New efforts!

[Arcana]

Is "you have to pay to get some of the things you want" really a "bad part"? You get that they're a business, and the folks doing the work are doing it for a living, not in their spare time, right?

I'm down with "I don't like lockboxes", but "a lot of the good stuff requires spending money" is literally how everything works. In the world.

The post you're quoting was in the context of replying to darkgob, who was echoing a comment made about a lot of Perfect World's games; that they are "money grubbing."  I don't think Star Trek is really all that bad, and I point out that while a lot of the very best stuff is gated behind purchases (i.e. lockboxes) most of the really good stuff isn't, and can be acquired through just gameplay.

Its like if I say the bad part about trying to tank the Clock King with Invuln is all the psi damage.  I'm not saying its wrong that the Clockwork King has psionic damage, I'm just saying its not the best situation for that guy with the Invuln tank (note: I knew Invuln tanks that could tank the Clockwork King: that's just an example).

The "the good stuff costs money" rule is a truism, but how you collect that money has an impact on how or if your customers will accept the price.  For example, I was not opposed to Paragon moving to an ala carte model with Freedom, and I even supported things like the Super Packs (both in terms of advocating for them, and actually spending money on them).  I felt they were reasonable return on expense, and they did not act to bifurcate the playerbase harshly into haves and have-nots.  If you didn't buy them, you weren't second class citizens in the game, while if you did buy them you got cool stuff that helped you, but didn't cause you to completely outclass everyone else.  In fact a smart strong invention build would be just as effective as a dumb not well thought out build saturated with pack material.

The problem with STO's ala carte stuff is that its so nakedly expensive compared to what you get.  As darkgob says, a single starship class which generally unlocks per character generally cost 3000 zen, the equivalent of about $25 US.  That's a lot.  A starship class is roughly equivalent to an archetype in CoH: imagine if free tier CoH players had to pay $25 to unlock controllers.  Per character.  And its not like you pay that once and you're done.  In CoH the replay value was less playing different archetypes (there were only about a dozen or so) but in playing powerset combinations of those archetypes.  With STO, its less about the power combinations (weapon and console configs) and more about starship types.  So that $25 pays for one ship.  There's about fifty or so in the store.

The lockboxes to me have a similar problem.  They cost about a buck per, so they are not that expensive - similar to Super Packs.  But what they contain is far more luck-based than Super Packs.  In the CoH Super Packs you were practically guaranteed to get at least *something* interesting, like ATIOs.  But in STO lockboxes you are more likely to get the equivalent of inspirations and invention salvage.  The odds of getting the good stuff tends to be a lot lower.  If what you're going for is a starship that is contained only in those lockboxes, the odds against you are in the range of 200 to 1, up to 1000 to 1 or worse.  Imagine if the only way to play a Soldier of Arachnos in CoH - by anyone, free or subscribed - was to buy Super Packs, and one in a thousand had that unlock.

The only thing that makes this both acceptable to me and yet in a way inexplicable to me is that all of these things - with a few exceptions - are things you can totally ignore.  Yes, a lot of the replay value of the game comes in playing with other starships.  But there are ways to earn other starships through content gating.  Other things you can buy with energy credits or dilithium (although its harder to earn EC in STO than influence in CoH, so a 100 million EC thing in STO is actually a lot more expensive in my opinion than a billion inf thing in CoH was).  Just like in CoH you do get a Zen stipend if you sub (or if you're a lifer like me) so cheap stuff is still in reach (like duty officer slots, say).  But while buying a couple of Super Packs in CoH a month with your stipend would slowly allow you to accumulate good stuff with each month making that worthwhile, I think spending the monthly stipend on lockbox keys in STO is a far worse value proposition.  I think if you're going to pay the lockbox game, you really need to spend money on them.  Lots and lots of money.  And I could if I wanted to: the money itself is not the issue.  I just don't think its a good value in STO.

If I really, really, really wanted something, I'd probably buy it.  I can certainly afford it.  But to me, the STO store is not as inviting as it could be, and from a purely business perspective it probably doesn't make as much money as it could make because its too much weighted in the direction of a few very expensive things and a very low probability high reward lottery (the lock boxes), rather than a more 7-11 open all night buy a six pack and a bag of chips store.

