P2W vs Pay to go a bit faster...

Mors-Subita

I hear people yelling about P2W because you can spend money to get to the finish line a bit faster... By that definition WoW is P2W because you can buy a boost to lvl 90, etc... People say that you can "never" catch up.... Except that EVERY thing in the game that you can rank up using money has a finite cap(i.e. gear slot upgrades capping at 20), so while you can pay money to get there a bit faster, I will catch up to you.

Not only that, but if you do spend money to rank up your gear slot upgrades or your temples, it raises your influence rating so I will NEVER have to deal with you in PVP or any other situation until such time as I am in the same ballpark.

 

My understanding of P2W is that you can spend money to get gear/items/skills/power that you cannot get any other way or that give you an unfair advantage over other players... Please explain to me how Pay to go a bit faster is P2W...

LacedOpium

 

Wow ... this again.

I agree with you but others can't seem to get over the notion that some players can get to the top faster than they can.  Everything is rush, rush now days.  Everybody wants to be first because supposedly the game starts at end game and whoever gets there first is forever the winner. 

And therein lies the problem.

observer

From what i remember, pay-to-win always meant paying real money to get higher stats on gear and weapons.  Somehow, the term has transferred over to convenience and advancement items.  So in essence, it's not really p2w, since the person wouldn't be winning anything.  I do miss the days when time was the only advantage anyone ever had.

TiamatRoar

Originally posted by observer
From what i remember, pay-to-win always meant paying real money to get higher stats on gear and weapons.  Somehow, the term has transferred over to convenience and advancement items.  So in essence, it's not really p2w, since the person wouldn't be winning anything.  I do miss the days when time was the only advantage anyone ever had.

Companies have learned that obfuscucating "pay-to-win" to just "pay-to-permanent-advantage" instead of "pay-to-WIN" is a great way to trick players into playing their game without thinking of it was pay-to-win, when that's what it really is.

 

In the case of games where there's a cap on how much you can earn in a day, yet paying exceeds that cap, then it is simple logic that someone who pays to exceed that cap will always beat someone who didn't, regardless of time.  After all, what use is time when the benefit from your time is CAPPED?  The payer will simply always be ahead because he is literally mathematically exceeding anything a non-payer can do no matter how much the non-payer plays.

 

As for "reaching the finish line first", any company with half a brain will make sure there is no finish line (or, more likely, that there is one but it's an illusion that's all but unreachable except maybe to the fattest whales).   After all, if the cash shop primarily sells things that make you race farther down the race course, then once someone reaches the finish line, they won't be paying any more.  A company would have to be filled with morons to allow that to happen.

 

Thus suckers will play the game not thinking it's pay-to-win, whereas others will be paying tons and winning.  And by the time various people figure that out (which they probably will.  R2Games explicitly notes that the company is fully aware of the implications of this on the lifespan of the game), the company will have already gotten the short-term revenue it was looking for, even if at the cost of the long-term.  A calculated cost they are willing to deal with.

 

Last I heard, this is the case with Skyforge, but it might have changed since then?  Dunno.

Khebeln

I really recommend for you to read this guide to get yourself more familiarized with the monetization in the game

http://www.excessum-gaming.com/forum/m/10248673/viewthread/22820506-skyforge-monetization-explained

 

And about credits that you can buy over the cap, yes you can, but you really dont need it for anything else than Pantheon/Guild upgrades. Developers need to make money from somewhere.

But to be honest i would never buy credits, conversion rate is pretty high and i really dont need them as you will have more than enough as you progress. You cant trade money or items with players so there are no gold sellers. Economy will be reasonably stable. Why would you use credits for when 90% of the stuff on market you cant even buy for credits but instead a special farmable tokens or argents (for costumes)

And if you look on the market this is least intrusive F2P game yet, so i recommend all whiners should stop complaining and get a job. Nothing is really free in life.

Khebeln

Originally posted by DMKano

P2W is a myth perpetuated by a vocal minority. 99.9% of all games that are labeled as p2w by this vocal minority are in fact "pay to faster" games.

What is really funny to me is pure pve games being called p2w.... lol

Furthermore buying maxed characters with max gear exists in EVERY game as no company can prevent 3rd party account or item sales, so by this fact every game in existence is P2W, because money buys a clear advantage, right?

