Free to play PvP games and the broader set of gamers, If you followed any of the discussion, I brought up Black Desert Online a game criticized for its extremely predatory methods of getting people to spend money on the cash shop. One of the biggest complaints is the sole fact that cosmetics, yes cosmetics having a 2% increase to stats when worn. 2% isn’t a ton in the long run but that 2% gives you a statistical advantage over others. Then we have the enhancement system which works on a succeed/fail percentile system, the system was designed in such a way to be highly toxic towards the players, you can enhance 100% guaranteed up to +7, with ever decreasing odds of succeeding the higher you go, once you hit +15 you hit the “I MUST spend money in order to succeed” category. Mind you Black Desert Online is a PvP game first and foremost.
Edit: The enhancement system on fail has a chance to PERMANENTLY reduce your items durability unless you buy an item to return it back to full durability, and to further elaborate on the MUST SPEND part of the system, there’s an item that guarantees your upgrade the more of it you have. So for example to go from +15 to +16, you might have a 30% chance to succeed (mind you each failure does increase your odds) but in order to guarantee your success, you must buy say 12 of these guarantee success items from the cash shop at $15-20 per single one.
Gaining a set bonus that buffs your spec’s resource generation and spenders doesn’t do anything if the person playing the character doesn’t know to use their spenders.
There are people in LFR who are doing less damage now at 490+ than I was doing at ~415 back in season 1.
I avoid those games, because I know they heavily push for monetization, don’t care if it’s the best game on the market. I agree on that though, those are distinct advantages that give you something that only $$ droppers can receive, I see that as pay to win.
I remember being on a private server in TBC and people had these, “donor” sets which cost like $200 and they were essentially soloing Illidan and un-killable in PVP without a large group. It was disgusting, needless to say I didn’t stay there long.
I feel we agree on this portion of what pay to win is.
Very serious question, where do people with 556 mythic raid gear have an advantage over someone who has 343 ilvl in a PLAYER VS ENVIRONMENT setting? Sure the stronger dude can kill things faster, but that doesn’t make the weaker player any less capable when the game scales to you as an individual.
There is only one making assumptions here. I’ll give you 3 guesses and the first two don’t count.
There is a reason I’ve been calling it ‘p2skip’ this entire time.
Anyone can do any of these things with time.
Dare I say ditto?
That’s pretty much the td;dr.
It is subjective to an extent because the majority agree on the unfair/unobtainable advantage aspect.
Being able to buy carries with gold doesn’t necessarily mean p2w, why? Because of the amount of things that go into that carry. It wasn’t something you did on your own. You had to go out of your way to find and pay people to run you through something.
It wasn’t something transactional through the blizz shop or you bought the token, redeemed for gold. Then went to vendor x for bis gear or greater.
Other games offer way bigger bags. Characters with better stats or skills. Item rerolls. Etc. Saying wow is p2w is just dishonest because you do not gain an unfair advantage over another.
Which is why I love to use the term ‘p2skip’. Because you are skipping the time. You are cheating in a sense, but you are cheating yourself.
I played on a 255 fun server with dono gear, I spent $100 to largely help new players because the existing player base were PvP elitists that largely prevented new players from playing the server.
It’s either p2skip, or pay to be anti-social. One of the skills required to do PvE content at a high level is the ability to not be the problem child. Some people would rather pay gold than develop that skill.
For starters, that wasn’t directed at you, so I don’t know why you’re answer for someone else. Also, he was making a statement about my opinions regarding people and the game that he didn’t know… this was him making an assumption.
No, some people will never be mythic raiders or high end PvP’ers or what ever else people want to pay for.
After my nice warm shower, food and coffee i returned to read this. Thank you for the laugh. Tell you what, buy me 12 tokens and ill let you ‘win’.
CE goes away, the 100% mount drop chance also goes away when the geear stops being relevant. People do not pay for a mythic carry for the gear - they buy either the CE or the mount.
Outside of a limited time achievement that affects no other player or a cosmetic mount form the removes the need to spend years farming for it - what advantage did someone who purchased gold over someone who did not pourchase gold gain?
Every single power reward that available to every player who bought a token is also available to every player that didnt purchase a token.
There is nothing that you can purchase with money that will give you a power advanatge over someone who did not. Nothing.
People don’t want to do these things because one of them requires them to be in a guild that will demand that you shed blood, tears and sweat for the sake of progression, never mind the stigma that comes with high end raiding. The other requires more effort to pull off and master, that and PvP isn’t a widely enjoyed mode in the game.
PVE though, I can see someone throwing themselves at it thousands of times and eventually getting the W… at some point the patterns gotta sink in, if not they may have some sort mental deficiency.
Anyone can be a mythic raider or a multi glad.
Its the time investment it takes to develop those skills. Thus p2skip.
Like my hunter for example. Ive developed a lot of muscle memory and attention to detail for nuance things.
I can usually out dps people 20-30ilvls higher than me. Why? Time investment and effort learning the silly little things that add +.01% damage increases.
Someone who walks in and drops gold won’t have that and won’t be repeating the content.
So again. P2skip is the term you are looking for.