What an awful waste of a great game and some great content.

The billions of credits floating around needs sorting out.

The fact that there's so many things that can be bought for RL cash and then sold to easily build up enormous piles of credits which are then turned into game-difficulty defining gear is ridiculous. At the least packs and market items bought should have the binding time removed and be permanently bound to legacy to allow moving items to an appropriate toon of the buyer's. Things like helping f2p items should still be tradable but the rest allows pay2win to an insane degree.

I understand the company philosophy and "The game needs to be profitable" but seriously, how many mmo's have a significant life-span with this type of economy?

EVE Online says hi.

"But, but, they only sell PLEX and maybe a monocle here and there!"

Step 1: Buy 50 plex

Step 2: Sell 50 plex for 400-500mil each (last I checked)

Step 3: Search contract market for high end bling, and/or check the officially sanctioned and regulated characters for sale forum to buy a toon with skills you want (thus bypassing months or years of RL training time on your own toon)

Step 4: ???

Step 5: Profit

Though it is hilarious when a blinged out, P2W PVE ship gets ganked by a clever PVPer when said P2W PVEr is clueless as to EVE's PVP risk mechanics.

Then explain it. I know what P2W means in the mmo's I've played. Tell me yours.

Pay2Win means being forced to spend money so as not to be at a competitive disadvantage.

As the most you can do in this game is pimp out a toon in the second highest tier of PvE armour/mods with no set bonuses and better equipment with set bonuses etc can only be obtained through play, this game does not qualify.

Also, people had the money to do this before the CM via playing the GTN game, so it's a moot point anyway.

Then explain it. I know what P2W means in the mmo's I've played. Tell me yours.

P2W is when the shop sells items that

a. make your characters overpowered for their level - but most importantly, for endgame PVE and PVP content.

b. cannot be acquired any other way except by buying them for real-life money from the shop.

That is not the case here.

And even though you might be right that you can make credits much easier than you normally would, by selling Cartel Market items even if you go on to make 1 billion credits, you CANNOT buy the highest tier of gear because it's not craftable. At best, you might end up with a character whose PVE gear is one level below the highest tier and your bank account will have hundreds (maybe thousands) of dollars/euros etc less than it did. For PVP, things are even simpler: you can have 1 billion credits and it would still make no difference in PVP, because the only way to get PVP gear is by getting Warzone/Ranked Warzone commendations.

Worst P2W I've seen.

Then you haven't seen much P2W IMO, which is not surprising.

This is not P2W. There were a few items on the market that could fit into a P2W definition, but have been there for quite some time (a few crystals and the ship upgrades).

This model is very similar to many successful hybrid models on the market. If anything it is TOO RESTRICTIVE and therefore not as profitable as it could be....they still try and push folks to sub which seems like a lost opportunity for profit to me.

Yep exactly, however I'm thinking beyond this.

Anyway I realised I cba with the point as it'll be opposed by those with the credits and they would claim to have none anyway.

EVE Online says hi.

 

"But, but, they only sell PLEX and maybe a monocle here and there!"

 

Step 1: Buy 50 plex

Step 2: Sell 50 plex for 400-500mil each (last I checked)

Step 3: Search contract market for high end bling, and/or check the officially sanctioned and regulated characters for sale forum to buy a toon with skills you want (thus bypassing months or years of RL training time on your own toon)

Step 4: ???

Step 5: Profit

 

Though it is hilarious when a blinged out, P2W PVE ship gets ganked by a clever PVPer when said P2W PVEr is clueless as to EVE's PVP risk mechanics.

Comparing such complex and deep social engineering economy sandbox to WoW clone is a little misleading. As closing of your own post kinda suggests, what exactly you are flying, how good 'gear' and 'talent tree' you have in Eve Online isn't in heart of it all, in terms of what you can and can not now do in game, in same way it is in TOR. Having said that, they undeniably make very similar "soft P2W" fn you will; For modest amount of IRL cash you can buy yourself out of months of money grind. Having said that having said that - part, if you are willing to spend..what, 1100 dollars on your MMO(your steps 1 and 2:o ) changes are, it much changes your experience in-game in any and all MMO ever made:p

This form of P2W present saddens me to a degree. What is much more disturbing and depressing is how dominant cash shop items in TOR have become. Vast majority of gear with unique graphics are brought to game with IRL cash now. Vast majority of new content added to game is all about this visual junk being added. Ultimately I blame community for it; community was so gosh darned 'easy' to please. Instead of demanding deeper, more enjoyable and better tuned MMO, signigficant enough portion of subscribers turned all star eyed from being able to buy a bathrobe with name Revan on it for 5 dollah. Instead of forcing EA to WORK for the succes of their 200 mil MMO, community ensured it was enough of them to start selling xmas holo trees for 5 dollah. We are very easy and we made turning TOR to comfortably profitable very easy.

