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

I believe you are telling the truth.

I think that the sale of real money items having such an effect on anyone may be a warning sign that they are 'too close' to the game. I really mean that.

I bring it up because I had a friend lose everything, I mean everything, over an MMO, so I am very cautious about letting them 'get to me' on too deeply an emotional level.

Personally, I see the real money market as a way for Paragon to continue supporting the game and nothing more.

Since Freedom started, I have averaged about $40 extra a month to Paragon. I spend it on all kinds of things. I love giving them money because the game gives me and my friends a great deal of pleasure.

At the same time, I still play at Wentworths to get things, I still covet the purple drops I get, etc. The real money market has not replaced anything in the game, just given it another aspect, IMO.

My in-game accomplishments mean just as much as they did before to me, even if I am using an enhancement I bought with cash or one I bought with influence, mainly, I think, because my goal in game is to have fun. Nothing more. I do not play the game for a sense of accomplishment.

That's funny. My game experience hasn't changed at all and I'm not using paid content aside from what my small bout of costume-piece snagging with Super Packs has given me.

You mean how we're getting new issues every 2-3 months with open beta, new content every week in the store, and a noticeable spike in developer activity/involvement? Wow. That is sad to see. /not

Right, because it's soooo hard to level as it is.

/all this.

Seriously, what was that? A "I left, and I'm coming back to tell you I'm still gone, ha ha" post?

See my Guides and Tutorials

Exactly my point. Thank you. Between power creep, class homogenization, pay-for-performace, etc. CoH has been dumbed down to the point there is no need to do anything beyond faceroll the keyboard.

Wonder how long 'til achievement badges can be bought in the store..

What? No 'can I have your stuff' comment? No 'Well, bye' .gif?

Yep. Totally right. The opinions of previous long term customers matter not at all. No reason anyone should care about that. I have totally waited months, nurturing all my pent up nerdrage this entire time, just waiting for the proper opportunity to let it all out!

Or it could be, I just actually was interested in checking out the game that I played and enjoyed for a long time and seeing what has changed.

Nice to see the CoH community has also fallen quite far since I last played as well..

I'm getting really sick of hearing 'power creep' lately. Like, I kind of want to vomit every time I hear it.

That said, I think you've taken your point of view to a very serious extreme. If the game is such a problem, why are you posting? Why are you using Blizzard-game terms like 'faceroll' to judge this community's skill? You want class homogenization? Might want to look at your own purview first.


Ever stop to think that we're responding so bluntly because your first post in this thread was:

1. Not constructive?
2. Blatantly false?
3. Snarky?
4. Arrogant?

You can't come into a thread and proclaim how the game stinks and things are terrible and you're leaving and good riddance, and then expect people to give you more civility than you've given them.

Better said than I was going to do.

And no, no interest in your stuff - plenty of my own, thanks.

See my Guides and Tutorials

Can you illustrate how the experience is cheapened? In what ways has your play experience been made less enjoyable?

All games are getting easier these days. Simple fact. They're trying to appeal to more casual gamers and younger/less experienced gamers.

But that's an argument for another thread.

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Anywho, on topic, my response would be:

"Let people spend money how they want. After all, it's their money and they can waste it how they want."

Paragon Studios offers services in exchange for money (Laugh and you die). This is the basic business idea of just about everything.

They want to make this game profitable to keep it afloat, whilst also keeping their playerbase happy. I believe, despite all the gnashing and wailing you see around here, that they do.

The Paragon Market is still a new thing. These Amplifiers have never been seen before on the Market. I'm not sure how they're selling, but by the forum response it should, at least, give the Developers a few ideas on what to do and what not to do if they want to sell performance enhancing items on the Market (Laugh and you're also dead).

The game won't become Play-to-win at any point, because that would tip the profit to happiness scale into dangerous territory. Some may argue that it's already happening, what with XP Boosters, Team Inspirations and IO Sets on the Market. These are items that (In order) only provide a modest boost and isn't 100% necessary, is a situation item and finally, isn't 100% required to play the game and can be earned in-game rather easily through a variety of methods.

Now, if the scenario appears that a "Insta-level 50!" item appears on the Market, I will gladly post a picture of me eating a hat.

That is all.

cry doom moar, plz

It simply has. I realize that this topic is akin to religion & politics. It's based more on values and beliefs than pure rationality. You're seeking facts to argue against. Try to think of it as a statement of preference.

The issue is more: Do I like this? And less; Does this hurt you?

I think I can offer some perspective here. Not an explanation, mind you, and probably not something that applies to anyone but myself, but give me a few minutes just the same.

