Harasser and 2 man bike may sound the same but they're different story. 2 man bike is a lot squishier and can go down rather quickly in focused fire. Moreover, the dev did mention that instore items, vehicles, elites will have a limited loadout compared to the ingame ones, I think one man bike will have more options when it comes to customization while 2 man bike will stay as it is.
As a rule of thumb, any armed vehicle that does not carry at least three people who are not driving or shooting is not a transport, it's a fast attack vehicle. This is why the Army's little three-man dune buggy that can mount two machine guns or one machine gun and a TOW is called the *drumroll* Fast Attack Vehicle. When they replaced it the Army felt like getting a little more creative, and called the new one the Light Strike Vehicle. So yes, they're going to have to learn the difference between a transport and an FAV (hint: knowing is half the battle, the other half involves guns), and seriously re-think what exactly "side-grade" means. One thing is that the rest of us are probably going to want some kind of fast attack vehicle. We could have a stock bike that everyone else can use which is identical except for the skin, or if they really want to stick to keeping bikes exclusive they are more comparable to a Land Speeder than a Rhino. I would also like to point out that even though TF2 also claims to have "side-grades" (they try, but it often takes several balance passes every time they release a new item) every single "side-grade" in the game is available in-game through crafting or drops (which are their item-acquisition system, for us it'd probably be EXP). All promotional items, exclusive items, or paywalled items (including MvM rewards) are not "side-grades", they are direct re-skins of stock weapons. Miguel might want to sit down and think for a bit about the reasoning behind that. Just saying, nobody gets balance right on the first try and first impressions matter. Whether they're OP or UP, it sure would be a PR headache if the Founder weapons were not balanced against stock on release.
Get the Land Speeder ingame and the problem will sort itself out, I don't care if founders get their fancy exclusive bike as long as I'm riding a Land Speeder
How exactly do you expect them to keep up on server and maintenace costs? Realistically the actual sales of the game are going to plummet after six months, and be non existent in a year, even if the game is successful (successful in an MMO is having over a million players, so not that large of a number). Games cost a lot more money to create these days, particularly with the ridiculous amount of money companies are charging to license out their game engines. Having an in game cash shop is fine as long as there's no filthy subscription fee, the biggest thing is just voicing our opinions on what should/should not be in that store to begin with.
Still completely different roles by virtue of one having a gunner on a moveable turret and the other having forward fixed guns. As I said they will be used very differently. If the bike can't be customized that doesn't mean it won't do a different job that no other vehicle will be capable of doing. And as long as the job of the 2 man bike can't be done by anything else, that will still be terrible and pay 2 win.
If normal item's stats are 9/10 and store item is 10/9.. I can just skip grinding for normal item and buy the store item, right? If so, that's called P2W. "Our style is evil, the grim, really dark universe of 40K." On this matter the doubts have been stacking up for some time already. And though it sounds good, it's time to see some proof to these words. Some mature grim models, please. Or at least the picture how they will look in the game when they are done.
Well, you're right! Given Guild Wars also has cash shop, it's acceptable. As long as they don't add ridiculous items which affect gameplay then it should be fine. Damn! Even BF4 has DLCs that get everything upgraded for you, I can also call that P2W because they have access to something that will take a normal player months to get.
The Battlefield 3 DLCs were the worst, you couldn't even get access to the gun's without buying the DLCs and that is most blatantly pay-2-win. I absolutely despise pay-2-win mechanics but it's very hard to have a reasonable discussion about it due to so many people thinking that ANYTHING you spend money on in an in-game store is "auto pay2win". With each person having their own specific view of the situation it becomes very hard to lock down what is/what is not Pay2win, and then the misinformation spreads like wildfire by angry, ignorant people.
If it really negatively affects gameplay, which we will see in Alpha and Closed Beta, it can be brought up and then the dev can do something about it. And enough with the negativity already, Miguel did say that things would be tested to see if the sidegrades actually worked like he thought it would. We haven't even entered alpha yet, leave alone launch, those items are not even in the store and nobody hasn't even seen their stats yet. P2W or not we will have to wait and see how those items function in actual gameplay.
