You dont have to pay for anythink if you dont want land for farming or house . Or you can just do what i did . Pay for 1 month sub get your shit together then buy 2 apex in game , your next month patron is ready. You can do it every month. Its not that hard to earn 120g in game . (APEX is 60g at my server )
In Pay 2 Win you typically gain a significant advantage over others by paying for things in a game store. This is true in ArcheAge. Pay 2 Win gives you crafting materials easily which translates to BIS equipment, etc. Whomever says this isn't P2W is either delusional, an extreme fanboy, or just isn't clear about what the definition is. In a game where resources means EVERYTHING and a huge pvp advantage can be gained from getting access to resources more easily and readily, and a game where you can only have housing by being a patron, it is the very definition of P2W.
Originally posted by intrinsc In Pay 2 Win you typically gain a significant advantage over others by paying for things in a game store. This is true in ArcheAge. Pay 2 Win gives you crafting materials easily which translates to BIS equipment, etc. Whomever says this isn't P2W is either delusional, an extreme fanboy, or just isn't clear about what the definition is. In a game where resources means EVERYTHING and a huge pvp advantage can be gained from getting access to resources more easily and readily, and a game where you can only have housing by being a patron, it is the very definition of P2W.
I look at it this way. If your'e not paying anything to play a game - the developer has no reason to cater to you. It's like complaining you wanted two slices of cheese on your free cheeseburger at a grand opening of a hardware store. You're only there for the free shit anyway and never plan on supporting said hardware store. If you like the game but don't like the f2p model then pay for a sub or find another game. It really is that simple.
Originally posted by Battlerock Pay to faster is an indirect form of pay to win. It's just another barrier to trying to enjoy these games. It's already hard enough to make an enjoyable experience, but then they tack things on like pay to faster and pay to win, the barrier to enjoying the game is hard to get past.
Then MMOs aren't for you, because the guy that started his sub before you has the same advantage.
Seriously, based on what you wrote there, even if the ability to pay for boosts was there, you still would find it hard to enjoy. Other F2P players find it fine. The ones that find it enjoyable to accelerate aspects of the game can do so. A player can get farther sooner, but that's true of ANY subscription MMO. Now, If AA had early-L2's leveling curve, I might agree with you, but AA's leveling is far from that.
I'm just speaking from how I feel. You are right though, MMO's are not for me, I think they have potential, but not many deliver.
Instead of investing in making the games interesting, they invest in accountants to come up with ways to make mediocre games profitable, or invest in marketing to grab some cash real quick.
It's all very unfortunate because consumer producer relationships do not have to be underhanded like this all the time.
In this case, if it's really that much of a pain to grind to level cap or level the playing field, just do us all a favor and streamline the leveling, streamline the grind to acquiring equal and balanced power and advantages. The barrier to getting to the main idea of the game is keeping the popularity of mmorpgs in check.
I know some of you like having the grind and enjoying the advantage of better gear, higher levels, and just more options to beat up on the people without those advantages, but keeping the grind in place and creating the 6 month imbalance every time a game launches is holding the genre back.
This is just how I feel, the 800 pound Gorilla figured it out with the boost to 90 feature, as much hate as they get, they are right to remove the barrier to getting your friends involved and getting them prepped for "endgame" (sorry for lack of better term) but it's just the truth.
So, basically from reading this thread, the impression i'm getting is that ArcheAge basically operates the same way as farmville and all of those ridiculous facebook games, in so much as, you get a certain number of spendable "credits" (or whatever they term the spendable unit) every hour or every 24 hours or whatever. Which you use to purchase things in game, whether its land, stuff to put on the land, etc, but if you want to pay for more of these said credits, you can, and then you dont have to wait.
Explain to me how thats not the definition of pay to win?
Because you get given a set amount of labour points just for having an account. These labour points are no different than the ones you buy if you want to go faster.
These labour potions are also tradable in game, meaning that if you have the gold you can buy them through playing. It takes me about two 8 min trade runs to earn the gold for a potion. Hence you gain them by playing the game.
Want to buy a sub? Earn the gold easily in game by playing. want to buy anything from the cash shop? Earn the gold easily in game by playing.
How is this pay to win?
A more casual player using a labour potion on a 11 hour cool down has no more advantage over me as a more dedicated player having spent around 15 mins to earn the gold to buy the same potion.
You don't use labour points to purchase land btw, you use gold. Gold is easily obtainable and flows freely if you make the effort to earn it.
