Guild Wars 2

I’m sorry but your definition of Pay to Win is totally wrong. If you “Win” by buying something you gain something somebody else in the game cannot conceivably obtain through conventional game play.

This is not the case in Guild Wars 2. The trade between gems and gold simply buys convenience. It allows you to get rewards at a faster pace at the cost of real life money.

As people have stated in previous posts in this thread, if you think this didn’t exist in previous MMO’s your deluding yourself. In WoW I knew several people who sunk chunks of money to purchase gold, and yes they obtained mounts/pets and various other things at a considerably faster pace than I could.

However, they “won” nothing. They removed any sense of accomplishment that is gained from actually playing to gain the items themselves. That’s what real “winning” is in an MMO.

I have 2 80’s at the moment. My guardian who I equipped myself, and spent time acquiring all the gear. And my Thief, who I spent a little of my earnings on, and equipped with two very pretty glass daggers and a full set of gear from the order of whispers as soon as she hit 80.

Do you know what, I don’t play my Thief very often, I am way more involved and attached to my Guardian, because I achieved more with her. I “won” more by investing time and playing the game, than I ever did through grabbing gems.

Diva.4706:

So, my wife and I have played GW2 since beta, and we have had a lot of fun. But now we are starting to see the game for what it actually is : Pay-to-win. A friend of ours started to play and was level 80 in 5 days, because he used $ to buy trade-skill mats to level up. This really made our level 80s seem pretty pointless, because it was then obvious that you can basically “buy” a level 80.

Now there are legendary weapons showing up on the trading post. We are very unhappy with this development. It seems most modern MMOs are all pay to win these day, with their cash-shops and the ability to buy coin. We long for the good old days of an even play field, no matter your standing in real life. I am now starting to look elsewhere for another MMO, even sub-based, with NO real life influence on your character. I worry that those days are over, and my enjoyment of MMO gaming is coming to an end.

This game isn’t play to win by a many long shots.. I have no idea how you define this game as play to win. Your friend got to lvl 80 because he skipped over half or more of the game. You could have easily done the same thing. Some of you people just do not have an idea what a play to win game is. Might want to do some research on that. I can tell you one game I played that is play to win and that is Rohan: The Blood Feud. You buy Ynk currency and you can by from anything like a maxed lvl character decked out.. to a nice looking weapon as long as your character is of the lvl to use it.. they can even sell in game money which are called crowns on the site and this is ran by the company who makes this game… I would call that play to win. For now on do some research before running your mouth about it being play to win.. Learn what a play to win game really is cause Guild Wars 2 is not one of them.

Peetee.9406:

Gehenna.3625:

Naqaj.6219:

Gehenna.3625:

I wouldn’t call it pay2win as such, but the OP does have a point that a lot of achievements in game can be bought. I also find that disappointing, because it does invalidate a lot of content this way.

Good call, that is the first argument against RMT that has some real merit. I guess there are people that are really serious about achievements, those would certainly be somehow affected by this.

It’s a simple thing really. If you put effort into something then it has a value for you. If then someone comes by and gets it cheaply, the value of your effort suddenly is compared to the cheap way. Originally the achievement had the value of what you put into it. And all of a sudden someone invalidates it by giving it a different value.

For example, if it takes you 20 hours of gameplay to get something and somebody buys it for 10 bucks worth of gems. Then your 20 hours are no longer represented by the effort but the money value. In this case 10 bucks for 20 hours of gaming effort.

Would you work for 50 cents an hour?

This is the point.

If you consider achievement hunting to be work, why are you chasing achievements at all?

If you don’t like it, don’t do it. If you like it, who cares how long it takes.

I don’t consider them work. Although it does get to that when it start feeling like grinding.

What you completely missed, is the point that I was making. Congratulations on skipping the main message and misunderstanding a small part of it.

What I was talking about is value and how and why people assign value to things. It’s because they put effort or time into it.

Money is related to work. People get paid for doing work. So what happens when on the one hand you put effort in to achieve something and someone then puts a money value on it? It equates your efforts while gaming to a money value and therefore what you did to make that money.

If one hour of work gives you something that costs you 20 hours in game to do, there is the comparison. I compare it only to work because that’s how people generally make money.

Now, we all know the grind and RNG involved in fractals and legendaries and that is too much. That does feel like a job and there people aren’t necessarily having fun anymore. So yeh I never got involved in that. It’s not fun and the annoying thing is that I cannot get these trinkets doing the things I might like in this game.

Who cares how long it takes? Well, depends on your own sense of accomplishment but most people don’t want to wait years before they feel like they got that accomplishment and also at some point gear is required for content. So called content gating. It exists only for higher level fractals atm but it will get more.

It will be interesting to see how Anet is going to release more ways to get ascended gear, more ascended gear and content gating based on it, because in the wrong order it will kitten a lot more people off….and unnecessarily at that.

Konfuzfanten.6503:

So what you are saying is that, IF i have low self-esteem and cant take pride in my own effort GW2 is P2W?

I need other ppl’s grind to validate my own grind? what!?!

