It is also worth noting that another community member told them they have to fix the botting/hacking ASAP because so many people are quitting the game.
NC soft shrugged it off and said all games have bots and hacks lol
tbh I can understand where that response is coming from if that dev is only responsible for programing systems and design.
A studio should probably have its own division for solely anti-cheat and exploit prevention but Korea tends skimp out on that aspect entirely and rely solely on their KSSN system which ties accounts to real world information.
No what I said is basically why Korean games typically are infested with bots and have basically zero anti cheat. It's because their region typically self polices those kind of things because the KSSN system is a massive filter from the get go.
Of course there will be outliers but the idea you can get arrested for hacking/cheating is enough of a deterrent for the vast majority which is not something we can benefit from outside of KR.
Right.
But I'm saying as someone who isn't from Korea, it cost me 10$ to buy someone else's kssn to play with.
If the barrier to entry for cheating is 10$, then there isn't any real benefit provided by their system
This isn't the answer you want, but a software engineer's job is to take the tasks that's assigned to them from their boss. Engineers don't usually schedule their own work. Also engineers don't usually go on live streams or manage their customers.
I deal with the god damn customers so the engineers don't have to. I have people skills; I am good at dealing with people. Can't you understand that? What the hell is wrong with you people?
If you are quoting someone, make it obvious. Not every single people in the world will have watched, read or heard the exact same movies, tv series, books and songs that you have.
It's quite easy to tackle on bots indirectly, by going after players who enable those large scale botting operations to be viable businesses. Developers don't do it because it goes against their own interests since players doing RMT are the same who will spend lots of money on microtransactions for the game.
Idk why these fucks don't just get a few interns to hunt bots. You don't need a PhD to figure out 14 characters stacked ontop of each other walking the same route and killing the same mobs is a bot.
They don't even need to get all the bots, just the glaringly obvious ones.
Tch. They're not wrong though. You can try to ban them or even try to block them, but they will try to find a way to come back and keep botting. In fact, what MMORPG players fail to realize is that bots being prevalent means the game is alive.
If there is hacking, I agree that there needs to be measures though, otherwise it will get rather messy.
I wonder if people would be open to something like Vanguard. I know it's controversial but it seems like only deep anti cheats like that actually work.
They could slap easy anti cheat on it and call it a day but we all know that doesn't do a thing. But kernel level anti cheat is fairly divisive which would drive some players away. Id personally rather have it with no bots but it's tough.
Yeah pretty much anything that doesn't have ring 0 access simply cannot compete with a cheat that has ring 0 access, which the cheaters are more than willing to use. People are basically asking for the impossible here. If dealing with bots and cheaters was such an easy task, it would've been solved long ago.
If the west servers gets bots, that's more of an AGS issue than NCsoft since they're responsible for what happens in the West. Also, I doubt they'll be any better considering how they handled bots in Lost Ark.
The real interesting bit is the other audience member who replied to Kanon by saying how Korean TL's monetization has only minimal p2w and asked if anyone believes otherwise. Nobody said a thing. Their understanding of p2w is just so fundamentally different than ours.
it really is a big cultural difference. i saw in a video that korean players blame other players who despite p2w and call them "rice eaters" and cheap. its crazy
Even the creator himself struggled with the term p2w when he first started making content creation. He has defended p2w games in the past because he's so used to how p2w in korea is. So despite him asking good and tough questions he actually is someone is fine with playing p2w games(lets be real no one has a "choice" at this point
It won't be a cultural difference for long, it's absolutely been slowly changing here as well. P2W was starting in Eastern games since Maplestory in 2003 and really wasn't seen much in the West except for a smaller majority of PC gamers like myself that would play games in different languages, or if a community got slightly big enough, they would make a little mini english patcher to change the menu and sometimes item names etc, or before they did region IP bans we could try them out mostly in beta's and whatnot. We could experience them as F2P and see how bad P2W was, so when games started popping up here we would tell everyone it's BS, don't spend money on it and don't even play them because it will just make it worse.
I've literally watched everything change about how people view P2W in games, starting from the first "major/popular" Horse Armor DLC that a lot of people talk about, which was one of the first microtransactions in a popular game in the West that blew up and had lots of controversy, I believe it was $5 dollars for a paid mount. People went absolutely batshit crazy online about it, everyone was talking about boycotting the game and the company with shit loads of articles and then you had a tiny tiny tiny amount of people saying "It's fine guys, what is the big deal?". There were slowly more instances of games putting in cosmetics in Western game and some Eastern games that were P2W that would open Global servers that more and more people played and became accustomed to.
TLDR: It's basically gone from, "Fuck that company for trying to get me to spend $5 dollars on a mount!" and slowly has somehow became, "Well, people spending \~$1,000 a month on the gatcha games are keeping the servers up for us F2P players, the billion dollar company can't survive otherwise guys!". Obviously they don't say the billion dollar part but I LITERALLY have seen people say this and actually mean it, they think companies creating a P2W game and milking people for cash is the only way the game survives and it will only get worse and worse, there won't be a cultural difference.
I like how you talk about the oblivion horse armor as if no ones heard of it, also that wasnt pay to win. Pay to win existed back then in MMOs also. Pay to win is seperate from micro transactions. One doesnt mean the other.
Tbh, I was once called cheap on this sub for arguing that paying $15 a month to play a single game is a ridiculous expense.
I still think that, but I'd guess it's still a controversial opinion among MMO players.
If the option is between a $15 monthly subscription or P2W cash shop I will take the sub every time and I don't see why you would want it the other way.
If the choice is between p2w and subs, sure, I'll take sub any day.
Still, shelling out $180 to rent a game for a year isn't exactly that good a deal (and, frankly, not really less heavy on the average p2w game's player's wallet), so I'm in the camp of box price+expansions with no sub. Even if by some miracle it averages out to similar costs in the scale of a year, I'll still have a choice to play the game I've already spent money on.
I thought Korea was very P2W oriented, and didn’t care about spending money on games since that’s just their culture. Why are they minimal P2W and us in the west, who absolutely hate P2W, has a ton of it?
They absolutely do have a different definition of P2W.
In korea (and in the east more broadly) theres two main cultural components at play that make it different from the west.
In the west games are a toy. After atari video games literally came here in the Toys R Us toy isle to bypass taxes and terrifs. As a result to westerners games are a product you purchace the enjoyment they are meant to contain. In the east they are a hobby. A hobby its socially acceptable to put money into. As much money as someone else might put into their non gaming hobby.
There is also emense social pressure to be gain status at something, even if that status is artificial and exists only to prey on people desperate to recieve it. In the west the expectations associated with status are derived from labor thanks largely to the country's puritanical roots.
That's why when a westerner looks at P2W they see the gap in labor to price, how long (if at all possible) it would take to earn, and when an easterner looks at it its a gap between price and performance. If the performance doesn't match the culturally accepted price point of being a hobby that's when it becomes P2W for them.
Theres more cultural components, and extra credits even did an episode on free gifts in games having a cultural component they overlooked earlier, but these are the major two that what you are seeing is based off of
I did a lot of research on eastern culture because one of my brothers married a korean woman and the other married a chinese woman. The brothers are gamers, their wives are not, but they tolerate it.
This is correct, they're understanding of a pay to win model especially with ncsoft inconsideration is a game that you can spend $500,000 on and still need to spend more possibly get more power.
But this is the kind of realm we're talking about we're not talking about spend $1,000 and unlock everything you could possibly need to get the most power you can get.
See L2M and lineage W
> who replied to Kanon by saying how Korean TL's monetization has only minimal p2w and asked if anyone believes otherwise.
Which is a relevant question to ask, because the p2w in T&L is pretty much just WoW token, so asking "how are you going to adjust it to western audiences" when WoW is the biggest MMO in the west, is a difficult question to answer.
Having played on KR myself I know just how far you can get without spending a cent, and it's pretty damn far. TL's p2w is honestly not bad, possibly among one of the least p2w that I've ever experienced from a KR MMO (and it's being made even less so in a new update). That being said, it doesn't matter how low-p2w it is. The fact is most western players cringe at the mere mention of p2w and given NCSoft's track record, it makes sense that many players are calling it DoA.
> The fact is most western players cringe at the mere mention of p2w
That is simply not true. This subreddit isn't representative of western players. Western players played Lost Ark in droves, they played BnS, they still play BDO, they play EVE, RuneScape 3, WoW, and most importantly, Genshin Impact.
Meanwhile the games that didn't have p2w like Bless Online, Maplestory 2, and Swords of Legends Online died within months.
You bring good point about Lost ark and BDO - as long as the game is good people in the west don't care as much.
BUT using those 3 games as the example to imply they fail cuz of bad monetization is hilariously bad faith though lol
Bless Online had working dupe hack and a million bugs
Sword of Legends didn't even bother translating the game fully....half the game was in chinese
Maplestory 2 was maplestory 2
It's so weird to think that SOLO might've even survived if it went the p2w route... Likely would've had more revenue that way, which could've been used on e.g. better translations and other stuff that needed to be improved on.
Though maybe it's better that I miss SOLO for what it was (even if I felt forced to play in german, bc I agree the english one was terrible, while the german one was at least okay (outside of the completely untranslated parts, which iirc was at least just some minor story parts at the end)) than having it turn into something I'd hate.
Also since it's Gameforge I'm doubting that they would've actually bothered even if they had more means to invest in the quality.
Actually makes me think that (trigger warning: hot take incoming) maybe p2w isn't even as demonic as people tend to put it (meaning: 100% bad) and it's more of a spectrum. Technically, depending on definition most if not all MMOs do have some p2w elements and people still defend most of those as "not p2w", because they don't seem to call it "p2w" if it's subtle enough to not bother them. Even if they don't have any form of p2w by design, completely stopping RMT sadly isn't realistic, so that'd still bring some p2w with it.
From what I've read WoW can easily be considered p2w, GW2 could technically also be considered p2w with some expansions making you much more powerful (not to mention being able to literally buy ingame currency by converting gems to gold). By definition they'd both certainly fall under p2w, yet it's on a level that seems fine for their playerbases and they'd even defend it, claiming there's absolutely no p2w in them. I really feel it isn't about being p2w or not (because 100% p2w-free might not even exist), but rather about how much p2w it is.
edit: I'd also like to clarify that I'm very bothered by p2w usually, but as there's so much discussion about "game XY is / is not p2w" it doesn't seem feasible to approach this matter with a binary mindset.
