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[Column] General: How Far is Too Far?
SBFord
Former Associate EditorMember LegendaryPosts: 33,129
As more and more MMOs employ the 'free to play' option and bring an 'item shop' on board, it becomes easy to succumb to those that utilize the 'pay to win' aspect. But how far is too far? Find out in our latest Pokket Says and then leave us your thoughts in the comments.
Wartune has this whole deal where, if you can't be on as much as you need to be because of work or whatever, then you can pay more to keep up with others. That's good and all, but a lot of people have actually paid quite a bit of money to do the same, and get ahead. One thing that many don't realize with this game however is that a lot of the stuff you pay for to get ahead is all a gamble. You're not guaranteed to get what you want, but if you spend enough, you'll likely get it eventually.
Read more of Hillary Nicole's Pokket Says: How Far is Too Far?
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Comments
There is no pay-to-win until the day someone adds a big red button with "win" on it to their cash shop, and that red button shut's the server down for good and anyone else trying to log on will get a message saying: "(Char name) has won the game". Everything else is Pay-to-have advantage or pay-to-have convenience.
'Pay to win' is where you pay real money to get an advantage that aids you in winning.
It's like paying an informant for insider stock info, bribing the indy race officials to get pole position, or even buying someone elses chess pieces to use when you are in a chess tournament.
'Pay to win' doesn't guarantee a win, otherwise it would make a lot less money, and a large portion of the players would just say, "screw this b.s., I'm not into auctions" and leave forever.
By the way, if it wasn't obvious, I don't like 'pay to win'. For that matter, I also don't like paying real money for 'gear' and 'appearance items' that have a limited duration. Kind of like "Give your favorite weapon purple flames! Only 2000 Krix (that's $30 real money). Duration 12 days.". Overpriced, temporary, and the real world price is obscured because they use some kind of ingame token money to confuse things. (Old psychological trick, just ask the cruise/resort industry.)
Lost my mind, now trying to lose yours...
/sigh
Just stop supporting these rip-off projects and things will change.
"Censorship is never over for those who have experienced it. It is a brand on the imagination that affects the individual who has suffered it, forever." - Noam Chomsky
Avatars are people too
The frog might realize it is only cheating itself.
"I am my connectome" https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=HA7GwKXfJB0
DEATH to all pay-to-win games!!!
F2P and cash shops are altogether bad. It fosters an environment where it is not your dedication or skills which puts you apart from others but rather also how much you open your wallet. Great for the corps., as they get more money, very bad for us gamers who just want to pay a one time fee and/or sub. and then just enjoy the game.
More over it is inevitable that the devs spend resources on things either directly or indirectly related to the cash shop to squeeze more money from people rather than just improving the game.
It is bad, there is nothing good with it and is only there because of greed and nothing else. It has nothing to do with gaming, at all.
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Hah, I like this example. If only I had shown this level of capitalism while DMing!
Agreed.
And the worst part is, developers are designing their games around the greed concept. The focus has gone from, "how can we create an awesome game" to "how can we bleed gamers out of the most cash".
Sad, pathetic, all that and a bag of chips.
"Censorship is never over for those who have experienced it. It is a brand on the imagination that affects the individual who has suffered it, forever." - Noam Chomsky
Well you are in the .000001 percentile with that opinion. Pay-to-win is clearly deeply inbedded in many of these f2p games. You really have to play some of these games to high level to realize your error. Many keep the obivious need to spend in the item shop until later levels.
The gambing for items is what I really object to. Many of these f2p basically run a casino for needed items. That is just wrong far as I am concerned. Perfect World is famous for this in their games.
It's funny how things work out. Fifteen years ago, still a teenager, I had an argument with my dad over video games.
His exact words: "Just wait until they've made you all gambling addicts!"
Back then, I laughed at the notion. Gaming and gambling were two entirely different things. I paid for a game once, and with that one investment, I could game as much as I wanted.
Now we're 15 years later, and all I can say is: Damn, my dad was more right than even he could have known.
Personally, I still need a good reason to pay for a game: I pay if it's good. I still need more reason to pay monthly.
