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IS T2W a fair discussion..
somersaultsam
Member UncommonPosts: 230
Often I am told that the ephemeral concept of "P2W" is bad. The definition is sketchy and seems to boil down to whatever personal experience imposes upon it.
But there seems to be a consensus of opinion in certain quarters that P2W is bad, even if it is not "P2W" per se, but rather a means for an otherwise free game to earn money by selling certain minor advanatages... but facts should not get in the way of a good rant.
So allow me to put the opposite argument forward. I have spare cash but I work hard. Most of my mates have families. Is it fair that someone with a lot of time on their hands (the standard basement dweller) should be given a huge advantage over me due to the time they have to spend playing a game? How is this advantage any better or any worse than the cash advantage of buying items in a cash shop?
Are people ultimately selfish, and massaging morality to suit their own outlook (the answer is- of course).
But there seems to be a consensus of opinion in certain quarters that P2W is bad, even if it is not "P2W" per se, but rather a means for an otherwise free game to earn money by selling certain minor advanatages... but facts should not get in the way of a good rant.
So allow me to put the opposite argument forward. I have spare cash but I work hard. Most of my mates have families. Is it fair that someone with a lot of time on their hands (the standard basement dweller) should be given a huge advantage over me due to the time they have to spend playing a game? How is this advantage any better or any worse than the cash advantage of buying items in a cash shop?
Are people ultimately selfish, and massaging morality to suit their own outlook (the answer is- of course).
Comments
What then will a gamer do? Well, let me tell you. You will experience the real world!
And in this dystopian society, you will only have two things you will ever need to worry about: Work, and your assigned family unit
You will have no other worries, for the government will care for you. You will not worry about if someone has more time to do something fun than you, because everyone will be assigned tasks and each task will take the same time! There will be no pay to win, time to win, free to play or pay to play. It will be just is. And not to include, everyone will have the same amount of money!
For the glory of swotzkol! The future of gaming! Where games play games!
My Skyrim, Fallout 4, Starbound and WoW + other game mods at MODDB:
https://www.moddb.com/mods/skyrim-anime-overhaul
Get used to it.
"True friends stab you in the front." | Oscar Wilde
"I need to finish" - Christian Wolff: The Accountant
Just trying to live long enough to play a new, released MMORPG, playing New Worlds atm
Fools find no pleasure in understanding but delight in airing their own opinions. Pvbs 18:2, NIV
Don't just play games, inhabit virtual worlds™
"This is the most intelligent, well qualified and articulate response to a post I have ever seen on these forums. It's a shame most people here won't have the attention span to read past the second line." - Anon
Pretty much this. Games can be fair and balanced, but with the human factor added, the balance will tip for one side. You can try to even that (like in chess when you give an advantage to the lower scored player), but in the end, there always will be some differences.
For MMOs your notion was circulated right since DDOs switch (at least in the west). As you said OP, p2p games always favoured the time factor, which state the cash shops and paid boosters (insta levelcap for example) turned over to the money side. Whether it's good or bad... it's up to each's tastes.
Personally, I don't give a sh.t
Cosmetics are of course the harder way to do it (i assume here that cosmetics for real money can not be sold at the auction house for ingame gold), they involve a lot of development work and risk whether the peple will like them or not. Items with stats is a lot easier to develop and you can be sure that they will be bought. A lot of games will claim that they are not P2W because the player can also get everything ingame, but what they don´t tell you is, that you have to do a shit ton of grinding for a long time to get it. Which is natural because well, they don´t want you to get it ingame, they want you to buy it of course.
So the only game i found until today which does a form of P2W light, where you can exchange things from the item store from real money to ingame gold and buy then gear or mats where you can craft high end gear is GW2. If you don´t want to do that you just have to wait and collect log in rewards, do your dailies and within a real reasonable amount of time you also get there. Also the difference between the highest gear which is called ascended and the second highest which is called exotic is not that high it´s around 5% for armor. So the effect is not that noticable but in the end you can directly exchange real money to ingame money.
