This video popped up on my feed and I thought I'd take a look as from my
time in World of Tanks (WoT) one thing became clear, there really isn't
a consensus of what is, and isn't, pay-to-win. The video is a bit long
and dry but one of the things that resonated with me is there's
pay-to-win and then there's pay-pay-pay-to-win as what money can give
you is a sliding scale.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wgNT72xzv1Y
To me it's really can paying give you advantage over an equally skilled player and/or does it effectively stop me enjoying a relatively full
game experience. That doesn't mean I think it's instinctually wrong as
it depends on the practical reality of that advantage/experince and
that's the model you knowingly enter. So I'll use WoT as my example as,
well it's the only game I've played that i consider to have pay-to-win elements.
In the early days the elements were pretty sparse so you had premium
tanks which earn more crew exp./credits but that came with the downside
that were slightly worse than a fully upgraded normal tank of their
tier. Then you had premium consumables (in-game gold only) which were
just better than regular ones and the ammo was one that made a
particular difference. This didn't bother me as the cost for running it
soon added up and the impression I got was because of that is was very
rare to encounter a player 'spamming' it. Th big one was premium time
that earned you more exp./credits. I didn't have a problem with that as
at its core it was about paying for time not in-game advantage.
Over the years that changed due to premium consumables being available
for in-game credits, and what was the best way to generate them - paid premium time/tanks, but the thing that really changed the game was the introduction of premium tanks that were just better than their free equivalents. That was then compounded by bringing out a tank that was
clearly over powered and putting it in paid lootboxes.
Overall it was one of the reasons I got less and less interested in the
game and eventual stopped playing it. It was the way that the desire to slowly ramp up the 'encouragement' to spend more and more money* started negatively impact on my game experience. Indeed it got depressing to
play certain tiers where the battles were stuffed with the latest and greatest premium tanks.
I won't cover all the more minor changes they made in-case anyone who's
got this far falls asleep!
So thoughts from anyone else, do you hate pay-to-win, think it's a good
thing or is it more a case of it depends?
*Mind you it worked overall and the amount of money some players
admitted spending was eye watering. One of the worst, or most ironic examples, was a player whose garage was stuffed full of premium tanks
and had probably spent over £1,000 in about six months. The ironic part
is that their win-rate was basically the same as if they entered a
battle and then didn't touch the keyboard or mouse.
On Fri, 29 Mar 2024 16:01:58 +0100, kyonshi <gmkeros@gmail.com> wrote:
I think it mostly can be defined as "you have to pay extra to be able to
have a reasonable chance".
And unfortunately I have to say it's a reasonable game mechanic, even
though I quite despise it. (I mean, you got the whole TCG market which
has the same stuff coded into it's genes).
Apparently it's a topic of note (again) because recently-released
"Dragons Dogma 2" has gone quite heavily into pay-to-win
microtransactions. Although, not having played the game, I'm not sure
how clearly they fall into the pay-to-win category. But even if they
aren't PTW, the MTX is still quite greedy, since apparently even
fast-travel mechanics have to be unlocked by a credit card.
Then again, it's a Capcom game. I'm not sure what else we should
expect from them. They long ago abandoned any pretense of offering a
full game experience just by buying the game; for over a decade,
they've been milking players with excessive MTX. I'm not sure why the community is so surprised and dismayed that "Dragons Dogma 2" followed
suit.
The video tries to define "pay to win" to broadly. It does so under
the justification that different people have different qualifications
for what 'winning' consists of; for some people, it points out, they
haven't 'won' a game until you've done everything there is to do in
the game. Therefore, if certain levels or cosmetics are hidden behind
a paywall, you can't truly win until you shell out some extra cash.
But a definition that broad is pointless. As the videographer himself
points out, under these rules even having the money to buy the game
(and hardware), or the time to play a game could be considered 'pay to
win'. After all, if I don't have the $60 to buy "Doom", I'll never
'win' it despite the fact that it's a one-time purchase.
I played WoT a long time ago. I bought a Churchill after playing quite
a bit. I was at the point I felt like I was both rewarding myself and
the company for all the play I'd previously had for free. The Churchill wasn't really any better, but it was of a tier I didn't have. I don't regret it, but as I progressed I found that it was more and more
obviously not so much pay to win, but pay to progress. However there
was also some pay to win in better ammo IIRC which would get exhorbitant rather quickly. I also found the more advanced tanks and maps I didn't
care for, so the progress was going the wrong way.