Exactly

Tho the are few exception where true P2W exists, like Atlantic Online or a lot of the older F2P games. I spent like 100o pounds on that game and it was a drop of water in a bucket. I know a guy that spend 50k $ on that game in few months :P

The issue is this days people call everything P2W.

They should play games that really are like that where you cant achieve anything w/o spending money before they complain.

 

andre369

Originally posted by DMKano

P2W is a myth perpetuated by a vocal minority. 99.9% of all games that are labeled as p2w by this vocal minority are in fact "pay to faster" games.

What is really funny to me is pure pve games being called p2w.... lol

Furthermore buying maxed characters with max gear exists in EVERY game as no company can prevent 3rd party account or item sales, so by this fact every game in existence is P2W, because money buys a clear advantage, right?

So that makes it okay for game companies to design their games around legalized RMT? Where as you say, pay to skip content. Because said content has been designed around legalized RMT.

So a small % in older MMOs paid, risking their accounts(if the company did their job to actually ban them). 

Now we should blindly accept that every new game offers pay to skip content? Is that what you are looking for in a game.

Personally I want my time spent in the game matter, I do not care if X player did it faster than me. But if you want to play a MMORPG and immerse yourself in it. What you do has to matter. Sure if you play it for two months max, you will not care if X player paid to skip content.

But have you noticed how most new MMOs have turned into a 1-2 month game for many of the consumers?

For the ones I have done that dance with, has been because simply you are allowed and encouraged to pay to skip content. 

Which results in whatever you actually do in game, will compare to dollars. Shall I spend 20 bucks to sell that cash shop item to another player?  Has that player I just saw actually done that super hard content, or did he/she just buy it?

Is the time I spend in game worth it? Will a paying player bypass me just because he/she uses a wallet?

I think you need to ask yourself, as a player and hide your wallet. Do I want the time I spend in this game matter? Or do I want it and the game be designed around the developers RMT?

aesperus

The simple truth is that there hasn't been 'actual' pay2win games in years. The last 2 made were Allods, and (arguably) Planetside 2. Infact ever since the term was coined (roughly a decade ago, when it actually was a problem), the number of games that employ such design have almost completely died out. Most of which no one really plays.

Simply put, the term 'pay2win' (and good god have there been way too many threads on this dead horse of a topic), has been so overused and misused that the term is now basically meaningless.

Pay2win used to mean 'buying power'. Paying for things that gave you a distinct power advantage over other characters who didn't pay (i.e. better gear). Today, 'Pay2win' means the game has a cashshop. Plain and simple.

It has nothing to do with pay-gated power creep, and everything to do with whether or not a game asked you for money in any way that isn't a subscription fee. Because, for some reason, people are convinced that subscriptions guaruntee quality, and are the only viable way to run a game. Even in the midst of countless examples to the contrary.

Konfess

Originally posted by Mors-Subita

I hear people yelling about P2W because you can spend money to get to the finish line a bit faster... By that definition WoW is P2W because you can buy a boost to lvl 90, etc... People say that you can "never" catch up.... Except that EVERY thing in the game that you can rank up using money has a finite cap(i.e. gear slot upgrades capping at 20), so while you can pay money to get there a bit faster, I will catch up to you.

Not only that, but if you do spend money to rank up your gear slot upgrades or your temples, it raises your influence rating so I will NEVER have to deal with you in PVP or any other situation until such time as I am in the same ballpark.

 

My understanding of P2W is that you can spend money to get gear/items/skills/power that you cannot get any other way or that give you an unfair advantage over other players... Please explain to me how Pay to go a bit faster is P2W...

P2W has nothing to do with the things I highlighted in the OP.  P2W mean selling items that a non-spending player wants, thereby forcing or enticing them to spend money in the cash shop.  Which they have no intention of buying.  Their anger over not having these desired items lead them to coin the bogus term “P2W (wanted) item”.  P2W only mean something they want, but can't have.  Because they won't pay for it.  These games are not advertised as free to win, only Free To Play.

 

Again P2W = spending money.

Khebeln

Its more like real P2W vanished from PC and moved to mobiles.

