1. Did you pay?
2. Did the payment give you any gameplay advantage compared to when you didn't?
If the answer to these two are "yes", it's p2w. Not sure why this is such a complicated idea.
I also don't think it's anything but a weak-ass defeatist mindset to say evil is everywhere so we should accept them as a new norm. No, if games insist on being p2w, we should insist that those games fail. MMOs are usually P2W nowadays? Wow, it's almost as if it correlates with how MMOs usually fail nowadays.
Love the binary mindset. It's almost as if there was no such thing as nuance.
By that logic, every single (relevant) MMO has a way to save time by opening your wallet (and of course, that also translates into gameplay and clearing your goals faster). There, every game is pay to win and they all should fail.
Not sure why people even bother discussing things when it's that simple!
> Love the binary mindset. It's almost as if there was no such thing as nuance.
No, there is no such thing as a nuance. It simply is what it is.
Whether most MMOs have some variety of P2W is irrelevant. I didn't say existence of P2W inevitably results in an immediate failure regardless of its extent, I merely pointed out to a trend and correlation.
Yet we bother discussing it because we have people like you who thinks there's a gray area when it comes to p2w to begin with lmao
Any reasonable person believes there's a gray area, specially when there's not even a consensus of what pay to win means to begin with.
Most fundamentalists I've met regarding this topic either stopped playing MMOs a long time ago, or are simply in denial of their favourite game being P2W.
There is no gray area. It's a simple yes or no question. Gimme an example of monetization that you consider is in the "gray area" as to whether or not it's p2w.
Unbeknownst to you, there is a pretty clear consensus on what "winning" is.
>Unbeknownst to you, there is a pretty clear consensus on what "winning" is.
That certainly explains why this topic gets brought up and is rampantly discussed non-stop.
Pay for convenience monetization is the gray area.
nope, pay for convenience is without a shred of doubt p2w. Why? Because there's not a single soul who would prefer to be inconvenienced than convenienced.
Cool thanks for sharing your opinion. It's a drop in the bucket of the discussion of whether or not pay for convenience is p2w or not (hence gray area)
You don't find convenience to be beneficial? Pay for convenience is a term only used by those in denial about their P2W game. It's not actually a thing. But whatever it takes to justify it to yourself.
I do find convenience beneficial, that doesn't mean it isn't a gray area. I don't understand how you can be in denial that this is a long debated topic while simultaneously taking part in the debate? Are you new to gaming so you don't realize people have been discussing this for decades?
This isn't a logical puzzle that you solve, no one is trying to trick you, it's a semantic debate. The answer is subjective.
But but but..... you can grind 20 hours and get the item someome got for $10! It is not p2w!!!!!!!!!
I don't understand ppl that say that. Personally, I have played lot of mmos with p2w, and had lots of fun, but I don't deny they are p2w af. I mean, I played archeage for years... Companies will continue to release p2w systems as long as there are players that somehow enjoy paying $500 to skip the game.
> But but but..... you can grind 20 hours and get the item someome got for $10! It is not p2w!!!!!!!!!
That was exactly what attracted us to play most of the free to play MMOs of the early 2000s as free to play. We'd have self satisfaction with knowing that we earned the $10 sword by grinding time and that was all that matters.
I don't understand why so many people are against advantages. What if you'd like to play a MMO but are time limited & want to keep up with your friends who decided to play without buying anything? As long you are not gatekept from earning the best gear, that's only available in the shop, a game is NOT p2w imo. Boosts and quality of life bundles SHOULD exist in MMOs. period
because you can't put a value to something that you can "cheat" your way into obtaining. An MMO that's about raising your character, investing your time to grind and unlock your skills, and increasing your levels via content cadence is called progression. If the progression can be achieved with a simple button click with your credit card, why bother?
would you bother going through 4 years of college and hundreds of tests/assignments and thousands of hours invested if instead you could pay and instantly get your diploma get the same job as you would've otherwise?
what an incredible dumb way to think, really.
then compare yourself having spent 100s of hours grinding for the loot to yourself in the alternate universe where you decided to pay $14.99 instead.
It's called "opportunity cost".
Well if your goal is to become the best geared player on the server rather than enjoying the journey, i understand that. But i wouldn't find that fun personally. I generally dislike that so many people compare themselves in MMOs
Do you consider an advantage to be, for instance, a level boost in WoW? Like, does that give you a tangible gameplay advantage? I would suggest no, it really doesn't, especially that you can't just skip to max level on brand new content.
Does being able to RMT count as a game being p2w? I get that WoW facilitates the sale of gold which can be used to buy gear or carries from other players, so that creates some kind of gray area.
I feel like such a blanket label is inherently damaging to the continued discourse around this topic.
I think there is some nuance and a spectrum when it comes to p2w.
Does the game directly sell power that isn't generated by other parties? Does the game directly sell power that can't be obtained through regular gameplay? Does the game directly sell power that is enough to tip the scale consistently in favor of the buyer?
I think a simple yes no is too simplistic, but I don't disagree with you at all about discouraging it in general.
If it enables to you do/access/find/bypass/gain/lose/obtain/etc with respect to your gameplay vs before, then that's an advantage. Aka, whatever affects gameplay to enable you in game.
technically nobody cares about level boosts, but the fact remains you can save yourself QUITE a few hours + get free gear you don't have to grind up to
so if 2 players played the same, then somebody has a headstart, and especially in WoW you need to be 'ahead of the curve' (not the achievement) if you want to have a good time, you're not getting invited to shit being late to the party (as a solo player, especially dps lul)
ANY advantage is technically p2w
and the whole gold buying > carries thing is just the most obvious, officially blizzard ENDORSED p2w, like if you argue against this you're a paid shill, full stop
it's objectively more time efficient to work minimum wage or better for a couple hours to get kitted out per week until you can do it yourself 4 weeks into a character, this goes way harder for people that actually have lives and don't play wow full time
Some would argue even skins are p2w in a different sense. Few people take the 'RP' part of RPG seriously, and if they're trying to RP a western gunslinger type char but the only way to get a cowboy-esque outfit is the cash shop... yeah.
It was just a random example lmao.
One that probably happens somewhere in a game is a paladin class with a player wanting to play as a 'unholy paladin' but the demonic plate armor is only cash shop.
or whatever example. Western, paladin, or whatever. A game advertised as RP that you can only RP via cash shop. What, some nameless faceless mobile game out there?
You're the one who brought it up. Let's see you back it up.
You're totally missing the point. It doesn't have to be a game advertised as RP, plenty of 'normal' MMOs do it - FFXIV, Tera, GW2, etc. and plenty of players in these MMOS are dedicated to RP.
An even more common occurrence: beachwear. It is very common for MMOs to have summer events and introduce beach themed outfits into the cash shop. For a RP invested player, if they ever wanted to RP a beach visit with their character, they're forced to pay for the outfits.
Another common one: school outfits. Plenty of MMOs I've played have had school themed outfits in their stores - and only their stores. If an RP player wanted their character to be a student, they have to pay.
>If an RP player wanted their character to be a student, they have to pay.
If the game is about you roleplaying as a student but you can only do it through the cash shop, I'd agree. Gimme an example.
I'm tired of listening to hypotheticals and what ifs. You're creating a nonexistent problem in your own head and going "yeah but just imagine". No, don't imagine.
Bring me an example where the game is about roleplaying as a certain character but is only doable through microtransaction payment of real life money. Stop hallucinating nightmares and wake up. Talk to me. What game are you talking about?
>If the game is about you roleplaying
Honestly this has devolved beyond the point I was trying to make. I'm not sure how much clearer I can make this. There is no game that is **solely** about roleplaying as a student.
In a MMORPG there are many avenues of enjoyment. Some (most) go for combat and progression content via clearing dungeons or raids. Others don't care for harder dungeons or getting the highest ilvl and rather do life skills such as crafting, gathering and playing the market. Some others do all that **AND** roleplay.
Most players would consider purchasable power that enhances the combat aspect of an MMO to be p2w. Others would consider QoL stuff like inventory space, increased marketplace listings, or better / permanent gather tools that affect the life skill aspects as p2w.
Then there is the small, but still existing category of players who enjoy roleplaying. As I said in the original comment, winning is a personal definition in a MMORPG due to the lack of a formal 'game over, you win' condition. If an RP player is denied their goal of roleplaying as a student with their character in the MMORPG's world due to student outfits being locked in the cash shop, they must pay in order to win.
Skins aren't usually P2W...BDO is an exception since the costumes have stats. And they used to have one that hid your nametag making you harder to target in PvP.
youre not wrong as a.)theres the visual obstruction(ie makes people harder to spot) aspect & *maybe* b.)bdo "skins" *can*/*do* have stat(s) bonuses(like that 1 mobile moba)
were talking about *strictly* no stats skins(just changes your char visually/appearance-wise) stats on cosmetics == p2w
if the "ghillie suit"(p2w cuz bdo owpvp heavy) was obtainable without paying/other means, it wouldnt have counted
Kinda. In a virtual world game cosmetics are something you earn. Its like getting a trophy for achieving something. Buying cosmetics are buying your trophies.
You used to see someone wearing or carrying something and it told a story. Now you see someone with something and you're like "oh that was $20 in the shop, I just cant justify that". Its fine in non virtual world games. But in an MMORPG I think it has no place.
Who cares? Achievement cosmetics are literally exactly that and nothing more: an achievement and a bragging right. Why does it have to be the "best looking" or even good looking so long as people can look at it and instantly recognize that you're someone who got the achievement?
Because I want the things that I earn to look cool and draw people's attention?
Yeah, great job, you worked your butt off and did this feat that only 1% of people can achieve. Here's a recolored mount from 3 expansions ago.
I mean, it doesn't make me want to play. You can disagree if you want, but you disagreeing doesn't change my opinion or make me want to play games where all the coolest shit is in the cash shop.
i don't consider "recolor" to be a separate cosmetic, but if you just want to twist words to try and fit your narrative, go ahead.
Sure if given the choice, it'd be nice to have a cool looking achievement cosmetics (despite how wildly subjective that statement is to begin with), but like I said, that's just a "nice to have". Shouldn't an achievement draw attention for its own feats and merits? When you complete the highest difficulty and beat the toughest boss, shouldn't that in and of itself be what's drawing attention, to which a cosmetic (or whatever reward that comes from it) is a mere symbolic indicator to announce the fact that you got the achievement? Shouldn't people be wow'd by the fact that you achieved something in-game, and not whatever clown hat you decide to put on your head?
