Do these people realize that if I wanted to I could just buy gold from a gold farmer instead?
At least this way discourages that practice.
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Do these people realize that if I wanted to I could just buy gold from a gold farmer instead?
At least this way discourages that practice.
RepairmanJack
Member
It also stops them from constant ads and from accounts constantly being hacked. These things will still happen, but far less with them putting a handle on it. But like I said everyone seems to be completely forgetting the Karma currency and everyone is thinking they can simply buy everything in the game with real money.
Nobody thinks things through beyond their first instinctual thought. Some don't even get that far.
MoonLightWave
Member
TERA is awesome, what's up with the hate? GW2 is overhyped as fuck.
I played several of the weekend betas. It's the same old Korean MMO with a shiny exterior.
If it's for you, cool. Not for me though. Haven't played a single foreign MMO that was.
I just don't dig the style. Chicks with bikini armor and lolitas. Heavy anime influence. Everyone looks entirely the same while leveling.
I didn't get much over level 20 so I can't say too much for the gameplay except that I didn't enjoy it much. The coolest thing was the first couple of flight paths. Very beautiful, but that's all.
Hype! Let's go! Excite get.
Gold sellers weren't that strong in GW1 due to how easy it was to get max armor and weapons. People still farmed to make gold and all, but the lack of need for it sort of deflated that market. They even offered GW leveling services which I thought was hilarious.
This GEM news does not soften the emptiness of my email box.
This GEM news does not soften the emptiness of my email box.
For this system to have any sort of success, there have to be a lot of gold sinks. WoW had this problem when I quit. Tons of gold, nothing to spend it on, the rich got richer and the poor got poorer. 5k gold for epic flying was nothing to some, but for others took months.
One could argue that the gems themselves are a gold sink. True, but there has to be balance. Too much available in gold or too much available with gems leads to an imbalanced economy.
No point in speculation, though. We know next to nothing.
One could argue that the gems themselves are a gold sink. True, but there has to be balance. Too much available in gold or too much available with gems leads to an imbalanced economy.
No point in speculation, though. We know next to nothing.
The poor in WoW most definitely did not get poorer. And having nothing to spend gold on definitely does not make you poorer.
The hilarious inflation meant that when I came back to play, my commodity trade good materials were worth way more on the AH, giving me the buying power to break into the market.
The prices went up a bit, but I passed the point in Cata where there was anything useful for me to purchase on the AH for my entire guild by putting in some time.
I don't know who was taking months to earn 5k, but uh... you'redoingitwrong.gif
Same principle here, just allowing me to choose whether my time or my money is better invested.
You can be certain they're keenly aware of the need for reliable gold sinks to keep the exchange rate reasonable, but even if they're aren't a lot of good ones, that just means that the price of items bought and sold on the AH goes up, giving you a way in to the economy via consumable gathered materials.
The hilarious inflation meant that when I came back to play, my commodity trade good materials were worth way more on the AH, giving me the buying power to break into the market.
The prices went up a bit, but I passed the point in Cata where there was anything useful for me to purchase on the AH for my entire guild by putting in some time.
I don't know who was taking months to earn 5k, but uh... you'redoingitwrong.gif
Same principle here, just allowing me to choose whether my time or my money is better invested.
You can be certain they're keenly aware of the need for reliable gold sinks to keep the exchange rate reasonable, but even if they're aren't a lot of good ones, that just means that the price of items bought and sold on the AH goes up, giving you a way in to the economy via consumable gathered materials.
My guess is it will never settle. The longer the game is out the higher the cost.
Oh I'm sorry, did you want to actually make a point about the quality of using increased mob counts etc to require CC and make encounters harder? It achieved it's goal but the primary result was rather than using awareness and reaction to counter the increased difficulty you just wound up with longer fights and longer dungeons. The CC fights padded the path between bosses. Now I prefer it to what went down in WotLK but at the same time I agree that there are better ways to increase difficulty. If that's the point that was being made then it was being made poorly
It's a side effect of having no monthly fee. Server slots cost them more storage space.
Yeah I wish there were more slots. I'll be doing the same thing I did in GW1, which was have a slot or two reserved for pvp character that gets deleted and remade often. I think it works against their wanting pve characters to be able to be pvp characters and vice versa to force people into this practice.
BTW, I'm pretty sure GW1 had four slots and then two additional slots for each Nightfalls and Factions.
Lumination
'enry 'ollins
Yep, this was how it worked. Idk, 4 slots for 6 professions, 6/8, and 8/10 slots seems pretty fair to me. Especially compared to WoW and FFXI, which charged you an additional monthly fee for each slot, if I remember correctly.
