Cosmetic Shop is P2W

Azherae wrote: »

Just as for me, the Economy First player, Multiboxing is ABSOLUTELY and possibly the WORST P2W. It's just also unstoppable by most standards so eh.

Yeah, this is why I found it quite hypocritical when Iridianny said that "being able to buy additional char slots is not p2w", while asking to see her pov as a valid argument for why the cosmetics store is p2w.

If I have the same amount of time to play the game as another nerd and we're both willing to grind the game enough to level up several artisans in different branches, but he can buy more char slots and do more stuff with them - to me, that's directly p2w. Multiboxing falls under the same concept, except I'm more accepting of it purely because in order to utilize that p2w advantage you gotta put in a loooot of money that I personally wouldn't have any time soon, while a char slot would probably cost somewhere below $30 (I'd hope).

So somewhat of a "you wouldn't say that getting obliterated by a lvl50 dude as a lvl10 dude is unfair, because the difference between you is just too big. But if a lvl15 one can still obliterate you just as much - now that's just shitty and painful" kind of thing.

While we are here, obligatory "Pay To Lose Cosmetics" reference...

What is this building for?

Is this gonna let me fish on my Freehold? Do I have to get a fishing thing for the freehold to use it at all? Did I Pay To Lose Money for this?

Can I even swim in it?!

(I figured I would bundle everything into one thread)

We have not received permission from Mag7spy to share the quoted post.

At this point I feel like you just lack imagination to get this point Just imaaagine that the situation Azherae presented is possible and mayhaps perchance has even happened to someone before.

Yes, it might be super rare in this particular context, but just the possibility itself justifies calling the store p2w, even if purely in the eyes of the person who was affected by the presented situation.

Azherae wrote: »

While we are here, obligatory "Pay To Lose Cosmetics" reference...

What is this for?

Is this gonna let me fish on my Freehold? Do I have to get a fishing thing for the freehold to use it at all? Did I Pay To Lose Money for this?

Can I even swim in it?!

(I figured I would bundle everything into one thread)

Yeah, freehold skins are such a huge question right now. And the longer Intrepid waits to explain how exactly the skins work, the more potential problems they'll have when people start realizing that they probably wasted a few hundos on a useless pixelclump.

NiKr wrote: »

We have not received permission from Mag7spy to share the quoted post.

At this point I feel like you just lack imagination to get this point Just imaaagine that the situation Azherae presented is possible and mayhaps perchance has even happened to someone before.

Yes, it might be super rare in this particular context, but just the possibility itself justifies calling the store p2w, even if purely in the eyes of the person who was affected by the presented situation.

I often forget that the sort of people who 'argue' on forums have a lot of social resilience/stamina. Sometimes they don't easily realize that others might not.

What I can tell you is less rare:

"Carl has been talking about the skin he bought to RP the group's Knight of the Order for a week now and the other person who wanted to be the Knight just figures it doesn't even make any sense to consider it and starts working on their other potential part."

"Someone in charge of the RP discovers from Carl on the day of initial role assignment discussion that Carl bought the skin, and the other person is asked 'are you okay with letting Carl have it?' and they just say yes because they don't wanna be a bother."

I know the world is full of people who respond "Well if you can't stand up for yourself you can't expect to have things" and I believe I've even heard "If you have social anxiety why would you even try to play an MMO?"

Ah, empathy. When you lack enough of it, the world is much rosier because the sort of people you step on don't even squeak loud enough for you to hear...

We have not received permission from Mag7spy to share the quoted post.

You're so close! You can do it.

One storyline slot .

It often amazes me how willing people are to say, about someone's else's life experiences "That must be rare because you can't find stories of it" and "That's not true because I've never seen it happen."

But we must all advocate for those things in which we are experienced, no matter how often that happens.

I am glad that in all the RP storylines you have written and coordinated, you have never had any reason to make a tough decision about a slot, and to know that you are an upstanding Lawful Evil individual who would never make such a decision based on appearance.

We have not received permission from Mag7spy to share the quoted post.

I mean, as I said several times already, I do think that kind of interaction in this particular context would be rare. But the latest Azherae post does present another situation where one person would lose out on participating in RP due to the situation she described in the post. And if someone loses, that means that someone won and in that case the winner got the win because of a bought cosmetic.

And as for "don't play with shitty people", that's a very difficult subject, especially when you're talking about peak performance in your preferred gameplay. I've played with several diskish GLs just because their guild was best on the server and I wanted to be a part of the best.

Same could be applied to hardcore RP groups. And considering the prerequisites for the situation described by Azherae, I'd assume that only the hardcorest of RPers would do that kind of thing, at which point there might not be an alternative group who's as hardcore at RP as them. And if you want to participate in the hardcorest RP around - you gotta join that dickish group who'd pick someone for their cosmetic if it matched their chosen storyline.

I've drawn a similar parallel before, but this really reminds me of dps meter and peak pve performance discussions on this forum. Noaani's standards for pve were so high that any subpar execution could get you booted out of the raid or maybe even the guild. And the same could apply to an RP group.

And that's why I believe that there are groups out there who can perceive cosmetic shops as p2w. I don't agree with their pov. I don't think they have enough people to influence the majority of players in any way. But I do understand why they have their pov. And I definitely pity them, for there is no mmo where they could RP to their fullest extent w/o any p2w influences on their actions.

edit: and on this I shall go to sleep. good talk yall

We have not received permission from Mag7spy to share the quoted post.

I'm much clearer on your perspective now, I was giving every 'benefit of doubt' I could, but I believe it is now fair to say that you believe that 'An MMO should not be planned/played like a Pathfinder Campaign or something'.

I will merely hope that Steven does not agree with you based on what I understand.