[Nobody]

The term pay to win keeps coming up with regards to a whole bunch of games including Aion and GW2. I've used the term before and given the arguments that people start about what is and is not pay 2 win (p2w), I was curious about the definition of the term. One of the top articles I found was a Massively article that says there is no agreed upon definition. To me, this suggests that there is a definition, but for some reason nobody is bothering to write one. Nobody being myself of course.

So Why?

There appears to be no full definition of p2w for a couple of reasons:

• It is a derogatory term when used to describe a game. What this means is that no game company wants its game described as p2w and people who enjoy playing games described as p2w will respond in a negative fashion whenever their game is called p2w. This was made particularly obvious in one of the youtube videos that comes up when searching for p2w, where there's an excellent discussion of free to play, buy to play, etc., which degenerates when the term p2w is discussed for a game that the author plays.
  
  
  
  
• While the concept of "pay to win" seems fairly simple, the games being accused of p2w don't have a "pay money, press button, and then win" simplicity. The conversion of cash to power and whether or not that means winning or what winning even is can be ambiguous. I think a lot of people may disagree about what winning is and then it just gets worse when you start trying to attach winning to how money bought it. To take a thought experiment example to its max, while most people agree that cosmetic items are not p2w, a cyber whore might disagree as wearing the right outfit might encourage more people to give her gold and for her, getting gold is "winning".
  
  
• P2w arguments often confuse exploitive practices by game companies as being p2w when they may just about exploiting players and don't have anything to do with making people pay to win. In other words, exploitative practices are a different issue that sometimes intermingles with p2w, but doesn't have to.

The Game History Behind P2W

MMO games where the pay to win term was born were subscription model games with a lot of what people now call "grind". At some point, high salaried professionals figured out that they could pay somebody else to grind for them and it would cost less than their time was worth if they did the grind themselves. There's a great video about this where an Everquest developer talks about how this all started out and what happened as gold selling companies became more prominent. Game designs have changed due to secondary markets quite a bit.



Some players didn't even (and still don't) bother to level their own characters and learn the game before they reach the end game. I personally have memories of old Vanilla WoW where you'd occasionally get a pick up group and have a rogue that didn't know how to sap or a priest that didn't know all the heal skills. It was never a positive experience. Even in current games, secondary markets can still give you end game gear if you're paying somebody to play your character for you. And that's literally "pay to win".

However, in trying to combat secondary markets, games have changed to help provide some of the benefits that secondary markets gave players. The extent to which they do this varies - from strictly cosmetic items to full gear sets. And that's how the pay to win model has evolved into a core component of actual games.

So What is P2W?

There are some consistent things about modern P2W:

• There appear to be two MAIN types of winning that we can discuss:
  
  • Pay for coin/stat/skills Advantage: you pay for potions or skills or anything that can potentially give you an advantage from payment that regular players may not be able to obtain by playing the game
    
  • Pay for time Advantage: you pay for anything that will save you time in playing the game such as XP boosts, crafting boosts, rez stones, teleport stones, etc.
  
  
  
• It mostly happens in games with a cash shop: you need to be able to make purchases in order for the pay part of p2w to happen. We can probably ignore the RMT issues here since they've become a different issue - one of "buying illegal gold". There is one exception to this that I've seen - if a game gives rewards for sub length, then it is technically possible for those rewards to be p2w where the payment is the length of the subscription time.
  
• It is a derogatory term: the concept of p2w suggests that players do not need skill or to actually play the game. They just need a fat wallet. This is not entirely true for all p2w except for the most extreme cases, but extremes are what are most often considered by players.
  
• It is not a binary term, but a slider that goes from nothing all the way up to O.o: This is where most players get confused when trying to debate the p2w concept. Rather than talking about what a spectrum of p2w looks like, they pick items and say they either are or are not p2w. There is probably a lot more consensus about where on the spectrum different items are than what the personal dividing line a person can "take" on the spectrum is. And different people are going to have different amounts of p2w that they can take before quitting a game. What is your breaking point on the spectrum and where are different items located?
  
  
  
  
• It is common practice for companies to try and hide it: I put the megaphone on the list above for this reason. If I have a megaphone in a Perfect World game, then I can sell a high cost item much more easily as I can shout out to the whole server my trading info. So I will have more money and with that I can buy more power potentially. With a few exceptions (I'm looking at you Perfect World), very few companies actually go all the way to the end and have you purchase end game power items directly. Instead, they put stuff that's lower on the spectrum that contributes to power in the game such as endless health potions on a separate cooldown from regular in game potions. And yes, if I have a potion that gives me more health than you can get unless you pay, it's contributing to winning and it's on the spectrum more than if I wear a sexy suit or dress. Probably more than the megaphone too. There are some interesting arguments based on economics and HOW MUCH different items are affecting end game power. So if there's a spectrum, where are different things in relation to each other?
  
