FFXIV - A Step to P2W (My 2.45 Feedback)

[Taliph]

I DID:



Dreadwyrm gear can't be traded or sold. (I'm keeping DoH/DoL gear out of this. My fault for not stating that before.)





"Being selfish" has nothing to do with the topic at hand. Ad hominems are no better than a circular argument.

I'm not "ok with P2W", because you don't "win" anything from selling a bracelet. No game mechanics are changed, the gil you acquire doesn't buy gear that makes the game's hardest content easy, the gil also doesn't buy gear that makes PvP easy.

IF it did any of those things, that would be P2W. But it doesn't, so it's not.

I like how you clipped the part where I state that I do not assume you are selfish....

Then go on to prove that you in fact are... You cannot conveniently exclude a large part of the game for the benefit of your argument.

Edit to add:
Step one: Buy EB
Step two: sell EB for Gil skipping hours/days/weeks of playing the game (the pay to win)
Step three: buy BiS gear for crafting/gathering with said Gil, or FCOB clears w/drops.

[Ooshima]

With the eternal bonding aside, since the topic says P2W:

Seriously guys, do you really believe that this game, at this stage, has any method of pay-to-win?

You can give everyone a full set if IL130 gear, those with the skill to clear T13 will clear it will clear it comfortably. Those without, can't even clear T9 with echo right now. Gear does help in a way or another, but it doesn't equate to winning T13. Just no. Gil can't buy skill. Those winners who wins, have already won the game in week one/two of patch 2.45.

Whlist there are indeed some arguments about eternal bond bracelet selling, but stop crying about bracelet selling = P2W. Go sell 50 bracelets if you want, and come back and tell me if that stack of gil have won you end game, if you haven't.

[polyphonica]

Half of these threads come down to the term "pay-to-win" itself.

One half says "money should never allow you to speed up or bypass anything in-game, as that's paying to win." The other half says "whether you speed up the process or not, that's not going to help you win the game." It would probably be easier to have the conversation if the term itself wasn't so debatable. (Never mind the automatic equating of F2P with P2W, and saying that sub-games don't offer ways to convert cash into gold, even though many do, and on and on. A lot of this thread has been arguing over semantics and debatable claims.)

In the end though... I don't there's truly any way to remove the influence of money as long as MMOs rely on time investment. Because, at a most primitive level, I could just pay an unemployed friend of mine to login to my account and grind the day away, and pay them some minimal amount + food or whatever. In the most general sense, that's what "gold farmers" basically are; people who will accept minimal money to do tedious tasks so people with more money than time don't have to. I personally don't see the point of doing something like that because I find value in the fact that I worked to earn things in the game myself, even if it's time-consuming... but it's been pointed out to me before that, for people whose entire enjoyment comes from raiding, for example, anything that gets them there faster may be seen as more valuable than any process of earning it in-game. Not 100% sure how I feel about that, but I guess it's all about perspective.

Anyway, we're not going to solve this larger issue/disagreement any time soon.

[pinder2009]

Its not P2W. You aren't gaining any stats directly from the bracelets. It is pay to pretty. Its all vanity and this is no different from some other rare item for multiple millions.

[dice137]

I like how you clipped the part where I state that I do not assume you are selfish....

Then go on to prove that you in fact are... You cannot conveniently exclude a large part of the game for the benefit of your argument.

I misinterpreted that bit, so my apologies. Regardless, one being selfish still has nothing to do with what does or doesn't qualify as P2W.

As for crafter/gatherer gear... I can't speak for gathering due to lack of experience. But if someone just goes and buys the best crafting gear, I know that doesn't magically make them a great crafter. Gil doesn't buy players the skill to craft top tier items.

Gil doesn't level a job to 50, it doesn't complete the MSQ for you, it doesn't unlock trials or dungeons. Before we even think about Coil, these are just basic things every player must do to progress through the game's main content... and none of it is bought with in-game currency.

[Ooshima]

Snip

IMHO, the real thing on P2W is that if I pay this certain amount in cash shop, and I obtain this imba item which helps me to the toughest content in a reasonable amount of time, then it is really P2W.

But if you are telling me that some people are selling 1 bracelet for 6m gil, and that bracelet costs like, $10-20USD (I don't really know how much it sells anyways, so take it as an example), so $100-200USD should net me 60mil gil in game. Sure I can buy a full set of IL110 crafted gear and pentameld them with IV materia and also a full set of IL90 accessories melded with VIT IV yada yada. But then, having all these meant that I will beat T13 in say, 1 week?

If you can beat T10-T13 in one week you should be in Lucrezia, or any of the world top 10 FCs/Teams. If you are not, and you are paying so much cash to get the gil and you are not going to beat the game any soon, how is that P2W? You are P2GLA: Paying to Get Laughed At. If you are going to crawl your way to your T13 clear you might as well just farm Poetics and buy your Poetics gear or even wait for the drops from the last installment of Crystal Tower, or just getting anything naturally.