As far as I'm concerned, 'pay2win' means, that gear that is comparable to your top raid and pvp gear is available to be purchased for cash money from a cash shop. That's not happening here, so in the strictest sense, I don't feel it's 'pay2win'.

What is happening, is that people are amassing credits by selling cartel crap on the gtn, and they use this money to upgrade their stuff, via the crafted mods on the market.

I for one, have no issue with this, because I don't raid, I'm a solo player, but I still like to feel like I can stand up to the content. I'm not the best, but I'm not mediocre either. The way the system is, allows everyone to have a crack at the CM items, without having to buy off the cash shop. It lets people who can craft, actually craft things of worth, and it does take time and investment to be able to make these things.

Also if you think the f2p people are cashing in, in a big way and are able to buy all this stuff, they can't, because they're limited in the money amount they can hold, so they won't be buying mods that sell for 1.2 million a piece...and when you have to get 21 of these mods for a set of armour at over a million each a lot of times for top mods, you have to find a way to raise the money. The players that choose to do this, are paying a sub, and probably paying for boxes...people like me, and we should have the option to play this way, its our money. Even so, I can't afford to buy for all my toons the mods they need. I run my toons on a max of lvl 66 gear that I can craft the bits for myself.

This game already has precious little to craft for good value, and if they stop this, well you may as well delete all the crafting things, because they won't be worth doing. Doing the group content will still get you the best gear going without spending a dime in the game, so I don't see this as a pay2win in the strictest sense, imo.

 

Also if you think the f2p people are cashing in, in a big way and are able to buy all this stuff, they can't, because they're limited in the money amount they can hold, so they won't be buying mods that sell for 1.2 million a piece..

..This is completely OT but above isn't exactly true. I'm FTP(Well, Freemium) for significant majority of my time in TOR and actually find it very fun and rewarding to come up with ways of trading my self exceptionally expensive stuff despite my credit cap. If pick this approach(or as FTP, are forced to pick this approach) you end up doing yourself a favor in long run;p Unavoidably you develop a very good idea of what is easy to sell, what is hard to sell, how GTN and /trade channel 'games' work.

Yep exactly, however I'm thinking beyond this.

 

Anyway I realised I cba with the point as it'll be opposed by those with the credits and they would claim to have none anyway.

I have never got above about 300k on any character. My highest is level 27, about to ding 28 (I suffer from altitis) So I'm very much not one of those 'with credits'.

You're STILL wrong.

...... you CANNOT buy the highest tier of gear because it's not craftable. At best, you might end up with a character whose PVE gear is one level below the highest tier .....

This one I will respond to as it's well-considered.

However 1 tier below the best still has a big drag on all the tiers below and the cartel items that can be bought for cash and sold for in-game currency (be that credits or gold-quality tradables like mass manips or others that hold their value well) therefore have a significant effect on the difficulty of the game.

Simply adding more difficulty settings doesn't help either as those without the "pay" resources others have don't have the chance to buy the gear needed for the higher levels meaning less cash denies some of the population content easily accessible to those with cash.

So it might not be the simplistic P2W mentioned above but it's certainly an extended version of it.

I have never got above about 300k on any character. My highest is level 27, about to ding 28 (I suffer from altitis) So I'm very much not one of those 'with credits'.

 

You're STILL wrong.

You can't possibly understand my point if you've not passed lvl 27 yet.

This one I will respond to as it's well-considered.

 

However 1 tier below the best still has a big drag on all the tiers below and the cartel items that can be bought for cash and sold for in-game currency (be that credits or gold-quality tradables like mass manips or others that hold their value well) therefore have a significant effect on the difficulty of the game.

