Tannakaobi wrote: »

Iluvrien wrote: »

Tannakaobi wrote: »

Iluvrien wrote: »

I do not want to see these in the store because they do, in a very specifically measurable way, devalue the efforts that crafters have gone to in acquiring the items (especially nirnhoned), planning researching order (prioritising most popular traits first) and keeping track of finishing times so the next can be started without "losing" time (to be as fast over the finishing line as possible).

It only devalues the efforts that crafters put in if they feel self entitled. Crafting is part of the game. Most people will craft because they enjoy crafting (me included). But I truly support that mmo's should be 'play the way you like'. Part of that is side stepping time consuming aspects that have no place in some people's gameplay, it becomes a grind.

Creating items that take months of continual playing time (not game play) is no different to having things like vanity pets that can only be bought. Which I'm also against.

"planning researching order (prioritising most popular traits first) and keeping track of finishing times so the next can be started without "losing" time (to be as fast over the finishing line as possible)." Sounds to me like you enjoy it. Some people don't, personally I just set up a spreadsheet in excel. But each to their own is all I'm saying.

Why can't the people who don't like crafting.... not craft? The idea of a crafting economy is that the people who want to craft can craft, and the people who don't want to craft can use some of the gold they have gotten, during the time they weren't slaving over a hot crafting bench, to buy the items made by the crafters.

That way nobody has to do what they don't want to. It increases player interactions in the game. It also doesn't run the risk of devaluing the effort the crafters put in (as this Crown Store addition would do).

Don't think about crafting in terms of what one person does or doesn't like. Think about it in terms of what community members offer to each other to support everyone's playstyle.

Which would be a great point if not for this silly guild auction system. Some people are simply put, not sociable and don't want to join guilds just to do their shopping. I actually do fall into this category. Good job I enjoy crafting.

Then why can't people visit the guild kiosks that are in all major cities, many smaller settlements... and occasionally just on the side of the road?

Failing that, about 50-70% of my first-time business as a crafter comes through zone chat. As an EP this happens most often in Deshaan (Mournhold) or Craglorn. A chat of "Who can craft X?" or "I need Y!" will usually bring one or more crafters running.

And I am not abundantly sociable either... and yet I am an officer in a guild. Yes, I craft for guildmates, but that isn't anywhere close to being my main source of clients. If I may put it gently and I mean no offense by this, I suspect that you may be hamstringing yourself here... and hoping that the Crown Store will pick up the slack.

Prof_Bawbag wrote: »

If some sucker wants to drop £60 learning the traits overnight, then let them. Doesn't affect my game.

Given the in-game economy and the 'business' of crafting and selling - yes it does effect a crafter's 'game'.

A great deal.

UrQuan wrote: »

Rev Rielle wrote: »

Tannakaobi wrote: »

How would people feel about that? Too pay to win maybe? Or is it pay to catch up...

I would use some crowns to instantly research one item right now... This isn't there already is it? I couldn't see it and was surprised to be honest. It must be because of the pay to win implications. In which case can I have a bouncy castle instead to spend my dough on?

No it would not be 'pay to win' at all.

How can you consider it not to be pay to win when it completely invalidates up to 12 skill points that other players have spent to achieve a much, much worse effect? Those 12 skill points that crafters have tied up in those passives (for a very very long time, because even with those passives it still takes a really long time to do all of the trait research) can make a huge difference in combat effectiveness. Being able to avoid spending those skill points on non-combat passives just by spending money is the definition of pay to win.

If you work on that principle then someone who has more time to play games is participating in P2W, time is money...

The definition of pay to win in my opinion is being able to buy something that gives you an advantage that can not be gained by any other means in the game. Otherwise it's pay for a head start, or pay for a boost... that's all a bit murky, better to keep things black and white.

Tannakaobi wrote: »

If you work on that principle then someone who has more time to play games is participating in P2W, time is money...

The definition of pay to win in my opinion is being able to buy something that gives you an advantage that can not be gained by any other means in the game. Otherwise it's pay for a head start, or pay for a boost... that's all a bit murky, better to keep things black and white.

