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AoC will currently be 100% pay to win, but how do we stop it?
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As for gold selling in chat that one should be easy. Have a Gm on server with the ability to ban anyone selling gold in chat. This would have the added benefit of cleaning up some of the inappropriate racist and over offensive things often plaguing MMO chat. I played BDO for a while and I remember how horrible chat would get in that game but it sure did clean up fast when a GM would actually get on and start warning people to keep it respectful.......with that said I hope they allow some joking around and some reasonable amount of swearing, it's the over the top personal insults and racist language I think most of us don't appreciate filling up our chat box.
With Steven being a gamer himself maybe he could even fill this role on whatever server he decides to play on.
That was from a little over 3 years ago (livestreams in May 2017, if you want to look them up).
However, since most players will be a part of a social organization, there are only 3 such organizatios known at present and social organizations have chat channels, it is probably safe to assume these will be the chat channels RMT sellers end up using (when they clue in to things a bit).
My point was more, sometimes you can see someone shouldn't have what they have. Of what i have understood, getting good gear in this game won't be easy. Of course, i can emagine if you farm alot of form, you can buy it from a crafter. When it comes to gold, you could proberly look at game time. Someone that plays a few hours a week, proberly won't have alot of gold
The problem with this is the stock market.
Someone that doesn't play much may still hit it big there.
Then you have the fact that all gear is able to be bought and sold - which combined with people being able to hit it big via stocks, you can't really simply look at the gear a player has to be able to judge whether they have participated in RMT or not.
Or should we remove the trading function and make it another boring economy based on Auction house like bdo, just to protect you from gold sellers?
Or do you prefer daily currencies that also arent tradeable, but make playing a miserable experience that reset every 24h, as the base of a characters economy.
The CashShop wont sell anything to the players that can be sold between players for gold. Cosmetics are bound.
Should the players that will play the game 1 year later call p2w for those that started the first year?
Dont make misleading claims. They can only hurt the development if blown out of proportion.
One char should have 1-2 professions and produce items for only those professions, as opposed one char having all prpfessions levelled up, flooding the shops with numerous items.
Meaningful crafts and material for solid prices and slower produce, as opposed to meaningless trinkets, massively produced by one character, with players dumping their 100s stacks of X Y Z item as 3 gold less than the previous person.
I would actually agree on this. The headstart is going to provide a level advantage and guilds who are smart will plan out how to utilize their KS members getting the most out of their time.
But that can proberly still be tracked. My point is, there are most likely ways to track some of these things
It will be by developers, but that kind of isn't my point.
Players are able to look at a character and see that something isn't right. Sometimes, they will report this and sometimes when they do, developers will look in to things.
However, the more false positives developers get with reporting like this, the less often they are willing (and indeed able) to look in to the reports.
Since Ashes will have several ways in which income a player makes can be completely independent of the amount of time a player spends in game, that means one of the main things players can see that doesn't seem right all of a sudden doesn't actually mean anything.
The develoeprs in Ashes won't (and indeed shouldn't) even bother looking in to a character that seems to have better gear than players would expect.
In many games, if you see a character go from having trash gear in every slot one day, to literally having the best gear money could buy the next, you can often make assumptions that they engaged in some form of RMT.
In Ashes, that assumption can't be made.
“Grinding
Repetition will not be part of progression in Ashes of Creation.[11]
There will be no "grindy" quests.[11]
There will not be repetitive quest lines through a single dungeon to obtain gear.[12]
The aspiration is to have more things to do in the game than a player has time to do.[11]
AFK leveling
There will not be AFK leveling in Ashes of Creation.[13]
We want this game to be played. If there are things that you can do to not play the game and still progress, we've done something wrong.[13] – Jeffrey Bard”
https://ashesofcreation.wiki/Progression
“Gatherers who are more advanced in their artisan tree will unlock higher level harvesting tools that have a greater chance of collecting higher quality resources.[10][11]
You will have an opportunity to proc certain qualities based on your progression in the Artisan tree. So if you are a gatherer; and as you advance in your gathering, you'll have a higher opportunity to collect better resources.[11] – Steven Sharif“
“Resource extractors are potential constructions that can collect resources over time.[13]
“Available to node citizens who own a freehold near a ‘resource center’.[13]
Requires several people to construct.[13]
Moving resources from the extractor will likely require a caravan.[13]”
“Alpha-1 gathering.[14]
“Gathering in the Alpha-1 early preview.[15]
Gathering is one of the artisan classes in Ashes of Creation.[1][16]
“Gatherable resources are discovered by trial-and-error and by learning their visuals.[1]
Gathering requires the creation and use of tools.[17][18]”
https://ashesofcreation.wiki/Resources
As for any “pay-to-win” from the official game store, there will only be pay-to-look-pretty. The microtransactions from cosmetics will help the perpetuity of providing effective support and R&D.
"Ashes of Creation will not be pay to win, that is our pledge to the community. One of the core principles we set forth with Ashes of Creation is a very strong desire to maintain the game's even playing field.
“Q: Will there be RNG boxes?
