, you point blank cannot talk about assets as determining factors with all of this put into consideration because the sheer odds of 2 perfectly equal guilds meeting each other in their respective peaks with mirrored playerbases are so infinitesimally small you would be daft to even consider it an argument for P2W when offering gold in WoW after you made that gold selling that cash shop pet to get people for a raid is more probable and equally P2W).
I'm not 100% sure I follow. Your tone seems to suggest you disagree with me but seems to fully back up my conclusion
"I think it comes down in the end to determine from the sum of skills + knowledge + organization + tools + gear + team play + numbers + politics how much the gear represents as a percentage for success. And that will be, in my humble opinion, the percentage the LP store is making this game p2w."
What am I missing? Or are you saying that that percentage is so small is not even worth mentioning?
The odds of that percentage ever even mattering in the equation is infinitesimally small. Put bluntly you'd not care if a sinking ship's radio is slightly dodgy or if a 90 year old that is on his deathbed is slightly bald. The odds of it ever mattering are just impossibly remote (Chaos theory basically, you can look at a 0.005% advantage to group A but that advantage will be mitigated by other shortcomings like inadequate leadership, lack of staying power, etc, will that advantage be there? sure but it is small to begin with and it becomes dwarfed by the multitude of other potential issues a guild will have to deal with and while you could say two equal guilds... that's really comparing apples and oranges as they are two groups made up of two sets of unique individuals to begin with).
OK, I see your point. I however disagree (and yes my experience is quite limited regarding the high level activities), but I doubt that gear quality has such a low importance in the great sum of things as you make it sound. In the end this is the end-game result of crafting which is promoted as one of the most complex and rewarding features of the game.
I will probably be proven wrong at some point in time or I will be more convinced of it once I get to experience organized pvp in this game.
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I'm admittedly still looking into more excuses and alleviating circumstances or aspects of the LP system as I haven't played the endgame yet. I'm not too concerned over how the game currently feels, but over what I see as probable course of the game when and if things stay as they are.
AA is very gear dependent
As repeated ad nauseum, LP is required for many actions in the game
Crafting end game gear requires huge amounts of LP and or collaboration
During a day in which both players play AA for 3 hours, p2p gains 9 times the amount of LP f2p gains so there quite a bit of basis for the claims that f2p is so severily limited in the game that the Trion motto "No tricks, traps or trials" sounds hollow.
With some collaboration, multiple p2p accounts and LP potions (cooldown is still per character) it is possible to attain castles in CB and endgame gear in significantly less time than it is possible by playing without clear desire to get ahead by using real money in an organized way
With item and gold sink status in the game as is, there are concerns over how the game economy will develop when and if things continue as they are
Whether it's "p2w" or not is in my opinion inconsequential. What matters, is whether players find the effect of real money on in-game matters reasonable or not. In my opinion, the f2p status is unreasonable and the LP potions' cooldown should quite clearly be made at least accountwide.
It's easy to deride that f2p should be severely punished for not wanting to pay in a monthly fashion, but such talk is counterproductive to games offering subs as a lot of customers and potential customers will stay away. There are plenty of examples and material over f2p done correct. Currently, AA is not an such example. Neither is any game with direct p2w as there are certainly examples of those too.
Not sure if this has been mentioned already but what really bothers me that makes it sort of "pay to win" (though I rarely use that phrase) is this:
A person who pays for a subscription can STILL benefit (and benefit significantly) from buying the labour potions when compared to other people who subscribe.
I'm fine if there is a system in place where free players need to use the cash shop in order to get closer to the activity of paying players...however in this game it is actually quite easy to exhaust your labour with active playing as a PAYING CUSTOMER. You should NOT (in my opinion) feel like you need to be labour potions just to play the game if you are a premium member.
In the betas there have been multiple times where I've used my free credits to get a labour potion, and I'm a premium member. That isn't right. It should be premium membership OR needing to use the cash shop. Not the cash shop ON TOP of premium membership. Having more labour is a significant advantage in this game....if you are alarge scale farmer with multiple large farms across your accounts that extra labour makes a huge difference.
If labour was a mechanic that was only applicable to free players or if there was some way to get premium the max amount of labour gain and not allow any player to go above that with the cash shop then I would be okay. As it stands now it bugs me.
