Slow down guys...I need to go get another bowl of popcorn.

http://www.guildwars2guru.com/forum/showpost.php?p=1235804&postcount=26

Time will tell still enjoy your day guys.

Bigs you want some of mine, I got some lemonade as well.

Originally posted by Malevil

I'm noty realy happy with this. Tbh I dont think it will have any real impact on general PvE or e-sport part PvP.

But imo there is real danger that it can destroy WsWsW. Yes your gear will have power celling so money will not buy more personal power but in WsWsW where you will need to buy upgrades to keeps and to buy siege weapons, it can realy fast become P2W ...

Right, yes. If anet reads these threads I hope they will take note and seperate keep upgrades, seige engines etc from the economy. Maybe they have already I have NO idea.

Ok everyone,... A little thought here, think about it please...

who the f*ck wants to spend their ingame gold that  you earned by hours and hours playing for gems that doesnt give you an advantage over others but only give you visual stuff?... I wouldnt!

Originally posted by ProfRed

It is straight up taking RMT out of third parties hands and putting it in the hands of the players.

A game like WoW any player can go out to a website and spend $50 and get thousands and thousands of in game currency, and then go spend it on anything in the game.

A game like EVE or GW2 players can buy gems and use them to buy gold from the players and do the same thing.  The difference is the in game economy is in the players hands.

It isn't a bad system really.  As long as there isn't stuff you can buy for gems only that give an advantage over those who only use gold.

But as long as you can trade gold for gems and vice versa, that is unlikely to happen...

The best part is you can buy anything in the cash shop with in game currency basically so you can be crafty and get all cash shop items for free if you spend enough time.

Originally posted by adam_nox

Originally posted by waynejr2

Originally posted by Alot

Originally posted by aionix

Originally posted by Alot

And all of a sudden the forums exploded. I don't really like it, it is way too similar to Diablo 3's Auction House.

Edit to the poster above me: But doesn't a system like this allow players to gain power by spending Real Money? Is this a problem in EvE?

As Kuppa just said, you can only buy vanity items in the cash shop.  In D3, you can buy gear that gives you a statitical advantage over other players.  That is a HUGE difference, so they really arn't the same.  All this does is allow playares who devote more time to playing GW2 to use ingame currency for cash shop vanity items rather than using real money. 

But what if someone would buy hundreds of Gems for example and offer to sell them to others for gold, couldn't that potentially give him an enormous advantage over others in terms of in-game wealth?

wealth is a preceived stat and doesn't beat people in combat in and of itself.  If you could factually prove that wealth buys you a button of IWIN, you have a point.  But you failed to do that.

uh, it all depends on who has burden of proof, given the corruption of every other mmo with a cash shop, I think that burden is on those who assert that wealth does NOT give an advantage.  You say a 'button of IWIN' but it doesn't have to be that.  It just has to be an advantage.

 

That advantage can be in time investment needed, it can be in recovery time needed (repairs and such), it can be in gear acquisition, and it can be based on other things as well.  But advantages can take many forms, not just who would win in an arena match.

So now your are moving away from your IWIN position?

Originally posted by NMStudio

Originally posted by Crackbone

Originally posted by NMStudio

Originally posted by Crackbone

Originally posted by BadSpock

Originally posted by Alot

Originally posted by BadSpock

Hard to compare it to EvE and Plex without knowing exactly how crafting/drops/loot will work in GW2.

But again, EvE is a universe where everything is player made (for the most part) so if GW2 has a lot of really high quality loot and drops that are untradable (BOP) than it might not have the same downsides as EvE and Plex.

It would be really nice if every post regarding the current topic would contain this ^ specific post as a quote.

Yeah, would certainly stop a lot of pointless ranting.

Can anyone provide links as to how exactly loot/drops work in relation to crafted gear and how much BoP vs BoE gear etc. there is?

I mean... all this worry about P2Play and Buy2Win would be pretty pointless if all the "good stuff" is BoP drop/loot only.

I'm pretty sure this is the case, with the bound currency involved being Karma. 

The problem comes when you have to buy gear in order to survive and beat the bosses that will give you your Karma.  They will massage the numbers, and the difficulty, to make sure that they're getting all the profit they can from the cash shop.  They are NOT going to let people play this game for free.  If you're playing for free, them someone else out there is spending extra money to make up for it.

I have little problem that there's "additional costs" in the game.  Frankly, I'd rather have the option to spend than being forced to spend.  It's a subtle difference, I realize that, but at least I have a choice. 

