I do not undestand the mentality here, mind boggeling to say the least. Just say NO to the cash shop, playing to gain my levels and gear is nothing at all like paying for insta gear through a cash shop, no how no way. I could go on and on but honestly at this point there is no reasoning with most of the GW2 fans, it has reached levels beyond those "In Bioware we Trust".
I can't believe the spin the OP is actually trying to put on this, lets justify the cash shop somehow, unbelievable. I guess it is ok as well to charge a full price pre purchase to get a spot in beta, something which has NEVER been done before, but you know ANET did it so lets fall on our hands and knees and praise them.
Well, in the OP's defense it's actually common practice now to offer beta spots to people who prepurchase games. In fact, it's been done with several games over the last few years. Not to mention the whole "head start" thing that is now common.
Mortal Online, Star Wars the Old Republic, and TERA are 3 examples of games that have done it.
Then we need to stop calling them betas
Not disagreeing with you there, but that's a whole other topic.
As long as everyone plays by the same rules it doesnt matter. there is nothing else a thempark game can do to make it fair.
People who put in more time are at such an advantage because of the removal of crafters and crafted items. however they play by the same rules as everyone else. Developers have taken the place of crafters and are claiming to do with microtrans what crafters used to do...equalize the playing field as much as possible. But is it still a game at that point?
However every game should have a business model as unique as their game. There is no one model fits all. Whatever makes the best experience, if it's a shop, it;s a shop. If it cheapens the experience...it's not the right model.
I can't believe the spin the OP is actually trying to put on this, lets justify the cash shop somehow, unbelievable. I guess it is ok as well to charge a full price pre purchase to get a spot in beta, something which has NEVER been done before, but you know ANET did it so lets fall on our hands and knees and praise them.
Well, in the OP's defense it's actually common practice now to offer beta spots to people who prepurchase games. In fact, it's been done with several games over the last few years. Not to mention the whole "head start" thing that is now common.
Mortal Online, Star Wars the Old Republic, and TERA are 3 examples of games that have done it.
Sorry but I disagree, when did you pay FULL price to get into beta for SWTOR or TERA, I paid $5 for TERA and SWTOR some people pre ordered the CE and never got in till the final openb beta but at no time did they charge FULL price. We are not talking pre order, ANET is charging full game price for beta slots the two are totally different.
I can't believe the spin the OP is actually trying to put on this, lets justify the cash shop somehow, unbelievable. I guess it is ok as well to charge a full price pre purchase to get a spot in beta, something which has NEVER been done before, but you know ANET did it so lets fall on our hands and knees and praise them.
Well, in the OP's defense it's actually common practice now to offer beta spots to people who prepurchase games. In fact, it's been done with several games over the last few years. Not to mention the whole "head start" thing that is now common.
Mortal Online, Star Wars the Old Republic, and TERA are 3 examples of games that have done it.
Then we need to stop calling them betas
Think we agreed on this a couple nights ago because it is just a marketing scam anyhow.
I can't believe the spin the OP is actually trying to put on this, lets justify the cash shop somehow, unbelievable. I guess it is ok as well to charge a full price pre purchase to get a spot in beta, something which has NEVER been done before, but you know ANET did it so lets fall on our hands and knees and praise them.
Well, in the OP's defense it's actually common practice now to offer beta spots to people who prepurchase games. In fact, it's been done with several games over the last few years. Not to mention the whole "head start" thing that is now common.
Mortal Online, Star Wars the Old Republic, and TERA are 3 examples of games that have done it.
I am not sure if you are aware of this or not but ANET is charging a Pre-Purchase (retail price) for a guaranteed beta slot, this is not the same as in the past with a pre-order which might have cost you 5 bucks. This is BS in my eyes, and is unprecendented in the industry.
... at what point does the purchasing of time translate into power in Guild Wars 2? To be on equal terms in PvP in Guild Wars 2, literally, requires absolutely NO time investment beyond that of a 15 minute tutorial. Structured PvP, the truly competetive game type, is available the MOMENT you enter the actual game world, and is COMPLETELY and TOTALLY untouched and unaffected by any money you spend in the cash shop.
