Cashshop's imbalancing effect!

serrat
serrat Posts: 31 Arc User
edited September 2008 in General Discussion
All this mess about PK-ing, successfully lured all the reflectorlights off of one of the biggest problems in the game.

While the devs said otherwise, the cash shop obviously do grant players who simply pay enough, godly benefits above those who dont. The CB clearly showed this with the abuse of free zen.

Most notable examples:

-Hierograms -one of the most obvious item, that grants huge advantage in pvp against ppl who dont use it, and even in pve where ppl can solo things with it where you would normally need a healthy team.

-Refining enhancers: grants the player to enhance their equips at a much greater ratio than normally, unavailible without cash shop.

-Refining success "failsafes": enables players to refine the equipments to a normally unreachable levels (or only with lotto luck.. 1 in a zillion) with 100% success rate.

-Buyable materials: ppl dont have to work/farm items or spend a coin of ingame money to aquire great amounts of mats, thus they can make tons of equips out of thin air with an almost 100% chance to create powerful 3 star equips thx to sheer number of availible tries.

U can basically pay for the ultimate one-hit freebie killer weapon, and invincibility providing armor+hieros (against freebies ofc) if you spend enough money in the cash shop, gretly imbalancing gameplay and economy, since theese players are basically buying gold at the same time since good equips worth a LOT.
Post edited by serrat on

Comments

  • karmelia
    karmelia Posts: 0 Arc User
    edited September 2008
    serrat wrote: »
    While the devs said otherwise, the cash shop obviously do grant players who simply pay enough, godly benefits above those who dont. The CB clearly showed this with the abuse of free zen.

    Of course it does. And I don't think the admins ever said otherwise. What the admins said is that you can play this game without spending one cent into the cash shop. They never said cash shop users will not have an advantage over those who don't.

    Everyone knows cash shop users will have advantages over freeloaders. it's the basic principle of every F2P games with cash shop.
    Frankieraye said : "we can promise that we will work to improve all facets of community, engineering, and customer service to ensure that something like this doesn't happen again."


    (We are still waiting to see any improvements or changes beign implemented. More empty promises from PWI?)
  • serrat
    serrat Posts: 31 Arc User
    edited September 2008
    I clearly remember one of the devs saying in an interview, when talking about the cashshop. That "no we dont have a "pay-to-win" button like in other f2p games" or something like that, and that it doesent have any imbalancing items, but mostly fashion items, mounts, and aerocrafts, etc.

    Although i can see it was just catchy PR talk. -By word-to-word literal examination its true, but in practice its a blatant lie. -Brilliant, yet sad.
  • moyles
    moyles Posts: 48 Arc User
    edited September 2008
    My biggest worry is craft now that we have stones to create slots.
    After around 70 attempts i only managed to create 4 socketed weapons all only had 1 socket.
    I crafted alot on MY server and can honestly say although it was hard to get 2/3/4/ sockets it was possible, and it seems with the introduction of these stones the craft rate has altered.
    Anyone else noticed these minor differences or am i being paranoid? :)
    Against logic there is no armor like ignorance.
    Laurence J Peter(1919-1988)
  • esux
    esux Posts: 87 Arc User
    edited September 2008
    karmelia wrote: »
    Everyone knows cash shop users will have advantages over freeloaders. it's the basic principle of every F2P games with cash shop.

    That's why the cashshop should be cheap enough for *everyone* to use, but sadly that won't happen.
  • karmelia
    karmelia Posts: 0 Arc User
    edited September 2008
    moyles wrote: »
    After around 70 attempts i only managed to create 4 socketed weapons all only had 1 socket.I crafted alot on MY server and can honestly say although it was hard to get 2/3/4/ sockets it was possible

    reality check : the most sockets a weapon can have is two.Good luck making a 4 socket weapon even after 1000 attempts
    esux wrote: »
    That's why the cashshop should be cheap enough for *everyone* to use, but sadly that won't happen.

    yea, that's my biggest worry for this game...
    Frankieraye said : "we can promise that we will work to improve all facets of community, engineering, and customer service to ensure that something like this doesn't happen again."


    (We are still waiting to see any improvements or changes beign implemented. More empty promises from PWI?)
  • aland
    aland Posts: 72 Arc User
    edited September 2008
    karmelia wrote: »
    reality check : the most sockets a weapon can have is two.Good luck making a 4 socket weapon even after 1000 attempts



    yea, that's my biggest worry for this game...
    CS does not have an imbalancing effect.

    People spend money, and expect to be stronger. What would u prefer? them to spend money, and still the same as you? but then that's imbalancing on their check balance!

    All we can hope now is that the company is smart enough to not be so money hungry and drive away all the players when OB starts.
  • serrat
    serrat Posts: 31 Arc User
    edited September 2008
    And what if i spend money too, with the intention to stay competitive? There are ppl who will be much more obsessive/rich than me, you or most of us and just greatly overcome us by sheer money. I cut it, ppl are not equal in the real world, but ppl play games to have fun not to embrace the **** of the real world again, and be stomped on by people with unfair advantages.

    A pay to play game, maybe even costs less in the end, and at least every player have equal chances to become good, just by playing or skill, instead of real money, and real influences.
  • aland
    aland Posts: 72 Arc User
    edited September 2008
    serrat wrote: »
    And what if i spend money too, with the intention to stay competitive? There are ppl who will be much more obsessive/rich than me, you or most of us and just greatly overcome us by sheer money. I cut it, ppl are not equal in the real world, but ppl play games to have fun not to embrace the **** of the real world again, and be stomped on by people with unfair advantages.

