rapticorMember, NW M9 PlaytestPosts: 1,078Arc User
edited April 2013
Oh hey did you know you can play this game without an epic mount or companion? It's true! I didn't use any HotN goodies during beta weekends and made it to level 50 just fine.
The only thing that has changed is vendor bought companions can only get to rank 15 where they could be 30 before. That's a bit disappointing and could end up being moreso depending on how the system is implemented in the future to upgrade them.
I think most of the people throwing around "pay to win" have no idea what it actually means.
I am pretty sure mounts are character bound to all on your account.
Companions are not. But you only get one. You level them up, equip them, and you can sell them or give them up to your lowbies.
If you do not want to purchase these companions, you do not have to. The other companions are very very good. I still use my wayward wizard.
Plus they are designing a way to upgrade the companions from white > blue > purple just like the mounts.
Honestly, you do not have to spend a dime on this game, but you will have to work the system with the diamonds to zen if you want things in the Zen store. And getting diamonds is definitely possible.
Again.. to reinforce what this wise and humble man spoke of... there is nothing in the zen store that you MUST purchase in order to be successful in the game. The mounts and the companions are a cosmetic thing. If you access the companion vendor in the Hall, you will see two placeholder items that will turn companions T1 to T2 to T3...
You can make minimum 5000 Diamonds a day.. and that is doing 5 daily missions. You can also sell things (I hear the public wants pants) and you can in turn buy Zen with those diamonds through the in game market, which is the SAME THING AS GUILD WARS 2!
I am sorry, what? Yes, you buy and sell in game currency for real money and back again in Guild Wars 2... same exact business model down to well everything.
So, TLDR: You do NOT have to spend money in this game to get the equipment you want, it just helps get you there a little faster.
Oh hey did you know you can play this game without an epic mount or companion? It's true! I didn't use any HotN goodies during beta weekends and made it to level 50 just fine.
The only thing that has changed is vendor bought companions can only get to rank 15 where they could be 30 before. That's a bit disappointing and could end up being moreso depending on how the system is implemented in the future to upgrade them.
I think most of the people throwing around "pay to win" have no idea what it actually means.
So yeah.. Carry on.
I don't mind the stuff that you can buy with $, it's just the pricing. You can't tell me that $10+ for a bag isn't a tad bit ridiculous, or $40 for a mount. They just need to price it better. Hell, i would buy some stuff if it wasn't so overpriced.
I don't think it's pay to win and yes i know you can get zen by selling diamonds the point i was making is that the stuff is just overpriced. Even SWTOR doesn't gouge this bad.
0
uedajiruMember, Neverwinter Beta UsersPosts: 0Arc User
edited April 2013
why are people coming across angry over this issue? i mean this game is not pay to win, its pay for time, ie faster mount or instant crafting. This game is free, they have to make there money somwhere. **** they could of really gone all out for the zen store and just sold item gear , teir gear, weapons you name it. That is pay to win, this is not.
Also on this entire topic about mounts not being account bound lol, that feture only really just got addded into wow recently. You had to get mounts on each character for years before they changed it. If you dont like the way things are done in this game then just stop playing, i mean your not paying a subscription so really your word has little weight in these forums compared to a subbed mmo. As for the lock boxes im sure they will change it after awhile, but right now the games fresh and they want to try and get as many suckers to buy keys while its new, in the mean time if you want to dump em, shove them on the ah and dont retrive them lol
If you got 2 keys for 350 AD, you either ripped someone off, or took advantage of someone simple-minded and you'll never see them again at that price, ever.
Your argument is invalid.
It's only invalid because you would rather complain on the fourms.
I can't believe people defend designing the game where it's not enjoyable to play so that players will start paying for base features available in all similar games. I maxed the daily zen purchase allowance buying typical mmo extras (clothes, dyes, keys, etc) before I even bought a bank, bag space, or a companion, and when I got to about level 20 I realized how immoral the game design is. Neverwinter would be a great game worthy of a AAA title claim and 95/100 review score, except that the extreme microtransactions so heavily integrated into (and ruin) everything. I would have been super pleased had the game been $60 flat free with either a subscription or optional microtransactions which no bearing on any gameplay or player advantage.
I have no idea why Free to Play MMO developers can not understand the concept of pricing things for selling. All prices in the ZEN store are far to high. If you understand how retail works it is far better to price things at reasonable prices because that will actually make your customers spend MORE money...it is a very simple concept and companies like Walmart built their entire business on it...
