I like the new features... apart from two very large points, that are making me seriously consider quitting the game...

1) The ability to re-roll with shardium. This is a very 'P2W' (pay to win) feature. As soon as one person spends loads of money re-rolling their items until they get near-perfect stats, they will be unbeatable... Then, the only way for someone else to compete with them, would be to also spend loads of money. Hence, pay to win.

2) The random gambling aspect of the re-roll. I saw Annie and dieeasy re-roll their items and get really nice stats... Then I tried, and got rubbish... Not just once, but many times... I had a few drinks last night, so on a silly impulse, kept re-rolling with shardium... about 2500 shardium later, and within only a few minutes, I still didn't get as good a roll as Annie or dieeasy did on their first and only re-roll >:( $25 wasted in about 2.5 minutes!!! (on one item).

I used to have a serious gambling problem, and I had to ask to get myself banned from my local casino (to stop me going in there when I had been out for a few drinks)... Last night, after wasting shardium that quickly, it reminded me of my gambling problem...

Yes, I know it's my own problem, but I believe it's unethical to take advantage of people's vulnerabilities, by enabling people with gambling/addiction problems, to spend money that they can't afford.

$25 isn't a large amount of money for most people (but it is for me, especially when I am unemployed), but when real money can be spent/wasted on a multiple gambles so quickly, the potential for wasting huge sums of money is most definitely there. This feeding of serious addiction/gambling problems can seriously ruin vulnerable people's lives.

I realise these kind of features are very common in many 'cash cow' or 'P2W' games, and that's why I won't play them. I believed that this game would be different, or I would have never allowed myself to become addicted to it.

If this feature is to remain, is it possible to have the "re-roll with shardium' button disabled on my account? (In a similar way of me asking myself to be banned from the casino). - Even if that were possible, I would probably get frustrated with the game and quit when there are paying players that would be impossible to compete with.

On the subject of paying money for a game...

I realise you want to make profit, grow and expand your company, and rightly so. I can see myself being very happy to spend $10-20 a month on a game like this (without P2W features)... and I could see myself playing it for many years.

But, perhaps I'm not the kind of player you want in your game. And perhaps you feel my complaining is detrimental to the direction your company is heading... If that is the case: I don't want to cause any problems, and you can delete this post with my permission.

I'm also with Andaho, this is pay to win, there's nothing else to say. This is definitely not pay to skip waiting, this is pay to get better items.

There is a matter of personal responsibility. Once when discussing with a dev or maybe on the forum, they said Shardium wouldn't be an extreme overkill. They essentially said it expedited things. Anything you can achieve by buying, you can achieve without buying. Yes, a couple of people will go out and spend ludicrous amounts of cash to do what they can on Day 1. If we use the example of Sil, it made him jump up a bit but still within reach of other players. Most hardcore players are getting free 10 shardium per day and it only costs 15 to lock a trait. You can reroll for free by accumulating the refinement stones.

If this game has taught us anything, it is that people can catch up very quickly. The first level 30's that came over from Alpha were like Gods for a brief moment, but then the server became flooded with 30's not all that far behind. All it took was getting your desert gear.

If everytime the devs make a change to add features, people are going to quit the game (which I haven't actually seen happen yet outside of threats), then I guess they should just stop improving it, add the new campaign content which even you Andadho, have said you are going to complete all on the first day it comes out (for free).

Take your time, build your strength, then laugh at the player that spent a couple of hundred bucks to hit for 1,000 more damage when you didn't need that damage anyway. A already know Tsukasa and Andaho are going to slam me for what I say here but I Want you both to know I do respect your opinions.

Andaho....the gambling thing. Man I hear you on this one. I don't have a gambling problem but I have seen people that do. In some ways I find the guild wheel disappointing because it doesn't drop anything I want (and I never get the gems) so I do one roll per day. But I have seen other games where that is where most players spend most of their real money.

Considering the game has to be paid for some way, I think the Devs have done a really great job of finding some ways of getting some income without completely breaking the game. This is a game that someone who has not spent shard can really be in the top players still. Granted over the long haul, someone spending hundreds or thousands over a year will likely outpace someone who does not, but we have yet to see that future.

I appreciate the argument from the other side Defiar. But I agree with Tsu as above.

As for the personal responsibility; of course! That's why I said "I know it's my problem". And as part of being responsible, I avoid getting into competitive, addictive games that are P2W (and I avoid casinos). I feel very disappointed at the fact that I heard the devs say (in world chat) "over my dead body", when questioned about the possibility of this game becoming P2W...

Having played their previous games, which are very well balanced (where most of the stuff to purchase is purely cosmetic), I trusted them when they said this wouldn't become P2W. - I thought they would come up with creative ideas, that would encourage players to pay a little while they are playing (like $10-20 a month), but I find the introduction of systems that enable endless benefits for unlimited spending to be unethical. - Especially when it's gambling.