So many games are SOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO baddly P2W over there. You wont even have access to majority of content unless you spend big buck at random.

andre369

Originally posted by DMKano

Originally posted by andre369

Originally posted by DMKano

P2W is a myth perpetuated by a vocal minority. 99.9% of all games that are labeled as p2w by this vocal minority are in fact "pay to faster" games.

What is really funny to me is pure pve games being called p2w.... lol

Furthermore buying maxed characters with max gear exists in EVERY game as no company can prevent 3rd party account or item sales, so by this fact every game in existence is P2W, because money buys a clear advantage, right?

So that makes it okay for game companies to design their games around legalized RMT? Where as you say, pay to skip content. Because said content has been designed around legalized RMT.

So a small % in older MMOs paid, risking their accounts(if the company did their job to actually ban them). 

Now we should blindly accept that every new game offers pay to skip content? Is that what you are looking for in a game.

Personally I want my time spent in the game matter, I do not care if X player did it faster than me. But if you want to play a MMORPG and immerse yourself in it. What you do has to matter. Sure if you play it for two months max, you will not care if X player paid to skip content.

But have you noticed how most new MMOs have turned into a 1-2 month game for many of the consumers?

For the ones I have done that dance with, has been because simply you are allowed and encouraged to pay to skip content. 

Which results in whatever you actually do in game, will compare to dollars. Shall I spend 20 bucks to sell that cash shop item to another player?  Has that player I just saw actually done that super hard content, or did he/she just buy it?

Is the time I spend in game worth it? Will a paying player bypass me just because he/she uses a wallet?

I think you need to ask yourself, as a player and hide your wallet. Do I want the time I spend in this game matter? Or do I want it and the game be designed around the developers RMT?

 

I can only speak for myself - I am older and at a point in my life where money is not so tight - I prefer games where I can throw a few bucks and speed up my progress.

To me time right now at this point in my life time is more valuable than money - so paying to progress faster is an ideal option.

I don't have 8 hours a day to spend playing a single game anymore - I play more games now than ever but I maximize the HELL out of my time via XP potions etc.

Spend 8 hours in game to get gold to unlock inventory slots or spend $5 and get it immediately - yeah I'm gonna spend $5 

That's just me.

I much prefer "pay to faster" games as again it works for me - plus it feels good to spend more money on games when I know it helps the dev teams I like.

Of course I want my time in game spent to matter - I just don't want to waste it on mindless boring tedious crap that takes hours, give me ways to pay and reduce the tedium as much as possible and I'm happy.

Also the devs are happy - because they're getting more funds

It's a win-win

The only people that this bothers are subscription purists - who are a tiny minority.

 

P2Faster - yes please

 

 

 

Well that makes sense. Gamers are getting older. But I personally dont agree. I dont spend tons of time each day either. But I would want my time spent playing to matter more than my wallet.

I am not trying to tell how you spend your money, only how I want my game time to actually matter. Gladly some devs still agree on that(Camelot Unchained, looking forward to that). 

Personally I do not feel rewarded for my time spent in most games anymore, because of the feature you like. 

Sure I do not have the patience either anymore to grind as much as I used to in Guild Wars 1. But I had a great time doing that, getting that gladiator 7 rank with my friends.

 

I do see where your points are coming from. but I dont like the paths devs are taking these days. And if we keep putting up with it we will see PC games, wait we already did. Come out with time gated core features that can be bypassed by wallet. 

I am all for a broader audience. but making every game fit that is not a good idea. 

ToxicAvenger

I don't play to win MMORPGs

I play to have fun.

so this notion of pay2win is kind of stupid to me

Mors-Subita

Some of the people posting in this thread seem to be labeling under some misconceptions.

Some of the ones I saw were that they can't do "faster to finish line" because once you reach the finish line you won't play any more, that it is simple logic that someone who pays to exceed a cap will beat someone who is capped, that because of money conversion your time doesn't matter, etc... So lets address them.

 

In skyforge you have a bunch of finish lines:

You have max upgrades for weapon slot

You have max upgrades for shield slot

You have max upgrades for rings

You have bag unlocks

You have pantheon unlocks

You have temple/province building

You have class/atlas progression

You have rare currency unlocks for costumes/gear

And those aren't all of them, just the ones that come to mind first.... Some of those can be affected by the cash shop, some can't. All of them have different goal posts... So to give some examples...

