Cosmetic Shop is P2W

Mag7spy

When you use P2W as a buzzword in a incorrect way because your argument is actually trash.

JamesSunderland

People are using the P2W term so carelessly and in such a wrong way that it might damage the term's original meaning, its pathetic to see how far people try using mental gymnastics and unreasonable relativisations to "expand" the term meaning, at that point anything and everything is P2W.

Come on guys.... this is becoming ludicrous....

SongRune

JamesSunderland wrote: »

People are using the P2W term so carelessly and in such a wrong way that it might damage the term's original meaning, its pathetic to see how far people try using mental gymnastics and unreasonable relativisations to "expand" the term meaning, at that point anything and everything is P2W.

Come on guys.... this is becoming ludicrous....

Hey now. Charging a subscription fee is definitely pay to win. If I don't pay, everyone else who does is gonna leave me in the dust. I won't even have a chance!

JamesSunderland

SongRune wrote: »

JamesSunderland wrote: »

People are using the P2W term so carelessly and in such a wrong way that it might damage the term's original meaning, its pathetic to see how far people try using mental gymnastics and unreasonable relativisations to "expand" the term meaning, at that point anything and everything is P2W.

Come on guys.... this is becoming ludicrous....

Hey now. Charging a subscription fee is definitely pay to win. If I don't pay, everyone else who does is gonna leave me in the dust. I won't even have a chance!

Hell yeah! You know what is also hella pay 2 win in an MMORPG? Internet connection! It's such an insane advantage having it!

Ludullu

JamesSunderland wrote: »

Hell yeah! You know what is also hella pay 2 win in an MMORPG? Internet connection! It's such an insane advantage having it!

Pfft, internet connection costs nothing compared to the $1k++ computer you gotta have to even try and run the game! P2W outta wazoo!1

Elder

NiKr wrote: »

JamesSunderland wrote: »

Hell yeah! You know what is also hella pay 2 win in an MMORPG? Internet connection! It's such an insane advantage having it!

Pfft, internet connection costs nothing compared to the $1k++ computer you gotta have to even try and run the game! P2W outta wazoo!1

Paying your power bill is way more P2W.

Noaani

Iridianny wrote: »

“Winning” in an mmo with numerous progression routes, is quite subjective.

I got this far through the thread, and was sick of the level of misinformation already.

Winning is not subjective. It cant be.

In order to win, there needs to be a clear goal, defined by someone that isnt you.

You can set your own goals, that's fine. However, achieving them is not winning, it is simply achieving a goal.

Winning in Ashes if creation is not an overarching concept. You do not win the game.

Rather, you win small portions of the game. This may be a fight with another player, a mob, or successfully crafting an item.

These are all activities with a clear objective set by Intrepid, and as such are things you can win at.

Nothing at all in the games cash shop can assist you at all in winning in any of these situations, and as such the cash shop is simply not pay to win.

This is not a subjective matter, it is purely objective. That is because winning is purely objective.

Achieving a personal goal is subjective.

Now, if you want to say the cash shop p2aypsg (pay to achieve your personal subjective goals), you may have a valid discussion.

However, claiming that the concept of winning is subjective is just blatantly incorrect. Starting a thread off with this claim just makes tour point irrelevant from the get go.

Iridianny

Asgerr wrote: »

Iridianny is seriously starting to piss me off. You monothematic fuck.

Some of you are very angry and agressive people. You should take a step back and wonder if you were what inspired the staff to start a thread about battling toxicity in their community long before the game has even been released. Maybe you shouldn't take anything in this online forum so seriously that you get "seriously pissed off"... it's probably bad for your blood pressure.

Iridianny

@Natasha then go back to bed, you didn't have to answer the forum guy's booty call to come post memes and offer no real value to the conversation, but I guess it makes you feel special.

Mag7spy

Iridianny wrote: »

@Natasha then go back to bed, you didn't have to answer the forum guy's booty call to come post memes and offer no real value to the conversation, but I guess it makes you feel special.