FF did that. western MMOs typically don't (until they go f2p/microtransaction based). WoW lets you have 50 characters accross all realms, 10 per realm, and are adding an 11th with monks so you can still have 1 of each class on any given server. That said, since this IS a microtransaction game I fully expect it to be similar to GW1, where you do need more slots to make every profession. Just wanted to clarify for misinformation's sake
razgriz417
Member
So they've confirmed that we'll get 5 character slots per copy? Anyone got a link? If it is 5, that's perfectly fine with me, was expecting between 4-5. With this game not having a monthly fee, it makes perfect sense to encourage the purchase of additional slots (need to pay those server costs somehow)
Warrior_Keoni
Member
I would gladly support paying for additional character slots. Guild Wars occasionally had a sale where additional slots were 50% off sometime! If you're the type to work on 1-2 characters, just wait for a bit and they might have a sale later down the road.
What videos have you been watching? Dynamic events are on-going whether the player is there or not, and based on their participation, those bad guys don't wait around; they occupy an area or move on to attack others. The only thing close to the traditional questing scheme (which Tera uses, mind you) is the personal quest.
The Pre-Purchase explicitly states that there's a 3 day head start. That isn't definitive, but there is a three-day weekend coming up soon for Memorial Day. If the headstart begins on May 26th and runs through the 28th (Memorial day), then it would fit the traditional Tuesday launch date too. I'm hopeful it'll happen.
I just got a new PC as an early anniversary / "Stop bitching about your 7 year old PC, Retro" gift from my wife, so I'm set in that regard. I could use a new desk (I'm using a 4 foot folding table now), but I'd rather wait to buy some awesome office-style desk. I can live with what I have now.
I've always wanted a big wrap-around desk though, something L-shaped. With cabinets above. And lots of leg room. Too bad there's no room in the office for the monstrosity I would want.
Hmm... That raises an interesting point; as you play on one character, in theory you could be raising the money needed for an alt character slot.
- Experience Potions
- Karma Potions (maybe, they imply that Karma is sort of a game-only feature)
- Extra storage, both bank and on-character bags. I'd buy bags for a new character, I hate starting off with no storage.
- Vanity/costume gear.
- Pets
- Transmutation stones
- Dyes. Probably just let you buy all of the ones you'd normally have to find seeds for.
When they get around to adding player/guild housing (they've said they want to have these shortly after launch), that's a whole slew of furniture, rugs, wall-papers, knick-knacks and crafting stations they can sell.
Awesome. I'm trying to convince the wife to take part in having a big nerd fest for launch; stock up on nerd-staples like Mountain Dew and Funyuns and just revel in the silliness of it. We haven't had an MMO launch together so it would be a nice little nerd party.
If I remember right, subscribing to LotRO after it went free to play basically just gave you a bunch of free points each month to spend in the store. We haven't seen anything that says they won't let you buy a monthly plan to get x points every 30 days or so, but we haven't seen anything that says they will either. It'd be a neat option.
Whenever you set foot in PVP or WvW, your character is automatically kicked up to Level 80. In Competitive PVP, you also have your gear replaced with a built-in set so nobody has an unfair advantage in terms of gear. I've not heard the same for WvW, however.
this: "its never OK for players who spend money to have an unfair advantage over players who spend time."
...could mean some really annoying things are easily available for gems though... can you buy that uber-weapon that normally you get from that epic dungeon with gems on your lowbie? they don't leave that out of the question at-all...
one of my big worries is that there are going to be uber-geared characters in lowbie zones (or wherever) skewing the difficulty curve.
i also really resent it when by "convenience items" they mean "things that really should be part of the main game interface, but we figured we'd charge extra for them". that's not necessarily the case here, but if i need to spend gems to reasonably manage my inventory (for example), that's annoying (hopefully they're covering this with "be able to enjoy what they paid for", but that's a fairly subjective comment).
not nearly enough information here to suggest that microtransactions aren't going to be detrimental to the game. having the people willing to spend real$ able to affect in-game inflation in a real way is going to be bad (for those who aren't doing it), certainly.
That's what I have a wife for.
She reads GAF and has an awesome sense of humor, but if you guys don't hear from me, send help.
They explicitly state that "it’s never OK for players to buy a game and not be able to enjoy what they paid for without additional purchases, and it’s never OK for players who spend money to have an unfair advantage over players who spend time." So your worries about buying uber-weapons or having pumped-up characters in lowbie zones can be safely laid to rest. The only thing you have to worry about are players who buy a bunch of gold and then blow it all on high-end lowbie weapons to make themselves look cool for 2 or 3 levels... we call those people idiots.
As for Convenience Items, they're talking about things like additional storage, XP potions, etc. These are not things they put into the game, then put behind a cash-shop barrier to screw people out of money. The only thing that strikes me as even close to that is additional character slots, and in all honesty not everyone needs 10 slots anyways. The reason these are considered conveniences is, not everyone has the time to play as much as they'd like, and a lot of things in the game accumulate over time (Money, Karma, XP). If people want to spend a little of their hard-earned money (which is probably why they can't play so much in the first place), ANet has provided a safe method, rather than going through a black market.