One of the more ridiculous examples is from BDO. At the time i played, there was a shop exclusive item named Elion's Tear. If you have died you could use that to resurrect immediately where you died. So BDO has world bosses that can drop BiS items. These world bosses spawn a good amount away from spawn points. Only people who do a high amount of damage to the boss are eligible to get loot. Now these bosses have 1 shot mechanics, and people got one shotted a lot. So if you didn´t have that item, you would have respawned at the next location, had to run back to the boss and therefore lost a lot of dps which meant, not loot for you bro. So you really had to have this item. So even if that item contained no stats and in other games would be considered as a convenience item, in BDO if you wanted to have that gear, and gear in BDO is everything, you had to buy that from the shop.
Seeing how the leveling process in most PvE games is devoid of skill and just a time investment I don't care all that much.
Basically it should be: Playtime + skill + luck = win. If you don't have as much time you should be able to overcome that by playing better, but not by paying more.
Rich people are already too pampered, making them best at games because they have the largest wallet just feel wrong to me. Skill should Trump cash (yeah, bad pun).
Is skill developing new technique?
Is skill developing new training program?
Is skill developing new technology?
Is skill developing new nutrition supplement?
etc. etc.
The "skill" implies getting better and that always involve money in a way or another.
The idea that you can somehow islolate performance and compare it on "equal footing" with others is unrealistic, absurd and naive.
It is fair to put more time into a game for more reward. Wherever you can spend money in a game for an advantage, the game has been designed to be unfair to players.
With all that work you have to do I am sure you have less time to work on your relationships with friends. How about just sending them some cash and expecting them to be just as happy as if they saw you more? Same thing for families, just splash some cash on the kids and wife, why should they be concerned you are not around?
Do you play amateur sports? With all those demands on your time you probably can't make practise that much or even every game. No problem, splash some cash and the fact you are unreliable won't matter.
Or you could be a good dad, good friend, good player or good gamer? You can be more than one of those but you can't be all at once. Don't expect money to solve that for you.
Cash shops are an Asian trick !
They don't belong in an mmo where people should earn their place naturally...not much else to say about that.
I'm sitting here waiting for an mmo.
You are going to wait very, very long time....
We all have the same amount of time. You invest it into work and family, a basement dweller invests it into a game. You should see benefits at work and with your family, the dweller should see benefits in-game. That just feels natural and fair to me.
Saying you should be able to trade money for game progress, is like saying you should be able to trade a WoW account for a stable family. I think both should take effort and time, both in their respective areas - it should not necessarily be transferable.
The other concern is protection of investment. Many people invest time in games, in hopes of being better than others. If you play the piano every day for 10 years, you'll be able to excel at your art. You'll be able to look back and feel like your effort got you to where you are. The "pay for time" argument would be "I should be able to pay 1.000$ to match the piano player's skill, because I chose to do something else with my time".
Maybe they play 12 hours a day, or played from launch, or played early access for 6 months and learned every nuance of the game before I even joined.
Perhaps they have a better computer, a mouse and keyboard that are programmed full of macros, 4 monitors, or even 6 accounts to my one, or maybe lower ping times because they happen to live closer to the servers.
Maybe their guildmates powerleveled them to high ranks, gave them free gear, or managed to take control of the best leveling spots, or found the perfect secret to making money in game that few know.
Maybe they are younger than me, or have naturally better hand/eye coordination (not a skill btw, but a genetic or age based factor), have more real life friends who play with them, or are members of large, well organized guilds that stomp all over everyone.
Perhaps they only fight when in their favor, having advantages in levels, gear, numbers, tactics, or even game mechanics such as lag or skill timers.
Or maybe, they bought some sort of perceived advantage in a cash shop or gold seller.
At the end of the day I've learned to accept the "unfairness" found in gaming and how to carve out my own personal measures of success and stopped "competing" with everyone else, because I've learned there will always be some one more powerful than me, who really cares why.
Even modern day college or pro team sports aren't "fair." Sure the rules and equipment are usually the same (unless someone deflates the ball
My hometown NFL team has been ineffective, even hapless as the owners perennially have one of the lowest payrolls in the league.
No, few times in life, or in gaming will it ever be an equal contest....get used to it.
Or yes, and in some situations, such as warfare or playing EVE if you find yourself in a fair fight, you've probably done something terribly wrong.