In earlier MMORPGs this was given since I could see how they needed all the servers to host that big-ass world. Now, with so much instancing and hanging out in a capital like in a lobby, that reason to pay a sub is no longer given. I haven't subbed to a single MMORPG in months now.
And f2p? Thoroughly depends on how it is done, and how the company behind the games comes across. I have no qualms about shelling out $100 to support Path of Exile. I wouldn't in my dreams spend $1 on a different colouring for my player avatar. All in all, I keep a very tight budget on my gaming needs. If I have the feeling I am being overcharged, I cut the cord. Often not only with that game, but with the entire company.
It's too far if they make less money then when not going as far. At least as long as they are "in it" for the money. Why shouldn't the day come some rich guy who can't spent all his money even if he wanted to keeps an MMO as his hobby, like many millionaires buy football (and other) clubs since a few years. Anyways, "too far" is ultimately just personal preference.
Don't like it? Don't play it. I don't like subs, as they extort money from you before you even touched it (yeah, theres free months etc, but it's not like they wouldn't factor that in when setting box price and subscription free).
F2P can be very annoying when you know there is content out there, but there is no way to reach it unless on average you pay the $15/month, whether it's via subscription or buying content packs for like $50 every few months.
But: You don't have to. At every single moment, you can decide it's not worth spending any more money. After half a year, when you got past the intiial content, you bought some character slots, content packs, some new races etc. for like $150-200.
So you spent about the same as a subscription, financially, there is no difference at this point. But: Take a break for two years, get back and play another 3 years without paying a single cent as you still are happy with your old characters etc. Then you played like 4 years for $100. Thats $2/month. Now show me an MMO with such a low subscription fee.
Of course, you can easily spend $100/month, but if you feel like it's worth it, why not. Also, a subscription is usually not a "one fee to pay them all", but it only allows you to keep playing. You have to buy the box, too. And that shiny new expansions? Another $20-$30. And then subscription based games also often offer additional stuff in the cash shop. If you want everything there is to have, you have to calculate the subscription on top of what you spend in a F2P game, not instead.
Ironically, F2P games that feature a subscription model are usually the ones that actually give the subscribers everything there is, often with some kind of "supporter" status that has benefits over the free user status for those that stopped subscribing.
A subscription fee is a license to print money, meaning the developers do not have to ensure everything runs fine etc. You already payed for this month, or even for several months with some subscription plans, even if you stop playing right now. But nobody is going to buy something in the shop if they are not playing. So you constantly have to offer something they want.
This can lead to situations where the restrict the game, actually remove features etc. to make people want something, but it's not like every subscription based game has all the features you would expect.
Ultimately, it's a matter of if you think you get your moneys worth, and not how and how much you pay, with F2P having freedom of choice, but also being spoilt for choice, with the subscription featuring neither (if it actually gives you access to "everything").
I'll wait to the day's end when the moon is high
And then I'll rise with the tide with a lust for life, I'll
Amass an army, and we'll harness a horde
And then we'll limp across the land until we stand at the shore
There are two differnt concepts that people get confused over.
there is p2w and there is the freemium f2p model, which is essentially sub2win
sub2win is games like EQ2 and LOTRO (at least initially) where you can play parts of the game (almost all of it in SoE's case) for free but sacrifice convenience, in some cases finite power (SoE), in some cases content (Turbine). But once you sub you are on an even field with the core population,extra money does not give you extra advantage.
pay2win is basically the more money you put into the game the better you are. Even the games that may have a power cap, if you have to spend more than a sub cost to get there its pay2win. Runes of Magic is major offender here, as is Perfect World games and the like.
The only time its really unacceptable is when the two paths cross. Turbine is certainly creeping towards that scenario, SoE is not.
The reason the freemium model exists is more necessity than greed. Sub model works great - if you have enough subs to cover the fixed costs such as developer salaries and wages. If freemium is being used to allow continued development than its not inherently a bad thing.
As for pay2win, I will never play a pay2win game but if people want to do it, go nuts.