This is the cold hard truth. Gil can only buy you as much as the items you want, but it doesn't buy you skill to beat the game in a timely fashion. Well, unless you are talking about carries, but then I haven't seen any grps selling T13 yet. Most people who are really into buying "wins", wants the excitement of getting them early and showing off their shinnies. By the time T13 sales become possible, it's a little late into the game, and even so, it existed way before Eternal Bond because people have been selling T5 and T9 since ages ago.

I can't see any strong argument put forth to suggest that there is a strong element of P2W in this game.

[Taliph]

I misinterpreted that bit, so my apologies. Regardless, one being selfish still has nothing to do with what does or doesn't qualify as P2W.

As for crafter/gatherer gear... I can't speak for gathering due to lack of experience. But if someone just goes and buys the best crafting gear, I know that doesn't magically make them a great crafter. Gil doesn't buy players the skill to craft top tier items.

Gil doesn't level a job to 50, it doesn't complete the MSQ for you, it doesn't unlock trials or dungeons. Before we even think about Coil, these are just basic things every player must do to progress through the game's main content... and none of it is bought with in-game currency.

Gil does buy the stats to craft the 4-star "endgame" recipes same goes for gathering unspoiled nodes. Gil can buy the leve items to level a craft or gathering job to 50. Macros make up for skill in crafts(no skill involved in copy/paste)

How isn't this pay to win at least for crafting and gathering?

And as far as combat, Gil buys ilvl 110, Gil buys clears/carries, Gil buys drops from those clears as well, in most cases.

[polyphonica]

This is the cold hard truth. Gil can only buy you as much as the items you want, but it doesn't buy you skill to beat the game in a timely fashion. Well, unless you are talking about carries, but then I haven't seen any grps selling T13 yet. Most people who are really into buying "wins", wants the excitement of getting them early and showing off their shinnies. By the time T13 sales become possible, it's a little late into the game, and even so, it existed way before Eternal Bond because people have been selling T5 and T9 since ages ago.

Well, and even if it did allow you to buy a T13 clear today and you "Win the Game"... then what? You're going to hang around Mor Dhona or your large personal house and do nothing? Quit the game for a few months and come back with the next patch so you can "win" again? I guess maybe you could level up all your crafters/gatherings, but surely such people would find that tedious as heck and pointless since they could just buy whatever they want. Use the gil to manipulate the markets, I guess? Or keep on running the same content over and over in their BiS gear to show off? Won't that get old?

Anyway, I guess I'm the wrong person to ask. I've spent way too much time in this game doing tedious stuff when I probably should have been focused more on "winning the game". But I just figure if I win, it's game over, and that's kind of beside the point. ^^;

[Ooshima]

Snip

I have no idea really. For us, once we clear the game we are pretty much jumping around the slope around our FC house and chilling and chatting in game and once in a while, do some silly stuff and runs etc. I'm not a carry buyer (a seller, actually) so IDK what's their mentality.

Well, some do buy wins and show off their shinies on MD, some actually becomes regular customer that buys carries from our FC every week... IDK. Buying wins doesn't buy you the skill to farm, so they end up in a routine buy? I think eventually it gets old too, they might stop doing it unless they find another purpose/fun in game (maybe they found friends in game but too lazy/no time/nub to actually clear the game so they resorted to buy what they want). But in any case it's beside the point. There is still nothing in the cash shop that grants me some crazy stats and allows me to steamroll new bosses and beat it for every patch release, so there's still no strong talk about P2W, just yet.

[tocsin]

Gil does buy the stats to craft the 4-star "endgame" recipes same goes for gathering unspoiled nodes. Gil can buy the leve items to level a craft or gathering job to 50. Macros make up for skill in crafts(no skill involved in copy/paste)

How isn't this pay to win at least for crafting and gathering?

I'm not sure what your experience level in crafting is, but unless they have truly unlimited funding, an couple million gil will get you nowhere close to 4 star stats in crafting. hell, I've blown through 50 mil, and am still nowhere close.

Also, macro crafts will only get you so far. We do not yet have a macro for 4 star crafts. and 3 star is still very iffy.

Unspoiled node gathering, 99% isn't limited by stats. you can get the stats easy. remembering to be in the right place to gather at the right time, to get the items you need for progression at a low RNG chance, that's more than half of it, and all the gil in the world wont buy that.

Remember, the primary tokens for progression in both crafting and gathering are untradeable. you can buy the mats for them, but you still need skill to HQ them.

essentially, you can only get so far, even in crafting and gathering, with 5, 10, 15, 20 mil gil. and I seriously doubt that someone is spending four to five hundred dollars on this game, just to buy marriage bracelets, in hopes of finding 10-15 people who have 5 million to spend this way.

edit: so I just checked my server, and the bracelets are down to 1 mil per. so lets talk about spending a thousand dollars, to get to 4 star.