I was RAWR at the time so I don't need to read the wiki
But if you give that weapon to a person at a level similar t yours, who do you think will win till you get more friends or that person gets bored and quits the game? (btw I have no idea what game you are reffering to since neither eve or aa have 9mm side arms ( I think))
Similar=/=same, there's no ideal circumstances in real life, if you are looking for me with the sun in your eyes, if I am better at moving silently than you are at spotting,etc, you lose and this goes for EVE and any game where the deciding factor is player skill not player e-peen ( Mittani stopped playing EVE some time ago yet he's still running Goonswarm... do you get what differences skill could make in a guild vs guild area? Not every guild is going to have a Sun Tzu, a Mircea the Wise, a Richard the Lionheart, etc, most guilds won't be structured well and fall apart when kicked in too hard, most of the remaining will decay in time anyway, you point blank cannot talk about assets as determining factors with all of this put into consideration because the sheer odds of 2 perfectly equal guilds meeting each other in their respective peaks with mirrored playerbases are so infinitesimally small you would be daft to even consider it an argument for P2W when offering gold in WoW after you made that gold selling that cash shop pet to get people for a raid is more probable and equally P2W).
I'm not 100% sure I follow. Your tone seems to suggest you disagree with me but seems to fully back up my conclusion
"I think it comes down in the end to determine from the sum of skills + knowledge + organization + tools + gear + team play + numbers + politics how much the gear represents as a percentage for success. And that will be, in my humble opinion, the percentage the LP store is making this game p2w."
What am I missing? Or are you saying that that percentage is so small is not even worth mentioning?
The odds of that percentage ever even mattering in the equation is infinitesimally small. Put bluntly you'd not care if a sinking ship's radio is slightly dodgy or if a 90 year old that is on his deathbed is slightly bald. The odds of it ever mattering are just impossibly remote (Chaos theory basically, you can look at a 0.005% advantage to group A but that advantage will be mitigated by other shortcomings like inadequate leadership, lack of staying power, etc, will that advantage be there? sure but it is small to begin with and it becomes dwarfed by the multitude of other potential issues a guild will have to deal with and while you could say two equal guilds... that's really comparing apples and oranges as they are two groups made up of two sets of unique individuals to begin with).
OK, I see your point. I however disagree (and yes my experience is quite limited regarding the high level activities), but I doubt that gear quality has such a low importance in the great sum of things as you make it sound. In the end this is the end-game result of crafting which is promoted as one of the most complex and rewarding features of the game.
I will probably be proven wrong at some point in time or I will be more convinced of it once I get to experience organized pvp in this game.
If BIS items are as rare as I've heard it be on the RU server and even the KR one (best fitted guys in the KR servers I hear have maybe 2-3 of em after how many years? ) and gear itself makes a difference but that difference is in a diminishing returns sort of way (naked who is 1/2 as powerful as someone with shitty gear who is 3/4s as powerfull as someone with decent gear who is 7/8s as powerful as someone with good gear, etc) then BIS gear will be more E-peen than practical (think Tech 3 kitted out with officer blingage vs a Ashimmu fitted for raping asses... you get the idea).
Originally posted by DrWookie
Not sure if this has been mentioned already but what really bothers me that makes it sort of "pay to win" (though I rarely use that phrase) is this:
A person who pays for a subscription can STILL benefit (and benefit significantly) from buying the labour potions when compared to other people who subscribe.
I'm fine if there is a system in place where free players need to use the cash shop in order to get closer to the activity of paying players...however in this game it is actually quite easy to exhaust your labour with active playing as a PAYING CUSTOMER. You should NOT (in my opinion) feel like you need to be labour potions just to play the game if you are a premium member.
In the betas there have been multiple times where I've used my free credits to get a labour potion, and I'm a premium member. That isn't right. It should be premium membership OR needing to use the cash shop. Not the cash shop ON TOP of premium membership. Having more labour is a significant advantage in this game....if you are alarge scale farmer with multiple large farms across your accounts that extra labour makes a huge difference.
If labour was a mechanic that was only applicable to free players or if there was some way to get premium the max amount of labour gain and not allow any player to go above that with the cash shop then I would be okay. As it stands now it bugs me.
As it stands now this isn't WoW, you aren't supposed to be strip mining or exhaustion farming or whatever as a subscriber let alone as a F2P player. Is it possible to get close with LP pots? sure, can you buy those potions of the AH? Yep. As for advantages of LP... it is, and forever will be, a speed booster having more LP not an advantage (this especially with the highly random way of crafting which will having you sinking more LP in it to get your items and each time you try is independent of the others thus having more LP at any one time means more dice rolls but even then that's a speed advantage really, the F2P and non-pot popping patron will still get there).
