Again, what you get is Rough Astral Diamonds.  Those need to be refined into Refined Astral Diamons.  There is a cap on how much you can refine per day.  So that level three mount upgrade that sells for 4 million refined astral diamonds....good luck not getting bored out of your mind.

So you are going to be running the same content over and over and over again.  This is how it works in STO but the don't pay as much for their items as it looks like people will have to in NW.

PWE took the already ridiculous dilithium grind/faction grind that was from STO and it looks to be even longer here.

If the whole ROguh Diamond thing is going to work exactly like STO's Dilithium does then this going to be a major dissapointment. The problem with that system is you can farm as much dilithium as you want every day but you can only refine 8k of it every day, and the refined is what you need to spend, unrefined is worthless. You can then exchange your refined dilithium for cash story case, in STOs case Zen.

The massive problem I have with STOs system is Refined Dilithium is not only for exchanging into cash story currency but it is also needed to buy pretty much every single endgame piece of gear in the game, the cheapest of which is 15k. That means your progression in the game is seriously restricted with a time limit... No matter how much you grind or how hard you work for stuff you still have to wait on that refining timer before you can buy the upgrades you want..

If diamonds / dilithium are only used for exchanging for cash store currency, awesome, no big deal at all. Making it required for every piece of high end gear in the game is no good at all and essentialy does actually make the game more p2w. People can buy as much cash shop currency as they want and sell it for dilithium/diamonds and thus make far more of it than the daily refining cap would allow.

Anyways, Astral Diamonds had better not be nearly as required for everything within the game as Dilithium is in STO or this is gonna be a huge let down. If it is on the other hand only used to exchange for cash story currency then great, all is well.

Originally posted by Kilrain
This is what I was hoping for and wish more game companies would do the same. The only thing I have to say is, I want to play a Drow without paying cash. Hey, he said I could do anything without paying, right?

 

The drow is already a race available to everyone. What's delegated to the founder's pack is a unique drow background.

Popular IP, accesibility of F2P with no P2W, player generated content and hopefully decent PVP.

This game might give the most popular MMOs a run for their money. And that's always a good thing for MMO scene.

In regards to grinding Astral Diamonds. Well, they have to return their investment somehow and I guess grinding or paying for convenience beats P2W any time of the day.

In vanilla WoW, we had to grind rep and pay for box+sub and everybody was happy.

Originally posted by Aerowyn

Originally posted by GoldenArrow

Originally posted by evilastro

Originally posted by thekze
Will you be able to purchase astral diamonds at any time? Can you buy items with these astral diamonds?? Will players have to work very hard to obtain what others got by spending money?? If yes is the answer to my three questions. This game is pay-to-win.

 

 Astral Diamonds are in game currency. You can earn them in game by completing dungeons, competitive challenges, events or invoking your god every hour. You can also trade Zen (RL currency) for other players Astral Diamonds via a GW2 type broker.

You buy items with those Astral Diamonds. You can obviously get items quicker if you just buy them with RL cash, but there is no need to.

Thats not Pay to Win, its just convenience.

Transforming real world currency into in-game currency allowing you to buy anything with real currency is pay to win. Unless the endgame items are bound on pickup so you can't simply purchase them.

 

that's never how i viewed P2W for me that's pay for convienence.. to me P2W is having items in the CS that give players who pay an unfair advantage over players who don't pay

If you can get something in few hours that takes F2P'ers months/years, I can't see how it's not P2W.

Originally posted by Aerowyn

Originally posted by GoldenArrow

Originally posted by evilastro

Originally posted by thekze
Will you be able to purchase astral diamonds at any time? Can you buy items with these astral diamonds?? Will players have to work very hard to obtain what others got by spending money?? If yes is the answer to my three questions. This game is pay-to-win.

 

 Astral Diamonds are in game currency. You can earn them in game by completing dungeons, competitive challenges, events or invoking your god every hour. You can also trade Zen (RL currency) for other players Astral Diamonds via a GW2 type broker.

You buy items with those Astral Diamonds. You can obviously get items quicker if you just buy them with RL cash, but there is no need to.

Thats not Pay to Win, its just convenience.

Transforming real world currency into in-game currency allowing you to buy anything with real currency is pay to win. Unless the endgame items are bound on pickup so you can't simply purchase them.

 

that's never how i viewed P2W for me that's pay for convienence.. to me P2W is having items in the CS that give players who pay an unfair advantage over players who don't pay

 Exactly, if you can obtain the same item through reasonable gameplay (as in, not grinding for months and months like Age of Wushu), then it's not Pay to Win.

