Tyranei's Post History

Tyranei
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About a month ago I spent some time trying to argue against EME's decision to rely on the cash shop for cosmetic items. Most posters simply ignored the points I brought up and declared me as "mad you can't afford $10" or that its healthy for the company despite pointing out I had plenty of disposable income and that no MMO has ever benefited from the release of a cash shop, in terms of the quality of the content. I was hyped for this game more than any other. Almost every aspect of the game appealed to me. The combat was refreshing and fun. The BAMs were awesome. The lore was interesting and unique. The Elin were moe. The gear was cool and tasteful (besides some Female heavy armor) for release. More than any other game I wanted this one to become successful.

Since then I have discussed with my friends that play this game how enjoyable it is compared to our disgust with today's market in money-grubbing MMO companies. We have decided to drop this game in hopes to let our wallets do the talking since words won't work. As someone pointed out previously, cash shops increase the income the game generates. So, I hope someone is willing to spend $90 a month to cover EME's losses generated from their decision to rely on the cash shop. Obviously this is only for my circle of friends and peers so who knows how many others have left.

Yes, this is a goodbye thread so it will most likely get locked. I wouldn't be surprised if there comes a day when no one knows why the game feels empty due to these kinds of threads being locked. We just feel EME views their player-base as mere wallets instead of players. I may pop in the forums every once and awhile to see how things are but I will not be giving them my business so long as they uphold these business practices. There are other games I can play.
Edited by: Tyranei 10 months ago
Leiloni on 07/19/2012, 10:12 AM - view
Aiden99 on 07/19/2012, 08:53 AM


Shocking Implosion is slow... takes about 2 seconds to charge and hit...I faced many mobs and most of them jump through me as soon as I let it off.

The only time I can get one successfully on is when I ambush them with it.

MAIN SPELL: the radiance spell, is so damn slow travelling to your target that 90 % of the time, the target dodges successfully.

You aim, release and bam, your target jumped...

your final reprisal spell is even slower... aim 1 second, charge up 1 second x 3 for each set means 4 seconds to deal mediocre damage at best... not to mention that you are still for those seconds...


Shocking Implosion I have no issues with. There is no charging of the spell. You just hit it in the mob's face and it goes off. That's another thing - you should be in melee range the entire fight as a Priest, 3m. Shocking Implosion and our AoEs will hit a mob multiple times if you're right up close to it. Adds to your dps. Also, I often open with Shocking Implosion since it's our greatest burst move and it has a CD, so the sooner you can get it off, the sooner you can use it on the next mob. Priest's work better one or two regular mobs at a time. One mob and a bunch of little guys is also fine. But our burst has a CD, so we are better doing one normal at a time. Even using Shocking Implosion at the end of a fight or somewhere in between I don't find hard - just aim it properly at the mob and go. Sure on occasion they may move out, but we have a ton of other skills on very short CDs so killing the mob a few seconds later is not hard.

Divine Radiance I only use as filler while waiting for other things to come off CD. Get in melee and use the other ones. Even if you do use it on occasion, there is no travel time if you're at 3m. Priests are melee range magic fighters. Final Reprisal should always always be chained. Don't even need it on your hotbar. It chains off of a few of our skills - Shocking Implosion and Triple Nemesis and you can also set it up in your Chains Window to chain off of Metamorphic Blast. When you chain it like that the cast time is instant (which if you read the skill description you'd know).

I often like to do Shocking Implosion > Final Reprisal > Metamorphic Blast > Triple Nemesis>Divine Radiance into Metamorphic Blast (I don't have either of our two AoEs on my skillbar, I always just chain them)>Final Reprisal again. Repeat as necessary, although you usually can only do Shocking Implosion once during a fight. Start by running into melee range and stay there. Mobs may move around a bit but that's not a big issue since most of our skills are instant and have short CDs, so you can basically just spam stuff in that order mindlessly and things die.

This post pretty much sums up how the OP fails to learn how to play his class as he levels up. I learned, pretty much as soon as I got abilities, when to use them. To me its just that obvious but anyone should learn from experience. The OP mentioned Final Reprisal taking 3 seconds to activate and that is clearly not the case when Metamorphic Blast is on such a short cooldown (shorter than Final Reprisal and the only time you need to chain with something else is when Persistence kicks in).

