What the "Win" in Pay to Win means to me.

tl:dr version - If you don't have to earn things, then they don't mean as much to me than if you do.

There have been discussions recently about whether certain market items represent the phenomenon known as 'Pay to Win.' (Sometimes abbreviated P2W) There are a number of definitions floating out there about what constitutes 'Pay to Win'. For some folks, Pay to Win can only exist in a PvP environment where exclusive items are sold that give a material advantage against other players. On the other side of the spectrum there are folks who believe anything sold that affects gameplay in any way is Pay to Win.

I believe my personal view is more nuanced that either of those extremes. However, I have seen folks (including myself) challenged by the proposition, "Why do you care what others do in their game?" The implication being that the only objection that anyone could have against a particular item is that it provides someone else with an advantage. I think that proposition too narrowly considers the question. But to answer that specific objection, it is not in anyway problematic to be concerned what others do. MMORPGs are organic, community driven games. Things that provide one player an advantage can affect another gamer in ways that we might not realize at first.

For example, if a piece of gear (in our game, enhancements) is sold for real money, that removes a potential customer from someone selling the same item for in-game money or barter. One could certainly feel that is an acceptable loss, you might even believe that the potential seller in that case is a 'price-gouger' for selling the item at a price higher than one might consider an item worth. But selling such an item for real world money undeniably affects the in-game economy. Whether you believe that is for the good or ill is mostly irrelevant. What, for our purposes here is, that the actions of another player in purchasing items for real world money can affect other players.

But as I said above, that is not my principal objection to some of these items. My objection is that selling certain items allows you to 'win' the game. OK, so there is no 'game-over' in City of Heroes (and other MMORPGs) so what am I talking about? I am talking about the various rewards that the game offers players. No you can't 'win' the whole game. But you most certainly can win a "Master of XXX" badge, or a suit of armor from the Imperious Task Force, or a Hamidon Origin enhancer from Hamidon or the LTF/LRSF. Personally, I feel that folks who make the "there's nothing to win" argument are being disingenuous. There are so many things to win in this game. All these various challenges and goals. Some people chase badges, some IOs, some costumes. All are rewards. And in my opinion, once those rewards can simply be purchased, I lose much of my interest in obtaining them. Please believe me when I say that I don't care how this affects others. I care how it affects my feelings regarding the game. I enjoy earning things in the game.

While I usually try to avoid using analogies, I'll take the risk here. When I was in high school, I played on my school's baseball and football teams. Now to be honest, I sucked at football. I wasn't a starter, and I only played a few games. But I went out there and tried hard. And at the end of the season, like many high schools, we had a letter ceremony. The school awarded me a little piece of fabric with the school's initial (L for Leo) to wear on a jacket or do what I will with it. I treasured that letter. Why? It's just a little piece of fabric. But it's a piece of fabric I earned by trying hard, going to practices and representing my school. The school would not allow you to just buy a letter and wear it. You had to earn it. It wasn't particularly hard to earn. Like I said, I only played a few games. But you did have to earn it. Let's say the school allowed people to buy the letter, but also awarded it to players. I can honestly say, I would not have cared as much about the letter. It's not because someone who bought it, didn't earn it while I did. It's because "I DIDN'T NEED to earn it." It's really not a reward for doing anything. It's just something you can buy.

Likewise, when certain items are sold, I can not see them as rewards, but only as things you can buy. For example, the mutant set costume pieces. I bought them. I didn't have any fun buying them. They just are there. On the other hand, I earned the Roman set from the ITF. Now, this is no great feat, thousands of others have done so as well. But I have a bit more affection for that set because I earned it. Anytime a reward is sold, given out, etc. a bit of the game dies for me because even if you can earn something and get it for free, the fact that I don't have to means it stops feeling like a reward. Applied to our market, I think of the various reasons I play: to create powerful heroes, accomplish difficult tasks, win shiny stuff (IOs, costumes, etc.) when a reward is added to the market or something is added to the market that makes earning a reward substantially easier, a little bit of the game loses its meaning for me.

Sorry, I don't normally drone on this long. Even if no one reads this, I'm glad to have gotten it off my chest.

I was pondering composition of a similar missive Geko, thanks for saving me the effort.

CO-SIGN.

with the addenda that I don't mind the existing tendrils of Pay to Win threaded through the Paragon Market because the deluge of content and perks it has funded are enough to assuage my concerns. In other words, I've been bought off by all those powersets and costume bits that wouldn't have seen the light of day without the resources funded by the marketplace.

But I'm conscious of the bribery, and aware that the potential for it to continue expanding in ways I may not be quite so sanguine about is high.

Once you cede some portion of your game design ethos to the profit motive, the capitalist impulse is to keep offering more, more, more.

And if you follow that path far enough you end up with Zynga.

