"It's never okay to buy blah blah."

What a load of bullshit. People play these games for a variety of reasons. Why should someone who puts more emphasis on looks have to pay more than a person with an emphasis on stats?

What happens is this: you end up getting "decent" looking gear in-game, but will have to pay cash for anything that looks black or cool.

However, I do have to realize that this isn't a P2P game, so it's acceptable. If this was a MMO, I'd **** all over it.

I think its an awesome CS idea, and none of the items make you more powerful then other players, so i dont see why people are still bitcfhing.

And someone said its a cash grab, wow imagine a business trying to make money.

I dont undestand all the hype around the system.

Its not revolutionary nor its new.

But since I want to try GW2, i got some questions

Will i be able to buy all items in game for real money ? (since I can sell gems for gold, and buy items with gold)

How is this not a Pay2Win ?

What do I use Karma for ?

I read trough a couple of posts, and this reminded me about panick when they announced that transmutation stone. Doomsayers assumed that Anet will insert intentionally ugly gear in game.

I am sorry, but i will write this in huge font format, so it can easily go to head of people:

BEST GEAR WILL BE OBTAINABLE FOR KARMA WHICH IS NON-TRADEABLE, NOT GEMS OR GOLD AND GEAR IS NOT MANDATORY ANYWAY

Off-topic, the most interesting group of doomsayers is the type of "oh noez, i thought that this will be perfect game and that it will kill wow, but its not going to happen. I will not buy this worst garbage of all MMOs that existed in universe, and im going back to my kung-fu pandas". Stupidity of some people amazes me :\

Originally posted by dzoni87

BEST GEAR WILL BE OBTAINABLE FOR KARMA WHICH IS NON-TRADEABLE, NOT GEMS OR GOLD AND GEAR IS NOT MANDATORY ANYWAY

 

Ok but since Mike O'Brien writes "They(Players) should also be able to spend money on account services and on time-saving convenience items." Does it mean that i will be able to buy items that boost my karma farming ? I can understad its not mandatory but still its P2W.

Total win!

[For the purposes of simplicity, Dollar is real world currency, Gem is purchased in-game currency and Gold is, er, game currency.]

I play on three games that have existed for 5+ years that has a similar system of Dollar->Gem<->Gold and I have to say that it works remarkably well as long as there's enough leaving the economy to prevent spiraling inflation.

Having said that, it does not entirely eliminate resellers, but it does discourage the vast majority. Those who do work in resellers, it helps by giving an official price so both the buyer and seller can be assured of getting fair value. (One person I know on one of them gives a 10% discount so if it's something like $10->100Gem/10000Gold at current prices, he offers $10->110Gem/11000Gold.)

With or without the resellers though, people are still going to be buying Gems from ANet since, well-- that's the only place they come from. Without them, resellers are going to have a headache of a time pricing competitively.

Personally, I believe this system to be among the best-- however, the devs do kind of have to be careful with exactly what Gems can do. I've gone mostly dormant or retreated out of competitive play on a few games where I personally felt that the effort required to obtain the Gold required to purchase Gems from other players became too extreme and diminished the fun. I doubt GW2 will fall into that, given what I've seen in GW and what they're saying right now, but... I really hope those 'time-saving convenience items' don't become effective necessities. (I have a special hatred for the EotN consumables. Powerstones, Grails, etc...)

I love this system.

---

Ok but since Mike O'Brien writes "They(Players) should also be able to spend money on account services and on time-saving convenience items." Does it mean that i will be able to buy items that boost my karma farming ? I can understad its not mandatory but still its P2W.

---

First of all, neither you or me dont know if will karma boost be in Cash Shop. Even if its true, on which way is getting karma boost pay to win? By definition, pay to win is the situation when one player will have unfair advantage OVER another player. Since there is no traditional gear threadmill, even the gear obtainable via Karma (let me state again) wont be much mandatory, hence wont give much of advantage OVER others. If you count the time spent in advantage argument, i always say one thing: if one want to rush trough game content faster, its his loss anyway. In PvP, everyone will have the same gear anyway, so there is less point.

People need to do some search about how gear worked in GW. If the GW2 keep the same gear system (which i am certain) im not worried a bit. If, something strange happens, and they suddenly accept traditional gear threadmill, then we will have a real problem there.

I like this system a lot actually. The only thing I want to know, what convenience items will they sell?

Originally posted by solarine

No way is this right, let alone "the perfect system"...

Right would be doing everything they say they're doing without letting players trade gems for gold. Buying cosmetic stuff with money + account services. That's the right way.

