Glorious Alpha Two Testers!
Phase I of Alpha Two testing will occur on weekends. Each weekend is scheduled to start on Fridays at 10 AM PT and end on Sundays at 10 PM PT. Find out more here.
Check out Alpha Two Announcements here to see the latest Alpha Two news and update notes.
Our quickest Alpha Two updates are in Discord. Testers with Alpha Two access can chat in Alpha Two channels by connecting your Discord and Intrepid accounts here.
Phase I of Alpha Two testing will occur on weekends. Each weekend is scheduled to start on Fridays at 10 AM PT and end on Sundays at 10 PM PT. Find out more here.
Check out Alpha Two Announcements here to see the latest Alpha Two news and update notes.
Our quickest Alpha Two updates are in Discord. Testers with Alpha Two access can chat in Alpha Two channels by connecting your Discord and Intrepid accounts here.
Comments
Exploit is (by definition) when people do not use intended mechanics but go around it and abuse it for other purpose, which is what we have been writing about. Not the intended way, but the abuse of it. Abuse that makes P2W possible. (You receive nothing through the default trade, player gives you gold after the gifting is complete in a separate trade).
Some of us concerned about P2W are suggesting that gifting gold allows P2W.
Most items will be crafted by players and sold by players to players. As of now, players will be able to make close to, if not, top-tier gear.
If you can gift gold, in exchange for something someone else used RL monies for, there is potential for P2W. It's not guaranteed, but the potential exist.
Spend real money on skin for friend, 'gift' skin to friend, friend 'gifts' gold back.
Real money = gold.
That's what some of us are trying to advocate against.
If you are adventuring for gear/resources and sell them to players for gold that's the in game economy working. Minus a sub fee no RL money is used in that type of transaction.
And even that would not stop exploiters from creating armies of characters to give gold.
Then they will just trade garbage for gold to complete transaction
Making them untradeable at the same time makes them ungiftable.
A reasonable idea would be allowing gifting FROM THE SHOP. like steam. when you guy it it will ask "is this a gift".
this way you can gift it to a friend, before it is bound.
the problem with that is, you could only ever gift current items for sale. nothing historical or rare.
just throwing that out there.
Also, gifting cash shop items would be fun for in game contests. Lets say I am a blacksmith and need tons of ore, I can hold a contest, whoever brings me the most ore in a week gets this sweet cloak... of course I could just do it with some fancy item I created aswell, so I guess its not that big of a deal.
but while I am on the subject of p2w... lets say I am a blacksmith and decide to sell my crap wares for 100,000 in game currency, then I pay some nefarious company 10$ to buy my crap sword at that cost... due to the game having so much to do what player made items, how will we avoid this type of situation?
The only way I see is if an item has a specific cost (based on a market) and I cannot sell it for more than that. BUT that isn't realistic or fair to the creators of quality items. If I build a name for myself selling great gear, I should be allowed to charge a premium for specific requests.
It seems very difficult to please both worlds, open market and no p2w.
Their plan is that Ashes will have no soulbound items and if they do implement a soulbound item it will be the exception to the rule rather than the rule. Meaning that you will find top-tier, epic, BiS gear maybe even legendary items for sale in exchange for in-game gold. If they give the people a way to make in-game gold by using real life money they are enabling them to get very powerful by spending real cash. that's why it is pay to win to be able to exchange cash shop items at all. While I realize some people will actually give it as gifts expecting nothing in return the reality is most people will use it to get as much of an advantage as they can. So Intrepid should not implement any tools that enable P2W scenarios for the games sake.
Also this scenario you brought up:
Also, gifting cash shop items would be fun for in game contests. Lets say I am a blacksmith and need tons of ore, I can hold a contest, whoever brings me the most ore in a week gets this sweet cloak... of course I could just do it with some fancy item I created aswell, so I guess its not that big of a deal.
