Re: What is pay-to-win?

On Sun, 31 Mar 2024 09:30:29 +0100, JAB <noway@nochance.com> wrote:

On 29/03/2024 17:01, Spalls Hurgenson wrote:

The video tries to define "pay to win" to broadly. It does so under
the justification that different people have different qualifications
for what 'winning' consists of; for some people, it points out, they
haven't 'won' a game until you've done everything there is to do in
the game. Therefore, if certain levels or cosmetics are hidden behind
a paywall, you can't truly win until you shell out some extra cash.
 
But a definition that broad is pointless. As the videographer himself
points out, under these rules even having the money to buy the game
(and hardware), or the time to play a game could be considered 'pay to
win'. After all, if I don't have the $60 to buy "Doom", I'll never
'win' it despite the fact that it's a one-time purchase.

>
Personally I think, could be wrong of course, that was quite deliberate
to show that what people consider pay to win has a wide variation and
that's why they tried to cut it up into a scale.

No, I get that... but broadening it that vastly maes the definition
makes the definiton worthless. It's just too expansive, almost to the
point of "blue is a color therefore all colors are blue" sort of
thing.

There are serious problems with how microtransactions have infested
games, but I don't think it helps to categorize them all as pay-to-win
rather than breaking them down into more narrow categories. It leads
to people attributing 'pay-to-win' tags to "Elder Scroll: Oblivion",
and then that game gets ignored by people who want nothing to do with
pay-to-win games.

For variation, there used to be someone on the WoT forums that would
argue quite vehemently that it wasn't pay to win as you couldn't use
money to get 80%+ win-rates overall. This is in a game where a 60%+
win-rate puts you in the top 0.1% of the playerbase.
Personally though I tend to agree with your position that it's about pay
to have an in-game advantage.

Even then, its tricky. "Dragons Dogma 2" apparently charges for
quick-travel. Is that pay-to-win? It doesn't give me any direct
advantage over you when playing; I can just move around the map
faster. But that ability WOULD allow me to jump between encounters -
and thus level up faster - than a player without quick-travel... so
maybe it is pay-to-win?

(Trust Capcom to smear the definition even more ;-).

But cosmetics? Extra maps? Paying for big-head mode cheats? That's
just DLC and microtransactions. Skeevy as heck, sure; to the detriment
of gameplay, definitely. But not pay-to-win.