Why EQ2 needs to move to a Pay to Win or Pay to Play Expansions Model for its survival

No competitive (high end) raider is going to "wait it out while people who paid have their advantages erode". Being high end means being first. People can pay for advantages that put them ahead of the competition in these terms. That's unacceptable.

In their current state, we're fortunate that T4 mobs are gated behind epics, otherwise people would just be ethershadowing/reflecting the mobs down and destroying any sense of discovery or achievement tied to these mobs.

*To get ahead of the usual argument, I've been against RMT researching since inception. It was never okay.

 

The catch here is that it's not the game or the company behind it requiring people to pay for gear, upgrades, and so on. It is strictly the players themselves doing it. There are many players and many guilds that give advice, help gear toons, and do content without requiring max level all-the-things right now. It takes them longer to do it without shelling out, absolutely...but the point is they can do it, without spending anything more than the cost of the expansion and their monthly subscription (and for a fair amount of content, you don't even have to spend that).

 

No, the point is that it is designed in such a manner as to incentivize real money transactions. Nothing within a video game is "required". That argument can be used ad infinitum ad nauseum. It's an infinite regression. At what point does the removal or near removal of meaningful gameplay constitute a requirement? If they removed your ability to move, unless you paid extra to do so, would you find that acceptable? Where is your just noticeable difference? (This is rhetorical, as there will inevitably be someone that would argue for this scenario, as playing a video game isn't "required.")

The company knows full well that their design will create a higher likelihood of people swiping their card. What you mean to say is "I'm okay with people buying power. I have no integrity to speak of nor does the Daybreak team." Why is it that the pay-to-win crowd can't ever manage a bit of honesty? You all seem to be masters of the disingenuous.

None of the guilds you're referring to are competitive at anything.

This expansion may as well be called EQ2: The Mobile Game. Log in once a day to click your cow!

 

Companies very definitely incentivize real money transactions...that's how they keep the lights on. That's why members get bonuses and perqs; without them, there'd be no incentive for people to subscribe and keep money coming in (or do it indirectly by buying krono). SOE/Daybreak walk the fine line of making sure pretty much everything they offer for cash is achievable at the same level or better in the game. It's the players themselves who decide that they want to take the shortcuts that are available.

And while the players and guilds that don't take the shortcuts may not get there first, they can still get there. Saying that people who choose not to use the shortcuts are not competitive narrows the game to a single point: get there first. For many, that's not what the game is about. The guilds who are racing to finish content first *could* put their collective foot down and say they aren't going to spend real money in that race.

It's always a choice.

 

The competitive game isn't mine, but I have to disagree with the last part. They don't have a 'collective foot'. The very nature of the 'competitive game' pretty much ensures that. I dislike the buying of spell research, but it's something I'm willing to live with.. provided there are ways to earn spell upgrades in game aside from research. Right now, there are 2 tiers that aren't. If adepts and masters were made available in game from drops, it would make the paying for research less of an issue.

 

I just wanted to cherry pick this one particular statement, as in fact I am quite the opposite of a casual.

The point of this thread when I started it is survival of the game.

Games will be cut by CN. Have no doubt about it.

I would prefer to have a game I have invested a lot of time, blood, sweat, tears, and even a couch I threw out my window during Energized Taehric Construct survive the culling of games.

Do I particularly like the concept of anyone with money being able to overtake me? Nope.

Do I think that games that offer that type of service have a better chance of surviving the purge? Yep.

 

While you may be correct, Inire, I find that I cannot maintain a clean conscience and continue to support such a model.

My group and myself will be bidding EQ2 a bitter adieu. We will avoid Daybreak games indefinitely.

Perhaps they're hedging that we will be an extreme minority, but I don't think so. This game seems like it's ripe for another mass exodus. Each week brings another mind boggling decision.