Your logic suffers terribly when placed alongside Korean grind MMOs.

Upgrading your weapon involves using an upgrade stone with a chance of failure that grows higher the more upgrades have been assigned to it. When your weapon reaches +17, getting to +18 may carry only a 5% success rate. Additionally, your weapon will either break completely or delevel if you fail. The only way to get your weapon to the highest ranks is by spamming upgrade stones and relying on RNG to eventually fall in your favor. These enhanced weapons are also virtually required for higher level content and definitely so for PVP.

You can choose to see the scenario as not Pay to Win because upgrade stones drop from normal mobs. You can get one or two with each ludicrous difficulty dungeon you clear, to be divided among the players in the team with random rolls. Farming 20 of them may take a reasonably competent and well-geared player a week. Yet the cash shop offers them at a dollar apiece and you only need about 200 of them to guarantee that RNG will bend to your favor. At least until your next weapon upgrade.

The true stickler though is that by the time any casual player has made it through the grind, new content is released that further ups the grind. So while the pay players have had maxed out gear for months and enjoyed the fruits of their out-of-game labor, the ones relying on in-game acquisition have just had all their work invalidated since the enhancements cap out on the weapon you're wielding while the higher level weapon drops need to be restoned all over again. Hope you enjoy farming for months getting all those rocks again.

Disregarding for the moment how IC and MMOs in general operate on this principle of charging players for access to the next carrot, a shortcut can very well be seen as pay to win. They offer players months of luxurious top-tier gameplay that would otherwise be a grinding slog and test of patience. The next time ZOS releases a new trait that requires months to research, who WOULDN'T love an instant access upgrade that permits crafting the set four months earlier than everyone else? Or what advantages that player would reap during that time of exclusive access to content others will not see for a season?

If you want to remain top dog (aka "WIN") then you have to provide the upgrade fee (aka "PAY").

Tannakaobi wrote: »

UrQuan wrote: »

Rev Rielle wrote: »

Tannakaobi wrote: »

How would people feel about that? Too pay to win maybe? Or is it pay to catch up...

I would use some crowns to instantly research one item right now... This isn't there already is it? I couldn't see it and was surprised to be honest. It must be because of the pay to win implications. In which case can I have a bouncy castle instead to spend my dough on?

No it would not be 'pay to win' at all.

How can you consider it not to be pay to win when it completely invalidates up to 12 skill points that other players have spent to achieve a much, much worse effect? Those 12 skill points that crafters have tied up in those passives (for a very very long time, because even with those passives it still takes a really long time to do all of the trait research) can make a huge difference in combat effectiveness. Being able to avoid spending those skill points on non-combat passives just by spending money is the definition of pay to win.

If you work on that principle then someone who has more time to play games is participating in P2W, time is money...

No, because time is not literally money. The saying "time is money" is just that. It means that time is limited so you have to prioritize what you do with it.

It doesn't mean that when you spend time on something you are actually paying for it.

Lrn2Metaphor.

UrQuan wrote: »

Rev Rielle wrote: »

Tannakaobi wrote: »

How would people feel about that? Too pay to win maybe? Or is it pay to catch up...

I would use some crowns to instantly research one item right now... This isn't there already is it? I couldn't see it and was surprised to be honest. It must be because of the pay to win implications. In which case can I have a bouncy castle instead to spend my dough on?

No it would not be 'pay to win' at all.

How can you consider it not to be pay to win when it completely invalidates up to 12 skill points that other players have spent to achieve a much, much worse effect? Those 12 skill points that crafters have tied up in those passives (for a very very long time, because even with those passives it still takes a really long time to do all of the trait research) can make a huge difference in combat effectiveness. Being able to avoid spending those skill points on non-combat passives just by spending money is the definition of pay to win.

Because it doesn't give them an 'unfair' advantage in anything. Pay to Win is getting an advantage that is only obtainable through direct pay methods and not otherwise through the game, and in relation specifically to PvP. A prime example of this would be being able to buy top quality functional arms or armour through the Crown Store that would not be available otherwise in-game.