Depending on the situation (mob types, CDs, etc.) I either open with Metamorphic Blast or Shocking Implosion chained into Final Reprisal. Persistence glyph works quite well with Powerlink Glyph. - Shocking Implosion > Final Reprisal > Metamorphic Blast > Final Reprisal - If Persistence activates with this rotation then you get the Powerlink bonus from 2 Final Reprisals as opposed to 2. That is effectively a 35% increase in damage for Final Reprisal at a 40% activation rate as opposed to the 25% normally provided by the glyph. That's a 10% increase in damage for an ability used often and has good damage output because of proper rotation management. We also have a damage increase ability, Energy Stars, that can be used while approaching a group for even more damage output. I usually use this when Shocking Implosion is on CD to lower the kill time. There is also the glyph for Triple Nemesis that lowers the target's endurance so you have even more synergy. I don't use Triple Nemesis and I know I should since the glyph increases group damage by a good amount but I've been lazy and don't get on much anymore. I often kill monsters so fast that Shocking Implosion isn't even up by the time I get to the second group.

Priest may not excel in damage over time but we have amazing burst while questing. I had very little issues on my journey to 60. I know quite a few DPS classes that wish they could heal themselves without investing time/money leveling alchemy with the currently broken crafting system.
KonpakuYoumu on 07/11/2012, 08:33 PM - view

I'm sorry guys. I tried to present a reasonable argument but it seems people would much rather take whatever I type out of context, ignore my arguments, reply with inflammatory posts, misread what I post, or just post troll comments that bring up a point that I've addressed far too many times. I am not trying to appeal to anyone nor am I conceding my arguments I've brought forth. This is not me rage-quitting or QQ'ing, I am just saying this will probably be my last post on this thread.

| 1 | The cash shop is fine just as long as it remains only vanity items.
- This argument is under the assumption everyone plays this game for the same reasons. Some people value character performance while others value character appearance. The problem is that people are taking this assumption and basing their arguments on it as if it were an objective concept.
- There is also the fact one of this game's features is the costuming. Seeing as there is very little to choose from for costumes, the cash shop puts a rather large emphasis on paying extra money to fully enjoy this feature. Tera has very little content right now and putting a price tag on content is quite an insult to some players. The main issue I have with the cash shop is how heavily EME is relying on it for any new costuming items. It is premature to put every costume item in the cash shop since there is little to choose from already.

| 2 | The cash shop helps support Tera.
- The funds derived from the cash shop support BHS/EME. This doesn't necessarily mean the funds will be used to further the quality of Tera. Rather, any implementation of a cash shop (even just Vanity Items) has indicated a noticeable drop in quality and in many cases the first step to F2P. Even the great WoW has had a noticeable drop in quality since the release of their cash shop, despite the mass amount of profits their cash shop is making.
- This is also tied with the assumption the cash shop is actually increasing revenue. I have been seeing quite a number of people who have decided to no longer pay to play Tera due to the cash shop. Sure, you can belittle them as much as you want but the fact remains there are still people out there that find cash shops have no place in P2P MMOs. And really, to place the burden of paying for the game on less people seems a bit ridiculous since someone is going to have to buy items to cover the loss of subscriptions. The effects of this won't be obvious but as time passes more and more people will need to buy items in the cash shop to cover their losses. If my group and I were to quit right now EME would lose $105 a month, thus someone is going to have to pay for that loss. If this keeps happening, eventually you're going to see Tera's cash shop have more than just vanity items to keep their game running.
- Previous P2P MMOs have managed just fine without cash shops. I have several years of experience in FFXI which has no cash shop and has offered a vanity item once. It was an item that could teleport you to a city. The community is very group orientated so people always used the item to teleport groups of people instead of using it only for themselves. Anyways, FFXI has had a lot of content released and it has no cash shop. WoW didn't have a cash shop, surely you don't believe they needed one. The fact is, the assumption that companies need cash shops to continue running the game isn't necessarily true. What happened to your subscription paying for everything?

With that I am largely done in trying to present my argument. If I notice I missed a point I may post again for only that. I wrote this under a rush as I had a time constraint.
Edited by: Tyranei 11 months ago
Gallus on 07/08/2012, 02:53 PM - view
Tyranei on 07/08/2012, 11:10 AM

How insightful of you to input something we've already addressed. You must think highly of yourself to believe what you've brought up hasn't already been discussed in a 34 page thread, especially in such vague detail. Once again I have to point out our arguments against the cash shop are completely unrelated to our financial positions. Then there's the fact you're acting condescending to those that are against the cash shop by saying "its funny," implying that this discussion has no relevance to the well-being of Tera. I've also pointed out on several occasions that cash shops have, more often than not, proven to be detrimental to the quality of an MMO. Thus I question whether the money you're using for cash shop items are actually supporting the games you play.

