Guild Wars 2

no, i was not joking or anything.
pay to win is where you can get an advantage by paying real money over players that cant.
or to put it another way, when you can buy power
since this game has no subscription, things like XP boosts and karma boosts are just getting more out of their playtime, which im okay with.
damage boosts on the otherhand are quite litrally buying power.

i ask you this, if those “pay to win” games you were talking about, with being 1000% better, if they had a “gold to gem” system like GW2, would they stop being pay to win instantly? no matter how much power was buyable?

also, at what % would you say the boosts are then pay to win?
10%? 100%? 1,000,000% extra dmg? if it’s buyable with gold, is that okay?
if buying 1,000,000% more damage with gems, even if it’s also buyable with gold is buying power, isnt 5% also buying power, just to a much lesser extent?

yes, you are right, it is not major, but it still goes against them saying that they would not sell power.

OP, it really annoys me too.

especially all these people defending it.
the worst defence is “well i can buy gems with gold, so it’s not pay to win”

that argument basically says “nothing this game does can be pay to win”
because even if they released a teir of gear above exotic that could only be bought with gems, gold → gems means not pay to win.

im not going to stop playing the game becuase of it, but i really really hope they remove them, because bonus movementspeed, armor and dmg just make you a better character.
If there ever gets to be hard content that no one can beat, but they almost can, have everyone pop their boosts, and suddenly they can.

random earthquake destroys all walls.

worked for me about 20 mins ago.

just the removed the character slot… meaning there was no point

again, this is due to the current snowbally nature of the game.

when you own 90% of the world, and the other two servers own 5% each, there isnt much fun to have for either side.

if they game naturally counterbalanced it’s self, so that generally the game would stay at about 40%,30%,30% (obviously swinging around more then that, so you’d often own more then 1/2, and sometimes be losing for short periods etc) then closer games would mean that one super serious night could actually turn the game around.

instead, currently you get 3 orbs then sit back and relax and let your stats take care of both servers (again, i know there is more to it then that, but it’s still super snowbally).

there was no chance for us to win our matchup after the 1st day. people stoped really trying, if there is some actual tension about who will win, even when winning, you’ll have plenty of people to fight, because the underdogs will be thirsty to usurp you.

yeah, cant wait till they start adding costs to server transfers, and all the server hoppers are trapped in a server with 4 hour queues, and WvW is made less snowbally, so one server doesnt dominate, and 2v1ing the winning server becomes possible.

wasnt it just to stop chain running dungeons to make way too much gold too quickly?

i mean, i dont want hyper inflation in this game.

your problem is your word “meaningful reward” exotic gear is the only “meaningful reward”, after you are all exotic, from crafting or w/e, grats, you are now done.

from there on you have the choice of either working towards getting gear you like the look of, playing WvW, getting 100% complete or mindlessly gathering. (sPvP you had the choice to do at level 1, so im not counting it)
if it’s grindy for you to do dungeons, then YES you should ignore it, if you REALLY REALLY need that style gear, then you just need to choose how much you need it, and how grindy it feels.

slow down maybe? game only just came out, you have years to get the prettiest items.

he missunderstood me, it should just say “no anti-snowball mechanics”

this is actually called “snowball mechanics”.
“slippery slope” is where something creeps little by little untill it passes a point that would have never been accepted back when it 1st started slipping, but is now, because it’s only slightly worse then it’s last state and doesnt seem like a big problem.

transfer cost based on population

yep, orbs snowball the game, instead of having catch up mechanics to keep people interested.

instead of having lots of “win more” mechanics, having ones that equalise the game, it can become keeping a constant small advantage over the opponent instead of getting an orb 1st, useing the stat advantage to snowball into the 3rd orb, then taking all of everywhere coz your superpowered.

you want a game to be even, not a one sided smashfest.

or even just add some type of counterplay options, like a siege weapon that inverts orb buff on those in the area, or something.

i think one huge problem is orbs.
they just snowball the game, winners win more.

there are also no catch up mechanics, which there really should be to have a fun game.

free transfers are also being detrimental to WvW, because people just leave if they are losing, and go to the winning side.

maybe having some type of ritual to disrupt the orbs effects on a map, and then if both servers do the ritual, invert the orbs effects for an hour or something would help.

if one server has all 3 orbs, just have both opposing servers run the ritual, turn it into -150 to all stats, and -15% hp, then cap it all back and take back the orb.

or a reinforcement event, that gives you 100 NPCs, but they spread evenly over what you own, so if you have only one keep, you get all reinforcements there, making that location basically impossible to cap, but if you own 30 places, it only adds 3 to each.

or even something simple like a “management debuff” that lowers your teams stats based on how much of the world you own, the more you own, the more points you get, but the weaker you are, and harder it is to hold it all.

once games are playable for an outmatched team, people would go back to low pop servers to avoid the queues, then add gem costs on transfer to seal up the servers maintain balance, maybe make it cost more gems the higher poplulation the server is, with going to a lowpop server staying free, or trivially costed.