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Pay 2 win becoming legitimate? Have we really lost our way this much?
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Then again, Pay2Win is a win-win situation for all involved. The developers can continue developing and sustaining the game, the non-paying players can continue playing without having to pay a single cent, and all this is made possible with the pay2win-players sinking money to bypass some aspects of the game that they do not want to be involved with. The pay2win-players keep the servers running single-handedly.
The model has proven itself to be a profit-machine, and when the person running the company is ultimately profit-driven, they will employ the model that makes the most profit for them.
The difference between pay2win and single-player cheat codes is that pay2win doesn't ruin the game as much as the cheats in single-player games. Because they need to balance those items in such a way that the pay2win players doesn't become absurdly powerful, it removes the "godliness" aspect of it. Pay2win players can still be beaten.
There is also another aspect of Pay2Win. Players like to customize their characters. They may or may not like farming for items to customize their characters with. This is especially so if their progress is restricted due to time constraints on their part. Now, I have no numbers to back up my claim so all this is theoretical BS, but I do think that those who invest real cash in their characters tend to stay on longer than those who farmed their way through. And if they don't? Well, the non-paying players and the developers are still happy that the pay2win player actually sink some money into the game for their benefit.(Actually, thats a good research point: comparing the retention rate of players who pay2win and those who farm for their equips.)
What are your thoughts on the cable TV's Pay Per View system - paying for premium content that subscription customers either will have to wait to see or will never receive?
Good grief. What if you do see the movie in the theater? Does that make you a Pay2Win Elitist Weanie? Criminy!
LOL yeah...paying to see a movie on a nice convenient pay per view system in the comfort of your own home is not in any way analogous to pay 2 win
Pay 2 win with movies would be like if you paid for the movie, decided it was boring a quarter of the way through and then paid someone to just tell you the plot of the movie so you wouldn't have to watch it
So, it would bother you that someone paid for highlight reel of the movie instead of sitting through the entire 90 minutes like you did?
So far very little has been presented about "pay to win" and most of the arguments against the F2P model is based ion some kind of odd competition that doesn't exist in the game but in the self-enforced 'race' that you are others are creating. Your example above clearly highlights that.
It's not even a matter of whether one works for certain things or buys them becaue in most games the stuff you buy and the stuff you gain in-game have little, if any, overlap. Where there is overlap is in the purchase of a la carte content such as additional campaigns or additional zones.
If MMOs were predominantly PVP games then I could maybe understand some of these complaints. Maybe. In a PvE, environment, what difference does it make if the guy next to you has a 10% XP boost or Pac Man deelyboppers?
Even in the PVP situations, the examples given are usually Perfect World, Runes of Magic and other games where 1,000's of dollars are supposedly spent in order to compete but here's the thing.... most of you already said you wouldn't play those games to begin with because they are "shallow" or "Korean grinders" or "kiddie games."
Your reply truly highlights your real issue, Creslin, and it has nothing to do with paying to win anything.
Haha it doesn't bother me if someone watched the highlight reel of a movie obviously, I think that's taking the analogy a bit too far
Also...I really don't have a big issue with P2W in F2P games. I mean, they have to make money somehow...but it's okay because I don't have to play them. If P2W permanently stayed in F2P games only and I always had a superior P2P or B2P alternative, I would be happy. But it's not staying in F2P games, it's starting to invade ALL games and become part of our culture. THAT is what annoys me. Now that Blizzard is doing it, I'm just afraid that soon there is going to be no refuge from P2W.
And don't say "hey you don't have to buy anything if you don't want!" Duh. I know this, it doesn't change the fact that it affects the game world. Part of what I like about achieving something in game is that if you spend a lot of time and effort to get something, it has some real meaning. This meaning is diminished if you know you could have just bought it from the in-game store for $5.00.
It would be like if you trained for weeks to defeat a mighty dragon, go on a month long quest which ends with a climactic battle with your foe, in which you slay the beast and take one of his fangs as your trophy. And then when you return to town you see that almost every single person is wearing a dragon fang. You ask one of the townspeople how he was able to kill the dragon and thus acquire the fang, and he saus "You did wut!?!?! LOLz, I just bought it from the auction house for five bucks!"
That's exactly what would really happen. You can't eat dragon fangs. I know it's silly, but if the point of doing something is doing something, then it doesn't matter what you get for it. If the point of doing something is to get the prize, it makes much more sense to buy it for a small bit of your disposable income than it does to nearly get killed for it.
If a game is setup such that having the best gear means you win, it doesn't make sense to spend hours, days and weeks grinding to get that gear. Spend $10 and buy the gear, because your skill is irrelevant anyway. If you still want to do it the hard way, that way still exists.
It seems like the biggest issue people have is that other people don't have the same opinion they do.