"True friends stab you in the front." | Oscar Wilde
"I need to finish" - Christian Wolff: The Accountant
Just trying to live long enough to play a new, released MMORPG, playing New Worlds atm
Fools find no pleasure in understanding but delight in airing their own opinions. Pvbs 18:2, NIV
Don't just play games, inhabit virtual worlds™
"This is the most intelligent, well qualified and articulate response to a post I have ever seen on these forums. It's a shame most people here won't have the attention span to read past the second line." - Anon
Please show me an MMO where getting to lvl x or getting a gear y is a matter of skill rather than time spent.
Just like a video game. If the game requires no life to succeed play many of the games where it doesn't. That's what I do. Refuse to play games I don't have time for. If you have other priorities stick to them, it's life and that's a game. Games are designed to give you an equal footing at the start and the best man wins or just plays the best.
Saying someone is more skilled or whatever so there is no equal footing is nonsense. Game are always designed to allow the players skill at a given task shine especially in competitive and coop games. You use the same rules and baseline tools. I don't pay to have 3 queens on a chess board because someone is a no lifer and better at chess than me, good for them.
Stop making excuse as to why paying is ok. It's really not for gaming unless there is a huge financial investment to field a competitor. Those who complain about have a legitimate reason. I choose to not play those games as well.
Yet, you validate games that are favouring time investment but games allowing for greater money spending are forbidden?
Stop making excusing as to how spending money on games is bad.
Double standards and hypocrisy.
Most pay to bypass the content they don't find challenging, the skill-less PvE leveling you find in every MMO since it's inception for example.
Hitting max level in MMORPGs has never been about skill anyway so bypassing it isn't a problem.
The average MMORPG gamer only needs a days play with a max level character to work out their role in a group raid/end game PvP.
I'm not buying anything that makes up for my lack of skill, money can't do that in most games label P2W by the community here.
But seriously, P2W is a result not the problem, I tend to look for the source of every problem, that's how you get to the bottom of things, debating or talking about how to fix something that is the result of something else being broken is just academic, and really just a waste of time.
It is bad. Good or bad is an opinion. If you are paying money in a game for advantage it is bad game design. My opinion leave it or take it. I gave my reasons vs. you have brought nothing but outrage at someone not agreeing with P2W.
Just because you do not like or disagree with something does not make it "bad".
Doube standards and hypocrisy.
But our hobby has always been based on a level playing field, that's what made it so great. It was a cheap and amazingly fun hobby where everyone REGARDLESS of their financial standing was equal. A penniless kid who's parents were nice enough to buy him a game and pay for his sub was on the same level as 99.9% of the player base no matter how old they were or how much money they had.
And this is where all the arguments like yours fall down if you've been a part of this hobby as long as me and others here on these forums.
Buying gold and buying cheats where the ONLY exceptions to getting around the above rule. They were considered BAD, you were considered a cheater if you used them because you used money to get a leg up on others in someway. The playing field as it was designed is no longer flat.
Fast forward to today. Developers have completely re-designed the playing field to make it easier for the people willing to give them more money. That's the foundational shift WE have a PROBLEM with. Developers have basically adopted those once taboo methods and baked them directly into their games. Buying items in a cash shop and selling them for game currency is EXACTLY like buying gold. Exactly. You used to be considered a douchebag if you bought gold but know since publishers sell it to you its OKAY. Well allot of us think its not okay.
When you buy potions that double and triple your XP or give you starter dungeon gear so you don't have to earn it in game passing other players progress with cash, we consider that the same as buying the cheats others would sell to advance your character.
So there is no real world justification to "human nature", or pointing to other hobby's that changes the simple fact of what the foundation of our hobby used to represent, equality for 99.9 percent of the players ( excluding the cheaters), and how those game-worlds played out to what they have become with the advent of cash shops.
Looking at present through prism of the past is mildly put, nostalgia. It is entirely irrelevant how games were monetized in past, neither MMOs back then were based on level playing field.
Also, you are wearing rose tinted glasses about old times when RMT was rampant and players regularly sold items and accounts on ebay.
It is just a matter of scale, neither time will go backwards.