Then there's the fact it was a PVP only game, which I'm not fond of.
It's hard to separate my feelings about the PtW aspects, but I'm sure
they factored into not playing the game anymore.
Even then, its tricky. "Dragons Dogma 2" apparently charges for
quick-travel.
On Sun, 31 Mar 2024 11:12:12 -0400, Spalls Hurgenson
<spallshurgenson@gmail.com> wrote:
Even then, its tricky. "Dragons Dogma 2" apparently charges for >>quick-travel.
I do not think it does. -->
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4bwddmUOaSY
On 29/03/2024 17:01, Spalls Hurgenson wrote:
The video tries to define "pay to win" to broadly. It does so under
the justification that different people have different qualifications
for what 'winning' consists of; for some people, it points out, they
haven't 'won' a game until you've done everything there is to do in
the game. Therefore, if certain levels or cosmetics are hidden behind
a paywall, you can't truly win until you shell out some extra cash.
But a definition that broad is pointless. As the videographer himself
points out, under these rules even having the money to buy the game
(and hardware), or the time to play a game could be considered 'pay to
win'. After all, if I don't have the $60 to buy "Doom", I'll never
'win' it despite the fact that it's a one-time purchase.
Personally I think, could be wrong of course, that was quite deliberate
to show that what people consider pay to win has a wide variation and
that's why they tried to cut it up into a scale.
For variation, there used to be someone on the WoT forums that would
argue quite vehemently that it wasn't pay to win as you couldn't use
money to get 80%+ win-rates overall. This is in a game where a 60%+
win-rate puts you in the top 0.1% of the playerbase.
Personally though I tend to agree with your position that it's about pay
to have an in-game advantage.
On Sun, 31 Mar 2024 13:52:29 -0400, Mike S. <Mike_S@nowhere.com>
wrote:
On Sun, 31 Mar 2024 11:12:12 -0400, Spalls Hurgenson
<spallshurgenson@gmail.com> wrote:
Even then, its tricky. "Dragons Dogma 2" apparently charges for
quick-travel.
I do not think it does. -->
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4bwddmUOaSY
Thank you for the update.
Specifically, what Capcom sells is an item that lets you 'mark' a
destination to where you can fast-travel. My understanding is that the
game has two fast-travel mechanics. The first is an 'ox-cart' mechanic
where you need to find a specific NPC, and then he'll take you to a
limited set of locations on the map (think the siltwalkers from "Elder Scrolls 3: Morrowind"). This is freely available to any player in the
game and there are no microtransactions regarding this feature.
The second option is a magical teleport. For this, you need a special
item to 'bookmark' where you want to go; later, you can use another
item to teleport back to that spot (somewhat similar to the "Town
Portal" spells in Diablo). The items to save and teleport can be found
in game... but you can also buy them as DLC.
Is this pay-to-win? Arguably yes, since it allows players with bigger
wallets to zip around the map faster, avoiding grindy walking and
getting to encounters where they can gain XP and loot more quickly.
Yes, the necessary items can be found in-game, but they are rare
consumables, and you get definite mechanical advantage if you pay
Capcom just a bit more. The original assumption was wrong not in that fast-travel was made into a pay-to-win mechanic, but in asserting that
that mechanic was available only to paid users.
Personally I think, could be wrong of course, that was quite deliberateNo, I get that... but broadening it that vastly maes the definition
to show that what people consider pay to win has a wide variation and
that's why they tried to cut it up into a scale.
makes the definiton worthless. It's just too expansive, almost to the
point of "blue is a color therefore all colors are blue" sort of
thing.
There are serious problems with how microtransactions have infested
games, but I don't think it helps to categorize them all as pay-to-win
rather than breaking them down into more narrow categories. It leads
to people attributing 'pay-to-win' tags to "Elder Scroll: Oblivion",
and then that game gets ignored by people who want nothing to do with pay-to-win games.
On Wed, 3 Apr 2024 10:04:07 +0100, JAB <noway@nochance.com> wrote:
Anyway back to the subject in hand. I agree that the overall problem is >>actually MTX and p2w is just one aspect of it. It really has done some >>awful damage, IMHO, to the gaming market in the bigger budget space. I >>pretty much avoid it totally now as I think it's taking the pee to
expect you to pay full price for game only to expect you to pay even
more if you want to, you know enjoy the game. The other thing that
annoys me is the devs./publishers know exactly what they are doing but >>pretend that this is somehow good for gamers. Oh we have an in-game >>currency purely for your convenience, no you have it as it helps create
a disconnect between how much you're actually spending.