[Power Arc X]

I hate the  lock  boxes  in STO. I let them stack  to 20  and just  discard  them  like trash. It's  just  sucks that if someone  gets  lucky to get a free ship that is only good  to use for  the  toon that  unlocked  it. I  just  buy my ships   when they go on sale like  this weekend. I am  thinking  of  getting  the KDF Internet  Cruiser for $26/2600 zen or the tier 6 Galaxy  but I'm  undecided  atm. I   haven't  even  touched  my Kobali  ship yet. It's  still  parked in space dock.

[Todogut]

A starship class is roughly equivalent to an archetype in CoH: imagine if free tier CoH players had to pay $25 to unlock controllers.  Per character. 

To further the comparison, back when I used to play Champions Online (another Cryptic/PW MMO, which uses the same Zen currency model in its game store), an archetype could be bought for 1,150 Zen. (I don't remember if this was a limited-time "on sale" price.) Given that the price for buying 100 Zen was around $1, an archetype cost around $11.50. Once bought, the archetype was available for as many characters as you wanted to create.

[Arcana]

Is "you have to pay to get some of the things you want" really a "bad part"? You get that they're a business, and the folks doing the work are doing it for a living, not in their spare time, right?

I'm down with "I don't like lockboxes", but "a lot of the good stuff requires spending money" is literally how everything works. In the world.

It occurs to me I responded to this by emphasizing that I didn't think STO itself was bad in this regard; that the turn of phrase was intended to contrast what people sometimes complain they have to pay for against what they can generally get for free, which is often entirely comparable in capability.  I did not directly address the other implication: that charging for "the good stuff" is either necessary or sufficient for an ongoing business to be profitable.  I don't think that's true either.

Before F2P, ala carte gaming (at least in the US) was the exception, not the rule, for most MMO and MMO-type games.  Companies could be very profitable selling subscriptions to game content in which it was not possible (outside of things like grey market ebay sales) to buy "the best stuff" with cash.  So its a given that its not necessary.  But is it even always desirable?  Not all games agree to the same extent.  For example, while some games sell the most powerful stuff, some games explicitly don't.  Some games require you to earn the absolute best stuff only through content gates.  They do not give you a cash bypass to get that stuff because they feel it compromises the game.  And even if you believe the first, last, and only objective of a business is to make money, compromising your game can have long term revenue impact.  Its been well established by experiment that people's motivations to participate in any endeavor are influenced strongly by their perception of fairness in how rewards are granted for effort.  If players believe that the best stuff should be bought and paid for, then selling it may not have any negative consequence.  But if players believe that selling it devalues the effort they put into otherwise earning comparable or even lesser things, that can contribute to a lower retention of players.  That in turn can cost you money.

Because this is a matter of perception, not of objective value, different player communities can react differently, and even the same group of people can react differently in two different games.  If a game originally encourages the belief that a fixed price grants everything, changing that can be worse than if things were different from the start.  And the question of whether content is worth a particular price is not directly correlated with the degree to which some players accept that price and pay it.  Datamining net revenue per price point is not always telling the whole story.

Put simply, sure, developers have to get paid.  But that's not the same thing as saying its obvious that "a lot of the good stuff requires spending money."  Development has to be funded and people have to make a living, but in a game where the players get no tangible materials for their cash, perception of value is everything.  If they don't perceive the cost of items and their value as being generally congruent, you're playing with fire.  At the very least, you're probably making a lot less money than you could be making with a different price structure.  Consider the most addictive (and currently most profitable) multiplayer game type: the casual social game (i.e. the Farmvilles of the world).  In those games, its generally the rule that you can't just buy everything.  Much if not most of the good stuff requires lots and lots of gameplay.  They don't want you skipping the gameplay, because they want to addict you to the game play itself through repetition.  What you *can* spend money on are ways to accelerate that gameplay or create more opportunities for that gameplay.  There's no question those guys are in it for the money, but they recognize that none of the things in the game are tangible or have any significant cost to them.  Its the game itself that costs money to produce as a whole, and how they get paid does not need to be connected in any way to the intangible products within the game.

Put this within the context of STO.  I would bet real money that if starship classes cost $15 as an account unlock rather than $25 per character, they'd sell a lot more starships and almost certainly make more money (and I am familiar with the whale theory).  I'd bet that if starships were a character unlock but cost only 600 zen instead of 3000 zen, and required going through a content gate to use (i.e. buy this token, use it to unlock this set of missions, unlock the ship at the end) you'd have a lot more players willing to both spend the zen *and* run the content to gain the ships and you'd at least break even with the current price structure *and* encourage people to participate in the store more.  And getting more people into the store would increase the probability that they would spend more zen on other things.