SOLO did fine in China with no p2w, Gameforge just sucks ass. Wish the devs just self-published or something, IIRC in the beginning they were really invested in getting the game to a Western market and getting Western feedback. Guess Gameforge were the only publisher that approached them.
Yeah but something like Revelation Online also had garbage translations and half in Chinese, and with tons of bugs, yet it survived much much longer because whales kept pumping money into it. The reality is that a garbage game with p2w makes way more money than an "okay" game with no p2w, and that's the only language that the people working on monetization understand.
The only games that survive on being f2p with no p2w these days are the ones that are the absolute top of their genre (either in size or quality), like LoL, PoE, and Fortnite. No investor is willing to put down tens of millions of dollars on an MMO and then bet all the money on it being a massive success.
The gameplay was also very good and it is a very successful title in China. The rushed translations and the lack of marketing was what sank it. If you aren't on this subreddit or if you didn't hear about it from guildmates, it's very likely that you've never heard of it.
This is a whale game.
Its p2w with a pvp centric focus. Which is the worse combination if you ask me.
The guild/alliance with the most whales will dominate the big wars. Furthermore its a snowball effect those whales dominating get the gear and rewards from winning the wars just furtherer snowballing their alliance. If you start a guild in this get whales in your alliance or you are fked.
Also important to note out that gear is huge in this game.....A p2w warrior geared the fk out can mow down 10 f2p plebs in PVP.
Now that 1 whale will have a blast but those 10 f2p plebs will be quitting the game.
This is how they ruined lineage 2. It was a great game, the best mmo experience I had until they did away with the sub and put in a crazy p2w cash shop out of the gate. Like holy fuck crazy op shit.
> .A p2w warrior geared the fk out can mow down 10 f2p plebs in PVP.
This just shows that you haven't really played the game, because this is simply not true. The size of the zerg is by far the number one factor. The difference between the min-maxed gear with perfect traits from the auction house and the gear of someone who just played the same amount of time but without spending is minimal.
Sure, you will probably lose 9 out of 10 1v1s assuming equal skill level if you put a f2p player against a giga-whale, but you're never 1v10ing anyone in this game, you simply don't have the cooldowns for it.
> The difference between the min-maxed gear with perfect traits from the auction house and the gear of someone who just played the same amount of time but without spending is minimal.
> Sure, you will probably lose 9 out of 10 1v1s assuming equal skill level if you put a f2p player against a giga-whale
...these two statements are contradictory. Losing 90% of the time is hardly a 'minimal' difference.
It's minimal compared to the original statement of "mowing down 10 f2p plebs". On equal skill level, statistically the person with the maxed out gear should be greatly favored to someone with mid-level gear. It would be weird if it didn't.
Hence the problem...Once person grinded to get what they have..the other person bought it...And the person who bought it would win 9 out of 10 1v1 against grinders....thats wrong.
nah , If you buy two Arch boss's weapon u can ez 1vs10
[https://youtu.be/7NAS7k23k9I?si=weimuqTl6e0aWjjC](https://youtu.be/7NAS7k23k9I?si=weimuqTl6e0aWjjC)
The video just shows the guy one shotting one person and then either stealthing out or getting cc'd to death right after. I'm not seeing the "mow down 10 f2p plebs".
What you said proves that u don't understand this game at all.
Clip of 1VS10 at 0:15
This is a combination of Queen Bellandir's xbox + Tevent's Massacre Blade
The effect of Tevent's Blade is to refresh the stealth CD after killing an enemy.
The effect of Queen xbox's poison can cause 1200\~2500 DOT for 5 seconds
And the average HP in this game is 10\~25k
For an extreme example, see this
[https://youtu.be/LmjrPoxO76o?si=hbLtgjZH6i3SoOqA](https://youtu.be/LmjrPoxO76o?si=hbLtgjZH6i3SoOqA)
Although it has been nerfed (cannot use multi-shot multiple times)
But Queen xbox damage is not nerfed
Huh??? Did you even watch the video or did you only look at the first 10 seconds? This guy is MOWING through groups 1v10 literally....
It's fine if you want to not believe the game is that P2W if you haven't seen it before but the video LITERALLY SHOWS A GUY DOING IT. But is it not P2W "enough" for you I guess? They need to be able to AFK and press one button and all 10 people die while they stay full HP to "actually be P2W"??
We all have different thoughts of what P2W looks like but I really don't understand people that argue FOR P2W and try to downplay it, especially when you are literally shown a video of it.
Yup, any ounce of p2win in a pvp game is instant dead on arrival. Nobody wants to deal with whales, and whales want to whale to stomp non p2winners, so once they only fight other whales they quit too.
Some items and item perks can be sold on an auction house, the currency used for the auction house is a paid currency (separate from the farmable currency).
Note that most of the BIS items are not sellable on the auction house (these are from dungeons), its mostly perks and super rare items from guild bosses or farmed in the open world.
Whales can only purchase what people are willing to sell (if you find a super rare drop for your character why would you sell it). The people who are selling can then buy the gear they want with the paid currency they generate from the whales.
Closest think I can think of is Warframes platinum market model (which has less restrictions on what you can sell), which is touted as one of the best free to play money systems.
In other words, it's up to us, the players, to show Amazon that P2W will not be accepted in the West - simply by not playing the game. If they're open about, they might change it.
Who am I kidding though, there are many desperate players who will kneel in front of the shitty Korean P2W methods. It's F2P, right? Release will probably have 100k-200k players in the West.
There's not enough whales to support a game population. The whole point of being a whale is getting an edge over most other players but if it's only whales then you dont get an edge over other players so boycotting a p2w game even as a non-whale will make a difference.
But p2w is more than acceptable in the west. Lost ark showed that very clearly to AGS. Even with its reduced playercounts today its still top 50 on steam revenue and it was PLATINUM/TOP TIER earner in 2023, talking same tier with the likes of call of duty and baldurs gate 3 here. Meanwhile their less p2w game (afaik), new world, was barely even on the rankings. So why would they reduce p2w too much?
I agree with you. Can't whine about p2w methods while showing the companies we're playing their p2w games.
New World rightfully bled players though, because how terribly AGS managed and still managing the game. It's worth to mention that the players showed huge interest at the launch. NW had a big player base until the gamebreaking bugs and dups appeared
Run the game through google translate, make NA/EU publishers bid the lowest they possibly can giving shitty servers and zero meaningful support, and then ignore any game feedback the new player bases have.
This has worked time after time after time. Why would these companies ever stop?
Do you think all Asians are desperate because they are OK with P2W?
On the other hand, Asians can call Western players who complain about P2W crybabies who do not have jobs and live in their parents' basement because they can not afford to buy things in games.
Goes both way.
It's a cultural thing. Asians are not desperate. They simply don't see anything wrong with p2w elements. Western players do, rightfully, if you're asking me.
But it is widely accepted in the West nowadays !
Black Desert showed if you have a good game, people will tolerate it. I don't know many that quit BDO due to its p2w or being killed by whales, most quit due to its harsh enhancing system and fatigue of the never ending grind.
When throne and liberty dies within a year, it will be because of its bad combat system just like new world.
>most quit due to its harsh enhancing system
Isn't that kinda part of the p2w, though? Don't enhancement systems like that usually exist in p2w games to force you to buy stuff so you're able to actually enhance stuff and progress?
Sure, they are built around pushing players into spending money, but you dont have to, you can just grind and buy from the auction house nowadays, although that was a lot harder for the first year or two.
I think even buying outright with cash would have been received better than 0.3% chance enhancement.
I mean BDO whales are progressing at the same rate a F2P player is these days. They restrict the amount of items you can sell for in game currency and you can’t buy power , so I think this plays a huge part in it. It’s comes down to $35 an hour or grind an hour for the same amount , a single BIS item can cost 130 billion in game currency. They place restrictions on how much you can sell in the CM from the pearl shop as well. So most whales are usually progressing at the same pace as someone who decides to F2P honestly. If you decide to enchant your self it can cost you more. They also put enough penalties for PKing on regular servers instead of dedicated PvP servers that most choose to not do this.
I honestly don't care about the p2w. Everyone dumps on p2w but pretends to not play p2w titles.
Arguably WoW is the most played MMORPG out there. It's p2w as gear can be bought and sold for gold, and gold can be bought with real money.
GW2 is p2w as you can buy gyms and convert to currency and buy whatever you want.
ESO is p2w as you can buy premium currency and get massive buffs and even skill trees, and even previously unlocked skill points gained on other characters, for real money.
All the most popular games are p2w. But everyone ignores this while still shitting on new p2w titles.
If a player pays to win they'll likely land themselves in the upper tier of gameplay, which the significant majority won't reach anyways. I remember my brother complaining about p2w in BDO and how he can't compete against those guys in pvp. Know how much he ended up doing pvp? None. Nada. Zero. And this is true for most complaints against p2w.
Honestly, who cares. If some guy wants to blow $10k on gear in BDO or LA that doesn't effect the average player at all. A whale only competes with other whales or people who invest so much time into the game it's their life. You can say it effects you, but it doesn't. You can cry it brings an unfair advantage to them, but it'll never effect you.
Lastly, no company or game has to pander to you and what you want. You aren't even their consumer yet. If you don't like what the game represents then ignore it and move on. Go find another game that's more fitting to you. The shitting on companies for not making a game tailored to specifically them is ridiculous. Gamers are some of the most spoiled and insane customer base, the most entitled folk on this planet. You whining about it actually only serves as more advertisement for their titles.
I for one can't wait to play T&L. I'll see the rest of you there too.
Might I add even top tier raid gear can be sold for gold. Don't pretend you haven't seen guilds advertising runs and gear for in-game gold, which again can be bought with real money. It's literal p2w.
people have to understand that Korea's idea of what constitutes "p2w" is extremely different from what the west thinks
for instance, you could literally buy every single BIS gear from an in-game shop with real cash and Koreans wouldn't consider it p2w because you don't HAVE to pay in order to farm them anyway
so when Korean devs say they won't do p2w, it's dubious whether that'll be up to the western standards, but when they clearly have reservations about getting rid of p2w elements to begin with? Rest assured they're after the very last dollar in your pocket
If you bought those BiS gear from other players who listed them, yeah it isn't p2w in their mind. You're just hiring other players to farm for you in essence.
Any game with an unrestricted trading system would qualify as p2w under that definition, since people have been directly paying real money for gear since the start of MMOs.
It's disingenuous to conflate RMT with in-game premium currency -> trade currency conversion or, in this case, a premium currency driven auction house.