Unlocking all your bag slots - estimated cost 1,000,000 credits.

Paying you can get it right now, me it will take 1.5 weeks because of the cap.

Max upgrades for weapon/shield/ring slots (caps at lvl 20) - estimated cost(each) 500,000 credits, TONS of upgrade stones

Paying you can get it right now if you can buy it right now IF there are enough upgrade stones on the marketplace. 1 week for me.

Temple/province building(caps at lvl 8) - not sure the cost, didn't get to try it in the beta

Class/atlas progression - by far the longest to the finish line, no estimate on how many months or years it will take to "finish" it, especially as they are already planning on expanding it... Cannot advance it using the cash shop

Rare currency unlocks - Epic cryomancer costume costs 100,000 rare threads

Exchange rate for crystals to rare threads in RU is roughly 1 rare thread to 50 crystals. That means that this would cost 5,000,000 crystals. RU the cost is $7.50/10,000 crystals. If someone wants to pay that for a costume, more power to them. Time to farm 100,000 threads, approx 2.5 weeks.

 

So char progression can't be rushed, costumes and gear can't be rushed... All you can rush are the gear tier upgrades, the temple upgrades, and the bag slots... And all of those have a fixed cap which means that the F2P players will catch up in short order... IF you dump enough money you can probably get stuff now that will take me a couple of months of playing to get... is that P2W? I don't think so, but I am trying to see the other side here because you have threads with 15 pages of people saying it is and I don't understand it.

R3d.Gallows

Skyforge simply hides it better than other games. One example - you can upgrade your weapon by using items bought with credits from the marketplace. You can get credits in game but only a limited amount per week or you can get them without limits by converting Argents - a currency bought with RL money. This screams P2W... 'but wait!' *an SF defender interjects* 'theres a secondary resource needed for the weapon upgrade and you cant buy it with credits. So its not P2W because no matter how many credits you buy, you can only use so many before you run out of the secondary resource'. And this is true... initially. What they dont tell you is how the credit cost of the upgrade items scales compared to the cost in secondary resource. After a while the upgrade items become so expensive you dont get nearly enough credits by playing the game to make use of the secondary resource youve gathered by regular gameplay. Unless ofcourse you convert them from Argents bought with RL money. Also... thats just one of the progression paths in game which make heavy use of credits. If you spend your credits on this one, you certainly wont have enough to push your character forward in the others. 

Edit: to the poster above me - you forgot atlas nodes which upgrade your stats in exchange for Argents (also isnt it 50 crystals for a PACK of 400 threads... someone did the math on the official forums and its roughly 12k argents per costume)? So, no, you can not rush every aspect of progression with RL money. But you can rush enough to get a significant advantage for months if not years. 

Mors-Subita

Originally posted by R3d.Gallows

Skyforge simply hides it better than other games. One example - you can upgrade your weapon by using items bought with credits from the marketplace. You can get credits in game but only a limited amount per week or you can get them without limits by converting Argents - a currency bought with RL money. This screams P2W... 'but wait!' *an SF defender interjects* 'theres a secondary resource needed for the weapon upgrade and you cant buy it with credits. So its not P2W because no matter how many credits you buy, you can only use so many before you run out of the secondary resource'. And this is true... initially. What they dont tell you is how the credit cost of the upgrade items scales compared to the cost in secondary resource. After a while the upgrade items become so expensive you dont get nearly enough credits by playing the game to make use of the secondary resource youve gathered by regular gameplay. Unless ofcourse you convert them from Argents bought with RL money. Also... thats just one of the progression paths in game which make heavy use of credits. If you spend your credits on this one, you certainly wont have enough to push your character forward in the others. 

 

 

Ummm, that's not how it works... I'm going to go out on a limb here and say you haven't actually played the game. Using your example of upgrading the weapon slot, here is how it actually works.

 

Weapons/shields/rings can be broken down into upgrade stones.

Each upgrade level has 4 increments you need to go through to get to the next level.

