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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.
Cosmetic Shop is P2W
Iridianny
Member
“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.”
“Winning” in an mmo with numerous progression routes, is quite subjective. Except they all have one thing in common, your character. Different from other games, rpgs and especially rpg mmos offer the feature of playing a character you skill, dress, role play, quest, fight, talk, and just experience the game with and through. Those ways of interacting through your character are all equally important parts of the game even if some hold different weight to different people. Regardless, they are all included in your character’s overall experience.
Given your character’s experience is the content of the game, and this game is a community game with other people’s characters affecting yours, character appearance matters and directly affects your quality of gameplay experience.
Character appearance could be interpreted as: your level, your combat gear, your non combat gear, your pets, your mounts, physical appearance, race, titles, and more. Really anything that other characters in the game can see about your character is character’s appearance. These often signify to others, and yourself, you have accomplished something in the game.
If character appearance truly didn’t matter, it would not be the focus of mmos. Level of visualization is nearly all that separates a board game from a video game. Having character visualization and progression is what separates other video games from a role playing game.
Given all of this, cosmetics items would fall into pay to win. Collection of appearances is a game mechanic. Being able to buy any feature of your character that otherwise could be achieved in game through content and game mechanics, is paying to “win” part of the game.
Revised from discussion with:
The most grand looking cosmetics will be from in-game achievment only.[9] – Steven Sharif
This was said to justify a cosmetic store "not being pay to win" because he addresses that the alternative to that is or he wouldn't have ever said this. Except, as we all know, the "best" in terms of appearance and cosmetics is subjective, so the store would be p2w given there are any cosmetics in it.
“Winning” in an mmo with numerous progression routes, is quite subjective. Except they all have one thing in common, your character. Different from other games, rpgs and especially rpg mmos offer the feature of playing a character you skill, dress, role play, quest, fight, talk, and just experience the game with and through. Those ways of interacting through your character are all equally important parts of the game even if some hold different weight to different people. Regardless, they are all included in your character’s overall experience.
Given your character’s experience is the content of the game, and this game is a community game with other people’s characters affecting yours, character appearance matters and directly affects your quality of gameplay experience.
Character appearance could be interpreted as: your level, your combat gear, your non combat gear, your pets, your mounts, physical appearance, race, titles, and more. Really anything that other characters in the game can see about your character is character’s appearance. These often signify to others, and yourself, you have accomplished something in the game.
If character appearance truly didn’t matter, it would not be the focus of mmos. Level of visualization is nearly all that separates a board game from a video game. Having character visualization and progression is what separates other video games from a role playing game.
Given all of this, cosmetics items would fall into pay to win. Collection of appearances is a game mechanic. Being able to buy any feature of your character that otherwise could be achieved in game through content and game mechanics, is paying to “win” part of the game.
Revised from discussion with:
The most grand looking cosmetics will be from in-game achievment only.[9] – Steven Sharif
This was said to justify a cosmetic store "not being pay to win" because he addresses that the alternative to that is or he wouldn't have ever said this. Except, as we all know, the "best" in terms of appearance and cosmetics is subjective, so the store would be p2w given there are any cosmetics in it.
1
Comments
As I've said in another post in another p2w thread, if the majority of mmo players truly cared about how you achieved the cosmetics - we wouldn't have the current monetization practices of "selling cosmetics is completely fine". But alas, we're here.
If the cosmetics are only available by paying and cannot be acquired by any other means - it is not pay to win.
If there is no alternative grind to get that specific cosmetic, it is simply the sale of a product. You aren't getting ahead of someone by buying an item that they could be spending several hours working towards since there is no other way they can work towards it other than straight up buying it.
Their collection of appearances is limited to what they have available without spending money and that's okay. They can have a complete collection of everything available to them in game without dropping their wallet.
By the logic that you're using here: trading cards are pay to win; figure collecting is pay to win; autograph collecting is pay to win; arcades are pay to win; the lottery is pay to win; the job market is pay to win; you can label pretty much anything in the world pay to win if you stretch it far enough.
All the vocal minority who scream that smth's unfair or p2w or whatever (this includes all the other p2w stuff in games) are just that - a minority. No one cares about us and no one will listen to us. Steven was one of us before (though mainly the non-cosmetic p2w part) which is why he decided to make a game that won't have the p2w mechanics that he hated. And so here we are.
“Let those cosmetics be earnable by creating more content in the game to do, making players play your game longer. You may not get more money right out of the gate, but you have invested players earning things and working to achieve things for longer. That means longer lasting subs.” -me in another thread
Says this while purposely ignoring that you earn gear in game. Can't make this stuff up. Legit begging for attention and ignoring anything people bring up about the game.