Not sure if this has been mentioned already but what really bothers me that makes it sort of "pay to win" (though I rarely use that phrase) is this:
A person who pays for a subscription can STILL benefit (and benefit significantly) from buying the labour potions when compared to other people who subscribe.
I'm fine if there is a system in place where free players need to use the cash shop in order to get closer to the activity of paying players...however in this game it is actually quite easy to exhaust your labour with active playing as a PAYING CUSTOMER. You should NOT (in my opinion) feel like you need to be labour potions just to play the game if you are a premium member.
In the betas there have been multiple times where I've used my free credits to get a labour potion, and I'm a premium member. That isn't right. It should be premium membership OR needing to use the cash shop. Not the cash shop ON TOP of premium membership. Having more labour is a significant advantage in this game....if you are alarge scale farmer with multiple large farms across your accounts that extra labour makes a huge difference.
If labour was a mechanic that was only applicable to free players or if there was some way to get premium the max amount of labour gain and not allow any player to go above that with the cash shop then I would be okay. As it stands now it bugs me.
OK, let's not allow Patrons to buy labour pots in the Cash Shop !
Now all Patrons are equal, right ? No other subscriber can "get more than you" by spending an extra $96 per month in the Cash Shop ?
My 3 patron accounts will only cost $45 per month (probably less with 6 month sub discounts), and I'll have TRIPLE the LP you have. But that's fine, because I'm not buying that advantage in the Cash Shop...
Currently it is not P2W but Pay for Time, if you give them money you get stuff done faster. Its that simple.
The whole labor point system isnt finalized yet for the western market so no need to discuss a CLOSED Beta thats in TESTING and will see several testing stages
Not sure if this has been mentioned already but what really bothers me that makes it sort of "pay to win" (though I rarely use that phrase) is this:
A person who pays for a subscription can STILL benefit (and benefit significantly) from buying the labour potions when compared to other people who subscribe.
I'm fine if there is a system in place where free players need to use the cash shop in order to get closer to the activity of paying players...however in this game it is actually quite easy to exhaust your labour with active playing as a PAYING CUSTOMER. You should NOT (in my opinion) feel like you need to be labour potions just to play the game if you are a premium member.
In the betas there have been multiple times where I've used my free credits to get a labour potion, and I'm a premium member. That isn't right. It should be premium membership OR needing to use the cash shop. Not the cash shop ON TOP of premium membership. Having more labour is a significant advantage in this game....if you are alarge scale farmer with multiple large farms across your accounts that extra labour makes a huge difference.
If labour was a mechanic that was only applicable to free players or if there was some way to get premium the max amount of labour gain and not allow any player to go above that with the cash shop then I would be okay. As it stands now it bugs me.
OK, let's not allow Patrons to buy labour pots in the Cash Shop !
Now all Patrons are equal, right ? No other subscriber can "get more than you" by spending an extra $96 per month in the Cash Shop ?
My 3 patron accounts will only cost $45 per month (probably less with 6 month sub discounts), and I'll have TRIPLE the LP you have. But that's fine, because I'm not buying that advantage in the Cash Shop...
We could have a legitimate mature discussion about this actually...though you seem more intent on sarcasm.
If you fully read what I wrote you would notice that I said if they limited patron accounts from buying labor pots they would also have to limit free players from overbuying pots to surpass patrons. I believe patron status should give you full access to the game without any additional advantage given from the cash shop. I don't like games where it is subscription PLUS cash shop. It should be cash shop OR patron status. I like subscription games because you pay one price and you know that you are getting everything with that price. This game is frustrating because you can clearly gain even more advantage by spending even more money.
You do bring up a good point however about "multi-accounting". I guess that is something that has always been true in subscription games. It isn't quite the same since the characters aren't actually linked (though in this game they make it easy to basically link them by using the family system).
EDIT: Edited for typing the wrong word. It's 4:30am and I'm working a night shift. I'm tired.
If you can only gain from an LP once every 12 hours that will not be a problem.
If you could purchase unlimited LPs and exchange then via the AH or an RMT site for gold, crafting materials or the best equipment then that would obviously be a P2W problem.
It's not pay to win, it's pay twice to play... A new breed of MMOs.
