[TERA PC & Console] En Masse is closing, but TERA lives on! We will continue to support TERA PC (NA) and TERA Console until service is transferred. Stay tuned for more information.
[TERA Console] The Grotto of Lost Souls update (v85) is now live! Read the patch notes here: https://bit.ly/TERACon_v85
[TERA PC] The 64-bit update (v97) is now live. Check out all the changes delivered on August 11 here: https://bit.ly/tera64_patchnotes
[TERA PC & CONSOLE] Summerfest Part 2: The Beach Bash is on from August 11 until September 1! Participate in event activities to earn tokens redeemable for costumes, consumables, mounts, and more! Details: https://bit.ly/tera_sf20
Comments
If that's your definition of P2W, then I can just pay my friend to play my TERA account for me in order to do all the grinding so that when I am ready to play, I can be fully-geared. Someone else does the work, I pay them for their effort, I "win." The trading of gear on the broker is no different -- someone did the grinding, someone else pays them for their effort, the person who did the work gets paid, the person who pays gets the item. Of course I know nothing of how to play and I'll suck, but that notwithstanding...
This is why the only useful/functional definition of pay-to-win is when there is a purchasable advantage that can only be achieved by paying money. Because if it's just the offsetting of labor, it can never possibly be prevented. People do not place an equal value on time. If you call that "pay-to-win," the term is utterly meaningless. Video games exist as a subset of real life.
You sir' your brain has been brainwashed by eme, tera, bhs
It has nothing to do with EME, TERA, BHS or anything. Look at MMO history. Any game that relies on grinding has this inherent problem; some people have time, some people have money. This is why gold-selling has been a problem in MMOs since the very beginning, even if the game developers are adamantly against it. Even completely aside from the cash shop, skilled players will "sell" carries -- how do you think people who buy carries get their gold? Nonfunctional definitions of pay-to-win are useless for actual discussion.
(This is not saying that I agree with the RNG of the lootbox or the release methodology of this dragon or anything. But if we're going to talk about pay-to-win, you need to have a useful definition first. People throw around the term to mean everything and anything where money is involved in any possible way, and it's meaningless.)
^ the future me
You can kill them as bams at Scy Fae, or ride them in Kaiator using the platforms. They are not so exclusive, except maybe for the color. The model is identical, the walking and flying as the creature that has always been in game (there is even one in Allemantheia as someone's pet).
But business is business and i don't particularly object from removing the drop event. I tho you could kill hundreds of bams to get one but whatever, I'll just keep using the brown pegasus. It is sad to hear some people have client crashes tho.
I thought the same thing earlier today when we found out we weren't getting the dragons today. I just couldn't find the meme to post it lol.
See that's where you're wrong. At the end of the day, the definition of P2W is subjective for a start and nonfunctional definitions are indeed useful as it is determined not only by developers and publishers but also the very in-game community itself. The community puts value on any cash based currency as well as the items available through cash based currency. The reason it is useful is to determine whether cash is heavily affecting the general economy of the game itself and how said economy affects the balance of power in the game. I've seen MMOs where publishers and developers have no choice but to give away valuable items due to the sheer fact that their cash based currency has damaged their in-game economy and free players couldn't even do essentials to get end game gear without cashing. Cash based currency like EMP can damage an in-game economy and put power in favor of cashing if they aren't monitored regularly. Being ignorant of that fact is what can easily turn any game Pay-to-win by definition of people buying their way through the game instead of actually playing it. If you say it's useless for discussion is to say that cashing without actually playing the game is fine.
A term whose definition is that inherently subjective and basically means whatever people decide at the moment is useless for discussion because nobody knows what you're talking about. But the actual issue is relevant and on-point, even if you discard the term. That's my suggestion if we want to have this conversation.
But, if you are going have this conversation in the context of TERA, it's rather nuanced because of the details of the in-game economy. The cash shop does not allow you to generate gold; it facilitates the transfer of gold from one player to another. The cash shop does inject consumables and new desirable items (like these dragons). The Gold:EMP ratio is historically determined primarily by the rate and ease at which gold can be earned at any given patch. And if you look at the difficulty of gearing, the influx of consumables from these lootboxes (combined with other recent events) results in their deflation, while the relative rate of earning new gold has gone up. So if you consider the confluence of all these factors, at this time, I would not say that there's any good reason to resort to "cashing" in your gearing process for anyone who plays regularly. The rush of consumables will lower their price, making them more accessible to people who play regularly with the power of earned gold. The temporary drive to get these mounts may temporarily skew things, but that's not unlike any other desirable cosmetic in that sense and will balance out soon.
There is the issue that right now that the only way to get these desirable mounts is on the cash shop. Even if you believe in the conspiracy theory that this was all a scheme to push cash shop sales before putting it in game, this doesn't disadvantage F2P players as much as it advantages already gold-rich F2P players. If you're a new player and you don't have a lot of gold saved up, you'll have to wait longer to get a mount due to having to wait until the grind option is made available, but you would have had to grind for it in the first place (as the same price spike would have happened anyway even if it all launched at the same time).
So anyway, I personally believe that it is extremely important to make absolutely everything accessible to F2P players in a reasonable and equitable way so that people who cannot pay are not at any gameplay disadvantage. But, there are a lot of counterbalances in TERA that have to be considered carefully and put together to understand the impact of any given change. That's a further reason why clear definitions of the problem are important, rather than buzzwords.
I am all for buying mounts through the CS, I've purchased 2 or 3 in the past, and I enjoy playing casually (not competitively) so the P2W stuff doesn't bother me. However, if I am going to splurge and spend the money, I want the guarantee that I am going to get the mount that I want and not a whole bunch of misc goods.
unless you telling me a person with a normal working hour playing a couple of hours per day can get a full set +15 imperator with t3 etchings and dyad niveots + accessories before the patch ends.
Im with you on that. I think many others would have used their credit cards today if the account bound dragons, or even single player bounds were in the store to buy outright. I don't care about the stats on them. I wanted a flying dragon mount and many others did too. even if they would have sold ones without the extra speed, flight time, and stats, people would have bought them. i just hope we can start farming for the tokens by Thursday's patch/maintenance instead of having to wait until possibly next Tuesday ( im not saying they will wait until next Tuesday, so don't think im spreading rumors). but as far as the p2w thing goes, i don't feel like the rng stats will make or break anything. if it was triggered during pvp, then i could see it maybe having a chance of having a slight advantage.
Agreed, the stats really don't mean much to me either. Sure, they're nice to have, but they're not a necessity. I was just really looking forward to flying around on a freaking dragon! Lol
Yes, if the mounts were capable of being used in combat the stats may have caused an issue. I've never been a pvp player, I prefer to quest and team up to dungeon rather than fighting other players, so I don't think I can properly comment on the P2W argument. As far as I know, P2W isn't an issue for pve?
Fingers crossed the tokens are released soon!!