Joseph Ridgeson
WarRavens
3571
   |
Posted - 2015.04.01 12:49:00 -
[1] - Quote
The game is Pay to Win in certain circumstances.
You have three people: Abel, Bob, and Charlie. Abel has been playing for 8 weeks, having spent no money. He decides to tell his friends Bob and Charlie to play. Bob decides to play and spend no money while Charlie spends 30 dollars on Aurum. Charlie gets 3 30 day Active and Passive Boosters. At the start, the SP looks like this:
Abel: 500,000 base + 1,334,000 Passive + 6,000,000 Active = 7,834,000 SP
Bob: 500,000 base
Charlie: 500,000 base
4 weeks later:
Abel: 7,834,000 + 672,000 Passive + 3,000,000 Active = 11,506,000 SP
Bob: 500,000 + + 672,000 Passive + 3,000,000 Active = 4,172,000 SP
Charlie: 500,000 + 672,000 (x2.5) + 3,000,000 (x2.5) = 9,680,000
Abel and Charlie are both using Prototype suits while Bob is using Advanced.
Simply stating "because you can't buy Officer gear, the game isn't Pay to Win" is missing the bigger points. SP is king. The difference between the 30 dollar spender and the free guy is huge in the early game. Yes, it does taper off greatly. Give the free guy 52 weeks of SP (47,7360,000 SP) and he won't care about such a minor difference. At the start, the person that spends money on Boosters is way, way ahead. Hell, I remember reading posts about how "Planetary Conquest is Pay to Win" because people didn't have enough SP to be fully Prototype with everything they needed so Aurum gear and SP boosters gave a superior team.
It is edge cases, yes, but I don't think you can so easily put DUST in with 'ethical' Free to Play games.
"This is B.S! This is B.S! I paid money! Cash money, dollars money, cash money!"
|
Joseph Ridgeson
WarRavens
3572
|
Posted - 2015.04.01 15:32:00 -
[2] - Quote
Like I said, it is edge cases where a Pay to Win argument can be brought up easily enough. If it is between 50 and 40 million SP for the Paid Player and Free Player, it doesn't matter too much. The difference is that Free Player has 6 or so Protosuits while Paid Player has 8 or so. But when it is the early days and it is 4 million to 10.5 million for players that started playing the same day, it is a chasm of a difference. Imagine if you could buy Officer gear for Aurum and you could also find it at the same drop rates that they currently have. Would you consider Aurum Officer gear only giving you a fast track or would you see it as buying power? Honest question, meant with respect.
Being able to trade players for Aurum items doesn't really change the dynamic that much, at least as far as I can tell. Yes, it means that people will potentially not have to spend money to get all the benefits of having spent money but with that reasoning you would also come to the conclusion that EVE is a totally free game to play providing you can make like 700 million a month for PLEX. 'Someone' still had to buy it; being able to get it from that 'someone' doesn't change the fact that every Boosters oozes with power. Expand it out. If ISK becomes the predominate factor in the game, such as it is in EVE, than the literal millionaire can buy Boosters/Aurum items in order to get infinite ISK. In that limited sense of "Infinite ISK vs. Finite ISK", you are Paying to Win but that is ad absurdum and likely not on the table.
Is DUST an honest to god Pay to Win game? Ehh, probably not. However, you can buy a hell of a lot of power to the point that it is no way an 'ethical' Free to Play game. And we should never just assume that it isn't Pay to Win because, in the short term, it really is.
"This is B.S! This is B.S! I paid money! Cash money, dollars money, cash money!"
|