You didn’t read or couldn’t comprehend what I said… I know you can earn gear in the game.
Trying to insult me and commenting things that are irrelevant to the topic seems much more attention seeking. If I did want attention, it definitely wouldn’t be virtually from people on these forums and especially not from someone like you.
But when we're talking about cosmetic p2w, how and who determines what's "winning" and what's not. Cosmetics are completely subjective and based purely on taste. 10 people might see a rainbow shop cosmetic, say that it's utter shite and move on, while a single person could see that cosmetic, love it but have no money for it and yell at everyone else about this cosmetic being "p2w". And those people would look at that person and think they're crazy because in their minds this rainbow piece of shit is worthless.
So how can you objectively say that cosmetics are p2w when majority of people can't even agree on what cosmetics are the best (which would determine the winning)?
That’s the same logic as to why other types of p2w are popular in mmos though. I am just saying that cosmetics are a type of p2w.
Please re-read. Just because taste in cosmetics is subjective does not matter. People could think being the best at pvp is winning, while another could say the same about having the highest level, or the most “useful” crafting skill, or the biggest freehold, etc. The point is, that I made, is that “winning” is subjective and...
At some point it becomes absurd. Yes, I agree that different people have different playstyles and that money influencing said playstyle could be seen as p2w, but at some point there's gotta be a line drawn.
And if for you that line is "absolutely no cosmetics in the shop" (as I assume it is) then Ashes might just not be the game for you, as cliché as that sounds.
@NiKr No. You have greatly misinterpreted things I believe. I never said that having one particular cosmetic is winning, ever. Please re-read my response to your last comment for clarification.
Thanks for clarifying!
Just to go deeper to open up more discussion, do you think all cosmetic shops regardless of game type are p2w or only those which are multiplayer?
My post was only about rpg mmos. I am not sure of a non multiplayer game off the top of my head that has a cosmetic shop, so I would have to look into it before I said one way or the other.
Now you are lying to yourself...
But if you just want some arbitrary cosmetic in the future, then why are you sure that it's definitely gonna be the one in the shop? Steven has promised that in-game cosmetics will be at the very least on par with the shop ones and even better looking for the super rare ones (though again, it's subjective as hell). So theoretically there's a high chance that any cosmetic you might like in the future could be an in-game one, so you'll be fully able to "win" at your own gamestyle.
And I argue against this because every other example of p2w is directly vertical, while cosmetic one is horizontal.
All of those things are objective p2ws within their whole gameplay systems, because you clearly see that someone can just buy their way upwards. But if your goal is not to have literally all cosmetics, then the whole system of buying cosmetics can't be considered p2w.
And the same logic has been getting applied to p4c items for the longest time, exactly because they usually only influence a small part of their whole system. Smth like a "+10% gain potion" can be seen as p2w by some people, but it still requires the person with this potion to put in work to make use of it to get to a point where the item becomes "p2w". Which is why "p4c vs p2w" is a widely debated topic.
And the same parallel can be drawn between buying a single cosmetic on your way to having them all. If there's 500 cosmetics in the game (afaik there's gonna be way more cause there's already a few hundred that have been sold), that single cosmetic will not equal a single % of the progress to the "win". And at the same time, a person can't just buy every single cosmetic in the game (even if we disregard the "hundreds have been sold already so you've lost), so at best they can only buy some % of the "win". Which would make the shop a p4c system rather than a p2w one.
And you say that you don't draw the line of "just one cosmetic defines the whole system as p2w", so your best argument would be "buying cosmetics is a p4c systems and I dislike that". At least at that point people wouldn't jump on your ass for calling a subjective system p2w. But even then, the system won't change because they've already sold hundreds of items and because the majority of people still don't see cosmetic shops as p2w.
I've made bold some relevant parts to discuss.
The skins available in cash shop, being that their in the cash shop. Doesn't this already tell people that this persons skin they are using is not a dramatic achievement and that they just threw money at the game instead?
I don't believe this hinders anyones personal feeling of progress since they can see this person hasn't worked in game for what they have.
Would you still consider it p2w if the skin being sold in the store is entirely unobtainable through game play?
According to the wiki, all skins sold through the cash shop are non-tradable. Therefore only powerful wallets can unlock them.
This is usually seen as "the first cosmetic purchase for a game". And there's countless examples of single player preorders that come with a different skin for your character or a weapon or smth like that. All of those could be seen as "cosmetic shops" for single player games. You pay extra for smth that doesn't influence your gameplay.
And guess what, I'd agree with you. I don't like them being expensive. But I'm not required to buy them all to play the game or progress. In fact I can pick and choose if I want to buy any.
So no, it's not P2W. I'm sorry they are expensive, but that's the only valid argument you have.