I have no problem with it at all.  I just think it's funny that I've been saying all along that this is the way it would be, and the fanboi's attacked me over and over... and now it has been confirmed.  For me it's more about the pure joy of those who attacked me being wrong :)

Heh. 

Why anyone feels the need to "defend" the choice is beyond me. 

The game is a business endeavor, unfortunately, that's the way the world works. :)   It doesn't take a brain surgeon to understand Arenanet is going to have ways in the game to make additional monies beyond the original box sale. 

The difference in this scenario is, I can choose when to spend, and what to spend on, or if I'm going to spend @ all. 

Originally posted by BadSpock

Originally posted by Naqaj

Originally posted by BadSpock

Originally posted by Alot

Originally posted by BadSpock

Hard to compare it to EvE and Plex without knowing exactly how crafting/drops/loot will work in GW2.

But again, EvE is a universe where everything is player made (for the most part) so if GW2 has a lot of really high quality loot and drops that are untradable (BOP) than it might not have the same downsides as EvE and Plex.

It would be really nice if every post regarding the current topic would contain this ^ specific post as a quote.

Yeah, would certainly stop a lot of pointless ranting.

Can anyone provide links as to how exactly loot/drops work in relation to crafted gear and how much BoP vs BoE gear etc. there is?

I mean... all this worry about P2Play and Buy2Win would be pretty pointless if all the "good stuff" is BoP drop/loot only.

Sorry, don't have a link at hand, as usual all this information can be found in the blog. The basic idea is:  the power plateau (the 100/100 in your earlier example) is very low, and there are several parallel ways to reach it. There is 100/100 crafted gear, 100/100 dungeon token gear, 100/100 karma gear, 100/100 WvW gear.  In order to reach the power plateau with your character, you can basically mix and match gear from each source.

So if that is true, then there really is no way or reason to buy your way to the top with RL money?

Exactly. The system allows you to buy time. Nothing else.

The irony is that people essentially pay additional money to not play the game. This makes a lot of sense if the game is so poorly designed that playing it isn't actually fun. So far I see no reason to assume that's the case with GW2. 

Anybody here want to buy 100 gems for ($500) and trade with me ingame -- I'll give you 100 gold for them.  Sounds like a great deal for me!!  I'm sure the other 50,000 gem sellers will get a better return on their "investment" ....

Every post mentions BUYING Gems with real money, but no one has mentioned that fact that people will be SELLING gems for rl money.  I can guarantee there are people out there already schemeing up plans to do exactly that. It's pretty simple really..create a third party website, or simply use ebay. Assuming the "best" items will be BoP or only tradeable with the karma currency, there will still be a demand for gems either way. More details still need to be revealed, but people (including foreign gold sellers) will still try to take advantage of this system to earn rl $$, I don't doubt that at all. Question is, how much regulating will Arenanet do to enforce this sort of thing from happening.
 

Originally posted by ProfRed

The best part is you can buy anything in the cash shop with in game currency basically so you can be crafty and get all cash shop items for free if you spend enough time.

then its not free if you have to spend TIME to get it, lol.

Pay 2 win = one guy has to grind an instance for gear, possibly die, incur a death penalty and have to wait it out to try again, whereas in GW2 another guy can buy rez-sickness potions and run the instance as many times as he wants until he gets what he needs, whereas the other poor sap is sitting on the sidelines wondering why he still doesnt have that cool item that mr Cash-shop has.

Pay 2 win, here i come. i cant wait. no grinding, just buy "time saving convenience" items, as THEY called it, and im on a equal playing field, BUT i am getting there faster than mr "slow grind" guy :)    i kinda like this new age of MMOs, its pay2win, but they actually fooled the populace into thinking its ok.

And the comparison to eve online was waaaay off.

It is only cosmetic items.  Players do not buy gear and weapons in GW2 to gain advantages over others. 

Originally posted by Naqaj

Exactly. The system allows you to buy time. Nothing else.

The irony is that people essentially pay additional money to not play the game. This makes a lot of sense if the game is so poorly designed that playing it isn't actually fun. So far I see no reason to assume that's the case with GW2. 

True and as armor is level dependent buying the best armor in the game with real life money will get you nothing if you are not prepared to invest your TIME to get to top level. There is no easy way out for the lazy gamer I'm afraid.

Originally posted by 2D34DLY4U

Originally posted by ForumPvP

Originally posted by StriderXed

Originally posted by ForumPvP

Most hyped MMO went to top carebear MMO. 

Elaborate

***In Guild Wars 2 we have three currencies: gold, karma, and gems. Gold is the common in-game currency. Karma, which players earn in-game but cannot trade, is used for unique rewards. And gems are the currency that’s bought and used to purchase microtransactions.

