I'm sorry, but I find the current outrage totally stupid. I understood when people were outraged over value packs (near-mandatory power items) introduced to the game, but this is just silly.
The community accepted that people can buy a pet, a costume or a value pack (from now on: power items) from the item shop and these items constitute advantage over not buyers. If the community wouldn't accept these, everyone were already quit by now and there were no one to protest. So we can conclude that buying "power items" were grudgingly accepted as "tolerable pay to win".
So someone please explain me why
- Adam buying power item is in the cash shop is acceptable
- Betty farming silver in game is acceptable
- Adam getting the silver from Betty in exchange for the power item on the marketplace BAD BAD BAD PAY TO WIN!
PS: thanks to Rohan for his blogsaving tip.
26 comments:
With a value pack you spend 15 (value pack is more like a sub) and still have to work for your silver yourself (crafting etc)
With this you can simply drop 100-150€ a week to get around 500M silver per week (5 costumes at 100M silver based on korean/russian info)
You might get 500M a week with your nice setup, but as you said yourself, not many poeple are going through the little effort to set up as well as you did (I actually don't know how much you get per week)
I understand that. But the 500M was already in the economy. Why do you care if it's in the hand of Adam or Betty?
Because it now concentrates in the hands of Adam from Bettty, from Carl From Diana from Edward from Ferdinand from Gerald from Hans from... from Zack...
This way people with no in game merit can get BiS gear too easy and start derping around like dicks (same problem happened in ArcheAge; people who tend to buy their gear purely with irl money, usually tend to be people who want to be dicks to others to 'show off')
The value pack is not straight silver for $$$, but acts as a multiplier for effort and poeple who invest effort into a game, feel more accomplished and usually have more of a feeling of 'belonging' and are thus more inclined to contribute positively to the game.
So besides the issue of players that can hardly be beaten anymore with 'normal' in game effort, those roflstomping players also have low investment into the game and dont care how many people they upset before they hop to the next 'p2w' game.
So yes direct silver for $$$ (a.k.a. p2w) is an detriment to the overall game health
Already answered you in Featherine thread.
i repeat this here:
We all know that game need money to survive, so i don’t mind paying for pets, costume etc’. this is something i have to pay once (some once per char). the Value pack is basically subscription, everyone that going to be comparative gong to have it. All this option still put the competitive players on equal footing in the game.
Now they add option to transfer cash to silver. this is endless pit (ye its only 5 item per week, but they will change it). So there is no way for me to play competitive with people that put 5k a month on the game.
Game for me is hobby, i like to play at competitive level using my time and brain. i don’t mind paying for my hobby, but this just kill it for me.
The game also build to give p2w people the feeling of god:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ELX4FkJL8Yc
Isn’t the reason you left world of tank was that you understood the game is rigged for p2w people? this is the same.
And for the argument that silver don't appear and just trade hands: lets pretend we are 5 hostile countries that have some king of war/cold war. then one country somehow buy all the other three countries war arsenal and make them non factor. now i face one country that can crash my country in 3 days. No new soldiers or equipment was created from nothing and still my country is fucked :P
In AA where the p2w is there for a while, the guilds that control the server are all whales guilds.
Shivaro
@Trenjeska Schutte
> This way people with no in game merit can get BiS gear too easy and start derping around like dicks
If you mean "no in game merit" as noobs, then what is the problem, pwn them with your merit.
If you mean "no in game merit" as they "had to do less things than me", then what is the problem, they paid for your effort.
The only thing I'd be worried about is them causing a rise in the top gear prices.
How about you stop whining and embrace gevlonism instead, uniting and pwning all the Adams.
Because it allows people to directly gear their character with their wallet only. Before you could buy a couple items that provide minor benefits, now someone can simply pay 200€ on day one for max gear, jumping ahead of the gear curve of people playing for ages.
More importantly, this is something the devs promised wouldn't happen, that specific market tab was removed for the western release. Going back on that can easily be seen as a betrayal of trust of sorts.
@Shivaro: so your problem is that MONEY made the countries unite against you and not ideology or "friendship"
I mean if Adam BUYS Betty's gear that's bad pay to win. If Adam talks Betty out of her gear or makes Betty join his guild and do the PvP for him, that's fair game. How?
The ONLY pay-to-win is if you go to the cash shop and buy "win" (items of unbeatable advantage). Now you buy nothing new, just what you were always buying.
Tithian: It's Betty whose IN-GAME performance pwned you, it was just in the hands of Adam. Why do you care if Adam or Betty pwns you?
@Gevlon
For example:
Tour de France announce sign-up fee for the new season. All teams pay the entry fee and join the new race.
On day 6 of the race, Tour de Frace announces that for 500k $ per day, they will let teams use electric motors on their bikes for 15-20 km only.
You are telling us that this in not pay to win and would be pay to win if they sell the race trophy directly.
Thats what will happened with bdo.
Gear is the most valuable thing in the game and racing for better gear is the goal for all guilds that go for Sieges and Node wars (end game in BDO)
I'm confused. You yourself said, that Unequal payment MMOs will always be pay-to-win.