The rest of your post I have nothing against and I agree that baseless arguments are irrelevant, though I wonder why you also implied a baseless argument against our financial positions.


O_0 Who the fug are you? Take your high and mighty act somewhere else. I'm too old to care what you little teenies think. I've been playing MMOs since before they had graphics, and you're... who? Some kid who started With WoW or L2 probably 3 years ago?

And you think money made from cash shop doesn't support the game? It adds to the company's revenue and by that very fact alone it helps the company to be prosperous. These companies are in it to make money. As long as they are operating and gaining a profit, updates and support for the game will continue. Would you prefer Tera be like VG:SOH, which offered no Cash shop, and stayed as a subscription-based game, even after the numbers had dwindled down to 100-200 players per server and updates were added to the game on a yearly basis, with little to no substance?

What's wrong with a company offering optional stuff for a little extra $$$? Not like you HAVE to have it!

Seriously, complain more about optional skins.

If the shop was forcing you to pay cash for the best stat items in a game, and anyone who didn't pay for them was "gimp" you might have some sort of argument.

But right now you're basically arguing over skins and Tera's attempt to combat RMT gold sellers via the chrono scroll. You state that "more often than not the cash shops hurt the game". Excuse me? Since when? Name ONE subscription based game, that started to offer additional cosmetic items/services for real-world money that did worst after it was put in? Name one, because I've played nearly every big-title MMO that's launch from UO to today and can't recall a single case of that happening.

You may have found the Pay-To-Win style games to be bad, which is fine to have an opinion on, but that's got nothing to do with Tera's cosmetic cash shop.

Get a reality check please.

Your connotation does very little in making me believe you actually have the experience you claim to have with MMOs not to mention your lack of patience to read through this thread. Honestly, anyone can say anything they feel like to gain an advantage in an argument over the internet but if you want to play this game then I've been playing MMOs nearly as long as you claim. I don't even know how you came to the conclusion that I'm new to the genre and started with Lineage 2 or World of Warcraft. Sure I've played both but they are definitely not the only MMOs I've played nor the first.

You claim cash shops add to the revenue of the company running the game yet fail to produce anything evidence to counter my argument (which, by the way, you would have seen if you read the thread). You've also missed the points we've addressed on what people consider to be acceptable. A cash shop is a cash shop, regardless of the content it offers. What one finds important can be found to be irrelevant to others, just as you're doing by implying complaining about vanity items being immature.

My major complaint about the cash shop is the fact it is largely premature. If you had read the thread you would have known I made this argument several times by providing previous examples. For instance, we'll use the prominent WoW to compare to Tera. WoW's cash shop was not released until years later and they were several expansions in. By then there was already a vast assortment of pets and mounts available to the players in-game (I still disagree with Blizzard's implementation of a cash shop but I find it more acceptable). Tera is not the case. Despite being released in Korea before NA this game doesn't have much content to mess around with to warrant a cash shop selling vanity items. It feels like any costume item they develop is going to be put into the cash shop instead of being included into the game I am paying a monthly subscription for. I've brought forth my complaint that Tera's costume feature was one of the reasons I became interested along with the art style and combat system. I find it in very bad taste to be required to invest more money on top of what I am already paying to fully enjoy one of the game's features.

There used to be a time when cash shops were never a concern for Pay-2-Play MMOs but these days more and more games are being marketed towards non-gamers who have thick wallets and little patience. Companies have always veered to market towards this demographic and it works. Unfortunately this has migrated into the gaming community and it has suffered for it.

You mentioned I'm arguing against BHS's decision to incorporate CCP's PLEX system into Tera. This leaves me bewildered as I had just argued for it in a recent post in this thread. Please read my posts instead of clumping me together with that "complainers and whiners" group you've created.

Your entire argument that only P2W cash shops are bad is based on the assumption everyone has the same tastes and desires. This is inherently flawed as people obviously like different things. Due to this, we should redirect the question of the existence of the cash shop, not the contents inside of it. I am not saying P2W is okay but that merely you should look into how other people care about different things than you.

