Re: What is pay-to-win?

On Wed, 3 Apr 2024 10:04:07 +0100, JAB <noway@nochance.com> wrote:

Anyway back to the subject in hand. I agree that the overall problem is
actually MTX and p2w is just one aspect of it. It really has done some
awful damage, IMHO, to the gaming market in the bigger budget space. I
pretty much avoid it totally now as I think it's taking the pee to
expect you to pay full price for game only to expect you to pay even
more if you want to, you know enjoy the game. The other thing that
annoys me is the devs./publishers know exactly what they are doing but
pretend that this is somehow good for gamers. Oh we have an in-game
currency purely for your convenience, no you have it as it helps create
a disconnect between how much you're actually spending.

In-game currencies have other advantages as well:

Items are never sold at prices that evenly divide with the values the
currency is sold at. You want that magic sword? It costs 400 Fakecash.
However, FakeCash is only sold in 300 unit increments. This has the
dual benefit of forcing people to buy more than they need (some of
which will inevitably go unused), and is a psychological prod to get
people to spend more. "Well, I /do/ have 350 Fakecash already, so I
might as well buy another FakeChest so I can afford the sword."

The other advantage is that if you are using in-game currencies, it
gives the developer a legal defense against accusations of gambling,
since it's not 'real money'. Fortunately, law-makers are becoming
aware of this trick, and (at least in some countries) this is no
longer a valid distinction.