Are we still not on azeroth?
Yep, and he's endorsed by Trion because he's a community ambassador. He goes around being very dishonest and an instigator, but is allowed to keep his ambassador title for some reason. Non ambassadors get perma banned for far less on Trion's official forums, but he has been toxic towards free to players and toxic in general because he has Trion's blessing to be so. Otherwise they would get rid of his 'ambassador' title.
Perfectly fine to sell carries for GOLD, which has been done in WoW (and Rift and every other MMORPG) for years. It is an argument of semantics for sure, but players in general draw the line at items being sold directly for real money vs paying other players for an in game service with in game currency. One is literally the publisher of the game generating and selling in game items for $$$ while at least "carries" for gear are still being earned by players - just not the player paying for the carry. In any event, Trion is a horrible gaming company - Hartsman & Co took the easy way out of failure and sold out long ago - yet still continues to be a failure...go figure.
Last edited by azurrei; 2017-12-10 at 10:10 PM.
The moment when Slipmat drags WoW into the comparison and doesn't even know how their lockouts work, how fucking embarrasing from a community ambassador
He shames the program. It's a very ironic title. The sole community ambassador is against the community and shrills for Trion on pretty much every issue.
There's been attempts to get the program revamped, but those threads have mostly devolved into pitchforks and personal attacks because of how many people hate Slipmat. Ironically, it would be easier to get the title removed from him if he was less hated.
Last edited by Darkdaemon; 2017-12-11 at 12:06 AM.
Do you even understand what that blue post is about? Obviously you do not so let me educate you. That is a post talking about guilds selling raid runs for REAL MONEY. Not BattleNet Balance, not gold, no in game currency at all. If you think the Bnet token is the same as real money well....there is no hope for you. Of course you ignore the rest of my post because you know I'm correct.
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The classic deflection defense. Slipmat knows he has no leg to stand on to try and defend bullshit business practices. I mean Trion suspended this blatant cash grab as it is.
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That is fine, I suggest for the rest of this thread (and future ones on MMO-Champ) we just talk around Slipmat and ignore his posts.
Time and money are not mutually exclusive.Originally Posted by Brasse
You're working on the assumption that players who don't have the time to play do have the money. It's a very paradoxical stance to adopt - If players don't have the time to spend in game, why would they spend money on it? People with less time to invest into a game are themselves, by nessesity, less invested in your game.
What you've really created is a system that encourages your most loyal players to open their wallets.
Anyone who dares to point out criticism is met with "But WoW..." arguments, anyone who's vocally critical on the forums is silenced. Elitism and toxicity are the two pillars which are propping up the entireity of the Rift community at this point.
@Slipmat is the ideal personification of the cesspool Rift's community has become. He brings a little slice of Rift's culture to us with each and every post. A perfect ambasador indeed!
As I said, we just should post around and ignore the person that is here to just waste our time.
Alright guys, you've all been warned/reminded in the past to keep on topic and not discuss other posters posting habits. If another poster annoys you, put them on ignore or don't respond. Derailing discussion complaining about other posters is against forum rules, so please keep posts on-topic, productive, and respectful.
I'm not Holyroller on the RIFT forums. I didn't make that post that I attached. I was illustrating the outrage by even very, very loyal RIFT community members (who Holyroller is)
But, yes. I feel that F2P games all devolve into P2W eventually. Also, not a fan of DLC's. It encourages companies to sell a watered down release and make people pay more to get the final finished product (eg. Civ 5, Civ 6)
It's also true (as per my tweet to that senator) that Trion Worlds (as well as other F2P companies) appear to deliberately prey on people who are weak-minded enough to drop thousands of dollars each month on their game once they've become addicted.
It's why I only play sub-based and B2P games or games that offer strictly cosmetic items in their store.
Last edited by theWocky; 2017-12-11 at 06:09 AM.
Yeah, I still play BnS because it has a great story and I love the combat but why, oh why must most FTP MMOs almost always devolve into P2W systems. Like, is it really that hard to create a sustainable system where players just buy cosmetics, mounts, pets, bag/bank space, character slots, etc? I would love to play an action combat Korean MMO that has a horizontal gear system for once.
I mean, look at NCwest, I would have bought more costumes and shit if they had the damn wardrobe unlocked from teh start for FTP players, but they had to be greedy fucks and keep it behind their minuscule benefit bullshit sub system.