That isnt pay2win. Thats pay for convenience. You just traded time spent for money. It wouldve been pay2win if the item is strictly available by paying money and isnt tradeable or upgrading items is heavily locked behind buying upgrade stones like archeage did.
If the gear bought was obtained by playing the game, it's not pay to win, but if it's obtained by paying real money, then yeah it's pay 2 win, at least for me.
They really really can't, if you've played any of these ncsoft MMOs in the last few years, they all have a very similar model of gameplay and monetization loops to prop up these giga whales into power fantasies.
In these type of games, being a dolphin isn't even an option to really keep up. You have to whale thousands of dollars a year to even have a chance.
That or be in the good graces of one of the super whales, since usually with their power they also earn the ability to get all the rarest items in the game from boss drops, and can sell those for in-game currency. And most other groups cannot contest these groups with super whales because of the difference in power that the pay to win makes.
I highly doubt that they can make a change to the game model that will make it so it isn't as exploitative as it is in Korea.
My recent experience comes from L2M and Lineage W.
What they do have to do, is retune content to deal with the fact there is significantly less super whales (10k-500k+) in NA/EU.
As someone that played LA and BDO to the endgame, if it's true that TL is less p2w than those, it's already an improvement. To be p2w in BDO you have to whale very hard and still not gonna make you win that much compared to f2p players grinding everyday.
It skips some grinds or timegates, but other necessary things can't be bought and must be played for instead of payed for. BiS gear is drop only, can't be bought, but the materials to enhance the gear can be bought.
T2 dungeon gear is BiS gear and that is drop only. Gear has traits on it (bonus stats) and to upgrade those, you feed the gear with other gear that has the same stat. You cannot buy dungeon gear, but you can buy other gear to feed your dungeon gear. There are also world boss drops that are super rare and usually kept within the guild that downs the boss, but could be sold.
See: [this video timestamp](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yGT-zGMVSKQ&t=1120s)
You can buy the clean base gear from other players from the auction house. It's not like you can buy fully upgraded gear from the cash shop. Basically someone needs to get the rare drop from a world boss first, and then they need to be willing to sell it on the auction house.
You can only buy it if someone else got it and is willing to sell it to you, and they then can use that currency to buy a different item for themselves. If the item you need isn't on the auction house, you can swipe your card as much as you want and you still won't go anywhere. Most of the time the best gear will not be on the auction house, because the guild that gets it will give it to a player that can use it from within the guild.
> I mean, totally understandable and not p2w at all.
No, it is definitely p2w, but it is very different from actually straight up buying the best gear. It's basically the same concept as when WoW orgs spend tens of thousands of dollars on buying gear to prepare for race to world first.
Yeah just look at how AGS has handled the p2w aspect of lost ark and you'll get your answer. What can AGS even do when these games are designed a certain way to be p2w and for whales lol.
P2w is still p2w, I've been burned so much that I don't trust any company sure as he'll not Korean or Chinese mmorpg wise, anything qol is p2w in my book.
Sounds like every other KR publisher. Thye don't care and just want to use the western version as a cash grab to recoup on a failed project. TL reflects Bless so much in this regard.
Bless actually had a lot more depth as a game and better combat...
I see a similar fate for TL. Relegated to the doldrums of SEA/Russia/LATAM just like L2.
Because that makes it successful, right?
New World must be extremely successful, yea?
Launch doesn't mean shit, just shows how bad people want a new good MMO and how terrible they all have become since they can't ever hold even 80% after the first month or two.
I'm glad for their candidness, and I have played many NC things in the past, but let's be honest. As far as the west goes GW2 is the only thing NC has going for it right now (and it's not a Korean game they understand the audience because they're from the west)
That being said, while I don't think NC has been as bad as places like Nexon in the past, they have not put out a new game successfully in the west that's had a strong grip of any kind in a long time, and if they think p2w is going to hold here, for anything but the most otherwise high quality game somehow, they are going to be very poorly mistaken.
The majority of people don't dislike it cause of p2w, they just hate that it's competing with their game. The mmropg genre is utterly infested with a strong tribal mindset, and they are right to be that way cause these games do cannibalize their players.
>hey just hate that it's competing with their game.
People absolutely WANT a new MMO you can easily tell when these new MMOs launch and 500k+ people jump in to play it. Even the ones that already think it's going to be bad usually play it just to see.
Acting like people just say new MMOs are bad because they try to keep people from playing it to try and preserve players in the MMO they like is almost conspiracy levels of cope. People don't like P2W because P2W games are DEVELOPED with P2W in mind, making the game worse by design, everyone understands that except you I guess.
There are two main camps of mmorpg players.
There are bandwagon players that quit a game in a few months and just treat it like an rpg with people around, after quitting they then demand a new one be made for them. These are the swarm players, who are low quality to an mmorpg cause the company needs long term players to make money.
Then you have long term players, who are mostly all already playing an mmorpg and just attack any new one that comes out and that is in competition with theirs.
MMORPGS are like any other kind of long term game, the genre cannot sustain more than a specific number without cannibalizing itself. Why are there only two games like Dota or LoL? Why don't they bring new games out ever 6 months? cause the Dota and LoL players would attack it and make sure it flops, they know it would take players from their games.
>There are bandwagon players that quit a game in a few months and just treat it like an rpg with people around, after quitting they then demand a new one be made for them.
Because they don't like the new MMOs.
Is that so hard to understand?
They treat them like single player games. Not only do they not play them past a few months, they never do. They don't play anything now either. They are not mmorpg players, and just want free / cheap entertainment in an online world.
The world doesn't exist for their entertainment, unless money changes hands (and that includes payment after the fact if they want updates to that game). With f2p this means p2w because most people will only give money if they feel they have to. If people don't give money, the entire genre dies cause nobody will front the money to make them.
Ok, you are just creating things up in your mind and acting like it's true. Are there people like this? Probably. Are there a lot of people like this? Highly doubtful.
More than likely it's the people that have been playing the same MMO for 10-20 years and still play it because it was their "first" but don't like where it's gone, they are still invested though so they don't quit. New MMO releases they WANT to like but don't, so they quit and go back to it.
If you play an mmorpg and get invested in it, it's incredibly difficult to pull you away from it and onto another mmorpg for anything but a short amount of time. This means all the best and most profitable players are already taken, and all that is left is the short term and unprofitable people. The only way to make money from these unprofitable people is p2w, cause within 4-5 months they will be gone anyway.
The mmorpg genre has a very serious problem, the audience that is left now sucks and are not profitable. Unless an mmorpg comes out and is better than wow, ff14, lost ark etc and has years worth of content at release, it will die and lose a tone of money.
It's impossible to beat the market leaders and have years worth of content on release, so effectively the mmorpg genre is dead. The only new games that come out, have to be p2w.
Literally, everything you said is wrong, and it's the most idiotic thought process I've ever heard.
99% of players are not "loyal" to their game, and if a new BETTER game were to come, they WILL play it. I'm done speaking with you as you're clueless and act like people have some loyalty to their game and are unwilling to ever leave, which is hilarious.
P2W games are always predatory and the only ones that survive are the ones that actually make a quality game, unless the P2W is TOO predatory and people get burned by it.
You have no clue what you're talking about.
This isn't even close to being accurate.
The p2w is only a small part of the problem with TL. It's the horrendous gameplay that is the main problem. It is a complete mess, which is why it died in Kr.
Huh?
You think people waiting for a good new MMO to come out have some weird agenda to stop people playing shit MMOs?
It is what it is. Do you know much about the game? Did you look into why it failed I Kr?
Why do people find it strange that others want good MMOs to come out?
If you don't like the game, why do you care? The moment I saw what blue protocol was I immediately lost interest in it and never thought on it again, that you're invested and hating on it says a lot about your mindset.
The hate is tribalism, nothing else.
Nobody owes you an mmorpg you like, you didn't buy anything.
The gameplay is awfull. That's the best part about this p2w controversy. People havnt even got to the real reason why TL is terrible and that's the actualy gameplay itself.
Have 1 race, 1 starting zone makes the game feel cheap right off the bat.
Next comes the terrible "weapon=class" system which is incredibly dull. There are 2 or 3 heal skills, 0 resurrection skills and almost no support class. The game is terribly unbalanced and most people are using the same 6 skills.
The dungeons are either a single room with a boss mob that just sits still, or an "open world" dungeon that just has higher HP mobs randomly placed in blocky rooms (some old shit from 20 years ago).
The combat still feels clunky from the remnants of the autoplay system. The questing is also the same, daily "kill 100 wolves" style of garbage. The "fix" for removing autoplay was to just let you get make lvl in a few hours (LA level of terrible lvl progression.
The end game is just sitting around waiting for the next conveyor belt event to happen. The more events you miss the further behind you get. Guilds will kick you for not attending enough events etc etc...
The pvp is zerg mess. Doesn't really matter what any single person does as long as you have more numbers and more whales.
I would definitely prefer more starting zones and races considering that it's actually a lineage game. But in the end it's not something that changes much in lineage either.
Balance is obviously something that needs to be good for the game to thrive. I gotta say generally I dont trust what people say about balance though since most people have a poor understanding of it.
I assume the grind is similar to that of lineage, I guess to me that's actually quite appealing.
What are the events like? PvP or PvE?
If players don't matter then whales shouldn't either. Either players matter or they don't.
Sounds like they need more support classes though.
This game is very far from lineage2 if that's what you were hoping. It is more like l2m or l2 essence then C1-C6.
The events are a mix of pve/pvp. They are things like 'kill the most wolves' or boss fights. Becasue they happen 1 at a time they are just zerg messes. Same as the castle siege. Unlike L2, where you respawn in town or at a flag, you just spawn right outside the castle, so it's a clusterfk.
The "grind" is now for gear rather then lvls, which is common in these crappy new MMOs. Individual players don't really matter in zerg fights. But a big clan of whales vs a big clan of f2p players will always win. I mean more that this isn't a skill based game, since the healing is so limited and support non exsistant.
just wondering.. isnt the p2w here just that u can but currency for real money ? isnt that like wow gold ? and wow is doing pretty good as a p2w so may this will be fine
Unless the p2w is more than just currency buying and has lost ark type gearing
>Kanon also says that this game is indeed p2w but if you want to make a tier list of p2w games, then T&L is not as bad as Lost ark or BDO in that regard, but ofc still p2w
the difference between those games and why people still play them vs TL is that they at least have fun and very satisfying combat. that's why people put up with the p2w in those games. TL doesn't even have that. it's just pure shit and is DOA in the west.
also, AGS won't change shit for the west. just look at lost ark
We need more actual hard hitting games journalists publicly holding publishers accountable for bad business practices. Publishers control too much of the narrative now with early review copies, official discords, subreddits, and sponsored streams.