Your sneer about low self-esteem is unnecessary and uncalled for.

And I never said GW2 was pay2win. That is your assumption, I in fact said it wasn’t but I do agree it devaluates people’s efforts when you can buy levels etc.

But I don’t call that pay2win. For me pay2win is being able to buy gear with real cash that is more powerful than what you can get in game. That is not the case in GW2.

Really, this whole discussion really is about the question “what is winning in GW2?”

And that answer is personal for everyone.
For me it’s exploring. And as such it is not P2W for me.
For some it’s the achievements. That could be P2W.
For others it’s WvW – that MIGHT be P2W if you count the boosters, however, I do not believe those have a significant effect in WvW. But that is also personal opinion.
For another group it’s winning in sPvP – no P2W there.

So this discussion can go on for 10 more pages and still no one would come up with a definite answer, because the answer depends on your preferred playstyle and goals.

All I can say is, for ME, it’s not P2W. I dont care if someone pays hundreds of euros for some shiny pixels as long as they don’t get in my way.

you dont have to buy anything to have fun in the game.
not even with in game gold.

go with what you find/get as drops, and you will have loads of fun.

Maybe its just me, but in the guilds i have been in in mmo’s nobody
wanted you to have ‘the best gear’ when you wanted to come along on a dungeon trip.
It was all about having a good time.

ps:personaly i think its pretty dumb to spend real time cash to buy things in a game.

I guess what I see is its like waiting for the end of expansion nerf to get all the acheives just to say I have it shows no skill or that you put any work in to acheiveing it but will say I got that acheive. But I do have to say the people putting massive real life money in to game are only promoting the gold sellers and hackers to hack more accounts to keep up with the demand which in it self is sad. And before you say everyone buys gems to get the gold think about it. I for one hope Anet looks in to these accounts that have bought alot or produced alot and starts banning accounts that have bought their gold from gold sellers and not the gems as they were supposed to. Probably would cut down on the bots and hackers alike taking the consumers away.

Oh boy, this thread makes my head hurt.

I have never spent any money on the gemshop, I did however convert some gold to gems at the first weeks and got some inv/bank upgrades. And same thing on halloween for the witch costume. I like the ability to use gemshop for a couple of goodies. And there is absolutely nothing there that would give anyone any serious advantage, the boosters are awful honestly.

Pay2Win?

If it’s not from a competitive standpoint (which has 0 p2w in gw2 and isn’t affected by gemshop at all), then I fail to see OPs logic. I actually know what game Pukknub was talking about, I was on the receiving end who got stomped by their guild. Since, I didn’t feel like spending that much money and some of theirs spent thousands. That was pure p2w, getting 1-2 shotted while doing minimal damage in return. This is mostly present in every F2P MMOs in some way.
In GW2, I can take on any of those players who used to dominate in other games, while being on equal grounds and the better player will win, not the gear. That’s what I like most about this game.

About your twisted definition of P2W. Does getting gold and buying special skins make you a winner? Nope, special skins aren’t better statwise and looks are only for yourself. You gain no advantage from different type of skins. My gear hasn’t changed statwise for the past 3 months, I’ve changed looks and played around with different skins, but it has had zero effect on my level of skill. I’ve gotten better thanks to experience and practice, not special looks.

Honestly, OP just seemed to be bitter and jealous of his friend. Why would anyone feel jealous about someone lvling quickly, I cannot understand. He’ll miss out on a ton of content, some pretty immersive and hilarious moments. Max lvl means nothing here, If I’d want to, I could hit the TP and lvl an alt from 0 to hero in a matter of hours. Does it mean, I’m now somehow better than someone who’s taking his time in enjoying the game? It doesn’t affect you or your gaming experience at all.

For your information, as a non-gemshop spender I’m nearing the end of my legendary progress and I’m certain, I’ll feel great satisfaction in knowing how much effort I put into it. I’ll enjoy my shiny and I won’t care what others think.

I don’t know about you, but I’ve never in my gw2 playtime looked at people with special weapons and thought “Oh, they probably used gems to gold and now they are much better than me. Darnit, Anet you got me again!” It’s more like “Oh, that’s a pretty shiny weapon and it fits his character, should work towards some skin I like aswell. But in the meantime, I’ll continue being awesome with my standard non-shiny weapon.”

Nayru.3947:

FourTwenty.4268:

Nayru.3947:

Nothing to do with the fact that you can pay to win instead of actually playing.

you dont understand what ‘pay to win’ means

Obviously you don’t. I can teach you.

Example: Guild Wars 2 has a gem store. You can pay real money for gold on it.

Gold in GW2 = Win.
No gold in GW2 = lose.

Therefore we see you can pay to win.

Do you understand?

Obviously the definition of pay to win is different. In other games that are truly pay to win you can buy items in the “gem” store that you can not obtain by playing. These items make you extremely more powerful in open world pvp.

Pay to win is if the in-game store sells power unobtainable by playing.