I don't know who you're replying to, but there seems to be a disconnect in what ArenaNet is actually offering the players. The items you can buy are time. In GW2, time does not equal power. No items are being shoved down your throat. Money people spend on the game will not affect you.
At point an advantage is offered in the cash shop. Period. We need to be indiscriminate about this. The more we accept non-cosmetic cash shops in games we already pay a premium to play (I personally think it's fine to offer convenience items in a complete F2P, but we are paying a box price in GW2) the more developers will push the boundaries of items offered in them.
Conquest PvP is balanced, yes. That doesn't mean the rest of the game can have imbalances. Also, GW2 seems to offer more than just "time saving" items, tell me how a resurrection stone that can possibly allow you to zerg bosses in PvE is just time saving. I'm still waiting for someone to blow $30,000 in resurrection stones and solo an explorable mode dungeon with it. It sounds absurd, but I know someone will do it. Have you seen how much rich Saudis blow into these kinds of games?
Also, Mystic Keys is essentially shoving the items down our throats. It's going to be an annoying reminder there is a cash shop and I should pay for it. I'm sure they'll drop quite frequently in the game. We've seen this in games that offer similar "chests" that require "keys" to unlock. It's quite frustrating when you go on a dungeon run and see 10-20 of these items drop that require $1.50 to open drop, clogging your inventory up and requiring you to either destroy them or open them.
As a competitive achiever, anytime someone spends money to reach an accomplishment faster than me does effect me. It may not effect you, but it sure effects me. This is why I don't go for competitive achievements in F2P, even though I'll play them from time to time I can never take them seriously enough because I never know how much of an advantage said person I was competiting with had compared to me. When I go for a competitive achievement in a pay to win game I know I'm on a competitive play field as everyone else. The only competitive play field that exists right now in Guild Wars 2 is conquest, so it's the only mode I'll be able to take seriously in the game which is unfortunate.
I can't believe the spin the OP is actually trying to put on this, lets justify the cash shop somehow, unbelievable. I guess it is ok as well to charge a full price pre purchase to get a spot in beta, something which has NEVER been done before, but you know ANET did it so lets fall on our hands and knees and praise them.
Well, in the OP's defense it's actually common practice now to offer beta spots to people who prepurchase games. In fact, it's been done with several games over the last few years. Not to mention the whole "head start" thing that is now common.
Mortal Online, Star Wars the Old Republic, and TERA are 3 examples of games that have done it.
I am not sure if you are aware of this or not but ANET is charging a Pre-Purchase (retail price) for a guaranteed beta slot, this is not the same as in the past with a pre-order which might have cost you 5 bucks. This is BS in my eyes, and is unprecendented in the industry.
I believe Mortal Online was full price. You can't cancel a preorder from most online retailers so it was basically the same thing if you prepurchased from an online retailer SW:TOR or TERA. It's not really unprecendented. Either way you were still paying for beta access, whether it was $5-10 towards your preorder or full price. The head starts are basically paying for full price for 1-3 days extra retail which is just as bad too. Same goes with preorder bonuses. Not justifying it, but these retailers only want people who are serious about the preorder, preordering the game. If people just cancel their preorder it defeats the entire purpose of having preorders in the first place.
Subscription is pay2win in EQ2. Heck, you get so much better by paying for it that free players have no chanse. They have worse gear and their skills do less damage.
I can't believe the spin the OP is actually trying to put on this, lets justify the cash shop somehow, unbelievable. I guess it is ok as well to charge a full price pre purchase to get a spot in beta, something which has NEVER been done before, but you know ANET did it so lets fall on our hands and knees and praise them.
Well, in the OP's defense it's actually common practice now to offer beta spots to people who prepurchase games. In fact, it's been done with several games over the last few years. Not to mention the whole "head start" thing that is now common.
Mortal Online, Star Wars the Old Republic, and TERA are 3 examples of games that have done it.