Cryptic really does need to hire someone who understands how to price things for repeat sales.
0
rapticorMember, NW M9 PlaytestPosts: 1,078Arc User
I can't believe people defend designing the game where it's not enjoyable to play so that players will start paying for base features available in all similar games. I maxed the daily zen purchase allowance buying typical mmo extras (clothes, dyes, keys, etc) before I even bought a bank, bag space, or a companion, and when I got to about level 20 I realized how immoral the game design is. Neverwinter would be a great game worthy of a AAA title claim and 95/100 review score, except that the extreme microtransactions so heavily integrated into (and ruin) everything. I would have been super pleased had the game been $60 flat free with either a subscription or optional microtransactions which no bearing on any gameplay or player advantage.
Immoral.. Seriously? I didn't buy anything during beta weekends and enjoyed the game enough to actually "pay" for it. I don't understand how people feel they need clothes, dyes, keys, etc to enjoy a game. They can make it MORE enjoyable but on a basic level someone has to find some enjoyment out of the game despite that or why are they even bothering in the first place.
I can't believe people defend designing the game where it's not enjoyable to play so that players will start paying for base features available in all similar games. I maxed the daily zen purchase allowance buying typical mmo extras (clothes, dyes, keys, etc) before I even bought a bank, bag space, or a companion, and when I got to about level 20 I realized how immoral the game design is. Neverwinter would be a great game worthy of a AAA title claim and 95/100 review score, except that the extreme microtransactions so heavily integrated into (and ruin) everything. I would have been super pleased had the game been $60 flat free with either a subscription or optional microtransactions which no bearing on any gameplay or player advantage.
I do see your point. I probably would've liked the game even more if it had a subscription plan or a box fee with a pure cosmetic store (meaning no stuff like profession packs, respec tokens, bank slots, character slots, those should be built in). However most F2P games are like this, the creators have to get money from somewhere and without a box cost or subscription plan, this is one of the way to get it.
I do disagree on one thing though. Typical mmo extras (if you ask me) are bankspace, character slots, respec feature (not a token), stuff like that, not clothes, dyes, keys.
I still enjoy the game though and I can live with the current model (I've had no reason with having to spend IRL money on the game, except the packs I bought) and will for sure play this game for a long, long, time. I just wish they would lower some of the cash shop prices (mounts and companions for example).
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sarsparilla1Member, Neverwinter Beta Users, Neverwinter Guardian UsersPosts: 27Arc User
edited April 2013
It's going to get to a point where everyone is crying for subs. 40 bucks for a companion or a mount or 15 bucks for a bag... way too expensive for my blood. I'll pay my 20 bucks a month, let the Zen accumulate for the stuff I really want and that's all the money they're getting out of me. You guys riding the $200 spiders are way too rich for me. Can't blame the game for wanting to make money though. I just feel like GW2 did it better.
If you love this game you gonna support it by buying zen to help you in game and to help cryptic staff to make this game better for me i have no problem to buy zen i love this game and i would love to support it no matter what
peace
[SIGPIC][/SIGPIC]
0
gyloirMember, Neverwinter Beta Users, Neverwinter Guardian UsersPosts: 0Arc User
edited April 2013
If the mounts were account bound, then they couldn't be tradeable.
If the mounts are tradeable, they can't allow you to just get a new one every character, the market would be flooded with people doing that and they'd be worthless/everyone would have one.
However they should allow you to trade it to other characters.
Just my take, fine with the cash shop and it seems fairly well implemented. However, the prices are unacceptably high.
I'm reasonably affluent and ok with spending on a game that I enjoy (bought Hero and Guardian packs). So saying, the fact that stuff is so expensive puts me off. I can afford it, but I don't want to pay it. If prices were more reasonable, I'd be spending and be happy.
As it is now, I'm not that happy and definitely not spending.
Just my take, fine with the cash shop and it seems fairly well implemented. However, the prices are unacceptably high.
I'm reasonably affluent and ok with spending on a game that I enjoy (bought Hero and Guardian packs). So saying, the fact that stuff is so expensive puts me off. I can afford it, but I don't want to pay it. If prices were more reasonable, I'd be spending and be happy.
As it is now, I'm not that happy and definitely not spending.