The *really* insane part is that starship slots are themselves limited, and you need to pay to expand them.  In other words, they are trying to sell starships at $25 a pop, and give all their players a limited number of them they are allowed to even own.  You can argue that "the devs have to get paid" so they have to charge for starship slots, but since that's a prerequisite to buy the most expensive things they sell, adding friction to that sale by putting yet another barrier to the sale seems highly economically counterproductive.  That's like Best Buy charging an entrance free to shop in their stores.

[Todogut]

The *really* insane part is that starship slots are themselves limited, and you need to pay to expand them.  In other words, they are trying to sell starships at $25 a pop, and give all their players a limited number of them they are allowed to even own.  You can argue that "the devs have to get paid" so they have to charge for starship slots, but since that's a prerequisite to buy the most expensive things they sell, adding friction to that sale by putting yet another barrier to the sale seems highly economically counterproductive.  That's like Best Buy charging an entrance free to shop in their stores.

Similar scheme in Champions Online. Play-for-free accounts were allowed a limited number of character slots. Back when I played, two character slots were sold in the game store for 1,400 Zen.

So, yeah, after I had filled all of my free costume slots, I had to buy both an archetype and a character slot if I wanted to add a new archetype character.

[Pyromantic]

The "the good stuff costs money" rule is a truism, but how you collect that money has an impact on how or if your customers will accept the price.  For example, I was not opposed to Paragon moving to an ala carte model with Freedom, and I even supported things like the Super Packs (both in terms of advocating for them, and actually spending money on them).  I felt they were reasonable return on expense, and they did not act to bifurcate the playerbase harshly into haves and have-nots.  If you didn't buy them, you weren't second class citizens in the game, while if you did buy them you got cool stuff that helped you, but didn't cause you to completely outclass everyone else.  In fact a smart strong invention build would be just as effective as a dumb not well thought out build saturated with pack material.

When it came to the Paragon Market, I had no problem with things that were cosmetic.  No problem with things you could reasonably earn in game.  Nor with things that accelerated the levelling process without getting you to a different end-place, or were "wide" instead of "tall" (such as powersets).  I am indeed grateful that these options existed, as they reinvigorated the game and I'm sure gave people many opportunities to have things that otherwise would have never been available.

However, the one thing I didn't like were enhancement boosters.  Were you to have an unlimited budget to afford full boosts on everything, I believe the benefit was too great.  It's the one thing that I believe crossed the line into pay-to-win and broke the sense of fairness to which you referred.  I have no idea what options there would be in a revival of the game (whether we're talking an I23 image, APR, or what have you) in terms of adjusting the market, but I would actually prefer these were not available at all.

[HEATSTROKE]

The Pay 2 Win debate is completely lost on me.. to me it just seems like a bunch of people whining about what a bunch of other people MIGHT have access to...

Im too busy playing my character to worry about what someone else MIGHT have or how they got it..

[MGLZadok]

If you want a free-to-play model that is fair to free-to-play players, look to League of Legends.  Different genre?  Sure.  But the philosophy can be the same.  Think of the two resources you have as Time (the currency you get just for playing the game) and Money (the currency you get by spending real-world money).  The rule is simple--anything that affects gameplay is purchasable with Time.  Done. Finished.  Most of it is also purchasable with money.  In City terms, power sets, classes, character slots, etc. would be available for Time (for the patient) or Money (for the impatient).  Items that affect the gameplay to a point that could make it "pay to win" would be purchasable with Time only.  Example: high-level Enhancement recipes or even crafted enhancements.  But the coup de grace?  Anything purely cosmetic would be Money only: costume pieces, emotes, color palettes (this even I wouldn't be happy about but it fits the category), new animations for power sets (Dark Flame, etc.), costume slots.