You pay a monthly sub to get rid of most F2P limitations, then you pay a second time when your Labor Points run out.
In other words paying a monthly sub doesn't cut it anymore, now it's sub PLUS cash shop rammed down your throat.
I can't believe people are actually thinking of playing this pathetic cash grab.
Game's good but not worth getting nickel & dimed to death. I know Trion is trying to make it smoother on us westerners who aren't used to taking it up the ass as much as Koreans, apparently, but it's still not good enough.
I'd like to see the reaction if EA had a game set up exactly like this.
For every minute you are angry , you lose 60 seconds of happiness."-Emerson
I've never seen a game that you can sub for that penalizes you for almost every action you make only to sell relief from this in their cash shop.
That's P2W...there is no mystery here...name another sub game that does that?
World of Warcraft, Wildstar, etc,etc,etc. What because people do not see the inherent timesinks (unless you claim dungeons/raids always drop every item in their loot tables every time) it does not mean I do not.
And what has your ANSWER to do with original QUESTION?
Comments
you are not even defending the game anymore...you are defending LP, which should be considered a crime to humanity. I guess you would like to see LP in every game?
That's kinda cool I s'pose. I understand why their are limits, I still don't like it though. To be fair, it's hard for many of us (if not most) who haven't played extensively to grasp the LP system. You have to admit, at a glance, it does sort of sound like some facebook-esqueue F2P-cashrop money grab.
No he made good points. Plus we are talking about real property within the game world, not gold sinks like other themeparks. There HAS to be limits. Instead of Trion saying, OK "only 1 farm per character", or "only harvest 3 trees in a day" or "you recently completed a trade pack please wait" they made an LP system. The LP system keeps a more level playing field. Otherwise people who don't play as often would get left in the dust. Not everygame would work with LP just AA and the way it was designed.
At least in AA as a free player i wasn't spammed with "It costs this many of our real $ currency to do this, and this, and this, and this" similar to SWTOR or Neverwinter or Perfect World or any of those actual P2W games.
The day Swtor made me pay $ to hide my helmet, I shall never forget that feeling.
Looking forward to: Crowfall / Lost Ark / Black Desert Mobile
You do love falling into the Nirvana fallacy,don't you? And if given the choice between paywalls you can only pay $ to pass and ones you can pay either time or $ (not both) I would choose the latter always ergo yes I would choose LP in every game as it is a good solution to the F2P-P2W issue though it still has its flaws.
Edit: Should never type after 1 am x.x.
Ok so I've seen this topic present so much lately I feel the need to address it too.
LP is a cool way to control progress. It will limit bots, it will differentiate patrons, it will make everyone budget activities a little, will reward team play, etc. No one has anything against the LP concept itself I presume. But...
Problem 1: The main problem people have with LP however is that it is forcefully mangled by Trion in EVERY aspect of the game. Do you really need to spend LP to look at "loot"? Do you really need to spend LP to die in peace? Do you really need it to get quest rewards? Sure, make it a way to control crafting as a way of limiting how much of BIS can be obtained really fast (though some intense crafters would say you are un-naturally limiting their ability to play, when the natural way of limiting crafting should be the ability to obtain resources, but EVE has the same concept hidden in the number of jobs you can start/research/etc and EVE has INDUSTRIAL level operations so people find ways around it). But TRION is limiting everyone and everywhere. And for f2p this is beyond limiting cause on top of the natural limitation, we also limit ourselves even more cause some of us try to hold on all the LP cause we are new to the game and don't know where and how much LP we will REALLY need. So doing even less with it trying to stockpile for that "important" quest or something. It is a decently frustrating experience for brand new players. But this is TRION's business model management and I'm sure they've run the numbers on how much money this will generate against how many ppl will just quit because of this.
Problem 2: Selling it on shops. A lot of people argue and I do agree with them that this underlines the fact that TRION acknowledges this to be a bottleneck (hard not to when they have actively created it) and the solution to it is to milk some more cash. Forcing people's hand is usually not the right way to build a long term relationship.