On the weapon at lvl 1, I believe it was 9 tier 1 upgrade stones and 1800 credits. So you get your 4 increments after 36 upgrade stones and 7200 credits, but you do not get to go to level 2 at that point. You need to increase the rank of the slot to begin progressing in level 2, and that requires currency that can only be gotten through questing and cannot be purchased. You quest, you increase the rank, and now it costs 13 stones and 2700 credits each. You buy the first one and then go to the marketplace to buy more stones because you are out, and discover that the marketplace is out of stones too because there are dozens of people trying to do what you are doing. So you cannot buy more stones until someone else sells them(finite quantity), and even if you could you cannot rank up the item without progressing through the quests...

And even if somehow you manage to buy all the stones you need and you get all the ranks unlocked, it caps out at lvl 20. You will hit lvl 4 or so by 1200 prestige. You are looking at a couple of weeks to max them out, max... If someone wants to spend $50-$100 to get that faster, it doesn't affect me in any way.

 

Not only that, but upgrading them like that artificially increases my prestige, which actually isn't a good thing for me because it screws up some of the gated content.

JDis25

I agree with you OP, in some ways. However there is a huge scale of acceptability on this. Pay to go faster is OK, so long as it is not completely unreasonable to get there without paying. Early Archeage (not sure what it's like now) was a perfect example of a Free to Play where money would put your far far ahead of the free player, and it would take the free player much, much longer to achieve without spending tens of hundreds (daresay thousands) of dollars.

Khebeln

READ the monetization guide for skyforge before you take some ideas out of thin air.

http://www.excessum-gaming.com/forum/m/10248673/viewthread/22820506-skyforge-monetization-explained

R3d.Gallows

Originally posted by Mors-Subita

Originally posted by R3d.Gallows

Skyforge simply hides it better than other games. One example - you can upgrade your weapon by using items bought with credits from the marketplace. You can get credits in game but only a limited amount per week or you can get them without limits by converting Argents - a currency bought with RL money. This screams P2W... 'but wait!' *an SF defender interjects* 'theres a secondary resource needed for the weapon upgrade and you cant buy it with credits. So its not P2W because no matter how many credits you buy, you can only use so many before you run out of the secondary resource'. And this is true... initially. What they dont tell you is how the credit cost of the upgrade items scales compared to the cost in secondary resource. After a while the upgrade items become so expensive you dont get nearly enough credits by playing the game to make use of the secondary resource youve gathered by regular gameplay. Unless ofcourse you convert them from Argents bought with RL money. Also... thats just one of the progression paths in game which make heavy use of credits. If you spend your credits on this one, you certainly wont have enough to push your character forward in the others. 

 

 

Ummm, that's not how it works... I'm going to go out on a limb here and say you haven't actually played the game. Using your example of upgrading the weapon slot, here is how it actually works.

 

Weapons/shields/rings can be broken down into upgrade stones.

Each upgrade level has 4 increments you need to go through to get to the next level.

On the weapon at lvl 1, I believe it was 9 tier 1 upgrade stones and 1800 credits. So you get your 4 increments after 36 upgrade stones and 7200 credits, but you do not get to go to level 2 at that point. You need to increase the rank of the slot to begin progressing in level 2, and that requires currency that can only be gotten through questing and cannot be purchased. You quest, you increase the rank, and now it costs 13 stones and 2700 credits each. You buy the first one and then go to the marketplace to buy more stones because you are out, and discover that the marketplace is out of stones too because there are dozens of people trying to do what you are doing. So you cannot buy more stones until someone else sells them(finite quantity), and even if you could you cannot rank up the item without progressing through the quests...

And even if somehow you manage to buy all the stones you need and you get all the ranks unlocked, it caps out at lvl 20. You will hit lvl 4 or so by 1200 prestige. You are looking at a couple of weeks to max them out, max... If someone wants to spend $50-$100 to get that faster, it doesn't affect me in any way.

 

Not only that, but upgrading them like that artificially increases my prestige, which actually isn't a good thing for me because it screws up some of the gated content.

I have played the game up until about 40k prestige. First of all the market place is not an auction house. Its not 'theres only so many items to buy as people put up for sale'. Its a game algorithm which decides when the supply will run out for you. Its not nearly as restrictive as you imply. Secondly... yes they only go up to rank 20 but have you looked at the prices of the higher ranked stones? You will have the secondary resources many times over before you can earn the credits so the secondary currency is not really a limiting factor. 

Also, as I said, there are other progression paths which benefit greatly from investing absurd amounts of credits (obtained by buying argets) or argents.