I can not remember winning or losing a single debate on the internet.
Of course the person using the digital e-bay is not going to directly affect my PVE game in Diablo 3. But let’s use your sword of facemelting as a point of reference on how it can affect players that do not use it. On this fictitious item it has a .001% chance of dropping from a boss, and it is really sought after for the new PVP arenas in Diablo 3. So let’s say I buy Diablo 3 when it releases and then spend 6 months farming the boss that drops it for a few hours a day, and never get it to drop. Now let’s say some stupid dude we will referee to from now as Stupid A buys Diablo 3. Also during that time a no life farmer was killing that boss as many times as they could for 16 hours a day, and then the no life famer then puts that item on the new digital e-bay. Now stupid A sees this weapon listed and buys the item from no life farmer and goes into the arena system and beats the crap out of my character. So then I redouble my effort to get the sword so I can beat up stupid A with my own sword of facemelting. After a few weeks more of farming for the item and continually losing to stupid A I break down and buy the item from the e-bay so I could actually win a match (either that or go on a rampage and kill everyone on the planet that plays Diablo 3 and has the sword of facemelting).
So what did all that prove in the end, that it is better to be a low life farmer and a stupid A then it is to be someone that actually plays video games. Or how eventually PVP is going to make someone snap and go on a shooting rampage.
http://us.blizzard.com/diablo3/world/systems/pvp.xml
The isolationist view of gaming needed to be abolished the minute someone started coding for an internet-based market.
These games work over the internet for a reason. They are multiplayer games, meaning you don't just play by yourself, you play with other people. Who you get to play with becomes extremely important. It is doubly important for MMO games, that usually lack much appeal beyond socialization, teamwork, and perhaps some degree of actual roleplaying.
Choosing to support a particular style of play (while it already exists in rampant form) will effect other playstyles because the ratio of people within a playstyle changes. Say, for instance, I decided to make 3-letter words worth 50 times as many points in a game of Scrabble, to support the 5-year-old player population. Adults that used to like to play Scrabble may not find it very interesting anymore, especially if the only people they can find to play with them are 5-year-olds.
Supporting real money transactions for the in-game items will bring in a large number of a particular type of player, which pushes out many other types of players. In my opinion, it's asking for trouble. I do not expect this maneuver to pan out as something a game company will do again.
On the super down side, this tactic may be just the bogus maneuver needed for legislation to be passed that will tax your game assets.
The people that complain about that cash shops assume that its play to win because they're just echoing what pthers are saying and they're just big babies that don't want to spend time earning their gear so they just give up because other people are spending money to get get or progress faster.
You can spend time getting stuff. It doesn't matter if other players are buying stuff with real money. Just like it doesn't matter if they are farming a boss over and over for rare gear. You kids need to grow up. "lost our way" these video games. Jesus Christ.
We are already taxed for services and the game itself at purchase and each time we renew our subscription, but I shudder to think of being taxed for in game income and property, what a depressing thought as it would drum me out of the genre, because I could and would not support such a thing.
I don't mind that people have a different opinion than mine. In fact, I even said that it doesn't bother me that P2W is in F2P games...I can just avoid those games and be happy, P2W lovers can play those games and be happy. What DOES bother is that P2W is invading P2P and B2P games, so I'm worried it will be forced upon me.
And yeah, even though the point of doing something is basically the journey, it does matter if you can just buy the reward and completely avoid the journey. It destroys the symbolic value of the reward as a trophy, and makes what was once rare and sort of special into something dull and commonplace. I mean, what would people think if the Academy said "yeah guys, we ran into some rough times, so we're just going to start selling official Oscars to anyone willing to pay us." How do you think real Oscar winners would feel about that? There is real value in the symbolic achievement implied by a trophy.
Are you team Azeroth, team Tyria, or team Jacob?
Of course the person using the digital e-bay is not going to directly affect my PVE game in Diablo 3. But lets use your sword of facemelting as a point of reference on how it can affect players that do not use it. On this fictitious item it has a .001% chance of dropping from a boss, and it is really sought after for the new PVP arenas in Diablo 3. So lets say I buy Diablo 3 when it releases and then spend 6 months farming the boss that drops it for a few hours a day, and never get it to drop. Now lets say some stupid dude we will referee to from now as Stupid A buys Diablo 3. Also during that time a no life farmer was killing that boss as many times as they could for 16 hours a day, and then the no life famer then puts that item on the new digital e-bay. Now stupid A sees this weapon listed and buys the item from no life farmer and goes into the arena system and beats the crap out of my character. So then I redouble my effort to get the sword so I can beat up stupid A with my own sword of facemelting. After a few weeks more of farming for the item and continually losing to stupid A I break down and buy the item from the e-bay so I could actually win a match (either that or go on a rampage and kill everyone on the planet that plays Diablo 3 and has the sword of facemelting).
