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NNTP-Posting-Date: Sun, 31 Mar 2024 15:12:11 +0000
From: Spalls Hurgenson <spallshurgenson@gmail.com>
Newsgroups: comp.sys.ibm.pc.games.action
Subject: Re: What is pay-to-win?
Date: Sun, 31 Mar 2024 11:12:12 -0400
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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.