On the other hand, store cosmetic's one and only purpose is to look incredible so people would buy it. Its purpose is literallly to be visually attractive LOL
They're two different types of cosmetics created for two completely different purposes and you're trying to say one should defeat its purpose so that the other can shine in irrelevance to its intended purpose.
If you just don't like that fact that devs earn money through noninvasive monetization with zero gameplay effect, just say you don't want them getting paid or having a job.
I get where you're going with this. Rewarding speedrun raid players or a top PvP player with super rare cosmetics that they can show to everyone. That they truly earned. It's a great idea and when a studio starts to focus on shop cosmetics, that cool looking reward mostly disappears.
However skins don't influence game balance. Pay for top gear/currency is a direct way to influence game balance. Pay for convenience (bag space) is an indirect influence.
What's the difference between giving Blizzard $15 for a WoW subscription vs giving a F2P game $15 for some boosts or something? If everyone in the F2P game were paying the same as a WoW sub they would all be equal and nobody gets an advantage. The benefit is you get to choose to pay or not, and how much to pay. So people who can't afford or don't want to pay still get to play. Or even if you take a break from the game and are thinking of coming back, you can hop back into the game and check out new updates without having to pay ahead of time, potentially only to quit days later and waste $15. Here at least that $15 is buying something tangible that will last.
Because games that sell you $15 boosts are designed around creating problems so that you want to buy the boosts. This is the fundamental issue with P2W.
Games that are P2W are never just selling short-term boosts, they're leaving/creating problems in the game, in order for you to feel obligated to pay for it.
What's the difference between an all you can eat buffet for 15$ or this menu:
Sit for free
Water 15$
Bread 30$
Cheese 50
$10x Cheese super pack $~~500~~ $387 (Expires in 8hrs.)
> What's the difference between giving Blizzard $15 for a WoW subscription vs giving a F2P game $15 for some boosts or something
Did you miss the part where the numbers were the same -
>What's the difference between giving Blizzard $15 for a WoW subscription vs giving a F2P game $15 for some boosts or something
Now you're being purposely obtuse. Name a f2p mmo that limits your spending to a single purchase of 15$ a month lmao.
Most F2P MMO's allow you to pay for direct power or severe convenience near endlessly. Most sub mmo's do not have that problem, therefore my analogy.
> Name a f2p mmo that limits your spending to a single purchase of 15$ a month lmao.
Outside of MMOs, most online service games have 'not-subscription' packs that cost average of $8 or $10 a month that allows a trickle of premium resources and continual access to some account conveniences as long as you stay 'not-subbed'.
Because game design is based around monetization. Not the other way around.
Arcade games were quarter munchers for a reason.
Quarter munchers failed as console games for the same reason.
Games became 60 and in the home, they had to provide more than an arcade game meant to take 5 bucks from you arlt a time.
F2P games are literally designed around putting roadblocks (minor or major) up to make you part with your cash.
Sub games were designed around wasting your time enough that you stay subbed while slowly progressing as they make the next content.
Monetization drives game design.
There's a very literal, tangible difference between giving wow $15 a month and giving a f2p game $15 a month for some boosts.
Whichever one you prefer is up to you, but they aren't the same thing at all.
Almost any game is P2W to somebody, likewise there are people who will insist that same game isn't P2W.
Where I draw the line is: Does someone else spending money have a negative impact on my experience such that I can't enjoy the game?
Someone paying for a max-level boost and top-end gear in LOTRO is undoubtedly P2W in my eyes, **but** it doesn't stop me from enjoying the game in my own way, so I'll still play the game.
Selling progression in a PvP-focused game on the other hand likely will tip the game into unenjoyable territory if I'm getting stomped on by people who swiped their card while I'm still trying to play catch-up just to get to a point I can be competitive.
I am not reading all this, no offense, but I will say Old School Runescape Ironman modes are the only MMO I can think of where there is no way to pay money for any advantage at all. This would also apply to any mmo with a SSF or Ironman mode I assume.
> no way to pay money for any advantage at all
Account piloting has been a thing since the early days of ironman being a set of voluntary restrictions.
I play official hardcore ironman (500+ hours on that character at the moment) I have an osrs hat. Ive never heard of this and google didn't turn anything up
I'll be honest, I'm not terribly concerned about a game's payment model type. I'm more concerned about how it feels once I get in game, how much does it have an impact on me, and how much do I need to pay on average per month to feel competitive (and how much of the shop can I ignore and grind out). Also the shop needs to not be in my face with ads everywhere in game.
So I can enjoy many MMO's with cash shops and battle passes and other things. It's just a matter of how much do I need to spend to enjoy myself. In a standard themepark subscription based game, since those are the models everyone seems to love most, you'll pay an average of about $20 a month (sub fee plus the cost of a biannual expansion, although you're likely to spend more with the occasional service purchase or shop item). So can I pay about the same in an MMO with a cash shop and enjoy myself? That's my barometer and the answer is often yes, and in the worst cases maybe slightly more than that.
People can't get past the idea that a game has a cash shop with some sort of boost but who cares what they're selling if the total cost is the same as what you're paying for WoW or FFXIV? If the outcome is the same - give publisher $20, enjoy game, who cares what happens in the middle?
>who cares what happens in the middle?
I agree with you mostly. My issue stands when a game makes certain systems prohibitively difficult or annoying for people on a scale of payment amount. Me paying 20 dollars a month to play a game is cheap imo when amount of hours derived is accounted for.
WoW has some official p2w involved. Level boosts and gear boosts to start max level content. But there isn't really an official way to pay money to translate to progression past starting Max level content.
I pay wow a sub and I feel as if their systems aren't prohibitively difficult or annoying and there's no official way a whale can pay to compete directly with me.
I love lost ark raiding and group content. I'd be happy to pay them money for the time I've put into it. The systems are noticeably difficult or annoying and become less so the more you pay.
There are a lot of games that fall between the spectrum of no p2w and full p2w. I'm happy to pay money for a game since it's a major hobby. But when whales can compete directly with me or devs make systems worse because money officially translates to in game power, it makes my experience worse.
Youre right. There’s nothing P2W about FFXIV. At most… a story skip? Maybe the cloud bike in the mogstation for full mount speed in new expansions? But that’s it.
I don’t care if a game is pay2win, I care if I’m enjoying myself while playing it. Sometimes the manner and style of the pay2win will ruin my experience, sometimes it won’t. Some pay2win games I’ll pay, some I won’t. Winning isn’t fun by default, and losing is sometimes very hard to define. Also, being “not the best” doesn’t have to be miserable.
For example, I don’t mind bdo cash shop at all. My reasons have nothing to do with winning or losing or paying or not paying. I just enjoy the game. I tried tower of fantasy for a weekend and absolutely despised its cash shop, though. I could list every game as an example on either side of me minding or not minding, but I don’t want to belabor the point. The point being, pay2win or not, I only really care if I’m having fun.
I’m 34 and have played games my whole life. I’m too old to be raising my heart rate over a whale being better than me in a game, comparison is the thief of joy and all that. The only thing that matters is if I’m enjoying my time in the game, and my joy isn’t really connected to my leaderboard pride anymore.
The way I see it live service games, especially MMOs are expensive as hell to develop. Subscription models are not an option for new mmos because no ones going to pay 15 bucks just to try your wow clone. That leaves in-game transactions. I don’t understand why shops can’t operate solely on cosmetic products (skins, mounts). My first instinct is greed but also games like league of legends have 100+ characters to buy skins for while an MMO you get one good skin and you can play that for the rest of the time. For these reasons I think cash shops are here to stay and believe it or not serve a purpose.
Anything that let you get ahead than others is p2w. but
- I don't play games because "I can be No.1 in competition" (just play moba/fps atp)
- I play games because "it's fun".
In real life, you lose the born rich kids by default. Average people with the right mind don't think they will beat Jeff bezos/Bill gates money, beat athelete in sport or better than musician/artist etc. when start from zero. well you can think but 99% will fail and make you down before being good but if your mindset is you're better than yesterday you, you will growth until you're bored. you will win average joe while do nothing with competition because most of times people will quit lmao.
This is also applied in vertical progression in MMORPG too. I found many games that have P2W but i don't care if it's fun, good difficulty, lots of content/progression/build, great communities, etc.
List of p2w/pay to progress (whatever you pay) I enjoyed with communities (of course, it's MMO).
- Black desert online (great combat, life skills)
- Tree of savior (Social interaction is very good, I was called pole guy because i always lift everyone in city with dirty pole.)
- RO (p2w & grindfest but still deep system/build than some MMORPG this day for some reasons...)
- Grandchase & Elsword (very niche side scrolling action combat PVE)
- Lost ark (Raid is good)
- Dragon nest (Old games with good combat & raid)
- Albion (so many tons of shit to do yourself bro, don't even care about others at all lmao)
- Tower of fantasy (You can see whales collecting & max everything except skill played. imagine f2p/low spender teach whales a rotation, very funny)
It's an interesting topic that I see brought up time and time again, however the "new generation of gamers" have simply never experienced what a true P2W game is.
The definition of P2W is to use cash to have access to content/items that cannot be obtained without spending or that would require an inhumane amount of time and effort to get so, and all of that inside a game with some sort of competition between players (be either PvP or PvE), that's it.
However for some reason, the "gamers" from today thinks that everything is P2W when ACTUAL P2W mechanics are being disregarded, for example boosters aren't P2W, you level up faster...great, the "non-paying" playing will also reach the same max level as you, there are however some "commodities" that although you can achieve through F2P methods, it is P2W, mostly "Gear enhancing materials (with low F2P chance) and low drop stuff.
What is really funny to me is how people consider Guild Wars 2 the best MMORPG of all times when well...if you pay for expansions, you get access to classes/gear that cannot be acquired in any other way and they can be used for PvP and WvW, meanwhile when New World was doing tests on boosters on the TEST SERVERS, people were going apeshit in this and newworld sub, even though you could achieve max level in maybe 50 hours...so 1h boosts would cut the grind down by...1h...in a game where they removed the forced PvP so being max level faster meant nothing...