I remember the time where MMO's with a cash shop were always called Pay 2 Win. It seems like the western MMO community is slowly accepting nickel and dime strategies, that were main course in the east.
And now we are even coming up with new names to distinguish with "better" types of cash shop?
Anyway, the answer to OP's question is Pay 2 Win, whether it's under the old meaning or under the new meaning.
I must have missed that time. I have only seen people call microtransaction games F2P. Only with in the last year or so has there been movement by consumers to identify them with an accurate acroyonm, and not the misnomer.
Being f2p you will be ok with bag space, LP's even sub .. Unless you solo it with no guild
The f2p players in the guild I am in are helped by us subbed players and in return they help however they can. We buy expansion scrolls, apex etc and they get traded with the f2p guys.
They should just go Pay 2 Play so you guys can stop comparing the differences between people that play FREE and people that actually contribute money to keep the servers alive. Also, so you FREEloaders can play the game and still complain like you have paid something here.
Labor potions would let you level faster if you have land to go with it. Without land you will be at a disadvantage in crafting and doing trade runs since a lot of resources you will need to buy off the auction house. You can still do trade runs but they won't be as profitable as a land owner who can make stuff. You also won't be using your labor points as fast so it likely wouldn't help you unless you got unlimited gold.
Basically labor is use for farming and crafting. You use it a little for opening loot that drops off mobs you kill. You also us labor to pay taxes for lands.
Doing anything in the game can make you xp. So if I were to go harvest ore which I can do freely that will use labor. I will also get xp for each thing I harvest. I can also then process the ore and stone into metal and bricks. That gives me xp and uses labor. If I only did this I could pretty quickly run out of labor points and would have to stop and do something that didn't take labor like PvE or PvP.
Where land comes into play is there are many things you can only make on your own land. For example, you get a quest to grow 50 roses. You can't grow roses in public lands. You could try to find some hidden spot to grow them but would likely find them gone when you came back. So you would end up buying the roses from the market. That will cost more than the reward.
Also there are things you might need. You also need a house because some items can only be placed in a house. For example a farmers workstation is needed to make feed for animals, medicine for sick animals and worms for fishing. Without the house you gotta buy this stuff. It adds up quickly.
Anyway without any of these things you don't normally use labor very fast. You can kill stuff and do quests probably uses less labor than you make. You can buy stuff on the market and do trade crafting and trade runs and make some profit although a lot less than if you grew the resources.
Bottom line is if you don't have land you will probably not find a need for more labor. If you do have land you can run out of labor and buy pots will help. It will also let you level up faster since all that harvesting and crafting gives you good xp points.
It doesn't really give you any advantage other than leveling speed.
However there isn't any land available so if you think you will get an account and buy land you should wait till the servers thin out. Right now there isn't any land available anywhere so Patron or F2P are pretty much on even footing.
However there isn't any land available so if you think you will get an account and buy land you should wait till the servers thin out. Right now there isn't any land available anywhere so Patron or F2P are pretty much on even footing.
I have said already here in this thread today that I have personally entered into an agreement with a freeb guildie that they can use my little farm in exchange for using their labour to help me on my other holdings. With their bit of land, they now make trade runs and can buy labour pots with in game gold.
THIS is what AA is about.
Social networking and cooperation.
Also, land will be opening very soon on all servers due to unpaid taxes etc.
However there isn't any land available so if you think you will get an account and buy land you should wait till the servers thin out. Right now there isn't any land available anywhere so Patron or F2P are pretty much on even footing.
I have said already here in this thread today that I have personally entered into an agreement with a freeb guildie that they can use my little farm in exchange for using their labour to help me on my other holdings. With their bit of land, they now make trade runs and can buy labour pots with in game gold.
THIS is what AA is about.
Social networking and cooperation.
What Ves just described is the cool type of sandbox gameplay that I look for in MMOs. Tools to support this kind of interaction and collaboration and, more importantly, players that make use of it.
