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From: JAB <noway@nochance.com>
Newsgroups: comp.sys.ibm.pc.games.action
Subject: What is pay-to-win?
Date: Fri, 29 Mar 2024 09:49:17 +0000
Organization: A noiseless patient Spider
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This video popped up on my feed and I thought I'd take a look as from my 
time in World of Tanks (WoT) one thing became clear, there really isn't 
a consensus of what is, and isn't, pay-to-win. The video is a bit long 
and dry but one of the things that resonated with me is there's 
pay-to-win and then there's pay-pay-pay-to-win as what money can give 
you is a sliding scale.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wgNT72xzv1Y

To me it's really can paying give you advantage over an equally skilled 
player and/or does it effectively stop me enjoying a relatively full 
game experience. That doesn't mean I think it's instinctually wrong as 
it depends on the practical reality of that advantage/experince and 
that's the model you knowingly enter. So I'll use WoT as my example as, 
well it's the only game I've played that i consider to have pay-to-win 
elements.

In the early days the elements were pretty sparse so you had premium 
tanks which earn more crew exp./credits but that came with the downside 
that were slightly worse than a fully upgraded normal tank of their 
tier. Then you had premium consumables (in-game gold only) which were 
just better than regular ones and the ammo was one that made a 
particular difference. This didn't bother me as the cost for running it 
soon added up and the impression I got was because of that is was very 
rare to encounter a player 'spamming' it. Th big one was premium time 
that earned you more exp./credits. I didn't have a problem with that as 
at its core it was about paying for time not in-game advantage.

Over the years that changed due to premium consumables being available 
for in-game credits, and what was the best way to generate them - paid 
premium time/tanks, but the thing that really changed the game was the 
introduction of premium tanks that were just better than their free 
equivalents. That was then compounded by bringing out a tank that was 
clearly over powered and putting it in paid lootboxes.

Overall it was one of the reasons I got less and less interested in the 
game and eventual stopped playing it. It was the way that the desire to 
slowly ramp up the 'encouragement' to spend more and more money* started 
negatively impact on my game experience. Indeed it got depressing to 
play certain tiers where the battles were stuffed with the latest and 
greatest premium tanks.

I won't cover all the more minor changes they made in-case anyone who's 
got this far falls asleep!

So thoughts from anyone else, do you hate pay-to-win, think it's a good 
thing or is it more a case of it depends?

*Mind you it worked overall and the amount of money some players 
admitted spending was eye watering. One of the worst, or most ironic 
examples, was a player whose garage was stuffed full of premium tanks 
and had probably spent over £1,000 in about six months. The ironic part 
is that their win-rate was basically the same as if they entered a 
battle and then didn't touch the keyboard or mouse.