The biggest problem with this system in an MMO is that there would be no in-game economy, which a lot of players enjoy.  There is a solution, though.  A third, strictly in-game currency (Inf, for argument's sake).  It would also be earned by doing missions but would be the currency used on the Market since trading Time or Money could be potentially system-breaking.  If players can trade Time, people would eventually be able to stock up on that when logging on for the first time, defeating the "Pay Money to get it faster" option.  The way I see the breakdown of currencies is like this:

Money - Account-wide, non-tradeable
Time - Server-wide, non-tradeable
Inf - Character-specific but tradeable.  Used to buy in-game items like enhancement recipes and crafting materials.

This provides a truly free-to-play option with money-making opportunity.  League of Legends is a highly successful game that has always used this philosophy and has changed the landscape of gaming and e-sports.

For reference, here's an article from last year about the amount of money Riot Games (the maker of League of Legends) made last year from microtransactions (spoiler alert in the link itself):
http://www.pcgamer.com/league-of-legends-has-made-almost-1-billion-in-microtransactions/

tl;dr: Free is possible and fair with cosmetic or optional microtransactions

[Arcana]

The Pay 2 Win debate is completely lost on me.. to me it just seems like a bunch of people whining about what a bunch of other people MIGHT have access to...

Im too busy playing my character to worry about what someone else MIGHT have or how they got it..

The problem is that its a fact that most people don't feel that way.  So even if you do, you have to at least consider what impact any act the devs makes on the game you play, because even if you don't care what anyone else is doing, if what they are doing is quitting then soon you won't have a game to play.

But looking at it objectively, the developers of basically every single MMO *want* their players to be thinking about and reacting to the other players.  That's part of the hook of playing an MMO.  So even if that has no effect on you personally, I don't think its fair to characterize most players negatively when they are basically doing what the devs have designed the game itself to encourage them to do.  What the players actually do with those motivations is generally outside the control of the devs, but the formation of the motivation itself is something they actively try to amplify.  If they didn't, they would almost certainly be making a single player game.

In other words, when a players says "why do they get to have that and I don't" its difficult to say that's a wrong-headed way to look at the game when the devs actually want players to make that comparison, hoping it will encourage them to play more and spend more.  It can't be "wrong" if the devs intend for it to happen.  If you can avoid that mindset, that might work out better for you.  But its not because is the "right" way to view the game.

[ivanhedgehog]

The problem is that its a fact that most people don't feel that way.  So even if you do, you have to at least consider what impact any act the devs makes on the game you play, because even if you don't care what anyone else is doing, if what they are doing is quitting then soon you won't have a game to play.

But looking at it objectively, the developers of basically every single MMO *want* their players to be thinking about and reacting to the other players.  That's part of the hook of playing an MMO.  So even if that has no effect on you personally, I don't think its fair to characterize most players negatively when they are basically doing what the devs have designed the game itself to encourage them to do.  What the players actually do with those motivations is generally outside the control of the devs, but the formation of the motivation itself is something they actively try to amplify.  If they didn't, they would almost certainly be making a single player game.

In other words, when a players says "why do they get to have that and I don't" its difficult to say that's a wrong-headed way to look at the game when the devs actually want players to make that comparison, hoping it will encourage them to play more and spend more.  It can't be "wrong" if the devs intend for it to happen.  If you can avoid that mindset, that might work out better for you.  But its not because is the "right" way to view the game.

that was why I had a problem with some of the costume codes and the like that they gave out to a few people at a meet and greet and were never available again. cool things should be something you can play more and work towards. too much "exclusive" stuff that cant be earned ever turns people off. anything like that should have a window of exclusivity. say after 2 years that cosmetic perk can be made available other ways. be clear up front that it is that way and you should have no problems.

[Felderburg]

The Pay 2 Win debate is completely lost on me.. to me it just seems like a bunch of people whining about what a bunch of other people MIGHT have access to...

Im too busy playing my character to worry about what someone else MIGHT have or how they got it..

I think Arcana explained it pretty well as far as general mentality goes. There was another response of hers about what it meant to "win" CoH, which as I recall was very loosely along the lines of being able to kill NPCs faster. And some people might see it as unfair that others can kill NPCs faster (and thus get more and better rewards faster) just because they paid money.

My issue with Pay 2 Win is with PvP. It's my belief that PvP in any game is predicated on each person having the same base stuff to work with. In CoH, that would be archetypes, IOs you can earn through the market or drops, and things like that. Once everyone is on the same level playing field, their personal management of slotting and actual play will carry them to victory (if they're good - defeat if not). But the point is that PvP is, in my view, supposed to be more about skill than gear.