There isn't a "right" or "wrong" way to play, if you want to use a screwdriver to put nails into wood, have at it, simply don't complain when the guy next to you with the hammer is doing it much better and easier. - Allein "Graphics are often supplied by Engines that (some) MMORPG's are built in" - Spuffyre
Almost all of the answers you get from these posters are heavily biased around their own gameplay choice. If they are paying for a sub its obviously not p2w only faster advancement, but from a free player's perspective it is obviously a p2w game. So whats the correct answer, well its not p2w in the sense that you can buy extra skill points or overpowered items for straight cash. However that being said it most definitely is a pay 2 win game because paying more does give you an advantage over other players not just in terms of leveling speed, crafting ability, gathering materials, auction house usage and land ownership but also because you can buy cash shop items and sell them for ingame currency. This means that you can most definitely use real money to quickly gain in game currency which can then be used for very real advantages like weapons/armor/potions/food etc. The only f2p players that can even come close to matching a paying players in game wealth are the no lifers playing for 60+ hours a week or more.
Originally posted by intrinsc In Pay 2 Win you typically gain a significant advantage over others by paying for things in a game store. This is true in ArcheAge. Pay 2 Win gives you crafting materials easily which translates to BIS equipment, etc. Whomever says this isn't P2W is either delusional, an extreme fanboy, or just isn't clear about what the definition is. In a game where resources means EVERYTHING and a huge pvp advantage can be gained from getting access to resources more easily and readily, and a game where you can only have housing by being a patron, it is the very definition of P2W.
I look at it this way. If your'e not paying anything to play a game - the developer has no reason to cater to you. It's like complaining you wanted two slices of cheese on your free cheeseburger at a grand opening of a hardware store. You're only there for the free shit anyway and never plan on supporting said hardware store. If you like the game but don't like the f2p model then pay for a sub or find another game. It really is that simple.
Archeage falls under the "What, a patron sub isn't enough!?" category when it comes to that argument, though.
(it's not the only game guilty of that. Many facebook games have a VIP subscription AND you STILL need to P2W after subscribing anyways to have a prayer of keeping up with others in a competitive environment. Archeage is..... slightly less worse than that. ....slightly)
Originally posted by intrinsc In Pay 2 Win you typically gain a significant advantage over others by paying for things in a game store. This is true in ArcheAge. Pay 2 Win gives you crafting materials easily which translates to BIS equipment, etc. Whomever says this isn't P2W is either delusional, an extreme fanboy, or just isn't clear about what the definition is. In a game where resources means EVERYTHING and a huge pvp advantage can be gained from getting access to resources more easily and readily, and a game where you can only have housing by being a patron, it is the very definition of P2W.
I look at it this way. If your'e not paying anything to play a game - the developer has no reason to cater to you. It's like complaining you wanted two slices of cheese on your free cheeseburger at a grand opening of a hardware store. You're only there for the free shit anyway and never plan on supporting said hardware store. If you like the game but don't like the f2p model then pay for a sub or find another game. It really is that simple.
Archeage falls under the "What, a patron sub isn't enough!?" category when it comes to that argument, though.
but a patron account IS enough, because you can earn the gold easily to buy additional pots 100% through playing the game.
There is absolutely no need to spend more.
Everything in that cash shop can be accessed by playing.
Originally posted by intrinsc In Pay 2 Win you typically gain a significant advantage over others by paying for things in a game store. This is true in ArcheAge. Pay 2 Win gives you crafting materials easily which translates to BIS equipment, etc. Whomever says this isn't P2W is either delusional, an extreme fanboy, or just isn't clear about what the definition is. In a game where resources means EVERYTHING and a huge pvp advantage can be gained from getting access to resources more easily and readily, and a game where you can only have housing by being a patron, it is the very definition of P2W.
I look at it this way. If your'e not paying anything to play a game - the developer has no reason to cater to you. It's like complaining you wanted two slices of cheese on your free cheeseburger at a grand opening of a hardware store. You're only there for the free shit anyway and never plan on supporting said hardware store. If you like the game but don't like the f2p model then pay for a sub or find another game. It really is that simple.
I agree with this in theory but in this case it's not that simple. What if I pay for patron status and get my labour points regenerating at a faster pace but don't buy LP pots? I'm paying to play so that meets your basic requirement that the dev should cater to me.
The guy next to me also pays for patron but then throws a ton of extra money at them for LP pots and gets to craft, loot, farm more than me, makes better gear faster, levels faster and as a direct result gains an advantage in PvP.
That is pay to win. The PvP element of the game makes it pay to win. If it were a purely PvE game I wouldn't call it pay to win because now he's just getting to end game content quicker, that wouldn't affect me. However, seeing as one day he might decide to bitch slap me around in his nice new uber gear, he is winning a fight with me because he paid.