Ask yourself this; which is more important; money or time? Which is easier to get back?
There are no strictly PVP characters. Every character starts out in PVE but can go to the PvP area and instantly bump to 80 with full gear (like how pvp characters began in GW1).
I hope there are no prior restrictions, like hitting level 2 or getting past starting area. Quickly making a character for a certain purpose in PvP was great in the first game.
i'm actually playing the game for fun, and will quite happily grind away at it, gem-free for as long as it continues to be fun......but it's an mmo, and what other people are going to be doing may affect my fun... in an instanced co-op game, i don't care that stranger69 has dethBlade9000... but if they show up in my combat and fell the boss i've been working on for 10 minutes in three seconds, i'll be annoyed and having less fun.
we'll see how it goes, of course... i generally feel that microtransactions are fundamentally dangerous to game design; not necessarily a gamebreaker, but very difficult to get right.
FutureZombie
Banned
The only way micro-transactions could hurt other players is if they gave an advantage to players in WvW. And I don't see that happening since the best gear is never available through vendors.
I'm in favor of whatever system pumps the most money into GW2 without unbalancing WvW.
I'm in favor of whatever system pumps the most money into GW2 without unbalancing WvW.
...but it's an mmo, and what other people are going to be doing may affect my fun... in an instanced co-op game, i don't care that stranger69 has dethBlade9000... but if they show up in my combat and fell the boss i've been working on for 10 minutes in three seconds, i'll be annoyed and having less fun.
we'll see how it goes, of course... i generally feel that microtransactions are fundamentally dangerous to game design; not necessarily a gamebreaker, but very difficult to get right.
I'm thinking the only thing I'll buy from the cash shop (and this could change, of course, as the actual items are revealed) are character slots to feed my alt-itis. I'll be right there with you grinding up money, loot and karma because that's part of the fun.
As for the Stranger69 showing up with his uber-sword, I don't think any item players can get their hands on will be able to have that level of advantage. Remember that characters are 'sidekicked' to the level of the content they're in, and that includes their gear, so even a max level character with an awesome weapon won't have any kind of significant advantage over the people who are actually at the appropriate level.
We don't know until we see what items are actually for sale, but ANet has followed through on their promises so far and I don't think we have any reason to doubt them when they say that cash shop items will have zero impact on actual gameplay or character power. If they want to go out and blow their real-world money on in-game gold and buy an awesome weapon, they're just hurting themselves by wasting money and trying to power through the game instead of learning how to play it better.
I can't remember the name of it anymore, but my brother and I briefly played a mech-combat game from NCSoft which had game-affecting cash shop items. The regular populace referred to people who bought their mechs instead of earning them as 'coiners' (after NCoins, the currency used) and considered them easy kills because they thought the stats on their weapons would make up for their inability to actually play the game well. The flashier the mech, the easier they were to stomp nine times out of ten.
I think we're safe. Because GW2's combat has much more emphasis on movement, the environment, strategy and player skill, rather than just raw statistical superiority, even people who blow a ton of money on gold to buy an Ubersword aren't going to be able to rely on just that to win.
We just had a video (I think it was the interview with Colin Johansen that MMORPG just did) where they were talking about a smaller organized group picking off the stragglers of a larger group and thinning out their numbers as they went, and the larger group splintering because of poor organization. We've also had stories from Kill 10 Rats of a few well-coordinated players taking on 10 sloppy journalists and soundly defeating them.
I can't say anything for sure at this point, but all signs point to skill beating stats. If little Richie MoneyBags wants to blow his allowance buying awesome gear, he can enjoy how shiny it looks while he's staring at his corpse. Too bad they won't have mouthwash for sale in the cash shop, he'll have a hard time getting the taste of dungeon floor out of his mouth.
do we know how this works? (i don't think i had realized it affected your gear). i assume you keep your skills? a skill on a level 80 weapon might still be a *lot* better than a low-level skill just because it has an unusual effect.
as long as the community is mostly good, it probably doesn't matter much, truthfully...
(and i'm not specifically adverse to the cash shop... i'm quite willing to buy some types of things there... sometimes these decisions are removed from the hands of the game designers, however.)
You'll still have any effects that traits apply to your skills, but I assume the numerical parts of those will scale down just like the rest of your stats.
RepairmanJack
Member
I'm starting to see confirmation that the emails for the beta client have gone out. The sadness is setting in...
I'll have to look for a specific source (and Jira, if you're out there, you probably know right where to look), but we have had Anet confirm that characters and gear scale up and down based on content.