Can you buy wearable items with Astral Diamonds? Yes. But Astral Diamonds, which people can trade RL money for, are obtainable in game by farming events. Giving no advantage, other than having to play less, to people who purchase the diamonds.

Pay to Win only applies when an item or perk purchased with real cash will give you a power advantage over someone else who plays normallyl, having a magical sparklepony isn't Pay to Win, it's vanity.

Originally posted by GoldenArrow

Originally posted by Aerowyn

Originally posted by GoldenArrow

Originally posted by evilastro

Originally posted by thekze
Will you be able to purchase astral diamonds at any time? Can you buy items with these astral diamonds?? Will players have to work very hard to obtain what others got by spending money?? If yes is the answer to my three questions. This game is pay-to-win.

 

 Astral Diamonds are in game currency. You can earn them in game by completing dungeons, competitive challenges, events or invoking your god every hour. You can also trade Zen (RL currency) for other players Astral Diamonds via a GW2 type broker.

You buy items with those Astral Diamonds. You can obviously get items quicker if you just buy them with RL cash, but there is no need to.

Thats not Pay to Win, its just convenience.

Transforming real world currency into in-game currency allowing you to buy anything with real currency is pay to win. Unless the endgame items are bound on pickup so you can't simply purchase them.

 

that's never how i viewed P2W for me that's pay for convienence.. to me P2W is having items in the CS that give players who pay an unfair advantage over players who don't pay

If you can get something in few hours that takes F2P'ers months/years, I can't see how it's not P2W.

Where did it say that? Is that even implied? You want something people pay for with actual money to be easily obtained for free. Why would anyone buy it then? You do realize these gaming companies are looking to make a profit, right?

Originally posted by kyssari

If the whole ROguh Diamond thing is going to work exactly like STO's Dilithium does then this going to be a major disappointment. The problem with that system is you can farm as much dilithium as you want every day but you can only refine 8k of it every day, and the refined is what you need to spend, unrefined is worthless. You can then exchange your refined dilithium for cash story case, in STOs case Zen.

 

Basically this is what I started thinking as soon as I read the 'get it all by playing'. Only time will tell what the costs are as well as daily limits on how many AD you can refine (already mentioned in some of the reviews with no info on the limits of course).

If everyone could everything absolutely free with minimal effort, most people wouldn't spend money and the game wouldn't make enough to cover costs. Given that,  it is in the game's best interest to offer it all for free but make it more convenient for people to drop a couple bucks here and $10 bucks there.

I haven't played the game yet though I have followed the posts and watched all the videos and reviews I can find. While I had hoped this would be a good few months game I am thinking right now, it will be one of those F2Ps that I leave installed to log in once in a  while when I have an hour or two with nothing better to do until the other 3 AAA titles release later this year (TESO, Archeage & ARR).

Originally posted by odiasuda

Originally posted by GoldenArrow

Originally posted by Aerowyn

Originally posted by GoldenArrow

Originally posted by evilastro

Originally posted by thekze
Will you be able to purchase astral diamonds at any time? Can you buy items with these astral diamonds?? Will players have to work very hard to obtain what others got by spending money?? If yes is the answer to my three questions. This game is pay-to-win.

 

 Astral Diamonds are in game currency. You can earn them in game by completing dungeons, competitive challenges, events or invoking your god every hour. You can also trade Zen (RL currency) for other players Astral Diamonds via a GW2 type broker.

You buy items with those Astral Diamonds. You can obviously get items quicker if you just buy them with RL cash, but there is no need to.

Thats not Pay to Win, its just convenience.

Transforming real world currency into in-game currency allowing you to buy anything with real currency is pay to win. Unless the endgame items are bound on pickup so you can't simply purchase them.

 

that's never how i viewed P2W for me that's pay for convienence.. to me P2W is having items in the CS that give players who pay an unfair advantage over players who don't pay

If you can get something in few hours that takes F2P'ers months/years, I can't see how it's not P2W.

Where did it say that? Is that even implied? You want something people pay for with actual money to be easily obtained for free. Why would anyone buy it then? You do realize these gaming companies are looking to make a profit, right?

 

That's why the cash shop content should be cash shop only and it should only consist of cosmetical/convinience items. Mixing up in-game auction house with cash shop items ruins the game balance because people simply convert real money to in-game currency and through this on to in-game items.

And addition to this all the highly valued items should be bind-on-pickup to not allow people to pay their way to everything.

Sure developers need to make their living but the common trend of biased and unbalanced cash shops is toxic.