Here is the reality check you ordered.
Edited by: Tyranei 11 months ago
Gallus on 07/08/2012, 10:19 AM - view
Winterfury on 07/08/2012, 07:41 AM
There are way more than just "five" people who agree with the OP, there is no reliable way of knowing what the real distribution is of support vs. opposition, but one can surmise from the trend that more and more people are Ok with it.


I haven't read anything in this thread, as I think it's funny to complain about skins / chrono scrolls.

Just saying.

PS I love the cash shop because I have lots of spending money and don't mind supporting games I play.

How insightful of you to input something we've already addressed. You must think highly of yourself to believe what you've brought up hasn't already been discussed in a 34 page thread, especially in such vague detail. Once again I have to point out our arguments against the cash shop are completely unrelated to our financial positions. Then there's the fact you're acting condescending to those that are against the cash shop by saying "its funny," implying that this discussion has no relevance to the well-being of Tera. I've also pointed out on several occasions that cash shops have, more often than not, proven to be detrimental to the quality of an MMO. Thus I question whether the money you're using for cash shop items are actually supporting the games you play.

The rest of your post I have nothing against and I agree that baseless arguments are irrelevant, though I wonder why you also implied a baseless argument against our financial positions.
Thundercat on 07/08/2012, 07:34 AM - view
this thread stinks of calypso and nerelith's attempts are trying to sound like intellectuals, with horribly placed "large" words, and horrible attempts at trying to quote logical fallacy.

I feel ignored.

I haven't seen any of these "large words" you claim these posters are using. Sure Nerelith's paragraph formatting and sentencing aren't the best but hardly anything misplaced. Also, you're appealing to the structure of someone's argument is another fallacy if you didn't know. You are addressing how someone brings forth an argument rather than the argument itself. I can understand questioning someone to get a better understanding but to attack them is definitely not how you appear to be "winning" an argument. Not that I agree with the connotations they've used.

I would also like to make note that I don't agree with everything they say. For instance, I don't believe Tera has become a Pay-2-Win game with the introduction of Chronoscrolls. Nor do I find Chronoscrolls to be a money scheme. They were designed after CCP's PLEX system for EVE which was created to allow players to offer officially offer subscriptions to other players on the market. Not only does this open up more players to the world but it drastically reduces RMT activity. Now, in order for this system to work you have to have vast gold-sinks to maintain the price of Chronoscrolls or you risk them becoming worthless on the market. EVE's gold-sink is virtually infinite, if you die you lose your ship and you have to buy a new one. EVE has a lot of money being poured into the economy but also a lot being drained out as PvP is a big focus so ships are constantly being blown up.

Tera's system is a bit different in the sense that the gold-sink is virtually finite, meaning eventually the worth of gold will become less and less as players stock pile vast quantities of it while losing very little. The gold-sink for Enchanting is very large but there is an end to it, or in other words you reach +9 or +12. This puts a time limit on the Tera developers to release new content and gear to have players eliminate vast quantities of currency from the economy through enchanting new gear. Now, a lot of people are reaching a point where there's not much else to sink their gold into. This is becoming dangerous waters if EME doesn't release QoA part 2 soon as people will end up stockpiling a lot of money, making Chronoscrolls worth less. Perhaps you will get more gold from selling a Chronoscroll as more and more people have more gold to spend, however that is largely dependent on the supply and demand of the item. Its hard to say how it will play out down the road but I hypothesize the prices for the Chronoscrolls will change.
Arlekiel on 07/07/2012, 11:48 PM - view
CrazedGamer on 07/07/2012, 09:57 PM
I'm surprised and amazed at how long this thread has been going. It's truly amazing to see more people than I thought to support no cash shop on a P2P game.



Actually.. theres ALOT of ppl who support the cash shop, and are also posting on the thread...
Theres even more ppl who dosent even care about it..


The main difference is that those people are actually PLAYING the game, enjoying it and having a good time, rather than just posting nonse at the forum.


So far, it seems that only 5 people are making this a big deal by posting over and over again.. about the same old stuff.

Provide biased information that has no factual evidence? Check.
A lot of those people are honestly posting inaccurate information or have brought up a topic that has already been addressed. By no means am I chastising those that support the cash shop. You can't accurately determine who can be classified as "doesn't care" because of their lack of posts.