Loke666

Pay2win means that you get an advantage in PvP or PvE if you buy stuff. Not stuff that makes you comfortable like extra guildbank space but stuff that gives you an easier time in combat or better loot.

Selling levelups to lvl 90 is a rather different thing even though I dislike stuff like that as well, but it is more pay2level unless we are talking about a PvP game where getting levels is hard since you get ganked all the time at low levels and maybe loose levels, gold and xp because it. In those cases it could be called pay2win as well.

But a lot of people tend to call anything you buy pay2win and that just isn't true. Gear with good stats is typicall pay2win stuff, not additional character stuff or my little pony mounts.

R3d.Gallows

Originally posted by Loke666

Pay2win means that you get an advantage in PvP or PvE if you buy stuff. Not stuff that makes you comfortable like extra guildbank space but stuff that gives you an easier time in combat or better loot.

Selling levelups to lvl 90 is a rather different thing even though I dislike stuff like that as well, but it is more pay2level unless we are talking about a PvP game where getting levels is hard since you get ganked all the time at low levels and maybe loose levels, gold and xp because it. In those cases it could be called pay2win as well.

But a lot of people tend to call anything you buy pay2win and that just isn't true. Gear with good stats is typicall pay2win stuff, not additional character stuff or my little pony mounts.

Were not talking about bag slots and mounts in case of SF (but you can buy those too).

Khebeln

Originally posted by R3d.Gallows

Originally posted by Loke666

Pay2win means that you get an advantage in PvP or PvE if you buy stuff. Not stuff that makes you comfortable like extra guildbank space but stuff that gives you an easier time in combat or better loot.

Selling levelups to lvl 90 is a rather different thing even though I dislike stuff like that as well, but it is more pay2level unless we are talking about a PvP game where getting levels is hard since you get ganked all the time at low levels and maybe loose levels, gold and xp because it. In those cases it could be called pay2win as well.

But a lot of people tend to call anything you buy pay2win and that just isn't true. Gear with good stats is typicall pay2win stuff, not additional character stuff or my little pony mounts.

Were not talking about bag slots and mounts in case of SF (but you can buy those too).

We know what you are talking about.

Just to make clear we have people in the community that played up to 110k prestige in RU version, w/o spending any money, or any need for it.

Paying for Gear or unique unaccesable otherwise stats is P2W.

But in this case its only costumes, convenience and time and that is acceptable in F2P games in my book.

If you dont like it go play subscription games.

Personally im a fan of Sub games, but F2P done right is just as good.

Skyforge is an example of F2P done right.

There is nothing you cant get by playing as F2P and spending absurd amount of money would only give you limited advantage. More in form of time than anything else.

There are some good ways to get up to 4x more money than your weekly cap w/o spending credits if you know what you are doing

Khebeln

Originally posted by Rhoklaw

Originally posted by DMKano

P2W is a myth perpetuated by a vocal minority. 99.9% of all games that are labeled as p2w by this vocal minority are in fact "pay to faster" games.

What is really funny to me is pure pve games being called p2w.... lol

Furthermore buying maxed characters with max gear exists in EVERY game as no company can prevent 3rd party account or item sales, so by this fact every game in existence is P2W, because money buys a clear advantage, right?

Label it however you want. Paying for advantages, specifically in PvP situations is what the majority doesn't want. Gaming companies know this drives competitive players up the wall. Forcing everyone to buy into the cash shop RNG crap in the hopes of being the best. PvP MMO's have ALWAYS been a competitive breeding ground of pride and respect. Now it's just a joke for people with more money to spend than someone else which completely removes the whole point of skilled players. The only reason you remain oblivious to this design flaw is because you are the spokesperson for one of the biggest culprits in the industry, ArcheAge.

Yeah but lets not get off topic.

Everyone knows Archage was a P2W as you could not get access to many of the features w/o spending money. You could even lose items if you stopped paying.

This is not the case with Skyforge so stay on topic

 

danwest58

I dont want to get into the P2W debate too much because what one person thinks is P2W another person Does not.  The only P2W people seem to agree on is if you can buy a item with massive powers that can only be gotten from the cash shop.