Diva.4706:

So, my wife and I have played GW2 since beta, and we have had a lot of fun. But now we are starting to see the game for what it actually is : Pay-to-win. A friend of ours started to play and was level 80 in 5 days, because he used $ to buy trade-skill mats to level up. This really made our level 80s seem pretty pointless, because it was then obvious that you can basically “buy” a level 80.

Now there are legendary weapons showing up on the trading post. We are very unhappy with this development. It seems most modern MMOs are all pay to win these day, with their cash-shops and the ability to buy coin. We long for the good old days of an even play field, no matter your standing in real life. I am now starting to look elsewhere for another MMO, even sub-based, with NO real life influence on your character. I worry that those days are over, and my enjoyment of MMO gaming is coming to an end.

If you read my other posts, I am the last person to defend this game. But you don’t know what pay-to-win means.

Him having the same things as you is not pay-to-win. You just seem to be ticked that you put in effort that he didn’t have to. Well. He paid money that you didn’t have to.

Further, you’re right – level 80 IS pointless in this game. If you’re grouped WITH him, it’s an advantage in PvE because, well, he’s with you. If you’re fighting against him in PvP it doesn’t matter at all since everyone scales.

Again to be clear – you are not using “pay to win” correctly in any way.

i put 100 euro on the table now 30 people run after me in WvW. i need about 2 weeks for first full exotic set. did the 2nd in 2 minutes from those euros aswell.. GW2 is very pay2winish and the only factor that makes me not really care about is the base line power of full exotic is kinda easy to get and theres not much above it in terms of stats ATM.

RedBaron.6058:

So, now, you can get a Legendary weapon for being a legendary player or having a legendary wallet.

lol, really? You’re gonna bring up Lengendaries saying people can just pay RL money to buy them? Twilight is up for 9500G, so yeah, sure you could buy Twilight with RL money…if you had a spare $8000 USD lying around.

Do your math before you try state people can pay to win because IMO, paying $8000 for a legendary isn’t paying to win, it’s just paying.

[Calculations based on current Gem → Gold average (100Gems → 1.5Gold) using the $50USD = 4000Gems purchase option.]

Diva.4706:

My point is that real life wealth should have zero impact on the game.

So do you think that players should be allowed to play for only like 3 hours a day. (That´s what´s real life have impact on my gameplay)

Gombie.3860:

People like Diva should not be able to play this game with such a negative attitude. Those people who buy gems are the ones who are supporting the servers and future content.

Also the issue is with you not the game, because im playing the same game and people buying gems has no impact on my game experience. Actually it improves it because im getting new content to play.

WRONG.
They spoil the economy.
If gems were used only to buy cosmetic stuff, minis, boosts would have been way different.

Diva.4706:

So, my wife and I have played GW2 since beta, and we have had a lot of fun. But now we are starting to see the game for what it actually is : Pay-to-win. A friend of ours started to play and was level 80 in 5 days, because he used $ to buy trade-skill mats to level up. This really made our level 80s seem pretty pointless, because it was then obvious that you can basically “buy” a level 80.

Now there are legendary weapons showing up on the trading post. We are very unhappy with this development. It seems most modern MMOs are all pay to win these day, with their cash-shops and the ability to buy coin. We long for the good old days of an even play field, no matter your standing in real life. I am now starting to look elsewhere for another MMO, even sub-based, with NO real life influence on your character. I worry that those days are over, and my enjoyment of MMO gaming is coming to an end.

I have to agree. We tried to warn folks about this very thing when the drops started being reduced that it would directly affect the economy of the game and thus try to get people to get gems to convert to gold (whether intended or not that’s what’s happening for many a new player). There’s a thread right now with over 1k posts about the drops and how it’s affecting the economy of the game.

Right now if you are a new player and you want to pick up armor, in a dps role capacity. Each piece of armor costs 4-5 gold. Most runes cost 2-3 gold each. If your account get’s DR turned on and you are hit by the DR bug, you might as well hang it up and go buy gold because there won’t be any drops for you to sell. I know they are working on it and that this game doesn’t have a sub but if you want to do dungeons now people demand that you be level 80 and in all exotics to do dungeons before you can join most 5 mans, If you want to do WvW and be highly successful at it your gear does matter.

Dancing around semantics doesn’t change the fact that this is happening and until it changes many a new player will be disenchanted with the game. My only suggestion is maybe return in January they might have a few things fixed regarding loot by then?

Steelo.4597:

i put 100 euro on the table now 30 people run after me in WvW. i need about 2 weeks for first full exotic set. did the 2nd in 2 minutes from those euros aswell.. GW2 is very pay2winish and the only factor that makes me not really care about is the base line power of full exotic is kinda easy to get and theres not much above it in terms of stats ATM.

And how does that give you an edge over me? I played the content, have exactly the same stats/gear and earned the gold by playing to obtain said gear? Where’s your win and advantage over me? You traded money for time, I traded time to spend less money.