This viewpoint I can agree with. I'm certainly not defending the high prices in the Zen store and obviously I would prefer some things be more affordable (we don't use the word "cheap"!). However I don't think most things in there qualify as "pay to win" like many people seem to be claiming.
Other than a bag I bought, for convenience more than anything, I don't see myself spending a lot of money in the shop as the prices are currently. Obviously having purchased HotN I got a good mount and companion already so that's covered. One could do the same thing with just the Guardian pack so that's probably the better deal.
0
brollypopMember, Neverwinter Beta UsersPosts: 0Arc User
I have no idea why Free to Play MMO developers can not understand the concept of pricing things for selling. All prices in the ZEN store are far to high. If you understand how retail works it is far better to price things at reasonable prices because that will actually make your customers spend MORE money...it is a very simple concept and companies like Walmart built their entire business on it...
Cryptic really does need to hire someone who understands how to price things for repeat sales.
^This.
It's really a shame that the developer-community relation is already so hostile even before the launch. The posts about PWI being too "greedy" keep poping in the forums. And it's hard to disagree with the fact that the prices are way overboard. Some people defend the PWI saying that the stuff for zen is cosmetic, that nobody forces you to buy these items, or that cryptic needs to earn money in some way since the game is f2p... Well first, I wouldn't say a companion that can level up to 30 rank over one that can rank up jsut to 15 lvl is just a cosmetic, the same going for the bank/inventory slots, or the profession improvements. Secondly, of course nobody forces me to buy stuff, but the problem is that I want to buy this stuff but it's just too expensive and it's actually bad for the developers since its obviously better to have 10 people buy an item for $20 rather than 2 people buying it for 40$. As for the 3rd argument being that PWI is basically a charity organisation for making a f2p game and the cash shop being their only way of earning some money, that's just naive ... Just look at Riot Games, they have accomplished such an enormous worldwide success ( 2kk $ prize pool for season 2 championships, hundreds of thousands stream viewers, competitive leagues in EU, NA, Asia etc ) through the hard work, cooperation with other companies, listening to the community and so on, not by adding conveniencies and other stuff into their cash shop or drastically increasing their prices...
I really liked this game on bw3 and I look forward to playing it for long time, and I just don't want to see it die out after few weeks/months just because developers focused more on getting money off the cash shop, rather than doing everything to make the game successfull and popular to the point where it earns for itself and isn't so reliant on the cash shop.
TL,DR: I actually hope current prices are just a fruit of miscalculation, and soon the developers will find the sweetspot where players are happy with the prices and buy more, and company is happy because it actually earns more, because right now it's pretty far from that.
Sorry for my english, not my first language
0
morterictusgrinMember, Neverwinter Beta Users, Neverwinter Guardian UsersPosts: 10Arc User
edited April 2013
Are those pay companions different from the free ones? Do they have dialog and quest where you can interact with them or are they just fancy pets like the free ones?
Are those pay companions different from the free ones? Do they have dialog and quest where you can interact with them or are they just fancy pets like the free ones?
Comments
The only thing that has changed is vendor bought companions can only get to rank 15 where they could be 30 before. That's a bit disappointing and could end up being moreso depending on how the system is implemented in the future to upgrade them.
I think most of the people throwing around "pay to win" have no idea what it actually means.
So yeah.. Carry on.
Again.. to reinforce what this wise and humble man spoke of... there is nothing in the zen store that you MUST purchase in order to be successful in the game. The mounts and the companions are a cosmetic thing. If you access the companion vendor in the Hall, you will see two placeholder items that will turn companions T1 to T2 to T3...
You can make minimum 5000 Diamonds a day.. and that is doing 5 daily missions. You can also sell things (I hear the public wants pants) and you can in turn buy Zen with those diamonds through the in game market, which is the SAME THING AS GUILD WARS 2!
I am sorry, what? Yes, you buy and sell in game currency for real money and back again in Guild Wars 2... same exact business model down to well everything.
So, TLDR: You do NOT have to spend money in this game to get the equipment you want, it just helps get you there a little faster.
Thank you
When you want to break the mold
BETA Tips and Tricks
Never saw Pants in beta?
I don't think it's pay to win and yes i know you can get zen by selling diamonds the point i was making is that the stuff is just overpriced. Even SWTOR doesn't gouge this bad.