I am not sure if you are aware of this or not but ANET is charging a Pre-Purchase (retail price) for a guaranteed beta slot, this is not the same as in the past with a pre-order which might have cost you 5 bucks. This is BS in my eyes, and is unprecendented in the industry.
I believe Mortal Online was full price. You can't cancel a preorder from most online retailers so it was basically the same thing if you prepurchased from an online retailer SW:TOR or TERA. It's not really unprecendented. Either way you were still paying for beta access, whether it was $5-10 towards your preorder or full price. The head starts are basically paying for full price for 1-3 days extra retail which is just as bad too. Same goes with preorder bonuses. Not justifying it, but these retailers only want people who are serious about the preorder, preordering the game. If people just cancel their preorder it defeats the entire purpose of having preorders in the first place.
See IMHO it is a marketing ploy and again one which no Major dev has charged full price before, MO has what 100 people playing it? I can always go to my local gamestop and cancel my pre order if I did not like the so called beta. Here they are sucking you in charging full price for a marketing ploy, it is not a real Beta let's get serious but if you think it is ok for them to do that knock yourself out on $50. Me I stand behind my principles I did not buy ME3 because of the day 1 DLC nor will I play this due to the cash shop and BS beta scam.
Subscription is pay2win in EQ2. Heck, you get so much better by paying for it that free players have no chanse. They have worse gear and their skills do less damage.
It's exactly the same for free accounts in Anarchy Online. But that model has been around for Years. It's because you don't have access to all expansions
Subscription is pay2win in EQ2. Heck, you get so much better by paying for it that free players have no chanse. They have worse gear and their skills do less damage.
EQ2 was subscription first then they changed models, totally unrelated.
The question I keep asking myself is why is there such blind faith in a Dev that made a mediocre semi MMO (GW1) to begin with, backed by a money grubbing parent company called NCSoft, that at the end of the day all they really want is your money plain and simple.
The premise of this thread was founded to kick around the idea that what ANet is doing is actually better for GW2 than traditional Revenue models.
To me, It's not. Because With the cash shop, they also said there will be sinks
It's these sinks that bother me. They will be there to reabsob currency to combat inflation from the cash shop. But this will burry the non cash shop user who will have to work that much harder to compensate.
And the other sinks. I would expect that what we are going to call "Items of Convienience" will have some kind of counter part in the game. The "sink" if you will, that will be there to make us want the items in the shop. I think it's very naive to think that we can look at the items in the shop and say point blank. Those mean nothing to me. They are going t obe there for a reason. They wouldn't go through the trouble of putting something in there that has little to no value.
See IMHO it is a marketing ploy and again one which no Major dev has charged full price before, MO has what 100 people playing it? I can always go to my local gamestop and cancel my pre order if I did not like the so called beta. Here they are sucking you in charging full price for a marketing ploy, it is not a real Beta let's get serious but if you think it is ok for them to do that knock yourself out on $50. Me I stand behind my principles I did not buy ME3 because of the day 1 DLC nor will I play this due to the cash shop and BS beta scam.
Betas really aren't suppose to be about getting players to decide whether they want to buy the game or not. That's what demos and trials are for. Betas are usually about testing the game (usually the public betas being stress tests on the servers) with a larger amount of people than their QA and Testers. Preorders are to get a gauge of how many people are going to buy the game (especially Collector's Editions). Besides, GW2 also has a free beta too that requires no prepurchase.
Someone the other day and I forget who nailed it on the head, all these companies have realized how lucrative the gold farming business is and now want a piece. That is really what they are doing nothing more nothing less and to me they are not any better.
EQ2 was subscription first then they changed models, totally unrelated.
The question I keep asking myself is why is there such blind faith in a Dev that made a mediocre semi MMO (GW1) to begin with, backed by a money grubbing parent company called NCSoft, that at the end of the day all they really want is your money plain and simple.
In my case because I played GW for 5 years and love it. Just because you don't doesn't mean it is a bad game. I am pretty sure I am unimpressed by plenty of games you like as well without I calling them "mediocre".