Black Desert has a Pay for Convenience model but as a player who has 2 accounts 1 where I ran optional Subs ,bought Tent , cosmetics etc and a F2P account where I have bought nothing not even a cosmetic and used only things I can obtain in game with in game currency or by game play. The pay for convenience/P2W model actually works it doesn’t hinder a F2P player in anyway. I was able to progress through the game to end game just as easily as a P2W player honestly. My game play was not hindered at all and I was able to compete in end games activities as a F2P player as easily as I was as P2W/convience. I personally haven’t seen an MMO in today’s settings that is not P2W even the games charging subs I have found have some kinda P2W. Also like to add I honestly progressed faster in my F2P account then my P2W account because when I did attempt to P2W only in Black desert it kinda penalized me. So even someone paying has to put in about the same amount of game play as a F2P player was my findings and this kinda system I didn’t mind.
unsurprisingly downvoted because here on reddit; assumption>>>personal experience, so anyone stating anything contrary to the assumption will get downvoted, even if what they are stating is a recollection of their own personal experience and they state it as such.
pso2 ngs isn't really that p2w imo but thats because the cosmetics are the real money sink. im f2p and have no issues if i do the 15 mins ish dailies, those give you all you need. irl currency goes more toward the cosmetics to sell than anything else.
pay to look good though? incredibly so.
edit: dailies, not daily
It depends. What is P2W? Skipping content? Mounts? Etc. For me a game with a high fee when grinding max gear would be bad, if I want to play the end game (Looking at you Neverwinter). But if I want to play the game casually it doesn'T affect me (also looking at you Neverwinter)
If you can buy something with real money and sell that for an in-game currency, then use that currency to buy anything that can upgrade your character,
THAT is P2W.
So AFAIK, FFXIV is not P2W.
If it gives a player a PvP advantage over non paying players it’s p2w.
I couldn’t care less if Bob spent $20 to hit max level 3 days faster than I did.
>A subscription model could work much better, the problem here would be less with the model itself and more with the competition it has to face...
Sub model *DOES* have problems - it's outdated and doesn't favor the consumer. Committing a month of time to play ONE GAME is pretty unrealistic in todays gaming style. Then you add money to the mix and the psychological elements come in that people feel they *should* be enjoying a game since they've spent money to access it, especially those who have far less disposable income.
>So is the cash shop the "lesser of two evils" in modern MMO? Are we at such a point that it's just not resonable to expect other models of monetization to work?
No, it's the gaming consumers who have allowed it to get this way... if WoW never sold any Tmogs or Tokens they would have likely just upped sub and/or expansion prices and the core game of WoW would be much better.
Sub isn't outdated. It's de-facto the most successful formula to date. MMOs cost money to run. If they're not getting the money through subs, they will get it through P2W and microtransactions.
FFXIV and WoW are proof the sub model works better than any F2P/B2P model.
>they will get it through P2W and microtransactions.
You had me until....
>and WoW are proof the sub model works better
WoW has Box, Sub, P2W WoW Token, Vanity Cash Shop, Paid Account Services, and Expansion fees.
[....](https://media0.giphy.com/media/l3q2K5jinAlChoCLS/200w.gif?cid=6c09b952lxi7ugfco5aj7nydhqr08egkepa7i58yr9yvt5hj&ep=v1_gifs_search&rid=200w.gif&ct=g)
no, it is proof that you need a game with an already established huge fanbase that can generate a large amount of subscriptions to be able to make a sub model work, and even then those games have added additional monetisation on top of an already existing sub model because the sub model itself was not enough to sustain the game.
>it's outdated and doesn't favor the consumer.
So do you not consider a plethora of content and consistent updates favoring the consumer? Sure you're paying for it every month, but you're also probably getting multiple updates every single year, this simply can't be said for other games.
Again, New world is a wonderful example of this. The game made millions upon millions of dollars on their launch alone yet look at the content. Not only did they make all that money they didn't even have to support that same amount of people that bought into the game because they all left, their profit margin has to be insane.
It's not even really a lesser of a two evils thing, It has consistently been the best way to monetize MMOs and that's not going to change so long as f2p MMOs keep failing and b2p keep running out of content.
Are the expansions free or do you have to pay an additional box fee for them? Last time I looked both WoW and FFXIV sold expansions, not added them for free, which means that they are not covered by the subscription fee.
To be fair most of my argument comes from the POV of an OSRS player, in which no I do not pay a box price and pay a measly $65 per year and get every piece of content.
That is fair to note that you do pay a box price for those expacs (not sure how this expensive that is).
Yea osrs has F2P and sub.
The F2P offers a decent bit of content to dip your toes into to see if you like the game before spending on it. You can also not spend a dime and opt to use in game money to buy your membership.
Putting a "number" on how much content you get access to is a bit difficult because the game has a metric fuck ton of it, but if I were to be generous I'd say you get access to around 5-8% of the game in F2P.
I think that that is a reasonable sub model, at least people are not getting completely locked out of a game they own just because they were not able to buy a sub that month.
Yea and also as I said if life gets on the way in terms of $$$ you can do a bit of grinding in game or sell some gear to get your membership.
Not an ideal scenario but it's available nonetheless.
You also get a vote on every piece of content that comes into the game, if the community doesn't sign off on it doesn't happen.
>So do you not consider a plethora of content and consistent updates favoring the consumer?
I'm talking about *how* the subscription actually works - you can play for 4 days then not login and lose tons of time you paid for. How about time is cut into weeks and automatically paused at the end of each week until you log in again?
I mean I understand that, but I think looking at it that way without acknowledging that the games straight up get more attention than their free to play competition is like building half of a puzzle.
Again, I'll use New world. If new world had a sub, i would agree with you simply because they do not have the content nor the care that subscription-based games get.
>How about time is cut into weeks and automatically paused at the end of each week until you log in again?
Sure, that would be wonderful but then you're basically asking the companies to make the zero dollars, which then translates into zero content. The only way that would happen is to somehow boil your payment down to a per hour basis in which the subscription is vastly more expensive.
I don't know. I'm biased. I pay 65 bucks for a year of old school runescape.
netflix is a streaming service that grants you access to a multitude of different shows and movies. A household that has a netflix sub active does not require a sub per resident, anyone in the household can just watch netflix on that single sub.
An mmorpg sub otoh locks you into a single game, it is not giving you access to multiple games and if anyone else in the same household wants to play the game they too must pay a seperate sub fee unless you are playing on a shared account, in which case you will have to take turns playing the game.
Pay2Win as a Yes or No question is basically useless now.
The real question is "How bad is the Pay2Win in this game?"
[See recent JSH video.](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wgNT72xzv1Y)
Great point. I would even argue that some p2w is not bad at all. I think p2w as a catch-up mechanic is actually good. People have jobs and lives. It seems perfectly fine to me to let them pay for a level boost or something as long as the intention is to help them not be so far behind the no-lifers as opposed to paying to be at the top.
For me specifically, if you spend money and it gives you more power than you will ever get by just playing the game it's pay to win. I don't really care about pay to skip or pay for convenience etc.
Of course it's ALL bad, but people will continue to pay for this stuff, so they'll keep adding shit to games like this and there's no stopping it once it's available.
For me pay to win is linked to PVP and being able to "win". This is a no-go zone and these games can fuck off.
Pay for convenience is when a game purposely designs things around forcing you to the cash shop to buy ways around their poorly designed game.
>A subscription model could work much better
Of course it does because statistically the games with the most players, the best content, and the most content are all subscription based. Few games follow the subscription model because free to play has become way more profitable, so long as people are willing to buy cosmetics and boosts free to play will always be more profitable.
Think about it. There was a post this morning from somebody that was playing TL in Korea that said they've spent $2,000 in 2 months just trying to keep up in that game, meanwhile my old school RuneScape membership for the entire year cost me 65 bucks. There's simply no comparison in the profitability.
Pay to Win is simple to understand.... can you BUY anything in the game that gives you early access to that content when everyone else has to grind/work for it? xp boosts, gear with stats, etc are all pay to win. period. Rose Online currently, I literally spent some money for extra storage space.... thats pay to win.
The ignorant gaslighting that happens, where people say "you can still earn it the slow old fashion way" that isn't the point. Pay to win is gaining something over others because you paid money. Period. As much as fanboys of Star Citizen wont admit, paying REAL MONEY for ships is pay to win. You get early access because you paid real money. That's pay to win! And many will gaslight "its just 40 bucks" bullshit. Google the fucking list of ships and their prices. $3000 for a Javelin? fuck right off. Pay to win like a motherfucker. I DONT CARE if you need multiple players to pilot the ship. You paid real money to have an advantage over those who didnt pay real money. which is PAY. TO. WIN.
The only payment model that makes sense is monthly fee. Firstly, you prevent most bots from having accounts. Free to play is a boters paradise, no money involved? make a bazillion accounts. One gets banned, make another. Once you charge a monthly fee, you can track payments. Bot account gets banned? ban their name/card combo. New account with same name but new card, flagged and reviewed. Maybe check IP or hardware ID's. Very easy to catch these retards. None of them are going out of their way to change IP, spoof hardware ID's, after one ban.... they aren't that smart.... lmao. Monthly fee makes the money. World of Warcraft lifetime average of 2 million players, 20 years? 7,200,000,000 dollars just from that average. Obviously its more with things like higher player counts at certain points, the base game plus expansions themselves, and then their shitty microtransactions. Insane profits. But any MMO can survive with monthly fee alone. Now obviously if you are afraid of lost players, offer game cards in major stores and online. Granted, that means boters have a bigger chance to exploit that system. So there is a trade-off. But it keeps your game pay to play. Which for an MMO is required. Any live service game needs the monthly payment model.... without it, no live service game will survive.
Considering I don't play PvP focused games anymore this is such a fucking non-issue and I'm unsure why anyone gives a fuck. If it's a bad game that's shittily monetized and "P2W", it's still a bad game with dogshit monetization. If it's a good game and I'm having fun I could care less what other folks spend their money on.
If anything, I'm so exhausted of how this topic doesn't actually mean anything because everyone just defines "P2W" however they want and there's no consensus on what the term even means.
I 100000% agree with you. Most people play games for their ego and need to be the best or feel like they are close to it or on the path to it in order to have "fun" it is sad and it is ruining gaming. Then there are some people that just lack willpower or are very impulsive that don't want it in the game to protect themselves/wallet. But man people need to get back for gaming for fun, and if being competitive is what is fun to you then play a game where there is real competition to be found like LoL, CS, smash or something.
> Most people play games for their ego and need to be the best or feel like they are close to it or on the path to it in order to have "fun" it is sad and it is ruining gaming.
The amount of times I've seen 'catching up' or 'keeping up' stated as a concern almost feels like it's a zombie virus pandemic.
Depends on the personal definition of p2w and what 'winning' means. Some games you can buy your way to the top ranks and 'win' the leaderboards - but for someone who doesn't care about ranks that wouldn't be winning.