Whereas what they have here practically means:  Rich in real life => Rich in game.

I don't know about you, but that just doesn't ring fair with me. Call me old-fashioned, but I believe in-game success must only be achievable with in-game effort. It's what gaming is all about.  

And he actually calls this a "level playing field"? Color me amazed. 

 

So you would call someone "rich in game" only because they have a item mall costume that doesn't give them any advantages only because you couldn't buy it? O_o

Really don't understand your complain here.

The way they are doing it helps all players being equal since:

- players that don't wanna or can't spend money for item mall cosmetical stuff or a extra character slots can invest in game time to gather enough gold and exchange it for item mall currency so they can buy this extra slot or costume they would like to have.

- players that doesn't have much time to play (weekend players or similar) and want to spend some money to get these things can do it directly.

They have additionaly the option to exchange item mall currency to gold and grab materials or other in game stuff they don't have the time to farm due to their limited gaming time.

This type of transaction helps both parties and makes the game more fun and more rewarding while at the same time increases the community interaction.

I saw this type of system in Jade Dynasty years ago (I think perfect world and battle of the immortals has it to but I don't remember anymore) and even there were only 2 types of currency instead of 3 in GW2, the system worked great!

Example: I'm a pets nerd ("catch them all" ;p ) and I wanted to have all these little pets that interested me for my characters(each character having many different ones but not the same).

There are some item mall pets and some in game catchable pets so, what I did since I didn't had the time for farming was spending a small amount of money on the item mall, buying 2 pets, then trading at the bank my remaining item mall money and buying with the in game currency the other pets I wanted from the players that sold them.

These players on the other side could buy item mall currency through the in game money I spend on them by buying their pets.

Through this they could buy a item mall pet for themselves or something else they needed.

A great thing in my opinion cause they had the time and invested it in that case "for me" while I "payed for their invested time" by buying their pets and making it possible for them to enjoy item mall stuff in the progress.

A Win/Win situation that made us both happy!

This sounds good. I don't see where having day-1 gold millionaires from cash shop is different from having day-1 gold millionaires from heavy farming.

(because yes, this system means you can indirectly buy gold with cash)

There are always those huge farmers in any MMO that you will never be able to match in term of wealth. It's the case in WoW, where there's no cash shop (yet). Some people are stacking hundreds of thousands of gold on each alt because they have a ton of primary resources to sell, but yet this doesn't break the game. That's absolutely no different from one gw2 player who doesn't know any better thing to do with his dollars but to buy a ton of gems and sell it for gold to anyone.

Originally posted by k-damage

This sounds good. I don't see where having day-1 gold millionaires from cash shop is different from having day-1 gold millionaires from heavy farming.

(because yes, this system means you can indirectly buy gold with cash)

There are always those huge farmers in any MMO that you will never be able to match in term of wealth. It's the case in WoW, where there's no cash shop (yet). Some people are stacking hundreds of thousands of gold on each alt because they have a ton of primary resources to sell, but yet this doesn't break the game. That's absolutely no different from one gw2 player who doesn't know any better thing to do with his dollars but to buy a ton of gems and sell it for gold to anyone.

your neglecting to talk about the people who arent rich and dont have the time to farm so much gold you have to put it on alts, i played wow for 7 years and i always wished i had money to buy the items and super fast mounts they offered but just never had time enough to farm gold, now people with the money to spend on it will always have a leg up on me. end of discussion

Originally posted by engellen

your neglecting to talk about the people who arent rich and dont have the time to farm so much gold you have to put it on alts, i played wow for 7 years and i always wished i had money to buy the items and super fast mounts they offered but just never had time enough to farm gold, now people with the money to spend on it will always have a leg up on me. end of discussion

It's not the end of discussion, because you have no clue what you're talking about. Having more gold does not equal having a "leg up". Example: I never had more than 5k gold in Warcraft, my buddy on the other hand never had less than 30k. We had the same tier armor, same pvp armor, same skills, same flying speed, same mount speed. What advantage did he have on me? He could buy more cosmetic stuff to look cooler?! Wow, hell of a leg up there.

Until the best armor and weapons in the game become buyable by in-game gold, this is not a leg up. 

End of discussion, you know, until the next person posts behind me, because just saying it doesn't cause it to happen.

Originally posted by LazerChicken

Originally posted by dzoni87

BEST GEAR WILL BE OBTAINABLE FOR KARMA WHICH IS NON-TRADEABLE, NOT GEMS OR GOLD AND GEAR IS NOT MANDATORY ANYWAY

 

Ok but since Mike O'Brien writes "They(Players) should also be able to spend money on account services and on time-saving convenience items." Does it mean that i will be able to buy items that boost my karma farming ? I can understad its not mandatory but still its P2W.