You have zero advantages over me and we have absolutely 100% same chances of “winning”.

and how long did you need to get it? i needed about 4 hours if i do the maths on euros into gold. so thats my edge. also i could have had the full exotic set on the moment i hit 80, without farming a copper. thats an edge because you didnt have it back then. i could by the ascended mats or legendary mats without farming a month but farming 3 hours at work. i could buy chests for buffs, the best buff food all the time – without ever farming a minute. i dont see what exactly is hard to see about the fact that 1 person can do in 1 minute IRL what another needs 100 hours for ingame and you dont see the “edge”.. its just acting stupid, its not like the logic doesnt apply to your mind.

Steelo.4597:

and how long did you need to get it? i needed about 4 hours if i do the maths on euros into gold. so thats my edge. also i could have had the full exotic set on the moment i hit 80, without farming a copper. thats an edge because you didnt have it back then. i could by the ascended mats or legendary mats without farming a month but farming 3 hours at work. i dont see what exactly is hard to see about the fact that 1 person can do in 1 minute IRL what another needs 100 hours for ingame and you dont see the “edge”.. its just acting stupid, its not like the logic doesnt apply to your mind.

No… The point you’re not getting is that some people value their money more than their time, and they don’t care if they have to spend longer to get to the point where they’re competitive. They don’t see themselves as losing. And sorry, they don’t see you as winning.

Steelo.4597:

and how long did you need to get it? i needed about 4 hours if i do the maths on euros into gold. so thats my edge. also i could have had the full exotic set on the moment i hit 80, without farming a copper. thats an edge because you didnt have it back then. i could by the ascended mats or legendary mats without farming a month but farming 3 hours at work. i could buy chests for buffs, the best buff food all the time – without ever farming a minute. i dont see what exactly is hard to see about the fact that 1 person can do in 1 minute IRL what another needs 100 hours for ingame and you dont see the “edge”.. its just acting stupid, its not like the logic doesnt apply to your mind.

I don’t farm, I do however play a lot of dungeons with my guildies though, but that’s because I really enjoy the dungeons and the socializing aspect. I work full time myself and I could easily buy everything I need aswell, although in my opinion that sounds like a very-very silly way to spend your money. Also tell me more about how you buy karma/world completion/skillpoints/dungeon tokens.

This issue is about time vs money. How you choose to spend your money is your decision, I honestly find other real life uses for it and it is absolutely not needed to spend a cent to achieve exactly the same results as a gemshop user.

I spend more time, but no money to get what I want, you spend a lot of money, but less time. Endresult is identical once we both have our gear. At that point you have no edge. Only time you have an edge as a gemshop user is if the other player is not 80 or fully geared yet and that comes from the same time vs money issue, since you cut down on your time required you’ll have your stuff faster. When the non-gemshop user has finished getting to 80 and getting full gear by spending a bit of more time, he is on equal grounds with you. Try that for logic and stop abusing the term Pay2Win, which you obviously have no idea of what it means.

Pay2Win means acquiring something through the cashshop that gives you a significant advantage over someone who doesn’t use the cashshop and who can’t achieve that same result by playing normally. It is most commonly used in either high-end raids/dungeons or pvp. There is absolutely nothing in this game you can’t do or run without using the gemshop.

Steelo.4597:

and how long did you need to get it? i needed about 4 hours if i do the maths on euros into gold. so thats my edge. also i could have had the full exotic set on the moment i hit 80, without farming a copper. thats an edge because you didnt have it back then. i could by the ascended mats or legendary mats without farming a month but farming 3 hours at work. i could buy chests for buffs, the best buff food all the time – without ever farming a minute. i dont see what exactly is hard to see about the fact that 1 person can do in 1 minute IRL what another needs 100 hours for ingame and you dont see the “edge”.. its just acting stupid, its not like the logic doesnt apply to your mind.

I had full exotics the moment I hit 80 without spending a dime on gems. And if you think spending money on a game you aren’t playing gives you an “edge”, well, that’s just stupid. It might be strange to you, but some of us actually like being logged in and doing stuff in GW2. It’s our hobby. Yes, I can buy a lamp for the desk, but I had a great time making one myself from random parts. When people make ship in a bottle or plane models, you think its because they can’t afford to buy one ready? The fun in a hobby is the journey, not the destination.

i spend time to get money. much less time then you spend to farm to get the same stuff as me. now i dont mind people who actually have fun at farming. but from my experience you only farm to get the ressources, its a means, not an end. and if people could pick up 1 gold instead of farming orr for an hour they would do it, that is my judgement. so whatever your definition, you cant deny i got an edge on you by paying euros and putting my real-life-weight in the ring. and its not like i find that a good principle in gaming. for me it should be the one putting most time = the uber hero, not the one putting most money. i just put some euros because i couldnt for the hell of it be arsed to spend 100+ hours farming orr to get a commander title.

if you had full exotics on hitting lvl 80 you didnt rush there.. i arrived at 80 completely broke because i put focus on full exp and only got my grandmaster book at around lvl 78. or you are just lieing or talking about an alt-char because that sounds pretty much like bullkitten to me. you need around 200k karma, 300 pvp badges and 12g to go instant-exotics. if you got that on hitting lvl 80 you really went out of your way to get karma and gold.