Also on this entire topic about mounts not being account bound lol, that feture only really just got addded into wow recently. You had to get mounts on each character for years before they changed it. If you dont like the way things are done in this game then just stop playing, i mean your not paying a subscription so really your word has little weight in these forums compared to a subbed mmo. As for the lock boxes im sure they will change it after awhile, but right now the games fresh and they want to try and get as many suckers to buy keys while its new, in the mean time if you want to dump em, shove them on the ah and dont retrive them lol
It's only invalid because you would rather complain on the fourms.
Cryptic really does need to hire someone who understands how to price things for repeat sales.
Immoral.. Seriously? I didn't buy anything during beta weekends and enjoyed the game enough to actually "pay" for it. I don't understand how people feel they need clothes, dyes, keys, etc to enjoy a game. They can make it MORE enjoyable but on a basic level someone has to find some enjoyment out of the game despite that or why are they even bothering in the first place.
It's not about defending anything.
I do see your point. I probably would've liked the game even more if it had a subscription plan or a box fee with a pure cosmetic store (meaning no stuff like profession packs, respec tokens, bank slots, character slots, those should be built in). However most F2P games are like this, the creators have to get money from somewhere and without a box cost or subscription plan, this is one of the way to get it.
I do disagree on one thing though. Typical mmo extras (if you ask me) are bankspace, character slots, respec feature (not a token), stuff like that, not clothes, dyes, keys.
I still enjoy the game though and I can live with the current model (I've had no reason with having to spend IRL money on the game, except the packs I bought) and will for sure play this game for a long, long, time. I just wish they would lower some of the cash shop prices (mounts and companions for example).
peace
If the mounts are tradeable, they can't allow you to just get a new one every character, the market would be flooded with people doing that and they'd be worthless/everyone would have one.
However they should allow you to trade it to other characters.
I'm reasonably affluent and ok with spending on a game that I enjoy (bought Hero and Guardian packs). So saying, the fact that stuff is so expensive puts me off. I can afford it, but I don't want to pay it. If prices were more reasonable, I'd be spending and be happy.
As it is now, I'm not that happy and definitely not spending.
This viewpoint I can agree with. I'm certainly not defending the high prices in the Zen store and obviously I would prefer some things be more affordable (we don't use the word "cheap"!). However I don't think most things in there qualify as "pay to win" like many people seem to be claiming.
Other than a bag I bought, for convenience more than anything, I don't see myself spending a lot of money in the shop as the prices are currently. Obviously having purchased HotN I got a good mount and companion already so that's covered. One could do the same thing with just the Guardian pack so that's probably the better deal.
^This.
It's really a shame that the developer-community relation is already so hostile even before the launch. The posts about PWI being too "greedy" keep poping in the forums. And it's hard to disagree with the fact that the prices are way overboard. Some people defend the PWI saying that the stuff for zen is cosmetic, that nobody forces you to buy these items, or that cryptic needs to earn money in some way since the game is f2p... Well first, I wouldn't say a companion that can level up to 30 rank over one that can rank up jsut to 15 lvl is just a cosmetic, the same going for the bank/inventory slots, or the profession improvements. Secondly, of course nobody forces me to buy stuff, but the problem is that I want to buy this stuff but it's just too expensive and it's actually bad for the developers since its obviously better to have 10 people buy an item for $20 rather than 2 people buying it for 40$. As for the 3rd argument being that PWI is basically a charity organisation for making a f2p game and the cash shop being their only way of earning some money, that's just naive ... Just look at Riot Games, they have accomplished such an enormous worldwide success ( 2kk $ prize pool for season 2 championships, hundreds of thousands stream viewers, competitive leagues in EU, NA, Asia etc ) through the hard work, cooperation with other companies, listening to the community and so on, not by adding conveniencies and other stuff into their cash shop or drastically increasing their prices...
I really liked this game on bw3 and I look forward to playing it for long time, and I just don't want to see it die out after few weeks/months just because developers focused more on getting money off the cash shop, rather than doing everything to make the game successfull and popular to the point where it earns for itself and isn't so reliant on the cash shop.
TL,DR: I actually hope current prices are just a fruit of miscalculation, and soon the developers will find the sweetspot where players are happy with the prices and buy more, and company is happy because it actually earns more, because right now it's pretty far from that.
Sorry for my english, not my first language
Just fancy pets. Nothing more.
When you want to break the mold
BETA Tips and Tricks
Never saw Pants in beta?