This is literally exchanging real-life cash for in-game items that you can later sell for gold which you can exchange for Best gear. That is totally P2W. Also Now imagine it's not you the one doing the transaction but someone else and instead of ore he exchanges the epic loot he got from a boss in exchange for that cash shop item he can't afford. That is also P2W. Again I cannot stress this enough, even though this might not be what you personally would use it for, there is a ton of people that would, and that's the point. Not enabling that people.
but while I am on the subject of p2w... lets say I am a blacksmith and decide to sell my crap wares for 100,000 in game currency, then I pay some nefarious company 10$ to buy my crap sword at that cost... due to the game having so much to do what player made items, how will we avoid this type of situation?
Shut me down, please....I hope I'm wrong. Make me understand how not being able to trade anything other than craftables is going to make for a fun and healthy economy.
(Side note, I really have no clue what's actually tradeable, or will be. Maybe more than just craftables are/will be, but I hope it's enough to make the market fun. If it's not fun, whats the point?)
Frankly, it seems that if you can't have nice things like a gifting system, then it's a symptom of a larger problem of not effectively dealing with RMT offenders. In any case, if no gifting system exists, I know they are cutting themselves off from the majority of potential profit they can get from me personally.
As for EQ 2, I don't know much about how they managed to keep people from taking advantage of the system or if they even tried at all. since I did not play this game and as I understand it Daybreak doesn't care much or at all about having P2W mechanics in their games. But as far as I understand it only legendaries were untradeable while epics were tradeable making it possible for people to just exchange cash shop stuff for gear, high tier gear.
Now if Intrepid comes up with a way to prevent people from abusing the gifting system in order to gear up or make their characters rich I would also be all for the gifting system.
2. Gear decays and breaks. Different jobs require different tools.
3. Crafters can craft everything. So what does anything other than craftables mean ?
Neither of the games I mentioned really sold any equipped gear or anything at all that would affect your performance. Gifts generally took the form of costumes, seasonal mounts, player housing options, and furniture... lots and lots of furniture. In EQ2, players could even design their own cosmetic items and submit them for approval to be sold, receiving a portion of the profits, essentially crowd-sourcing the game's art development.
The more questionable items sold were things like potions for xp and vitality which would speed up the leveling process, and though not ideal, it was ultimately inconsequential as most time was spent at max-level anyway and more than enough such potions were otherwise free as veteran rewards. The most economically disruptive cash shop items for EQ2 were the subscription extensions that could be traded in-game, as that allowed a new player to get rich without any in-game effort. I would certainly not endorse that.
I mean, I guess it's not a big deal. I'm just saying that I'm likely to spend a great deal more money if they have a convenient means for me to give away exclusive dresses and ponies and fireplaces and such to my friends.
The conversation here is not whether or not the cash shop items themselves are P2W. They are most definitely not going to be in ashes.
The conversation is about how a gifting mechanic could enable unscrupulous people to "gift" those cosmetics in exchange of performance items in-game. or Anything like for example charging for them in items, gold, power levels, raid runs, or anything that will give them an advantage just because they are offering something that's worth real cash to another player that doesn't want to pay for it in real cash.
And since in ashes there are no soulbound items someone unscrupulous could basically go top tier gear by just offering cosmetics they bought with real cash to players that have the top tier items in-game effectively gearing themselves up with top tier gear by just dropping a few hundred dollars which is P2W. Even though the cosmetics that person got from the shop were not P2W at all.
I understand your sentiment that you want to gift stuff to your friends and family, but Intrepid values not having P2W in their game more than earning those extra dollars you could have most likely given them by buying the same item repeated times for your guildmates or loved ones.
The developers didn't consider it an issue, and to my knowledge they still don't.
As for giving items, you can always sell them super cheap to friends and family. Just not cash shop items.
The issue is people would use that as a method to use real life money to purchase cosmetics. Go to an third party website to trade cosmetics which were bought with money for in game items that provide an advantage. They would then gift it to the person using the gift method you are proposing. The other person would then transfer the item with stats to the person they got the gift from. It can and most deffinitely be abused this way if it were allowed and third party websites are already set up to do this sort of thing for multitudes of games. People use loopholes to trade money for items of advantage. It's done all the time.
You may not abuse the system this way but people will which is why they are not allowing it.
Hope this makes sense to you.
When people abuse systems like that it's not only that it becomes a method to turn a cosmetic only shop into a PTW method by using third party sites or sometimes even in game chat and such. It also destroys game economy.