I’m more disappointed by the replies to this thread, really.

To my the replies are symptomatic of the lower quality of players in MMORPGs these days.

Most players these days just don’t get it.

Here’s what “win” is. Win is playing the game – actually playing it, and earning the cool stuff that’s within the game. Earning. Not shortcutting. Not buying with game gold. Not buying with cash. Play the game – or go away.

If you can just buy your way thru the game – that’s basically cheating. Having the games themselves facilitate cheating doesn’t make it any less of cheating.

And actually, ANet did bill this game as not being pay2win. Of course, ANet has blown off lots of things they said when developing the game and has shifted to catering scrubs trying to generate big numbers of players and doesn’t seem to care about the quality of their game anymore. Philosophical quality, not production quality. ANet puts out (buggy as hell and requiring daily patches) good new content but philosophically they’re ditching key/core ideals they proclaimed during development and pre-sales.

The fact that ANet doesn’t care that people can buy legendaries speaks volumes. What it says is, hey, maybe someone will buy a bunch of gems to sell via currency exchange and we’ll make a few dollars -that’s what REALLY matters.

Calsifer.6079:

RedBaron.6058:

So, now, you can get a Legendary weapon for being a legendary player or having a legendary wallet.

lol, really? You’re gonna bring up Lengendaries saying people can just pay RL money to buy them? Twilight is up for 9500G, so yeah, sure you could buy Twilight with RL money…if you had a spare $8000 USD lying around.

Do your math before you try state people can pay to win because IMO, paying $8000 for a legendary isn’t paying to win, it’s just paying.

[Calculations based on current Gem -> Gold average (100Gems -> 1.5Gold) using the $50USD = 4000Gems purchase option.]

Calsifer,

Sorry but your reasoning is wrong. You used an extreme example trying to depreciate my statement.
If you check BLTC now you will see Legendary weapons available for much less and others with offers going from 450 gold to 2100 gold. With time it will be possible to buy Legendary for much less real money because gems will trade for even more gold.

Ah, and with time Legendary will have better stats than anything else, as stated in the game future plans.

In my opinion, Legendary weapons should be bound on acquire and a sign of player commitment and prowess. I believe that Legendary crafting should only require in-game achievements instead of mats easily bought through TP. The percursor should be a reward of a very hard quest line and all the other items to craft Legendary should be earned through in-game achievements.

The whole idea of selling Legendary weapons at TP just kills all the sense of achievement.

If you have enough money, you just buy it. And believe me that many players are prepared to pay a lot of money (even thousands of dollars/euros) to have a top item (it happened a lot of times in a lot of other MMO’s, through eBay and other methods).

In the end, money is relative. 8.000 dollars can be a lot for you and me but nothing to other people. Right now, Legendary are just skins but in the future they will have the best stats around.

Best regards,

Red

RedBaron.6058:

<snip>

Ah, and with time Legendary will have better stats than anything else, as stated in the game future plans.

<snip> <snip>

In the end, money is relative. 8.000 dollars can be a lot for you and me but nothing to other people. Right now, Legendary are just skins but in the future they will have the best stats around.
<snip>

Every official statement I’ve seen says the opposite. Could you point me to your source? I’d like to readjust my thinking, if necessary.

RedBaron.6058:

Ah, and with time Legendary will have better stats than anything else, as stated in the game future plans.

No, they will not. They will be upgraded to the equivalent stats of Ascended weapons, when they are implemented, so they don’t become redundant by themselves. The only thing special about Legendaries is their skin. That will always be the case.

This is a great thread and I’m sure you’re all wonderful people.

OP: If having the cash lying around to buy a virtual sword is ‘winning’ to you, then we just don’t share the same definition. As a result, I sympathise. Perhaps it would help if you try and stop considering your own successes besides those of other people (ie; ‘He did it easier than me, therefore my own struggle and victory are less valuable’), and you might be able to take more satisfaction from overcoming things that are difficult.

Nayru.3947:

Poledo.3256:

Diva.4706:

So, my wife and I have played GW2 since beta, and we have had a lot of fun. But now we are starting to see the game for what it actually is : Pay-to-win. A friend of ours started to play and was level 80 in 5 days, because he used $ to buy trade-skill mats to level up. This really made our level 80s seem pretty pointless, because it was then obvious that you can basically “buy” a level 80.

Now there are legendary weapons showing up on the trading post. We are very unhappy with this development. It seems most modern MMOs are all pay to win these day, with their cash-shops and the ability to buy coin. We long for the good old days of an even play field, no matter your standing in real life. I am now starting to look elsewhere for another MMO, even sub-based, with NO real life influence on your character. I worry that those days are over, and my enjoyment of MMO gaming is coming to an end.

I feel sorry for your friend, and in part for you because of your attitude towards his leveling. I’ve had the game for a month and I have 4 characters at level 20 and one that I keep deleting and trying something new with. I’m enjoying every area and the story and having more fun than I have had in a long time in an MMO, so much in fact that level 80 isn’t even a concern for me at this point. That’s rare for me, I don’t think I’ve felt that way about an MMO since EQ1 and that was mostly because the whole MMO experience was new to me back then.