    A pay to play game, maybe even costs less in the end, and at least every player have equal chances to become good, just by playing or skill, instead of real money, and real influences.
    unfortuntely, a virtual game is owned by a company in a REAL WORLD (GASP!!), who will try to make as much money as possible (this is so hard to understand?)

    In a f2p game, they earn money from ur competitiveness.
  • irbis
    irbis Posts: 294 Arc User
    edited September 2008
    teribly sorry for draging this issue here but everything that you said is linked with PvP mostly.
    on PvE:
    a player X has better eq then me - i dont care
    a player Y kills mobs faster them me - so?
    a player Z who is son of bill gates have every singel advantage above me there is - good for him
    the thing that iam trying to say is that theres always somebody above and under you. if you have a big goal like to be the best - well good luck with it but dont expect this to be easy.
    on PvE it will be all about jelousy.
    on PvP it will be all about need.
    so basicly, just dont be jelous :)
    There exist only three beings worthy of respect:
    the priest, the soldier, the poet.
    To know, to kill, to create.
    -severan
  • serrat
    serrat Posts: 31 Arc User
    edited September 2008
    Guess you're right, it has less effect on pve servers.. just based of the PR machine's promises i had a much different impression of this game (even though i played the MY version), and had a false hope that ppl might have (and desire) fair competition on pvp servers.
    I kinda expected equal, or at least balancedly different circumstances for every players.. its not coming from naiveness, more like my past experiences in many multiplayer FPS games (i'm relatively new to the swampy world of mmorpgs.. which seems to be in the lowest league of gaming on many levels)

    It was a mistake from my viewpoint i guess, since pvp server will be all about rich ppl running in godlike equips, and pwning low level noobs in groups, and brag how 'skilled' they are.
    At least i finally decided what server will i play now.
  • devast
    devast Posts: 5 Arc User
    edited September 2008
    Every f2p game is imbalanced. Basics of f2p games is to sell imbalancing stuff for real $ in games, thus buyers will be happy couse they own everyone, cannonfodder ppl are happy couse they play for free, and company is happy couse they make tons of money. For the pve part.... i don't really recommend playing this game for pve. After certain char lvl it will become your usual korean grinder, quests will dry up, and you have to use hiero+exp scroll in aoe parties to lvl at a half decent rate. This is the main reason i'm gonna play on the pve server: Heavy cash shop usage has much higher impact on 1v1 fights(pk) then compared to tw, where it's 80v80. If 80 very heavy cs users unite into one guild, thats another story...
  • lastpunisher
    lastpunisher Posts: 2 Arc User
    edited September 2008
    They way to not get disturbed of CashShops is the way of thinking. Imo you only should buy things that help you to lvl much much faster. Buyign socket stones or something isnt the way, but if there are items that give you double exp take it. Because by playing a game u will waste hundreds of hours in the game and if u can simply cut 200hours of game time to 100 hours of game time then u can do anythign with tthat rest of the 100 hours, and maybe wasting 4 hours at work u already gain the money back u have wasted on the game. Of course the sad thing is that games should be for fun, but then no one would be making them and you pay a lot of money in the real world as well to just play something, like pool or go swimming, you are paying for the clothes, entryfee, or in pool case to play a game you have to pay or maybe you want to pay a pooltable, but if u now compare that cost with the money you will waste on MMORPG it will be enormous .
    Tho the game is very good imo and we simply have to accept that everything will cost money these days, like it was different in the past. Thirdly it is very good relaxation. Or you can go and get ur self drunk, get beaten up, get stood up by a women and waste hundreds of dollars on just having a good evening. But there are many other ways to have fun and one is to play games, and out come will be that u actually waste way less money that you would waste on out door activities.
    Also dont get carried away with games, im a mmorpg addict for abotu 6 years and i have been playing games since i first saw one, then iw as 5 or 6 years old and now im almost 21. There are much more important things in life than money, like friends, family, girlfriend, job satisfaction, education etc. Just play the game as much as you can and dont mind wasting a bit of money on double exp scrolls or what ever to get better satisfaction from the game. Those ppl who think they are gods when they waste a lot of money on the game, are called NOLIFERS and we actually should feel sorry for them and not to be jealous of them, because they lack of clear thinking and have no idea where starts the fun and ends fun.
    I also must say that i waste about 75% of my free time just playing games or watching movies, but that doesnt make me a NOLIFER, because i have different way of thinking. But real NOLIFERS take toll on friends and school and future to get high lvl and to be cool. And i always stop playing a game when it gets boring and dont mind if it happens at lvl 30 or 40, then ill just start a new one.
  • anyandrell
    anyandrell Posts: 64 Arc User
    edited September 2008
    moyles wrote: »
    My biggest worry is craft now that we have stones to create slots.
    After around 70 attempts i only managed to create 4 socketed weapons all only had 1 socket.
    I crafted alot on MY server and can honestly say although it was hard to get 2/3/4/ sockets it was possible, and it seems with the introduction of these stones the craft rate has altered.
    Anyone else noticed these minor differences or am i being paranoid? :)

    What I have noticed, is that if in PW-MY you could easily get a +1 refining, only from +2 up it would get harder, here I tried 8 times to go +1 and failed every time. Only when I got the orb from the cash shop I was able to +1. Pretty sad.

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