Dr. Claus
Banned
The video is fine. It literally spells out in the most simplistic manner how the game is Pay to Win. Whether or not this is an issue for you is your own thing, but it can't be denied.
The video is fine. It literally spells out in the most simplistic manner how the game is Pay to Win. Whether or not this is an issue for you is your own thing, but it can't be denied.
sweet.
don't really care about the advantage but im at ilvl 550ish and the grinds already kinda boring, might as well speed it up if it's a reasonable price.
Amibguous Cad
Member
That's not the definition I've used for it, and the way you use it is ambiguous and unclear. There are really four scenarios we want to distinguish between:
1.) Spending money is neither necessary nor sufficient for winning - this is most offline games.
2.) Spending money is sufficient but not necessary for winning - call this the Level Boost scenario, where players can pay to skip some content but not to be guaranteed victory. By my lights, this is where Lost Ark is at. The main question for games in this category is whether, and if so to what extent, the leveling process is slowed down to unfun levels to encourage people to spend.
3.) Spending money is not sufficient but is necessary for winning - The Magic: The Gathering option. You have to spend money in a multiplayer game to get to an even level with others who are playing it, but once that minimum level is reached, the playing field is even. This is not very common.
4.) Spending money is both sufficient and necessary for winning - the paradigmatic Korean MMO problem.
P2W should refer only to the last category, because otherwise you compress categories 2, 3, and 4 into the same category, when the distinction between those scenarios is really important for figuring out how the cash shop will affect your experience.
Frustratingly, I don't think I've heard anyone discuss the most important question here, which is how much Lost Ark's option 2 design leads it in a frustrating or unfun direction.
You almost surely already have a ton of gold and if you don't give a shit able cosmetics just spend it on upgrade material in the AH.
iHaunter
Member
Any Korean F2P MMO that has a "Founders" pack has been P2W. It always will be P2W because that's the culture of their games. I've played literally EVERY MMO they have. BDO, Archeage, you name it. Some are more egregious than others but are P2W non-the-less.
Not sure why people lie to themselves, if you want to be competitive, you will HAVE to pay money. That simple.
Hari Seldon
Member
No it is a Korean game.
Hari Seldon
Member
I am not at max level, but playing the game as a completely free player feels like a full experience so far. Like there is 0 pressure to spend money on anything while leveling. So if you eventually need to pay money to be in the top 5% of players or whatever at the end game, I'm fine with that, because at that point I will have gotten at least 100 hours of fun gameplay at exactly 0 dollars of out of pocket cost, which is super fucking fair.
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iHaunter
Member
That's ALWAYS how it is, to start. Give it 6 mo or so. It'll be done. I've done all this shit and more. I've played Korean MMOs for 15 years.
AJUMP23
Parody of actual AJUMP23
Nothing but it seems like there are bunch of currencies.
This games just makes me wish for a fully fleshed out World of Diablo in this style. I have to wonder, I believe Lineage 3 went this same route as Lost Ark, which I never tried. I'm not even sure it saw an English release. But considering this game is fairly old, Amazon could have done a bit more with bringing it over. Hopefully they keep to their word and have nerfed the shop and have no P2W.
Belthazar
Member
The thing is: this doesn't bother me at all as I only play the PvE aspects of those games, so as long as I finish the content I'm done with the game.
You won't be finishing the endgame content without paying a few hundred dollars or setting up an AFK grind bot.
Dr. Claus
Banned
Yep. I am sure the game is great! But you can't argue that it isn't pay to win. I had the same issue with BDO.
manfestival
Member
makes me scratch my head wondering if you watched the same video(same with chix). he does a simple breakdown and even discusses all of the views and approaches to defining p2w. He flat out calls the game p2w and was baffled by cohh(the actual shill) pulling a yes and no defense of p2w that he disagreed with in the video. Not sure what he is in denial of. Not that he needs me to defend him. Just curious cause your point is so contrasting from what I watched. Though I mostly wanted to comment on the fact that yeah he lives like a homeless person. He has a tooth missing as well despite having all of this money. He is just one of those guys with a fat bank account living like a hermit. Kind of amazing to see
. . .or just leveling iLevel casually in between doing the OTHER content not tied to iLevel.
Did YOU watch the video. Cohh's point is absolutely spot on and aligns with what someone posted earlier: the "P2W" moniker is not nuanced enough to cover ALL instances of paid convenience in games. There is no one to win against in this game (or rather no advantage you can purchase over another player). People talking about "Well you're beating content before someone else" are stretching the definition to it's absurd breaking point.
It is a F2P game. Of course there are progressing bumps, progression bumps that can be alleviated by you purchasing crowns and buying materials off the AH (there are no direct progression unlocks in the shop). The point remains, all you "win" by doing this is skipping content that you would otherwise be engaged in naturally. In between engaging with non-iLevel content and iLevel content, I've gotten my iLevel up to around 500 or so without spending a dime on the Shop.
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manfestival
Member
Clearly I watched it from the fact that I could even go more in depth regarding the subject rather than just dismissing things without providing context like I did. Here is a way to simply sum it up as Asmongold put it, they are both right. Though I find myself leaning with Asmongold's view(he convinced me since I didn't care or realize it was p2w prior... still don't since I am having fun playing the game). Reminds me of the whole "time savers" in Assassins Creed Odyssey and how people lost their minds over it.