In relation to this post's topic: having a new player or otherwise be able to research a trait at a quicker rate for whatever reason does not give them an unfair advantage over anyone else. Now if it was a trait that was only obtainable through the Crown Store, that would be something entirely different.

The basic argument against that you see is: 'I had to put in all this 'effort' so everyone else has to'. And really that's a weak argument at best, and only tries to divide the community into 'us and them'. Looking at it in a wider context: We should be encouraging our fellow players and helping them enjoy the game, it's not a competition, we're all playing the game together.

I'm down for it, even though I have almost everything researched. It's not pay 2 win. The key of good f2p games has always been selling things that reduce time or visual things. I only have a problem if the cash store is selling things that aren't available in game.

Of course, there's limits to that too. I would have a problem if they started selling emperor haha.

Egonieser wrote: »

psychojudge wrote: »

It would not be fair to the players who did spend days on end researching every trait there is.




BUT if the add it to the crownstore i wil be happy to use it

Days on end? Don't sugarcoat it buster, it's MONTHS on end. :P

I know i still have a long way to go only 30% done

LordSemaj wrote: »

Blackhorne wrote: »

No, because time is not literally money. The saying "time is money" is just that. It means that time is limited so you have to prioritize what you do with it.

It doesn't mean that when you spend time on something you are actually paying for it.

Lrn2Metaphor.

Actually it does mean when you spend time on something you are actually paying for it. The metaphor derives from the saying that "there is no such thing as a free lunch", indicating that there is always a cost behind something even should you not be the one to pay it. With regards to time, this cost is in the form of "opportunity cost", an economics term meaning the loss of potential gain from other alternatives when one alternative is chosen.

"Time is Money" is a phrase that literally means your time can be spent earning money by doing something other than what you are choosing to do with it. So everything you do in your off time or life in general carries with it the cost of NOT receiving the income you otherwise could have made with that time. This is best seen when someone like a doctor is deciding whether or not to go on vacation. His time can be spent at the hospital earning countless dollars, so even if the vacation were "free" he would still be incurring an opportunity cost due to the loss of potential revenue. That better be one hell of a vacation.

You're describing the use of opportunity cost in the microeconomics model. But microeconomics is not all of life.

"Play to win" means paying actual currency to win, not metaphorical currency.

Im pretty sure this would be something that would make me rage uninstall. Seriously.

Rev Rielle wrote: »

UrQuan wrote: »

Rev Rielle wrote: »

UrQuan wrote: »

Rev Rielle wrote: »

Tannakaobi wrote: »

How would people feel about that? Too pay to win maybe? Or is it pay to catch up...

I would use some crowns to instantly research one item right now... This isn't there already is it? I couldn't see it and was surprised to be honest. It must be because of the pay to win implications. In which case can I have a bouncy castle instead to spend my dough on?

No it would not be 'pay to win' at all.

How can you consider it not to be pay to win when it completely invalidates up to 12 skill points that other players have spent to achieve a much, much worse effect? Those 12 skill points that crafters have tied up in those passives (for a very very long time, because even with those passives it still takes a really long time to do all of the trait research) can make a huge difference in combat effectiveness. Being able to avoid spending those skill points on non-combat passives just by spending money is the definition of pay to win.

Because it doesn't give them an 'unfair' advantage in anything. Pay to Win is getting an advantage that is only obtainable through direct pay methods and not otherwise through the game, and in relation specifically to PvP.

Which is exactly what this would be. You get to have all of the traits without having to severely limit your combat effectiveness by tying up 12 skill points for many many months. That would only be obtainable by buying it, and would be impossible to get in-game. It's pay to win, pure and simple.

Now something that just sped up research time wouldn't be pay to win, because it doesn't invalidate those 12 skill points. You'd still have to keep them tied up for a long time in order to get all of the traits. Just a somewhat shorter time.

It wouldn't be. I'm not really sure what more to say.
Additionally, you don't have to tie up any skill points to research traits & and there are ample skill points in the game. Whether someone invests in skill points to increase research time or add multiple research items, is the same for all. Finally, it has basically zero effect on other players. So it simply cannot be pay to win.

