So, 'pay to win' is the future of CoH?
By
Agahnim,
Posted on: 2011-10-13 07:59 in CoH and CoV General Discussions
It's not a true pay to win, though, until SO builds become unplayable.
A lot of MMO are going this route to keep farming profits where they belong - in their OWN hands. Those ridiculous profit margins on gold farmers can belong to the company instead since the same players who would pay real money for fake currency might pay real money for virtual goods directly. Frankly I have no problem with that.
Until SO builds become unplayable.
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As can be seen from the recent minor kerfluffle over the perceived 'weakness' of Street Justice (not my perception but then I haven't bought it yet), it is my current belief that the Devs do not intend to make 'buy only' items any more powerful than what is available ingame.
Nor does it seem to be that they intend that only the most powerful stuff is in the store.
I don't personally have a problem with people being able to get stuff faster via money than they could ingame, but I do hope they will keep the 'buy only' stuff to a minimum.
However there will always be something shiny in the store to entice people to subscribe and buy it with those 'free' VIP points. This makes total sense to me.
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more options are always nice, i consider it the impatient "buy it nao" option for those who have the money to shell out for it but arent patient enough to wait for drops or earn inf to buy on market, or alignment merits/emp merits to buy directly
i personally would never buy IOs from the paragon market since i would rather buy things like powersets and costume pieces or other account wide functional items like increased storage
i dont see it being pay to win unless they were exclusive to the paragon market and could not be earned in game through any means
I don't think its the case in CoX, but honestly PAY TO WIN is the future of gaming.
The writing is on the wall.
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IMHO the backlash would be huge if they only offered the best IOs through the store.
But as far as letting people buy Purple and PvP IOs in the market? Don't really care. I'll never do it personally but I remember some saying about fools and money.
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Source? I'd dare say they haven't gone live because of balance issues (being able to earn them in-game through some method, etc.). There again, that's just as much speculation as your conjecture.|
Originally Posted by Panzerwaffen
I'd hazard a guess that these will be going live very soon.
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| I hate to jump to conclusions (...) |
I don't see them, but was curious about them.
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I have seen the stats of these AT Specific Purples, and aside from a few imbalances in the IOs themselves (Brutes/Tankers/Scrappers/Stalkers get procs that interact with their inherent and what their AT does and the Def/Corruptor sets do, damage!) I don't see a huge power boost in them, they are about on par with a Purple Set, except the set bonuses are actually all good as opposed to a pair of crappy ones.
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Originally Posted by Panzerwaffen
I am hesitant to read too much into this, but unfortunately the cynical side of me is finding it hard not to.
The new AT specific IO sets that were screencapped back during beta can be seen on the auction house market in-game. I'm assuming this is a bug as they are not supposed to be able to be sold or traded, and they are listed as 'Account Bound' and 'Attuned'. I'd hazard a guess that these will be going live very soon. The part of this that worries me however, is that you can also now see 'Account Bound' & 'Attuned' versions of all the rarest IO's, PvP IO's and Purples as well. LotG's, Miracles, Numinas, all the purples, all the PvP IO's.. I hate to jump to conclusions, and I really hope I am wrong, but I don't think I want to be part of a game where all a player has to do is shell out some cash and buy the most powerful builds possible. |
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I think the devs have said they are no sure how'd they'd price purples let alone pvp IOs (my sense was they were leaning towards EXPENSIVE). I think I'd buy ONE set that was hard or expensive to get at Wents, but that's about it. Especially with what I assume the price would be for them on the paragon market.|
Originally Posted by Frostbiter
IMHO the backlash would be huge if they only offered the best IOs through the store.
But as far as letting people buy Purple and PvP IOs in the market? Don't really care. I'll never do it personally but I remember some saying about fools and money. |
And that's for purples. I wouldn't waste my time buying pvp IOs. I don't try to get those now. Seeing as how I don't pvp nearly as much as I pve, they are useless. Incarnate abilities make more of a difference in zone pvp these days than the procs.
I've faced folks with the procs and teamed with ones with them. They don't seem to make any difference whatsoever in zone pvp. Skill seems to make more of a difference than pvp IOs, with Incarnate abilities coming a close second. Sooooo useless to me. For arena I don't know as I don't do arena pvp. Ever.
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If they sell PvP IOs they will be making a rod for their own back as that will make it harder to change PvP.
But generally speaking ... I don't care one way or the other.
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I think you are reading too much in to all this. I think the Attuned mechanic is a cover-all for all IO's; that is, it's just a flag that causes said enhancement to stay at your level. I highly doubt the devs went in and made an entire copy of the current IO sets and individually marked them all Attuned/Bound. I also highly doubt we'll be seeing Rare and Superior IO's in the store, since if any other game did that it'd basically be like turning on I Win Mode, and I don't know about you, but if I turn on God Mode in a game the game gets shelved an hour later.
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They're viewable on the auction house in-game. There are separate versions of all rare, purple and PvP IO enhancements marked as both Attuned and Account Bound. They have new graphics as well to further differentiate them from the existing ones.
