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Please never add P2W or pay for convenience.
BraydenS
Member
I know Intrepid has often talked about never adding pay to win to Ashes, and Steven is one of the only people in the industry that can make me believe a statement like that. That said, please stick to your guns about it. We've seen so so so many games claim to not be P2W only to do a full 180 and go completely P2W and break the trust of their entire audience. I am so tired and so broken. I'm tired of being called poor or a leech because I can't afford $100+ a month on subscriptions, consumables, weight increases, inventory increases, character slot increases, secondary inventory increases, housing slots, gambling systems, etc.
I'm so tired of having the debate of "Well its not P2W because you can't win an MMO."
I'm so tired of investing my time and energy into a game only for someone with a larger wallet to be able to surpass my progression in a tenth of the time. (It's an MMO, not a single player game. Other people's progression matters.)
I'm so tired of my characters looking like starter level 1 characters after 10,000 hours, while a starter level 1 character looks like an end-game player because the first thing they did when loading in is open the store.
P2W makes me feel worthless as a customer, ruins my game experience, and only ever pulls me out of the immersion of the game. It reminds me that I'm playing a game and that the money that I make in real life is the only thing that matters.
The industry has gotten so bad that my first thought when I got my embers for supporting AoC was "I better hold onto these for when P2W gets added." While I understand and appreciate that businesses need to make money to keep running and that MMOs are a service that cannot be given for free, I believe in Intrepid's ability to do that without ruining the game experience for someone who can only pay their monthly subscription. I will gladly pay my monthly subscription, buy merch, buy expansions, and pull as many friends as I can into the world of Verra if the game is enjoyable in order to support the product. P2W may get a few dollars out of me, but it ultimately leads me to being angry, quitting, and making a forum post on an upcoming MMO begging them not to add P2W.
Sorry that this post doesn't really have any useful feedback or discussion material. I am just tired of P2W ruining the games that I love and I needed to vent.
I'm so tired of having the debate of "Well its not P2W because you can't win an MMO."
I'm so tired of investing my time and energy into a game only for someone with a larger wallet to be able to surpass my progression in a tenth of the time. (It's an MMO, not a single player game. Other people's progression matters.)
I'm so tired of my characters looking like starter level 1 characters after 10,000 hours, while a starter level 1 character looks like an end-game player because the first thing they did when loading in is open the store.
P2W makes me feel worthless as a customer, ruins my game experience, and only ever pulls me out of the immersion of the game. It reminds me that I'm playing a game and that the money that I make in real life is the only thing that matters.
The industry has gotten so bad that my first thought when I got my embers for supporting AoC was "I better hold onto these for when P2W gets added." While I understand and appreciate that businesses need to make money to keep running and that MMOs are a service that cannot be given for free, I believe in Intrepid's ability to do that without ruining the game experience for someone who can only pay their monthly subscription. I will gladly pay my monthly subscription, buy merch, buy expansions, and pull as many friends as I can into the world of Verra if the game is enjoyable in order to support the product. P2W may get a few dollars out of me, but it ultimately leads me to being angry, quitting, and making a forum post on an upcoming MMO begging them not to add P2W.
Sorry that this post doesn't really have any useful feedback or discussion material. I am just tired of P2W ruining the games that I love and I needed to vent.
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Comments
Do you mind clarifying which side of our usual 'Cosmetics are/are not P2W' debate you are on?
It depends on how its implemented. For instance with the caravans, if caravan skins don't allow the player to easily and instantly identify the components on the caravan then that is pay to win.
For cosmetics that have no real effect on gameplay I'm on the fence. I don't think I'd necessarily consider it pay to win, but definitely feels bad. While you aren't getting any mechanical advantage over other players, it feels terrible if a game doesn't provide cosmetics that the player can enjoy and use to add to their character identity without paying.
I am all for Intrepid adding paid cosmetics to Ashes of Creation so long as they don't provide a mechanical advantage and there are ample cosmetics available through gameplay that can provide equivalent value to the player. I shouldn't be stuck looking like a walking bush wielding a wooden stick while someone else walks around with an armor set with the fires of Mordor coursing through it.
I definitely agree with this.
Like the ghillie suit in BDO. It was 100% P2W to have it. I know, for BDO it wasn't super high on the P2W list, but it was a cosmetic with a real advantage in combat and PvP in general. I think I've heard they changed it sometime after I quit the game, but the original version was pretty damn P2W.