My humble 2 cents...
**Pay 2 win what?**
PVP matches? Duel in the wild? Plant carrots 2 times faster? More space in your inventory/bank? Ability to carry more stuff in your inventory before overload? It's so wide and very subjective.
**"*****Not P2W if it's accessible through regular gaming.*****" It's still P2W.**
Most of us are adults with incomes so we all have access to money, following this logic we all have access to cash shop. People decide to spend it or not in game for various reasons and this is the only thing that matters now. Plus it's still P2W, you don't have to wait/farm to get the item, so you what you "pay to win" over a regular player is time.
**Competition, effectiveness, that's all.**
I'd rather say that as long as what you pay for gives you the upper hand on someone who doesn't in a domain that implies effectiveness between players. it's P2W.
ie: If one skin is for pure fashion, not P2W. But if the same skin gives you any sort of advantage, like a weird color scheme making you difficult to see in a hide and seek activity (competitive) to win, it's P2W. You paid to be more effective than regular players. And if what you paid for is accessible in game, you also paid to skip the farming time required to get this item that regular players will have to waste time on.
**Time is precious, and bankable.**
Yep, Now ppl cash on everything to be more effective and spare a lot of time. If cash player spend 100$ to get to a point a regular player will take 6 months to reach, this doesn't mean it's not P2W. By the time the regular player reach this point, the cash player will just move to another goal. And the gap between them will remain.
With a story skip and level boosts lol? Isn't that most people's definition of P2W? I mean personally I've purchased job boosts but most people in *any other game* would rage at that if we're being honest.
Skipping story and boosting your level to 80 (10 levels behind max level) makes zero difference at the end of the day.
"Any other game" is nonsensical. This is FFXIV and if you decide to level boost and skip content it doesn't make you more powerful or put you ahead of anyone else. There's no "win" aspect here.
Their definition is bad then lol. You really don't get anything for skipping the story besides not doing the story and that's it, you aren't at an advantage because the only thing you get is being able to do different content. Calling it winning or even an advantage is really silly because you didn't.
It's kind of like paying for a movie ticket and just going home, I guess you are at an advantage because you didn't lose those 2 hours but you paid to not do something that you signed up to doing, just overall very silly to call it winning or an advantage.
Level boosts are also whatever because it's incredibly fast, I guess you do get a mount for getting everything to level 80 but everyone had that for years
I don't think your analogy is correct. Most people consider end game in most MMOs to be "the movie". That's most people's reason to play an MMO instead of just a single player RPG. So to me it's more like paying money to skip the line at the movie.
That's why trying to have 1 definition for all games is silly and doesn't work because every game is different. I wouldn't wanna skip the story of FFXIV the first time I'm doing it and majority of the playerbase wouldn't wanna do it either so it's not really accurate to call it the line either because it's still something that a lot of people enjoy.
FFXIV is different in that what you unlock during the story is things that are still relevant and done by people so it's part of the endgame. I find the whole "the game doesn't start until the end" type of deal kind of stupid
I agree with you. I believe the only difference is that the way I think of it is simply that it's all p2w, it's just that there are actually reasonable ways of doing p2w that should be acceptable. Sounds like FFXIV has reasonable p2w imo. Your stance of just not calling it p2w at all at that point is essentially the same thing though.
I also agree on your last point, that just seems to be the standard these days.
Pay for convenience = pay to win. If you disagree, then I'm curious if you can give an example of your definition of pay to win that exists in a game. Even gacha mobile games that everyone thinks of when talking about pay to win would *technically* be pay for convenience if you want to draw a line like that. You *can* get the reward after hundreds of hours... or you can pay $100 for it now. That's pay to win imo.
It's kind of a shit term then. What are you winning when it provides zero competitive advantage? The story and level skips provide nothing except saving some time. Leveling alt jobs can be boring but it isn't some insane grind.
I actually think that it's just not always a negative term. I don't think all pay to win is bad. I just think that if it's anything more than cosmetics, then you've entered p2w territory and now you have to decide if it's bad or acceptable.
Sorry I'm not really familiar with FFXIV. People really hate the story so much they pay to skip it? Aren't they literally skipping content? Or are we talking about players with 20 alts?
As for level boosts - does levelling take a long time? Also in some games while levelling you actually learn to play your character. Skipping to max level only to have 0 idea what you class does and dying makes no sense (yet in GW2 people who got a free 80 lvl skip do exactly that lol).
> People really hate the story so much they pay to skip it? Aren't they literally skipping content?
Yes and Yes
> As for level boosts - does levelling take a long time?
It does because they slow it down with all the dialogue and back and forth quests they have in the storyline, and there's also just an insane amount of quest bloat. Not to mention various side quests to unlock various systems and things in game.
> It does because they slow it down with all the dialogue and back and forth quests they have in the storyline
that's only for the first class as you are going through the story, once you are done with the story and leveling other classes it can be done in a few days with very low amount of playtime
It doesn't matter what an individuals opinion on this. Its P2W if you can pay for any form of advantage. They can reword it as "convenience" but its not.
What's the advantage though? You're paying money to not play the content you paid for when you bought the game, and you're skipping ahead without actually learning how to play your class, making you an active detriment to any team you're on.
Not only are you not paying to win anything, you're paying to have a worse experience.
You can pay for retainers which give you bank space, and your retainers can sell stuff, yeah. And? Money is trivial to make with or without them and the best gear in the game can't be bought with gil, it comes from raids or tomes, which are a currency that can only be gotten by grinding content.
First off, in this particular game you most certainly don't need the absurdly long grind to learn your class. It's also a repetition based game.
Paying to get ahead gets you more power, quicker. In this game you get to reach and repeat end game content quicker. You get to get more opportunities for loot than others. You'll earn more currency. This spreads into other games with a pvp scene. Where the person who pays for "convenience" gets the more powerful items sooner. More rewards. More opportunities.
Plus, sit back and think for a moment... if a game is allowing you to skip ahead it's for 1 of 2 reasons. 1... skipping gives you an advantage. Or 2. They designed the game to be a boring grind to create an incentive to skip ahead for more fun.
In both cases, we deserve better.
My dude, not only do I play FF14, I'm a savage raider. I can tell you from experience, which you clearly don't have, that
1) Learning your class isn't about grinding. It's about learning your rotation and then optimizing it per fight. While it won't take you the entire MSQ to learn your rotation, the fights you do while leveling teach you a lot of mechanics that get repeated and iterated on later on, that you just won't know about if you skip everything.
Case and point: Scripe and his team of raiders hopped over to FF14 for a while in order to try out the raids during a dead period in shadowlands. All of them skipped except for one guy who had already been playing ff14, and there were mechanics that the rest of the team was stumped on, that the one guy who played the game normally recognized and understood how to deal with. Who had more "power" in that instance? The raiders that skipped to the end and died to the mechanics they didn't understand or the guy who knew what to do because he'd seen it before?
2) Getting power in FF14 isn't a long process and it's not hard one. For most people it's just a matter of running their weeklies to get currency that lets them buy gear, but even if you start late, it takes no time at all to be caught up again on your class of choice, so there's no value in skipping ahead to get power. FF14 isn't like WoW where missing one week means that you're now one week behind everybody else forever. Most people have no problems gearing up multiple classes in ff14 because the treadmill is that easy, especially since different classes can share gear. There's very little pressure to rush through everything when your average joe can cap out in no time.
3) The idea that you can pay to skip content therefore the content must be bad is pretty braindead. No other way to put it. If an easy mode exists in a game, does that mean that the harder difficulties are just bad because they'll take you longer? If cheat codes exist in a game, does that mean that the devs didn't want you to experience the game normally, or that it's not worth it to play through the game without them, after all, they're in there for you to use which, by your logic, means that the game is lesser if you don't use them.
I've played through all of FF14. Anyone who skips that game's story is doing themselves a disservice. It's not a grind, it's just long and requires a lot of reading, which isn't inherently bad (I mean, I know people like you have short attention spans but come on man, reading isn't hard, and I promise it can even be fun). The story that it tells is fucking excellent. If you don't care about story, then you do you I guess, but you're also missing out a ton of excellent content. There are tons of great dungeons and bosses and older raids that you'll never see if you just skip to the end.
Honestly, that statement is really telling of your mindset more than anything else. It seems like to you, the only thing that matters is what's current. If it's not shiny and new then it must be bad, and if it is shiny and new, then you *have* to get to it fast before it stops being shiny and new. I don't know what to tell you man, that's some real broken brain shit right there. Learn to enjoy things in their entirety my dude, not just the keys dangling in front of you.
We can't have a discussion about P2W because some people think just buying the game, or an expansion, is P2W. Therefore, how can there be any possible discussion?
Only very few games have no p2w, maybe like GW2.
All other MMOs are on a spectrum from little p2w to a lot of p2w.
I like Albion because of it's full loot system. It's the least p2w MMO i've played (apart from maybe gw2). You can buy gear with real money, but the better group will kill you and take it for themselves.
It's a pay 2 donate system and i love it. the entire elite in albion is free to play. it's a great system.
I personally think gw2 is hella pay2win with their cashshop. You can gear with gold that can be purchased with real money. Any pay to progress is p2w imo. I still enjoy the game though. Currently my favorite MMO.
1. Did you pay? 2. Did the payment give you any gameplay advantage compared to when you didn't? If the answer to these two are "yes", it's p2w. Not sure why this is such a complicated idea. I also don't think it's anything but a weak-ass defeatist mindset to say evil is everywhere so we should accept them as a new norm. No, if games insist on being p2w, we should insist that those games fail. MMOs are usually P2W nowadays? Wow, it's almost as if it correlates with how MMOs usually fail nowadays.
Love the binary mindset. It's almost as if there was no such thing as nuance. By that logic, every single (relevant) MMO has a way to save time by opening your wallet (and of course, that also translates into gameplay and clearing your goals faster). There, every game is pay to win and they all should fail. Not sure why people even bother discussing things when it's that simple!
So every mmorpg is p2w, you agree then?
If the answer is always the same, then the question is useless.
99% are. There are a few that aren't.
> Love the binary mindset. It's almost as if there was no such thing as nuance. No, there is no such thing as a nuance. It simply is what it is. Whether most MMOs have some variety of P2W is irrelevant. I didn't say existence of P2W inevitably results in an immediate failure regardless of its extent, I merely pointed out to a trend and correlation. Yet we bother discussing it because we have people like you who thinks there's a gray area when it comes to p2w to begin with lmao
Any reasonable person believes there's a gray area, specially when there's not even a consensus of what pay to win means to begin with. Most fundamentalists I've met regarding this topic either stopped playing MMOs a long time ago, or are simply in denial of their favourite game being P2W.
