People have a real aversion to anything that allows you to simply spend money to get ahead in terms of gear for your toon. In response to this I offer the following opinions of what I personally would do about it.
1. Pay to Win is only definable as a problem in PVP from what I can tell. I don't really do PVP and if someone else wants to give the company more money than I do to get better IOs for themself, I say let them. In PVE this doesn't hurt me, it helps them, and it helps the company. So fqar PVE, as far as I'm concerned, PAy to Win is not a thing. It doesn't exist on that context, not really.
2. In PVP the fact is that no two toons are ever totally on par with each other in terms of gear anyway, and there are factors other than money contribute to this. For one thing, time spent grinding on a toon to get gear, for another, the player's ability to access the auction house (how much Inf they have, etc). Also, if you're going to charge for new power sets and classes, it's impossible to make those new classes and sets totally equal to what already exists, so there are bound to be SOME examples of stuff rolling out new for money that's better in PVP than anything that existed before it. So those are indirect examples of what some would call Pay to Win which are generally accepted as okay and not game-breakingly unfair, I think.
3. People have complained that charging money for content then making that content more lucrative in terms of gear drops at the end and during is Pay to Win, and if it is, I think it's as indirect as what I mentioned in 2 above and equally effective.
4. The real problem isn't having all of the paid-for stuff that might make one toon better than another, but rather the rules of engagement in PVP, I think. If you could control the PVP environment such that you (you the player) could generate PVP events or instances with the ability to disable everyone's set bonuses, nerf all IOs down to the level of what a generic common IO would do for you, normalize everyone's effective level, etc, then you wouldn't have any problems with Pay to Win because whatever you paid for isn't actually helping you win, in reality. And for those brave enough to do it, you could also have a "No Holds Barred" PVP option where there are no such safeguards and everyone plays the toon as-is, come what may. At that point if there is any traction to the idea of getting rid of all paid-for gear of all kinds, no matter how indirect, then I submit that it's the PVPers refusal to do the "normalized" style PVP that's the problem, I think, not the paid-for content/gear in itself. You can offer "fair" PVP to PVPers, if they choose not to do it for some reason, the fault lies with them, not the game company.
R.S.O. of Phoenix Rising
Pay to Win ultimately boils down to "does winning come down to whomever spends more money?" In our case I do not feel this is possible, as our design is such that anything mechanical is earnable in-game. It may be a badge, it may be something you craft or buy on the auction house, but nothing, absolutely nothing, which manipulates mechanics will be locked behind a paywall.
Pay to get the pretty fairy wings with sparkles without needing to farm for them, that is not pay to win, and is instead the model we are aiming solidly at.
Technical Director
Read enough Facebook and you have to make Sanity Checks. I guess FB is the Great Old One of the interent these days... - Beamrider
It's a PvE problem too.. I've played games where the only way to complete difficult content is buying certain gear and then there is a culture of the "haves and have-nots"
I'll be honest and say I am perfectly okay with PvP ONLY being unlocked at endgame (level 30 or 50). Then have a tiered system so the new players can face new players and better geared (or just better record) players can play with each other too.
Crowd Control Enthusiast
Sounds good. But does this mean that there will never be content that can earn a person randomized gear drops (salvage and recipes, to use the CoX equivalent) at a faster rate than other content might? For example, in CoX they had Incarnate trials, which were subscriber-only and thus paid-for. They gave you Incarnate powers, which were a form of added rewards for added money (the sub). The Incarnate powers were not able to be used in PVP, I think. Would something like this be possible in CoT as you envision it, or are we definitely not doing anything like that?
R.S.O. of Phoenix Rising
I agree with you to the extent that I don't want things to turn into a game where you MUST have the best gear to get on a Task Force, etc. If they can keep the spirit of CoX alive by making all the IOs etc more like "optional, but better" rather than "you can't do the TF without this, it's THAT hard" then I think we're okay in that regard. I also think difficulty sliders factor into that in a good way if we have them. That said I could also enjoy trying to do TFs set to harder difficulty once in a while and trying to build an Uberforce team to do it, for fun, occasionally, fo the "Master of This TF" badge, etc.