So what did all that prove in the end, that it is better to be a low life farmer and a stupid A then it is to be someone that actually plays video games. Or how eventually PVP is going to make someone snap and go on a shooting rampage.
http://us.blizzard.com/diablo3/world/systems/pvp.xml
In the scenario you describe, the problem with the game is that your skill is not relevant to the outcome of PvP battles. If it's the gear making the decision, it doesn't make sense for a player to spend 6 months grinding away to get items that will win them matches.
Also, it would take you too long to kill everyone who plays Diablo 3. Even a conservative estimate of 3 Million players puts you at over 8,000 years to actually every everyone. If you're 20 years old, at best you'd get through 29,000 people or so before you died. Even hitting conventions, lan parties, etc. you'd have a hard time averaging more than 3 people a day.
I can not remember winning or losing a single debate on the internet.
No idea why skill2win is dying out.. Seems some people just don't like fair competition
I really don't see them levying a property tax on in-game property
. As for taxing income, this really should be no surprise, you get taxed for ANY income, regardless of how you got it. Also, you won't get taxed on income until you "cash out." Since D3 (and likely other games with an RMAH) give you some kind of "credits" that can be exchanged for real money at a time of your choosing, you won't get taxed for every transaction.
You can sell something on the AH, get $5.00 worth of credits, then buy something for $5.00 later and not be taxed a cent.
Are you team Azeroth, team Tyria, or team Jacob?
I despise gold selling which is the beginning of pay-to-win, of course it's spread so much further now. Pay-to-win is pathetic, as is the whole dumbing down of games in general. I'm not thrilled with where these games are going in general in recent years. There's nothing out there currently I feel any desire to pay anything for. ArchAge and possibly Guild Wars 2 are the only things I'm really looking forward to at all at this point. Mostly ArcheAge. There seems to be more de-evolution then evolution going on in "development" circles. We seem to be living in bad times in general, everything falling apart. Mad politicians destroying the societies they've been tasked with protecting (and hopefully improving). Filthy laissez-faire scum turning us all into slaves to the elite very-few. Bad times. I guess shouldn't really expect the game companies to be any better.
Ah and therein lies the rub. If a game with a lot of PvP is to be P2W, it HAS to be designed so that the gear has a significant impact on PvP. Otherwise, there is no incentive to buy items from the cash shop or RMAH.
So another strike against P2W...it encourages imbalanced PvP.
Are you team Azeroth, team Tyria, or team Jacob?
so with pay2win everyone can be a winner and special? lol.... hello kitty island adventure anyone?
Actually you only have to play Hello Kitty if you don't P2W. If you decide to lay down your cash, you get to play Rambo
.
Are you team Azeroth, team Tyria, or team Jacob?
It's not necessarily that it's pay to win, at least for me. It's that RMT defeats the purpose of the game for me.
Given the options of farming for countless hours for a chance at a drop of a good upgrade, or spending money that is a fraction of what I make an hour working... well it would be stupid to spend hours of time grinding for something that could be obtained with significantly less effort. Yet at the same time, doing so defeats the entire purpose of playing the game, so why should I even bother 'playing' the game if I'm not actually going to play it?
So it comes down to that RMT just kills the spirit of the game for me. I don't expect everyone else to be in the same position or feel the same way. If other people are fine with it the way it is, that's their choice. For me however, the existence of RMT in a game kills my desire to play it, because it creates a cost benefit analysis paradox.
These days I have no problem at all with pay-to-win.
For years people have been buying gold. Not everyone, of course, but enough. Stay in any guild long enough and you'll learn the people that are prepared to 'cheat'. Buying gold is a form of pay-too-win which earns the developer nothing.
Pay-to-win means it is now the games developer who is gaining additional income from their product. People were already paying-to-win so it barely makes a difference. In fact the only difference is that with the developer gaining a greater share of the pie, so I can pay less, or the quality of the game will be greater.
This is exactly it. Before RMT, the "value" of uber sword X was how many hours it took to farm, or an equivalent amount of in game gold. This value was consistent no matter who you are. After RMT, the value of uber sword X is just two hours of me working at my real job.
I never want to say..."man I really want to get that sword in WoW...better work some overtime tonight!"
Are you team Azeroth, team Tyria, or team Jacob?
Believe me, you won't be paying less
.
Also, the problem I have with this argument is that it basically justifies RMT being "okay" only because "people were already doing it." Just because people are already doing something does not mean that it's good. People are doing lots of bad things that the government could profit off of...does that mean they should?
I always despised gold selling sites, and I still feel that it does serious damage to a game's economy. Game developers used to agree with me before they realized they could tax the hell out of RMT and make a profit.
