when it comes to online gaming, pay to win has always been a worrisome topic for many.
I'm confident all of you are familiar with the term, so I won't bother going into
detail explaining it. instead, I'd like to hear everyone's thoughts on the matter:
what do you think can be classified as P2W, how do you personally define it?
to start off, I'll give some thoughts of my own. do note that these are just
my opinions and not something you should take as absolute. the following
also concerns mainly an endgame-centric MMORPG environment.
- in any MMORPG where enhancing equipment is a feature, having your equipment
in top condition becomes more or less a requirement for endgame. anything you
can buy with actual money makes it easier/faster/cheaper to upgrade your gear
is P2W in my opinion. as a hypothetical example, imagine you can enhance your
equipment on a scale of +0 to +10, and each stage requires more material to
succeed. however, as you get closer to +10, the chances of success decrease
dramatically, while the cost of materials increases all the while. a simple item to
increase the chances of success, even a little, would still count as P2W, as
you're achieving the same thing non-paying players are, just far faster and easier. - anything you can get off a cash shop that directly makes you ingame gold, be it
via a boost, or just selling the item for gold, is P2W also. this is because spending
actual money would grant you with a virtually infinite supply of ingame currency.
you can very easily liken this to buying gold off a gold seller. this could be dangerous
due to the warp in the game's economy such practices may create, either by generating
more gold than intended, or just by making the paying players exceedingly wealthy
in comparison to their non-paying counterparts, which comes with a set of problems of
its own. - as for something a bit more controversial, many people see experience and level
boosts as P2W, but I can't fully agree. WoW is a notorious example for this, as they
give a max level boost with the pre-purchase of every new expansion (and offer it separately in their store).
I don't see this as P2W because the game centers very much around the endgame,
this boost just puts you in the very beginning with that, the gear this provides you
with is only good enough for the entry-level max level content. something to consider
is also that long time players have likely leveled dozens of characters over the years,
so the boost is just a way to skip the content they've already seen so many times.
please note that this thread is intended to be a very general exchange of thoughts regarding the subject.