Just this week, they will be nerfing reset runes into utter uselessness and changing the mechanics of reflect in such a manner that it will also be useless. (Well, perhaps not for templars, but the rest of us won't be using them for certain.) If they didn't want people 1-shotting raid mobs with the priest foci neck, perhaps they should have tested it. It's another hamfisted response that seems like the aim is more to punish players for finding an exploit, rather than to adjust the ability properly.

Most people I've spoken with expect all of the nerfs to be along the lines of the Conduit nerf. That is to say, utterly destroying their usefulness.

 

Not trying to defend the mistakes that have been made, but, this is clearly bugged, and you're saying "well now it's in game, might as well leave it!". Surely that's not the way forward.
With regards to damage from reflects, that never really mattered until recently.

 

Templars have been doing very high reflect damage for quite some time. I'm not suggesting it shouldn't be fixed. The foci hitting for 700 billion damage is clearly broken. When it's fixed though, it will be "I don't even use this ability". Surely you don't think that's reasonable either.

If you're referring to the reset runes, I don't see a bug whatsoever. They have functioned this way for over a year. I see absolutely no rational argument to relegate them to useless.

 

And just as I forecasted, the foci is worthless and so are priest reset runes.

Ha!

Oh, Daybreak. You make my decision to leave the game, so much easier with each week.

 

I have to agree with Feldon - there needs to be a challenge. I'm very time constrained yet I manage to have fun. I don't need to keep up with the elite. I do what I can and I'm OK with that. I am all for them selling cosmetic items and I frequently buy houses and house items and occasionally mounts (for looks not stats). Every game I've played that had too much pay to win going on turned me off. It's just the tone of the game. Paying to win takes something away from the game and once they go down that road there's no coming back.

 

What I've seen it's not pay to win,it's pay to confirm that i am a Rube.I enjoy the game,I understand that things are changed.What I don't like is buying something in good faith then have It nerfed to the point It's no longer anything like what I payed for.I'd have to be a rube to do this again,I imagine there are few others that will feel the same way.This can't be good for the future.

 

Since I've had 4 accounts permanently banned from official eq2 forums for raising critical concerns and pressing devs to provide some kind of explanation for what they are doing, I've gone beyond thinking they are incompetent to firmly believing they are straight out crooks. Theybreak Games is a farse, a ruse. Anyone who gives them another penny or a second of their time is being suckered. It's very sad. i spent 12 years building a home there and they just turn it into a crack house to make quick cash on poor souls who still have roots in the game and just cant let go.

 

EQ2 is WELL on the road to Pay To Win. Start raiding T4 mobs and you'll know you need ascension abilities at grandmaster to even have a chance at killing some of them.

Ascension is about the closest line without crossing it being blatantly p2w - get extremely rare spell drops (that you have to scribe in tiered fashion) or just pay a convenience fee to gain massive boost in effectiveness and be way ahead of everyone else with 0 effort.

What DID cross the line of P2W was REQUIRING certain ascension abilities at certain levels to progress through raid content.

Daybreak is happy in the moment as like Feldon said, they have remarkably cut costs and have taken in more money from EQ2 than they ever have. If they continue on this road EQ2 started it's long walk into the sunset. It wont be too long before they go too far, and P2W stretches too thin that people have no reason to play this game anymore. This is coming from someone who loves the game and even enjoys it in its current state, but I have a close eye on the horizon.


As far as Inire's main argument, look at it this way. Pay me $1000 and I'll populate an account with all maxed characters, best gear in the game, maxed out everything. Like you said, Time is the same as money right? You couldn't argue with your point that you wouldnt be all for an offer like this in the marketplace. Pay $1k USD and have a completely maxed out account.

I realize this isnt reality RIGHT NOW, but many things that were introduced with KA are going DOWN THIS PATH. The closer we get to devaluing people's effort & skill in a Massively Multiplayer Online Game, the sooner you see people nope the hell out of that environment. People in MMO's want their work to mean something, their skill to mean something - the second you underhand that when any joe schmoe can match or BEAT the effectiveness of a talented and/or hard working person, you devalue the core reason of playing. Period.