2015-08-13, 08:45 AM
Grey Wrote:The quantity of upgrade systems isn't the major factor in creating a gap here. If I had a million different upgrade systems that were equally available to everyone, with 100% chance to get an upgrade that would be the same for everyone, that wouldn't cause a gap. All those things have an element of chance, which on its own, I think is fine. The gap would just be based on chance, which doesn't discriminate, and we would probably have people along a wide spectrum of damage levels. The problem is that you can brute force your way to better equips by throwing tons of money at it. There are people who can, and eagerly, spend to get the best possible equips, and those that can't, or won't. That's where the gap comes from. With potentials, sure, you could spend hours gathering materials to craft cubes, but you can get as many cubes as you want if you just buy them from the cash shop. The more you spend, the higher the chance of getting something good, not to mention there's an entire potential system (bonus pots) that non-paying don't even have access too, except for like, if I remember correctly, two instances where you could buy 5 bonus pot cubes for rewards points. This isn't even like a minor thing, you can get pretty significant stats from bonus pots, that non-paying players will never see, there's a gap, right there. Enhancements, I mean, they cost a lot back in the day, with having to buy protection scrolls and all, and those gave a big bonus too, for weapons, but most people would just do their weapon and be done with it, but that was still at least 7 stars more than a non-paying player, unless they spent entire events farming and hoping that the few protection scrolls that they could get would let them pass an enhancement scroll. Thankfully, we have star force now. Nebulites... you can't even get A rank outside of marvel or gach or fusing, all of which cost money. To have good results from these systems, you pretty much have to spend a ton of money, and if you can't, well, you're basically out of luck.
Things like additional options and star force don't increase the gap much, if at all. They're equally available and unaffected by how much money you throw at the screen (additional options more so than star force, since star force gets pretty pricey so, you know, that's kind of gappy). At worst they shift the gap up, and given that there's a cap, weaker players can continue to rise while stronger players eventually hit the cap, necessarily decreasing the gap.
It's incredibly stupid to think that not adding additional options is somehow helping things. All you're doing is making sure that weaker players necessarily have to pay to get better equips, not to mention making everything but the best stuff irredeemably worthless. It's unlikely that Nexon's going to suddenly remove potential or make it available to everyone (without pissing all the heavy spenders off), so we might as well look out for the little guy until they come up with a satisfying solution for the power creep. At the very least, if everyone's in the same damage range, it makes it much easier to scale things down.
Wait - by "gap", are we talking about a generic average damage (or DPS difference) between a funded and unfunded player, or are we specifically referring to the difference between a paying and non-paying player?