It has been argued that this advantage is only temporary, but it's still an advantage.
I don't see how patron status is "pay 2 win", considering the fact that if you are planning to play this game for anything more than a month you SHOULD be subbing as patron.
Otherwise you are not even a customer (since the game costs nothing to download)
If you are NOT a customer, then why would you even expect to have anything close to equal terms to paying customers? You shouldn't even get support imo.
They are a business. This game is meant to make them money (at least enough to make a living off it). This is their livelihood. I don't understand why do some people expect them to provide you with free entertainment? They do need to eat too, you know.
Imagine if people say you should work for free because you give better services to paying customers and therefore these people are "pay to win"
Just sub if you are planning to play the game for any length of time.
Also, the cash shop doesn't really offer anything powerful that you can't really get from within the game itself (labor pots can be purchased from auctioneer and tax certs can be generated from farms/properties using labor, and if don't have land, you don't really need either).
However there isn't any land available so if you think you will get an account and buy land you should wait till the servers thin out. Right now there isn't any land available anywhere so Patron or F2P are pretty much on even footing.
I have said already here in this thread today that I have personally entered into an agreement with a freeb guildie that they can use my little farm in exchange for using their labour to help me on my other holdings. With their bit of land, they now make trade runs and can buy labour pots with in game gold.
THIS is what AA is about.
Social networking and cooperation.
What Ves just described is the cool type of sandbox gameplay that I look for in MMOs. Tools to support this kind of interaction and collaboration and, more importantly, players that make use of it.
Sadly, most will play solo with no social effort, look at the situation as a soloer without making any type of social effort, and complain that they feel that they have to pay extra to support themselves, when it just isn't the case.
They are too toilet trained from a decade of railroad MMORPGs to have the imagination in these games to see opportunity and potentiol in a situation.
They also willfully will not see what I am saying here at all, and tune it out in order to continue to complain. Thank you Lok for getting the point I am making.
Originally posted by intrinsc In Pay 2 Win you typically gain a significant advantage over others by paying for things in a game store. This is true in ArcheAge. Pay 2 Win gives you crafting materials easily which translates to BIS equipment, etc. Whomever says this isn't P2W is either delusional, an extreme fanboy, or just isn't clear about what the definition is. In a game where resources means EVERYTHING and a huge pvp advantage can be gained from getting access to resources more easily and readily, and a game where you can only have housing by being a patron, it is the very definition of P2W.
I look at it this way. If your'e not paying anything to play a game - the developer has no reason to cater to you. It's like complaining you wanted two slices of cheese on your free cheeseburger at a grand opening of a hardware store. You're only there for the free shit anyway and never plan on supporting said hardware store. If you like the game but don't like the f2p model then pay for a sub or find another game. It really is that simple.
I agree with this in theory but in this case it's not that simple. What if I pay for patron status and get my labour points regenerating at a faster pace but don't buy LP pots? I'm paying to play so that meets your basic requirement that the dev should cater to me.
The guy next to me also pays for patron but then throws a ton of extra money at them for LP pots and gets to craft, loot, farm more than me, makes better gear faster, levels faster and as a direct result gains an advantage in PvP.
That is pay to win. The PvP element of the game makes it pay to win. If it were a purely PvE game I wouldn't call it pay to win because now he's just getting to end game content quicker, that wouldn't affect me. However, seeing as one day he might decide to bitch slap me around in his nice new uber gear, he is winning a fight with me because he paid.
It has been argued that this advantage is only temporary, but it's still an advantage.
You can spend gold and buy labor pots from auctioneer (current market price of around 6-7g). It is just a question of whether to can make the labor pot worth the gold being spent is all.
If you pop it and use the labor points to run 10 trade pack runs than the 6-7g spent on the points is pretty much nothing for you.
If you are not a patron then I don't even talk about why you even need labor pots in the first place.
You can spend gold and buy labor pots from auctioneer (current market price of around 6-7g). It is just a question of whether to can make the labor pot worth the gold being spent is all.
If you pop it and use the labor points to run 10 trade pack runs than the 6-7g spent on the points is pretty much nothing for you.
You get it.
Anyone that doesn't make a labour pot pay for itself pay for itself multiple times over just by playing the game needs to stop telling others 'how it is' and start asking others how to play.
No game is pay to win when gold is so easy to come by, and that gold can access everything in the cash shop via the AH and Apex.
No one I play with even pays for their patron status with real money... We all buy it via playing.