Once you're willing to take one step down that road, you're going to be willing to take a second and a third. The only question then becomes how fast can the developers manipulate you into accelerating your spending without giving you a breaking point where you realize you need to stop.
It all is just one big hoax. With P2P you at least know what are you buying and what do you get from game, but with F2P you only get deceived. And, its ruining the mmo gaming.
Easy to get sucked into a pay to win item mall game? Maybe some of them.
But Wartune? Seriously? That game had the most over-the-top outrageous marketing campaign since Evony. If you didn't see that as a blaring siren warning you to stay away from the game, then I don't know what to say.
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I don't have a problem with people who pay moderate amounts having advantages over people who pay nothing, even if they're huge advantages. People who pay absolutely nothing should be regarded as playing a free trial, and if a free trial is very restricted, so be it.
The problem comes when people who pay substantial amounts are at a disadvantage as compared to people who pay even more. If you can get everything that matters for $10/month or $15/month or $20/month, fine. But when people who pay $50/month are at a huge disadvantage as compared to people who pay $100/month, you've got a big problem.
Too far would be selling perma stat increases.
I don't mind mounts, cosmetics, exp boosters or even temporary stat boosts as long as the stat boosting items (like food or pots) are craftable in the game.
You should never be able to buy anything that isn't cosmetic that you can't get in the game (except for maybe exp boosters and the like), and you should never be able to buy stats.
I think if you charge for content or classes (like LOTRO) you should be laxer on things like quick travel, bank and inventory space, or at least make the overall prices for items cheaper than average in your marketplace.
Other than that, markets are fine imo, even for sub based games.
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Theres so much cheating/hacking/botting in so many games now how can you tell who has any skill anyway??
I have no problems whatsoever with games that use Pay to Win business models. Anyone having issues with companies using this business model should just stay away from them.
It's really that simple. Gaming companies want to make money, and they're free to decide how they want to make money. As customers we get to choose if we want to play by their rules or not.
It differs from implementation to implementation. I love some models, like World of Tanks, where i buy premium for one month if i'm in the mood for playing. I strongly dislike the models where, if you do not play for 2-3 months you fall behind, and it also costs you a few hundreds per month to play.
From the pay to win category, there was no game that i could not stay away from, except Atlantica Online. For me, this game represents an extreme example of what greed means. You need 30 bucks for convenience items every month, and probably a few hundred more if you want to stay competitive (gamble boxes, 10 bucks each, about 1/40 chances to get the item you want - no, i'm not kidding). On the other hand, the game is absolutely fantastic: deep, complex, addictive, probably the game many people would play forever if it had a subscription option.
It is easy to get sucked in, until you realise what's going on, until you figure out that, after you spend those 200 bucks to get that "great" mount, in 2 weeks time a new, better mount is sold, and yours becomes almost worthless. That's why less and less people are playing. I'm really sad that such a gem of a game will die pretty soon just because of Nexon's greed.
If it is possible to pay for an advantage over another player then the game is pay to win even if the advantage is small.
Paying money to save time is not pay to win unless it is extremely agregious. (For example some systems allow a in game monster dropper currency to be exchanged for the premium currency by players. So while the rarest items are technically farmable by farming in game currency -> buying the premium currency and buying the item advantage, the ratio to do so is incredibly incredibly high).
Paying money for cosmetic stuff is awesome but there are very very few games that stick to this as the only cash shop category and generally add pay for convience or pay to win.
I hear alot of you yelling "burn F2P, kill it, dont support it" and many other things like that.......the fact is most of the gamers (*think) that F2P is actually cheaper then paying 15 bucks a month sub and keep pumping money in those F2P games....they make more money then subbed games do.
* yes they THINK its cheaper....my own expirience here is GW2, GW2 is the first F2P game i even touched and it has me spending about 20 to 30 bucks for stuff instead of the usual 15 a month for a full game......so if you look at it....F2P is more expensive then subs anyways.
ps: i know i dont have to buy keys for chests or dye upgrades but thats what i like (customizing my character) and in GW2 that costs alot of money.