And so when you introduce items in a cash shop that can be used as an "I win" button in PvP, that is a serious issue. You've eliminated any skill-based component to competition, and instead made it about who has more money they're willing to spend. For people like yourself, only worried about playing your own character in a PvE environment, it might not matter. But the spirit of fair play in (PvP) competition is ruined with Pay 2 Win items.

This also affects the PvE community in games where powers are not separated in the PvE and PvP arenas. I haven't played STO in a year or two, but the PvP vs. PvE debates were pretty vitriolic when I was there. Because of the huge issue with Pay 2 Win in PvP, you had PvPers complaining (rightfully so) about such items in the shop. So the items got nerfed, and then the PvE players complained that their super sweet item, that they paid good money for for it to be as powerful as it was, had been nerfed, because of the PvP players. So you introduce an artificial divide in the player base, on top of all the issues brought about with Pay 2 Win items in general.

[Antovaras]

The problem with STO's ala carte stuff is that its so nakedly expensive compared to what you get.  As darkgob says, a single starship class which generally unlocks per character generally cost 3000 zen, the equivalent of about $25 US.  That's a lot.  A starship class is roughly equivalent to an archetype in CoH: imagine if free tier CoH players had to pay $25 to unlock controllers.  Per character.  And its not like you pay that once and you're done.  In CoH the replay value was less playing different archetypes (there were only about a dozen or so) but in playing powerset combinations of those archetypes.  With STO, its less about the power combinations (weapon and console configs) and more about starship types.  So that $25 pays for one ship.  There's about fifty or so in the store.

Shame this statement is blatantly wrong, c-store starships ranges from 1000 zen to 3000 zen, all of which are account unlocks for all eligible characters. I.e a Federation cruiser will unlock for ALL federation characters on the account as long as they have the right level. In addition the overall effect of starship type and equipment  is less than you imply, plenty of examples of low tier ships completing end game content in the hands of a decent pilot... Easily youtbuted and verified.

[Minotaur]

The problem is that its a fact that most people don't feel that way.  So even if you do, you have to at least consider what impact any act the devs makes on the game you play, because even if you don't care what anyone else is doing, if what they are doing is quitting then soon you won't have a game to play.

But looking at it objectively, the developers of basically every single MMO *want* their players to be thinking about and reacting to the other players.  That's part of the hook of playing an MMO.  So even if that has no effect on you personally, I don't think its fair to characterize most players negatively when they are basically doing what the devs have designed the game itself to encourage them to do.  What the players actually do with those motivations is generally outside the control of the devs, but the formation of the motivation itself is something they actively try to amplify.  If they didn't, they would almost certainly be making a single player game.

In other words, when a players says "why do they get to have that and I don't" its difficult to say that's a wrong-headed way to look at the game when the devs actually want players to make that comparison, hoping it will encourage them to play more and spend more.  It can't be "wrong" if the devs intend for it to happen.  If you can avoid that mindset, that might work out better for you.  But its not because is the "right" way to view the game.

Look at what's just happened in NW. Many people spent considerable real money on character slots and crafters to do the leadership profession, which allowed you to generate some astral diamonds which could be used in the marketplace or converted to Zen for purchases in the Zen store (Zen is what you can buy with real money). With 3 days notice they removed almost all astral diamonds from leadership without any thought as to the stupidities that were left behind (removal of the ADs from a 24 hour task meant that it rewarded less than a lower level 4 hour task for example) and 2 patches later they still haven't fixed it.

People have left in droves, I spent a little over $100 on stuff that helped me earn 1M+ ADs/week. I now earn <300K/week and any chance of real progress on my characters has disappeared in a time frame I'm prepared to accept (I have immediate need for maybe 30M ADs and that's gone from 6 months which was acceptable to 2 years which isn't) and my investment is worth a small fraction of $100. I will play on till my VIP period runs out then make a decision as I won't be able to afford to renew it. I will never spend any more real money on the game as my trust in Cryptic/PWE has gone.

The real problem is that they trumpeted - "but we've added some ADs to dungeons and skirmishes". I'm a soloist, I don't do those by choice, I preferred to craft for my ADs. More of Cryptic saying "you will play the game our way" - anybody remember that from the Emmert days of CoH. So I try a Pug dungeon, it's full of people who don't really want to be there but feel they have to, skirmishes are full of AFK bots. This came hard on the heels of an implemention of guild bases that has crucified small guilds like the one I was in.