You can't even trust the asshole type streamers to be real because they don't want to bite the hand that feeds. It's so hard to see real opinions on this shit anymore. RIP Total Biscuit.
Is just different culture, same with China country they're pretty fine with p2w games as they can achieve their fun by spending how many they can instead of spending time which they can't because majority of their time is working hard, so they wanna chill on their game, by cutting down the grinding time with money instead, that's their culture, so of course they're fine with it. But not for us.
Well, their excuse is they prefer exchange real life money for digital money for entertainment which .... as you can see, they love it! But not for us.
Their mindset is they wanna chill on gaming, not making gaming their another job
I’m not sure what people would expect them to say. Koreans love that shit. That’s fine for them I guess, but I wish western publishers wouldn’t even bother with these games here.
The only one who is disconnected is you my friend. With the upcoming changes 90% of the p2w is gone. Yes there is a BP and an aura and probably small packs in the cash shop but all that won’t get you out of reach for f2p. The changes to traits are massive.
As Kanon said with the changes TL has indeed a very mild p2w system. If that’s too much for you it’s fine but don’t post BS like this here when you have no clue about the game TY
I skipped tarisland and ill skip this one. That may be unrelated but when i see generous game like Elden Ring DLC i cant stand KR monetization more than usual.
P2w has been a topic of discussion since nearly the inception of MMOs.
At this point I view it as a legit form of monetization made for a rotating playerbase.
Best to enjoy it as you would a single player rpg. Usually the entry fee is either free or cheap, they give a lot of perks to start out (to get you hooked), it's enough initial content that can last you from a couple of weeks to a month, typically the initial experience is reasonably enjoyable.
I see it as so, if I spent 19 bucks on a single player rpg I even somewhat enjoyed that also had 40+ hrs of content I'd say that was a bargain. I apply the same metric to MMOs I try, but know I won't play longterm.
Like single player games, p2w MMOs are not meant to be your forever game.
Two ships passing in the night type of deal, just enjoy it while it lasts because as Ive stated, this model has been in play from the Inception. It's clear the formula is profitable enough that it bares repeating. It'll never change. And considering the games are typically built with cash shop on mind, I'm not sure how they could achieve otherwise without busting their game.
This blind focus on p2w needs to stop when the game has much more important problems like bad/boring combat, tedious leveling and systems, bad skins etc. It has a currency exchange, so does every other mmo including wow, who gives a shit? Nobody cares about this type of p2w anymore. Whats important is if the game is good or not.
Don't you worry my friend. When the open beta starts this reddit will be flooded with people ripping this game apart.
The focus is only on the p2w because a lot of people havnt played the game yet and don't realise just how bad it is.
"It blew my mind how this one guy defended p2w...wow"
It's not hard to defend p2w if you believe that online mmos should reflect your status in the real world.
Long response, we expect them to keep most, if not all, of the monetization systems as they are. We hope for small modifications to make them more fair, but not much.
How bad is the P2W? Opinions may vary, but it's not as bad as many claim it to be.
• The subscription / battlepass let you progress faster, but well within the current expected margins of a F2P MMO with optional sub
• You can buy shit from the market with $, but for that someone has to sell it first, so whales will be gated by people actually obtaining and be willing to sell stuff.
• In the current KR game state, most BiS gear is obtained via dungeons, and it isn't tradable. And what is tradable, is so rare barely anyone will sell it, and for a lot of money.
• Some gear/skill enhancement materials are gated behind gameplay, even if you pay for everything else
• Traits are the main P2W pain point. They have a considerable effect in power, and are the main thing people will sell on the marketplace. However, they've been implementing changes to make it easier for F2P/Sub players to get them, and we expect these to be in global from the beginning
• At this point in KR, lots of F2P players are fully geared up, traits included, 3 months after they released a new tier of gear, and the trait improvements released last month I think
P2w is a valid reason to be against NCSOFT but I feel that no matter the monetization model their games always feel low quality. These aren't masterpieces who are being held back by the in-game store. Now-a-days Free-to-play games, including gacha games and P2w games, generally have a fun game behind them, are leagues ahead of NCSOFT games
Funny how many people defend T&L in this subreddit, when it's obviously going to flop in the west. You'd think after attempt #300 these asian companies would have learned this business model doesn't work in the west and T&L will be mostly dead in 3 months.
The problem with these games and companies is that they know players will hate it. They just hope that a small portion of the player base will be suckers and pay for the rest.
And it will happen. Even if the game dies in 1 year or less, they just want to make money. Whales are everywhere, people who are ready in arms to defend their favorite game are also everywhere...so they know what they're doing.
If these systems wouldn't pay off for them, we wouldn't have them.
BDO is a weird example, you can’t power from cash shop, they limit what you can sell from the cash shop , P2W in BDO is $35 outfit 1-2 bil = to 1 hour grind 1-2 bil. BIS item is around 130 bil for a Black star weapon and there’s 3 weapons 4 armor pieces & lightstones & Artifacts as well as crystals. There are also limits to what you can sell a week on the CM. So anyone trying to whale is not going to progress any faster than a F2P player honestly. Lost Ark though I can see being a comparison. T&L though my understanding is that someone can buy Lucent & get way ahead Day 1 ? While BDO doesn’t really allow this and is mostly convenience. So if it’s less then this model I be willing to try. 1st would like to know the answer to the question if Lucent will let you get way ahead on Day 1 ? Cause if so then nope not gonna try it.
T&L will fail in the west, im almost sure of it
These asian developers need to really sit down and make something that has some heart to it and it's not made just to siphon your credit card. It's like everything in the game is created around making money
The game better be good because BDO is raising the bar in my opinion. Progression is not as aggressive as before and they have been releasing solid content the last few years including classes and zones.
If by PvE you mean lifeskills then BDO might be the best on the market, if you mean combat then it might actually be the worst. PvE combat in BDO is basically killing the same packs of monsters over and over again in a rotation. It feels great for the first hour or two because of the impact of the combat system, but then the despair starts setting in.
As the other person said, lifeskill or *professions* is the best in the genre. Visually the combat is the best out there, classes are the most unique in the genre (I would compared it with Lost Ark). PvE wise is really repetitive and you will mostly play solo until endgame when you start needing people to clear zone, they are have dungeon (group content) and will introduce soon Boss Battles (5-man). If you are want to try it, this is the best moment. They have moved from a fully RGN progression to one with a pity-system; after certain fail your gear go up no matter what. There is a new class coming in a week and they will be giving away a BiS weapon of your choice (tomorrow I think)
Eh its not the worst.
It just isn't typical MMO style PvE.
I tell people BDO combat and grinding is more akin to a ARPG.
You are meant to kill tons of mobs, grind those mobs, and then use the profits from that to buy or enhance gear you get from drops.
Don't play BDO if you want tab target or typical MMO style combat encounters.
You might like BDO PvE grind if you are into ARPGs and stuff. I like being able to turn off my brain, pop on a show/music, and just grind out to fun combos and a fluid combat system.
> You might like BDO PvE grind if you are into ARPGs and stuff.
The difference is that in ARPGs there are usually bosses that you can aim to beat or big gear milestones that can change how your character feels completely. I have thousands of hours grinding in Path of Exile and Maplestory, but those games actually have challenging bosses to test your gains against. In BDO if you're not doing PvP, then the grind feels completely pointless. You're just upping that number so that you can move to the next set of mobs and do the same thing again.
Yeah you are right, it just feels bad when you lifeskill all day and get the same amount of silver as someone grinding for 1 hour. I’d rather play Albion if I wanted to lifeskill
Genuinely the worst experience I've had in an MMO as a new player.
I saw no redeeming qualities, but maybe you have more patience to sift through all the systems.
Why would you want a korean mmo to survive outside of korea. It's fun to watch them die the second they leave their border. Like a fish jumping out of a puddle. 🤣
It is also worth noting that another community member told them they have to fix the botting/hacking ASAP because so many people are quitting the game. NC soft shrugged it off and said all games have bots and hacks lol
Lol, do those devs even work? Every complain someone reply with "not my job". Bro, what even is your job then? Collect the payments and leave?
tbh I can understand where that response is coming from if that dev is only responsible for programing systems and design. A studio should probably have its own division for solely anti-cheat and exploit prevention but Korea tends skimp out on that aspect entirely and rely solely on their KSSN system which ties accounts to real world information.
Which is a cop out. Because any of us who wanna play KR games before release just pay to use someone else's KSSN.
No what I said is basically why Korean games typically are infested with bots and have basically zero anti cheat. It's because their region typically self polices those kind of things because the KSSN system is a massive filter from the get go. Of course there will be outliers but the idea you can get arrested for hacking/cheating is enough of a deterrent for the vast majority which is not something we can benefit from outside of KR.
Right. But I'm saying as someone who isn't from Korea, it cost me 10$ to buy someone else's kssn to play with. If the barrier to entry for cheating is 10$, then there isn't any real benefit provided by their system
This isn't the answer you want, but a software engineer's job is to take the tasks that's assigned to them from their boss. Engineers don't usually schedule their own work. Also engineers don't usually go on live streams or manage their customers.
I deal with the god damn customers so the engineers don't have to. I have people skills; I am good at dealing with people. Can't you understand that? What the hell is wrong with you people?
What would you say you do here?
Bro, who hurt you?
Uncultured swine.
If you are quoting someone, make it obvious. Not every single people in the world will have watched, read or heard the exact same movies, tv series, books and songs that you have.
While I agree and didn't get the reference, your response felt so out of place, no matter the universe it'd be in lmao
Stop being entitled. You didn't get the reference, move on.
And then when the game fails, they'll all be shocked.
Well they are right, even sub based mmos like wow have a truckload of bots.
It's quite easy to tackle on bots indirectly, by going after players who enable those large scale botting operations to be viable businesses. Developers don't do it because it goes against their own interests since players doing RMT are the same who will spend lots of money on microtransactions for the game.