And yeah, NC soft are money grabbing like all big publishing houses but they are nowhere near EA, Atari or Activision. AAA MMOs are sadly so expensive to make today that very few independent companies can make them.¨
I don't have blind fate, usually when I love a game the sequel is at least worth the money and time to play it.
If you hated GW and havn't tried GW2 we can talk about blind fate though.
I can't believe the spin the OP is actually trying to put on this, lets justify the cash shop somehow, unbelievable. I guess it is ok as well to charge a full price pre purchase to get a spot in beta, something which has NEVER been done before, but you know ANET did it so lets fall on our hands and knees and praise them.
The cash shop so far doesn't bother me as I've seen nothing I consider to be Pay2Win.
As for the pre purchase to get into beta - why should a company give beta access to just anyone? I think that makes good business sense. A beta is supposed to be a testing phase. You do that testing with people who you think are going to actually play your game. By granting beta access to those of us who pre purchase, they can get close to eliminating people who use the beta to figure out if they want to even play the game. It's basically them protecting their brand and I see nothing wrong with that.
It sounds to me like your not that big a fan of Anet, which makes me think you won't be buying the game any time soon. So, why then should YOU get into the beta at the expense of me (someone who will pre purchase) getting into it. If it were a typical beta - fill out the application and hope to get picked - why should you be able to take a spot from me?
So, what about the Cash Shop don't you like? Or did I just get caught walking over the Troll's bridge again?
You want me to pay to play a game I already paid for???
See IMHO it is a marketing ploy and again one which no Major dev has charged full price before, MO has what 100 people playing it? I can always go to my local gamestop and cancel my pre order if I did not like the so called beta. Here they are sucking you in charging full price for a marketing ploy, it is not a real Beta let's get serious but if you think it is ok for them to do that knock yourself out on $50. Me I stand behind my principles I did not buy ME3 because of the day 1 DLC nor will I play this due to the cash shop and BS beta scam.
Betas really aren't suppose to be about getting players to decide whether they want to buy the game or not. That's what demos and trials are for. Betas are usually about testing the game (usually the public betas being stress tests on the servers) with a larger amount of people than their QA and Testers. Preorders are to get a gauge of how many people are going to buy the game (especially Collector's Editions). Besides, GW2 also has a free beta too that requires no prepurchase.
We're going off topic a bit here.
Again I must redspectfully disagree with you, but if you think that it is ok to charge full price for a guaranteed spot in this so called beta test that is your prerogative.
Originally posted by Distopia Originally posted by Dreadblade
Originally posted by Jakard
Gotta be honest. Have no idea what the OP is talking about. It went over my head.
He is trying to reverse spin the sub model, to justify the cash shop in a nutshell. The proverbial smoke-screen sums it up fairly well.
I don't think that's fair. The only smoke in this thread seems to be coming from subscription model supporters, who either don't comprehend the OP, or who do understand it, but aren't offering any reasonimg behind why time is somehow less valuable than money.
There also appears to be a huge gap in knowledge about how this game is structured, and how far cash items can actually take you.
Someone the other day and I forget who nailed it on the head, all these companies have realized how lucrative the gold farming business is and now want a piece. That is really what they are doing nothing more nothing less and to me they are not any better.
So it is as bad to have a cashshop as to hijack peoples accounts? Because that is how most gold sellers got their money nowadays.
Don't get me wrong here, RMT suck but you are comparing someone who download music from piratebay with someone who robs people.
Comments
I do not undestand the mentality here, mind boggeling to say the least. Just say NO to the cash shop, playing to gain my levels and gear is nothing at all like paying for insta gear through a cash shop, no how no way. I could go on and on but honestly at this point there is no reasoning with most of the GW2 fans, it has reached levels beyond those "In Bioware we Trust".
Not disagreeing with you there, but that's a whole other topic.
As long as everyone plays by the same rules it doesnt matter. there is nothing else a thempark game can do to make it fair.
People who put in more time are at such an advantage because of the removal of crafters and crafted items. however they play by the same rules as everyone else. Developers have taken the place of crafters and are claiming to do with microtrans what crafters used to do...equalize the playing field as much as possible. But is it still a game at that point?