Is this p2w? Yes it is. And yes most games have it. People come and say it is not relevant how much cash you put in if you lack skills and organization. That is absolutely true. But when they'll get off their high horse they will understand that their competitive guild will be stomped by an equally competitive guild that also spends RL cash. And many people will think it is futile and quit after giving their best and being beaten by RL money. People come and say this is a MMORPG and ppl don’t need to rush to level 50. Well the way I understand the concept (with my very limited visibility on high level stuff) is that you need to get that castle and you need to get that money to keep it and you need to get highest gear asap in order to defend your holdings. Even basic farming is limited by LAND availability so getting there fast matters (it is even a big bonus of the founder packs, speed is promoted even by TRION at the highest product/marketing level). So something that actively and considerably helps you with that speed is p2w. If you get a one week buff that makes you shoot 20% faster you call it p2w, but if you get LP that allows you to get much faster than your competitor a bow that shoots 20% faster suddenly that is not p2w anymore... and differently from eve your ultimate weapon is not destructible. It's there to stay and make you 20% faster till people catch up.
Is it something unbearable? I would think not. I do believe that long term you will need more people with skills and dedication than money. And the natural falling of empires will happen, either that they spend RL money to claw to their power or not. But we should remain honest and call it what it is.
I think it comes down in the end to determine from the sum of skills + knowledge + organization + tools + gear + team play + numbers + politics how much the gear represents as a percentage for success. And that will be, in my humble opinion, the percentage the LP store is making this game p2w.
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Here, I will give you a Dragunov Anti-materiel rifle and I will pick up a 9 mm side arm, my guess is even with the superior gear you won't be the one who wins (you are talking too much about ideal scenarios... as I pointed out earlier in EVE the scenario you said has happened already quite a few times and the ones who get curve stomped are the ones who are weaker in organizational capability not monetary power... https://wiki.eveonline.com/en/wiki/Northern_Coalition_%28Player_coalition%29 that's one of the more recent examples).
I was RAWR at the time so I don't need to read the wiki
But if you give that weapon to a person at a level similar to yours, who do you think will win till you get more friends or that person gets bored and quits the game? What about better weapon, better armour, faster move speed, bigger health potions (just random examples)?
(btw I have no idea what game you are reffering to since neither eve or aa have 9mm side arms ( I think))
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AA is NOT P2W, as far as I can tell.
Yes, I play it as a patron.
It is HUGE, and I mean GIGANTIC advantage to have patron status, but you CAN play it w/0 patron status.
Buying 1k LP potions twice a day is also an advantage, but nothing like having the patron status in the first place.
Similar=/=same, there's no ideal circumstances in real life, if you are looking for me with the sun in your eyes, if I am better at moving silently than you are at spotting,etc, you lose and this goes for EVE and any game where the deciding factor is player skill not player e-peen ( Mittani stopped playing EVE some time ago yet he's still running Goonswarm... do you get what differences skill could make in a guild vs guild area? Not every guild is going to have a Sun Tzu, a Mircea the Wise, a Richard the Lionheart, etc, most guilds won't be structured well and fall apart when kicked in too hard, most of the remaining will decay in time anyway, you point blank cannot talk about assets as determining factors with all of this put into consideration because the sheer odds of 2 perfectly equal guilds meeting each other in their respective peaks with mirrored playerbases are so infinitesimally small you would be daft to even consider it an argument for P2W when offering gold in WoW after you made that gold selling that cash shop pet to get people for a raid is more probable and equally P2W).
P2W is a magical in-game bunny pet that devours everything in sight.
There, now that we've cleared that up...
I'm not 100% sure I follow. Your tone seems to suggest you disagree with me but seems to fully back up my conclusion
"I think it comes down in the end to determine from the sum of skills + knowledge + organization + tools + gear + team play + numbers + politics how much the gear represents as a percentage for success. And that will be, in my humble opinion, the percentage the LP store is making this game p2w."
What am I missing? Or are you saying that that percentage is so small is not even worth mentioning?
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The odds of that percentage ever even mattering in the equation is infinitesimally small. Put bluntly you'd not care if a sinking ship's radio is slightly dodgy or if a 90 year old that is on his deathbed is slightly bald. The odds of it ever mattering are just impossibly remote (Chaos theory basically, you can look at a 0.005% advantage to group A but that advantage will be mitigated by other shortcomings like inadequate leadership, lack of staying power, etc, will that advantage be there? sure but it is small to begin with and it becomes dwarfed by the multitude of other potential issues a guild will have to deal with and while you could say two equal guilds... that's really comparing apples and oranges as they are two groups made up of two sets of unique individuals to begin with).