In-game currencies have other advantages as well:
Items are never sold at prices that evenly divide with the values the currency is sold at. You want that magic sword? It costs 400 Fakecash. However, FakeCash is only sold in 300 unit increments. This has the
dual benefit of forcing people to buy more than they need (some of
which will inevitably go unused), and is a psychological prod to get
people to spend more. "Well, I /do/ have 350 Fakecash already, so I
might as well buy another FakeChest so I can afford the sword."
The other advantage is that if you are using in-game currencies, it
gives the developer a legal defense against accusations of gambling,
since it's not 'real money'. Fortunately, law-makers are becoming
aware of this trick, and (at least in some countries) this is no
longer a valid distinction.
On Wed, 3 Apr 2024 10:04:07 +0100, JAB <noway@nochance.com> wrote:
Anyway back to the subject in hand. I agree that the overall problem is
actually MTX and p2w is just one aspect of it. It really has done some
awful damage, IMHO, to the gaming market in the bigger budget space. I
pretty much avoid it totally now as I think it's taking the pee to
expect you to pay full price for game only to expect you to pay even
more if you want to, you know enjoy the game. The other thing that
annoys me is the devs./publishers know exactly what they are doing but
pretend that this is somehow good for gamers. Oh we have an in-game
currency purely for your convenience, no you have it as it helps create
a disconnect between how much you're actually spending.
In-game currencies have other advantages as well:
Items are never sold at prices that evenly divide with the values the currency is sold at. You want that magic sword? It costs 400 Fakecash. However, FakeCash is only sold in 300 unit increments. This has the
dual benefit of forcing people to buy more than they need (some of
which will inevitably go unused), and is a psychological prod to get
people to spend more. "Well, I /do/ have 350 Fakecash already, so I
might as well buy another FakeChest so I can afford the sword."
The other advantage is that if you are using in-game currencies, it
gives the developer a legal defense against accusations of gambling,
since it's not 'real money'. Fortunately, law-makers are becoming
aware of this trick, and (at least in some countries) this is no
longer a valid distinction.
The gambling commission (the regulator) looked into this several years
ago and reached the conclusion that lootboxes have all the hallmarks of gambling (including the issue of problem gambling) but until the law
changes they are legal. Our government then set-up a parliamentary
committee to look into the issue. The report was even more damning and
also used a number of actually studies showing the links between problem gambling and lootrboxes. One I found particular interesting was that
games companies were effectively exploiting certain vulnerable people in society. It also showed that the idea that it's just 'rich people' who
are whales is untrue.
On 4/4/2024 2:25 AM, JAB wrote:
The gambling commission (the regulator) looked into this several years
ago and reached the conclusion that lootboxes have all the hallmarks
of gambling (including the issue of problem gambling) but until the
law changes they are legal. Our government then set-up a parliamentary
committee to look into the issue. The report was even more damning and
also used a number of actually studies showing the links between
problem gambling and lootrboxes. One I found particular interesting
was that games companies were effectively exploiting certain
vulnerable people in society. It also showed that the idea that it's
just 'rich people' who are whales is untrue.
FTC is looking into it here in the US still, taking their sweet damn time.
Our government looked at the report and, mad Nad as she's known,
basically went yeh whatever. We shouldn't burden companies with more
'red tape' that will in anyway negatively effect their profits. Why
set-up a committee in the first place if you're going to completely
ignore what it says.
JAB <noway@nochance.com> writes:
Our government looked at the report and, mad Nad as she's known,
basically went yeh whatever. We shouldn't burden companies with more
'red tape' that will in anyway negatively effect their profits. Why
set-up a committee in the first place if you're going to completely
ignore what it says.
Isn't that just how politics works? Setting up a committee is usually a delaying tactic to begin with and when they finally deliver something,
the choices are more committees for more delays or dismissal. Pretty
soon it's the end of the term and issues are forgotten or maybe the new parliament sets up another committee about the same thing.
Oh well, for a little international flavor, here in Finland we're moving
away from a government gambling monopoly towards some kind of a
licensing deal. Mostly because gambling's not a monopoly any more, in practice people are free to stuff the online casinos' coffers with their money. So the loot box question may come up at some point here but I'd
be surprised if anything happens this decade. Then again, Finland is a
small market, EU wide regulation might actually do something to
someone's bottom line.
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