If you want to just zoom to 80 and have the best stuff and then stare at each other wondering what do you do now because you’ve “won” the game then I feel sorry for you. However you always have the option to do the same…

That’s not what he said at all.

It’s completely relevant to what he said. Their friend got 80 in 5 days. I said I feel sorry for him for missing all the enjoyment of leveling through the content. Every game out there can be called pay to win in many cases. WoW and Rift have players pay real cash to run with the top end guilds and take loot, so even though its not off the TP its still the same principle. So as I said, they can either enjoy the game the way they were until they saw an OMGLEGENDARY on the TP and now all of a sudden it’s not fun anymore.

If you were having fun doing what you were doing, stop trying to keep up with the Jones’ and keep having fun. Who cares how they got it, get yours how you think it should be or do the same because you have that option.

I’m going to go read more threads where people complain its too hard to get things.

Know how you feel… Just bought the game, install takes nearly an hour.. then you have to register.. the info entered isn’t advised correctly, then there’s the confusion over how to actually connect.. then you’re hit with a 3 hour patch download, which essentially replaces the entire game you just installed from disk.

Then you come online and find out it’s PaytoWin. By Win, I refer to gain max level.

But that said, I didn’t play the beta, didn’t watch the youtube vids, will NEVER buy gold or use xpomats. I’ll just play the game as I choose.

Because that is what makes an MMO. It isn’t what you can do, it’s what you do, do.

Mmo’s these days are for chimps who need to be able to cheattowin using cornercutting cash, oblivious to the fact they’re being ripped off of cash better used elsewhere. But if these people (and i use that term loosely) wish to play like that let them. It’s thier loss, have no skills, not knowing “how” to actually play.. having to watch someone elses skill on youtube to know what to do. Never realising, that buying your max level isn’t winning the game. To win any game, you need to grind the levels 1xp at a time. Only when you gain those legendary items by your own hands and skills, can you actually boast to winning the game.

Naturally, that does mean that 99.99% of players are also all liars.. but then, that’s just like real life.

Not to mention all the typo filled posts…

Time is Money

Pay to win is when money is more valuable than time, to the point that time is worthless in comparison, regardless of how much of it you can spend.

I find the opposite to be pretty bad as well. Why should someone with ridiculously large amounts of time get an advantage over someone who cannot afford that much time?

I believe GW2 has found a pretty decent balance. It takes neither a large amount of Money or Time to reach the plateau. After that, players are equal to one another, regardless of how much Money or Time they have.

Oh someone hits 80 because he bought crafting matirials from gems. Thats sooo. pay2lose.
He paid money to lose a big chunk of gameplay this game has to offer. Instead of being envy you should pitty him.

Oh someone can buy a legendary because of RL money. That must be p2w.
But i have my T3 cultural hammer(asura) and i am happy.
But it more valuable. It must be p2w. Nope . I like my hammer more.
But he spent money. It must be better. Its p2w. Nope. Same stats as mine.
But its better looking. Nope. My hammer fits perfectly my equipment.

P2W is:
You are excluded from content because it needs money, or you must spend so much time on gainig it ingame that its not worth the effort.

Nothing in GW2 fits this. Gaining a pet/Skin doesnt fit this either.
Nobody will ask: LFG ini xy acm point 3k+ only.
You are not excluded out of content if you dont want to spend money!!
Not P2W

Edit:
One question to all who think GW2 is P2W: is WoW P2W??
You cann Level your char to max level way faster if you use “Recrute a friend”
You can buy raiding runs with pro guilds for gold (and illegal gold buying)
You can buy mounts and pets for RL money. With no chance gaining it with ingame currency.
It has no legal Gold-Money exchange. Thats the only difference. So you could argue that buying raiding gear is illegal (with RL-Money). But on the other hand you cant get some things ingame in WoW. But in GW2 you can get them all (with much time)
If you think GW2 is P2W. Then WoW is P2W too. and pretty much every other MMO out there too.

I’m sorry, are we now acting like obtaining lvl 80 is hard and a huge accomplishment?

OP,
One of life’s cardinal rules is to let go those things you cannot control. There are no perfect games out there.

How you choose to look at the situation will dictate your enjoyment of the game. ANet had their reasons for structuring the game the way they did. Your friend may have felt pressure to “catch up”. Try to view your progress as a welcome challenge and be proud of what you have been able to do without spending a dime.

What other people do does not have to affect your experience.

miss the pve content well i will only jump to 80 on another character only to go to wvw.

I had a long post written up about how the OP is wrong, but it wasn’t worth the effort. I’ll just sum it up.

You don’t know what pay to win is.

RedBaron.6058:

When I saw Legendary weapons being sold at TP I just laughed. The cash cow mentality had reached new heights!

So, now, you can get a Legendary weapon for being a legendary player or having a legendary wallet.

LOL top marks !

Seriously though back on subject, you are right and wrong at the same time. I have had my main at lvl80 since early october and essentially been hoarding gold since.