 

Second thing is that Mike writes that GW2 system will have "the similarities to EVE Online’s PLEX system", wich in my opinion is a fail one. If you have enough rly money you can provide super-boost for you char/corp. Buy mass PLEX and sell it for ISK, and buy shpis/ammo/resources. Finnaly making any war depend on how much money players would spend in order to win.

Time Saving Convencience Items in GW1:

- Unlock all Pets except of the "Elite Special ones"

- Unlock all PvE Skills (except of elite skills I think)

- Unlock all PvP Skills

- Unlock all Skills of Prophecies Or Factions Or Nightfall OR EotN (as far as I remember)

Nothing game breaking there in my opinion.

Someone that has very limited game time can pay a buck or two and get these things unlocked while others that have the time and don't wanna spend just unlocking the stuff in the game.

Account Services :

- Additional Character slots

- Hero slots for your main characters so you can take them with you as heroes

- Character makeover (change the looks of your character like face, hair and so on again)

Cosmetical Stuff:

- various costumes

Pretty sure it will be the same in GW2 cause by the "flat" leveling line in GW2 it won't take ages to have a character up to max level (still depending on your gaming time though).

After you reached max level you will probably gain further levels in form of skill points like in GW1 with which you can unlock more skills of the ones that we will be able to unlock through a npc (weapon skills are unlocked by using the weapons only).

Due to this I highly doubt they will add double xp or double gold  and similar items in the item mall.

The so called end game gear will be probably like the elite armors in GW1 which are not totally needed but good to have for your hall of monuments. 

So if someone wants lets say to have all skills from the beginning for his profession because they  dont want to invenst time in unlocking them, they have the chance to do so.

This doesn't give them any real advantage in pvp since personal skill has always been a factor in GWs PvP and in pve everyone will be getting rewards when involved in a event so no problem there either.

Runes Of Magic has been using this system for years and it works very well. They use diamonds and u can buy diamonds with real money and put them on the ah and sell them for gold.

Originally posted by engellen

Originally posted by whisperwynd

Originally posted by Thane

 

[quote]Even if there is an consumable in the microtransaction shop, that gives players a +10% boost to all damage, everyone can purchase it.[/quote] 

sounds alot like p2w to me tho :)

Not really P2W as you can buy with ingame gold. Kinda moot point and said several times over many threads. Buy a gem with RL money and get it or grind some gold, buy a gem from player then get it. Equal opportunity. Nothing P2W about it.

i dont think you understand it at all, you buy gems online with real money then sell them for gold and be able to buy anything you want in game, how is that not P2W?

 

P2W is not the fact that you can by gems and exchange them for gold but the fact that you can buy an item that increases your damage by 10% in the cash shop. That isn't right and that shouldn't be part of their "things to sell". Those types of things should only be attainable in-game if you ask me.

Originally posted by baykes112

Guys please please open your eyes. You guys really think this will not be a P2W game?.
 

Every1 was thinking that it was going to B2P. Believe me Micro transactions=always p2w. It starts with costumes (looks), and after a couple of weeks, exp boost,speed boosts, character stat boosts, Armors, Pets,Mounts.
 

You think they gonna make game only for B2P??. Very bad move of GW2 . Didnt expect this. REAL MONEY=WIN ECONOMY+EQUIPMENT VERY EASYY. It has nothing to do with time etcc.
 

And dont talk about convencience items... Yes IT STARTS with these kinds of items but after some time it will be a copy of AOC or LOTRO or even Lineage2 hahah.

BYe Bye GW2 i prefer play a p2p game then a item mall(p2w) game. 
 

Its the rich against the poor.

What a load of rubbish.

Pay to win indicates that you are more powerful for buying gems than someone who doesnt. This isnt the case. The best gear in the game  at max level, in terms of power and not appearance, is very very very easy to obtain. Basically if you spend RL money on buying level 80 gear, you are an idiot and deserve to be ripped off. All level 80 armor sets are the same, just differing in appearance. Go play GW1 to see how it works.

ANet prides the GW franchise being competitive PvP. There wont be any stat boosts, speed boosts or damage boosts. Appearance gear? Yep thats almost a certainty. Non-combat pets? Probably. The game wont have mounts at all (shows how much you know about it).

You would prefer to play a game where you have to pay to be competitive than a B2P game with convenience and appearance gear? Each to their own I guess. I know that I would rather play a game where I am on the same playing level as everyone else (GW2).