Monthly Development Update – 31st July, 2013

[Gatester]

Instead of making a Trader and taking it to 220 to fully make use of the CL + increased percentage of the Trader Shop, you can now just flat out buy the Trader Shop!

Instead of making a Trader and levelling it to a point where you can make use of the portable GMI, you can now buy it!

Instead of making a Crat and playing it to the point where it can make use of the Bank, you can now just buy it!

Instead of making a Fixer to get good use out of Grid Nanos, you can now just buy the Nano Cans!

Instead of teaming from 150-200, you can now just skip it! All with the wonders of the FunCom Point Shop!


It's Paying to get something without the time investment. It's P2W. End of.

There are limits on the benefit of computer literacy for the trader shop...and hardly any credits are generated from selling pearls and monster parts.

No one would "level" a trader just to use a portable GMI, it would make more sense to simply log an alt who is next to a GMI, check the prices, and then move on. Given level 1 froobs can use market terminals, your point hits some major issues. Also, weren't the portable market terminals introduced before the GMI was introduced, and therefore having access to "player shops" which no longer exist is the issue?

No one would "level" a crat just to use a portable bank, afterall, how can you make use of a portable bank terminal on a character if the crat is on the same account or in a totally different location? At this point is it not easier to simply find a bank terminal and deposit items there?

Introduction of unlimited F-grids for all professions would be stupid, but I believe they are temporary items intended for players who need quick access to something like a tower war (not entirely supportive of this myself though). The grid warping items which players can freely use are not functional in-combat, and are therefore not equivalent to fixer tools.

Heckler juice is like $60 or more...


Most of these additions are actually band-aid fixes for playability issues which should be corrected anyways. Players should not have to run back through 10 empty floors of a mission, they should be able to leave once they beat the boss, instead we have out-of-combat grid warping items.

[Veev]

I am so glad to hear that GMI is repaired and everyting (including AO economy) is OK
/sarcasm off

Yeah, could we get an official response on what happened to the market exactly? Did it just go down, or something more serious? Sort of annoying that we are forbidden from mentioning a certain word here, which makes it incredibly difficult to determine what has happened to the economy exactly.

[Raggy]

Irrelevant

They are still exclusive perks to the profession and they are being sold off at a premium price on a premium subscription game. If you suddenly had to start paying for access to perklines, you'd all be in uproar, but it's ok for ease-of-access components of certain classes to be sold off? Double standards.

Most of these additions are actually band-aid fixes for playability issues which should be corrected anyways. Players should not have to run back through 10 empty floors of a mission, they should be able to leave once they beat the boss, instead we have out-of-combat grid warping items.

So why are they not being sorted? Because FC can make even more money off the gullible and the lazy by selling of parts of the game we already pay for.

It's ridiculous and frankly disgusting.

[Dysfunction]

I havent bought portable GMI or fgrid nanocans or any of that other, because it isn't needed. It's really not hard to find the profs you need or walk your {self} to the gmi/bank... if you guys are seriously {complaining} about them becoming available for money, when they dont effect pvm/pvp, you are wayyyyy too uptight about this. I don't care about it and I don't even use it, I have a fixer with fgrid and don't mind one bit helping out others with it, I don't mind walking to a GMI and I don't mind walking to the bank. If someone wants to spend $5-$10 for that 'perk' they're {removed}. Let them eat cake

[Raggy]

I havent bought portable GMI or fgrid nanocans or any of that other, because it isn't needed. It's really not hard to find the profs you need or walk your {self} to the gmi/bank... if you guys are seriously {complaining} about them becoming available for money, when they dont effect pvm/pvp, you are wayyyyy too uptight about this. I don't care about it and I don't even use it, I have a fixer with fgrid and don't mind one bit helping out others with it, I don't mind walking to a GMI and I don't mind walking to the bank. If someone wants to spend $5-$10 for that 'perk' they're {removed}. Let them eat cake

If people buy it, FC sees that people are interested in the shop and will add more to the shop, probably stuff you wouldn't like.

"50% of all Combined Armour this week only, ranging from 3000FC Points and up!"

"Fed up of bad drop rates? Buy your BoC now for only 1500FC Points!"


Just you wait and see.

[MachSchau]

Oh man Raggy, you are a funny guy, you make me laugh with your stupidity. I am going to put on my ruff and tuff face and shake my finger at you and explain how funny and dumb you are.

