It depends how big the differences are. If the founder variant is unique enough to be the only hero capable of fitting into a certain role (e.g. anti-tank), then that's a huge difference and likely to be a problem. If they have a variation on a theme which is unique (e.g. one of several ranged anti-tank heroes, but with the founder having a unique tactical ability related to this - hypothetically speaking, a weapon effect which reduces the enemy tank's rate of fire, at cost of lower damage output) that's not necessarily a problem. If you had someone fielding the second type of hero, that would give you some slightly different options if you came across an enemy tank, but would be unlikely to rewrite the anti-tank rulebook, and you wouldn't build your squad around it. That gives it the opportunity to be unique without automatically wrecking the balance. If you take the WoT premium tanks as a somewhat comparable example, they have a broken mirror balance with non-premium alternatives, but are only 'better' in specific situations (which are not entirely under the player's control) and are not outright better than their non-premium alternatives. Indeed, in most situations, they're intentionally slightly weaker overall. As in any horizontal progression game its unlikely that all classes will be perfectly equal, premium tanks do generate grumbles amongst the player base (sometimes just because of perception - being killed by a premium tank 'must' mean P2W) but they're not gamebreaking or fundamentally advantageous to bring to the field from a stats perspective. Indeed, my own stats show that I consistently outperform the premium tank I have with non-premium versions of the same tier and tank class. Equally, you have the founder model of TESO, which has no stat effect but is much more divisive in terms of the non-stat based opportunities it opens up. On what's effectively an unrelated note, I also agree that the balancing in GW2 is dicey, but that's true of all class balancing in all PvP elements of MMOs. As stated before, I'm not actually in favour of the idea of unique stat variants for founders. But I don't believe its the automatic route to disaster that some people in this thread have implied.
Well I am not sure it will lead to a "disaster" but that it leave a sour taste in their "no P2W commitment". As a side note, STO have a P2W system (you can buy the cruiser), people don't really complain but the PvP is not very ective either. On a PvE level, it seem that the fact that every one can buy the unit is enough to quiet the rufus. In the PvP world, it is true that is somewhat damage the pvp crowd; Though most of the problem seem that difference of level between pvp and pve is too much and people need actual training to somewhat perform in pvp (on a one on one basis). Here we will not have one on one so I don't think that this problem will happen. So I don't really mind that some heroes are sold (it is P2W, but I am ok with it) but not if they are exclusive. I think it is more the exclusivity that will damage the whole thing. And if they say it is exclusive and change their mind, they will damage their PR too.
I think it depends where you draw the line on what is and isn't P2W. If I buy a unique class, which is better in 50% of situations and equally worse in 50% of situations, I'm paying to win and paying to lose and am no better overall than anyone else. Is that P2W? I personally don't think it is, unless you start screwing around with them being better in situations that no other class can be equally good in. Its a slightly less comfortable point on the P2W line than XP boosts, which some people consider P2W because the horizontal progression is accelerated. Again, I'm not convinced there's any 'win' involved. Its a bit different in vertical progression games, although XP boosts make such little difference to the overall gameplay experience that I don't have a problem with them there either. I don't think we should have unique premium-only classes, and I'm even less comfortable with founder-only unique premium classes, but this is more because I think it'll create a perception problem amongst the players rather than because I think it will lead to founders having an advantage.
when im reading through this a bineary code flows through my mind you just see it like "in this situation this one is better and in this situation this one worse" but we should also see how much better he is in "this" situation maybe he would solve the situatin in like 3 secounds while another class would need 30 secounds but in the end this is to much to think about right now^^
The 50% better 50% worse was a purely hypothetical example to demonstrate my thoughts on P2W - if you have no overall gain in power or effectiveness vs others, just a reallocation of your strengths and weaknesses, I don't think that makes it P2W just because cash has changed hands. So I don't see founder-only classes as automatically being P2W. I completely agree that in reality there's never truly a 50%/50% binary balance, as its a lot more complicated than that, which makes it difficult to genuinely determine if a class is overpowered or underpowered. So yes, there's clearly a genuine P2W risk. My bigger concern is that many players will leap to calling it P2W by default, and this is likely to end up in repeated arguments between founders, non-founders and the devs, plus create a negative stigma around founders...and one which will never go away. This is in no-one's best interest, and I really don't believe we need unique stat variants to reward founder purchases with the whole series of other unique things on offer. I've seen so few (if any?) potential founders arguing in its favour that I'm concerned that this is souring what is otherwise a really exciting set of announcements.
^ this. I feel since most of us our use to normal liner balance games where both side our carbon copyies of each other. where having a hard time come to grasp that in aysmetrical balance, one guy having some that you cant get is a part of the balancing act of the game. Were all stuck in a the idea that if they have a anti tank ramge hero(just using this as a example), Then we MUST have one as well or they our OP, or P2W. But instead we need to get our mind out of the whole "every one has a race/ faction equivalent" And more around that a faction can have something that no other faction has a equivalent of.