The bold part is technically true, but realistically completely and utterly false, and the fact that you can even say it means that I simply can't take you seriously. Technically, yes you don't have to spend any skill points to be able to become a 9-trait crafter on everything. It'll just take you 1,789 days to do it. That's 5 years. And that's assuming that you are always online and able to move on to research the next item at the exact moment when research is done, so even that is impossible to actually achieve.

Tannakaobi wrote: »

Sylance9 wrote: »

They did something similar in ArcheAge. That made me quit immediately. My freaking bear farm. We spent literally months breeding bears (after spending months learning how to because it was a BIG secret) and once bred, you had a CHANCE to get a pet or a mount, and the mount was super rare. Literally after having only about 20 mounts on the server (and never actually getting the luck to get one myself) they released them in their store for people to buy making anyone breeding them worthless to sell on the auction. They also killed the economy with another item that was super rare that they started to offer in the crown store.

Spent all that time on nothing and got absolutely nothing out of it.

This is entirely different and I am in total agreement that this is out of order. They should have at least just added a different bear. I think ESO should have more pets that you can earn by playing.

Talking of which, what's up with the pets anyhow? My dog does not do anything. Some emotes like licking it's butt, chasing it's tail and generally being like a dog is surly a must with a crown store vanity pet.

What I meant was it was a time sync. Meaning it took like a week to get a bear breedable (if after the week they even were breedable 98% of the time they werent and it ended up taking a month just to get ONE bear breedable and even then you werent guaranteed a mount) and then another time sync to hatch it. It isnt different at all. When you are spending all your time trying to get something that someone else could just come up and get without putting any time into it at all.

Rev Rielle wrote: »

The basic argument against that you see is: 'I had to put in all this 'effort' so everyone else has to'. And really that's a weak argument at best, and only tries to divide the community into 'us and them'. Looking at it in a wider context: We should be encouraging our fellow players and helping them enjoy the game, it's not a competition, we're all playing the game together.

Actually, it's the best argument there is.

Crafting doesn't directly result in more PvP kills or higher leaderboard placements in PvE. The items that are crafted may do so but these are available if there is a crafting economy. This means that crafting is an optional path that people can pursue for fun or profit while investing time and energy.

The current research system is flawed in that, I believe, it should be more involved during the process itself. Other suggestions threads have addressed this, so I won't.

That said, given the current system, the only thing you really can put into researching traits is time (and energy to track down the items, plus any planning you do) so to say that maintaining the parity between players on the basis of time is a weak argument... is itself flawed.

I am all for the encouraging fellow players and helping them to enjoy the game. I wouldn't be an officer in a small guild if I wasn't. I do not believe that we encourage people by taking away all of the obstacles, to the detriment of all, but in showing them how best to overcome the obstacles themselves! I have already shown guildmates what I know about choosing the traits to research first, which set bonuses tend to be more popular and the add-ons I use for keeping track of how research is going. I look forward to doing so again.

Finally... gaming, especially MMO gaming, is a time sink. We take time out of our daily lives and get rid of it in a really enjoyable way. I still remember getting my first 9-trait item completed and how good that felt. By including instant research in the Crown Store you would be stealing that moment from everyone who might enjoy it. The people who buy it would probably feel nothing as they had no investment in the process, and the people who didn't buy it wouldn't have that sense of satisfaction either because of the knowledge of all the people who did the same merely by dumping a bit of cash.

No thanks.

Selique wrote: »

LordSemaj wrote: »

psychojudge wrote: »

It would not be fair to the players who did spend days on end researching every trait there is.

You mean like the Horse training that shaves off 6 months of logins?

Horse training I don't mind. How fast someone can ride their horse doesn't bother me in the slightest..

However, I spent many many many months researching traits, looting gear with the right trait, crafting sets and everything... I'd be pretty mad if they gave that out for 700 crowns a trait >.>

Well, that means a lot in Cyrodiil.