As for skills, in the Beta it looked like you unlock weapon skills pretty quickly, and there's no difference between a Level 1 Greatsword and a Level 80: they both have the exact same 5 skills. You also buy your utility skills in any order you like, so even if there is some kind of "iWin" ability, you can buy it at any level as long as you have the skill points for it (which seemed pretty easy to get early on).
I have 250,000 gold in Wow and I have not played since April. It's easy to make money in WoW, anyone who is poor is an idiot.
ah right... i had forgotten all weapons had the same abilities...
and you only downscale in level, as i recall (exception: pvp/wvw) if you head into an area above your level you're just getting in over your head (as it should be
I think the upscaling only works if you're in a group, but that's PVE anyways. I also agree that that's how it should work too.
But yeah, WvW and competitive PVP, everyone is automatically kicked up to 80. Since you were worried about cash shop affecting WvW, that's good news.
I think when I threw in the towel I had ~100k sitting across all of my characters, and the most I ever did was throw ore on the AH or cut gems for people in trade chat. The biggest reason I had money is that there wasn't really anything to spend it on unless you wanted some kind of ridiculous 3-seater mammoth or a goofy pet.
Maleficence
Member
The combat is good for a while, the graphics/art are beautiful (mostly)... outside of that it's actually pretty shit.
Since every profession can control, support and damage, the only thing really stopping them from putting in new professions is finding ways to make them unique. I would expect to see new professions in future expansions, along with new weapons (thus, adding to what the old professions can do as well).
Wouldn't be shocked if we saw another heavy armor ("Soldier") profession in the next expansion, so each armor class has three professions. Throw in Spears / Halberds / Javelins and there ya go.
I also kinda would love to see whips added in. As unrealistic as whips are as actual weapons, they're still ingrained into popular culture (Catwoman, Indiana Jones, Castlevania, etc.) and I think they could do some interesting things with them.
Yeah they went out at about 2 am est just like the invites.
Wow it's gotten pretty bad then. It's about $7 - $8 for 10,000 gold according to playerauctions.com. Dat economy.
RepairmanJack
Member
I was just bringing weapons up the other day. I would really like to see some kind of long staff like item. Either it be a scythe or a spear or javelin or something. It would work great with a Monk type profession. Also if they bring in another heavy armor profession it would be great for them to add in two handed axes(don't really get why they arent in for warrior and gaurdian but I guess they have enough weapons)
They can release holidays costumes too, which is fine by me. Something that people is forgetting(like the people at Guru) is that if we get gear for gems, it will be gear with nice looks and not a +300 uber awesome / +4 attunements at once.
Pets too. (The cosmetic ones)
Found this article about the cosmetic store that touch good points:
http://www.thetyrianorder.com/home/m/2850070/article/638922
Paragons, baby. They wore heavy-ish armor and used spears extensively. With their expansion, bring in Spears (one-handed pole weapon), Halberds (two-handed) and Javelins (Off-hand).
They already have staves but they could add in Scythes as part of the "Pole Weapon" theme to give Casters something to look forward to. What Necromancer wouldn't love a Scythe? What Guardian wouldn't love a "Swords to Plowshares" theme where the scythe is a heavy support/caster weapon? And an elementalist with a flaming scythe of doom? Love it.
And it would make Teknopathetic happy.
Yes, fantastic article there that should answer everyone's cash-shop related woes. Nice find.
RepairmanJack
Member
He makes some very good points. But he says "to put it simply" way too much. The points of player made economy and supply and demand are great. Wonder if this will be posted on guru. :lol
Got it from there, in the middle of the fire and chaos.
RepairmanJack
Member
Paragons, baby. They wore heavy-ish armor and used spears extensively. With their expansion, bring in Spears (one-handed pole weapon), Halberds (two-handed) and Javelins (Off-hand).
They already have staves but they could add in Scythes as part of the "Pole Weapon" theme to give Casters something to look forward to. What Necromancer wouldn't love a Scythe? What Guardian wouldn't love a "Swords to Plowshares" theme where the scythe is a heavy support/caster weapon? And an elementalist with a flaming scythe of doom? Love it.
And it would make Teknopathetic happy.
Yes, fantastic article there that should answer everyone's cash-shop related woes. Nice find.
The whole idea of adding new weapons into the game further down the road has me excited for the possibilities. It is a much better way to put a fresh look on an older profession rather than just getting a few new spells each expansion.
Also not sure on Paragons, I never really played GW1. I might have to look into them.
So probably being ignored. I had to walk away from being over there after I saw people saying they weren't going to pre-purchase now, and general overblown bullshit.
Posted or not, it will quickly be ignored, the sane voice of rationality in a storm of reactionary angst and cancelled pre-orders.
Edit:
Yep. Who didn't see that coming? I'm so glad I've got GAF where cooler heads (usually) prevail.
BrettWeir
Member
Nice article.
With transmutation stones, I could see the armor/weapons on the MTS coming with no stats at all. Perfectly fine with that.
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