Are you team Azeroth, team Tyria, or team Jacob?
rmt wont fly high or the game will not have lot of player.it is all fine and dandy to try to forcefeed this idea a la blizzard(diablo3)
but the fact is if the rmt has an unfair advantage over the grinder
the average player will just play another game.
It's not a property tax, it's usually called a capital gains tax and is considered a part of income.
Currently if I win a house in a sweepstakes or something, I must pay taxes on that gain. If the house is worth a million dollars, those taxes can be very significant. If, however, I win a house spot in a game that is worth a lot of money to someone, I do not have to pay any capital gains tax. I'm the type of player that would not sell that house spot to someone else (except within the game context), so the house spot in my possession is not really worth the large sum of money.
Making a shop for real money transactions would allow a legislator to point to game assets and attribute a dollar amount to them, even if it takes some sort of conversion from "Blizzard points" to American dollars. If I then pull something very valuable from a chest, completely by accident during the course of playing the game, the IRS may hold me accountable for perhaps hundreds of dollars of income due to that acquisition. The item would have to be extremely rare, of course.
Currently most developers make it clear in their ToS that all game items and database objects are the property of the company, and they reserve the right to wipe or delete as they choose. They also generally make it a violation of the ToS to sell database objects for real world money. So far, this has protected people from having to claim game winnings as a part of their income.
Blizzard may be changing that.
Since you posted that after I posted :
"It's not even a matter of whether one works for certain things or buys them becaue in most games the stuff you buy and the stuff you gain in-game have little, if any, overlap. Where there is overlap is in the purchase of a la carte content such as additional campaigns or additional zones."
Then I assume you have information that contradicts what I said. Could you give me links to the games where you can buy epic and rare boss-kill items? I'm hoping there are a number of such games and this isn't just another reiterating of unchecked misinformed talking points like your earlier post.
There isn't a "right" or "wrong" way to play, if you want to use a screwdriver to put nails into wood, have at it, simply don't complain when the guy next to you with the hammer is doing it much better and easier. - Allein
"Graphics are often supplied by Engines that (some) MMORPG's are built in" - Spuffyre
I guess it depends on how you look at playing the game. For me the uber sword X does not really have a value since I would have obtained it while doing a fun and/or challenging activity. As such it is merely a perk of an enjoyable activity. My main problem with P2W setups is that they tend to turn many enjoyable activities into boring grinds just so they can sell you items. Since D3 does not seem to be doing this, the value of my actitivities in the game is not affected.
Actually thinking that a virtual item is worth overtime work seems completely lopsided to me. Merely having the item is not fun or challenging so why would I pay to actually skip all the good stuff in the game?
I will admit. I am not an expert on P2W games. If you haven't guessed by my posts, I don't play them
. So no, I can't give you any specific examples about what you exactly asked for. What I do know is admittedly second hand information.
That said though, and before you eviscerate me for being "misinformed." Look at how Diablo 3 will work. It's going to have a RMAH where you can buy and sell basically anything...it's a random item system so it's not like things will be BoP. So in D3, you WILL be able to buy any items that are achievable in-game, rare, epic anything.
And to be honest, D3 is what has me up in arms about this. I don't mind P2W in F2P games because I never had any intention of playing them, and I always had superior P2P or B2P alternatives. I'm upset though because I really wanted to play D3, and now the RMAH (among other recent "developments") is kind of ruining it for me and I see this happening with other P2P or B2P games in the future.
Are you team Azeroth, team Tyria, or team Jacob?
You are miss using terms.
D3 is not Pay to Win, Pay to win is when you sell Exp potions, or sell things that you CANNOT get from just playing the game normally that gives you an ADVANTAGE over other players.
You are using the wrong term.
EVERYTHING in Diablo 3 you can get from just playing the game, there is NO advantage you get from buying items, because the only things that are being sold are items you can get from just playing the game, the PLAYER based auction house is selling items for REAL money.
So please stop using the wrong terms and confusing people and getting up in arms about things that you yourself admit you know very little about.
Edit: Perhaps try using the term "Real money trading" as in RMT. That would be technically correct, while Pay to Win implys you are paying money to have an unfair advantage, which is NOT occuring in any instance you have mentioned.
laughing-men:you asume there wont be very rare sold!i sure hope there arent rare sold but the truth is there probably will be.
if you can get an item that as a .1 chance to drop how many years you will farm to get said item.
the dude that is selling it,he is gona make a player with an unfair advantage cause the drop chance is so low
might as well say it doesnt drop.this is the issue a lot of game face often .they make the drop a low percentage chance sell the same in store ,player get pissedoff because in truth the item will never see the light of day in his hands if he doesnt buy it!
just because it is avail in some game and drop in some game doesnt mean it isnt pay2 win when the drop chance is insanelly low!