 

Simply adding more difficulty settings doesn't help either as those without the "pay" resources others have don't have the chance to buy the gear needed for the higher levels meaning less cash denies some of the population content easily accessible to those with cash.

 

So it might not be the simplistic P2W mentioned above but it's certainly an extended version of it.

A) You can't craft PvP gear

B) The PvE tier BELOW BiS being craftable is hardly pay to win. You can use credits earned in-game to skip 4 weeks of grind. You can also use credits earned in-game to buy 25% xp buffs off the gtn. Neither are P2W.

A) You can't craft PvP gear

B) The PvE tier BELOW BiS being craftable is hardly pay to win. You can use credits earned in-game to skip 4 weeks of grind. You can also use credits earned in-game to buy 25% xp buffs off the gtn. Neither are P2W.

You can still pay your way through a lot of content. I recently decided to take a break from pvp and do a bit of pve. I had to start in crappy blue level 53 gear, though me and a friend did joke about buying cartel market junk, sell on the GTN and flat out buy good gear because that would get us into Operations without having to grind Flashpoints.

So this game does have P2W in my opinion. Perhaps it is a mild version, but when you can use real money to get in-game currency to upgrade in-game gear, it is P2W.

I had to start in crappy blue level 53 gear, though me and a friend did joke about buying cartel market junk, sell on the GTN and flat out buy good gear because that would get us into Operations without having to grind Flashpoints.

 

No it doesn't - you've just contradicted yourself in your own post.

In the above statement you could simply "grind flashpoints". You are NOT forced to spend money to remain competitive.

Spend a week doing nothing but dailies. Take 1 character and do BH, Section X, Makeb and Czerka each day.

You'll have a load of basic coms - for gear certainly better than the Blue 53's and you'll be more than ready for HM flashpoints. Once you start these you'll start earning Elite coms.

At no point in that process do you HAVE to spend credits.

So as has already been said - there is no P2W.

No it doesn't - you've just contradicted yourself in your own post.

In the above statement you could simply "grind flashpoints". You are NOT forced to spend money to remain competitive.

Spend a week doing nothing but dailies. Take 1 character and do BH, Section X, Makeb and Czerka each day.

You'll have a load of basic coms - for gear certainly better than the Blue 53's and you'll be more than ready for HM flashpoints. Once you start these you'll start earning Elite coms.

At no point in that process do you HAVE to spend credits.

 

So as has already been said - there is no P2W.

ANYTHING can be done with enough time, part of the P2W philosophy is that you skip enormous amounts of time and grind to get there a lot quicker. If someone's so far beyond needing credits it's easy to lose sight of the restrictions of having very little (relatively speaking) all over again.

P.S. I have no interest in PVP in any way and the dedicated gear has very little influence on the PVE content which is the major part of the game.

It is not pay to win, or at least, no more so than any other game with digital currency now.

In Guild Wars 2, SO many people paid to get gold so they could get the mats for their legendary weapons or mystic armor. Of course, parts of the recipe were things you had to grind by playing. So basically you could get second highest tear of gear.

In Warcraft, tons of people used to buy gold or, even, buy rankings, so that they could unlock gear. I understand your point that the Cartel is sanctioned and operated by EA, but the basic point is the same.

In Warcraft, if you shelled out enough for gold, you could get to all but the highest tiers of gear, especially in recent patches where there are MANY bind on equip items in the strongest dungeons that you could buy for gold.

The trend in PVE in MMORPGs is flattened gear because people are tiring of the raiding and incremental gear grinds. In old Warcraft, you literally had to agonizingly go through each tier. Now, really, there is tier 1 and like tier 1.5. This is no different from SWTOR.

There is base gear you can get pretty easily, and the absolute best gear which you have to earn.

In PvP, I think it's much better than Warcraft or other options, in the sense that you literally can only get rewards by playing PvP.

I think SWTOR has some stuff to fix, but I think people are looking for problems in the Cartel that aren't there.

Should there be some vanity or gear things people pay money for in the cartel store? Yes, if you like SWTOR and don't mind people paying and getting that stuff so the F2P players can stay F2P. I you don't like the cartel, you should have subscribed. If enough people had done that, they wouldn't have needed to do it.

This is P2I - Pay to Improve. But that's what you get when you can't run solely off subscriptions.