OK, I see your point. I however disagree (and yes my experience is quite limited regarding the high level activities), but I doubt that gear quality has such a low importance in the great sum of things as you make it sound. In the end this is the end-game result of crafting which is promoted as one of the most complex and rewarding features of the game.
I will probably be proven wrong at some point in time or I will be more convinced of it once I get to experience organized pvp in this game.
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I'm admittedly still looking into more excuses and alleviating circumstances or aspects of the LP system as I haven't played the endgame yet. I'm not too concerned over how the game currently feels, but over what I see as probable course of the game when and if things stay as they are.
Not sure if this has been mentioned already but what really bothers me that makes it sort of "pay to win" (though I rarely use that phrase) is this:
A person who pays for a subscription can STILL benefit (and benefit significantly) from buying the labour potions when compared to other people who subscribe.
I'm fine if there is a system in place where free players need to use the cash shop in order to get closer to the activity of paying players...however in this game it is actually quite easy to exhaust your labour with active playing as a PAYING CUSTOMER. You should NOT (in my opinion) feel like you need to be labour potions just to play the game if you are a premium member.
In the betas there have been multiple times where I've used my free credits to get a labour potion, and I'm a premium member. That isn't right. It should be premium membership OR needing to use the cash shop. Not the cash shop ON TOP of premium membership. Having more labour is a significant advantage in this game....if you are alarge scale farmer with multiple large farms across your accounts that extra labour makes a huge difference.
If labour was a mechanic that was only applicable to free players or if there was some way to get premium the max amount of labour gain and not allow any player to go above that with the cash shop then I would be okay. As it stands now it bugs me.
If BIS items are as rare as I've heard it be on the RU server and even the KR one (best fitted guys in the KR servers I hear have maybe 2-3 of em after how many years? ) and gear itself makes a difference but that difference is in a diminishing returns sort of way (naked who is 1/2 as powerful as someone with shitty gear who is 3/4s as powerfull as someone with decent gear who is 7/8s as powerful as someone with good gear, etc) then BIS gear will be more E-peen than practical (think Tech 3 kitted out with officer blingage vs a Ashimmu fitted for raping asses... you get the idea).
As it stands now this isn't WoW, you aren't supposed to be strip mining or exhaustion farming or whatever as a subscriber let alone as a F2P player. Is it possible to get close with LP pots? sure, can you buy those potions of the AH? Yep. As for advantages of LP... it is, and forever will be, a speed booster having more LP not an advantage (this especially with the highly random way of crafting which will having you sinking more LP in it to get your items and each time you try is independent of the others thus having more LP at any one time means more dice rolls but even then that's a speed advantage really, the F2P and non-pot popping patron will still get there).
OK, let's not allow Patrons to buy labour pots in the Cash Shop !
Now all Patrons are equal, right ? No other subscriber can "get more than you" by spending an extra $96 per month in the Cash Shop ?
My 3 patron accounts will only cost $45 per month (probably less with 6 month sub discounts), and I'll have TRIPLE the LP you have. But that's fine, because I'm not buying that advantage in the Cash Shop...
Currently it is not P2W but Pay for Time, if you give them money you get stuff done faster. Its that simple.
The whole labor point system isnt finalized yet for the western market so no need to discuss a CLOSED Beta thats in TESTING and will see several testing stages
We could have a legitimate mature discussion about this actually...though you seem more intent on sarcasm.
If you fully read what I wrote you would notice that I said if they limited patron accounts from buying labor pots they would also have to limit free players from overbuying pots to surpass patrons. I believe patron status should give you full access to the game without any additional advantage given from the cash shop. I don't like games where it is subscription PLUS cash shop. It should be cash shop OR patron status. I like subscription games because you pay one price and you know that you are getting everything with that price. This game is frustrating because you can clearly gain even more advantage by spending even more money.
You do bring up a good point however about "multi-accounting". I guess that is something that has always been true in subscription games. It isn't quite the same since the characters aren't actually linked (though in this game they make it easy to basically link them by using the family system).
EDIT: Edited for typing the wrong word. It's 4:30am and I'm working a night shift. I'm tired.
If you can only gain from an LP once every 12 hours that will not be a problem.
If you could purchase unlimited LPs and exchange then via the AH or an RMT site for gold, crafting materials or the best equipment then that would obviously be a P2W problem.
I'd like to see the reaction if EA had a game set up exactly like this.
For every minute you are angry , you lose 60 seconds of happiness."-Emerson
And what has your ANSWER to do with original QUESTION?