Is there an actual argument against "P2W" games that doesn't involve NEETs complaining that people who don't invest their lives into their game can actually compete against them?
As long as the reward that can be bought can be obtained by time spent, I don't see a problem. Especially in these free to play games, how is financially supporting the company that develops and maintains your game that you devote your life to a bad thing?
The only time it would be acceptable is if credit card warriors were quarantined to their own exclusive shitter servers.
Kys neet
>Hmm, we wanna add microtransactions to this game... let's make everything take an insulting ridiculous amount of time to unlock/level up to nudge our customers towards buying packs!
>t. buttmad shitter
no, it's just stupid to play them
That would be funny since it would expose their hypocrisy. There's bound to be some people out there that spend so much money that they make the average p2w fag look like a f2p sob in comparison. You would have a torrent of bitching in no time asking for servers to be segregated for high spenders and low spenders.
We all know they spend money to distance and differentiate themselves from those that cannot though.
They are rarely quality games and only fun you can get out of them is said content that require purchase or hours of grind.
It's like when people say
>This game gets amazing 20 hours in
Nobody wants to fuck round for 20 hours for the possibility of fun
Yes, the fact that you're gonna get destroyed if you're a normal person and either don't spend money or aren't a NEET, precisely
Also at least if i get raped by a NEET in full epic gear or whatever it's understandable, the guy invested a lot of time and effort and i don't feel that mad
If i get raped by someone who paid for all his gear though it's terrible
Imagine you go to a random friendly football match with friends :
>First you face a professional team who trains 24/7
Well you expect to lose and that's normal
>Now you face a team just as shit as yours except they paid the referee and are automatically declared winners
And apparently everybody is ok with it. What the fuck ? No point even playing football then
Sounds like you're poor. Why wouldn't you let the credit card warriors play with you in the game they're supporting and you're not? You're basically receiving MMO-Welfare.
Is that bad? You don't have to spend money. You can completely supplement the lack of money spent by playing more, since well, you're not supporting the game anyway.
>pretty barbie dressup to exercise my repressed homosexuality and somewhat interesting action-combat grindy goodness? I've got nothing better to do.
Games should progress by the time you put in not the money you're willing to pay.
>Sounds like you're poor. Why wouldn't you let the credit card warriors play with you in the game they're supporting and you're not? You're basically receiving MMO-Welfare.
Why do credit card warriors need to be on the same servers as people who prefer to play the game the real way?
If you're not spending money for an in-game advantage you should have no issue with playing on servers exclusively for credit card warriors while people who prefer to play the game in its pure untainted form can still do so.
Such a scenario should be win-win, unless your motives for spending are different from what you try to portray them as.
I tend to agree op, but the game must be built to allow even equally skilled opponents a way to catch each other off guard, allowed make an ordinary mistake. Can't just buy your way past the RNG so to speak. Basically the player playing longest real hours would simply be more skilled. So I tend to disagree completely with p2w but it is possible to balance.
but I like grinding. How popular is Diablo again?
That analogy doesn't make sense. You don't pay for the ability to play the game well, you pay for the ability to keep up with people who devote their lives to the game. Normal people can keep up and NEETs get to keep their game developed. Win-Win.
I just fail to see why that should be a divisive factor. The purpose in paying is so you can play with the people who play more than you.
Surely skill should be the most important factor in pvp, but in games where gear matters and is at some level purchasable, I don't see the issue with offering financial support for the chance at keeping up with people.
Step back for just a moment and reflect on the question you asked.
"If something can be unlocked in-game, why is it a bad thing for me to able to buy it instead?"
Which begs the question, if you CAN unlock it, why would you buy it?
The answer, obviously, is that unlocking it is a total pain in the ass and it'd be easier to just buy it.
The problem with this line of reasoning is that what it amounts to is saying "I'd be willing to pay extra to NOT play this game"
If the act of actually playing the game is so unappealing that you'd pay for the privilege of not doing it, then you should just uninstall. The issue with your argument, the core fucked-up problem with it, is that if people are okay with developers doing what you say, you are LITERALLY ENCOURAGING DEVS TO MAKE THEIR GAMES NOT FUN, ON PURPOSE, SO WE WILL PAY NOT TO PLAY THEM.
Holy shit that is a cancerous goddamn approach to a form of entertainment media
I played Black Desert and was probably one of the top 10 highest leveled players in EU from launch to end of May, which was when I quit. One of the main reasons I did was the P2W stuff they added in form of dyes because I considered it to be the beginning of the end. Its not about how much actual impact something like this has, its about how valuable are the accomplishments of other people. Some might call this silly, but if I play an MMO in which I compete with other people then I cant be bothered to be outgunned by someone who isnt better or smarter, but who simply spends more money. I spent 500 bucks in 3 months, so dont even bother calling me a NEET. But I did so for outfits, dyes and other shit. Not for ingame silver. The 10% EXP boost from costumes I was able to swallow, but as soon as they went full jew mode I couldnt be bothered anymore. And I am sure many felt like that. Its not that these features are inherently bad, its just that after a certain point you cross a line that will alienate you players. That limit is reached at different stages for different players.
It's a bad monetization model.
Best model for MMO's is pay for non-gameplay related things like cosmetics, houses, land, and mounts, and then allow everyone to donate. People who donate get to see and play all the new content first with their priority based on their donation amounts. The highest donors should also be mined for their opinions on content and used to get ideas when the dev team inevitably runs out.