Pay to win, in all aspects, means that the company has built a game that is so grindy and so difficult to obtain items or compete with others that their item shop provides players boosted XP, weapons, armor, spells, trinkets to make their gaming experience superior to another player who did not use the item shop.

What AO has are convenience items for people who dont want to waste time in getting whatever or makes some things more streamlined. You can buy 2500 tokens, is that buy to win? No, because every TL7 has one and getting tokens is ridiculously easy nowadays and only a fool or some retardedly rich person (in game or otherwise) would buy that. Now, if there was a 2500 token board, or even a 5000 token board ONLY available in the item shop which added 3 times as many stats to the 2500 board, that would be pay to win. You see, a player would pay money to be more competitive than others who did not shell out the money to become powerful.

Items like the nano cans, portable bank, gmi and virtually everything in the item shop are convenience items. I have never heard or experienced of one incident of where player X had some item from the item shop that tipped the scales for him in pvm or pvp, nor have I read anything of the sort. All of the nano cans in the item shop are buffs only that dissipate when in combat.

People have always wanted/bought things that convenience them. It runs rampant in this game with loot right selling and dont tell me you have never bought something that conveniences you in AO.

With all that said, the day the item shop introduces varying degrees of armor, weapons, specialized nanos for combat with all of them being exclusively sold in the item shop is when AO has become pay to win. This notion that portable terminals being available to players tips the scale in ones gaming is such an absurd thing and to even suggest it does shows how ignorant you are. Or maybe you are just trying to argue for the sake of arguing, I mean, all you ever do is piss and moan and make this absurd statements. I dont even know if you are trolling anymore or if you are just that stupid. I try to not consider you are that stupid because I dont think anyone can be that stupid, but the evidence says otherwise.

[Traderjill]

hmm..

So where is the pay to win line drawn exactly because I'm not sure. Some people define pay to win as situations where you can buy things with real life money that you can't get by playing the game. There's also people that believe that pay to win encompasses a much larger category and defines it as situations where a game sells items (even labeled as convenience) that help people progress through the game faster/easier than those that do not spend real life money. The pay to win concept, in that definition, is worsened when the game development company doesn't fix balance issue or situations in their game that would motivate someone to pay instead of play to win.

In my opinion, AO is very much pay to win at this point.

A person purchases a Premium Clan Application from the itemshop and then sells it ingame for 800mil. They use that 800mil to buy nodrop items via lootrights sellers. What exactly is the difference between that and funcom selling a Burden of Competence in the itemshop for the same cost as a Premium Clan Application? As far as I can see there really isn't much of a difference at all. AO is a very grind and item dependent game (well so are most mmo's). If it takes me X hours to level my character and Y hours to farm its gear before I'm at my desired 'endgame point' and someone else can go spend real life cash and bypass the X hours of leveling and Y hours of gear farming then yeah.. they paid to win.. what else do you call that?

Ofc that isn't my biggest gripe with the original post. I'm pretty annoyed that the freaking trader shop is being sold in the itemshop. THE TRADER SHOP.. REALLY.. IS NOTHING SACRED!!! And no, I'm not just annoyed because the Trader profession is my favorite. I was just as annoyed when they sold all of the other profession specific goodies.. but this is just crossing the line in my opinion.

People may say that its making a mountain out of a mole hill and that's fine. Maybe what they love about the game isn't being torn apart bit by bit. For me, the diversity of the classes, the profession goodies.. that's one of the great things I love about AO.

Edit:

I just saw this!

A treatment transfer twinking nano can.
This buff will last for 4 hours, but will break if you get hit. Convenient for twinking.

So... the nano-can is going to be better than what a doc with the 10 perks can provide? Or is the doctor perk being upgraded to 4hrs as well?

[Gatester]

So where is the pay to win line drawn exactly because I'm not sure.

I think it starts when you "pay" for something that actually lets you "win" at something.

[McKnuckleSamwich]

can you win a ACDC with the upgraded lottery ticket?

And if so, how much do they cost?

[NayNay9]

I'm so glad they caught the person holding a gun to my head and took him away for a long time!
Making me buy all those pay to win items was just wrong... now i have my own accountability and i choose not too!

[Traderjill]

I think it starts when you "pay" for something that actually lets you "win" at something.

