PWI is pushing the Power Gap too far

charlieizboss

Years ago when the OP goals were: R9, +12, JoSD, G14 cube neck+warsong belt, cloudcharger wings and a warsoul hat, that was not a small fortune needed to farm and cash shop a little to work towards that stuff. It was doable by investing some time and money

NOW, and this latest sale has really set me off, the cash required has gotten astronomical. If i was from a very wealthy family, as i'm sure more than a few players are, i would be right in there buying everything as it came out too.

we started getting stuff like holy pills to buy for that meridian
nueme pills
war cards and all that stuff associated with that
star charts and all that mountain of expensive stuff
engrave necks
engrave rings
engrave robes and belts
put sockets and shards in accessories
reroll your old +10 r9

that is serious money to do all that

and NOW they have an event where if you buy thousands of packs to get a certain set of pack drops, yiu get more prizes.

A) we all know how squirrely pack drops are
the people who can easily do this have everything already

Seriously PWI, wtf am i supposed to do after i see some mega star 3 shot the missive boss knowing there is ZERO possibility for me to match that player in any kind of pvp events and half the pve ones where they just blow it all away instantly.


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kittyempressa

If you're not super-rich...

...just stop dreaming about PVP-pr0 and become a PVE-pr0 instead. There's lots of room for those since the rich kids usually have the gears to win in PVP but they forgot to buy the skill for PVE.
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ayejay101

You fail to notice that PWI/PWE is a Business first, MMO second. This business getting higher in age and losing customer base, there for it's milking what it can as many F2P games do. This has been discussed and said time and time again.

If you look into more of the newer MMOs, they're getting into Alpha characters, which means yes... that one guy that 3 shots a boss or whatever, how many people are like that? One out of thousands. If you can't beat that ONE, look for the other NINE HUNDRED NINETY NINE other players that may be up to your standards.​​

standoffishman

You're correct in that the power gap is starting to push the limit of what it can get to before things start to really break. However I think you're massively diluting the point.

Normal gear slots really aren't overtly worse than they were before. Refine standards have gone up a little and we got NW gear but it's not a massive change for the most part. Plus when priced in gold (frankly a more useful metric than coins as it doesn't inflate) many gear slots have actually dropped a lot in price over time.

I would also note that this is all a completely moot point in pve. I don't think it's practical to complete with big spenders in pve as they have to be completely **** to not preform better in 90% of situations. Having said that it doesn't matter with the way pve works in pwi and you can still do some good damage and be very useful with moderately good gear. Also almost nothing has the hp right now for it to matter and a squad with +10 adv WS will still melt stuff.

In my eyes the main gear gap problems stem from war avatar sets and starcharts. Both are insanely expensive to get top end solutions on and the top end solution has a massive power gap over more reasonable stuff. In pvp that power gap is really annoying even for end game players.

I think right now they are near the limit of what's stable on the pvp side. However considering updates in china like g17 I actually think the devs know this. I wouldn't expect them to introduce a 3rd similar system at this point without massively devaluing one of the first two, to the point where portal sets are only like 10b or 1-2k gold for example. Perhaps I'm wrong and after g17 they'll put in war avatars 3.0 with no other changes. If they do however I think it will hurt them as a business as it pisses off too many cash cows who question why they spend thousands to get completely rolled and 1 shot.

I would also point out that you actually need a whole bunch of people with gear worth 8-20b to keep the people with gear worth 150b+ happy and spending. Much like how the presence of nv3 and r9 with bad refines helps keep the r9 pvp core spending and happy with past purchases.

imalone21

The OP was in west QQ about this also. I attempted to tell her that PWE is a business, a business out to make money.
Now lets be honest here, they KNOW there are some players that will do anything to keep up with the latest trends/styles/gears (R9/fash/mounts/flyers/pets/+more.
So from a business point of view, they are clearly banking on this concept.
Demand is high from high end "cash players" so pwi will make the supply a bit more,,,,appealing to them.
Offering new goods to apease their want/need to "keep up with the jones's" as one would say.
From a business point of view. PWE/PWI/Wanmia are hitting it on the dot. Making them dollars.
From a F2P player, we struggle. I personally do cash some here and there. nothing like some high end cashers i know.
I mostly farm for what i got. I have farmed 1 r9rr class so far. I am currently working on another.
To the OP: IT IS POSSIBLE to farm r9rr+12+josd's. + anything else u want.
Takes REAL effort. Research. Keep your eyes on the market.
See something in west you think is too good to be true price wise? PC and if it is, buy it>resell it.
I can name countless other ways one could make coin in pwi but no point. there are other threads for that.
Yes there is a power gap. We all know this
In all honesty, if there was no power gap in the "famed" r9rr gear pwi offers,,,,nobody would buy it.
There has to be a real difference in said gear for pwi to attempt to "justify" the cost of said gear.