  • It may not be you and your time for the game - it may be the design of the game itself. P2w that is not at the end of the spectrum is often touted as "time savings" rather than p2w. Let's face it, playing games these days are all about time sinks. That's all the game can do since players consume content faster than developers can make it. Items you pay for to bypass/reduce time sinks generally get you closer to the end game and max power capability. It's further along the spectrum than cosmetic items, but many people think that it's "ok" because the game may have silly super hard time sinks to get to that end game. If getting to that end game was super fun, why would you want to bypass it all? Of course, who knows if the sinks in the game were designed specifically for that cash shop or not. More about that under player exploitation below.

From the above, I hope that in this topic we can have a good discussion involving what items people have seen that add to the p2w elements of a game as well as where they go on the spectrum of such elements. What a "win" is needs to be further discussed as well.

Psychological Exploitation and Cash Shops

I mentioned player exploitation above and it's important to that the p2w spectrum be considered with this in mind since power is something that players want and it's an easy source of exploitation by game companies. Games are designed with cash shops in mind and mmo game designs have changed extensively in recent years due to the introduction of cash shops. A good example of this that's easily accessible is a talk given at a game development conference in China.

The speaker was quite blunt with what they considered and how they considered it (and offensive from the player's perspective), but it's important to know what these people are thinking about when they DESIGN modern online games with a cash shop.

We need to be more educated as players about player exploitation in its many forms. If we are not, then design practices are only going to become more and more about milking players and less about their overall experiences with the game.

Speaking of which, here is a listing of different methods of psychological exploitation for gambling.

Gambling establishments have studied this extensively and are very well aware of how they get players to part with their money. Parts of the list that I find tend to work well in games with a cash shop are:

• Money is converted to "credits", tokens, or chips. This abstraction makes it harder to keep track of how much money has actually been lost. Once real money has been converted to play money, it takes significant mental effort and discipline to cash out, even after a win.
  
• Customers receive frequent, small prizes at irregular intervals. This encourages continued betting in the hope of getting a big jackpot. Think about lock boxes of any sort here.
  
• Players are kept in games by giving out hourly "tickets" that can be handed in for prizes. Tickets may also be bought in some games.
  
• Lock boxes may be programmed with "near misses" to make customers think that they are close to winning. The psychological stimulus of almost winning augments the desire to continue playing to try to get a big prize.
  
• Public announcements of large wins serves to convince players who have been losing on nearby machines that it is possible to win by continuing to play.
  
• The absence of obvious clocks relaxes the customers and makes them lose track of time.
  
• Game companies may establish a tier system with labels of "platinum", "titanium", and "diamond" for the more prestigious players, whereas the ordinary players are assigned categories like "gold" or "red label". The higher ranks with greater fringe benefits can only be achieved by increased level of play or by winning large jackpots.

The fact that I can take a list for gambling and with minor modifications fit most of it into cash shop gaming should cause people some concern. Gambling is a highly regulated industry because of the extensive black market elements that it tends to attract. Making sure that casinos don't "cheat" is important as is regulating them for the potential of money laundering and other issues.

I would like to suggest that some games with cash shops are headed this way, but they're not there yet. You just need to look at parallels in articles such as this one about Diablo 3 as a sweatshop to see what's coming. I don't agree with the whole article, but the parallels it draws with gambling are interesting.

It remains very rare for a game to state the odds of getting different items out of its lock boxes and it's common for drop tables in games with real money conversions to change at the whim of the company. I'm not even going to get into the various accusations of GM tampering with rare item drops for specific customers. There is a lot of money to be made and there is no oversight. We don't even know for sure if the lock boxes sold by a game company are "fair" or if they contain code that considers how much you've paid the company so far in order to determine the drop table.

This has large consequences when applied to in game power gains in p2w situations.

It reminds me of a specific Perfect World game where you needed a rare drop pet from a lock box for end game pvp. Obtaining the end game pet wasn't the end of it though - you then had to outfit the pet with expensive aoe spells. At that point you could easily kill anybody without the pet or aoe spells from the cash shop. I knew somebody that really wanted that power and spent over $1k in a month to try and get just the pet. And that was BEFORE they nerfed the drop rate of the pets. I can't even think of how you would get into a similar situation in reality - unless it involved some sort of illegal operation.