Classifying an intelligent discussion as nonsense? Check.
Are you implying I'm not already playing the game? You make it seem as if the people who are against cash shops just don't give a [filtered] about Tera. If I didn't, why would I spend the time to post an argument? I've tried to bring up some fairly valid points but to claim (or at least imply) I'm being nonsensical doesn't really bring much to discuss. Its also implying players should just enjoy whatever the developers create, regardless of the quality they may produce and that feedback is irrelevant.

Neglect to mention the less-than-5 people who have managed to come up with valid arguments for cash shops? Check.
Like I said, there's very few people in this thread that I found to bring something to the table. Most of it is either troll-bait or just irrelevant or wrong information. I'm sure you can see the multitudes of posts that contain some variant of "can't afford cash shop so you're against it." Or how about those that compare Tera's cash shop to F2P games' cash shops? I'm sure we can all see the difference in having a cash shop in a subscription-based game as opposed to F2P.

This post is a bit more aggressive but I suppose I'm just losing my patience a bit.

Edit: Nerelith, I believe you are speaking of the fallacy Appeal to Numbers or Appeal to Authority.
Edited by: Tyranei 11 months ago
Demika on 07/07/2012, 10:18 AM - view
To all the people saying "We pay a monthly subscription fee, we shouldn't have to pay for this as well", you don't have to pay a monthly subscription fee. The cash shop sells chrono scrolls, people put them on the AH for ridiculously low cost. You can buy those in game and then spend the money would you would have spent on your sub fee on the skins you want.

There are so many options in this game, but just because you choose to ignore them, does not make them cease to exist.

You do realize someone has to spend real money to obtain a Chronoscroll before putting it on the AH, right? This effectively means someone is just paying for your subscription. People will not offer Chronoscrolls on the AH if there is no demand. I thought this was rather elementary. You are largely missing the entire point of this topic.
Edited by: Tyranei 11 months ago
I have a question to those that claim art assets are not considered content. If all of the game's art assets were not included, could you even consider it a game? By art assets I mean all models and textures. By definition you wouldn't see anything; no UI, no background, no armor, no characters, no monsters. Even Pong had its art assets. These days, art assets make up a majority of the work necessary to release a standard MMO. To seperate art from what you call content makes it seem that you're implying this game needs very little in free art assets and BHS/EME (or any MMO developer, really) could release their art in their cash shop. Obviously this kind of thinking is detrimental to the players since you could end up creating a market for these developers could discover to exploit.

Thunderstruck on 07/06/2012, 03:10 PM - view
There is nothing wrong with having a cash shop filled with "fluff" items that let you customize your character and make them unique, As a matter of fact I love this idea.

What i dont love is the outrageous prices they are trying to stick people in the [filtered] with. And before some smartass comments that "You mad" because you can't afford them, That is not the issue. I'm far from a rich man but could easily AFFORD to buy every item in the shop right now. Its the principle and the repercussions of supporting such inflated pricing.

I refuse to give support and conformation to EME & the industry as a whole that this type of pricing model is OK. For every SUCKER that buys one of these items they give more credence to the industry to just keep raising the price on any and everything. Where does or will it end, Whats next, 30.00 a month subscription fee's, 100 dollar expansions ?

You have to ask yourself at what point will the industry stop ? Is this vanity item really worth the price tag? How much work did the dev's put into creating this item ? How does the PRODUCT justify the PRICE? THINK PEOPLE THINK!

While I don't agree with using blanket statements like "there is nothing wrong with _" I can concur to your arguments against people supporting this business model. As I've said before we didn't have any cash shops years ago with our P2P MMOs however it has started to leak into the industry and has created some concept in people's minds that if the cash shop wasn't there we wouldn't have access to those items in-game. And so they base their arguments on that assumption and declare people that are against cash shops as those that are against implementing cool things into the game. Then you have those that say we are mad we just can't afford these items, which is usually false for these people. I find this claim absurd since you cannot accurately determine the financial status of someone on the internet who posts anonymously (even if said person declares his financial status, who's to say he's truthful?).

EDIT: The cash shop is at the very least premature for Tera, a P2P-sub MMO. WoW, the most prominent comparison, did not have a cash shop until there was already a lot of mounts/pets to acquire and even then, their cash shop didn't have that many mounts. They waited years to sell things to players. BHS/EME should have waited at least a year before looking at selling in-game items to players, cosmetic items or not. There is just not enough art content, or more specifically the costumes, in the game so it feels that players have to pay extra to use their costume feature.
Edited by: Tyranei 11 months ago