Last edited by Usagi Senshi; 2017-12-11 at 06:27 AM.
Personally, I'm done with F2P games. Their producers always seem to eventually succumb to greed and try to push the envelope with pay to win.
It's really funny how the few people defending P2W practices seem to have largely not actually experienced the grind involved with Intel or participate in end game raiding and gearing. They also tend to call their opposition entitled for some reason, even though we tend to be long term, veteran players that have heavily invested in the game. After all, those with the most stake in this are the ones that actually play. Personally, i bought over 100 lockboxes ($250) in a show of support when they revamped them to my liking.
To be fair there are some good F2P models out there. I can name at least 2 right off the bat and I'll PM you them so it doesn't derail.
But yeah the issue with F2P is since there is no box price it can allow the dev to get greedy as it has done with Rift for a while now. Although funny thing is initially there WAS a box price for Starfall Prophecy and there was a no refund policy.
This also says to me that it might be close to the end for Rift. Because a common thing I've noticed is that high price stuff like this starts to make itself known closer to the end of a games lifecycle.
The simple reason people are defending it is 2 reasons as I said mate.
1. Trion can do no wrong in their eyes and it's perfectly fine for a F2P game to be P2W despite the devs saying it never would be.
2. They have thrown so much into the store over the years and need to justify their large spending habits.
I would disagree here. There are lots of perfectly fine F2P games that haven't slid into a P2W system. Dota for example, it's been doing F2P right for a long time now. So has LoL, Warframe, Path of Exile and even Hearthstone. There's nothing at all intrinsic to F2P that will force an eventual slide into P2W.
I think the issue is more that the publishers of smaller titles tend to look at how well the big names are doing, decide they want to make EA amounts of money from their F2P game and as a result copy the kinds of stratergies EA are using to rake in $800 million from a single title alone. These days it seems it's just not enough to have a successful F2P game, you're either making ALL of the money or you're scraping by. That's far from the truth, it's been shown time and time again that even unknown companies can make F2P games that are both profitable for them and fair to their players.
To be fair, I still have more people on ignore in Rift than I have in LoL and Dota combined - In fact, it's orders of magnitude larger! (6 across both LoL and Dota where as I have 63 on ignore in Rift). Rift is, by far, been the worst gaming community I've been a part of. Your milage may vary, but I run into far more ragers, trolls, elitists and just downright awful people in Rift than anywhere else.
It's very amusing that there are so many accusations of freeloading and entitlement thrown around, both here and on the reddit posts about this issue. Those people clearly have no idea about MMO monetization models or why a 1-5% paying population is still incredibly healthy.
In MMOs, players ARE content. You support an MMO just by playing it. The tiny additional load you impose on the servers is offset many, many times by your interactions with paying customers, the potential free advertising and the free quality assurance/bug testing through feedback. I've already touched on how most of the people complaining are actually those that buy things, but even players that don't aren't freeloaders. If the only playerbase of any F2P MMO was reduced to only the paying population, how will they get dungeon or raid groups, or PvP queues to pop?
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The funniest thing is, many of the people defending this either:
1. Don't play. They're like armchair philosophers blaming poverty on laziness. They skirt the edges of MMOs, level, and never get to endgame. They think that because leveling is fun, companies deserve all the money they can get.
2. Aren't actually at endgame and haven't experienced the grind. A certain someone in this thread hasn't actually completed his eternal weapon quest or attempted to accumulate the currency being sold. They have no first hand experience why people hate it so much. This forum post, the MassivelyOP article and the reddit threads haven't even mentioned the other problems with captured intel. It speaks a lot about game design when getting a currency is so grindy, arduous and un-fun that selling it for real money is construed as a catch up mechanic. Let me give you some numbers here for reference:
The normal weekly cap for Captured Intel is 47k.
Zone events award 40-70 Captured Intel per completion, and pop up once on every shard (of which there are seven) perhaps every hour or so. The most optimal way to complete them is by AFKing at a spawn point and tagging when you see the zone event tracker site announce one. The five daily quests give 30 each, while the two weekly quests give 200 each. If you use a tablet (a premium consumable that boosts currency and costs around $3-4), you need around 12-17k captured intel saved up in your rift loot bag to cap, depending on your loyalty tier and assuming you have patron. Thus, by abusing a game mechanic (the rift loot bag) AND using a tablet, you can expect it to take around 200 zone events, or around half the hours of a work week, to cap for a week.