So, basically from reading this thread, the impression i'm getting is that ArcheAge basically operates the same way as farmville and all of those ridiculous facebook games, in so much as, you get a certain number of spendable "credits" (or whatever they term the spendable unit) every hour or every 24 hours or whatever. Which you use to purchase things in game, whether its land, stuff to put on the land, etc, but if you want to pay for more of these said credits, you can, and then you dont have to wait.
Explain to me how thats not the definition of pay to win?
Because you get given a set amount of labour points just for having an account. These labour points are no different than the ones you buy if you want to go faster.
These labour potions are also tradable in game, meaning that if you have the gold you can buy them through playing. It takes me about two 8 min trade runs to earn the gold for a potion. Hence you gain them by playing the game.
Want to buy a sub? Earn the gold easily in game by playing. want to buy anything from the cash shop? Earn the gold easily in game by playing.
How is this pay to win?
A more casual player using a labour potion on a 11 hour cool down has no more advantage over me as a more dedicated player having spent around 15 mins to earn the gold to buy the same potion.
You don't use labour points to purchase land btw, you use gold. Gold is easily obtainable and flows freely if you make the effort to earn it.
You must be joking right. You literally just defined pay to win.
MMO's are about progression, progression is typically measured either in A. Time Spent in game (see EVE skill points), or B. Gear+Levels.
The difference is, gear and levels take time to acheive, so anything that allows you to circumvent that time requirement is by definition pay to win.
The "but you can earn it in game if you do X or Y" is a completely bunk argument that has been shot full of holes about three million times over. I seriously don't understand why people still play that card, its embarassing.
If paying money allows you to get ahead of someone who is NOT able to pay the money, then its pay 2 win, thats simply all there is to it.
"The surest way to corrupt a youth is to instruct him to hold in higher esteem those who think alike than those who think differently."
"We all do the best we can based on life experience, point of view, and our ability to believe in ourselves." - Naropa "We don't see things as they are, we see them as we are." SR Covey
You can spend gold and buy labor pots from auctioneer (current market price of around 6-7g). It is just a question of whether to can make the labor pot worth the gold being spent is all.
If you pop it and use the labor points to run 10 trade pack runs than the 6-7g spent on the points is pretty much nothing for you.
You get it.
Anyone that doesn't make a labour pot pay for itself pay for itself multiple times over just by playing the game needs to stop telling others 'how it is' and start asking others how to play.
No game is pay to win when gold is so easy to come by, and that gold can access everything in the cash shop via the AH and Apex.
No one I play with even pays for their patron status with real money... We all buy it via playing.
Exactly. This game is very much about Labor Points management in terms of the trading aspects of it.
I do think that you are right also when you mention that this is a game about being part of the community - even if you did the land grab at the start and got several large farms running there is no way that you'll ever have enough labor points to run all of them without a few others that don't have land using their labor to help you manage it and share the profits.
Numbers matter, that's why guilds seems to be much more sizable in this game compare to others.
So, basically from reading this thread, the impression i'm getting is that ArcheAge basically operates the same way as farmville and all of those ridiculous facebook games, in so much as, you get a certain number of spendable "credits" (or whatever they term the spendable unit) every hour or every 24 hours or whatever. Which you use to purchase things in game, whether its land, stuff to put on the land, etc, but if you want to pay for more of these said credits, you can, and then you dont have to wait.
Explain to me how thats not the definition of pay to win?
Because you get given a set amount of labour points just for having an account. These labour points are no different than the ones you buy if you want to go faster.
These labour potions are also tradable in game, meaning that if you have the gold you can buy them through playing. It takes me about two 8 min trade runs to earn the gold for a potion. Hence you gain them by playing the game.
Want to buy a sub? Earn the gold easily in game by playing. want to buy anything from the cash shop? Earn the gold easily in game by playing.
How is this pay to win?
A more casual player using a labour potion on a 11 hour cool down has no more advantage over me as a more dedicated player having spent around 15 mins to earn the gold to buy the same potion.
You don't use labour points to purchase land btw, you use gold. Gold is easily obtainable and flows freely if you make the effort to earn it.
You must be joking right. You literally just defined pay to win.
MMO's are about progression, progression is typically measured either in A. Time Spent in game (see EVE skill points), or B. Gear+Levels.
The difference is, gear and levels take time to acheive, so anything that allows you to circumvent that time requirement is by definition pay to win.