I don't know - I bought the game on deluxe pre-order, played two months and left. I'm back now and I'm really impressed at the changes and I like it. I know it is frustrating and slow to see the problems, but EA had a management shake-up, fired 15% of the Company and is SLOWLY trying to improve. Christ, you should see the mess they had with Simcity. I stupidly bought that too and that game is dead on arrival. At least, hopefully they can fix this one before it's too late.

I think keeping up lots of content will help.

Also, gear is one thing but performance is another. Even in these MMORPGs, you can have the best PvP or PVE gear, but the action is all in getting the heroic clears the quickest, or sustaining high PvP performance in tourneys.

Everybody I know in PvE in the good MMORPGs has basically the best gear, but there are still huge gaps in top 500 guilds in WoW and how fast they clear the hardest bosses. There are huge gaps between people capped in PvP gear and who stays on top.

If you think even getting the best gear means you have "won", you haven't. People will know who cleared the content the fastest and, the moment the new content comes, if you weren't naturally good or putting in your time, you have to pay again.

Honestly, if some person is going to pay $50-100 a pop to get some gear each time any new content drops, that's crazy pricy. If they choose to have their fun paying that kind of money, that's life. It's just a game and it's not like their actions inhibit my fun. I can accomplish the same thing, have the pleasure of knowing I did it myself, and pocket the cash.

Plus, the way I think about it is I subscribe, but if enough people weren't paying for those cartel coins, they would have to shut the game down or come up with some even crazier scheme.

Just wait - see what happens when WoW gets below 1M subscribers one day. The cash scheme there will make Bernie Madoff look like Aunt Jemima. They will make you pay to take a dump in capital cities or to dance with other NPCs.

No it doesn't - you've just contradicted yourself in your own post.

In the above statement you could simply "grind flashpoints". You are NOT forced to spend money to remain competitive.

Spend a week doing nothing but dailies. Take 1 character and do BH, Section X, Makeb and Czerka each day.

You'll have a load of basic coms - for gear certainly better than the Blue 53's and you'll be more than ready for HM flashpoints. Once you start these you'll start earning Elite coms.

At no point in that process do you HAVE to spend credits.

 

So as has already been said - there is no P2W.

What Buggs already said. P2W doesn't mean you -have- to spend real money on a game, it means you -can- do it. If I toss money on a bunch of cartel packs and sell it on the GTN I'll soon be able to buy crafted gear that is better than what you can get for basic comms.

So long as you -can- use real money to advance your character in game (directly or indirectly), the game suffers from P2W.

This one I will respond to as it's well-considered.

 

However 1 tier below the best still has a big drag on all the tiers below and the cartel items that can be bought for cash and sold for in-game currency (be that credits or gold-quality tradables like mass manips or others that hold their value well) therefore have a significant effect on the difficulty of the game.

 

Simply adding more difficulty settings doesn't help either as those without the "pay" resources others have don't have the chance to buy the gear needed for the higher levels meaning less cash denies some of the population content easily accessible to those with cash.

 

So it might not be the simplistic P2W mentioned above but it's certainly an extended version of it.

"Win", though a highly debatable term when talking about an MMO, is about beating the hardest content there is by paying or having access to overpowered items that can be acquired only through the game's shop.

If someone is buying stuff off the CM for real-life money and selling them on the GTN in order to get second-best gear, they're not Paying to Win, they're Paying to be a Fool. So, if they want to do just that, I say let them. They are paying for my enjoyment

Also, even if you were right about the P2W element, your title would still be misleading and plain out false. Because if this is the "worst P2W you've seen" you've either not seen real P2W or P2W is not the huge, game-changing issue that people make it out to be.

Lastly, I'd like to add this: no matter what they add to a game's shop, the moment the shop itself is added there will be people crying "P2W! P2W!"

In this case, they give you the option to buy the stuff you like from the GTN, which if you ask me is good for us but it might not be the wisest decision for Bioware both in terms of income and the time needed for people to reach BiS gear. But that's their choice to make, not mine.

You can abuse the system and bypass most of the endgame content to get second best gear, by selling CM stuff and making a lot of credits, but that's just stupid because in addition to just having spent probably thousands of dollars/euros for a game, if you go straight to the hardest content there is and beat it...well... there's not much else to be paying for, is there?

You're essentially buying your way out of the fun you could've been having by playing the game. How is that rational or even Bioware's fault?