One RNG accessory box costs 15k, and another 40k to upgrade, giving it a total cost of 55k. Getting to intel cap yields under one upgraded accessory per week. Realistically, most people will take months or a year to get the minimum of 275k intel needed for 5 accessories. Did I mention that necklaces are a hit piece and getting them is pure RNG with this system? It's a 1/5 chance presumably, but you can roll a 5 sided die 100 times and never have it land on a 5.
Accessories have 5 possible suffixes of varying quality. There are 2 ring slots, 1 necklace slot and 2 earring slots. You can see how this all balloons.
People like the shrill that shall not be named aren't endgame. They haven't actually experienced this.
Back to this topic. Sorry I've actually been playing the game you guys hate so much and are boycotting so I haven't really been paying attention to the garbage that's been posted here. Anyways, time to reply.
Drugs are against the law to use or even hold. Comparing illegal actions to actions that a company has decided to do under their right to operate their business how they see fit is not even comparable. Advertising cacinos in schools (first off I didn't know schools even had advertising in them but whatevs) is not illegal and frowned upon because their target audience can't even gamble in a casino (again I didn't even know schools had advertising). Corporate ethics protect the consumers from unlawful practices by businesses to get them to spend money. Offering something you can't afford but others can is not unlawful business practices. Its jealousy and envy. When you are told that nobody is forcing you to buy Intel, it really is that. Nobody is forcing you to go out and spend real money to buy Intel. Hell nobody is even forcing you to play Rift. Nobody is forcing you to do a god damn thing when it comes down to it. A judge can't force you to pay child support. If you don't want to, you don't. A judge can't force you not to beat your ex-girlfriend who got a restraining order against you. If you want to, go for it. You might go to jail but when you get out you can go beat her some more. Nobody is forcing you to stay away from her. Well I guess there is one way that you are forced to do something. If someone shoots you, you kinda are forced to be dead. Ok so I guess there is ONE thing you are forced to do and that's it.
Pay to win is when a company allows you to pay real money for items you can't obtain in the game any other way that are equal or more powerful than those you can obtain for free/regular means. What Rift is doing is allowing players to pay real money for a few accessories that are ALSO obtainable for free in the game by regular means.
I don't think they have been really hiding the fact that they get something from it. But you are downplaying that the PLAYER does in fact get something out of this. Not only do the players who purchase this get an item but YOU (the person boycotting and not paying for it) get to play a game FOR FREE! What a concept? People with money are forking over their hard earned money to support a game they enjoy so others who are self-entitled pricks get to play a game without forking out one cent...or is it shilling over there for you guys?
And he brings up a very good point, have YOU ever been a game developer or even ran your own business? If the answer is no then you have no idea what it takes to keep a business afloat, provide content that will satisfy your players, and keep the game interesting.
So you're like the WoW players that bitched about wanting vanilla WoW and then when they got it weren't happy so they bitched some more. The difference is Rift will never release a "vanilla" server because its a F2P game that doesn't bring in anywhere near the revenue that Blizzard does with WoW. Games evolve. If you don't like that fact, move on to another one or get over it.
Again I point you to other games, including WoW (you know the game that started this forum/website you're on now bitching about Rift), that have said one thing and later on found there was not only a desire but a NEED for them to offer something they said they would NEVER do. As much as you might want to ignore it, a gaming company is in it to make as much money as they can possibly make so they stay in business longer to make even more money. They aren't there to to provide quality gaming experiences to people while losing money. If they did that, they would literally go bankrupt and the game would go offline which would negate them providing quality gaming experiences to people. Is it really that difficult of a concept to grasp? If a company sees a DEMAND for adding some access to endgame items to players for a fee then they are most likely going to SUPPLY it to them. Its economics 101 of Supply and Demand.
Actually Lythelia they don't owe you or any other player any answers at all. They answer to their stockholders not their player base who are bitching of an "unfair advantage" for someone to pay for something that other players have to raid for but are still able to get for free.
There are builds that allow for solo play that aren't making the mage a glass cannon. Just because you don't like those builds does not mean they weren't around or available.
Seriously have you ever played any other MMO other than Rift? Games do this crap all the time!
If you say you'll never touch another Trion game again, why are you so vocal about this happening then? Do you secretly wish to play Rift again if they take away this? Is so, that makes you a liar.
You can't bypass the weekly lockout for bosses in a raid. You get 1 chance at loot per week per boss. The exception is bonus rolls using tokens that have a 3 per week limit to purchase.
