"
> Still the analogy only flies for PvP. And to put it bluntly, that's what PvPers spend their money on: To be the first to have that F22 while the rest still flies around in Spitfires. The keyword here is competition. And as long as money buys you a faster way to get something, that's beating the competition, even if only temporary. Is that P2W? "
yes, thats the definition of p2w
To be fair, that's your definition of P2W. That's why this discussion is so interesting! We all have different definitions, different thresholds, different places where we draw the line. It is very interesting to me to see where exactly people feel the game sets the bar too high. Whether I agree or not, it's a very interesting discussion!
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beckylunaticMember, NW M9 PlaytestPosts: 14,231Arc User
Skill is far to subjective. And there is builds and character classes to take on account too.
Remember when most people were running dungeons with 4 or 5 CW's? And no one wanted both GF or HR in a party? It was in module 2.
By that time i used to run T2 dungeons (to get armor to use in PvP, so go figure) with a party made of:
1 GF (me)
1 DC
3 HR
And we did short work of all the tier 2 dungeons since the dynamic worked super well, i was calling the aggro, the dc healing me and the 3 HRs were free to trash things.
But on that time no one wanted to run dungeons with neither GF or HR. As GF didn't really help with the Party DPS and HR didn't contribute for control.
Still playing together we could do what was spected from our classes and it worked great.
So Skill, power and even builds are very relative. I got kicked from several parties for not being Tank enough (Conqueror GF here). And i must agree that i simply can't tank a lot, but i make top DPS several times! lol.
Still there is another GF in my guild that copied my build and when we run dungeons TOGETHER its just GREAT as we can divide the aggro and maximize the damage output.
So if you ask me, PvP is a far better measure of both balance and skill than PvE.
But at the end of the day its up to cryptic to think if the amount of money that players spend on Enchantments is worth the game bad reputation and if not (i think it isn't) find a way to rework the system for the best, instead of this rank 12 mess that they made.
I stopped joining PuGs very early in the game. People who refuse to run with an entire class are ... just not people I want to team up with anyway. Someone's skill level is definitely subjective, but as a whole, I feel someone who is well skilled at their character will out perform someone who doesn't know how to play their character, in dungeons, regardless of item level.
I'm not sure I agree that PvP is a better measure of balance. It seems to me in theory that there are some classes that are just going to perform better in PvP than other classes. Clerics have some mitigation via heals, but are pretty squishy. I would be surprised if people regularly top the PvP charts with Clerics. (Someone show me a screen shot of this if it happens, that would be amazing!) I don't feel that this is a detriment to Clerics, or that this means they're underpowered compared to other classes. One-on-One death matches versus a melee class isn't really what Clerics are good at. They're great on teams though, and can really shine in a good group.
Apologies if I misunderstood the gist of your post, though!
if Bis gear was able to be acquired in a reasonable amount of time by playing the game, that would be one thing.
but it's not. not even remotely close. you'd have to play NWO like it was a job 8hrs/day and even then it would take months if not years to max out all your enchants and artifact/gear.
face it, 99.9% of the players with all bis gear paid for it. period
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kwsapphireMember, NW M9 PlaytestPosts: 671Arc User
P2W is pay to get advantages over other players, and being realist it will ALWAYS be present on free to play games, what is debatable is the AMOUNT of it that we can survive to.
My personal definition of P2W includes making progression either literally or practically impossible without cash. (By "practically" I mean that in the fullest sense of the definition: so unrealistic as to be impractical.)
For example, I read somewhere that Candy Crush has some kind of algorithm in it that adjusts the difficulty of the game. It is possible, and common, for the game to make particular levels nearly impossible to beat, unless you pay money for some kind of item that makes it easier. And if you spend money once, the game is more likely to keep making content this difficult more often in the future, to get you to keep spending money. Perhaps the game is no longer like that. Perhaps the article I read was mistaken. However, THAT falls in my definition of P2W. That's tantamount to "Pay to Play". They might as well slap a price tag on it at that point.