charlieizboss

Good discussion.

as i said, i have spent some and scavenged a lot.

my gripe was that there are actually now things that are impossible for me to do.

regarding my gear and how i have done so far
my main toon is ace pve. i had to build several sets of gear to "sort of" keep up with the OP's but i can DD huge or swap and tank huge. i just cant do everything at once.

fwiw, i dont believe anyone else has thought of that. all i see is pdef cube necks on casters doing pve dailies=useless

but still some bully waltzes in and screws up the whole show and all i can do is watch or maybe qq a little

i'm probably going to hang out with kittysama.....she is probably my best chance to refocus on pve

thank you all for your input. different perspectives helps with the big picture.

ps, imalone. the shalomar unit has almost 400 inv safe stones FOR LATER sales at huge markup. just waiting so yeah, i know how to grab at the right time

hypereccentrik

I think the Neuma, cards, starchart, meridians, spirit mechanics , passives are all balancing factors that make it so this game isn't just about buy R9 to win. They are balancing factors. I see R9s3 high refines get rekt by s3 NV players cause all they did was charge gear and nothing else...

armoftheland

charlieizboss wrote: »

Good discussion.


ps, imalone. the shalomar unit has almost 400 inv safe stones FOR LATER sales at huge markup. just waiting so yeah, i know how to grab at the right time

admitting to having 400 inventory safe stones almost for sure says that you had redeemed free codes on 25+ accounts, not something i would put on the forums​​

freygin

Before horizon, Highest Matk for most magic classes are somewhere between 25k-30k iirc, now it's 50k-60k ? Dmg reduction was capped at 90% before horizon, but now it's capped at 95%. 5% doesn't look like much but it's actually DOUBLING your survivability.

There are a lot of stats to be gained from starchart and avatars, mainly spirit and penetration for PvP, and a lot of other stats that scaled like twice than before, in the end it's all about getting the highest char stats that's shown when pressing 'c' in the game.

The race for gears or stats is on, but.. if previously most ppl spent more or less the same amount of money for the same stuffs like R9.3 for endgame, now there is also luck to factor in for avatar and starchart, is it A set, is it S set, what set is it, is it awakened, is it leveled to max, how many attributes the starchart has, is it the attributes that you're after, etc. There is also new engravings, sockets for acc with various gems.

There are SO MUCH new additions to add to your char stats not just R9.3 full josd and full +12 like before. It needs a lot of time and money to maximize all that and ppl might have different focus on what they currently want, so gear gaps or actually char stats are varied wildly now.

Oh and there are also new mechanics added into the game like dmg reduction charms for two hits, 14 seconds cooldown for HP charms, hp passives.

All these are a lot of variables that enter the equation for PvP and PvE

dagoddominator

well it all boils down to the point in which money becomes involved and the amount of money PWE is setting these stats at.

personally it is downright abominable the sheer amount of cash required to compete normally. every stat they release, every system they enact (sans meridian), they all go a certain length and then it starts to cost.... A LOT.

this would be deal-able if the current heights one can achieve with money( a LOT of it) weren't so uncompetitive. i'm not a fan of this logic they are using to valuate things, elevating a very small group of players without much contribution in effort makes the environment very antagonistic. i can run every daily for 2 years straight and still be powerless to somebody who can drop 2k every month on packs.

and as it pertains to people who can spend 14 hours a day or more to do it for free, there is a low tolerance for how many players can do it this way. it's a skill to some degree and luck at another, but everyone can't adopt the free method to stay competitive on a large scale. the big money players are required to do so. hopefully the g17 mat market will supply the free players with a bit more coin to run around with.