However every game should have a business model as unique as their game. There is no one model fits all. Whatever makes the best experience, if it's a shop, it;s a shop. If it cheapens the experience...it's not the right model.
Sorry but I disagree, when did you pay FULL price to get into beta for SWTOR or TERA, I paid $5 for TERA and SWTOR some people pre ordered the CE and never got in till the final openb beta but at no time did they charge FULL price. We are not talking pre order, ANET is charging full game price for beta slots the two are totally different.
Think we agreed on this a couple nights ago because it is just a marketing scam anyhow.
After some thought, My definition of P2W (And this is a general rule, I won't say absolute)
Is when you can break the isolation of the game.
Meaning we all start out in a world and from that starting point, we all have the same things at our disposal. Nothing more nothing less.
Everything we do with/to our characters happens from within the game only. And it has to be the same for everyone.
Once you beak that isoloation for anyone, you lose the integrety of equality.
I am not sure if you are aware of this or not but ANET is charging a Pre-Purchase (retail price) for a guaranteed beta slot, this is not the same as in the past with a pre-order which might have cost you 5 bucks. This is BS in my eyes, and is unprecendented in the industry.
At point an advantage is offered in the cash shop. Period. We need to be indiscriminate about this. The more we accept non-cosmetic cash shops in games we already pay a premium to play (I personally think it's fine to offer convenience items in a complete F2P, but we are paying a box price in GW2) the more developers will push the boundaries of items offered in them.
Conquest PvP is balanced, yes. That doesn't mean the rest of the game can have imbalances. Also, GW2 seems to offer more than just "time saving" items, tell me how a resurrection stone that can possibly allow you to zerg bosses in PvE is just time saving. I'm still waiting for someone to blow $30,000 in resurrection stones and solo an explorable mode dungeon with it. It sounds absurd, but I know someone will do it. Have you seen how much rich Saudis blow into these kinds of games?
Also, Mystic Keys is essentially shoving the items down our throats. It's going to be an annoying reminder there is a cash shop and I should pay for it. I'm sure they'll drop quite frequently in the game. We've seen this in games that offer similar "chests" that require "keys" to unlock. It's quite frustrating when you go on a dungeon run and see 10-20 of these items drop that require $1.50 to open drop, clogging your inventory up and requiring you to either destroy them or open them.
As a competitive achiever, anytime someone spends money to reach an accomplishment faster than me does effect me. It may not effect you, but it sure effects me. This is why I don't go for competitive achievements in F2P, even though I'll play them from time to time I can never take them seriously enough because I never know how much of an advantage said person I was competiting with had compared to me. When I go for a competitive achievement in a pay to win game I know I'm on a competitive play field as everyone else. The only competitive play field that exists right now in Guild Wars 2 is conquest, so it's the only mode I'll be able to take seriously in the game which is unfortunate.
I believe Mortal Online was full price. You can't cancel a preorder from most online retailers so it was basically the same thing if you prepurchased from an online retailer SW:TOR or TERA. It's not really unprecendented. Either way you were still paying for beta access, whether it was $5-10 towards your preorder or full price. The head starts are basically paying for full price for 1-3 days extra retail which is just as bad too. Same goes with preorder bonuses. Not justifying it, but these retailers only want people who are serious about the preorder, preordering the game. If people just cancel their preorder it defeats the entire purpose of having preorders in the first place.
Subscription is pay2win in EQ2. Heck, you get so much better by paying for it that free players have no chanse. They have worse gear and their skills do less damage.
See IMHO it is a marketing ploy and again one which no Major dev has charged full price before, MO has what 100 people playing it? I can always go to my local gamestop and cancel my pre order if I did not like the so called beta. Here they are sucking you in charging full price for a marketing ploy, it is not a real Beta let's get serious but if you think it is ok for them to do that knock yourself out on $50. Me I stand behind my principles I did not buy ME3 because of the day 1 DLC nor will I play this due to the cash shop and BS beta scam.
It's exactly the same for free accounts in Anarchy Online. But that model has been around for Years. It's because you don't have access to all expansions
Nope.