In my opinion, paying money to obtain something sooner than it can be obtained in the game is not P2W, assuming that item can be obtained in the game with a reasonable amount of invested time. But again, what one considers a "reasonable amount" is entirely subjective. I am far more tolerant than some.
if Bis gear was able to be acquired in a reasonable amount of time by playing the game, that would be one thing.
but it's not. not even remotely close. you'd have to play NWO like it was a job 8hrs/day and even then it would take months if not years to max out all your enchants and artifact/gear.
face it, 99.9% of the players with all bis gear paid for it. period
As someone else has already pointed out in this thread, they spent 6 months to get a character up to BiS without spending any cash at all. I don't know what percentage of people got their gear from grinding versus paying. It's easy to say that most people must get it from spending cash, but there isn't much visibility into the players who are doing it the long way. There's nothing on their character sheet or in the /inspect screen that tells you how much time or effort they invested in gearing up, or whether they circumvented time and effort with cash. There's just no way to know without asking.
And I don't think 6 months is wholly unreasonable to get the best of everything. I have spent money, and I started playing the game during beta (minus about a 9-month break). I still don't have anything close to Transcendent. I finally got ONE artifact to Legendary, and celebrated like I'd toppled a mountain. Because I kind of did topple a mountain. And now I'm climbing the next mountain. I'm just not as fast at climbing as some other people are, even people who spend less money than I do can climb faster through more efficient behavior. And I am okay with that.
In my opinion, paying money to obtain something sooner than it can be obtained in the game is not P2W, assuming that item can be obtained in the game with a reasonable amount of invested time. But again, what one considers a "reasonable amount" is entirely subjective. I am far more tolerant than some.
What many Neverwinter players have considered "a reasonable amount of time" to obtain the latest BiS gear is "before it gets replaced with even newer newest BiS gear". The introduction of artifact equipment and harsh limitations on F2P ways of refining said gear to max level, and the replacement cycle on new artifact gear, is a huge part of why people feel that Neverwinter no longer allows natural progression. It's much less punishing if you've resigned yourself to never ever owning BiS (which is a little demotivating, honestly), or skipping getting it in some modules, or whatever.
People aren't so resentful when their shiney new armor is just a thing they buy or get as a drop, and they put it on, and *that's all*. No refining, no paying tons of AD to unlock powers on it to make it useful. Off the rack department store gear, not hugely expensive custom tailoring. They're both gonna go out of style next season, but one is a lot easier to replace than the other.
Ok, show me someone that made a Transcendent Epic Enchantment just playing the game, without spending money and without an army of praying and leadership slaves and i will agree that it is POSSIBLE.
But no, it is NOT possible. Show me someone that made a rank 10, not even 12, enchantment just by playing the game, without using exploits and praying and leadership slaves that i will say it is possible.
But no, it is not.
If having 8 characters doing leadership belongs to leadership slaves category, no, I cannot do it.
If it does not, I can make a rank 10. No exploits and no money.
No, I don't have Transcendent.
*** The game can read your mind. If you want it, you won't get it. If you don't expect to get it, you will. ***
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kwsapphireMember, NW M9 PlaytestPosts: 671Arc User
ok i will stop u there. u and me are lvl 40. each other toon below lvl 40. u spend 30 dollars on mythic and onother on lvl 8 stones. i dont. who payed to win on pvp?
I'm still not talking about PvP. I can't make informed commentary on the PvP situation because I don't participate in PvP. I don't like PvP. I mentioned that I thought match-making based on item level is a good idea, but someone else commented that they feel it's a bad idea, and explained why. So I really can't say anything about P2W in PvP.
I am entirely basing this on PvE. Paying cash doesn't instantly transform a character into a dungeon crushing machine. Paying cash can shorten the journey of turning a character by some margin, but I don't consider that P2W (personally).
Ok, show me someone that made a Transcendent Epic Enchantment just playing the game, without spending money and without an army of praying and leadership slaves and i will agree that it is POSSIBLE.
But no, it is NOT possible. Show me someone that made a rank 10, not even 12, enchantment just by playing the game, without using exploits and praying and leadership slaves that i will say it is possible.
But no, it is not.
I can't show you anyone, because I don't ask how people got their gear. I don't actually know who has a Transcendent anything off the top of my head, I'll have to dig through my husband's toons to see if he has a Transcendent anything on any of them. I don't think so, but he might have gotten something up that far during the last 2xRP weekend.
My point here is that we have no way of knowing if that dude with the Transcendent Vorpal paid cash for it, or invested a lot of time, or happened to get some very lucky drops. Unless there is some kind of poll conducted, I think it's faulty logic to assume any specific ratio of paid vs grind.