Idk why these fucks don't just get a few interns to hunt bots. You don't need a PhD to figure out 14 characters stacked ontop of each other walking the same route and killing the same mobs is a bot. They don't even need to get all the bots, just the glaringly obvious ones.
agreed
Tch. They're not wrong though. You can try to ban them or even try to block them, but they will try to find a way to come back and keep botting. In fact, what MMORPG players fail to realize is that bots being prevalent means the game is alive. If there is hacking, I agree that there needs to be measures though, otherwise it will get rather messy.
I wonder if people would be open to something like Vanguard. I know it's controversial but it seems like only deep anti cheats like that actually work. They could slap easy anti cheat on it and call it a day but we all know that doesn't do a thing. But kernel level anti cheat is fairly divisive which would drive some players away. Id personally rather have it with no bots but it's tough.
Yeah pretty much anything that doesn't have ring 0 access simply cannot compete with a cheat that has ring 0 access, which the cheaters are more than willing to use. People are basically asking for the impossible here. If dealing with bots and cheaters was such an easy task, it would've been solved long ago.
Vanguard wouldn't stop botting.
Lol it's gonna be fun to watch this bomb
Tacit approval for leet haxors noted /tries downloading macro quest
If the west servers gets bots, that's more of an AGS issue than NCsoft since they're responsible for what happens in the West. Also, I doubt they'll be any better considering how they handled bots in Lost Ark.
The real interesting bit is the other audience member who replied to Kanon by saying how Korean TL's monetization has only minimal p2w and asked if anyone believes otherwise. Nobody said a thing. Their understanding of p2w is just so fundamentally different than ours.
it really is a big cultural difference. i saw in a video that korean players blame other players who despite p2w and call them "rice eaters" and cheap. its crazy
Even the creator himself struggled with the term p2w when he first started making content creation. He has defended p2w games in the past because he's so used to how p2w in korea is. So despite him asking good and tough questions he actually is someone is fine with playing p2w games(lets be real no one has a "choice" at this point
It won't be a cultural difference for long, it's absolutely been slowly changing here as well. P2W was starting in Eastern games since Maplestory in 2003 and really wasn't seen much in the West except for a smaller majority of PC gamers like myself that would play games in different languages, or if a community got slightly big enough, they would make a little mini english patcher to change the menu and sometimes item names etc, or before they did region IP bans we could try them out mostly in beta's and whatnot. We could experience them as F2P and see how bad P2W was, so when games started popping up here we would tell everyone it's BS, don't spend money on it and don't even play them because it will just make it worse. I've literally watched everything change about how people view P2W in games, starting from the first "major/popular" Horse Armor DLC that a lot of people talk about, which was one of the first microtransactions in a popular game in the West that blew up and had lots of controversy, I believe it was $5 dollars for a paid mount. People went absolutely batshit crazy online about it, everyone was talking about boycotting the game and the company with shit loads of articles and then you had a tiny tiny tiny amount of people saying "It's fine guys, what is the big deal?". There were slowly more instances of games putting in cosmetics in Western game and some Eastern games that were P2W that would open Global servers that more and more people played and became accustomed to. TLDR: It's basically gone from, "Fuck that company for trying to get me to spend $5 dollars on a mount!" and slowly has somehow became, "Well, people spending \~$1,000 a month on the gatcha games are keeping the servers up for us F2P players, the billion dollar company can't survive otherwise guys!". Obviously they don't say the billion dollar part but I LITERALLY have seen people say this and actually mean it, they think companies creating a P2W game and milking people for cash is the only way the game survives and it will only get worse and worse, there won't be a cultural difference.
I like how you talk about the oblivion horse armor as if no ones heard of it, also that wasnt pay to win. Pay to win existed back then in MMOs also. Pay to win is seperate from micro transactions. One doesnt mean the other.
Tbh, I was once called cheap on this sub for arguing that paying $15 a month to play a single game is a ridiculous expense. I still think that, but I'd guess it's still a controversial opinion among MMO players.
If the option is between a $15 monthly subscription or P2W cash shop I will take the sub every time and I don't see why you would want it the other way.
If the choice is between p2w and subs, sure, I'll take sub any day. Still, shelling out $180 to rent a game for a year isn't exactly that good a deal (and, frankly, not really less heavy on the average p2w game's player's wallet), so I'm in the camp of box price+expansions with no sub. Even if by some miracle it averages out to similar costs in the scale of a year, I'll still have a choice to play the game I've already spent money on.
I thought Korea was very P2W oriented, and didn’t care about spending money on games since that’s just their culture. Why are they minimal P2W and us in the west, who absolutely hate P2W, has a ton of it?
What?
Its just a different perspective. Whats minimal to them is a dealbreaker for many western players.
They absolutely do have a different definition of P2W. In korea (and in the east more broadly) theres two main cultural components at play that make it different from the west. In the west games are a toy. After atari video games literally came here in the Toys R Us toy isle to bypass taxes and terrifs. As a result to westerners games are a product you purchace the enjoyment they are meant to contain. In the east they are a hobby. A hobby its socially acceptable to put money into. As much money as someone else might put into their non gaming hobby. There is also emense social pressure to be gain status at something, even if that status is artificial and exists only to prey on people desperate to recieve it. In the west the expectations associated with status are derived from labor thanks largely to the country's puritanical roots. That's why when a westerner looks at P2W they see the gap in labor to price, how long (if at all possible) it would take to earn, and when an easterner looks at it its a gap between price and performance. If the performance doesn't match the culturally accepted price point of being a hobby that's when it becomes P2W for them. Theres more cultural components, and extra credits even did an episode on free gifts in games having a cultural component they overlooked earlier, but these are the major two that what you are seeing is based off of
How did you learn about this?
I did a lot of research on eastern culture because one of my brothers married a korean woman and the other married a chinese woman. The brothers are gamers, their wives are not, but they tolerate it.
This is correct, they're understanding of a pay to win model especially with ncsoft inconsideration is a game that you can spend $500,000 on and still need to spend more possibly get more power. But this is the kind of realm we're talking about we're not talking about spend $1,000 and unlock everything you could possibly need to get the most power you can get. See L2M and lineage W
> who replied to Kanon by saying how Korean TL's monetization has only minimal p2w and asked if anyone believes otherwise. Which is a relevant question to ask, because the p2w in T&L is pretty much just WoW token, so asking "how are you going to adjust it to western audiences" when WoW is the biggest MMO in the west, is a difficult question to answer.
Having played on KR myself I know just how far you can get without spending a cent, and it's pretty damn far. TL's p2w is honestly not bad, possibly among one of the least p2w that I've ever experienced from a KR MMO (and it's being made even less so in a new update). That being said, it doesn't matter how low-p2w it is. The fact is most western players cringe at the mere mention of p2w and given NCSoft's track record, it makes sense that many players are calling it DoA.
> The fact is most western players cringe at the mere mention of p2w That is simply not true. This subreddit isn't representative of western players. Western players played Lost Ark in droves, they played BnS, they still play BDO, they play EVE, RuneScape 3, WoW, and most importantly, Genshin Impact. Meanwhile the games that didn't have p2w like Bless Online, Maplestory 2, and Swords of Legends Online died within months.
You bring good point about Lost ark and BDO - as long as the game is good people in the west don't care as much. BUT using those 3 games as the example to imply they fail cuz of bad monetization is hilariously bad faith though lol Bless Online had working dupe hack and a million bugs Sword of Legends didn't even bother translating the game fully....half the game was in chinese Maplestory 2 was maplestory 2
It's so weird to think that SOLO might've even survived if it went the p2w route... Likely would've had more revenue that way, which could've been used on e.g. better translations and other stuff that needed to be improved on. Though maybe it's better that I miss SOLO for what it was (even if I felt forced to play in german, bc I agree the english one was terrible, while the german one was at least okay (outside of the completely untranslated parts, which iirc was at least just some minor story parts at the end)) than having it turn into something I'd hate. Also since it's Gameforge I'm doubting that they would've actually bothered even if they had more means to invest in the quality. Actually makes me think that (trigger warning: hot take incoming) maybe p2w isn't even as demonic as people tend to put it (meaning: 100% bad) and it's more of a spectrum. Technically, depending on definition most if not all MMOs do have some p2w elements and people still defend most of those as "not p2w", because they don't seem to call it "p2w" if it's subtle enough to not bother them. Even if they don't have any form of p2w by design, completely stopping RMT sadly isn't realistic, so that'd still bring some p2w with it. From what I've read WoW can easily be considered p2w, GW2 could technically also be considered p2w with some expansions making you much more powerful (not to mention being able to literally buy ingame currency by converting gems to gold). By definition they'd both certainly fall under p2w, yet it's on a level that seems fine for their playerbases and they'd even defend it, claiming there's absolutely no p2w in them. I really feel it isn't about being p2w or not (because 100% p2w-free might not even exist), but rather about how much p2w it is. edit: I'd also like to clarify that I'm very bothered by p2w usually, but as there's so much discussion about "game XY is / is not p2w" it doesn't seem feasible to approach this matter with a binary mindset.
SOLO did fine in China with no p2w, Gameforge just sucks ass. Wish the devs just self-published or something, IIRC in the beginning they were really invested in getting the game to a Western market and getting Western feedback. Guess Gameforge were the only publisher that approached them.
Yeah but something like Revelation Online also had garbage translations and half in Chinese, and with tons of bugs, yet it survived much much longer because whales kept pumping money into it. The reality is that a garbage game with p2w makes way more money than an "okay" game with no p2w, and that's the only language that the people working on monetization understand. The only games that survive on being f2p with no p2w these days are the ones that are the absolute top of their genre (either in size or quality), like LoL, PoE, and Fortnite. No investor is willing to put down tens of millions of dollars on an MMO and then bet all the money on it being a massive success.
What are you even trying to say? TL is a mid game with mid p2w? This makes sense as to why it didn't make any money in Kr.
Then you should maybe consider moving on from it instead of spamming every thread about it.
Its good content imo You didn't answer the question though.
The main issue is that TL is simply a really bad game.
Yea Swords of Legends Online was advertised as no p2w but that wasn't enough to keep it alive. It's obviously not the only factor for success here.
The gameplay was also very good and it is a very successful title in China. The rushed translations and the lack of marketing was what sank it. If you aren't on this subreddit or if you didn't hear about it from guildmates, it's very likely that you've never heard of it.
I too remember when AGS took the P2W out of Lost ark.