It would be if they had scaled subscriptions where the higher prices allowed you to get an advantage.
EQ2 was subscription first then they changed models, totally unrelated.
The question I keep asking myself is why is there such blind faith in a Dev that made a mediocre semi MMO (GW1) to begin with, backed by a money grubbing parent company called NCSoft, that at the end of the day all they really want is your money plain and simple.
Gotta be honest. Have no idea what the OP is talking about. It went over my head.
He is trying to reverse spin the sub model, to justify the cash shop in a nutshell.
The proverbial smoke-screen sums it up fairly well.
For every minute you are angry , you lose 60 seconds of happiness."-Emerson
The premise of this thread was founded to kick around the idea that what ANet is doing is actually better for GW2 than traditional Revenue models.
To me, It's not. Because With the cash shop, they also said there will be sinks
It's these sinks that bother me. They will be there to reabsob currency to combat inflation from the cash shop. But this will burry the non cash shop user who will have to work that much harder to compensate.
And the other sinks. I would expect that what we are going to call "Items of Convienience" will have some kind of counter part in the game. The "sink" if you will, that will be there to make us want the items in the shop. I think it's very naive to think that we can look at the items in the shop and say point blank. Those mean nothing to me. They are going t obe there for a reason. They wouldn't go through the trouble of putting something in there that has little to no value.
Betas really aren't suppose to be about getting players to decide whether they want to buy the game or not. That's what demos and trials are for. Betas are usually about testing the game (usually the public betas being stress tests on the servers) with a larger amount of people than their QA and Testers. Preorders are to get a gauge of how many people are going to buy the game (especially Collector's Editions). Besides, GW2 also has a free beta too that requires no prepurchase.
We're going off topic a bit here.
Someone the other day and I forget who nailed it on the head, all these companies have realized how lucrative the gold farming business is and now want a piece. That is really what they are doing nothing more nothing less and to me they are not any better.
In my case because I played GW for 5 years and love it. Just because you don't doesn't mean it is a bad game. I am pretty sure I am unimpressed by plenty of games you like as well without I calling them "mediocre".
And yeah, NC soft are money grabbing like all big publishing houses but they are nowhere near EA, Atari or Activision. AAA MMOs are sadly so expensive to make today that very few independent companies can make them.¨
I don't have blind fate, usually when I love a game the sequel is at least worth the money and time to play it.
If you hated GW and havn't tried GW2 we can talk about blind fate though.
The cash shop so far doesn't bother me as I've seen nothing I consider to be Pay2Win.
As for the pre purchase to get into beta - why should a company give beta access to just anyone? I think that makes good business sense. A beta is supposed to be a testing phase. You do that testing with people who you think are going to actually play your game. By granting beta access to those of us who pre purchase, they can get close to eliminating people who use the beta to figure out if they want to even play the game. It's basically them protecting their brand and I see nothing wrong with that.
It sounds to me like your not that big a fan of Anet, which makes me think you won't be buying the game any time soon. So, why then should YOU get into the beta at the expense of me (someone who will pre purchase) getting into it. If it were a typical beta - fill out the application and hope to get picked - why should you be able to take a spot from me?
So, what about the Cash Shop don't you like? Or did I just get caught walking over the Troll's bridge again?
You want me to pay to play a game I already paid for???
Be afraid.....The dragons are HERE!
Again I must redspectfully disagree with you, but if you think that it is ok to charge full price for a guaranteed spot in this so called beta test that is your prerogative.
The proverbial smoke-screen sums it up fairly well.
I don't think that's fair. The only smoke in this thread seems to be coming from subscription model supporters, who either don't comprehend the OP, or who do understand it, but aren't offering any reasonimg behind why time is somehow less valuable than money.
There also appears to be a huge gap in knowledge about how this game is structured, and how far cash items can actually take you.
So it is as bad to have a cashshop as to hijack peoples accounts? Because that is how most gold sellers got their money nowadays.
Don't get me wrong here, RMT suck but you are comparing someone who download music from piratebay with someone who robs people.