What many Neverwinter players have considered "a reasonable amount of time" to obtain the latest BiS gear is "before it gets replaced with even newer newest BiS gear". The introduction of artifact equipment and harsh limitations on F2P ways of refining said gear to max level, and the replacement cycle on new artifact gear, is a huge part of why people feel that Neverwinter no longer allows natural progression. It's much less punishing if you've resigned yourself to never ever owning BiS (which is a little demotivating, honestly), or skipping getting it in some modules, or whatever.
People aren't so resentful when their shiney new armor is just a thing they buy or get as a drop, and they put it on, and *that's all*. No refining, no paying tons of AD to unlock powers on it to make it useful. Off the rack department store gear, not hugely expensive custom tailoring. They're both gonna go out of style next season, but one is a lot easier to replace than the other.
I understand and agree with your logic here. I was pretty bummed after the level bump to find my L60 purple gear, which was the last gear I thought I'd ever have to get (ha ha, how naive am I?) was now less effective than the 60+ green and blue gear. But I've been working on dungeons, not as often as I'd like but I'm getting there, and I'm getting some pretty nice gear. I haven't gotten to the Elven set yet, still saving up seals. Now wondering if I will save those seals for the Dragonflight set instead.
I had invested a lot of RP into an artifact belt, only to learn this module that I needed a different belt. So I waited until 2xRP weekend and dumped the old belt into the new. I only got 80% of the value of the old belt, but I resigned myself to that. At least it was 2xRP weekend!
I can definitely see where a natural progression of "The Next Big Thing" is more desirable. And I want as many people to enjoy the game as much as possible, since I want it to stick around. That's why I feel like these discussions are so important to have, and I am really happy with how civilized this thread has remained. :]
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kwsapphireMember, NW M9 PlaytestPosts: 671Arc User
Comments
Yeah, but you've then edited out all the tags for the nested quoting, and completely stuffed the formatting. User error.
Neverwinter Census 2017
All posts pending disapproval by Cecilia
I was talking about "tag" in your message. The "[quote... " (begin quote tag) and "[/quote...." (end quote tag) thing.
Try it. See how you do, inspect the "winners" and figure out what it would take for you to get to their level, and then revisit this topic.
To be fair, that's your definition of P2W. That's why this discussion is so interesting! We all have different definitions, different thresholds, different places where we draw the line. It is very interesting to me to see where exactly people feel the game sets the bar too high. Whether I agree or not, it's a very interesting discussion!
Possibly a board setting dropping tags? It's hard to tell when it went off the rails, but your posts are definitely missing the BBCode tags.
Neverwinter Census 2017
All posts pending disapproval by Cecilia
In my "Leave a comment" box after I press "Quote", under the text box that I am typing now, it has a line saying:
You can use BBCode in your post.
I assume you do not see that. I think you have a configuration issue.
I use chrome. I guess somehow your browser/board setting/etc is not BBCode capable.
I stopped joining PuGs very early in the game. People who refuse to run with an entire class are ... just not people I want to team up with anyway. Someone's skill level is definitely subjective, but as a whole, I feel someone who is well skilled at their character will out perform someone who doesn't know how to play their character, in dungeons, regardless of item level.
I'm not sure I agree that PvP is a better measure of balance. It seems to me in theory that there are some classes that are just going to perform better in PvP than other classes. Clerics have some mitigation via heals, but are pretty squishy. I would be surprised if people regularly top the PvP charts with Clerics. (Someone show me a screen shot of this if it happens, that would be amazing!) I don't feel that this is a detriment to Clerics, or that this means they're underpowered compared to other classes. One-on-One death matches versus a melee class isn't really what Clerics are good at. They're great on teams though, and can really shine in a good group.
Apologies if I misunderstood the gist of your post, though!
if Bis gear was able to be acquired in a reasonable amount of time by playing the game, that would be one thing.
but it's not. not even remotely close. you'd have to play NWO like it was a job 8hrs/day and even then it would take months if not years to max out all your enchants and artifact/gear.
face it, 99.9% of the players with all bis gear paid for it. period
My personal definition of P2W includes making progression either literally or practically impossible without cash. (By "practically" I mean that in the fullest sense of the definition: so unrealistic as to be impractical.)
For example, I read somewhere that Candy Crush has some kind of algorithm in it that adjusts the difficulty of the game. It is possible, and common, for the game to make particular levels nearly impossible to beat, unless you pay money for some kind of item that makes it easier. And if you spend money once, the game is more likely to keep making content this difficult more often in the future, to get you to keep spending money. Perhaps the game is no longer like that. Perhaps the article I read was mistaken. However, THAT falls in my definition of P2W. That's tantamount to "Pay to Play". They might as well slap a price tag on it at that point.