Pay to win is really a generic term because winning in a mmorpg is a bit of a joke. MMORPG's, by design, are not made to be won.. they're made to keep you playing long term.. constantly chasing a carrot that has the perception of winning without you actually ever doing so. But for sake of argument, I'd say that for some, having a max level toon with all best in slot items equipped could be considered winning from a PvM perspective. Personally, my definition of winning is successfully leading a raid group in every endgame encounter. Someone else's definition of winning might be a long-term success organization. Another's might be being able to kill every X in PvP or taking all tower sites from the opposing faction. In other words, we all have a personal definition of winning and I can tell you , for a fact, that the itemshop allows quite a few of the potential definitions to 'pay to win' either directly (i.e. I could buy items in the shop, sell them and buy all of the best in slot stuff) or indirectly (as every toon in game has to level and gear up and the itemshop allows people to do that with cash without having to do any work in game). My question was really rhetorical in natural, I guess... maybe even bad wording on my part as I really knew the answer.

There are limits on the benefit of computer literacy for the trader shop...and hardly any credits are generated from selling pearls and monster parts.

How do you know that? I guess I'm the only person in game that still sells these to the shop.. who knows.

No one would "level" a trader just to use a portable GMI,
...

No one would "level" a crat just to use a portable bank

You're 100% right. Players no longer level toons because of their cool profession specific abilities because they can just buy an account-wide version in the item shop. The trader shop was really the last thing to be sold and like Genele said, heck they did it with everything else so there was no point in leaving that out. I remember how 'cool' I thought it was that fixers and traders had their own shops and how crats could access the bank. I remember when it was special that fixers held the key to the fixer grid. You're right about the crat bank.. you can't use it on every toon BUT the fact that you could only do that on a crat meant that you used crats in very specific situations. The same applies to the trader shop. This just feeds into that AO mentality that I hear about in both PvM and PvP when people are whining because X profession can't kill Y profession or X profession can do this but omg Y profession can't.. nerf X!!! There's something positive to be said and had with diversity in this game.. and maybe people won't really see that until its gone.

There's a reason why so many people loved this game.. it wasn't all about the unique twinking system. Soon, however, the ability to twink stats and I guess PvP (I'm not really into that) is about all we'll have left that's both unique and good (if people define the PvP in AO as good.. all I tend to hear are people whining about it in some way/shape/form) about the game. And.... here's another harsh reality. A big part of twinking in AO isn't the simplistic math it takes to get an item on (yeah math is hard.. not) but obtaining the items to do what you want to do. The glory of having that amazing twink that you worked hard to equip by taking it to the ends of rubi'ka/SL to get that one item to be better than everyone else is what it used to be about. Isn't that the reason why BoC's used to be so cool.. because you got something that other people didn't have.. because it showed that you knew the game better and had the experience to have earned a top end item. Now, there's no feeling of accomplishment.. just buy LR to this. Can't wait til we start having WoW-style stupid achievements so people can actually get a sense of achievement again in the game. As is now, with the itemshop, you can just pay for items, turn them into credits, buy lootrights for everything you need and create an awesome toon that you didn't do very much to equip. Where's the glory or achievement in that?

Most of these additions are actually band-aid fixes for playability issues which should be corrected anyways. Players should not have to run back through 10 empty floors of a mission, they should be able to leave once they beat the boss, instead we have out-of-combat grid warping items.

Couldn't agree more.. and as long as they use their time to add more stuff to the itemshop when they could be fixing said play-ability issues instead... the play-ability issues will continue to get worse.

[MachSchau]

If you need an example of pay to win, go play Diablo 3. But since I doubt you will, I will give a quick run down. The game in its current state is extremely bad in terms of what the game is about, which is finding loot to become better. 95% of the loot you find is utter crap and finding anything good requires thousands upon thousands of hours. There are two auction houses, gold and real money. Players use the gold auction house to flip items for more gold to then obtain enough gold to buy better items in the gold auction house. You can not farm gold itself effectively (maybe 200-400k an hour if you are a starting player) when items cost millions. The absurd amount of grinding is just insane if you want to be legit about the experience. The real money auction house has some of the more godly items that if you have the money you can buy the item.