A: I dislike RNG. Archeage made me loath rng monetization gimmicks.[12] – Steven Sharif
Inventory slots and XP potions are considered pay to win.[13]
“My definition of pay to win is really anything that affects the in-game economy, the in-game action pool, your abilities and/or skills... In my opinion the inventory slots and the XP potions would be considered pay to win.[13] – Steven Sharif“
“Equitable cosmetics, both from a quantity and quality standpoint, are achievable through in-game means.[16]
Nothing in the cosmetic store will be pay to win.[17]
I want to incentivize purchase in the cosmetic shop for sustainability of what expansions we have intended, since we are not a box cost. I want to incentivize purchase by offering limited items: limited time, limited quantity, so you have confidence that when you purchase them, they won't be offered later on in some other way.[16] – Steven Sharif“
https://ashesofcreation.wiki/Payment_model
Are you guys talking about head start on release? That’s only temporary, I imagine a few months after everyone can play there won’t be that huge of a gap, and a year or two later there won’t be one at all.
And that's on servers that you choose to join isn't it? As in not all server are going to open at that time.
Of course but I would argue the same logic applies to if you say, bought a weapon from the store that's level 10 out of a potential 50. Sure, you're not gonna use it all the way to max but if everyone else starts with a level 1 weapon at launch, you'll get considerably faster ahead of the other players that didn't use money, even if the advantage is only temporary.
Edit to add to the point: And once you've reached max level, you can then move on to end game things. If you get there faster than others, then that means that you will likely be consistently ahead of your peers, at least to an extent.
What I do like is that the devs will have servers specifically for headstart, so that people can choose to opt out of competing against others when they may not have had acces to purchasing it. Hell, I don't even know if my guild will be playing on a headstart server as we'll probably be going where all the other big guilds are
A lot of games have done it, it hasn't caused issues in any of them.
[/sarcasm]
I think it's because the first few days of AoC will be extra important in deciding which nodes are the first to rise up and start vassalizing others. Even if nodes don't progress at all during the head-start. It's still a small advantage to be able to start your personal journey a few days early, get your bearings, and start the real game a couple levels ahead. Because of that, you should be able contribute more XP to nodes and thus have more influence over node progress (very slightly).
And for those first few in-node houses which become available in just a couple days, it's possible that only head-start players will have enough gold to buy them.
But yeah, it's not really a big advantage. No one should care after the first week or two. The optics sucks though, because technically I would agree that it's P2W. Just a very tiny amount.
If head start lets you begin, say, a week early, you have whatever you get after a week’s effort. Someone who doesn’t have head start will have the same thing you do after a week of playing too. You’re not really getting anything extra, you’re just getting it early. It’s not pay to win, it’s pay to not wait.
You can liken it to giving someone a head start in a foot race but this isn’t a foot race. It’s a marathon with no finish line. There’s no real tangible gain.
Regarding the headstart issue, it is somewhat pay to win. But at the same time, it's somewhat isn't. Headstart players will be able to flock in certain areas of their choosing so that they can be prepared to level up the nodes of their choice. They will be at a higher level than non-headstart players, thus making their node leveling faster since they can kill mobs faster. However, it is essentially the same as getting into the game late despite the early access provided by the devs themselves.
Players with early access will only be able to join the headstart servers during the early access period. Non-headstart players will for sure avoid headstart servers. Players who are in headstart servers will also create a new character and play in non-headstart servers because that's where the majority of the population are going to be. Who wants to play in a server that only have their own guilds in it? Well, if they want to make it their private island, sure. Go ahead, no one wants to go there anyway.
Fun fact, OP was also one of the people that made a thread regarding the concerns of headstart servers.
I don't consider it pay to win at all.
Here is my reasoning.
I don't think it is pay to win, and so would be happy to buy it right now.
I can't buy it, and will never have the chance to buy it.
Since I can't buy it, it can't be pay to win.
In order to be pay to win, it can't just be something that can give people an advantage, it also needs to be something that people can buy.
Add to this the fact that I agree with you that any advantage that it offers will be completely lost in the first week or so, and suddenly we have a thing that is neither pay, nor win.
So, in my opinion, it fulfills neither aspect of pay to win.
Yeah that's a good point.
But that makes me wonder. If kick-starter backers received god-tier weapons, which you can't buy anymore, and which help those players to "win" more, what would you call it? Certainly that has its own problems, but you're right that it's not the same as P2W. More like a Founder's Advantage.
Again, I never thought that the head-start was anything more than a tiny, one-week, advantage. Negligible even. But if the perks of being a founder were more significant and permanent, would that be just as bad as P2W, or would it be more acceptable?
While it still wouldn't be pay-to-win, it would be something that would stop me playing the game regardless.
Note that none of the perks from Kickstarter offer any sort of mechanical benefits. Everything is either a cosmetic benefit or making the game more accessible... Such as earlier alpha spots, beta keys to share with people, or the lifetime sub I mentioned. No non-cosmetic gear, no XP boost or in-game currency.
The fact that the pledge tier rewards avoided P2W was one way that the project showed its commitment. While it might be an intellectual exercise to speculate on what P2W for Kickstarter backers would mean today, it’s a silly one because that kind of up-front hypocrisy would probably have tanked this project before it really could get started, and we wouldn’t even be here chatting about it.
why not both