I hate to tell you this, but some guy was born with athletic talent and was 6' 6" in high school. He made the team with no real effort on his part thanks to his genetics. He got the letter and it meant nothing to him. High school football was a given, he was disappointed that he did not get into pro football.

It meant something to you because you worked hard for it. The fact that others did not have to work hard for it didn't change what it meant to you. Maybe you just ignored that fact, or maybe you didn't realize that others did not have to work for it.

By the way, EG.




You're wrong.


Smartalec and required objection out of the way - I do disagree with you, in the case of COH. I think you're taking the effect someone else has of buying things via the Paragon Market *far* out of proportion to the actual effect. Plus, of course, making a few assumptions - like that they'd visit the auction house in game to begin with. (If we were looking at a D3 style real-money auction house as well, I'd be far more willing to grant your point about damaging another player here... but we don't.) You *don't* know that you've lost a/several sales because of people buying, oh, a set of purples on the market, or some thunderstrikes or whatnot. They may not *have* the in-game INF to afford them - not at the prices set by the sellers, historically. In other words, that sale is *not* lost because it didn't exist in the first place.

Alternately, they may not like having enhancements stuck at a particular level (let's take thunderstrike, again, since they're both in game and in the PMart.) They may want them all at the same level (and given some of the self-described obsessive personalities in game, you KNOW there are people like that.) So they ignore the market, preferring Merit Vendors (since you can set the level.) You haven't lost a sale to them. Or they see the "attuned" version on the market and grab that. Another one you haven't lost a sale to.

As far as the "nothing to win" argument - that's... the only way I can put it is "it's your own hang up." First, their obtaining of said badge doesn't hurt you in any way. There's not a limited supply, or "Only 100 people in 24 hours can make the attempt" or any such thing. And second, and related to that, if they can *buy* the pieces to "complete" a build that makes them more confident in TRYING the Master Of.... badge in the first place, well, you've "won" more people to make that attempt WITH. It really is a win/win situation.

You say it affects YOUR feelings about the game. Well, then don't let what other people do *bother* you. If you look at a league's worth of people, can you actually tell, from one IO'd build to another, who has bought versus who has "earned" (as you put it) their builds? And, quite honestly - and you'll have to excuse the indignant tone here - what gives you the right to determine if it's really been "earned?" If someone's been playing the game for (say) five years, but only gets Saturdays to play for a few hours, they've had a 50 for the last year and have never seen a purple, don't have a ton of INF, etc... have they not "earned" the privilege of using them? Is *their* enjoyment (and continued support) of the game and *their* subscription a distant second to *your* ego? Or is the privilege of purples only reserved for the person who can farm 7 days a week to get full sets, or who enjoy screwing around with the market?


Now, all that said, there ARE some things that I agree should remain off the market - but I haven't heard any rumblings about these being there anyway. Things like, oh, Efficiency Expert. Frankly, I want to see more things like that that, yes, you CAN lose at and only get one shot at. And I know full well that's unpopular in some circles. I find farming PVP rep badges, for instance, somewhat offensive, especially when done by someone who actually has zero interest in PVP. I used to make many of the same arguments you did - basically about diminishing the "intrinsic worth" of some item. But I came to realize, quite bluntly, *it doesn't affect me.* It doesn't affect anyone, period. There's not one less badge for me to earn. It doesn't move more things to the PVP zone because there's another badge earned there.

For me, I don't *care* what others do. I can be proud (as much as anything in a video game really deserves pride...) that *I* did things "the hard way," or earned instead of bought them. Take pride in your own accomplishments, and tell the ego of "showing off" - which does nothing to help, generally - to take the night off.



Edit: dug's post gets my ending point across a bit better than my own post, I think.

See my Guides and Tutorials

Here's how I look at it.

I have characters with powerset combos and power picks that are deemed 'subpar' by the community. I kick gargantuan, monolithic butt with those characters and I don't need no stinkin' amplifier to help me. Everyone plays different. If you're comfortable with paying real money to amp up your in-game power, good for you and more power/money to the devs.

Personally? I could spend the money and drop some points on a survival amp. Will I? Hell no. I don't need it. I can reach that level of fun and awesome without outside assistance.

Other people paying to win in this game just helps me win more.

Prices on the AH drop. Teammates get better builds. I complete more TFs faster. The game gets more development funding.

"Pay to win" in this game means nobody loses.

Nice, thoughtful points. Let me contrast with my own experience. I'm a casual player by my own definition -- though I log in 5-6 times a week to play, my usual play time will usually run an hour or two, sometimes a bit longer, unless I'm enjoying an otherwise unscheduled weekend. Sometimes that hour will be spend figuring out what salvage from some toons needs to go into the base bins to let other toons build their enhancement recipes. I seldom play at higher than baseline difficulty and I'm not hardcore about enhancements -- if anything, I'm the guy putting underpriced rare recipes and enhancements on the auction house because I just don't want to spend that much time figuring out exactly how much Inf I need to ensure a 'payoff' and then have to grind out or mail that Inf to a given toon.