Your notion that the item shop allows players to sell those items for credits to then use on in game credits is somewhat true but it isn't totally rampant and game breaking or much of a requirement that true pay to win games have. Also, that is a totally different problem with people using credits to buy raid items, simply put, players shouldn't be able to buy raid loot rights. So if say hypothetically you cant buy loot rights anymore, that leaves players the only option to using the credits on armor, utils, ncu and symbs. This is also implying that players will only resort to buying those items instead of going out and finding them. Also, if that were to happen, people will gain that "glory" of raiding for their end game loot and completing a toon.

Your statement about farming longer than someone who pays real life money doesn't really apply to AO necessarily. Any player can look at the dnet and neutnet spam and see that players are selling nodrop items, ai armor, or they want to buy nodrop items or ai armor or power leveling. The messages are few and far between of players selling tons of yesdrop items from the item shop. I dont deny that people have made money, but that isn't the main source of the majorities method of making money. The selling of nodrop loot is such a cyclical thing that when you have a decently geared toon you then raid on that toon to sell raid loot to other people and that allows you to spend credits on another toon you will roll.

With that method, of course people that have a high source of income are going to use those credits for services like power leveling and loot right buying to speed things along. The problem has nothing to do with the item shop, but the item shop does influence it considering that you can sell those yesdrop items for credits to then buy raid loot.

The argument here is about the former profession specific items. Those items are totally and completely convenience based. I have never in my entire AO career have felt the need to roll a toon just for its perks (by perks I mean its goodies) nor have I had a need for a portable anything or a nano can. The smart and good players wont have a need for those things and the people that want those things will get them.

(Keep in mind we are only talking about the items themselves not how they are used) In the end, how does it affect you, how does it affect the game? Do people do more damage than you because of those items? Do they excel at pvp or pvm now because they have those items? Are they automatically considered a pro player and people should look up to them? Do they get epeen points? The advantage of rolling those toons will always be there and for free and you can still taunt others with saying at least you didn't have to buy a portable whatever cause you have X toon. People buying those items simply dont affect you and you probably wouldn't even know they had them unless they told you. If anything they help because it gives FC money which goes towards vaporware and we all cant get enough of their vaporware.

[Traderjill]

If you need an example of pay to win...

Just because another game is doing something to a worse degree doesn't negate the fact that this game (Anarchy Online) is doing it. So I don't get your point except to say "if you think this is bad you ain't seen nothing yet". Ok, i'll take your word for it that Diablo is worse. Back to AO...

Your notion that the item shop allows players to sell those items for credits .... is somewhat true but it isn't totally rampant and game breaking or much of a requirement that true pay to win games have.

Ok.. not somewhat true.. it is totally true, lol. I'm not sure if you're subscribed in-game to neutnet, dnet, look at the GMI or check the shopping channels but these itemshop items have been getting sold by players for in-game creds for the entire time that the shop has been out. In one of the friday with means I even asked him if he was aware of this and he basically said "its either us or the gold spammers" (not an exact quote).

Also, that is a totally different problem with people using credits to buy raid items, simply put, players shouldn't be able to buy raid loot rights.

Maybe players shouldn't be able to but we don't live in that alternate reality, do we? In this reality they can buy lootrights with credits so that's the reality I'm referring to in my post. Buying items in shop for USD then turning around and selling in-game for credits and then using those credits to buy lootrights is akin to funcom selling gear in the itemshop itself. The only difference is a mild delay in the turnover.

Your statement about farming longer than someone who pays real life money doesn't really apply to AO necessarily.

Yeah, it does apply exactly to AO. The rest of what you said after that statement doesn't negate what is actually happening in game.

The argument here is about the former profession specific items. Those items are totally and completely convenience based. I have never in my entire AO career have felt the need to roll a toon just for its perks (by perks I mean its goodies) nor have I had a need for a portable anything or a nano can. The smart and good players wont have a need for those things and the people that want those things will get them.

I respect that 'you' haven't and that's ok. The truth, however, is that you do not represent the entire game community. I respect your opinion but at the same time please do not be blind to others that view the game differently. I'm speaking up to communicate my disagreement with their decisions as it affects 'me'. If it doesn't affect you one way or the other (items in the shop, because you'll never buy them) then why even bother arguing against something that is opinion based? Just let me state my opinion and be done with it.