The "but you can earn it in game if you do X or Y" is a completely bunk argument that has been shot full of holes about three million times over. I seriously don't understand why people still play that card, its embarassing.
If paying money allows you to get ahead of someone who is NOT able to pay the money, then its pay 2 win, thats simply all there is to it.
This right here, exactly this. P2W isn't a question of "how will the company support the game" or "you can get everything it just takes longer to accomplish" it is merely whether or not paying gets you an advantage and it surely does in archeage.
Originally posted by intrinsc In Pay 2 Win you typically gain a significant advantage over others by paying for things in a game store. This is true in ArcheAge. Pay 2 Win gives you crafting materials easily which translates to BIS equipment, etc. Whomever says this isn't P2W is either delusional, an extreme fanboy, or just isn't clear about what the definition is. In a game where resources means EVERYTHING and a huge pvp advantage can be gained from getting access to resources more easily and readily, and a game where you can only have housing by being a patron, it is the very definition of P2W.
I look at it this way. If your'e not paying anything to play a game - the developer has no reason to cater to you. It's like complaining you wanted two slices of cheese on your free cheeseburger at a grand opening of a hardware store. You're only there for the free shit anyway and never plan on supporting said hardware store. If you like the game but don't like the f2p model then pay for a sub or find another game. It really is that simple.
I agree with this in theory but in this case it's not that simple. What if I pay for patron status and get my labour points regenerating at a faster pace but don't buy LP pots? I'm paying to play so that meets your basic requirement that the dev should cater to me.
The guy next to me also pays for patron but then throws a ton of extra money at them for LP pots and gets to craft, loot, farm more than me, makes better gear faster, levels faster and as a direct result gains an advantage in PvP.
That is pay to win. The PvP element of the game makes it pay to win. If it were a purely PvE game I wouldn't call it pay to win because now he's just getting to end game content quicker, that wouldn't affect me. However, seeing as one day he might decide to bitch slap me around in his nice new uber gear, he is winning a fight with me because he paid.
It has been argued that this advantage is only temporary, but it's still an advantage.
This is where you choose to vote with your wallet. If you disagree with their model, don't play the game. I honestly don't mean to sound like a prick, but as a consumer those are the choices. You can complain about or disagree with their business model but it's ultimately up to you if you're willing to play the game or not regardless if you decide to pay any money at all or hundreds of dollars a month.
Originally posted by 123443211234 Almost all of the answers you get from these posters are heavily biased around their own gameplay choice. If they are paying for a sub its obviously not p2w only faster advancement, but from a free player's perspective it is obviously a p2w game. So whats the correct answer, well its not p2w in the sense that you can buy extra skill points or overpowered items for straight cash. However that being said it most definitely is a pay 2 win game because paying more does give you an advantage over other players not just in terms of leveling speed, crafting ability, gathering materials, auction house usage and land ownership but also because you can buy cash shop items and sell them for ingame currency. This means that you can most definitely use real money to quickly gain in game currency which can then be used for very real advantages like weapons/armor/potions/food etc. The only f2p players that can even come close to matching a paying players in game wealth are the no lifers playing for 60+ hours a week or more.
Comments
I look at it this way. If your'e not paying anything to play a game - the developer has no reason to cater to you. It's like complaining you wanted two slices of cheese on your free cheeseburger at a grand opening of a hardware store. You're only there for the free shit anyway and never plan on supporting said hardware store. If you like the game but don't like the f2p model then pay for a sub or find another game. It really is that simple.
I'm just speaking from how I feel. You are right though, MMO's are not for me, I think they have potential, but not many deliver.
Instead of investing in making the games interesting, they invest in accountants to come up with ways to make mediocre games profitable, or invest in marketing to grab some cash real quick.
It's all very unfortunate because consumer producer relationships do not have to be underhanded like this all the time.
In this case, if it's really that much of a pain to grind to level cap or level the playing field, just do us all a favor and streamline the leveling, streamline the grind to acquiring equal and balanced power and advantages. The barrier to getting to the main idea of the game is keeping the popularity of mmorpgs in check.
I know some of you like having the grind and enjoying the advantage of better gear, higher levels, and just more options to beat up on the people without those advantages, but keeping the grind in place and creating the 6 month imbalance every time a game launches is holding the genre back.
This is just how I feel, the 800 pound Gorilla figured it out with the boost to 90 feature, as much hate as they get, they are right to remove the barrier to getting your friends involved and getting them prepped for "endgame" (sorry for lack of better term) but it's just the truth.