It's the dishonesty I really don't like, "too many people were botting leadership", OK, so make some effort to deal with the bots and leave those of us using it legitimately alone. Opinion is pretty much universally that it's a blatant money grab because people were making more ADs through leadership than PWE wanted and thus not buying enough Zen with real money. The exchange rate has dropped from 1 Zen - 400 ADs from 1:500 so it's now in some ways less worth buying Zen to convert. That said most prices have dropped in the market to match, and one of the key items that people bought with ADs from the shop has had its price slashed although all others remain the same so good luck trying to do things like upgrade your pet.

PWE's money grabbing reputation is well deserved IMO

[Pyromantic]

The Pay 2 Win debate is completely lost on me.. to me it just seems like a bunch of people whining about what a bunch of other people MIGHT have access to...

Im too busy playing my character to worry about what someone else MIGHT have or how they got it..

Paying to win exists on a spectrum.  On one end you could have a game in which you simply cannot pay money for anything which has any mechanical impact whatsoever.  On the other end, it could be that the more money you spend, the "better" mechanical benefit you have such that you would always "win" (whatever that means for the game in question) compared to someone that had spent less money; skill would only be a factor when your expenditure was identical.  I think most people will agree that the latter option is not desirable at all, in which case you acknowledge that there is an amount of pay-to-win that a game can contain that is too much.  The only question then becomes how much.

I believe just about all gameplay is predicated on the belief that the rules should be "fair"--that they value attributes that players bring to the game that are intended to have value (in particular, mental and physical attributes that the game depends on), and are impartial to other attributes.  I would certainly prefer to put money in the latter category in my video games, whether I have some to spend or not.  Of course however, game designers need to make money, and deserve it if I believe the game has value to me.  So how do you reconcile these?  Well, I have absolutely no problem with the expectation that I have to spend money in order to play the game in the first place.  This also includes (as I mentioned before) "wide" benefits like powersets; in such a case I'm spending money to get access to a new way to play the game, without it necessarily being strictly better.  Cosmetic things like emotes or costume options I'm also perfectly fine with.  I also recognize that players tend to fall somewhere on the time-available/money-available spectrum, and so I don't really mind if players can spend money to get something that others can get by investing time.  It starts to bother me if access to money means that you're reaching to a different end state, one that is strictly better than those without.  This is particularly true in a game like CoH that is intended to be very accessible to casual players. 

There is certainly subjectivity in whether or not you agree.  However, classifying people that complain about pay-to-win elements as whining is unnecessarily pejorative.  The act of complaining is not whining, especially when the complaint has merit; it is the manner in which the complaint is made that is the determining factor. 

This leaves me curious now.  How do others feel about enhancement boosters?

[Felderburg]

Another thing about Pay 2 Win that may be a factor is that for some games, and even the MMO industry in general, a flat fee was all you needed to gain access to everything. For people who could only afford that flat fee, to have their access lessened in lieu of people that can afford to pay as much as they need to can sting. And even if there's no change in the actual stuff you can access once a game goes to a cash shop model, someone who was able to access everything at one point is now money-gated from certain things.

[syberghost]

Another thing about Pay 2 Win that may be a factor is that for some games, and even the MMO industry in general, a flat fee was all you needed to gain access to everything. For people who could only afford that flat fee, to have their access lessened in lieu of people that can afford to pay as much as they need to can sting. And even if there's no change in the actual stuff you can access once a game goes to a cash shop model, someone who was able to access everything at one point is now money-gated from certain things.

The problem is this; during the nearly 20 years in which that flat fee has remained $15/month, the cost to produce a game has more than quintupled. They spent as much on Destiny before release as WoW has spent on development TOTAL across the entire life of the game. City of Heroes cost $7 million to develop; STO was over $20 million. DCUO and TSW were $50 million each.

Unless gamers are willing to go back to paying $120 a month for MMOs (which was once a thing), their only choices are make more money, or spend less on production. F2P makes more money.

[Felderburg]

The problem is this; during the nearly 20 years in which that flat fee has remained $15/month, the cost to produce a game has more than quintupled. They spent as much on Destiny before release as WoW has spent on development TOTAL across the entire life of the game. City of Heroes cost $7 million to develop; STO was over $20 million. DCUO and TSW were $50 million each.