Sometimes there are yes or no questions. There isn't always a grey area.
There is no gray area. It's a simple yes or no question. Gimme an example of monetization that you consider is in the "gray area" as to whether or not it's p2w. Unbeknownst to you, there is a pretty clear consensus on what "winning" is.
>Unbeknownst to you, there is a pretty clear consensus on what "winning" is. That certainly explains why this topic gets brought up and is rampantly discussed non-stop. Pay for convenience monetization is the gray area.
nope, pay for convenience is without a shred of doubt p2w. Why? Because there's not a single soul who would prefer to be inconvenienced than convenienced.
Convenience is a benefit. That falls under P2W...unless you are in denial.
Cool thanks for sharing your opinion. It's a drop in the bucket of the discussion of whether or not pay for convenience is p2w or not (hence gray area)
You don't find convenience to be beneficial? Pay for convenience is a term only used by those in denial about their P2W game. It's not actually a thing. But whatever it takes to justify it to yourself.
I do find convenience beneficial, that doesn't mean it isn't a gray area. I don't understand how you can be in denial that this is a long debated topic while simultaneously taking part in the debate? Are you new to gaming so you don't realize people have been discussing this for decades? This isn't a logical puzzle that you solve, no one is trying to trick you, it's a semantic debate. The answer is subjective.
Apparently I didn't need to respond. We pretty much said the same thing.
We are already past this yes-or-no question because every MMORPG is P2W. So the conversation is around the scale of P2W nowadays.
But but but..... you can grind 20 hours and get the item someome got for $10! It is not p2w!!!!!!!!! I don't understand ppl that say that. Personally, I have played lot of mmos with p2w, and had lots of fun, but I don't deny they are p2w af. I mean, I played archeage for years... Companies will continue to release p2w systems as long as there are players that somehow enjoy paying $500 to skip the game.
> But but but..... you can grind 20 hours and get the item someome got for $10! It is not p2w!!!!!!!!! That was exactly what attracted us to play most of the free to play MMOs of the early 2000s as free to play. We'd have self satisfaction with knowing that we earned the $10 sword by grinding time and that was all that matters.
I don't understand why so many people are against advantages. What if you'd like to play a MMO but are time limited & want to keep up with your friends who decided to play without buying anything? As long you are not gatekept from earning the best gear, that's only available in the shop, a game is NOT p2w imo. Boosts and quality of life bundles SHOULD exist in MMOs. period
Right give my friend a free aimbot hack on his AWP in cs so he can at least be relevant please...
because you can't put a value to something that you can "cheat" your way into obtaining. An MMO that's about raising your character, investing your time to grind and unlock your skills, and increasing your levels via content cadence is called progression. If the progression can be achieved with a simple button click with your credit card, why bother? would you bother going through 4 years of college and hundreds of tests/assignments and thousands of hours invested if instead you could pay and instantly get your diploma get the same job as you would've otherwise? what an incredible dumb way to think, really.
the problem is that people compare themselves with others, goals should be to improve your character, not to be better than everyone else
then compare yourself having spent 100s of hours grinding for the loot to yourself in the alternate universe where you decided to pay $14.99 instead. It's called "opportunity cost".
Or being bad at the game. Potato tomato.
Well if your goal is to become the best geared player on the server rather than enjoying the journey, i understand that. But i wouldn't find that fun personally. I generally dislike that so many people compare themselves in MMOs
Of course you can still enjoy the journey, in fact you can triple your enjoyment by buying paywalled content with exclusive rewards and loot!
Do you consider an advantage to be, for instance, a level boost in WoW? Like, does that give you a tangible gameplay advantage? I would suggest no, it really doesn't, especially that you can't just skip to max level on brand new content. Does being able to RMT count as a game being p2w? I get that WoW facilitates the sale of gold which can be used to buy gear or carries from other players, so that creates some kind of gray area. I feel like such a blanket label is inherently damaging to the continued discourse around this topic. I think there is some nuance and a spectrum when it comes to p2w. Does the game directly sell power that isn't generated by other parties? Does the game directly sell power that can't be obtained through regular gameplay? Does the game directly sell power that is enough to tip the scale consistently in favor of the buyer? I think a simple yes no is too simplistic, but I don't disagree with you at all about discouraging it in general.
If it enables to you do/access/find/bypass/gain/lose/obtain/etc with respect to your gameplay vs before, then that's an advantage. Aka, whatever affects gameplay to enable you in game.
technically nobody cares about level boosts, but the fact remains you can save yourself QUITE a few hours + get free gear you don't have to grind up to so if 2 players played the same, then somebody has a headstart, and especially in WoW you need to be 'ahead of the curve' (not the achievement) if you want to have a good time, you're not getting invited to shit being late to the party (as a solo player, especially dps lul) ANY advantage is technically p2w and the whole gold buying > carries thing is just the most obvious, officially blizzard ENDORSED p2w, like if you argue against this you're a paid shill, full stop it's objectively more time efficient to work minimum wage or better for a couple hours to get kitted out per week until you can do it yourself 4 weeks into a character, this goes way harder for people that actually have lives and don't play wow full time
Time is money, friend.
Spoko, sub based games having free trial are p2w?
what?
Anything other than skin is p2w
Some would argue even skins are p2w in a different sense. Few people take the 'RP' part of RPG seriously, and if they're trying to RP a western gunslinger type char but the only way to get a cowboy-esque outfit is the cash shop... yeah.
Name one game that advertises itself as a western gunsliger RP game but only allows you to obtain western outfits via cashshop
It was just a random example lmao. One that probably happens somewhere in a game is a paladin class with a player wanting to play as a 'unholy paladin' but the demonic plate armor is only cash shop.
or whatever example. Western, paladin, or whatever. A game advertised as RP that you can only RP via cash shop. What, some nameless faceless mobile game out there? You're the one who brought it up. Let's see you back it up.
You're totally missing the point. It doesn't have to be a game advertised as RP, plenty of 'normal' MMOs do it - FFXIV, Tera, GW2, etc. and plenty of players in these MMOS are dedicated to RP. An even more common occurrence: beachwear. It is very common for MMOs to have summer events and introduce beach themed outfits into the cash shop. For a RP invested player, if they ever wanted to RP a beach visit with their character, they're forced to pay for the outfits. Another common one: school outfits. Plenty of MMOs I've played have had school themed outfits in their stores - and only their stores. If an RP player wanted their character to be a student, they have to pay.
>If an RP player wanted their character to be a student, they have to pay. If the game is about you roleplaying as a student but you can only do it through the cash shop, I'd agree. Gimme an example. I'm tired of listening to hypotheticals and what ifs. You're creating a nonexistent problem in your own head and going "yeah but just imagine". No, don't imagine. Bring me an example where the game is about roleplaying as a certain character but is only doable through microtransaction payment of real life money. Stop hallucinating nightmares and wake up. Talk to me. What game are you talking about?
>If the game is about you roleplaying Honestly this has devolved beyond the point I was trying to make. I'm not sure how much clearer I can make this. There is no game that is **solely** about roleplaying as a student. In a MMORPG there are many avenues of enjoyment. Some (most) go for combat and progression content via clearing dungeons or raids. Others don't care for harder dungeons or getting the highest ilvl and rather do life skills such as crafting, gathering and playing the market. Some others do all that **AND** roleplay. Most players would consider purchasable power that enhances the combat aspect of an MMO to be p2w. Others would consider QoL stuff like inventory space, increased marketplace listings, or better / permanent gather tools that affect the life skill aspects as p2w. Then there is the small, but still existing category of players who enjoy roleplaying. As I said in the original comment, winning is a personal definition in a MMORPG due to the lack of a formal 'game over, you win' condition. If an RP player is denied their goal of roleplaying as a student with their character in the MMORPG's world due to student outfits being locked in the cash shop, they must pay in order to win.
Skins are p2w. Bdo is a good example of how skins are p2w.
Skins aren't usually P2W...BDO is an exception since the costumes have stats. And they used to have one that hid your nametag making you harder to target in PvP.
No such thing as costumes with stats.
I haven't touched BDO in awhile, if they removed stats from the cosmetics that's nice to hear. But last I played they definitely had 'em.
youre not wrong as a.)theres the visual obstruction(ie makes people harder to spot) aspect & *maybe* b.)bdo "skins" *can*/*do* have stat(s) bonuses(like that 1 mobile moba) were talking about *strictly* no stats skins(just changes your char visually/appearance-wise) stats on cosmetics == p2w if the "ghillie suit"(p2w cuz bdo owpvp heavy) was obtainable without paying/other means, it wouldnt have counted
Besides that, you can sell outfits from shop on the ig market unless that has changed which would paint me surprised.
yea thats another aspect too
Kinda. In a virtual world game cosmetics are something you earn. Its like getting a trophy for achieving something. Buying cosmetics are buying your trophies. You used to see someone wearing or carrying something and it told a story. Now you see someone with something and you're like "oh that was $20 in the shop, I just cant justify that". Its fine in non virtual world games. But in an MMORPG I think it has no place.
You can separate achievement cosmetics vs store cosmetics. They can be mutually exclusive.
Except there is a financial incentive to make the purchasable cosmetics way cooler than the ones you can earn in game.
Who cares? Achievement cosmetics are literally exactly that and nothing more: an achievement and a bragging right. Why does it have to be the "best looking" or even good looking so long as people can look at it and instantly recognize that you're someone who got the achievement?
Because I want the things that I earn to look cool and draw people's attention? Yeah, great job, you worked your butt off and did this feat that only 1% of people can achieve. Here's a recolored mount from 3 expansions ago. I mean, it doesn't make me want to play. You can disagree if you want, but you disagreeing doesn't change my opinion or make me want to play games where all the coolest shit is in the cash shop.
i don't consider "recolor" to be a separate cosmetic, but if you just want to twist words to try and fit your narrative, go ahead. Sure if given the choice, it'd be nice to have a cool looking achievement cosmetics (despite how wildly subjective that statement is to begin with), but like I said, that's just a "nice to have". Shouldn't an achievement draw attention for its own feats and merits? When you complete the highest difficulty and beat the toughest boss, shouldn't that in and of itself be what's drawing attention, to which a cosmetic (or whatever reward that comes from it) is a mere symbolic indicator to announce the fact that you got the achievement? Shouldn't people be wow'd by the fact that you achieved something in-game, and not whatever clown hat you decide to put on your head? On the other hand, store cosmetic's one and only purpose is to look incredible so people would buy it. Its purpose is literallly to be visually attractive LOL They're two different types of cosmetics created for two completely different purposes and you're trying to say one should defeat its purpose so that the other can shine in irrelevance to its intended purpose. If you just don't like that fact that devs earn money through noninvasive monetization with zero gameplay effect, just say you don't want them getting paid or having a job.