Because you get given a set amount of labour points just for having an account. These labour points are no different than the ones you buy if you want to go faster.
These labour potions are also tradable in game, meaning that if you have the gold you can buy them through playing. It takes me about two 8 min trade runs to earn the gold for a potion. Hence you gain them by playing the game.
Want to buy a sub? Earn the gold easily in game by playing. want to buy anything from the cash shop? Earn the gold easily in game by playing.
How is this pay to win?
A more casual player using a labour potion on a 11 hour cool down has no more advantage over me as a more dedicated player having spent around 15 mins to earn the gold to buy the same potion.
You don't use labour points to purchase land btw, you use gold. Gold is easily obtainable and flows freely if you make the effort to earn it.
I must have missed that time. I have only seen people call microtransaction games F2P. Only with in the last year or so has there been movement by consumers to identify them with an accurate acroyonm, and not the misnomer.
Being f2p you will be ok with bag space, LP's even sub .. Unless you solo it with no guild
The f2p players in the guild I am in are helped by us subbed players and in return they help however they can. We buy expansion scrolls, apex etc and they get traded with the f2p guys.
Labor potions would let you level faster if you have land to go with it. Without land you will be at a disadvantage in crafting and doing trade runs since a lot of resources you will need to buy off the auction house. You can still do trade runs but they won't be as profitable as a land owner who can make stuff. You also won't be using your labor points as fast so it likely wouldn't help you unless you got unlimited gold.
Basically labor is use for farming and crafting. You use it a little for opening loot that drops off mobs you kill. You also us labor to pay taxes for lands.
Doing anything in the game can make you xp. So if I were to go harvest ore which I can do freely that will use labor. I will also get xp for each thing I harvest. I can also then process the ore and stone into metal and bricks. That gives me xp and uses labor. If I only did this I could pretty quickly run out of labor points and would have to stop and do something that didn't take labor like PvE or PvP.
Where land comes into play is there are many things you can only make on your own land. For example, you get a quest to grow 50 roses. You can't grow roses in public lands. You could try to find some hidden spot to grow them but would likely find them gone when you came back. So you would end up buying the roses from the market. That will cost more than the reward.
Also there are things you might need. You also need a house because some items can only be placed in a house. For example a farmers workstation is needed to make feed for animals, medicine for sick animals and worms for fishing. Without the house you gotta buy this stuff. It adds up quickly.
Anyway without any of these things you don't normally use labor very fast. You can kill stuff and do quests probably uses less labor than you make. You can buy stuff on the market and do trade crafting and trade runs and make some profit although a lot less than if you grew the resources.
Bottom line is if you don't have land you will probably not find a need for more labor. If you do have land you can run out of labor and buy pots will help. It will also let you level up faster since all that harvesting and crafting gives you good xp points.
It doesn't really give you any advantage other than leveling speed.
However there isn't any land available so if you think you will get an account and buy land you should wait till the servers thin out. Right now there isn't any land available anywhere so Patron or F2P are pretty much on even footing.
---
Ethion
I have said already here in this thread today that I have personally entered into an agreement with a freeb guildie that they can use my little farm in exchange for using their labour to help me on my other holdings. With their bit of land, they now make trade runs and can buy labour pots with in game gold.
THIS is what AA is about.
Social networking and cooperation.
Also, land will be opening very soon on all servers due to unpaid taxes etc.
What Ves just described is the cool type of sandbox gameplay that I look for in MMOs. Tools to support this kind of interaction and collaboration and, more importantly, players that make use of it.
There isn't a "right" or "wrong" way to play, if you want to use a screwdriver to put nails into wood, have at it, simply don't complain when the guy next to you with the hammer is doing it much better and easier. - Allein
"Graphics are often supplied by Engines that (some) MMORPG's are built in" - Spuffyre
Archeage falls under the "What, a patron sub isn't enough!?" category when it comes to that argument, though.
(it's not the only game guilty of that. Many facebook games have a VIP subscription AND you STILL need to P2W after subscribing anyways to have a prayer of keeping up with others in a competitive environment. Archeage is..... slightly less worse than that. ....slightly)
but a patron account IS enough, because you can earn the gold easily to buy additional pots 100% through playing the game.
There is absolutely no need to spend more.
Everything in that cash shop can be accessed by playing.