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Originally Posted by Nalrok_AthZim
I think you are reading too much in to all this. I think the Attuned mechanic is a cover-all for all IO's; that is, it's just a flag that causes said enhancement to stay at your level. I highly doubt the devs went in and made an entire copy of the current IO sets and individually marked them all Attuned/Bound.
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I wouldn't mind buying some Gladiator Armor +3% Defense IOs for 100pp each...
Wait, did I just say that?
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LOL, I seriously doubt they would be anywhere near just 100pp each.
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Originally Posted by SolarSentai
I wouldn't mind buying some Gladiator Armor +3% Defense IOs for 100pp each...
Wait, did I just say that? ... someone find me my meds! |
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That would be a sweet deal.|
Originally Posted by SolarSentai
I wouldn't mind buying some Gladiator Armor +3% Defense IOs for 100pp each...
Wait, did I just say that? ... someone find me my meds! |
That IO can be bought with Enough Empyrean Merits that equals doing all four iTrials once a day for 10 days. In the real world, that time spent in working would be worth hundreds of times more than the worth of 100 PP.
Any, I would welcome Pay-To-Win if it meant I could pay to permaban certain forumites.
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That doesn't necessarily mean that the enhancement in question is worth that, though.
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Originally Posted by Zombie Man
That IO can be bought with Enough Empyrean Merits that equals doing all four iTrials once a day for 10 days. In the real world, that time spent in working would be worth hundreds of times more than the worth of 100 PP.
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I don't really care if in-game items become available for purchase with real life money - I can currently obtain pretty much anything I want/need with a little patience (and not much actual effort) so I'd just not bother buying them.
I would however be somewhat unhappy if special enhancements were exclusively available from the real-money store - if there wasn't a way to obtain them in-game (I suppose the first part of my post is why the devs/publisher might decide to make them real-money only, mind you).
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This is already the case. Store-only Enhancement boosters can make any in-game IO better than is otherwise possible. Store-only Mystic Fortune and Secondary Mutation provide unique and noticeable benefits. |
Originally Posted by Frostbiter
IMHO the backlash would be huge if they only offered the best IOs through the store.
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We already pay-to-play, and that's great. I don't mind paying more to play more (more options, more content, whatever).
But pay-to-win is horrible.
Enhancement boosters are already just paying for minor server math (absolutely no content, just higher numbers). Make them available as in-game drops or vended for and they would just be a minor and dull endgame power up.
If the AT IOs are store-bought only too, then the gap between the haves and the have-nots will just grow wider. I'd prefer to be more inclusive.
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I am.... confused... by this pay-to-win concept.
Win?
Win what? When do we 'win' this game?
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To be honest, I don't think it matters a whole lot.
As currently speculated, it's simply a 'short cut' to power that's obtainable in game anyway [and circumvents Third Party Transactions, so bonus].
And then you have to look at the price, and to be honest, I don't have much faith in Paragon putting the price point such that it will impact the rest of the game [look at Boosters I mean 
].
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It's being sold for 3 Billion INF.|
Originally Posted by Lazarillo
That doesn't necessarily mean that the enhancement in question is worth that, though.
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Worth is relative, but something like this becomes a temptation to use RMTers, which starts giving virtual items a real life value.
Because it is in great demand, but very rare, the value spikes while demand is high. And because it had such a high value on the market, the Devs exacerbated the problem by pricing that IO higher in eMerits than the other PvP IOs rather than lower to ease demand -- which was the wrong thing to do. You don't want anything being so highly valued and so hard to get that RMTers become an attractive alternative.
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I thought it was weird enough that they had some Recipe sets available for purchase through the store to begin with (even if it's mostly the neglected sets). It all seems weird.
It will probably be the only way I'll ever get a complete purple set, however, and the only way I'd ever get a PvP set. You see, I have what is called the 'Anti-luck' in-game when it comes to drops. Really really really need a purple recipe? Have a Flight IO recipe! Need just one Pangean Soil salvage to make an expensive recipe (that I had to buy on the Market, naturally), take a Circuit Board! Now you have 11 of them! YAY!
Thanks for eight fun years, Paragon.
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You can play with SOs, but you can't "win" with SOs, unless you are a really really good player. Completing all your missions on base difficulty is no longer the definition of "win," and I think more and more new content will be tailored to IO builds. Look at the problems people had with Trapdoor.
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Originally Posted by TheBruteSquad
It's not a true pay to win, though, until SO builds become unplayable.
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I agree. I hope these enhancements aren't meant to be store bought only, at least give me the option to earn them.
I am hesitant to read too much into this, but unfortunately the cynical side of me is finding it hard not to.
The new AT specific IO sets that were screencapped back during beta can be seen on the auction house market in-game. I'm assuming this is a bug as they are not supposed to be able to be sold or traded, and they are listed as 'Account Bound' and 'Attuned'.
I'd hazard a guess that these will be going live very soon.
The part of this that worries me however, is that you can also now see 'Account Bound' & 'Attuned' versions of all the rarest IO's, PvP IO's and Purples as well.
LotG's, Miracles, Numinas, all the purples, all the PvP IO's..
I hate to jump to conclusions, and I really hope I am wrong, but I don't think I want to be part of a game where all a player has to do is shell out some cash and buy the most powerful builds possible.