My cynicism of our Marketing team notwithstanding, I generally dislike "pay to win" as a concept because it "corrupts" the game. Let me explain. Typically, a game is something I do because it offers me things that real life can't, and specifically because it isn't subject to the same restrictions that I dislike in real life. Our heroes never have to use the restroom, they never get sick, they never get parking tickets (or need to own cars...), they never sleep in or sleep at all, they don't have walk the cat or buy headlight fluid, that sort of thing. Most of that comes with the limitations of what the game can emulate, but some things a game CAN emulate that I really really don't want it to.

One of the things I really don't want games I play to do is mix real money into the game. It's not a question of other people getting more than me or me having to pay for more, or even a question of community. To me, the money side of things is one part of real life I don't enjoy, and having it rubbed into my face in-game is not pleasant for me. A game is escapism. Whether we achieve this through a sense of achievement, a sense of accomplishment, a sense of victory or a sense of invincibility, we are ultimately crafting for ourselves an illusion of success that, like in most entertainment, we use to make ourselves feel better. When the real world intrudes into the game, the illusion is shattered and its greatly diminished.

One of the reason I solo so much is because I make builds based on concept first and on "however much I can be arsed to try" second, and they end up being pretty sub par. This doesn't stop me from play-pretending that my characters are awesome, I just lower the difficulty and have an easy time. That doesn't quite work when I team with someone with an actual strong build. The illusion of power disappears before the reality of power, and I'm left disappointed in general. Now, obviously, this is a quirk of mine, but the broader subject remains:

When the real world and real money start intruding into a game, they tend to corrupt the illusion that the game is really about. They make the game too "real," in a sense. All of a sudden you start trying to figure out who deserves to have what, how can you prevent people from having things, when do you allow people to have things and so forth. All of a sudden it starts feeling less like a game, and that tends to take the magic out of it.

To loop back onto the subject of Amplifiers, why they concern me isn't that other people will play better than I do - I wouldn't be teaming with them either way. It isn't that I'll suddenly have to pay too much - I still control my own spending. It's that my performance in-game all of a sudden starts depending on my wallet, and I start asking a question that I really don't think I should be asking in a game - can I afford to have fun? This is the question I should ask myself before I log in, and once the answer has been found to be "yes," then that should be the last it comes up. Part of the point of a game, at least to me, is to put those questions aside and act as if I could afford the good stuff and as if I do deserve to be the best. Maybe not really, maybe not objectively, but within my little illusion, at least.

Injecting "pay to win" in a game runs a very real risk of corrupting what it is that makes a game to begin with, more or less.

Originally Posted by Arcanaville Samuel_Tow is the only poster that makes me want to punch him in the head more often when I'm agreeing with him than when I'm disagreeing with him.

Still, though, you have the satisfaction of knowing that you did it the "hard way". Indeed, if you think that effort was something to be admired in the first place, then the fact that there's now an "easy way" makes you even more hardcore for putting in that effort.

Yes, yes, we've heard this song before. YOU disapprove. Therefore it cheapens the game for everyone; the game is going down the tubes; etc.

TF's faster = reward merits get adjusted down.

That said, I don't really mind the pay2win (as we tend to use the term here).

Subscribing gets you the largest amount of pay2win in Paragon.

You can buy those for a couple of Astral Merits in Ouro, you know.


Those drop from a completely different recipe pool to IO recipes, and have no effect on their drop rate. You can easily check this in game -- watch the combat log, and you'll sometimes see a temp power and an IO recipe drop from the same defeat.

I don't think the rates had changed when people last analysed the drop rates. If you think you've seen a reduced rate, you can always collect some logs and take a look.

It's interesting. For some reason I don't see it that way. Like with IOs now. I used to enjoy the chase of finding IOs. Getting a new shiny was really a treat. Now....eh. It's no different than SOs, just a bit more effort and/or RL cash.

To give you a similar example, I remember when I first got into manga about 21-22 years ago. At the time, finding anime was a real chore. You had to call around, check in different stores. I found the chase fun. Today. Well, now I can just download the stuff in 5 minutes. I lost a ton of interest in anime after that. The chase is gone and while the stories are no more sillier than they were when I was 18, I find that I mostly just don't care anymore. Maybe I'm just getting old.

I believe the first half of that statement is impossible for non-socipathic human beings.

The fundamental principle at work here is the expectation of fairness doctrine in games design. One of its cornerstone principles is that people must perceive a game to be fair in its dealings with its players, or that will be a source of friction between the game and its players. Its impossible to avoid this completely because everyone is different, but within the scope of MMOs all human beings have a psychological need to believe that by at least some definition they are comfortable with the game treats all players fairly. And fairly does not mean "equally" either.

We can say "I don't care what those players do or are allowed to do" and we might even believe it, but studies have shown that when you're not actively trying to adhere to that principle your brain will not follow the rule.

How the game presents choices to the player, and how it presents choices to all players in general, directly influence how the players perceive the game to be fair or unfair in the psychological sense of the word. That it will affect us is certain. How it affects each of us is the part that is much more difficult to know.