I am also not coming at this as a p2w being a bad thing in this case. Since it isn't affecting anyone negatively imo. People just get too hung up in viewing it as an exclusively negative term and become defensive or angry about it being tied to their title that they enjoy.
FYI Asmongold addresses your personal point and view in the video as well. Which pay for convenience is still pay to win. Once again he even oversimplifies it to get the point across too. Maybe not ALL instances of paid convenience in games counts as pay 2 win but we aren't talking about all games. Just this one. Which it applies here.
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Yeah, think I' m about done with the game. Had fun with it for the 50 or so hours I played. Currently iLvl ~530 and just cleared Rohendel. Need iLvl 600 to go to Yorn.
I think it's a fun enough game. The combat is engaging enough and there seems to be lots of ways to build out your character. They've got some beautiful worlds and such. It's unfortunate that the way you go through them is just painfully linear for an MMO to the point where it starts to feel like less of a world and more of a sequence of levels. Reminds me of how WoW went on to design later expansions.
Biggest issue is the upgrade path. I don't really care about the P2W aspect, but the combination of how slow it is to upgrade and how boring the upgrades are is what's getting me. It's all so linear, upgrading the same piece of gear repeatedly for marginal stat increases that just result in a slow power creep you'll never notice. I need to hit iLvl 600 to get to the next area. So I need to upgrade 6 pieces of gear 4 times each....each individual upgrade needs about 12 harmony stones and has a failure chance of 60% (now, but this goes higher as i get closer to 600). Given how few harmony stones you can get a day (I've cleared out all the islands that give you up front ones, so I'm limited to daily activities) that'll take a couple weeks at least...and it just seems to get exponentially worse. Then you have jewellery and stones which are just entirely RNG. It reminds me a lot of the Diablo III gearing in all the worst ways.
Another issue I have is the activities you're unlocking don't really differ. The Guardian Raids I've done are basically just reskins. The Chaos Dungeons are the same boat. In fact, from what I can tell, basically every enemy in this game is only differentiated by their skins and the damage they output (which hardly matters since the way they've gated the content means you're always on a similar level with the immediate enemies). Do normal enemies even have status effects and stuff that they dish out?
I think it's a fun enough game. The combat is engaging enough and there seems to be lots of ways to build out your character. They've got some beautiful worlds and such. It's unfortunate that the way you go through them is just painfully linear for an MMO to the point where it starts to feel like less of a world and more of a sequence of levels. Reminds me of how WoW went on to design later expansions.
Biggest issue is the upgrade path. I don't really care about the P2W aspect, but the combination of how slow it is to upgrade and how boring the upgrades are is what's getting me. It's all so linear, upgrading the same piece of gear repeatedly for marginal stat increases that just result in a slow power creep you'll never notice. I need to hit iLvl 600 to get to the next area. So I need to upgrade 6 pieces of gear 4 times each....each individual upgrade needs about 12 harmony stones and has a failure chance of 60% (now, but this goes higher as i get closer to 600). Given how few harmony stones you can get a day (I've cleared out all the islands that give you up front ones, so I'm limited to daily activities) that'll take a couple weeks at least...and it just seems to get exponentially worse. Then you have jewellery and stones which are just entirely RNG. It reminds me a lot of the Diablo III gearing in all the worst ways.
Another issue I have is the activities you're unlocking don't really differ. The Guardian Raids I've done are basically just reskins. The Chaos Dungeons are the same boat. In fact, from what I can tell, basically every enemy in this game is only differentiated by their skins and the damage they output (which hardly matters since the way they've gated the content means you're always on a similar level with the immediate enemies). Do normal enemies even have status effects and stuff that they dish out?
Yeah I'm not too stressed about it being P2W or whatever. The problem is, they give you access to tons of upgrade materials by way of the islands early on. But those are all one time things, they got me to ~ilvl 500 or so. Once you've exhausted those though it's an incredibly tedious and slow grind because you literally can only do daily activities (which you can only complete a few of a day) to get more of the materials you need. Combine that with the ever increasing requirements of mats + higher failure chances and I see why people invest money to skip. I'd need to do all my dailies for another 14 or so days to access the next continent at this point.
MastAndo
Member
After learning more about the game, I envision that I'll end up calling it quits around that point as well. Don't get me wrong, I'm really, really enjoying the game right now. It checks plenty of boxes I look for - but I'm only level 25 after 10 hours or so, and a lot of the appeal is the sense of progression and seeing what's next for my character. From everything I've read, the slow trickle of progression that is the endgame probably won't be enough to keep me around, despite how satisfying the combat is.
The explanation in this video of the reality of the game's progression model was particularly jarring;
Long story short, as a free to play player, you basically can never max out your character. It would take you years of daily grinding, at which point your efforts will likely be nullified by an update.
I know I questioned calling this game "pay 2 win" earlier but I get it now, despite not exactly agreeing that "win" is the best descriptor.
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IntentionalPun
Ask me about my wife's perfect butthole
Jesus christ how do annoying idiots like this get nearly 1 million subs?
Probably a side effect of regularly getting > 100k viewers on twitch.