I guess that's one of the things I don't get with the forums. People claim that a change doesn't affect them (good/bad) one way or the other yet they passionately argue against anyone that doesn't like the change. Why? Nothing you say is going to change my perception of the change and you don't care as it doesn't affect you so ultimately you have 0 stake in the issue and yet you're writing paragraphs to prove someone else to be wrong or foolish in their thinking. That's a lot of effort for something that, you admit, doesn't affect you one way or the other.

As for how it affects me.. it does. I could write pages and pages (and I have) on my thoughts on the trickle down affect of Funcom's decisions over the years and how it affects teaming (as you level up and raids). I could post that all again here but for what point? To start a debate on whether or not people's decisions to bypass leveling affects another player's ability to get a leveling team? Plenty of threads on that just search for kiting or outside tank discussions (and I'm sure if there's a thread about either on the forums you can find a post or twelve of mine in it). Similarly, if there's a lootright selling thread, same thing.. sure I've posted my thoughts in it on how I feel it trickles down to affect those that want to team with others and I've even posted some suggestions on how to encourage teaming and rid the game of LR selling altogether. Somehow, however, I get the feeling that you've posted in those same threads so not sure why you're asking me how it affects me unless you just like reading what I type (which I think not, lol).

But regarding the profession specific stuff.. hmm.. hard to explain. AO used to have a strong community. In some ways we still do but when you start removing the things that still force us to interact with one another you tear down the backbone/foundation of what made the community great. It seems like a small thing when you can buy a 4 hour treatment transfer from the itemshop right? But I can recall the friends that I stood by while they twinked, talking to them and joking around because they needed to grab TT. They relied on me and in turn there were things I relied on them for as well. Seeminly small but overall really big in forming bonds between players.

[Raggy]

{do not edit someone else's words to say what you want, thank you - Ana}

That was difficult.

The simple fact is, no matter how much you try to personally attack me, time is a resource, a finite commodity. By paying RL money to use less time, it is by definition, paying to win. League of Legends is Pay to Win for the same reason. Even the professional players of it, say its P2W and it is using the same system as AO.

Also if you think all I do is 'piss and moan' stick your head into Fourth Wall some time.

[Aimzor]

More generalization...

K now there is totally no further use for my trader anymore since my agent will be able to use the terminal, formally knows as Prince… a.k.a. specialist commerce vending machine.

Bad...

For the rest good stuff and you're early for an August update

[Mastablasta]

In the old days, we had arcades. You could insert coin to continue when you had lost all your extra attempts. Pay 2 Win? To some extent. The games were relatively short, but brutally difficult in order to suck coin out of you, flashing the end of the game and a new environment at the end of every level, inticing you to go on. If you couldn't handle it, you could always just dump more coin in. You'd lose your highscore, but you would be able to complete the game.

Look at most the Facebook games, nearly all the games on mobile phones, that are free, and some that aren't, and take a look at how those games work.
They actively block you from progressing if you do not either introduce many new people to the game, pyramid scheme, or spend some amount of money just to see the next level. They aren't difficult, they just require you either wait a month for your resources to tick up high enough, but with some generation ceiling that requires you to go visit the "game" at least a couple times a day, or miss out. Or play the easy areas 1000 times just to get enough to progress to the next level.

In MMOs we have various games like Allods online where you could play the game, fight the boss, and win. But if you didn't pay, the loot would be unusable to you. In addition, if you died, your gear would slowly be locked out and you'd have to pay money to continue using it. Others completely block the attaining of gear from free players, and sell powerful items directly to players, leaving it actually impossible to progress from just playing the game.
Some sell items for cash that are better than what you can buy with whatever you can attain ingame through playing.

That is what pay 2 win is. Being able to buy a clear advantage that is not attainable by just playing the game. OK, you can call having a portable GMI terminal a clear advantage. But it's pretty irrelevant if we're going to be having a DD fight over a spawn, or a duel, or about to fight over towers.
Would I duel a player 50 lvls above me in uber gear if I was wearing carbonum and starter rifle? No. But would I be able to play my way to get 50 lvls and that same uber gear without spending cash? Yes... clearly, no pay to win scenario is present in AO. You cannot buy things that put you in a situation where your character is demonstrably better than a character that has just played the game and spent nothing but subscription fees. You might have a bit more utility at your disposal, for every day tasks like shopping, but in a fight? No.