Don't be trying to bully Natasha, she is just built stronger than you. All you are doing is spreading misinformation.

Elder

JamesSunderland

Do you understand that your thread holds no real value at all? @Iridianny

I'm afraid you might come to realise that the premise of your thread requires you to wear a cosmetic P2W set consisting of a huge pair of shoes, a colorful wig, and a red round nose to be properly discussed.

Iridianny

@JamesSunderland And you'll have the biggest rainbow afro of them all for wasting your time engaging in a conversation you knew held no real value at all.

Iridianny

Mag7spy wrote: »

Iridianny wrote: »

@Natasha then go back to bed, you didn't have to answer the forum guy's booty call to come post memes and offer no real value to the conversation, but I guess it makes you feel special.

Don't be trying to bully Natasha, she is just built stronger than you. All you are doing is spreading misinformation.

Me bully her? She came here trying to provoke me and pick a fight with her shit posting and insulting XD But nice job defending her, now he might give you her snap

Mag7spy

JamesSunderland wrote: »

Do you understand that your thread holds no real value at all? @Iridianny

I'm afraid you might come to realise that the premise of your thread requires you to wear a cosmetic P2W set consisting of a huge pair of shoes, a colorful wig, and a red round nose to be properly discussed.

The thread had brought us together in a common goal, id say that is some value xD

Mag7spy

Iridianny wrote: »

Mag7spy wrote: »

Iridianny wrote: »

@Natasha then go back to bed, you didn't have to answer the forum guy's booty call to come post memes and offer no real value to the conversation, but I guess it makes you feel special.

Don't be trying to bully Natasha, she is just built stronger than you. All you are doing is spreading misinformation.

Me bully her? She came here trying to provoke me and pick a fight with her shit posting and insulting XD But nice job defending her, now he might give you her snap

I saw the HE

JamesSunderland

@Iridianny Forgive me, I was a bit too harsh, it seems like i've overlooked the thread's comical value, it's certainly worth the laughs for the time spent, i will gladly accept the biggest 0 stats P2W colorful crown in such a thematic thread.

FuryBladeborne

Iridianny wrote: »

“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.

I searched "cosmetic pay 2 win" in the Ashes forum search box and got 15 pages of results. I skimmed the first 10 pages and saw many threads on this topic. I know from participating in quite few that there are at least several massive threads on this topic. If you want to know what people think about this, you have many hours of reading there...

Bottom line is that cosmetics in ashes are not going away. The Kickstarter packages included many skins and skins have been sold monthly for about 5 years now. The best that you could try for is no cosmetic shop on release. However, a monthly sub + cosmetic cash shop has been the plan since the game was originally announced. Its what the revenue projections are based on. At initial announcement, Steven had $30 million secured for Ashes. Steven has stated that the game is projected cost about $40-45 million by release at this point. I doubt that you can come up with any argument that is practical from IS point view to reduce monetization while the cost of development is increasing by so much.

Iridianny

@FuryBladeborne Never have suggested to get rid of all the cosmetics they’ve sold already. I've said before that cosmetics could be the reward of those who were part of the development process and then not have cash shop on release. The issue with that is people have embers they are afraid will devalue, but I think those could just be converted to game time. I never have suggested to reduce monetization, simply transfer it. I like higher sub fee than the 20 year average of $15 and paying for extra character slots, neither effect the quality of in game experience the same way a cash shop and cosmetics do. Also, they could offer various merch for sale, too. I think official custom character figurines of your character would be really cool.

FuryBladeborne

@Iridianny I understand wanting to argue getting rid of purchased cosmetics, but I doubt that it will ever happen. Its just a massive revenue source and doesn't hurt the gameplay.

Steven does have to recoup his costs. Even after the game is released he will still be paying the studio that is intended to be 160+ developers on top of other business costs while trying to recover his investment. He has to have a reasonable way of doing so.