@ Defair: Your using Sil as an example of having 1000 extra damage, is a bad one. I cannot beat him in the arena now. It's more than just extra damage (which is more than 1000 anyway), his extra speed gives him a few extra hits on me now, not to mention all the other stat improvements... And the thing is... this is just the start of it...

I've seen Sil's gear... It's nice, but it could be a LOT better... If I were to spend $100 re-rolling, I'm sure I could compete with Sil... But then, someone else could spend more on improving their gear even further... Sil has stats like +30 int... with enough gambling of real money, stats like that could be replaced with +56 int (or better - I don't know what the ceiling is, but one of the highest I've seen is +56).

Now, to address the factor of time for free players to be able to compete... I'm sure that before I could, for free, do XX(X?) number of re-rolls to get similar secondary stats, there would be a new expansion to the game, and the level 30 gear would be replaced with better higher level gear... So the natural progression of free players will always be many many steps behind...

But hang on... I'm not even a free player... I've already spent $40 on the game!... Annie has spent $90!... But now, neither of us can kill Sil in arena... Okay, we can if we keep trying and get lucky with a few critical hits, but that's not the point, and being competitive isn't just about beating someone in the arena... Perhaps after a month (or more) of doing free re-rolls, we might be able to have comparable equipment... But maybe not, because it's a random gamble... But by that time, I imagine level 40 gear will be available, and the level 30 gear that's taken so long to build up, will be redundant.

I fear this is just the start of more P2W features to come.

I deleted my post after tsukasa's last one so I will just say this: I don't like it one bit.
oh and those stats shouldn't be on any "epic" stuff from the start ._.

I was hopeful something like this was alot further out, although I knew the day was coming. A game like this just doesnt survive without being Pay to Win, and sadly I believed Justin.

I bought a starter pack because I knew of the companies past games, I wanted to support the dev team and this new game. I saw the comparisons to games like Wartune, and new it had the potential to be a P2W game, and so I never planned to spend any more money than that one starter pack.

Then Justin came here and "reassured" us that the game would stay the way it was, and claimed he was against P2W as much as the rest of us. Hearing this, I was thrilled, and even purchased the Festival Pack, just to continue to support them, in hopes they wouldnt need to look for other ways to make money.

I hate to say it, but I told you so seems relevant. This system is purely Pay to Win, as others in this thread have pointed out. I respect the opinions of the other side, and so far you have seen me in the forums supporting the game, and engaging in discussions from both sides of it. But the second you start selling the best items in the game for real money, it is the pure definition of Pay to Win. And that is exactly what this system is doing.

Some will have to pay more than others, some will get lucky, but in the end, you will have to buy the very best. Anyone who doesnt do this, will not be competitive. And its not just Arena. If the world boss gets implemented even close to the way it is in other games, it will be a competitive play event. Meaning that you get rewarded based on your participation, and those who do more, earn more. Anyone who has paid for their stats with the best equipment will far outdamage those who dont, and therefore get all the best rewards. Its a terrible cycle, and while some may argue that its not that bad yet, this is only the beginning. Even HoT has the potential further down the road when more floors are added, and the only way to beat them will be to pay for your stats. A difference in the number of tokens potentially earned adds up rather quickly, and its easy for some to outpace others when upgrading to new equipment.

By saying it wont get worse, you are naive and encouraging the devs to create larger and larger pay gaps. I really sorry for how negative this post is, but I feel the devs need to know that the community as a whole is unhappy about the direction of the game. If we let it continue unchecked it will get out of hand, and later there wont be a way for them to change it. Right now, it will be easy for the system to get modified, before any real lasting damage is done.

Today I saw a lot of players in chat try to explain this system in various (bad) ways, trying to say it's pay for convenience (it's not), that you need in game materials (you don't) or various other illogical explanations. The fact remains that I can spend an unlimited amount of money to get items that approach perfect. Note I say approach perfect, the chance to get the best mods with the best value they can be is so small that people can keep spending and spending trying to get there. This is a system set up like all the other pay to win systems in other games. The goal is to make the most money possible and (maybe, probably never) deal with the fallout later.

This coming not even two weeks after Justin posted this:

"With all that said, my personal feelings towards pay-to-win is that it's not a fun system for non payers. I'm much more comfortable with a pay-to-skip system, where payers and non payers can reach roughly the same power levels, but payers can get there faster by trading money for time. We've had success with similar systems in our other games, such as Bush Whacker 2, where outside of purely aesthetic things, there's not much in the game that non payers can't do that payers can."

This gives me the perfect opportunity to use that old saying, I'm not angry, just very disappointed. And for once I can use it in its correct context.

It's both a bit worrying and disappointing to go over a week and not see any kind of response from the devs about this. I don't think anyone is expecting a final answer, but even just a "Hey, we're currently discussing this" would be appreciated.

I'm not disappointed about the lack of developer replies at all. I was expecting it and I was right.

It's easy to be a friendly developer when people are praising you but when they start asking questions like these the normal response is to shut up and hope the questions go away. I've seen this for years and if you thought CNE was any different this proves that they really aren't.