We have a new player-driven market that allows players to trade gold for gems and gems for gold. If you want something, whether it’s an in-game item or a microtransaction, you ultimately have two ways to get it: you can play to earn gold or you can use money to buy gems.***

GW2 carebear formula v1.0 (beta)

a)real money for gems

b)gems for gold

c)gold for karma ,items whatever. help me to kill this and that i pay 10,000 gold gems whatever.

looks absolute carebear game to me.

The best part of this is watching how people go over their heads with vague assumptions about games that they know nothing about, then when something comes out and violates the current groupthink trends, everyone goes berserk.

This is good news for this game, trust me.

The only carebear that left is the one that thought this was all about gear.

 

That said, I will personally pwn you with my :10dolla: gear and my :50bux: army of third world hirelings. Many times. Fear me and my money.

im pretty sure he´s not making vague assumptions about games that he knows nothing about.

http://www.arena.net/blog/mike-obrien-on-microtransactions-in-guild-wars-2

Originally posted by ace80k

Every post mentions BUYING Gems with real money, but no one has mentioned that fact that people will be SELLING gems for rl money.  

Yes, those people are called Arenanet. ...

Originally posted by Mephster

It is only cosmetic items.  Players do not buy gear and weapons in GW2 to gain advantages over others. 

This is completely untrue.  GEMS can be purchased with CASH.  In game GOLD can be purchased with GEMS.  Therefor, anything in the game that can be purchased with gold, including the entire auction house, can be purchased with CASH.  Just because the fanboi's have been crying for months that it will only be cosmetic items does not make it true.  Read the blog post for yourself.

Originally posted by Onomic

Originally posted by Creslin321

Well I'm not happy with this at all.  You can trade real money for in-game gold which essentailly means that you can buy anything that can be bought with real money.  And the way I see it, this only has two potential outcomes:

1.  Nothing you can buy with gold makes any real difference in terms of the power of your character.  And this would suck because it would mean there is basically no economy and crafting would be useless.  I mean, people aren't going to pay for something that doesn't do anything.

OR

2.  You can gain an advantage over other players by spending real money.  Since real money can be traded for gold...that means you can buy ANYTHING i the AH with real money.  And if items actually make a difference in the "power" of your character, you can gain an advantage by buying them.

 

I honestly don't see how Mike O'Brien espouses their mantra of "no player should ever be able to spend money to gain an advantage over another player that spent time" and then he goes on to say that essentailly any item in the AH can be bought with real money.

Huh??????

It means either the AH is completely irrelevant, or players can gain an advantage over other players by spending money.  These are the ONLY two things that could result.

They have said from day one that they would add dungeons in the cash shop

Unless people can buy cash shop gems for gold they would be forced pay with real life money or miss the bonus content.

It has disadvantage for sure but i personaly cant think of a better idea if you want people to access your store without useing money.

Buying cash shop gems for gold is not the problem.  Buying gold for cash shop gems IS.  If ANet just sold their gems for an exorbitant amount of gold ala LoL, that would be fine (and that's your better idea too).  But that's not what they are doing.

They are allowing PLAYERS to sell REAL MONEY for GOLD.  This means players can use that gold to buy stuff in the AH, which will likely make them more powerful.  This means the game is at least partially P2W.

How bout we post some solutions we would  like to see instead. 

Take away the ability to buy gems with in game gold and vice versa..

Problem Solved.

Originally posted by drumchannell

So you can purchase gems with money, that can be traded for gold in game. If I'm reading this correctly, this gives advantage to players who spend real money as opposed to those who don't.

it only offers you more in game currency, the more people that buy to try and sell gems the price drops. It will balance itself out. Also what on earth with a gold amount even get you in game? Guild influence? You can get it just as easily grouping with guildies.

Let's use WoW as an example because they have a very active AH and I think GW2's AH will be just as active. When I left WoW I have EVERY buyable in game luxury I could, except for the later buyable TCG items just because they weren't for sale on my server. I still had several hundred thousand gold just laying around doing nothing.. there was nothing to spend it on. This is what will happen once the economy settles.. they might get an advantage 2-3 weeks from release when people have farmed enough in game cash to have enough money to make actually selling the gems worth it to those that bought them for resale.

I see no issue in the long run and very little in the beginning. Please don't worry your pretty little heads over something as benign as this RMT setup. To give a bad example of a similar set up you have Runes of Magic's (diamonds?) where VERY few of the currency bought is tradeable in game and the price in game is sky high. It is a problem because there is a lack of currency, not because it is actually buyable with in game money.