R.S.O. of Phoenix Rising
PvP could be unlock at level 10+... but i dont care much for it, soooo... whatever! ;)
P2W didn't exist in CoX PvE but does in WoW PvE in the sense that if you don't have the uber gear people will not dungeon with you.
Also WoW has gear degradation / repair costs.
The CoX example: the cash shop sold purple enhancements. Non-tradeable. You bought them for you.
So say I bought a set of Hecatombs and a set of Ragnaroks and um.. I dunno.. a set of Armageddons.. and it worked because I already had an uber build that just needed a bit more recharge.. that's a big if right there..
Who wins in PvE? Everyone I team with.
Not really P2W.. I didn't win anything, it cost me $40 (or whatever) and the whole team got the same reward/loot table rolls.
But to tie in with another thread.
I have all these purples. You are a complete idiot. You run in and aggro all the mobs on a squishee when I'm the tank and somehow that gets ME killed.
If there were repair costs, it could cost me to carry on playing.
In CoX it did not do this, I'm just aware that people are talking about repair costs so here's a problem.
If people won't pay enough to finance its creation, it is not worth creating.
/Segev
Also I'm pretty sure that you could use incarnate powers in PvP as long as it was level 50 (RV) PvP.
The other PvP zones were not level 50 so you wouldn't have got those powers.
If people won't pay enough to finance its creation, it is not worth creating.
/Segev
getting something faster, or slower, is not P2W, you still have to play the content. Then it is cash vs time. You don't have time, so you pay cash.
Technical Director
Read enough Facebook and you have to make Sanity Checks. I guess FB is the Great Old One of the interent these days... - Beamrider
The only way, if I have my druthers, people will be able to spend real money to get in-game advantage-giving items is by buying them in the player-to-player market from other players, using Stars. (Buy the Stars from MWM, then use them to get another player's gameplay-earned item.) If you're willing to spend the money on it, you can pay to win...but the rarity of items will not change, and thus it will be a matter of supply and demand. SOMEBODY earned that ultra-cool item through gameplay, which reduces or eliminates the serious problems with P2W schema. Most notably, there's not necessarily an item for everybody willing to cough up the cash; this means you won't see a clear "has spent money" divide.
[color=#ff0000]Business Manager[/color]
[img]http://missingworldsmedia.com/images/favicon.ico[/img]
Fantastic! Precisely what I was hoping to hear too. Now if only there were a Like, or Thank You button for posts. (Wish List?)
Capt Odee, saving the city one click at a time.
[CENTER][URL=http://www.nodiatis.com/personality.htm][IMG]http://www.nodiatis.com/pub/20.jpg[/IMG][/URL][/CENTER]
Same here. My Twitch skills are not what they used to be in my younger days.
Capt Odee, saving the city one click at a time.
[CENTER][URL=http://www.nodiatis.com/personality.htm][IMG]http://www.nodiatis.com/pub/20.jpg[/IMG][/URL][/CENTER]
Everything Dr. Tyche and Segev have said above works great for me.
R.S.O. of Phoenix Rising
Well, what about Competition? Wont sellers keep lowering and lowering the price after some time? Less and Less Stars spent? :{
Not necessarily. There is the chance that this could happen, but that is only when the supply is greater than the demand.
And the fact that Stars get spent on the market shouldn't bother MWM at all. They still got the money in their back pocket by someone purchasing them. The only time when they should step in is if exploits/dupes/other nefarious means were used to generate items faster than they should be acquired (or workarounds to generate stars from nothing)
The generation of Stars is what get's the company money, but if there is a stipend given for subscribers, then you need there to ALWAYS be something to spend Stars on if you have them. Otherwise the Stars pile up and nobody wants them, so nobody pays a subscription to get them and you them lose money due to flooding the market.
That said, if there are rares and very rares, I feel like the Stars will always be useful, especially if you're NOT going to just sell those IOs outright in the cash shop like CoX did. If all Stars had to be created by buying them and all recipes and IOs had to be created by random drop, then I think you're okay. The idea being, I got a purple I can't use, but I want a different one, so I sell mine for Stars and then buy the other one for Stars. I think they just need to avoid having too many totally crappy purple sets so that they're practically ALL valuable to someone.