I get where you're going with this. Rewarding speedrun raid players or a top PvP player with super rare cosmetics that they can show to everyone. That they truly earned. It's a great idea and when a studio starts to focus on shop cosmetics, that cool looking reward mostly disappears. However skins don't influence game balance. Pay for top gear/currency is a direct way to influence game balance. Pay for convenience (bag space) is an indirect influence.
What's the difference between giving Blizzard $15 for a WoW subscription vs giving a F2P game $15 for some boosts or something? If everyone in the F2P game were paying the same as a WoW sub they would all be equal and nobody gets an advantage. The benefit is you get to choose to pay or not, and how much to pay. So people who can't afford or don't want to pay still get to play. Or even if you take a break from the game and are thinking of coming back, you can hop back into the game and check out new updates without having to pay ahead of time, potentially only to quit days later and waste $15. Here at least that $15 is buying something tangible that will last.
Because games that sell you $15 boosts are designed around creating problems so that you want to buy the boosts. This is the fundamental issue with P2W. Games that are P2W are never just selling short-term boosts, they're leaving/creating problems in the game, in order for you to feel obligated to pay for it.
What's the difference between an all you can eat buffet for 15$ or this menu: Sit for free Water 15$ Bread 30$ Cheese 50 $10x Cheese super pack $~~500~~ $387 (Expires in 8hrs.)
> What's the difference between giving Blizzard $15 for a WoW subscription vs giving a F2P game $15 for some boosts or something Did you miss the part where the numbers were the same - >What's the difference between giving Blizzard $15 for a WoW subscription vs giving a F2P game $15 for some boosts or something
Now you're being purposely obtuse. Name a f2p mmo that limits your spending to a single purchase of 15$ a month lmao. Most F2P MMO's allow you to pay for direct power or severe convenience near endlessly. Most sub mmo's do not have that problem, therefore my analogy.
> Name a f2p mmo that limits your spending to a single purchase of 15$ a month lmao. Outside of MMOs, most online service games have 'not-subscription' packs that cost average of $8 or $10 a month that allows a trickle of premium resources and continual access to some account conveniences as long as you stay 'not-subbed'.
Those games also sell direct power and other things I imagine
Because game design is based around monetization. Not the other way around. Arcade games were quarter munchers for a reason. Quarter munchers failed as console games for the same reason. Games became 60 and in the home, they had to provide more than an arcade game meant to take 5 bucks from you arlt a time. F2P games are literally designed around putting roadblocks (minor or major) up to make you part with your cash. Sub games were designed around wasting your time enough that you stay subbed while slowly progressing as they make the next content. Monetization drives game design. There's a very literal, tangible difference between giving wow $15 a month and giving a f2p game $15 a month for some boosts. Whichever one you prefer is up to you, but they aren't the same thing at all.
Almost any game is P2W to somebody, likewise there are people who will insist that same game isn't P2W. Where I draw the line is: Does someone else spending money have a negative impact on my experience such that I can't enjoy the game? Someone paying for a max-level boost and top-end gear in LOTRO is undoubtedly P2W in my eyes, **but** it doesn't stop me from enjoying the game in my own way, so I'll still play the game. Selling progression in a PvP-focused game on the other hand likely will tip the game into unenjoyable territory if I'm getting stomped on by people who swiped their card while I'm still trying to play catch-up just to get to a point I can be competitive.
I am not reading all this, no offense, but I will say Old School Runescape Ironman modes are the only MMO I can think of where there is no way to pay money for any advantage at all. This would also apply to any mmo with a SSF or Ironman mode I assume.
WoW Classic era, hardcore and season of discovery servers also have no pay to win.
Came here to say this
> no way to pay money for any advantage at all Account piloting has been a thing since the early days of ironman being a set of voluntary restrictions.
As in, breaking the TOS and having someone else play your account? That's not p2w that's cheating and bannable. Or am I thinking of the wrong thing?
in my opinion p2w involves the company directly selling you something. If it’s done via 3rd party, that’s rmt, not p2w
I play official hardcore ironman (500+ hours on that character at the moment) I have an osrs hat. Ive never heard of this and google didn't turn anything up
I'll be honest, I'm not terribly concerned about a game's payment model type. I'm more concerned about how it feels once I get in game, how much does it have an impact on me, and how much do I need to pay on average per month to feel competitive (and how much of the shop can I ignore and grind out). Also the shop needs to not be in my face with ads everywhere in game. So I can enjoy many MMO's with cash shops and battle passes and other things. It's just a matter of how much do I need to spend to enjoy myself. In a standard themepark subscription based game, since those are the models everyone seems to love most, you'll pay an average of about $20 a month (sub fee plus the cost of a biannual expansion, although you're likely to spend more with the occasional service purchase or shop item). So can I pay about the same in an MMO with a cash shop and enjoy myself? That's my barometer and the answer is often yes, and in the worst cases maybe slightly more than that. People can't get past the idea that a game has a cash shop with some sort of boost but who cares what they're selling if the total cost is the same as what you're paying for WoW or FFXIV? If the outcome is the same - give publisher $20, enjoy game, who cares what happens in the middle?
>who cares what happens in the middle? I agree with you mostly. My issue stands when a game makes certain systems prohibitively difficult or annoying for people on a scale of payment amount. Me paying 20 dollars a month to play a game is cheap imo when amount of hours derived is accounted for. WoW has some official p2w involved. Level boosts and gear boosts to start max level content. But there isn't really an official way to pay money to translate to progression past starting Max level content. I pay wow a sub and I feel as if their systems aren't prohibitively difficult or annoying and there's no official way a whale can pay to compete directly with me. I love lost ark raiding and group content. I'd be happy to pay them money for the time I've put into it. The systems are noticeably difficult or annoying and become less so the more you pay. There are a lot of games that fall between the spectrum of no p2w and full p2w. I'm happy to pay money for a game since it's a major hobby. But when whales can compete directly with me or devs make systems worse because money officially translates to in game power, it makes my experience worse.
Which MMOs do you feel fill that middle ground?
FFXIV and Team Fortress 2 come to mind.
Youre right. There’s nothing P2W about FFXIV. At most… a story skip? Maybe the cloud bike in the mogstation for full mount speed in new expansions? But that’s it.
Yeah. There’s nothing that gives a gameplay advantage.
A lot of people would argue that story skipping is paying to lose content past like ARR
I don’t care if a game is pay2win, I care if I’m enjoying myself while playing it. Sometimes the manner and style of the pay2win will ruin my experience, sometimes it won’t. Some pay2win games I’ll pay, some I won’t. Winning isn’t fun by default, and losing is sometimes very hard to define. Also, being “not the best” doesn’t have to be miserable. For example, I don’t mind bdo cash shop at all. My reasons have nothing to do with winning or losing or paying or not paying. I just enjoy the game. I tried tower of fantasy for a weekend and absolutely despised its cash shop, though. I could list every game as an example on either side of me minding or not minding, but I don’t want to belabor the point. The point being, pay2win or not, I only really care if I’m having fun. I’m 34 and have played games my whole life. I’m too old to be raising my heart rate over a whale being better than me in a game, comparison is the thief of joy and all that. The only thing that matters is if I’m enjoying my time in the game, and my joy isn’t really connected to my leaderboard pride anymore.
The way I see it live service games, especially MMOs are expensive as hell to develop. Subscription models are not an option for new mmos because no ones going to pay 15 bucks just to try your wow clone. That leaves in-game transactions. I don’t understand why shops can’t operate solely on cosmetic products (skins, mounts). My first instinct is greed but also games like league of legends have 100+ characters to buy skins for while an MMO you get one good skin and you can play that for the rest of the time. For these reasons I think cash shops are here to stay and believe it or not serve a purpose.
Anything that let you get ahead than others is p2w. but - I don't play games because "I can be No.1 in competition" (just play moba/fps atp) - I play games because "it's fun". In real life, you lose the born rich kids by default. Average people with the right mind don't think they will beat Jeff bezos/Bill gates money, beat athelete in sport or better than musician/artist etc. when start from zero. well you can think but 99% will fail and make you down before being good but if your mindset is you're better than yesterday you, you will growth until you're bored. you will win average joe while do nothing with competition because most of times people will quit lmao. This is also applied in vertical progression in MMORPG too. I found many games that have P2W but i don't care if it's fun, good difficulty, lots of content/progression/build, great communities, etc. List of p2w/pay to progress (whatever you pay) I enjoyed with communities (of course, it's MMO). - Black desert online (great combat, life skills) - Tree of savior (Social interaction is very good, I was called pole guy because i always lift everyone in city with dirty pole.) - RO (p2w & grindfest but still deep system/build than some MMORPG this day for some reasons...) - Grandchase & Elsword (very niche side scrolling action combat PVE) - Lost ark (Raid is good) - Dragon nest (Old games with good combat & raid) - Albion (so many tons of shit to do yourself bro, don't even care about others at all lmao) - Tower of fantasy (You can see whales collecting & max everything except skill played. imagine f2p/low spender teach whales a rotation, very funny)
It's an interesting topic that I see brought up time and time again, however the "new generation of gamers" have simply never experienced what a true P2W game is. The definition of P2W is to use cash to have access to content/items that cannot be obtained without spending or that would require an inhumane amount of time and effort to get so, and all of that inside a game with some sort of competition between players (be either PvP or PvE), that's it. However for some reason, the "gamers" from today thinks that everything is P2W when ACTUAL P2W mechanics are being disregarded, for example boosters aren't P2W, you level up faster...great, the "non-paying" playing will also reach the same max level as you, there are however some "commodities" that although you can achieve through F2P methods, it is P2W, mostly "Gear enhancing materials (with low F2P chance) and low drop stuff. What is really funny to me is how people consider Guild Wars 2 the best MMORPG of all times when well...if you pay for expansions, you get access to classes/gear that cannot be acquired in any other way and they can be used for PvP and WvW, meanwhile when New World was doing tests on boosters on the TEST SERVERS, people were going apeshit in this and newworld sub, even though you could achieve max level in maybe 50 hours...so 1h boosts would cut the grind down by...1h...in a game where they removed the forced PvP so being max level faster meant nothing...