When I finally decided to make an alt, I spent roughly 45-55 gold (ingame generated gold) to level 6 crafts + doing story quests inbetween and got to level 80 in 3 days.

So it is possible to get an lvl80 in a matter of days while playing “genuinely”, without playing to win as you put it.

However it is perfectly possible for someone to literally just spend god knows how much on gems, then convert it to gold and do the same as I did. Am just saying both can be done. But do not let this hinder your enjoyment ingame. This game is not an aggressive gear treadmill by any means, so pretty much everyone equalizes fairly quickly at lvl80 . Should the game be gear competitive I probably would be saying something else.
At least you value your characters and know how to play them in many various situations, something your friend cannot say. Cherish what you have and your experience.

Some are going to pay to win, others aren’t. To quote EA, “it’s in the game”.

All of these people trying to argue that it is ok to pay to win but are you the same group of people who dont want the Trinity? Who don’t want progression?

ZaiTh.6378:

All of these people trying to argue that it is ok to pay to win but are you the same group of people who dont want the Trinity? Who don’t want progression?

We dont think p2w is ok.
All we are saying is: GW2 is not p2w.

pay to win definately doesnt apply to this game design at all, if you think this game has that system, you dont even know whats pay to win.

Clearly there are fundamental differences in the way people are thinking here. I guess it’s all opinion at this point.

MY opinion:

GW2 does not fit P2W criteria. Having more gold does NOT accomplish anything. Stats are capped on exotics/ascended gear. Both of which are relatively easy to obtain. Having tons of gold COULD get you exotics faster, and honestly you don’t need to buy gold to obtain them, you can buy a full set of exotics with ~15g. Certainly not a large amount.

Boosters do not make you win either. They last 1hr, can’t be used in PvP (even in WvW, like I said, it doesn’t really help if you’re outnumbered. You might be able to pick off random stragglers I suppose, but even then a bad player with boosters would get facerolled by a good player without boosters).

Legendaries do not make you win. Whatever moron said legendaries are the end game clearly does not understand how GW2 works. PvP is the end game, not obtaining Legendaries which are exotics with fancy sparkles.

When they boost legendary stats to the max like they intend to, that will help whom exactly? That one guy that can buy a legendary? How has he won now? In WvW the difference will be negligible. In sPvP the difference will be negligible unless your entire team has Legendaries. One man does not make a difference.

You can’t purchase all of the mats to make a legendary either. At minimum you need 100% map exploration to even craft it.

If you people honestly think having the rarest skins in the game constitutes winning in this game, then you are too far gone to even help or try to speak logic to.

And finally, and this is the most important point: Why does it matter? Seriously, why do you care that someone was able to purchase, for real money, the gold needed to get one item that is marginally better than what you have? Seriously, if you have full exotic/ascended everything, and you compare YOUR stats to someone with full exotic/ascended PLUS a legendary weapon instead of your exotic, what kind of % increase over your stats do you think they will actually have?

Let’s say legendaries give I dunno 50 extra power and 50 extra precision than an exotic. (which I feel is more than it will even be), and let’s say damage is 1250 instead of 1100 like exotics are.

Using my 80 full exotics guardian as a base:

1738 Power
1456 Precision
2838 attack (1100 weapon damage + 1738 Power)

Let’s add in that epic win legendary weapon with my hypothetical stats which I still feel is more than what it will be:

My new stats:

1788 Power (2.8% increase)
1506 Precision (3.4% increase)
3038 Attack (1250 weapon damage +1788 Power) (7% increase)

In conclusion, if you honestly feel that someone paying real life money to be 7% “stronger” than you (skill will always trump 7% by the way…)constitutes “winning”, then your points are technically valid and this is a P2W game hands down.

If you are like me and the rest of the level-headed, rational, population that thinks this is a ridiculous claim, then I welcome you to the club.

This was why I had a feeling GW2 would fail in the long run

I just don’t like it when people can have an advantage in a game by paying money, even if it is a tiny one. I actually prefer paying money to support a system that does not allow these advantages. Yes, I know my logic is seriously kittened up

Spakpak.7260:

This was why I had a feeling GW2 would fail in the long run

I just don’t like it when people can have an advantage in a game by paying money, even if it is a tiny one. I actually prefer paying money to support a system that does not allow these advantages. Yes, I know my logic is seriously kittened up

It would be nice if you could name one advantage. Even if its a tiny one.

Look at it this way — did you have to pay to win? Didn’t you enjoy leveling your characters and exploring the world, playing the game at your own pace? What does it matter, if some friend of yours threw his money away and cheated himself out of that experience?
Others may be able to buy things to speed their way to 80, or look a little nicer, but in the end they don’t have access to any extra gameplay or content that you can’t get for free.
Also, the game has no subscription fee. Is it that unreasonable to consider maybe tossing ArenaNet a few extra bucks now and then, if something useful or nice pops up in the Gem store?
You said yourself, you’d be willing to look into subscription-based MMOs. So, take $15/month of your money, and pretend Guild Wars is a sub-based game. At least this way, your money goes toward what YOU want to pay for, rather than toward… well, nothing.