This post has been edited by Nobody: 11 February 2013 - 02:02 PM

[dirtyklingon]

great article snooozle.


if i may add, the term pay 2 win was coined in repsonse to early RMT in early mmo's. mmo's like EQ and UO and so on, where it was initially welcomed by devs. there's a numbewr of interesting videos on the subject on youtube.

pay 2 win was coined to desribe people who bought their way to high levels and high end gear. this was the standard usage as late as when i quit l2 in 2006 and wow tbc in 2007.


i personally don't see any difference between back then and games like eve adn gw2 and d3 where RMT is monopolized and legitimized. in fact, players today commonly call d3 pay 2 win, so i find it curious that gw2, which is a game where you can literally buy your way to 80 and the best gear in the game, is not pay 2 win when d3 is.



as far the exploitation thing, seeing it in spades in EME tera right now. random chance cash shop items, classic lockboxes, bizzarre money to cash shop currency conversaions and item pricing, every bit of abusive and exploitative practices.

[Nobody]

yeah, thanks for the suggestion of adding something about the history of it. I've seen the rmt video with the guy from Everquest that talks with an RMT guy about how it used to be and why things are different now. It's a good video.

And the gold sellers have caused a lot of issues that have affected the design of mmo games. Virtual money has caused a lot of issues overall, with things like the Chinese QQ coin competing with national Chinese currency and becoming THE monetary form for money laundering and black market deals. That's why they outlawed RMT stuff in general except when controlled tightly by the company that issues the currency in a closed system. Which is funny because the gold sellers will never be forced to deal with the law because they're "legit" in comparison with what the Chinese gov't was trying to stop.

I'll add some stuff when I'm feeling like looking more up :P

[dirtyklingon]

it's also the reason we're innundated with this bind on pick up and bind on equip nyerk.

[Nobody]

And the tokens. Don't forget the gorram tokens.

[reflexion]

what about p4s?

[GurrenLagann]

dirtyklingon, on 10 February 2013 - 04:30 PM, said:

great article snooozle.


if i may add, the term pay 2 win was coined in repsonse to early RMT in early mmo's. mmo's like EQ and UO and so on, where it was initially welcomed by devs. there's a numbewr of interesting videos on the subject on youtube.

pay 2 win was coined to desribe people who bought their way to high levels and high end gear. this was the standard usage as late as when i quit l2 in 2006 and wow tbc in 2007.


i personally don't see any difference between back then and games like eve adn gw2 and d3 where RMT is monopolized and legitimized. in fact, players today commonly call d3 pay 2 win, so i find it curious that gw2, which is a game where you can literally buy your way to 80 and the best gear in the game, is not pay 2 win when d3 is.



as far the exploitation thing, seeing it in spades in EME tera right now. random chance cash shop items, classic lockboxes, bizzarre money to cash shop currency conversaions and item pricing, every bit of abusive and exploitative practices.

i think the d3/gw2 thing is because there are subtle but impactful differences in the things those games do.

D3 you can literally buy endgame gear with real money in a direct method, meaning you see the money written right there.
GW2 you can buy xp buffs and gems, which then you can trade for endgame gear. But it's not direct so people don't label it as pay2win but it's still somewhat there.

Also the thing is that unlike d3, the items in gw2 are going to run for a LOT of money making it way less compelling to get because it's not that hard to get them normally in game, while in d3 the items do go for a lot but they are also hard to obtain ingame.


Now for me pay2win has always been about buying power with real money, usually meaning gear or extra skills or anything that translates directly to being more powerful than someone who doesn't pay.

I don't care about xp or crafting buffs, for me they don't matter. But when gear is involved or extra stats then yeah, the game is pay2win imo.

[BlackOrchid]

I do belive the big problem in defining what P2w is and what p2w is not lies in the fact that some games are not and are labeled as so by the community's. A good rule of thumb for defining p2w would be anything in game that gives you leverage over non paying players be it in PvP or PvE puting you in a diferent level of gameplay only being aquired through real world money.

The big problem nowadays is that people tend to spit out alot of labels just to look smart and in most of the cases they do not even stop to think about what they are actually saying. Certainly there are games in wich the gray area is big but even those are just that meaning they are in the gray area...undifined and although the temptation to lavel them is big, one should not fall prey to it because as it has been established P2W carries a bad conotation.