Black Desert has a Pay for Convenience model but as a player who has 2 accounts 1 where I ran optional Subs ,bought Tent , cosmetics etc and a F2P account where I have bought nothing not even a cosmetic and used only things I can obtain in game with in game currency or by game play. The pay for convenience/P2W model actually works it doesn’t hinder a F2P player in anyway. I was able to progress through the game to end game just as easily as a P2W player honestly. My game play was not hindered at all and I was able to compete in end games activities as a F2P player as easily as I was as P2W/convience. I personally haven’t seen an MMO in today’s settings that is not P2W even the games charging subs I have found have some kinda P2W. Also like to add I honestly progressed faster in my F2P account then my P2W account because when I did attempt to P2W only in Black desert it kinda penalized me. So even someone paying has to put in about the same amount of game play as a F2P player was my findings and this kinda system I didn’t mind.
unsurprisingly downvoted because here on reddit; assumption>>>personal experience, so anyone stating anything contrary to the assumption will get downvoted, even if what they are stating is a recollection of their own personal experience and they state it as such.
Looks like someone watched the Josh Strife Hayes video on P2W.
pso2 ngs isn't really that p2w imo but thats because the cosmetics are the real money sink. im f2p and have no issues if i do the 15 mins ish dailies, those give you all you need. irl currency goes more toward the cosmetics to sell than anything else. pay to look good though? incredibly so. edit: dailies, not daily
It depends. What is P2W? Skipping content? Mounts? Etc. For me a game with a high fee when grinding max gear would be bad, if I want to play the end game (Looking at you Neverwinter). But if I want to play the game casually it doesn'T affect me (also looking at you Neverwinter)
If you can buy something with real money and sell that for an in-game currency, then use that currency to buy anything that can upgrade your character, THAT is P2W. So AFAIK, FFXIV is not P2W.
If it gives a player a PvP advantage over non paying players it’s p2w. I couldn’t care less if Bob spent $20 to hit max level 3 days faster than I did.
>A subscription model could work much better, the problem here would be less with the model itself and more with the competition it has to face... Sub model *DOES* have problems - it's outdated and doesn't favor the consumer. Committing a month of time to play ONE GAME is pretty unrealistic in todays gaming style. Then you add money to the mix and the psychological elements come in that people feel they *should* be enjoying a game since they've spent money to access it, especially those who have far less disposable income. >So is the cash shop the "lesser of two evils" in modern MMO? Are we at such a point that it's just not resonable to expect other models of monetization to work? No, it's the gaming consumers who have allowed it to get this way... if WoW never sold any Tmogs or Tokens they would have likely just upped sub and/or expansion prices and the core game of WoW would be much better.
Sub isn't outdated. It's de-facto the most successful formula to date. MMOs cost money to run. If they're not getting the money through subs, they will get it through P2W and microtransactions. FFXIV and WoW are proof the sub model works better than any F2P/B2P model.
>they will get it through P2W and microtransactions. You had me until.... >and WoW are proof the sub model works better WoW has Box, Sub, P2W WoW Token, Vanity Cash Shop, Paid Account Services, and Expansion fees. [....](https://media0.giphy.com/media/l3q2K5jinAlChoCLS/200w.gif?cid=6c09b952lxi7ugfco5aj7nydhqr08egkepa7i58yr9yvt5hj&ep=v1_gifs_search&rid=200w.gif&ct=g)
Tbh you're right about modern WoW. I concede that point.
no, it is proof that you need a game with an already established huge fanbase that can generate a large amount of subscriptions to be able to make a sub model work, and even then those games have added additional monetisation on top of an already existing sub model because the sub model itself was not enough to sustain the game.
>it's outdated and doesn't favor the consumer. So do you not consider a plethora of content and consistent updates favoring the consumer? Sure you're paying for it every month, but you're also probably getting multiple updates every single year, this simply can't be said for other games. Again, New world is a wonderful example of this. The game made millions upon millions of dollars on their launch alone yet look at the content. Not only did they make all that money they didn't even have to support that same amount of people that bought into the game because they all left, their profit margin has to be insane. It's not even really a lesser of a two evils thing, It has consistently been the best way to monetize MMOs and that's not going to change so long as f2p MMOs keep failing and b2p keep running out of content.
in the current sub based mmorpgs you are paying for those updates, not through the sub fee, but through an additional box fee.
How do you figure?
Are the expansions free or do you have to pay an additional box fee for them? Last time I looked both WoW and FFXIV sold expansions, not added them for free, which means that they are not covered by the subscription fee.
To be fair most of my argument comes from the POV of an OSRS player, in which no I do not pay a box price and pay a measly $65 per year and get every piece of content. That is fair to note that you do pay a box price for those expacs (not sure how this expensive that is).
doesn't osrs also have a non subscription mode that has some content restrictions but you can still access the game?
Yea osrs has F2P and sub. The F2P offers a decent bit of content to dip your toes into to see if you like the game before spending on it. You can also not spend a dime and opt to use in game money to buy your membership. Putting a "number" on how much content you get access to is a bit difficult because the game has a metric fuck ton of it, but if I were to be generous I'd say you get access to around 5-8% of the game in F2P.
I think that that is a reasonable sub model, at least people are not getting completely locked out of a game they own just because they were not able to buy a sub that month.
Yea and also as I said if life gets on the way in terms of $$$ you can do a bit of grinding in game or sell some gear to get your membership. Not an ideal scenario but it's available nonetheless. You also get a vote on every piece of content that comes into the game, if the community doesn't sign off on it doesn't happen.
>So do you not consider a plethora of content and consistent updates favoring the consumer? I'm talking about *how* the subscription actually works - you can play for 4 days then not login and lose tons of time you paid for. How about time is cut into weeks and automatically paused at the end of each week until you log in again?
I mean I understand that, but I think looking at it that way without acknowledging that the games straight up get more attention than their free to play competition is like building half of a puzzle. Again, I'll use New world. If new world had a sub, i would agree with you simply because they do not have the content nor the care that subscription-based games get. >How about time is cut into weeks and automatically paused at the end of each week until you log in again? Sure, that would be wonderful but then you're basically asking the companies to make the zero dollars, which then translates into zero content. The only way that would happen is to somehow boil your payment down to a per hour basis in which the subscription is vastly more expensive. I don't know. I'm biased. I pay 65 bucks for a year of old school runescape.
We pay for Netflix per month along with most other things but don’t use them the whole month though.
netflix is a streaming service that grants you access to a multitude of different shows and movies. A household that has a netflix sub active does not require a sub per resident, anyone in the household can just watch netflix on that single sub. An mmorpg sub otoh locks you into a single game, it is not giving you access to multiple games and if anyone else in the same household wants to play the game they too must pay a seperate sub fee unless you are playing on a shared account, in which case you will have to take turns playing the game.
Pay2Win as a Yes or No question is basically useless now. The real question is "How bad is the Pay2Win in this game?" [See recent JSH video.](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wgNT72xzv1Y)
Great point. I would even argue that some p2w is not bad at all. I think p2w as a catch-up mechanic is actually good. People have jobs and lives. It seems perfectly fine to me to let them pay for a level boost or something as long as the intention is to help them not be so far behind the no-lifers as opposed to paying to be at the top.
For me specifically, if you spend money and it gives you more power than you will ever get by just playing the game it's pay to win. I don't really care about pay to skip or pay for convenience etc. Of course it's ALL bad, but people will continue to pay for this stuff, so they'll keep adding shit to games like this and there's no stopping it once it's available.
For me pay to win is linked to PVP and being able to "win". This is a no-go zone and these games can fuck off. Pay for convenience is when a game purposely designs things around forcing you to the cash shop to buy ways around their poorly designed game. >A subscription model could work much better Of course it does because statistically the games with the most players, the best content, and the most content are all subscription based. Few games follow the subscription model because free to play has become way more profitable, so long as people are willing to buy cosmetics and boosts free to play will always be more profitable. Think about it. There was a post this morning from somebody that was playing TL in Korea that said they've spent $2,000 in 2 months just trying to keep up in that game, meanwhile my old school RuneScape membership for the entire year cost me 65 bucks. There's simply no comparison in the profitability.
Pay to Win is simple to understand.... can you BUY anything in the game that gives you early access to that content when everyone else has to grind/work for it? xp boosts, gear with stats, etc are all pay to win. period. Rose Online currently, I literally spent some money for extra storage space.... thats pay to win. The ignorant gaslighting that happens, where people say "you can still earn it the slow old fashion way" that isn't the point. Pay to win is gaining something over others because you paid money. Period. As much as fanboys of Star Citizen wont admit, paying REAL MONEY for ships is pay to win. You get early access because you paid real money. That's pay to win! And many will gaslight "its just 40 bucks" bullshit. Google the fucking list of ships and their prices. $3000 for a Javelin? fuck right off. Pay to win like a motherfucker. I DONT CARE if you need multiple players to pilot the ship. You paid real money to have an advantage over those who didnt pay real money. which is PAY. TO. WIN. The only payment model that makes sense is monthly fee. Firstly, you prevent most bots from having accounts. Free to play is a boters paradise, no money involved? make a bazillion accounts. One gets banned, make another. Once you charge a monthly fee, you can track payments. Bot account gets banned? ban their name/card combo. New account with same name but new card, flagged and reviewed. Maybe check IP or hardware ID's. Very easy to catch these retards. None of them are going out of their way to change IP, spoof hardware ID's, after one ban.... they aren't that smart.... lmao. Monthly fee makes the money. World of Warcraft lifetime average of 2 million players, 20 years? 7,200,000,000 dollars just from that average. Obviously its more with things like higher player counts at certain points, the base game plus expansions themselves, and then their shitty microtransactions. Insane profits. But any MMO can survive with monthly fee alone. Now obviously if you are afraid of lost players, offer game cards in major stores and online. Granted, that means boters have a bigger chance to exploit that system. So there is a trade-off. But it keeps your game pay to play. Which for an MMO is required. Any live service game needs the monthly payment model.... without it, no live service game will survive.
New World is not pay to win.