 

With that said I feel that ANY F2P game is now P2W in some way shape for forum.  That is my personal opinion and this is why I no longer play any F2P games and NEVER will.  I want to pay my $160 per year in a subscription and make of the game what I can by skill not by a cash shop.  I can deal with FFXIV's cash shop only because there is nothing there that matters,  Great I could by a season item I missed, or a minion or a mount.  Nothing that matters to the game unless you like them theme things.  As for other MMOs even if its hard to say is P2W like SWTOR, you still have to pay month for some of the looks, or you can buy gear that has stats and is really only good for leveling.  In the end I would rather pay a Sub and get what I can get from playing the game NOT from my wallet.  

 

On a side note games that F2P I am keeping my teenage daughter away from as well.  I do not accept as a parent this type of monetization business model.  Its fake and is designed to lure people with no self control yet make it so enticing.  Come on cannot get past this level BUY THIS SWORD YOU WILL WIN NO MATTER WHAT $10 FOR THE SWORD.  Buy your in game house now $500!.  All this is a bunch of BS and while I understand Developers got to make money, The online gaming world has just gone the wrong direction.  If a game cannot survive as a sub for any reason then shut it down.  Subs do not have to be $15 a month they can be $5, the point is this business model is the wrong way to make money.  The reason why I keep my Teenage daughter from this crap is because it teaches the wrong value, that if you have money you can win at anything.  I dont want that message out there.  If she cannot play a sub game OR a single player B2P game that is not an online game unless you want to play multi-player with friends without a cash shop involved; then she is not going to be allowed it.  

Gestankfaust

Originally posted by DMKano

P2W is a myth perpetuated by a vocal minority. 99.9% of all games that are labeled as p2w by this vocal minority are in fact "pay to faster" games.

What is really funny to me is pure pve games being called p2w.... lol

Furthermore buying maxed characters with max gear exists in EVERY game as no company can prevent 3rd party account or item sales, so by this fact every game in existence is P2W, because money buys a clear advantage, right?

^this

R3d.Gallows

Originally posted by Khebeln

Originally posted by R3d.Gallows

Originally posted by Loke666

Pay2win means that you get an advantage in PvP or PvE if you buy stuff. Not stuff that makes you comfortable like extra guildbank space but stuff that gives you an easier time in combat or better loot.

Selling levelups to lvl 90 is a rather different thing even though I dislike stuff like that as well, but it is more pay2level unless we are talking about a PvP game where getting levels is hard since you get ganked all the time at low levels and maybe loose levels, gold and xp because it. In those cases it could be called pay2win as well.

But a lot of people tend to call anything you buy pay2win and that just isn't true. Gear with good stats is typicall pay2win stuff, not additional character stuff or my little pony mounts.

Were not talking about bag slots and mounts in case of SF (but you can buy those too).

We know what you are talking about.

Just to make clear we have people in the community that played up to 110k prestige in RU version, w/o spending any money, or any need for it.

Now look at people who invested a similar amount of time but also bought argents. 

 

Paying for Gear or unique unaccesable otherwise stats is P2W.

But in this case its only costumes, convenience and time and that is acceptable in F2P games in my book.

If you dont like it go play subscription games.

So youve decided to stop replying to my specific points and start referring to yourself in plural. Also yure telling me to go elsewhere. That must mean youre right. 

Personally im a fan of Sub games, but F2P done right is just as good.

Skyforge is an example of F2P done right.

IYO. 

There is nothing you cant get by playing as F2P and spending absurd amount of money would only give you limited advantage. More in form of time than anything else.

Not so absurd and not so limited (and the discussion didnt even touch upon Pantheon Wars and the bidding system). Also... if you get an advantage that lasts a year+ , it might as well be permanent when talking about MMOs.  If you were able to buy an item that gives you +20% of a stat for the duration of an expansion in some other MMO, you wouldnt have trouble identifying that as P2W. And before you ask, thats an example Im not saying the advantage buyable with money in SF is precisely 20%.

There are some good ways to get up to 4x more money than your weekly cap w/o spending credits if you know what you are doing

And a veiled ad hominem attack at the end there. 

 

Konfess

Originally posted by Mors-Subita

[edited for content]

is that P2W? I don't think so,

Again if a non-spending F2P gamers feels compelled, coerced, forced, or wants to spend money on a cash shop item.  Then that is P2W.