I agree with this in theory but in this case it's not that simple. What if I pay for patron status and get my labour points regenerating at a faster pace but don't buy LP pots? I'm paying to play so that meets your basic requirement that the dev should cater to me.
The guy next to me also pays for patron but then throws a ton of extra money at them for LP pots and gets to craft, loot, farm more than me, makes better gear faster, levels faster and as a direct result gains an advantage in PvP.
That is pay to win. The PvP element of the game makes it pay to win. If it were a purely PvE game I wouldn't call it pay to win because now he's just getting to end game content quicker, that wouldn't affect me. However, seeing as one day he might decide to bitch slap me around in his nice new uber gear, he is winning a fight with me because he paid.
It has been argued that this advantage is only temporary, but it's still an advantage.
I don't see how patron status is "pay 2 win", considering the fact that if you are planning to play this game for anything more than a month you SHOULD be subbing as patron.
Otherwise you are not even a customer (since the game costs nothing to download)
If you are NOT a customer, then why would you even expect to have anything close to equal terms to paying customers? You shouldn't even get support imo.
They are a business. This game is meant to make them money (at least enough to make a living off it). This is their livelihood. I don't understand why do some people expect them to provide you with free entertainment? They do need to eat too, you know.
Imagine if people say you should work for free because you give better services to paying customers and therefore these people are "pay to win"
Just sub if you are planning to play the game for any length of time.
Also, the cash shop doesn't really offer anything powerful that you can't really get from within the game itself (labor pots can be purchased from auctioneer and tax certs can be generated from farms/properties using labor, and if don't have land, you don't really need either).
Sadly, most will play solo with no social effort, look at the situation as a soloer without making any type of social effort, and complain that they feel that they have to pay extra to support themselves, when it just isn't the case.
They are too toilet trained from a decade of railroad MMORPGs to have the imagination in these games to see opportunity and potentiol in a situation.
They also willfully will not see what I am saying here at all, and tune it out in order to continue to complain. Thank you Lok for getting the point I am making.
You can spend gold and buy labor pots from auctioneer (current market price of around 6-7g). It is just a question of whether to can make the labor pot worth the gold being spent is all.
If you pop it and use the labor points to run 10 trade pack runs than the 6-7g spent on the points is pretty much nothing for you.
If you are not a patron then I don't even talk about why you even need labor pots in the first place.
You get it.
Anyone that doesn't make a labour pot pay for itself pay for itself multiple times over just by playing the game needs to stop telling others 'how it is' and start asking others how to play.
No game is pay to win when gold is so easy to come by, and that gold can access everything in the cash shop via the AH and Apex.
No one I play with even pays for their patron status with real money... We all buy it via playing.
You must be joking right. You literally just defined pay to win.
MMO's are about progression, progression is typically measured either in A. Time Spent in game (see EVE skill points), or B. Gear+Levels.
The difference is, gear and levels take time to acheive, so anything that allows you to circumvent that time requirement is by definition pay to win.
The "but you can earn it in game if you do X or Y" is a completely bunk argument that has been shot full of holes about three million times over. I seriously don't understand why people still play that card, its embarassing.
If paying money allows you to get ahead of someone who is NOT able to pay the money, then its pay 2 win, thats simply all there is to it.
"The surest way to corrupt a youth is to instruct him to hold in higher esteem those who think alike than those who think differently."
- Friedrich Nietzsche
"We all do the best we can based on life experience, point of view, and our ability to believe in ourselves." - Naropa "We don't see things as they are, we see them as we are." SR Covey
Exactly. This game is very much about Labor Points management in terms of the trading aspects of it.
I do think that you are right also when you mention that this is a game about being part of the community - even if you did the land grab at the start and got several large farms running there is no way that you'll ever have enough labor points to run all of them without a few others that don't have land using their labor to help you manage it and share the profits.
Numbers matter, that's why guilds seems to be much more sizable in this game compare to others.
This right here, exactly this. P2W isn't a question of "how will the company support the game" or "you can get everything it just takes longer to accomplish" it is merely whether or not paying gets you an advantage and it surely does in archeage.
This is where you choose to vote with your wallet. If you disagree with their model, don't play the game. I honestly don't mean to sound like a prick, but as a consumer those are the choices. You can complain about or disagree with their business model but it's ultimately up to you if you're willing to play the game or not regardless if you decide to pay any money at all or hundreds of dollars a month.
Kind of like real life right?