Feel some hypocritical about making this thread, as was just complaining about players who make a big deal of cash shops on another board. However, this is a bit different.

1. HiRez, maker of Global Agenda announces limited cash shop where they will sell consumables to players that speed up experience and gear gain ingame.

2. Simultaneously, they ramp up difficulty (in particular the randomness and combinations of certain mob spawns) of PvE in the lastest patch drastically, when it was fairly balanced before, making their cash shop items more attractive for players, especially those midlevels, who are frustrated with the new difficulty.

3. Bad business practice? or shrewd marketing on Hirez' part? Not sure how I feel about this yet, so thought I'd ask others.

Discuss.

the PvE difficulty is just ridiculous.

i just stop playing for today cause no one of my guildmates is only and u are completly fucked up with randoms doin max or ultra max sec.

if u get the sec drone spawns 90 % chance to fail the next 7 minutes and not getting the boss down , i m just curious why they buffed the hell out of max and ultra max sec.

This is exactly why people who say that cash shops don't affect games are wrong.  When a company has to make a choice between making a game fun and challenging versus designing things to push players to the cash shop it most certainly does affect the game. 

A company should never have to choose between making a game fun for players and making things tedious so they can sell more cash shop items.  Most don't see that, because baubles of +1hour experience gain don't say +1 damage or something blatanlyt obvious.

Yep it kinda killed the fun for me doing PvE missions :-/ prior i never had problems, but since the patch i didnt manage to complete a single ultra max. And some people claim they made it easyer, through halfing the hitpoints of many mobs.

I kinda always run out of time in ultra max mission. And yes im doing them with randoms as there is not a single reason to join a agency right now with the broken AvA. I dont play GA for socialising ;-)

Yes now the item shop appears in new light ... not good one for me. But meh there is no sub. The purchase of the game was still worth it ;-)

Max is still easily doable with a pre made team, ultra max however has been buffed beyond all reason and is no longer fun. In fact max sec is no longer fun to do, I was worried about the cash shop because we do all know where this leads and well here we are!

Alot of players have lost interest in GA now thanks to this, PVE is now broke along with AVA. This is getting silly, I'm starting to look around for something else now unless hi rez do something about this BS!

Figures that I kinda stopped logging in huh.

They have already posted about this.

Originally posted by Mykell

They have already posted about this.

High Security will be changed soon to allow rewards past Level 30 (as it was before patch). We're also looking at the general balance of the PvE instances and may make some tweaks here and there to improve.

Quick Update: We're deploying a patch today that will essentially double token rewards across the board. The article will be updated to reflect the change.

Still not fun to grind tokens for gear.

i see it that way, i get tokens for playing the game.

Afaik they ll have another look at the diffi and i like how they implement the cash shop..itll speeden up your

xp and token gain but only to the daily limit..so if you want to make your own hell and grnnd yoursellf

you can do that in any  game from lotro (one of the more rp heavy games) to any  full f2p.

GA is free now after the purchase so if you feel a burnout coma back later just enjoy the gameplay

as pvp shooter , coop shooter or rpg shooter like borderlands you can find quick action for an hour a day

easily and your char will appreciate it ^^

Originally posted by Speiberbob

i see it that way, i get tokens for playing the game.

Afaik they ll have another look at the diffi and i like how they implement the cash shop..itll speeden up your

xp and token gain but only to the daily limit..so if you want to make your own hell and grnnd yoursellf

you can do that in any  game from lotro (one of the more rp heavy games) to any  full f2p.

GA is free now after the purchase so if you feel a burnout coma back later just enjoy the gameplay

as pvp shooter , coop shooter or rpg shooter like borderlands you can find quick action for an hour a day

easily and your char will appreciate it ^^

This is very true.  Actually it is why I am *not* playing right now.  When Sandstorm phase 3 comes, I will return and have some fun.