CCP denies it, and CCP fanboys deny it. But it is one of the elephants in the room, and a big one to boot.

It is Pay to Win

It is in DUST. It can not be denied.

Even Proto guns for tanks have been released with an AUR price tag, and not a very high one compared to infantry gear I might add.

The problem:

In short, the AUR items tend to use fewer resources, and from what I've seen have equal or better stats than their regular counterparts, and cost about half if not a third the SP to get.

AUR items can mean freeing up valuable resources, and being able to fit an extra damage mod, or other modules the player would never be able to field otherwise, making them far more durable, and potentially deadly. It is not the individual AUR item that puts them in the P2W category, it is what they enable when fitted.

A DUST Fitting Tool would be nice, but that is probably still a way off, but we need to sit down, and crunch all the math to see what AUR Items really mean to fittings and what the resources their use free up on the vehicle or dropsuit really mean for the overall stats of a fit.
If it turns out (as I suspect) that an AUR fitted player will have significant overall performance over their ISK only counterparts, things need to be changed.


I see only one solution really, and that is to add an ISK price on AUR items as well as an AUR price on ISK items, with a set AUR/ISK conversion rate for the NPC market. The Player market can then go in and undercut that NPC market, both ways.

Change the current terminology, and make the current AUR items into "Faction" items, like in EVE, where these actually ARE more expensive, and do free up resources as well as having superior stats. But they are available for ISK, NEVER for AUR.

Perhaps later, these Faction Items may be rewarded in storyline NPC missions, or for warpoints, as well as AUR if needed.

For CCP, this means that all items CAN be bought for ISK or AUR. Of course that also mean that rich kids will have it easier than not so rich kids, but that is no different that in EVE, where we can sell the PLEX'es and raise ISK that way, and doesn't get around the need to earn SP and skills before using it.