And now BDO is EXACTLY like Albion Online, meaning you can trade money for silver/gold and there is a defacto subscription (value pack/premium status). But instead of calling BDO P2W you call those that do silly?
Did you have a change of hearth or am I missing something?
@Gevlon: no my problem is one country that buy the other countries(not in game diplomacy, no alliance, just spend cash and get this countries arsenal for them self).
In this game the more silver you get the more power you have. People that will use cash item to buy silver will have advantage(p2w) that other people wont be able to compete with. sure the silver was created in the game by some random f2p player. this player that sold silver was not competitive in the first place so it doesn't matter.
The problem is in p2w you have two kind of player: f2p and p2w. as you explained yourself in the past the f2p are not costumer they don't matter they only used as content for the p2w players.
So you have two option:
1) be f2p player and fail to compete
2) become a wallet warrior.
neither of this option is appealing to me (and my guess to a lot of the competitive player as well).
Shivaro
@Gevlon: by the way what about your ideals about meritocracy:
government or the holding of power by people selected on the basis of their ability.
a society governed by meritocracy.
plural noun: meritocracies
a ruling or influential class of educated or skilled people
p2w is exactly the opposite to this idea - do this people (the p2w) will get power because in game skill? ability? I don't think so.
Gevlon
The amount of power Adam can buy in the cash shop is limited. However, if he can sell to a potentially unlimited number of Betty's then the silver he can buy is similarly unlimited. And hence the amount by which he can upgrade his gear is similarly unlimited.
I have no axe to grind here since I'm enjoying the game casually. But I can see the point of No P2W.
I don't question that BDO (like every other game recently) is pay-to-win.
My point is that the P2W happens when Adam buys an item in the cash shop and not when he exchanges it for silver with Betty.
My secondary point is that the protests are just as silly as protesting against gravity. Since the skill trade results of EVE there is no doubt that the players want P2W and those who are not are a loud minority http://greedygoblin.blogspot.hu/2016/04/the-death-of-subscription-gaming.html
If they quit the game, the publisher just don't care
Now Adam only buys the cash shop items and can't get any more ahead then those items allow. He cannot buy BiS gear yet as that requires only silver (and a lot of it)
After Adam can buy the cash shop items to get an edge AND have enough silver to get the BiS gear from the night vendor/marketplace.
There is imo still a difference between force mulitpliers and outright force.
Once you can get Gear just like that, I stop playing the game indeed. Back to single player games it is then (Stardew Valley here I come! and after that Planescape Torment)
I think you right that the protest was stupid. i personally just logged off never to log back (unless they backtrack this decision).
I don't think that the against p2w people are the minority. Most of them are in the process of leaving the game, the one that stay will of course be pro p2w or just clueless.
Also game design make huge different. In eve even if you had all the skills and all the money, you still piloting one ship that need limited skill point and can explode at any moment in time. Unless you buy half the server alliances, to do something(and in this process distribute your silver to the f2p people) you can't gain much power with real money.
BDO is made as p2w game. It design to give paying players and especially whales god like feeling, using the f2p players as content for them. (see the youtube i link).
"So someone please explain me why
- Adam buying power item is in the cash shop is acceptable"
You already answered this one, buying the power items was basically the same as buying a subscription, which people can accept. As you said here: "So we can conclude that buying "power items" were grudgingly accepted as "tolerable pay to win"." Accepting this compromise didn't mean that people would be ok with additional monthly cash amounts buying more power, however. This seems to be where you went off track in understanding the protests.
"- Betty farming silver in game is acceptable"
This was always accepted, by tradition. Those who can't accept this left the genre long ago.
"- Adam getting the silver from Betty in exchange for the power item on the marketplace BAD BAD BAD PAY TO WIN!"
This is an inaccurate depiction of the change. The change you are describing in the sentence above is a change where players can continue to buy one power item per month, but now can choose to sell it or use it. In this scenario players can't stack benefits over those already deemed equivalent to "subscription equivalent." This is clearly not a good analogy for the actual changes made.
To fix your analogy, we must revisit the first step. Something is different now here: "Adam buying power item is in the cash shop is acceptable" Where the power item was previously limited to a subscription-equivalent price per month, now you can apparently buy another 75$ of items and sell them every month for silver. This is not subscription equivalent, so people are no longer willing to accept this step. All we really changed in your analogy was changing "item" to "items", but it's an important "s".
"I don't question that BDO (like every other game recently) is pay-to-win.
My point is that the P2W happens when Adam buys an item in the cash shop and not when he exchanges it for silver with Betty."
Yes, and now Adam is buying more items per month than before, and people aren't willing to accept this change.
"Since the skill trade results of EVE there is no doubt that the players want P2W and those who are not are a loud minority "
Generalizing from EVE to other games is often misleading.
"The whole BDO sceene is in outrage because the dev is allowing cash shop items to be traded on the marketplace. Hundreds of guilds changed their icon to a P2W logo, so the cities look like this"
"If they quit the game, the publisher just don't care"
I'm guessing the publisher would care if "the whole BDO scene" quit the game.