Unless gamers are willing to go back to paying $120 a month for MMOs (which was once a thing), their only choices are make more money, or spend less on production. F2P makes more money.

I recognize that, but it still doesn't change the mentality of someone who once had a flat fee to pay, and now has to pony up extra.

I don't have issues with cash shops in general, but per my previous post, it's when the cash shop becomes a PvP Pay 2 Win scheme is when it causes issues.

[MM3squints]

I recognize that, but it still doesn't change the mentality of someone who once had a flat fee to pay, and now has to pony up extra.

I don't have issues with cash shops in general, but per my previous post, it's when the cash shop becomes a PvP Pay 2 Win scheme is when it causes issues.

I remember a guy on Trumph named Big Pun who bragged about buying $200+ worth of influence from gold farmers to make an ice/em tank (pre i13 a beast 1 v 1) He would go on arena chat talking trash so I said I would duel him with my ice/rad. Besides him having a $200+ toon (essentially a Pay to Win toon) he started talking more trash saying I will do no dmg to him because he has ice res capped. 5 minutes into a 10 minutes duel, I dropped him. 2 minutes latter I dropped him again. Before the 3 minutes was over, I dropped him 2 more times (4-0)

The point I'm making it yes builds, gears, etc do give you an advantage, but in terms of at least CoX PvP, skills can out beat a P2W toon. It's like saying just because you bough a McLaren F1, you have the driving skills as Dale Earnhardt (how ridiculous dose that sound?) But on a equal or skilled platform, P2W can be an issue, but then again, PvPers will spend 60% of their gameplay farming while 30% Pvping, 10% PvE (probably lower than that, but that was about my breakdown) so even if you do P2W, seems like a waste in CoX standpoint. Of course it may be different in other games because the store can give out exclusive OP stuff.

Besides being able to meet from all servers, the best part about test was you can copy as many purples and other IOs over so basically all team really didn't have an advantage IO wise over the other.

[brothermutant]

Never really got into the PvP side of things. I did DUEL from time to time, but problem I had was I (wrongly) thought that every toon should be able to compete in PvP effectively. What I mean is IF I am decent at PvP, I should at least stand a chance against any other toon. Obviously, that is wrong. I did try very hard to make toons that could duel one friend in particular (he had various Dark/XX Defenders I believe). I did my damnedest to beat him with a couple of my weaker toons.

Used a MM that kept having him heal off of my pets, same with my Huntsman build for my Arachnos Soldier, finally kept him to a draw (mostly) with my Shield/DM tanker; couldn't do enough to kill him consistently, but I had a Darkest Night togg from my Epic set that pretty much made him have to break line of sight. Only reason I ever died was the clickey Mez protection or running out of end (he had a Dark/Elec that was pretty mean).

I DID like how CoX made the model where if you paid long enough, you got vet reward points you could "spend" to buy newer powersets, etc. I thought it was a particularly innovative way to reward us long time members and still offer specific things up to those willing to just play for free and buy what they wanted. Only thing I don't remember being for sale was a chance to "buy" incarnate level content, which I think was a mistake. Could have made it pricey but still available to those willing to buy it.

PLUS: I hate PvP (just saying  :P)

[LaughingAlex]

This leaves me curious now.  How do others feel about enhancement boosters?

Enhancement boosters are better seen as "slot savers" than simple power increases.  You still had to know how to use the IO's to benefit from them, because once a power was hitting ED, the boosters made no difference.  But what you could get per-enhancement was pretty big for minor powers.

The other benefit of them was you could lower your endurance costs when it was possible to do that already :/.  Generally any build I had that was the only benefit of them.  I always had very high accuracy, so much so that any increases to accuracy was pretty meaningless(even more-so on toons with +to-hit, there is only so much a godlike accurate toon has in benefit, fighting +5 or worst even hitting them every time your damage was flattened).

I still feel it was probably a hair to much of an issue pay to win wise.

As for another post about inflation and dev costs....well, us peasants only make scraps these days.  And if I recall, modern server costs are not as severe as they were in the earlier days, which allowed developers to keep the cost down inspite the growing the development cost of the actual game.  But the inability to charge more I am betting is also ensuring the quality of new content is lower then it already would be due to publisher/developer uncreativity.