If you would like an idea of how much players as a whole really care about purchased items, just look at Diablo Immortal. That game has severe pay 2 win PVP monetization with estimates to max a character ranging between at least $100,000 to more than $500,000 USD. I know of one streamer that has spent over $100k on his character and he hasn't said that he is anywhere near max. The complaints from players are extreme. In spite of that, the game has generated $100 million in revenue, has 30 million downloads, and has only been out for 2 months. The point is that player complaints about monetization don't really impact profits that much.

I'm just so glad that IS seems firmly committed to not using pay to win mechanics options that actually impact gameplay.

If Ashes is very successful, it may pave the way for other companies to restrict all non cosmetic sales in MMOs. I can only hope.

Noaani

Iridianny wrote: »

FuryBladeborne Never have suggested to get rid of all the cosmetics they’ve sold already. I've said before that cosmetics could be the reward of those who were part of the development process and then not have cash shop on release. The issue with that is people have embers they are afraid will devalue, but I think those could just be converted to game time. I never have suggested to reduce monetization, simply transfer it. I like higher sub fee than the 20 year average of $15 and paying for extra character slots, neither effect the quality of in game experience the same way a cash shop and cosmetics do. Also, they could offer various merch for sale, too. I think official custom character figurines of your character would be really cool.

So, here's the thing.

If Intrepid decided to put the price of subscription up to $20, and decided to give cosmetics as rewards for people that participated in development (which I have to assume means only developers working at Intrepid), what is to stop them adding the cosmetic store back in the future?

I mean, if there is concern that the current cosmetic store could mean adding pay to win features in the future, what reason do we have to assume Intrepid wouldn't just add a cosmetic only cash shop back after they increased the subscription fee?

The only real difference is that Intrepid knows the vast majority of players are fine with a cosmetic only cash shop - even if a few are not. This means they know they won't get much (if any) backlash by adding it back in later on if they take it out now.

daveywavey

Huh? Hasn't this just been going on in a different thread...?

daveywavey

Mods: Any chance we can get a Mega-Thread for these?

daveywavey

Asgerr reading more @Iridianny nonsense:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=M72agpjFHYM

Whoops, accidentally tagged you. My bad.

akabear

@Iridianny low subscription fees alone will unlikely maintain the financial viability of the game. subscription fees are aimed low to widen the possible subscriber base and cosmetics offered to bulster this. A double edged sword. Raise the subscription fee, make all cosmetics free narrows the field of players that potentially will pay.

So, if you are against cosmetic, what would you do?

Happymeal2415

Natasha wrote: »

cockwomble

Lol

BaSkA_9x2

This is the TL;DR:

If you think looking good is winning, then yes, any game with a Cosmetic Shop is P2W.

For most people, winning means being stronger than other players, therefore cosmetics that do not add any extra stats do not make a game P2W.

If you disagree, good for you, it was nice seeing you and I hope you find an MMORPG without P2W for you to enjoy.

Regardless of your opinion or feelings, no matter how many posts like this are made, this game will have a Cash Shop with cosmetics. By the way, I dislike cosmetics very much, but I'd rather have a game with cosmetics and no actual P2W than the opposite.

Last but not least, Steven has said that in-game obtainable gear will look just as good, if not better, than cosmetic gear. So maybe, just maybe, play the game before going full ret*rd.

Cheers mate, time to ostracize this post now.

mcstackerson

I think if you are going to adopt this definition of p2w then you must agree that any game you have to pay for is p2w, since you have to pay to play the game.

Can't win if you can't play.

PenguinPaladin

Now we need a thread on how the subscription method is literally p2w, and p2play, and P2lose

Happymeal2415

Obviously too late for this now but I have an idea for cosmetic shops. Call the cosmetic shop the bargain bin. Everything sold in there Is something achievable in game except it's a worn out version someone's thrown out. All those cool gems on it... they're cracked. The aura coming off of it... it's worn out and faded. The nice cloak... torn. Each one of these items has an in game gold/materials sync. You can go get it repaired to refurbish it but it only lasts a short duration before returning to a worn out piece of crap. Pay to lose cosmetics