The fact that it would be nice to ALWAYS have something to spend Stars on is another reason I like the idea of having one or more TFs or Trials that you have to pay a fee to do every time you do one. That sort of thing probably needs better rewards at the end that the non-pay-to-run TFs and trials which exist in the form of better XP and Inf drop rates during, better salvage and recipe drop rates during , bigger/better Insps when they drop during, and/or better drops at the end, like a double drop of random recipes or something. That's another thread though (for a while there that thread's status was in limbo, but Dr. Tyche decided not to delete it, for which he has my thanks.)
Edit: Now that thread has been locked.
R.S.O. of Phoenix Rising
I'll repeat what I said in the Pay to Raid thread. I really feel this thread also needs to be locked or deleted. We really need to stop kicking this horse.
I got chills! They're multiplyin'. And I'm losin' control. Cuz the power, I'm supplyin'. Why it's ELECTRIFYIN'!!
I don't think we should lock every thread just because one user (oOStaticOo in this case) disagrees with somebody or doesn't like the ideas being discussed. This thread hasn't gotten exceptionally long, hasn't gotten acerbic or turned into a flame war, and isn't hurting anyone as it is, as far as I can see.
R.S.O. of Phoenix Rising
And I don't think one user (Radiac in this case) should be discussing monetization methods for CoT when MWM themselves haven't even decided upon how they wish to monetize CoT. I think MWM should be the ones to discuss the monetization methods of their product if they so choose to do so with us. I think we should let them figure out what they should or shouldn't be doing as far as what they feel should or shouldn't be monetized for their product. If they decide to gather input from us, the player base, let them do so on their terms with perhaps a poll in which everybody can participate in.
I got chills! They're multiplyin'. And I'm losin' control. Cuz the power, I'm supplyin'. Why it's ELECTRIFYIN'!!
But... nothing else on these forums works that way. We discuss everything else whenever we want and MWM is going to do what they think is best in the end. Why is this different?
My wife and I both own our own service businesses. We make no bones about asking for money for what we do, or paying people for what they do.
Years ago I worked in financial advising, and I learned people are HIGHLY emotional about money. No, that's not right, most people are boogety-boogety crazy when it comes to money. They think everyone should give it to them and noone should ever ask them for any.
This will always be a tough topic as long as it is humans that will be playing this game, but discussion is just discussion and MWM are going to do what they think is right in the end. Any discussion--as long as it's civil and follows forum rules--is just food for thought.
FIGHT EVIL! (or go cause trouble so the Heroes have something to do.)
Because basically this "discussion" is boiling down to everything that was already hashed over in a different thread that is now locked. We do not know what MWM is planning as far as their monetization method is concerned. We do not know exactly how they plan on rolling out any kind of Sub or MSub stipend, or if there will even be one. Any kind of "discussion" involving that is moot until we get a clearer picture of just what MWM plans to do.
I'm all for discussing ideas on how to improve upon the CoH model to make CoT better. Let's talk about graphics, sound effects, pets, auras, costumes, enhancements, boosts, powers, ATs, story lines, enemies, giant monsters, etc.
I can see this thread quickly spiraling out of control into looking very similar to the previous thread. Radiac has already started slipping back down that slope by mentioning the fact that he'd like to have content that is paid for that will hand out better bonuses to the person who has paid for it. Which is basically bringing back his desire for a Pay to Raid system.
I got chills! They're multiplyin'. And I'm losin' control. Cuz the power, I'm supplyin'. Why it's ELECTRIFYIN'!!
If the thread can keep from spiralling down the hole, nothing wrong with discussing potential ideas. The idea of "selling" your purples for Stars bought by someone else has been done successfully in many games already, so there's a solid model to study.
Technical Director
Read enough Facebook and you have to make Sanity Checks. I guess FB is the Great Old One of the interent these days... - Beamrider
I can see paying for items to allow the player to improve characters faster, as you can in games like World of Tanks and Warthunder. While some might view this as pay-to-win, it's not as long as those who didn't pay those premium costs can still improve their characters as much even if it takes longer.
And I agree with Static, let's not let this thread become yet another swamp of idle debate on monetization. That doesn't help at all.
There are a bunch of discussed methods of bringing in money when required.