And yeah, the cosmetic skins for caravans have to show the mods on the caravan they are on, or they start to fall into the P2W category unless there is another way to quickly see the same info at a glance.
while i sympathize with what you are saying, and i also dont really play heavy p2w games, there are lots of people who like those games.
while the game makes you feel like a level 1 after 10000 hours or makes you feel worthless as a customer, the opposite happens to people who pay. you start the game, open the store, spend 10-20 bucks and you immediately look really cool, and you get some consumables that help you early on while you learn the game. it feels awesome! and those games are made for those people.
a lot of people dont have 10+ hours a day to play or arent 15-20 years old with gigachad reflexes. fights that would be easy for a good mmorpg player can be quite hard for some people, so having those extra potions and consumables help them balance it out. and spending 20-30 bucks a month isnt that much (even heavy p2w games get lots of players who spend thousands and thousands).
so those games are made for those people, not for you and me. simply dont play them, you arent the target audience. with that being said, i also hope ashes doesnt add any p2w.
My issue is not with the existence of P2W games (although I think its a problem that the entire industry is going in that direction). My problem is when games are advertised as non-P2W and then turn around and start adding as much of it as possible. I'm disappointed with the long list of games that I've had to quit because P2W was suddenly added and ruined the entire game experience, and I don't want AoC to be added to that list.
I won't support a company that in any way allows anymore than my monthly fee to be used for unfair advantages
The issue is you think with or without a skin you will know what it does. So by no means does it fall into p2w scale.
Yes the discussion now is multiboxing is p2w or not. Which it obviously is p2w... you're paying extra for an advantage.
Perhaps there is a little advantage in having one account stay at a freehold and doing things there, or camping the auction house, while the other account is out doing adventuring stuff.
I am sure people will try the illegal type of multiboxing as well, and I hope they get perma-banned.
I'm very anti multiboxing, as ive said on my WoW server there was 1 guy with 15 death knights and another with 25 druids who would get in raid together, the druids would spam aoe and heal, deathknights would grip people into the chaos, instantly killing them and spread their disease hots to opposing raids.
2 people. just 2 people shutting down entire cities and we could stop them sure, but with 2 people it only depends on how active they want to be... our defenders are 40-60 seperate individuals with lives. These are 2 people spending way more money on the game than it's worth for an unfair advantage, yes they will be on all day.
That being said, I don't mind people having several accounts at once on different servers or playing seperately at least you have to actually micro manage them at that point, but god i had to stop typing that because just remembering how infuriating it was, that everytime we tried to have a proper pvp fight, those 2 cheaters would show up. So even their own faction stopped fighting in areas they were in, hoping we could overpowered them but with such precision it was often harder than it was worth and they'd just res and do it all over again. Please do not allow this
after they terrorized our server long enough, alot of my friends stopped playing because they played for the pvp but 2 people managed to tip the scales to far and it became not fun. I'm sure they lost money because of these 2, more than they gained from their extra accounts. i noticed my guild getting smaller and smaller week by week as city pings never stopped and you had these 2 shutting down auction houses and quests. Get rid of these kinds of people, ban multiboxing.
the issue wasnt multibox, the issue was botting
one of them is currently in aoc alpha, he made a video trying to defend himself how "its all hardware" I recognize the voice considering ive been in ventrillo with him (yes it was some time ago) but im 90% sure its the same guy.... with like 10 monitors and several pc's. I refuse to support another game that allows this behavior i will 100% just stick to my rts games.
u cant seriously believe its all hardware xDDD
also hardware needs software...
I don't know why they were not banned but in AoC there will be GMs responding to player reports.
The way those players played will not be allowed, according to wiki and discord. GMs will notice them.
To be honest, probably similar reasons why most GM's don't do much for things against TOS over time unfortunately.
One thing I imagine being useful is to reduce risks, being able to watch the path your caravan may take, if they'll be safe or not, at the choke points.
"The quests that we made for you to level with are annoying and troublesome piece of content to hold you back instead of being an interesting and fun story element for you to learn about the world. Pay us extra to get rid of the obstacles before you get to the fun part of the game."
Same applies to purchasable gear: If you can buy good items it signals to me how aware the game designers are that the process of attaining good gear in the game is annoying and troublesome to the point that people would be willing to pay for skipping it or that the player base is simply not interested in gear progression. So either the designer lack the skills to make fun game mechanics or they advertised their game to the wrong kinds of players. Worst case scenario would be that they designed the game "right" but a publisher not interested in the game as a piece of fun pasttime and only as a product ruined it with their executive power.
With all that being said: Intrepid has to nail the cosmetics in PvP design. If players cannot reliably tell from the UI what kind of gear their opponents primarily wear that'll end in disaster.