LOL. "Get Everything You Want By Playing"  this is what Cryptic keeps telling everyone.  But let do some math.  In STO,  they lock some of the best gear in the “Lobi” Store.  Some of the gear is upward of 300 lobi per piece of  three piece set (900 lobi in  total)  “lobi” is another currency that only comes in lock boxes at the rate of about  five lobi per box.  each key to open a lock box  cost $1.25. So you could spend $75 on one piece of gear (some items cost about $200 in lobi) or you play and get “dilithium” (the in game “time based” currency)  and trade it for Zen to buy keys.   Dilithium to zen trades at about 90 dilithium to 1 zen.  So you need 675,000 dilithuium to buy 60  keys.  But Cryptic has a limit that you can only earn 8,000 dilithium per day.  So even if you played hour and hours per day,  it would take 84 days to make enough in game cash to buy ONE  piece of the end game gear.   So yes.  you can “get everything you want by playing”  

If you are playing the beta,  don’t be fooled by the numbers in the game now. Cryptic will change them when the game goes live.   The system that Cryptic has set up is not designed for the player.  It is designed so the house always wins.

Does anyone really think it matters to Cryptic/PWI one bit if you buy your micro-transaction currency with money or if you buy it from others with in game gold who bought it with real money?  The end result is the same, actually it’s better for them if you do it that way because they get a cut of the transfer between players.  And he didn’t even mention the exclusive content that will get put in random drop boxes that you need store bought keys to open.  And yes they are in game, even though they didn’t drop and you couldn’t directly open the Cryptic store you could do a /cstore and see them for sale.

NW looks like it could be a fun if not a bit shallow game but I don’t buy for a second this Free 2 Play crap.  There will be a price to play it and I promise you that $15 a month will only take the edge off of the pain it won’t remove it completely. 

I understand some people do not like the model.  I could care less!

The game was fun and thats all I worry about.  Hopefully the endgame potential is there due to the Foundry and potential to continue development as the Devs said.

Not to go to far down the rabbit hole, the indications given in the forums tell us they will have several more classes before release including Warlord and Ranger.

The currency issue doesnt seem to bad. The events were a bit limited in Beta and that is one of the key ways to make Astral Diamonds. 

See how it looks as they improve things

Personally I don't see an issue with the economy structure. There is little difference between this model and using a monthly paying cycle. How many players out there have played MMOs with a monthly billing cycle like EQ, and then went to sites like IGN to buy Plat to get high end  items? Is this any different? Not really. The only real difference in this model is CO / PWI are cutting out the middle man for what people would do anyway. You can't stop those that are going to spend money to get ahead in any structure. There is always a work around. I personally feel that if this structure helps support a game we enjoy instead of utilizing an additional monthly fee, then I support it.

As for commercalizing the beta, I don't see a problem with that either. There are many people that were not accepted to the closed beta that really wanted to be part of it. Why not sell access and help support the game. It seems harmless enough to me. Infact, that is the main reason I did buy a founders pack. Well that, and to support my in game vanity. :)

As fot the Astral Ruby progression, yes it will take awhile. You don't always get them with the hourly invocation either btw. You can get them in the other ways mentioned above. I got quite a few doing the orc assaut and tower events. Will it take awhile to get everyhting you want? Yes it will, but it doesn't  mean that you can't do it. If you can't get a decent party to complete or you get crappy rolls and miss out on the gear, does that mean you should not have access to get decent gear for the end game or PVP?  I don't think it should. I lost every roll on each event, so I never got the good stuff. I know I could purchase similar items with astral rubies and tokens, but it's not the same as having won the items myself. But that is personal preference for me. How many times have people wanted to raid in WoW or EQ only to be turned down because your gear wasn't good enough? Why should someone be punished for not having the time to spend getting gear because of RL situations like work? I don't think purchasing similar items  is neccesarily a bad thing. Yes, there are those out there that will  try to use this as an advantage to get a head. But there are others out there that work long hours and miss out, but still want to be able to game with friends that do have time to get the better items. So I personally don't see an issue. Although, I would hope the developers have put different graphics for the putchased items and those that have been won . Again, it's a vanity thing. 

Think what you want and play if you like. Everyone is entitled to their own opinion. I am a big fan of cryptic and have played CoH/CoV, CO and STO from beta. I have never been disappointed. This was the first beta I was not accepted into, but took a chance with a founders pack. Again, i was not disappointed. I think this game has great potential and look forward to the release. 

Damn that preview looks so generic... game that could, at max, be enjoyable for 5 hours before falling into boredom again :(

Why can't MMORPGs be fun nowadays, like single player games ?