Pay to Win
Agreed. All of the new content is basically still “beta.” It will take quite a few balance patches to tune things. I have yet to see an MMO that launches a new profession that’s perfectly balanced.
It isn’t a matter of nerfing elites or buffing base. Its a matter of design. Elites don’t just have brute force and nothing else. They’re more complex. They’ve got more/better mechanics to tinker with. They’ve got more flexibility. I say elites are fine. Base needs a total overhaul.
As long as Anet reasonably balances the new elite specs with the old ones, HoT will not be pay to win. Please keep in mind it’s only been a few days since the expansion. Some things are clearly broken. The worst offenders should get nerfed, while underperforming base specs should ideally receive a boost. It seems like Anet really wanted the elite specs to be fun and viable, and that has come at the cost of older specs feeling lacking, but give it time. There have already been frequent changes, so I expect things will calm down shortly.
I r8 your click b8 title at 8/8 m8.
Set aside the need to monetize games, especially persistent games like mmos, for a moment. Evaluate pay to win on the concepts of a level playing field alone.
Consider the two scenarios that exist with the expansion:
1. A new profession was added: the revenant. You get the revenant, and the entire revenant including its specialization.
2. Specializations added to existing professions. Essentially an expansion to an otherwise complete character.
For the case of the revenant, assuming the designers have not intentionally created the profession to be more powerful than the others be default, the game is gaining another complete profession to add to the roster. And because the power level is appropriate the addition of the revenant is not a pay to win situation.
For the case of the specialization additions, this can fall into a pay to win situation quite easily. If you don’t have the specialization for your profession you don’t have a compete character and now you are not a level playing field with those that have the specialization. It really comes down to this (again not from a monetization perspective but from designing a fair competition):
- if specializations are too weak to matter then they are needless bloat that only add complexity and potentially trap choices to new players created a barrier to entry
- if specializations are of an appropriate power level then it can creates a two tiered system of complete characters (ie with the specialization choices and options) and those without (an incomplete character).
Note the above only really applies in the context of PvP as its the only part of the game that requires a level playing field to function.
Unfortunately, games as a business is much more complicated I’m sure and there is always going to be the need to monetize players bumping against creating a fair and competitive game.