>I just fail to see why that should be a divisive factor. The purpose in paying is so you can play with the people who play more than you.
It makes no sense why you aren't okay with having your own servers. The purpose in paying is not to play with people who play more than you, it's to pay for a distinct in-game advantage. If you want to play like that, you should be more than okay with playing other people who choose to play the same way. There are people who prefer to play the real way who don't invest a significant amount of time. Why should they suffer just so you can have fun cheating through the game?
I'm against P2W, but I'm also against grind shitters getting time-based welfare.
I like games where the only crutch is your brain
I'm not a huge fan of P2W because it basically says "our game doesn't have enough content to remain interesting or feel rewarding for working for your achievements, so you can just buy them"
Also what said.
As much as it gets a lot of hate, League of Legends does it right: All content you pay for is strictly cosmetic or game-related merchandise, like T-shirts and plush toys.
Back before I got b& from DCUO, I was challenged to a duel by some mid-level shitter, who wanted to fight my Flame tank. He completely destroyed me in five seconds because he had purchased all the end-game gear and mods that are only available if you spend real money. I thought long and hard about what the point is about buying your way to victory, and I only came up with how the ends justify the means. I still felt like shit knowing he was just cruising through the game one-shotting bosses because he spent money, as if winning was more important than having fun. Maybe I'm just old-fashioned in that regard.
I'm sure most people who pay money would unlock things by spending time playing would love to, but they simply don't have the time-- not implying that spending time isn't fun. Of course this isn't the case for everyone, but I think that's likely the case for a lot of people.
with BDO specifically, for like $100, you can earn somewhere around 150m per week, which is a really, really bad return on investment. You can farm that amount of silver in a few hours with good gear.
I agree cash shops should be for cosmetics only, but then you'll have to balance the progression someone can make who plays the game 24/7 as to not alienate the people who don't.
>The purpose in paying is not to play with people who play more than you, it's to pay for a distinct in-game advantage.
*leans into microphone* wrong.
Agreed, but I'm a masochistic shitbag who loves grindy korean MMOs.
>hat doesn't involve NEETs complaining that people who don't invest their lives into their game can actually compete against them?
Yeah, the rest of humanity besides wallet warriors and grinding losers who don't touch these games because they are run on such a retarded system that your premise is even allowed to exist.
P2W is fine, as long as you can grind for the exact same thing in a reasonable amount of time.
It's perfectly acceptable if you can simply pay as a substitute for grinding. It also allows more options because people can grind but still put in some money for that last piece of gear or whatever.
It's statistically and objectively worse to make your F2P P2W, financially, than to adopt a well thought-out model such as in dota or cs.
If you're going to make this a football analogy, the difference would be that you're playing a team with new top-of-the-line cleats and equipment while you're running around in your jeans and tennis shoes.
>with BDO specifically, for like $100, you can earn somewhere around 150m per week, which is a really, really bad return on investment. You can farm that amount of silver in a few hours with good gear.
Didnt really matter to me. My experience was ruined after that point. To be fair, though. It wasnt the only reason I left, but definitely had an impact.
This
multiplied by 100000
A pure-skill progression style game doesn't really compare to an MMO though.
Ultima Online stayed afloat for years by sheer value of being good and providing quality content. It aged at this point so much it's pretty much old-school of old-school.
Meanwhile, most of the games with microtransactions I know no longer even exist.
That analogy doesn't work either. both sides would be in the same equipment, but one would acquire it by purchasing it, and one would acquire it by spending hours playing football, which makes no sense. either way, you'd still think the guy who plays football more stands a higher chance of winning by virtue that he plays more football-- not the equipment he's wearing, yeah?
I never played UO, but I imagine it stayed around for so long due to it being one of the first games out of its kind. Much like how Everquest, FFXI, and WoW are still around. People play them because they've been playing them forever.
I think games like League, Dota, CS, Hearthstone, etc. are prime examples of games that have micro transactions that are still afloat. Imagine in League if you could /only/ purchase heroes (or whatever they're called) by time spent, and the heroes progressively got objectively stronger. Nobody would play.
user, UO was old when WoW came out. This game is really that fucking old. And still afloat, while the generation of kids of the original players is making the playerbase
LoL is a funny case of micro done right. You can't buy power. You can unlock characters, but so can anyone. You literally can only buy colourful addition to the game, at astronomical prices. Everything else can be get by just playing and it doesn't take that much time either.
I'm aware of how old it is, but do you think its /new/ playerbase is growing? I don't imagine too many people are looking for a game to play and pick UO over newer options. Same story with EQ, FF, WoW, etc. not many new people pick up these games, just old players who've already invested time.
By setting arbitrary time limits, you separate people in pay-to-win groups and play-to-win groups. The pay-to-win group gets the satisfaction of gaining an advantage over other players, while the play-to-win group realizes that the game isn't actually fun to play. Otherwise, they'd be satisfied with just playing.
It encourages games to be not fun.
if it was pay2Compete and not pay2Win nobody would care
If you seriously think people in their mid 30s have enough time to play a grindfest like UO, think again.
And yet the playerbase stays steady.
Basically this. Stop throwing money at shitty games you fucking casuals.
bdo is shit and u should feel bad for playing it