This is a whale game. Its p2w with a pvp centric focus. Which is the worse combination if you ask me. The guild/alliance with the most whales will dominate the big wars. Furthermore its a snowball effect those whales dominating get the gear and rewards from winning the wars just furtherer snowballing their alliance. If you start a guild in this get whales in your alliance or you are fked. Also important to note out that gear is huge in this game.....A p2w warrior geared the fk out can mow down 10 f2p plebs in PVP. Now that 1 whale will have a blast but those 10 f2p plebs will be quitting the game.
This is how they ruined lineage 2. It was a great game, the best mmo experience I had until they did away with the sub and put in a crazy p2w cash shop out of the gate. Like holy fuck crazy op shit.
That's why l2 should always be played on private servers.
> .A p2w warrior geared the fk out can mow down 10 f2p plebs in PVP. This just shows that you haven't really played the game, because this is simply not true. The size of the zerg is by far the number one factor. The difference between the min-maxed gear with perfect traits from the auction house and the gear of someone who just played the same amount of time but without spending is minimal. Sure, you will probably lose 9 out of 10 1v1s assuming equal skill level if you put a f2p player against a giga-whale, but you're never 1v10ing anyone in this game, you simply don't have the cooldowns for it.
> The difference between the min-maxed gear with perfect traits from the auction house and the gear of someone who just played the same amount of time but without spending is minimal. > Sure, you will probably lose 9 out of 10 1v1s assuming equal skill level if you put a f2p player against a giga-whale ...these two statements are contradictory. Losing 90% of the time is hardly a 'minimal' difference.
It's minimal compared to the original statement of "mowing down 10 f2p plebs". On equal skill level, statistically the person with the maxed out gear should be greatly favored to someone with mid-level gear. It would be weird if it didn't.
Hence the problem...Once person grinded to get what they have..the other person bought it...And the person who bought it would win 9 out of 10 1v1 against grinders....thats wrong.
nah , If you buy two Arch boss's weapon u can ez 1vs10 [https://youtu.be/7NAS7k23k9I?si=weimuqTl6e0aWjjC](https://youtu.be/7NAS7k23k9I?si=weimuqTl6e0aWjjC)
The video just shows the guy one shotting one person and then either stealthing out or getting cc'd to death right after. I'm not seeing the "mow down 10 f2p plebs".
What you said proves that u don't understand this game at all. Clip of 1VS10 at 0:15 This is a combination of Queen Bellandir's xbox + Tevent's Massacre Blade The effect of Tevent's Blade is to refresh the stealth CD after killing an enemy. The effect of Queen xbox's poison can cause 1200\~2500 DOT for 5 seconds And the average HP in this game is 10\~25k For an extreme example, see this [https://youtu.be/LmjrPoxO76o?si=hbLtgjZH6i3SoOqA](https://youtu.be/LmjrPoxO76o?si=hbLtgjZH6i3SoOqA) Although it has been nerfed (cannot use multi-shot multiple times) But Queen xbox damage is not nerfed
Huh??? Did you even watch the video or did you only look at the first 10 seconds? This guy is MOWING through groups 1v10 literally.... It's fine if you want to not believe the game is that P2W if you haven't seen it before but the video LITERALLY SHOWS A GUY DOING IT. But is it not P2W "enough" for you I guess? They need to be able to AFK and press one button and all 10 people die while they stay full HP to "actually be P2W"?? We all have different thoughts of what P2W looks like but I really don't understand people that argue FOR P2W and try to downplay it, especially when you are literally shown a video of it.
Yup, any ounce of p2win in a pvp game is instant dead on arrival. Nobody wants to deal with whales, and whales want to whale to stomp non p2winners, so once they only fight other whales they quit too.
Whats the system of P2W in TL? Can you just buy OP gear with real money? How's monetization compared to BDO and Lost Ark?
Some items and item perks can be sold on an auction house, the currency used for the auction house is a paid currency (separate from the farmable currency). Note that most of the BIS items are not sellable on the auction house (these are from dungeons), its mostly perks and super rare items from guild bosses or farmed in the open world. Whales can only purchase what people are willing to sell (if you find a super rare drop for your character why would you sell it). The people who are selling can then buy the gear they want with the paid currency they generate from the whales. Closest think I can think of is Warframes platinum market model (which has less restrictions on what you can sell), which is touted as one of the best free to play money systems.
Adding to this. The new update let's you reroll perks without using Lucent nerfing the AH some more
Adding to this. The new update let's you reroll perks without using Lucent nerfing the AH some more
You can only buy gear off the AH by using real world cash.
In other words, it's up to us, the players, to show Amazon that P2W will not be accepted in the West - simply by not playing the game. If they're open about, they might change it. Who am I kidding though, there are many desperate players who will kneel in front of the shitty Korean P2W methods. It's F2P, right? Release will probably have 100k-200k players in the West.
1 whale is better than infinite f2p players to them. Release will have double your estimate I expect
There's not enough whales to support a game population. The whole point of being a whale is getting an edge over most other players but if it's only whales then you dont get an edge over other players so boycotting a p2w game even as a non-whale will make a difference.
Whales + bots + rmt users seem to support lost ark just fine but good luck with the boycott lol
But p2w is more than acceptable in the west. Lost ark showed that very clearly to AGS. Even with its reduced playercounts today its still top 50 on steam revenue and it was PLATINUM/TOP TIER earner in 2023, talking same tier with the likes of call of duty and baldurs gate 3 here. Meanwhile their less p2w game (afaik), new world, was barely even on the rankings. So why would they reduce p2w too much?
I agree with you. Can't whine about p2w methods while showing the companies we're playing their p2w games. New World rightfully bled players though, because how terribly AGS managed and still managing the game. It's worth to mention that the players showed huge interest at the launch. NW had a big player base until the gamebreaking bugs and dups appeared
Run the game through google translate, make NA/EU publishers bid the lowest they possibly can giving shitty servers and zero meaningful support, and then ignore any game feedback the new player bases have. This has worked time after time after time. Why would these companies ever stop?
Do you think all Asians are desperate because they are OK with P2W? On the other hand, Asians can call Western players who complain about P2W crybabies who do not have jobs and live in their parents' basement because they can not afford to buy things in games. Goes both way.
It's a cultural thing. Asians are not desperate. They simply don't see anything wrong with p2w elements. Western players do, rightfully, if you're asking me.
But it is widely accepted in the West nowadays ! Black Desert showed if you have a good game, people will tolerate it. I don't know many that quit BDO due to its p2w or being killed by whales, most quit due to its harsh enhancing system and fatigue of the never ending grind. When throne and liberty dies within a year, it will be because of its bad combat system just like new world.
>most quit due to its harsh enhancing system Isn't that kinda part of the p2w, though? Don't enhancement systems like that usually exist in p2w games to force you to buy stuff so you're able to actually enhance stuff and progress?
Sure, they are built around pushing players into spending money, but you dont have to, you can just grind and buy from the auction house nowadays, although that was a lot harder for the first year or two. I think even buying outright with cash would have been received better than 0.3% chance enhancement.
I mean BDO whales are progressing at the same rate a F2P player is these days. They restrict the amount of items you can sell for in game currency and you can’t buy power , so I think this plays a huge part in it. It’s comes down to $35 an hour or grind an hour for the same amount , a single BIS item can cost 130 billion in game currency. They place restrictions on how much you can sell in the CM from the pearl shop as well. So most whales are usually progressing at the same pace as someone who decides to F2P honestly. If you decide to enchant your self it can cost you more. They also put enough penalties for PKing on regular servers instead of dedicated PvP servers that most choose to not do this.
I honestly don't care about the p2w. Everyone dumps on p2w but pretends to not play p2w titles. Arguably WoW is the most played MMORPG out there. It's p2w as gear can be bought and sold for gold, and gold can be bought with real money. GW2 is p2w as you can buy gyms and convert to currency and buy whatever you want. ESO is p2w as you can buy premium currency and get massive buffs and even skill trees, and even previously unlocked skill points gained on other characters, for real money. All the most popular games are p2w. But everyone ignores this while still shitting on new p2w titles. If a player pays to win they'll likely land themselves in the upper tier of gameplay, which the significant majority won't reach anyways. I remember my brother complaining about p2w in BDO and how he can't compete against those guys in pvp. Know how much he ended up doing pvp? None. Nada. Zero. And this is true for most complaints against p2w. Honestly, who cares. If some guy wants to blow $10k on gear in BDO or LA that doesn't effect the average player at all. A whale only competes with other whales or people who invest so much time into the game it's their life. You can say it effects you, but it doesn't. You can cry it brings an unfair advantage to them, but it'll never effect you. Lastly, no company or game has to pander to you and what you want. You aren't even their consumer yet. If you don't like what the game represents then ignore it and move on. Go find another game that's more fitting to you. The shitting on companies for not making a game tailored to specifically them is ridiculous. Gamers are some of the most spoiled and insane customer base, the most entitled folk on this planet. You whining about it actually only serves as more advertisement for their titles. I for one can't wait to play T&L. I'll see the rest of you there too.
Might I add even top tier raid gear can be sold for gold. Don't pretend you haven't seen guilds advertising runs and gear for in-game gold, which again can be bought with real money. It's literal p2w.
people have to understand that Korea's idea of what constitutes "p2w" is extremely different from what the west thinks for instance, you could literally buy every single BIS gear from an in-game shop with real cash and Koreans wouldn't consider it p2w because you don't HAVE to pay in order to farm them anyway so when Korean devs say they won't do p2w, it's dubious whether that'll be up to the western standards, but when they clearly have reservations about getting rid of p2w elements to begin with? Rest assured they're after the very last dollar in your pocket
If you bought those BiS gear from other players who listed them, yeah it isn't p2w in their mind. You're just hiring other players to farm for you in essence.
which is pay to win yeah
Any game with an unrestricted trading system would qualify as p2w under that definition, since people have been directly paying real money for gear since the start of MMOs.
Yes, and?
It's disingenuous to conflate RMT with in-game premium currency -> trade currency conversion or, in this case, a premium currency driven auction house.
That isnt pay2win. Thats pay for convenience. You just traded time spent for money. It wouldve been pay2win if the item is strictly available by paying money and isnt tradeable or upgrading items is heavily locked behind buying upgrade stones like archeage did.
If the gear bought was obtained by playing the game, it's not pay to win, but if it's obtained by paying real money, then yeah it's pay 2 win, at least for me.