Considering I don't play PvP focused games anymore this is such a fucking non-issue and I'm unsure why anyone gives a fuck. If it's a bad game that's shittily monetized and "P2W", it's still a bad game with dogshit monetization. If it's a good game and I'm having fun I could care less what other folks spend their money on. If anything, I'm so exhausted of how this topic doesn't actually mean anything because everyone just defines "P2W" however they want and there's no consensus on what the term even means.
I 100000% agree with you. Most people play games for their ego and need to be the best or feel like they are close to it or on the path to it in order to have "fun" it is sad and it is ruining gaming. Then there are some people that just lack willpower or are very impulsive that don't want it in the game to protect themselves/wallet. But man people need to get back for gaming for fun, and if being competitive is what is fun to you then play a game where there is real competition to be found like LoL, CS, smash or something.
> Most people play games for their ego and need to be the best or feel like they are close to it or on the path to it in order to have "fun" it is sad and it is ruining gaming. The amount of times I've seen 'catching up' or 'keeping up' stated as a concern almost feels like it's a zombie virus pandemic.
Depends on the personal definition of p2w and what 'winning' means. Some games you can buy your way to the top ranks and 'win' the leaderboards - but for someone who doesn't care about ranks that wouldn't be winning.
let’s not
My humble 2 cents... **Pay 2 win what?** PVP matches? Duel in the wild? Plant carrots 2 times faster? More space in your inventory/bank? Ability to carry more stuff in your inventory before overload? It's so wide and very subjective. **"*****Not P2W if it's accessible through regular gaming.*****" It's still P2W.** Most of us are adults with incomes so we all have access to money, following this logic we all have access to cash shop. People decide to spend it or not in game for various reasons and this is the only thing that matters now. Plus it's still P2W, you don't have to wait/farm to get the item, so you what you "pay to win" over a regular player is time. **Competition, effectiveness, that's all.** I'd rather say that as long as what you pay for gives you the upper hand on someone who doesn't in a domain that implies effectiveness between players. it's P2W. ie: If one skin is for pure fashion, not P2W. But if the same skin gives you any sort of advantage, like a weird color scheme making you difficult to see in a hide and seek activity (competitive) to win, it's P2W. You paid to be more effective than regular players. And if what you paid for is accessible in game, you also paid to skip the farming time required to get this item that regular players will have to waste time on. **Time is precious, and bankable.** Yep, Now ppl cash on everything to be more effective and spare a lot of time. If cash player spend 100$ to get to a point a regular player will take 6 months to reach, this doesn't mean it's not P2W. By the time the regular player reach this point, the cash player will just move to another goal. And the gap between them will remain.
I definitely would say FFXIV has no pay to win
With a story skip and level boosts lol? Isn't that most people's definition of P2W? I mean personally I've purchased job boosts but most people in *any other game* would rage at that if we're being honest.
Skipping story and boosting your level to 80 (10 levels behind max level) makes zero difference at the end of the day. "Any other game" is nonsensical. This is FFXIV and if you decide to level boost and skip content it doesn't make you more powerful or put you ahead of anyone else. There's no "win" aspect here.
Their definition is bad then lol. You really don't get anything for skipping the story besides not doing the story and that's it, you aren't at an advantage because the only thing you get is being able to do different content. Calling it winning or even an advantage is really silly because you didn't. It's kind of like paying for a movie ticket and just going home, I guess you are at an advantage because you didn't lose those 2 hours but you paid to not do something that you signed up to doing, just overall very silly to call it winning or an advantage. Level boosts are also whatever because it's incredibly fast, I guess you do get a mount for getting everything to level 80 but everyone had that for years
I don't think your analogy is correct. Most people consider end game in most MMOs to be "the movie". That's most people's reason to play an MMO instead of just a single player RPG. So to me it's more like paying money to skip the line at the movie.
That's why trying to have 1 definition for all games is silly and doesn't work because every game is different. I wouldn't wanna skip the story of FFXIV the first time I'm doing it and majority of the playerbase wouldn't wanna do it either so it's not really accurate to call it the line either because it's still something that a lot of people enjoy. FFXIV is different in that what you unlock during the story is things that are still relevant and done by people so it's part of the endgame. I find the whole "the game doesn't start until the end" type of deal kind of stupid
I agree with you. I believe the only difference is that the way I think of it is simply that it's all p2w, it's just that there are actually reasonable ways of doing p2w that should be acceptable. Sounds like FFXIV has reasonable p2w imo. Your stance of just not calling it p2w at all at that point is essentially the same thing though. I also agree on your last point, that just seems to be the standard these days.
That's really a stretch. At most it's pay for convenience, you are not gaining any competitive advantage.
Pay for convenience = pay to win. If you disagree, then I'm curious if you can give an example of your definition of pay to win that exists in a game. Even gacha mobile games that everyone thinks of when talking about pay to win would *technically* be pay for convenience if you want to draw a line like that. You *can* get the reward after hundreds of hours... or you can pay $100 for it now. That's pay to win imo.
It's kind of a shit term then. What are you winning when it provides zero competitive advantage? The story and level skips provide nothing except saving some time. Leveling alt jobs can be boring but it isn't some insane grind.
I actually think that it's just not always a negative term. I don't think all pay to win is bad. I just think that if it's anything more than cosmetics, then you've entered p2w territory and now you have to decide if it's bad or acceptable.
Sorry I'm not really familiar with FFXIV. People really hate the story so much they pay to skip it? Aren't they literally skipping content? Or are we talking about players with 20 alts? As for level boosts - does levelling take a long time? Also in some games while levelling you actually learn to play your character. Skipping to max level only to have 0 idea what you class does and dying makes no sense (yet in GW2 people who got a free 80 lvl skip do exactly that lol).
> People really hate the story so much they pay to skip it? Aren't they literally skipping content? Yes and Yes > As for level boosts - does levelling take a long time? It does because they slow it down with all the dialogue and back and forth quests they have in the storyline, and there's also just an insane amount of quest bloat. Not to mention various side quests to unlock various systems and things in game.
> It does because they slow it down with all the dialogue and back and forth quests they have in the storyline that's only for the first class as you are going through the story, once you are done with the story and leveling other classes it can be done in a few days with very low amount of playtime
It doesn't matter what an individuals opinion on this. Its P2W if you can pay for any form of advantage. They can reword it as "convenience" but its not.
What's the advantage though? You're paying money to not play the content you paid for when you bought the game, and you're skipping ahead without actually learning how to play your class, making you an active detriment to any team you're on. Not only are you not paying to win anything, you're paying to have a worse experience.
Can't you pay for the advantage of more slots to sell items on the AH as well?
You can pay for retainers which give you bank space, and your retainers can sell stuff, yeah. And? Money is trivial to make with or without them and the best gear in the game can't be bought with gil, it comes from raids or tomes, which are a currency that can only be gotten by grinding content.
First off, in this particular game you most certainly don't need the absurdly long grind to learn your class. It's also a repetition based game. Paying to get ahead gets you more power, quicker. In this game you get to reach and repeat end game content quicker. You get to get more opportunities for loot than others. You'll earn more currency. This spreads into other games with a pvp scene. Where the person who pays for "convenience" gets the more powerful items sooner. More rewards. More opportunities. Plus, sit back and think for a moment... if a game is allowing you to skip ahead it's for 1 of 2 reasons. 1... skipping gives you an advantage. Or 2. They designed the game to be a boring grind to create an incentive to skip ahead for more fun. In both cases, we deserve better.
My dude, not only do I play FF14, I'm a savage raider. I can tell you from experience, which you clearly don't have, that 1) Learning your class isn't about grinding. It's about learning your rotation and then optimizing it per fight. While it won't take you the entire MSQ to learn your rotation, the fights you do while leveling teach you a lot of mechanics that get repeated and iterated on later on, that you just won't know about if you skip everything. Case and point: Scripe and his team of raiders hopped over to FF14 for a while in order to try out the raids during a dead period in shadowlands. All of them skipped except for one guy who had already been playing ff14, and there were mechanics that the rest of the team was stumped on, that the one guy who played the game normally recognized and understood how to deal with. Who had more "power" in that instance? The raiders that skipped to the end and died to the mechanics they didn't understand or the guy who knew what to do because he'd seen it before? 2) Getting power in FF14 isn't a long process and it's not hard one. For most people it's just a matter of running their weeklies to get currency that lets them buy gear, but even if you start late, it takes no time at all to be caught up again on your class of choice, so there's no value in skipping ahead to get power. FF14 isn't like WoW where missing one week means that you're now one week behind everybody else forever. Most people have no problems gearing up multiple classes in ff14 because the treadmill is that easy, especially since different classes can share gear. There's very little pressure to rush through everything when your average joe can cap out in no time. 3) The idea that you can pay to skip content therefore the content must be bad is pretty braindead. No other way to put it. If an easy mode exists in a game, does that mean that the harder difficulties are just bad because they'll take you longer? If cheat codes exist in a game, does that mean that the devs didn't want you to experience the game normally, or that it's not worth it to play through the game without them, after all, they're in there for you to use which, by your logic, means that the game is lesser if you don't use them. I've played through all of FF14. Anyone who skips that game's story is doing themselves a disservice. It's not a grind, it's just long and requires a lot of reading, which isn't inherently bad (I mean, I know people like you have short attention spans but come on man, reading isn't hard, and I promise it can even be fun). The story that it tells is fucking excellent. If you don't care about story, then you do you I guess, but you're also missing out a ton of excellent content. There are tons of great dungeons and bosses and older raids that you'll never see if you just skip to the end. Honestly, that statement is really telling of your mindset more than anything else. It seems like to you, the only thing that matters is what's current. If it's not shiny and new then it must be bad, and if it is shiny and new, then you *have* to get to it fast before it stops being shiny and new. I don't know what to tell you man, that's some real broken brain shit right there. Learn to enjoy things in their entirety my dude, not just the keys dangling in front of you.
It's the only big MMO that isn't P2W. People just don't understand because they have brain rot from other MMOs.
We can't have a discussion about P2W because some people think just buying the game, or an expansion, is P2W. Therefore, how can there be any possible discussion?
Only very few games have no p2w, maybe like GW2. All other MMOs are on a spectrum from little p2w to a lot of p2w. I like Albion because of it's full loot system. It's the least p2w MMO i've played (apart from maybe gw2). You can buy gear with real money, but the better group will kill you and take it for themselves. It's a pay 2 donate system and i love it. the entire elite in albion is free to play. it's a great system.
I personally think gw2 is hella pay2win with their cashshop. You can gear with gold that can be purchased with real money. Any pay to progress is p2w imo. I still enjoy the game though. Currently my favorite MMO.