Funny, my first two characters are pretty much finished and I have never spent a cent in the cash shop, nor have I felt forced to.

People seriously need to learn what pay to win really is before they start tossing those accusations.

I would like to thank everyone for their comments. The issue of RMT can get heated, and there are some fair arguments on both sides.

In the case of GW2, I love the art style of the game and many of the play mechanics, but the fact that the company is fine with players being able to simple buy, or at least lessen barriers to obtaining rare reward (not power items, rare items), just seems wrong to me.

I know people have always used real money to “cheat” in MMOs, but it was usually at the risk of breaking the EULA and facing the risk of being banned. It was not in any way approved by most companies. Now we have companies that actually encourage you to buy gold, so you can “get rewards”, instead of playing the game they actually spent years making.

I agree that GW2 is not a strict P2W game, but with many items being incredible difficult to get through normal game play, it is definitely a pay-to-not-grind game.

GW2 is a good game, I just don’t care for the RMT. So I have decided to take a break, I may play again in the future if things change.

Good hunting, and be cool to each other

The term “pay to win” applies to a competitive state. Generally games that have a versus functionality, like online FPS games, or any other situation of that nature.

Competing in the PvP aspect of the game doesn’t have any different impact than if someone spent $200 in the shop. Only difference it really makes is the attire that someone’s wearing cause of how much glory one gets.

Don’t really want to sound like an echo among others, but the term by the OP was skewed to a different fashion than the actual usage of the term.

There are three types of people:

Type 1: People who don’t have very much free time but have enough disposable income that they are fine with spending extra money on the game. These people can spend relatively little time playing the game and simply buy a lot of gems to convert to gold and fully gear out all of their characters. These people are fine with pay 2 win because it allows them to get characters fully geared in exotics even though they don’t have much time to play.

Type 2: People who don’t have much disposable income, but have a lot of free time on their hands. These people don’t spend any extra money on the game but are able to fully gear out characters in exotics regardless because they have the time to spend several hundreds of hours playing. These people are fine with pay 2 win because it doesn’t affect them since they are already able to max out chars anyway and think maxing out a char is a relatively easy thing to do.

Type 3: People who do not have a lot of disposable income, and don’t have a lot of free time on their hands. These people don’t like pay 2 win because they don’t have the time nor the money to max our a char in a reasonable amount of time. Getting a char to lvl 80 with full exotics may be a process that takes a year or longer, and they are jealous of both the Type 1 and Type 2 individuals because they are able to max our chars easily due to real life resources (time and money) which the Type 3 individual does not have.

All arguments about pay 2 win come down to these three types of individuals thinking everyone else is exactly like them.

It takes a week or two to get a character to level 80, in full exotics, without the cash shop. If you gather along the way, you might even have leveled a craft or two.

It isn’t about jealously, its about wanting a game world and economy that is separate and unaffected by real money.

Diva.4706:

I want an MMO where real money only allows access to log in. When in game, all content is obtained/experienced through game play. Period.

I feel those types of games are gone.

Yeah, and they will probably be gone for a while, why would a company not want real money in-game….?

Steelo.4597:

i spend time to get money. much less time then you spend to farm to get the same stuff as me. now i dont mind people who actually have fun at farming. but from my experience you only farm to get the ressources, its a means, not an end. and if people could pick up 1 gold instead of farming orr for an hour they would do it, that is my judgement. so whatever your definition, you cant deny i got an edge on you by paying euros and putting my real-life-weight in the ring. and its not like i find that a good principle in gaming. for me it should be the one putting most time = the uber hero, not the one putting most money. i just put some euros because i couldnt for the hell of it be arsed to spend 100+ hours farming orr to get a commander title.

if you had full exotics on hitting lvl 80 you didnt rush there.. i arrived at 80 completely broke because i put focus on full exp and only got my grandmaster book at around lvl 78. or you are just lieing or talking about an alt-char because that sounds pretty much like bullkitten to me. you need around 200k karma, 300 pvp badges and 12g to go instant-exotics. if you got that on hitting lvl 80 you really went out of your way to get karma and gold.

I’m a player since beta and I entered release with quite a sufficient knowledgebase about the game. I was far away from broke once I hit 80. No gemshop user ever had an advantage over me, because it took quite a lot of time after I was 80 and geared for the TP to eventually start working.

I’ve never farmed Orr, not in the past and not now, because I dislike it honestly. I’ve never worn karma gear, nor wvwvw one (it’s ugly). I crafted my first gear myself, got some mats cheaply from mapchat and I was full exo within one week.

Now, since I have one lvl 80 as main it’s even easier to gear alts, usually my alts have their endgame gear already in their inventory once they hit lvl 30 and that is by playing them the most casual way possible.

But honestly, if you still believe GW2 is P2W, come take your char with real life money spent on lvling to spvp, show me your P2W and how that will make you “win” with your money vs time. I’ll be looking forward to it. :P