For me, 'pay to win' probably should be replaced with 'pay to play', as in, give me the option to pay to get to the point where I can play what other people in game are playing. Case in point:

After playing the game off and on for over 8 years, I finally got my first character to max level over Memorial Day weekend and was looking forward to trying out the Incarnate content. Then, on May 31, Issue 23 went live and it seemed as though everyone with an Incarnate wanted to run the new Magisterium trial, which my poor guy who hadn't even filled his Alpha slot yet couldn't do. Over the past month, I've been able to get into a few BAF runs and a single Lambda trial, plus ran my own respec trial to get a Notice of the Well, which was enough to upgrade the Alpha to Rare to get the level shift and still have components left over to slot Judgment with a Common power. The rest of the time, I was running other toons, and now have a second character with a slotted Alpha...and realize that now people are focused on running MoM and 'Hard Way' Mag trials, which again my poor guys can't participate in. If I had the ability to purchase, say, 2000 Incarnate Threads off the Paragon Market, I'm sure there'd be an outcry that I'm 'paying to win', when really all I'm doing is paying to be able to get into the same content everyone else already seems to have a character for.

Likewise, as noted above, I tend to be the guy who takes rare recipes and throws them on the AH for Inf to fund more mundane activities. So when the recent special on enhancements came up, I decided to splurge and picked up a couple for my blaster, including Ragnarok. While it hasn't turned my Blaster into a living god -- even Elite Bosses are still pretty tough and generally require a Rise of the Phoenix to finish off -- it's made the more mundane content a lot easier to get though, so I'm not nearly as worried about small groups of yellows as I used to be. Could I have ground out the Inf required to get all those enhancements 'honestly' from the in-game market? Probably. Would it have been any fun? Doubtful. Am I going to turn around and drop the same amount of money on enhancements for my other toons? No -- the difference isn't that huge. Was it worth the expense I paid? I'd say 'yes' -- I have one toon now with a significant power bump, so I know what that feels like, and I do enjoy it. And I don't feel at all bad that I didn't spend the last six months doing Death from Below so many times that the mere mention of the sewer network would make me want to hurl.

Are there people out there using real cash to give themselves in-game bragging rights? Probably -- it wouldn't surprise me at all. But I have to assume that there are folks out there like me who'd simply like to be able to play the game that everyone else seems to be playing without having to spend so much time doing so that it feels like a second full-time job. 'Pay to play' does that for me.

--
Pauper

Personally, I don't mind PMarket items... as long as they aren't exclusive; if it can be bought OOG then the option to "earn" it IG should also be there.

You know, your post actually comes off as very selfish.

I guess it is all a matter of perspective.

I had bought the DVD Collector's version of COH, with the nifty prestige power slide and cape. My son, a few months later, was only able to obtain the CD version. But over the years he desperately wanted all the extras you could only get from the DVD version. So desperate he was willing to let me spend $80 on Amazon to buy it for him. Of course I didn't . As time went on we were able to obtain a copy when they were being sold for $5 at discount stores. He was excited to FINALLY get a hold of it. Did he struggle to obtain that in-game as a reward? No. But his patience was well rewarded when he was able to use real money to buy what he couldn't obtain in-game.

This is valuable therefore I will work hard to obtain it.

vs.

I worked hard to obtain this therefore it is valuable.

Some of the second group don't care what other people did to get theirs. They define the value for themselves. Most seem to require that everyone else value that which was obtained at least as much as they do or theirs loses its value.

Thanks for the responses. I will not argue with anyone else's opinion.

I agree with the Op, I also understand and feel how the casual gamer tends to think as I am one of them. But I frown at the idea that the extra perks become mandatory to play the game. That you need to spend those boosters to WIN. Take the Magistrate trial, if you want to go the real hard way, you are expected to pay for a couple of those +1 Universal level boosters.

What if the developers think of content that can only be won if you have a superb full IO'ed build plus some boosters that need to be bought with real money? Don't say it won't because it will happen if they continue on this road.

I'm really not seeing how even Boosters, Converters, etc alter the game so much to worry about whether someone is "Paying to Win." The game can be played without them. They just make it slightly easier, or just easier, depending on how much you use.

If anything, if you're teaming with these people in Trials, for example, they're paying to make your game easier as well. It's like getting those buffs without paying for them. The end result is the same.

May I ask a question. I will not argue with anyone's response and I hope you'll answer with a yes or no. Obviously I can't force you to and I don't mean to presume I can. Please note, I will not quarrel with any of you because of your answer nor will I hold any hard feelings. I'm honestly curious. I feel that the two sides are talking over each other.

Do you believe that I am not telling the truth (either willfully or not) when I say that I don't care about what other people do and that some real money items affect how I feel about the game independent of other players' actions?