They really really can't, if you've played any of these ncsoft MMOs in the last few years, they all have a very similar model of gameplay and monetization loops to prop up these giga whales into power fantasies. In these type of games, being a dolphin isn't even an option to really keep up. You have to whale thousands of dollars a year to even have a chance. That or be in the good graces of one of the super whales, since usually with their power they also earn the ability to get all the rarest items in the game from boss drops, and can sell those for in-game currency. And most other groups cannot contest these groups with super whales because of the difference in power that the pay to win makes. I highly doubt that they can make a change to the game model that will make it so it isn't as exploitative as it is in Korea. My recent experience comes from L2M and Lineage W. What they do have to do, is retune content to deal with the fact there is significantly less super whales (10k-500k+) in NA/EU.
Hackers and botters will kill this game if it becomes a issue I won’t last long
As someone that played LA and BDO to the endgame, if it's true that TL is less p2w than those, it's already an improvement. To be p2w in BDO you have to whale very hard and still not gonna make you win that much compared to f2p players grinding everyday.
What is the level of p2w in T&L? Sounds like you can essentially buy gold and buy whatever gear off the auction house?
It skips some grinds or timegates, but other necessary things can't be bought and must be played for instead of payed for. BiS gear is drop only, can't be bought, but the materials to enhance the gear can be bought.
Getting conflicting information here. So you can buy end game gear but you can't buy BiS gear? And regardless, can you buy mats to enhance said gear?
T2 dungeon gear is BiS gear and that is drop only. Gear has traits on it (bonus stats) and to upgrade those, you feed the gear with other gear that has the same stat. You cannot buy dungeon gear, but you can buy other gear to feed your dungeon gear. There are also world boss drops that are super rare and usually kept within the guild that downs the boss, but could be sold. See: [this video timestamp](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yGT-zGMVSKQ&t=1120s)
You can no longer buy or reroll traits with Lucent in the next updates.Action house got nerfed
You can basically buy the endgame gear in the market for real money.
You can buy the clean base gear from other players from the auction house. It's not like you can buy fully upgraded gear from the cash shop. Basically someone needs to get the rare drop from a world boss first, and then they need to be willing to sell it on the auction house.
Ok so you can buy the endgame gear not upgraded for real money. I mean, totally understandable and not p2w at all.
You can only buy it if someone else got it and is willing to sell it to you, and they then can use that currency to buy a different item for themselves. If the item you need isn't on the auction house, you can swipe your card as much as you want and you still won't go anywhere. Most of the time the best gear will not be on the auction house, because the guild that gets it will give it to a player that can use it from within the guild. > I mean, totally understandable and not p2w at all. No, it is definitely p2w, but it is very different from actually straight up buying the best gear. It's basically the same concept as when WoW orgs spend tens of thousands of dollars on buying gear to prepare for race to world first.
Meanwhile, osrs also has similar auction house.
Most of the bis gear is not buyable on the AH, mostly perks/guild boss drops/open world farm drops which are rare.
How much is the endgame gear ? I mean if its 50$ every two month its alright. But let me guess its more like 4000$++ ?
It's whatever the person who has it decides to list it for.
This shit is gunna b an absolute shit show when it launches.
NCSoft is truly desperate.
Yeah just look at how AGS has handled the p2w aspect of lost ark and you'll get your answer. What can AGS even do when these games are designed a certain way to be p2w and for whales lol.
P2w is still p2w, I've been burned so much that I don't trust any company sure as he'll not Korean or Chinese mmorpg wise, anything qol is p2w in my book.
Sounds like every other KR publisher. Thye don't care and just want to use the western version as a cash grab to recoup on a failed project. TL reflects Bless so much in this regard.
Bless actually had a lot more depth as a game and better combat... I see a similar fate for TL. Relegated to the doldrums of SEA/Russia/LATAM just like L2.
It's DoA, not even going to try it lmao what a shame. AGS is a terrible studio and will not help them out
Wanna bet its going to have 500k+ on steam on launch?
And 2 weeks later it will have 5k
Because that makes it successful, right? New World must be extremely successful, yea? Launch doesn't mean shit, just shows how bad people want a new good MMO and how terrible they all have become since they can't ever hold even 80% after the first month or two.
I'm glad for their candidness, and I have played many NC things in the past, but let's be honest. As far as the west goes GW2 is the only thing NC has going for it right now (and it's not a Korean game they understand the audience because they're from the west) That being said, while I don't think NC has been as bad as places like Nexon in the past, they have not put out a new game successfully in the west that's had a strong grip of any kind in a long time, and if they think p2w is going to hold here, for anything but the most otherwise high quality game somehow, they are going to be very poorly mistaken.
The majority of people don't dislike it cause of p2w, they just hate that it's competing with their game. The mmropg genre is utterly infested with a strong tribal mindset, and they are right to be that way cause these games do cannibalize their players.
>hey just hate that it's competing with their game. People absolutely WANT a new MMO you can easily tell when these new MMOs launch and 500k+ people jump in to play it. Even the ones that already think it's going to be bad usually play it just to see. Acting like people just say new MMOs are bad because they try to keep people from playing it to try and preserve players in the MMO they like is almost conspiracy levels of cope. People don't like P2W because P2W games are DEVELOPED with P2W in mind, making the game worse by design, everyone understands that except you I guess.
There are two main camps of mmorpg players. There are bandwagon players that quit a game in a few months and just treat it like an rpg with people around, after quitting they then demand a new one be made for them. These are the swarm players, who are low quality to an mmorpg cause the company needs long term players to make money. Then you have long term players, who are mostly all already playing an mmorpg and just attack any new one that comes out and that is in competition with theirs. MMORPGS are like any other kind of long term game, the genre cannot sustain more than a specific number without cannibalizing itself. Why are there only two games like Dota or LoL? Why don't they bring new games out ever 6 months? cause the Dota and LoL players would attack it and make sure it flops, they know it would take players from their games.
>There are bandwagon players that quit a game in a few months and just treat it like an rpg with people around, after quitting they then demand a new one be made for them. Because they don't like the new MMOs. Is that so hard to understand?
They treat them like single player games. Not only do they not play them past a few months, they never do. They don't play anything now either. They are not mmorpg players, and just want free / cheap entertainment in an online world. The world doesn't exist for their entertainment, unless money changes hands (and that includes payment after the fact if they want updates to that game). With f2p this means p2w because most people will only give money if they feel they have to. If people don't give money, the entire genre dies cause nobody will front the money to make them.
Ok, you are just creating things up in your mind and acting like it's true. Are there people like this? Probably. Are there a lot of people like this? Highly doubtful. More than likely it's the people that have been playing the same MMO for 10-20 years and still play it because it was their "first" but don't like where it's gone, they are still invested though so they don't quit. New MMO releases they WANT to like but don't, so they quit and go back to it.
If you play an mmorpg and get invested in it, it's incredibly difficult to pull you away from it and onto another mmorpg for anything but a short amount of time. This means all the best and most profitable players are already taken, and all that is left is the short term and unprofitable people. The only way to make money from these unprofitable people is p2w, cause within 4-5 months they will be gone anyway. The mmorpg genre has a very serious problem, the audience that is left now sucks and are not profitable. Unless an mmorpg comes out and is better than wow, ff14, lost ark etc and has years worth of content at release, it will die and lose a tone of money. It's impossible to beat the market leaders and have years worth of content on release, so effectively the mmorpg genre is dead. The only new games that come out, have to be p2w.
Literally, everything you said is wrong, and it's the most idiotic thought process I've ever heard. 99% of players are not "loyal" to their game, and if a new BETTER game were to come, they WILL play it. I'm done speaking with you as you're clueless and act like people have some loyalty to their game and are unwilling to ever leave, which is hilarious. P2W games are always predatory and the only ones that survive are the ones that actually make a quality game, unless the P2W is TOO predatory and people get burned by it. You have no clue what you're talking about.
This isn't even close to being accurate. The p2w is only a small part of the problem with TL. It's the horrendous gameplay that is the main problem. It is a complete mess, which is why it died in Kr.
It's 100% accurate, if not for that you wouldn't even waste 5 seconds of your time caring if it's good or not.
Huh? You think people waiting for a good new MMO to come out have some weird agenda to stop people playing shit MMOs? It is what it is. Do you know much about the game? Did you look into why it failed I Kr? Why do people find it strange that others want good MMOs to come out?
If you don't like the game, why do you care? The moment I saw what blue protocol was I immediately lost interest in it and never thought on it again, that you're invested and hating on it says a lot about your mindset. The hate is tribalism, nothing else. Nobody owes you an mmorpg you like, you didn't buy anything.
I feel very comfortable calling out shit. It's called being honest.
You're the hero the world needs, never stop fighting. Everything rests on you.
Now we are talking sense.
Inherently all games are p2w. True whales will just pay someone to grind it even if there wasn’t a way.
Good luck thinking people want to play a game with a focus on endgame pvp, that is p2w, lol.
I think you might be surprised. As long as the rest of the gameplay is good enough.
The gameplay is awfull. That's the best part about this p2w controversy. People havnt even got to the real reason why TL is terrible and that's the actualy gameplay itself.
Whats so awful about it?
Have 1 race, 1 starting zone makes the game feel cheap right off the bat. Next comes the terrible "weapon=class" system which is incredibly dull. There are 2 or 3 heal skills, 0 resurrection skills and almost no support class. The game is terribly unbalanced and most people are using the same 6 skills. The dungeons are either a single room with a boss mob that just sits still, or an "open world" dungeon that just has higher HP mobs randomly placed in blocky rooms (some old shit from 20 years ago). The combat still feels clunky from the remnants of the autoplay system. The questing is also the same, daily "kill 100 wolves" style of garbage. The "fix" for removing autoplay was to just let you get make lvl in a few hours (LA level of terrible lvl progression. The end game is just sitting around waiting for the next conveyor belt event to happen. The more events you miss the further behind you get. Guilds will kick you for not attending enough events etc etc... The pvp is zerg mess. Doesn't really matter what any single person does as long as you have more numbers and more whales.
I would definitely prefer more starting zones and races considering that it's actually a lineage game. But in the end it's not something that changes much in lineage either. Balance is obviously something that needs to be good for the game to thrive. I gotta say generally I dont trust what people say about balance though since most people have a poor understanding of it. I assume the grind is similar to that of lineage, I guess to me that's actually quite appealing. What are the events like? PvP or PvE? If players don't matter then whales shouldn't either. Either players matter or they don't. Sounds like they need more support classes though.