1 There is no limit to the amount of tokens you can purchase. There is a limit to the number you can purchase at once but once it sales, you can purchase more until you run out of real money to purchase them. Also to buy a full mythic/heroic run from a guild isn't as expensive as you would think. Full heroic runs go for about 200k and mythic runs start around 500-600k.
You're right. The player does have to actually find a group willing to do this (which really isn't that difficult) and it doesn't fully guarantee they'll get a specific item they want. It does, however, give them a higher chance at getting multiple items during a run because of loot being tradeable for 2 hours after a boss is killed from ANYONE in the raid.
Well you might understand how boss lockouts work in WOW but you don't seem to understand that you can't actually trade/gift WoW tokens to anyone in game. You can give them enough gold to buy one but the actual token is non-tradeable. As far as your claim that you'd be full heroic geared "as quickly as a normal raider" is utter bullshit. When you buy a run (heroic or mythic), you are buying the loot rights to all the gear you sign up for. They only take one of each type of class/role with them into these sorts of things to prevent clashes over gear that may drop (you know 1 healer/caster, one tank, one melee). No reputation has been destroyed as nobody actually knows you've done it unless you tell them specifically. There's no skills learned in most cases since they typically tell you to go hit the boss with something then stand in the back/kill yourself so you don't interfere with them killing the boss because of mechanics. I know this first hand because I've bought several of these sort of runs on various alts over the years so I could bring them into our normal raids or on my priest when I wasn't able to attend normal raids because of school/work scheduling.
Its natural to make comparisons to other games when discussing one. You guys have made comparisons already to Battlefront II but don't like when other people bring up other games to show how Rift compares to other games.
If players don't have the time or the money to obtain items (in this case some accessories that can be obtained from raiding or the cash shop) then that's a too bad so sad situation. If you don't have the time to invest in raiding to obtain those items, why should a company GIVE them to you for free? Your comment about not having time to spend in game is moot. There are plenty of circumstances where a player might not have time to farm up or raid consistently to obtain those items like the accessories being sold in the cash shop that can also be obtained by free methods (spending time not money) but may have time to occasionally make it to raids or groupings with friends/guildmates. These players would like to actually contribute to what's going on and not be a liability to the group if they're even allowed to attend the grouping. These players would like to have some gear already so they contribute as I said. This just allows them the opportunity to get some previous raid gear & current tier accessories to do so. These players still have to come up with their armor and weapons from "normal" raiding/dungeons. Just because these players don't have 40 hours a week to invest in playing a game doesn't mean they don't have SOME emotional or other type of investment in the game.
Blizzard does the same thing with their games as do most other games. Its unofficial forums that allow the player to vocalize their criticism of games without fear of being silenced or banned. This is not a new concept and it will never change. Here's one for you. Aion allows players to buy current tier weapons & armors from the auction house using an item that you buy from their cash shop. That's right, ANY gear from the highest tier can be bought with gold to a player and an item from their real money cash shop. But that's ok since its not Rift and there's ingame currency used right?
Uh have you even played Hearthstone? That game is completely pay to win.
What this really boils down to is I think all of you I quoted (with the exception of Slipmat) are just a bunch of crybabies who aren't even patrons or players who don't/haven't spent any real money to support the game they are playing for free yet criticize for trying to earn some money. This is one way the company has decided to earn some money and you all either can't afford it so you QQ about it being available or you're just jealous that others might be able to actually get caught up so they can play the game still with friends/guildmates. Maybe if you opened YOUR wallets and contributed some of YOUR money to the game you're playing, you might find Trion wouldn't have to offer such things to bring in some money for themselves which caused all of you to QQ in the first place. Yes, this is a F2P game but they still have operations costs to pay out in order to keep you guys able to play their game. The F2P model is a way for a company to offer their game to more people so they have a larger audience to potentially earn money from in the form of microtransactions. I happen to enjoy this game & have spent MY own money to help support it through the years when I played it. I believe you should at least pay out the $15 a month to help them keep the game running if you decide to play it. I always have done these sorts of things with every F2P game I've played. I've even forked out my money for ingame credits to buy various things too. Last night I paid $30 just so I could have enough credits to buy my rogue some leveling gear & for a REX to get some gold to spend on ingame items on the auction house. When's the last time any of YOU have paid out even one cent to Trion for anything?