Maken Tosch
DUST University
Ivy League
11336
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Posted - 2015.04.01 15:05:00 -
[1] - Quote
Pagl1u M wrote:Joseph Ridgeson wrote: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. Wrong. A game is pay2win when you can buy, with moneys, something, an advantage, that you cant have if you dont spend moneys. A and B Will have the same things that C has. It ll just take them more time. If moneys save time It isnt pay2win. It is pay2win when you cant obtain the same things without spending moneys.
Thanks for the help, but you're kind of doing it wrong. Let me elaborate.
Technically, certain boosters do count as Pay-to-Win since they allow you an in-game advantage that you can't get otherwise if defined in terms of time needed to reach a certain level. Currently, Daily Missions offer only 1-3 Day Active (or Omega Active) Boosters and those are rare to get. On some occasions you might get lucky with a free key and get one from a strong box. But other than that, you don't see 7-30 Day Active Boosters being handed out at all in this way. You have to buy those.
But to be honest, those only provide a fast lane to using better gear which can be obtained without the need for boosters anyways. It will just take longer if you grind for free.
Also, having more skill points will never guarantee you a victory. What guarantees you a victory in a match is gameplay experience. Reaching Nova Knife Operations to Level V only unlocks the Ishukone Nova Knives but it never teaches you how to fight with them. That is something you have to learn the hard way on the field and that will require you to die a lot before you start making any meaningful progress with the knives.
Another thing to consider is something that will GUARANTEE the obliteration of any Pay-to-Win claim. Simple Trading.
Simple Trade, according to CCP Rattati, will initially be restricted to ISK variants only during the initial stage of implementation to ensure that no bugs exist or so that any bugs that do come up will be addressed immediately so that AUR items like BPOs, Boosters, and Respecs can be traded safely between players without having some bug/glitch ruin the experience.
But once that happens, there will be almost no AUR item that can't be obtained within the secondary market except for maybe Jara Kumora (the market agent) and warbarge components. Unfortunately for Jara Kumora, she will be made redundant and almost pointless once Simple Trading arrives since you can always find better deals with other players than what Jara offers for your salvage.
Warbarge components are not really all that great to have anyways. The only real tangible benefit that the warbarge offers is the primary weapon damage bonus and the experimental lab which isn't all that much to begin with. But on the bright side, you can acquire components through either salvage, strong boxes, or Daily Missions.
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Maken Tosch
DUST University
Ivy League
11338
|
Posted - 2015.04.01 16:10:00 -
[2] - Quote
Joseph Ridgeson wrote: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.
The thing about Eve Online is that there are a ton of ways to earn ISK. Lots of ISK in a short time. Incursion running can net you hundreds of millions of ISK in a single day if you grind long enough and if your FC is competent enough. Market trading is another way. Mining is a lucrative career. Exploration is another source. Mission running is another source of ISK.
Sure, someone has to spend money to get that PLEX, but the point of this topic is whether or not something that is paid with cash can be obtained any other way. The secondary market ensures that players without any cash can get it.
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