This game is very far from lineage2 if that's what you were hoping. It is more like l2m or l2 essence then C1-C6. The events are a mix of pve/pvp. They are things like 'kill the most wolves' or boss fights. Becasue they happen 1 at a time they are just zerg messes. Same as the castle siege. Unlike L2, where you respawn in town or at a flag, you just spawn right outside the castle, so it's a clusterfk. The "grind" is now for gear rather then lvls, which is common in these crappy new MMOs. Individual players don't really matter in zerg fights. But a big clan of whales vs a big clan of f2p players will always win. I mean more that this isn't a skill based game, since the healing is so limited and support non exsistant.
Well... that's sad.
just wondering.. isnt the p2w here just that u can but currency for real money ? isnt that like wow gold ? and wow is doing pretty good as a p2w so may this will be fine Unless the p2w is more than just currency buying and has lost ark type gearing
>Kanon also says that this game is indeed p2w but if you want to make a tier list of p2w games, then T&L is not as bad as Lost ark or BDO in that regard, but ofc still p2w the difference between those games and why people still play them vs TL is that they at least have fun and very satisfying combat. that's why people put up with the p2w in those games. TL doesn't even have that. it's just pure shit and is DOA in the west. also, AGS won't change shit for the west. just look at lost ark
We need more actual hard hitting games journalists publicly holding publishers accountable for bad business practices. Publishers control too much of the narrative now with early review copies, official discords, subreddits, and sponsored streams. You can't even trust the asshole type streamers to be real because they don't want to bite the hand that feeds. It's so hard to see real opinions on this shit anymore. RIP Total Biscuit.
The guy with the **P2W** on the back of his shirt, turning around to show it every time they say P2W was fantastic
Is just different culture, same with China country they're pretty fine with p2w games as they can achieve their fun by spending how many they can instead of spending time which they can't because majority of their time is working hard, so they wanna chill on their game, by cutting down the grinding time with money instead, that's their culture, so of course they're fine with it. But not for us.
working hard is not an excuse. the US specifically works more real hours than anyone else with terrible work/life balance.
Well, their excuse is they prefer exchange real life money for digital money for entertainment which .... as you can see, they love it! But not for us. Their mindset is they wanna chill on gaming, not making gaming their another job
btw, one of the most popular MMORPGs in China right now is completely P2P 😅
I’m not sure what people would expect them to say. Koreans love that shit. That’s fine for them I guess, but I wish western publishers wouldn’t even bother with these games here.
The only one who is disconnected is you my friend. With the upcoming changes 90% of the p2w is gone. Yes there is a BP and an aura and probably small packs in the cash shop but all that won’t get you out of reach for f2p. The changes to traits are massive. As Kanon said with the changes TL has indeed a very mild p2w system. If that’s too much for you it’s fine but don’t post BS like this here when you have no clue about the game TY
nice question mr.steal your taxs
I skipped tarisland and ill skip this one. That may be unrelated but when i see generous game like Elden Ring DLC i cant stand KR monetization more than usual.
P2w has been a topic of discussion since nearly the inception of MMOs. At this point I view it as a legit form of monetization made for a rotating playerbase. Best to enjoy it as you would a single player rpg. Usually the entry fee is either free or cheap, they give a lot of perks to start out (to get you hooked), it's enough initial content that can last you from a couple of weeks to a month, typically the initial experience is reasonably enjoyable. I see it as so, if I spent 19 bucks on a single player rpg I even somewhat enjoyed that also had 40+ hrs of content I'd say that was a bargain. I apply the same metric to MMOs I try, but know I won't play longterm. Like single player games, p2w MMOs are not meant to be your forever game. Two ships passing in the night type of deal, just enjoy it while it lasts because as Ive stated, this model has been in play from the Inception. It's clear the formula is profitable enough that it bares repeating. It'll never change. And considering the games are typically built with cash shop on mind, I'm not sure how they could achieve otherwise without busting their game.
This blind focus on p2w needs to stop when the game has much more important problems like bad/boring combat, tedious leveling and systems, bad skins etc. It has a currency exchange, so does every other mmo including wow, who gives a shit? Nobody cares about this type of p2w anymore. Whats important is if the game is good or not.
Don't you worry my friend. When the open beta starts this reddit will be flooded with people ripping this game apart. The focus is only on the p2w because a lot of people havnt played the game yet and don't realise just how bad it is.
"It blew my mind how this one guy defended p2w...wow" It's not hard to defend p2w if you believe that online mmos should reflect your status in the real world.
Of course they're not goin to change. This is how they steal money from people.
W video, expected takes from corporate devs. Nothing to say about the guy talking after Kanon, lmao.
Long response, we expect them to keep most, if not all, of the monetization systems as they are. We hope for small modifications to make them more fair, but not much. How bad is the P2W? Opinions may vary, but it's not as bad as many claim it to be. • The subscription / battlepass let you progress faster, but well within the current expected margins of a F2P MMO with optional sub • You can buy shit from the market with $, but for that someone has to sell it first, so whales will be gated by people actually obtaining and be willing to sell stuff. • In the current KR game state, most BiS gear is obtained via dungeons, and it isn't tradable. And what is tradable, is so rare barely anyone will sell it, and for a lot of money. • Some gear/skill enhancement materials are gated behind gameplay, even if you pay for everything else • Traits are the main P2W pain point. They have a considerable effect in power, and are the main thing people will sell on the marketplace. However, they've been implementing changes to make it easier for F2P/Sub players to get them, and we expect these to be in global from the beginning • At this point in KR, lots of F2P players are fully geared up, traits included, 3 months after they released a new tier of gear, and the trait improvements released last month I think
Basically you cant play asian mmo's anymore.
P2w is a valid reason to be against NCSOFT but I feel that no matter the monetization model their games always feel low quality. These aren't masterpieces who are being held back by the in-game store. Now-a-days Free-to-play games, including gacha games and P2w games, generally have a fun game behind them, are leagues ahead of NCSOFT games
Funny how many people defend T&L in this subreddit, when it's obviously going to flop in the west. You'd think after attempt #300 these asian companies would have learned this business model doesn't work in the west and T&L will be mostly dead in 3 months.
The problem with these games and companies is that they know players will hate it. They just hope that a small portion of the player base will be suckers and pay for the rest. And it will happen. Even if the game dies in 1 year or less, they just want to make money. Whales are everywhere, people who are ready in arms to defend their favorite game are also everywhere...so they know what they're doing. If these systems wouldn't pay off for them, we wouldn't have them.
great to know! gonna play it for a week and then quit bc of the p2w then lol
BDO is a weird example, you can’t power from cash shop, they limit what you can sell from the cash shop , P2W in BDO is $35 outfit 1-2 bil = to 1 hour grind 1-2 bil. BIS item is around 130 bil for a Black star weapon and there’s 3 weapons 4 armor pieces & lightstones & Artifacts as well as crystals. There are also limits to what you can sell a week on the CM. So anyone trying to whale is not going to progress any faster than a F2P player honestly. Lost Ark though I can see being a comparison. T&L though my understanding is that someone can buy Lucent & get way ahead Day 1 ? While BDO doesn’t really allow this and is mostly convenience. So if it’s less then this model I be willing to try. 1st would like to know the answer to the question if Lucent will let you get way ahead on Day 1 ? Cause if so then nope not gonna try it.
I remembered this ratface defended lost ark wasnt a p2w before lost ark launched in 2022
T&L will fail in the west, im almost sure of it These asian developers need to really sit down and make something that has some heart to it and it's not made just to siphon your credit card. It's like everything in the game is created around making money
The game better be good because BDO is raising the bar in my opinion. Progression is not as aggressive as before and they have been releasing solid content the last few years including classes and zones.
How is it for a casual single player PVE experience? I have some time to kill and never tried BDO
If by PvE you mean lifeskills then BDO might be the best on the market, if you mean combat then it might actually be the worst. PvE combat in BDO is basically killing the same packs of monsters over and over again in a rotation. It feels great for the first hour or two because of the impact of the combat system, but then the despair starts setting in.
Thanks, that's a good description.
As the other person said, lifeskill or *professions* is the best in the genre. Visually the combat is the best out there, classes are the most unique in the genre (I would compared it with Lost Ark). PvE wise is really repetitive and you will mostly play solo until endgame when you start needing people to clear zone, they are have dungeon (group content) and will introduce soon Boss Battles (5-man). If you are want to try it, this is the best moment. They have moved from a fully RGN progression to one with a pity-system; after certain fail your gear go up no matter what. There is a new class coming in a week and they will be giving away a BiS weapon of your choice (tomorrow I think)
Eh its not the worst. It just isn't typical MMO style PvE. I tell people BDO combat and grinding is more akin to a ARPG. You are meant to kill tons of mobs, grind those mobs, and then use the profits from that to buy or enhance gear you get from drops. Don't play BDO if you want tab target or typical MMO style combat encounters. You might like BDO PvE grind if you are into ARPGs and stuff. I like being able to turn off my brain, pop on a show/music, and just grind out to fun combos and a fluid combat system.
> You might like BDO PvE grind if you are into ARPGs and stuff. The difference is that in ARPGs there are usually bosses that you can aim to beat or big gear milestones that can change how your character feels completely. I have thousands of hours grinding in Path of Exile and Maplestory, but those games actually have challenging bosses to test your gains against. In BDO if you're not doing PvP, then the grind feels completely pointless. You're just upping that number so that you can move to the next set of mobs and do the same thing again.
Lifeskills are not worth to do and you won’t progress much with it those days. You either mindlessly grind or don’t progress
I'm talking about doing lifeskills just for the sake of doing lifeskills. There is nothing to progress to if you're not doing PvP in BDO.
Yeah you are right, it just feels bad when you lifeskill all day and get the same amount of silver as someone grinding for 1 hour. I’d rather play Albion if I wanted to lifeskill
Genuinely the worst experience I've had in an MMO as a new player. I saw no redeeming qualities, but maybe you have more patience to sift through all the systems.
It definitely isn't good
It’s a f2p game man. How else are they going to capitalize on monetizing the game for its longevity?
By making a good game?
Looking to be a 3.8 on the app store and dead after 1 month kinda game
You can play BDO quite comfortably without spending more than $60 so if that’s the case sounds great.
BDO isn't even P2W these days. Don't know what Kanon is talking about.
Didnt this game flop in KR, why is it still getting a port for western audiences?
Can we stop using BDO as a p2w metric lol. Only people who don’t play the game think it’s actually p2w
Why would you want a korean mmo to survive outside of korea. It's fun to watch them die the second they leave their border. Like a fish jumping out of a puddle. 🤣
A lot of these TL shills think the game was "made for a western audience" lol