In my opinion, paying money to obtain something sooner than it can be obtained in the game is not P2W, assuming that item can be obtained in the game with a reasonable amount of invested time. But again, what one considers a "reasonable amount" is entirely subjective. I am far more tolerant than some.
As someone else has already pointed out in this thread, they spent 6 months to get a character up to BiS without spending any cash at all. I don't know what percentage of people got their gear from grinding versus paying. It's easy to say that most people must get it from spending cash, but there isn't much visibility into the players who are doing it the long way. There's nothing on their character sheet or in the /inspect screen that tells you how much time or effort they invested in gearing up, or whether they circumvented time and effort with cash. There's just no way to know without asking.
And I don't think 6 months is wholly unreasonable to get the best of everything. I have spent money, and I started playing the game during beta (minus about a 9-month break). I still don't have anything close to Transcendent. I finally got ONE artifact to Legendary, and celebrated like I'd toppled a mountain. Because I kind of did topple a mountain. And now I'm climbing the next mountain. I'm just not as fast at climbing as some other people are, even people who spend less money than I do can climb faster through more efficient behavior. And I am okay with that.
What many Neverwinter players have considered "a reasonable amount of time" to obtain the latest BiS gear is "before it gets replaced with even newer newest BiS gear". The introduction of artifact equipment and harsh limitations on F2P ways of refining said gear to max level, and the replacement cycle on new artifact gear, is a huge part of why people feel that Neverwinter no longer allows natural progression. It's much less punishing if you've resigned yourself to never ever owning BiS (which is a little demotivating, honestly), or skipping getting it in some modules, or whatever.
People aren't so resentful when their shiney new armor is just a thing they buy or get as a drop, and they put it on, and *that's all*. No refining, no paying tons of AD to unlock powers on it to make it useful. Off the rack department store gear, not hugely expensive custom tailoring. They're both gonna go out of style next season, but one is a lot easier to replace than the other.
Neverwinter Census 2017
All posts pending disapproval by Cecilia
If having 8 characters doing leadership belongs to leadership slaves category, no, I cannot do it.
If it does not, I can make a rank 10. No exploits and no money.
No, I don't have Transcendent.
I'm still not talking about PvP. I can't make informed commentary on the PvP situation because I don't participate in PvP. I don't like PvP. I mentioned that I thought match-making based on item level is a good idea, but someone else commented that they feel it's a bad idea, and explained why. So I really can't say anything about P2W in PvP.
I am entirely basing this on PvE. Paying cash doesn't instantly transform a character into a dungeon crushing machine. Paying cash can shorten the journey of turning a character by some margin, but I don't consider that P2W (personally).
I can't show you anyone, because I don't ask how people got their gear. I don't actually know who has a Transcendent anything off the top of my head, I'll have to dig through my husband's toons to see if he has a Transcendent anything on any of them. I don't think so, but he might have gotten something up that far during the last 2xRP weekend.
My point here is that we have no way of knowing if that dude with the Transcendent Vorpal paid cash for it, or invested a lot of time, or happened to get some very lucky drops. Unless there is some kind of poll conducted, I think it's faulty logic to assume any specific ratio of paid vs grind.
I understand and agree with your logic here. I was pretty bummed after the level bump to find my L60 purple gear, which was the last gear I thought I'd ever have to get (ha ha, how naive am I?) was now less effective than the 60+ green and blue gear. But I've been working on dungeons, not as often as I'd like but I'm getting there, and I'm getting some pretty nice gear. I haven't gotten to the Elven set yet, still saving up seals. Now wondering if I will save those seals for the Dragonflight set instead.
I had invested a lot of RP into an artifact belt, only to learn this module that I needed a different belt. So I waited until 2xRP weekend and dumped the old belt into the new. I only got 80% of the value of the old belt, but I resigned myself to that. At least it was 2xRP weekend!
I can definitely see where a natural progression of "The Next Big Thing" is more desirable. And I want as many people to enjoy the game as much as possible, since I want it to stick around. That's why I feel like these discussions are so important to have, and I am really happy with how civilized this thread has remained. :]
SQUEE! Thanks!! *stares intently at patch progress* *wiggles in seat*