People are upset because in the old system, you had to put the power items to use by playing. Free players were ok with this because there were two distinct player classes.
With the new system, the paying player can now use his money to bypass the need to play by indirectly purchasing silver. It's now all one class, with the paying players treading over the free players.
It was never about the bonuses themselves. The new system cheapens the value of in-game effort. It's not play to "win," but pay to "not play."
The power is not only in the cash shop items, but in silver as well. The second kind of power (silver) was previously exclusive to those who "actually play". It could be transferred via market between people with different playstyles, but that's considered fair. Now it's not exclusive and whales can get it with real money without actually playing, which is considered unfair.
Your words were: if a player can pay only some limited about of money and get some advantage, it's OK. If a player can pay infinite amounts of money and get advantage with every cent, it's less OK. I know too little about BDO to judge, but from distance it looks like BDO just augmented its P2W and moved towards the latter model. They can buy more power than they could before.
Indeed this increase is limited by the market. If no people will be able to pay silver for cash shop items, whales can't buy too much power. If too many whales sell cash shop items, every single grinder will get those items, having them will be the next baseline, and further power buying will be impossible.
Yet, devs are usually fast with fixing such "little annoyances". Is it worthy of a protest, I don't know.
As last anon, "pay to not play" is exactly what came to my mind. "Pay to win without playing", rather.
I might not know much about BDO, but please enlighten me on a topic.
So, Adam the whale has put some money up and purchased the good gear. Someone sold him that gear, which usually (correct me if I'm wrong) happens when the seller has better gear and sells his older set.
So, basically, Adam the whale has not automatically become the "top dick". He just got on the level, and not even as high as the level of the guy who sold him that gear. So far I don't see anything warranting all the crying.
Now, assuming (correct me if I'm wrong) that silver of yours allows to upgrade gear, and Adam can get the gear more powerful than that of a top player, and the gear itself is more important than (correct me if I'm wrong) player skill, then, and only then, I can see a problem.
If that is the case, then question remains - is Adam the whale identifiable? In EVE, just scan his fit and there you go, instant whale-or-not answer. And in case of a whale, you know happens in EVE? Gangbang. So, the question is, can you just gangbang him? If answer is yes, just protest with your actions.
And if that's not the case, quit whining just because you ain't developer's favorite pet anymore.
I think the protest isn't about the cash shop buyer buying the cash shop item.
Or even about the silver holder getting it by buying it with silver.
It's about the cash shop buyer basically buying silver with cash.
Your argument that the silver was already in, and stays in, the economy doesn't fly because there is now a new reason to farm silver. Hence, more silver is produced.
This scheme is essentially Blizzard's Gold Token / Game Time Token mechanic, but with a bad new aspect of speculation thrown in (Look at Eve PLEX prices under speculation as people buy as a "store of value.")
It's a bad plan. I would be protesting it too.
but BDO is above this, lately your posts about BDO resemble eve more and more and more. Its funny how once you actually cross the fence and spend some time there it really isn't that much greener then where you came from.
Please look at how this game was advertised by their Marketing Manager:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0Thrqnk_r3A&feature=youtu.be
This is a Bait & Switch case.
I would have not played & put 300 eur into this game if the option to convert real money into game currency would have been there from the start.
If they implement it now, will look for option to charge back all my money.
@Anonymous who posted about EVE:
this is the correct comparison, yes. The whale with infinite money that buys the TET Kzarka weapon for 1.03 Billion and the armour to match is not going to have the faintest idea what skills he or she has or what combos to use, and will die fast in any fight. I'd have thought that any player who doesn't want to trade item shop stuff for silver would *want* to find this player, because they'd beat the whale every time.
Which means, yeah: I don't understand the complaints in the slightest. It seems win-win for all concerned, and only the whale with more money than sense has anything to lose.
@seanas, For some reason people only think that the clueless will use p2w and get power.
The reality is that some of the competitive people on the server (the one that will stay) will also use p2w. They will also bend together in the same guilds and will rule the slow death of the server.
You don't have to believe me, just look what happened to ArchAge.
Interesting. This is very similar (basically identical) to PLEX/WOWtoken which Gevlon wrote an aticle about weeks ago as being bad for games (http://greedygoblin.blogspot.com/2016/07/is-plexwow-token-good-idea.html). Here's how:
In WoW, Betty grinds gold, Adam grinds $ IRL. Adam gives $ to developer (gets tradeable subscription). Betty gives gold to developer (auction house). Adam gets Betty's gold, Betty get's Adam's $ (via subscription).
In BDO, there is no subscription, just power items. So in BDO, Betty grinds gold, Adam grinds $ IRL. Adam gives $ to developer (gets tradeable power items). Betty gives gold to developer (auction house). Adam gets Betty's gold, Betty gets Adam's $ (via power items).
It's funny to me that Gevlon sees PLEX as obviously bad but doesn't understand why people are upset about a change in BDO that essential gives BDO PLEX.
@Anon: I see that it's bad and I don't support it. I'm just surprised that people are outraged over the TRADE of power items and not their existence
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