[Wrangeline]

I just wanted to jump in real quick and point out that the rest of the gaming industry does in fact not agree with MachSchau's definition of P2W.

He said:

"Pay to win, in all aspects, means that the company has built a game that is so grindy and so difficult to obtain items or compete with others that their item shop provides players boosted XP, weapons, armor, spells, trinkets to make their gaming experience superior to another player who did not use the item shop."

This implies:

1. That the game in question has to be grindy and difficult, which isn't true. This is not a requirement.

2. That there's a difference between "convenience" and "P2W", which there isn't. Raggy is correct when he says Time is a resource and I will go into detail on that subject in a sec.

3. That the game in question provides a worse gaming experience without using real money and a better gaming experience if you spend money, because the game is badly designed, which is also not true. This is not a requirement either.

So wrong on all accounts with the definition there.

The accepted conditions for P2W in general are these:

1. In a competitive game where you need X amount of time to create a character that is Y amount powerful, anything sold for real money that allows you to reduce the amount of time required to reach "Y", is P2W. Because during the time it takes for non-paying players to catch up, you have an advantage. In MMO's this effect is magnified as there is no "end" to how big your "Y" is, so catching up becomes theoretically impossible.

2. If you can buy an item that affects "X" or "Y" that can't be gotten any other way.

[Aimzor]

OK, you can call having a portable GMI terminal a clear advantage. But it's pretty irrelevant if we're going to be having a DD fight over a spawn, or a duel, or about to fight over towers.

Not everything has to be relevant for the PvM or PvP gameplay, something’s are just relevant for the use they had and there uniqueness.

This used to be Trader only and a nice feature. Even more when the GMI came into play since multiple items of the same Unique (even in QL) could be stacked inside the GMI as a nice banking system. So you always where able to loot a unique item even if you already had a exact same one. This was a big advantage when it came to farming stuff. Portable GM/GMI, and the Trader shop where one of the reasons to start my first trader. Because no other prof had this feature I wanted to have a trader and so I rolled one (or two ).

Undoing the Profession uniqueness and faction uniqueness (such as the Clan and Omni social armor versions not checking side) is numbing down the game in one way or another. Changes I do like and even more when they open up a fresh insight in experiencing the game. Generalizing stuff, I'm not so fond off... :S

So if the Trader shop is opened up when can we expect the Fixer shop to be available??? And next please remove all the profession visual/= prof- locks from items ingame? And perhaps condense all the professions into a Shadysolpercrat

[Mastablasta]

So if the Trader shop is opened up when can we expect the Fixer shop to be available??? And next please remove all the profession visual/= prof- locks from items ingame? And perhaps condense all the professions into a Shadysolpercrat

Last I heard fixershop was getting removed completely.

[Mastablasta]

I just wanted to jump in real quick and point out that the rest of the gaming industry does in fact not agree with MachSchau's definition of P2W.

He said:

"Pay to win, in all aspects, means that the company has built a game that is so grindy and so difficult to obtain items or compete with others that their item shop provides players boosted XP, weapons, armor, spells, trinkets to make their gaming experience superior to another player who did not use the item shop."

This implies:

1. That the game in question has to be grindy and difficult, which isn't true. This is not a requirement.

2. That there's a difference between "convenience" and "P2W", which there isn't. Raggy is correct when he says Time is a resource and I will go into detail on that subject in a sec.

3. That the game in question provides a worse gaming experience without using real money and a better gaming experience if you spend money, because the game is badly designed, which is also not true. This is not a requirement either.

So wrong on all accounts with the definition there.

The accepted conditions for P2W in general are these:

1. In a competitive game where you need X amount of time to create a character that is Y amount powerful, anything sold for real money that allows you to reduce the amount of time required to reach "Y", is P2W. Because during the time it takes for non-paying players to catch up, you have an advantage. In MMO's this effect is magnified as there is no "end" to how big your "Y" is, so catching up becomes theoretically impossible.

2. If you can buy an item that affects "X" or "Y" that can't be gotten any other way.

Sorry, there is a rather large difference between convenience and buying powerful equipment that lets you win, that you can't obtain through playing the game.
Time is a commodity and a resource yes. It is however something that you will have to spend in order to become good. If you could buy all the items in the game and the means to equip them, and fought someone who had gained those items through playing the game, you'd still not have a P2W scenario.