Box sale, merch sale, bundles of in-game things, 3d models, authored content, a subscription (specifically the kickstarter refers to months of VIP subs).
Lesser tiers of subscriptions (lock out crafting, lock out AE, lock out AT's, lock out paywalled missions and maps) have also been discussed.
The ability to just play everything for a day for $1 (to paraphrase Robocop) was mentioned.
I wont be paying a subscription to get stars, I'll be paying a subscription to play all the content with all the ATs. I'm more than happy for my stars to pile up. I'm going to fill a pool with them and swim round in it like Scrooge McDuck.
Also agree with Static.
If people won't pay enough to finance its creation, it is not worth creating.
/Segev
He wait... I dont want to be left behind! :<
I also Agree with... ME! :})
I changed my mind! :/
You know.. I'm allowed to do that! ;D
I just dont know Who's Mind I have now! :P
Ok, I see. I haven't read any of the "Pay to Raid" thread, so my earlier response to Static was just based on what I was seeing here, which I didn't think was so bad. A spiraling, pointless thread is a valid reason to lock.
Monetization will always be contentious, but I want you guys to have plenty of fair, appropriate ways to TAKE OUR MONEY!!! :P
FIGHT EVIL! (or go cause trouble so the Heroes have something to do.)
As do a lot of people on here. Which is why I suggested that MWM takes a poll and discuss it with us on their terms if they desire to find out more about what we are willing to give our money on.
I got chills! They're multiplyin'. And I'm losin' control. Cuz the power, I'm supplyin'. Why it's ELECTRIFYIN'!!
Its easy to use Google Drive to make a survey. (ex: http://goo.gl/kdt6oR) For FREEEEE.! ;)
Except for your #1 Lucky Star, which you keep in a special vault so the Beagle Boys don't steal it.
Now I must reiterate that we don't know how the training (my word for gear) system works. I know that there will be many unbound items that work on any character but I hope that the "maxxed out" gear comes in a "Unique" form that is not tradeable thus eliminating the Pay2Win scenario.
This will allow players who power level and don't want to feel "gimped" because they didn't run the content to collect al the gear of their level to pay to come up to par (the better gear but not the best gear) without having level 12 training (my word for gear) on a level 30 character.
Some things really should only be earned IMHO. Waiting for that perfect training (gear) piece keeps active player population and gives people systems to keep aspiring to. I know I have one kind of offense I want to train, one kind of defense and one kind of utility.. getting the perfect fit that matches my view of a character is worth me working for.
Crowd Control Enthusiast
While I understand your desire for "Unique" untradeable enhancements, I am not in that same boat. I have never liked playing games where I had gear I could not gift or trade to my other friends while playing. It frustrated me to no end having gear that was designed for some other character that I was not playing, i.e. Rogue's Leather while I was playing a Fighter and needed Plate. When it was bound to my character upon receiving it, the only options I had were to either sell it to the vendor or delete it. To me, that was a waste. If I could have gifted it to someone else I would have been much happier.
From what I gathered and understand about the Auction House that has been mentioned by the Devs, there will be two ways to obtain items. One through Stars, and the other through regular game money. I haven't heard anything about the Devs also introducing something like the Merit System we had in CoH, but that could also be another way to obtain particular enhancements. I think the more options we have in obtaining these, the less there will be what we consider Pay 2 Win. After all, if you can't get it one way all you have to do is get it another.
I got chills! They're multiplyin'. And I'm losin' control. Cuz the power, I'm supplyin'. Why it's ELECTRIFYIN'!!
I'm with oOStaticOo on this one: I like the idea that everything is tradable. There may turn out to be some exceptions, mind, where I would be convinced otherwise, but I do not think there would be a blanket subcategory of a particular kind of thing which is otherwise tradable that shouldn't be. Certainly not just due to "rarity" or "tier of usefulness" or the like. I think the idea of being able to trade what you don't want for what you want is conducive to fun in MMOs.
[color=#ff0000]Business Manager[/color]
[img]http://missingworldsmedia.com/images/favicon.ico[/img]
I agree with Static and Segev. Being able to trade things is much better than not. I cannot count the number of times in WoW that I got a 'useless' drop that was bound to my character which either another one of my characters or someone else's character would have made good use of.