I have said inumerous times that GW2 is not P2W game, never was and most probably won't be, Why? Because none of what you can get through real world money will give you leverage over other players. Now you can argue that XP boosts and Crafting XP boosts fall in to that category, but that will bring us to another problem wich is the way a game is percieved by the player. A game should be viewed as a journey and apreciated as such, meaning the leveling process should enable you to enjoy and explore the content of the game. For some people though the only thing that maters is geting to the end as fast as possible... the question is was the game designed for that? I don't think so. Back to GW2 everything you can buy with money in GW2 van be atained in game, except the vanity unique items that you can get at the store. Even the box keys that can be bought at the gem store can be aquired in game, sure the drop rate is low but then again there are seasonal events in game that enable you to aquire the keys in game almost for free. I for one aquired over 30 keys during the last xmas events through crafting, and it cost me 3 gold to do it, it would have cost me even less if I didn t buy the mats ... but I am a slacker... XD

So the only thing left in GW2 that can be atained through real world money and is hard to find in game is the percursor of your end game weapon. That is hard to aquire, and costs alot of gold hence if you want to aquire it in a fast maner you need to buy gold from a RMT ... but then again its ilegal and can get you baned. Those percursors are suposed to be rare, and not for everyone to carry, they are suposed to be unique items that will distinguish your char from everyone elses char. They don t give beter stats...they are just in for the looks...and if looks could kill... XD

[dirtyklingon]

just to note for both of you, the term pay 2 win was coined long long long before there was any game in which you could buy things in games which were not normally attained through actual gameplay.

the idea of buying extra power which cannot be obtained through gameplay is relatively recent, popping up in teh last 6-7 years or so, where as the term pay 2 win has been around since 1998 or so.




i always illaustrate it as a spectrum, much as snoozle made in the OP.



wow's 100% cosmetic cash shop----------------------->eve plex -----------> gw2's gems ----> d3's RMAH -----------> world of tanks' cash shop ammo and tanks.



anything that is now called "covneience" is glossing over the truth that it's actually pay2win in the very classic definition to one degree or another. just because stuff has become even more pay 2 win since then does not invalidate the older original definition.


just because mt eden changed what we think of as dubstep, does not mean original dubstep is no longer dubstep.

[dirtyklingon]

also gurren, gems are just like any other f2p cash shop currency, they are meant to exploit players by obfuscating the actual dollar cost of what you are buying, as well as get extra money from players with non contiguous item pricing.


in that regard, d3 is much much much more respectful of players than gw2 or any PWE et al game. iirc valve actually did a blog post about hte whole subject of cash shop currencies and why they don't use them. can't find it with a quick google of the terms "valve cash shop currencies", but i'm sure it can be found with the right terms.


ia ctualyl find it hilarious that players qq about d3's cash shop and not gw2's. d3's RMAH is not only upfront but allows players to cash out to irl denaros. where as 100% of gw2's economy and cash shop goes into anet coffers.


as far as EVE's PLEX goes, it was also called pay 2 win when it first came out, and rightfully so, but not as pay2win as regular everyday RMT due to the time gated nature of the skill progression in EVE vs other mmo's where RMT was commonly used in conjuntion with power leveling.


nevermind that gw2 gems in particular basicalyl say"look the original real reasons why mmo's stopped welcoming RMT and started fighting it by penalizing legit players without actually impacting RMT are invalid, in so long as we the mmo company are the only ones to legitimately profit from it"

the idea being originally that if a player bought their way to cap and good gear, they usually didn't know how to play their toon well liek someone who had properly learned through gameplay over hundreds of hours. many facets of gw2 basically say"that is completely false, here's a free level 80 in spvp, here's a $200 level 80 for pve and wvw, and if you spend another $50-100 you can have more or less the best gear in teh game as well, but if you buy from anyone but us, we'll ban you for it".

companies liek anet/ncsoft, PWE and gameforge have literally balls deep legitimaed both pay 2 win and RMT, but on the b asis that they hold local monopolies on that RMT in teh games they manage. calling it "covnenience" is the same reasoning that people who RMT via 3rd parties have been doing for 15 years.


"i don't have time to grind out the levels, i just want to have fun when i do have time, and i have money, so why not buy levels and gear?" is a classic player defence agaisnt accusations of paying 2 win via RMT going back to EQ1. and ironically it's exactly how anet chose to sell it's first party monopolized pay2win RMT system, aka the gem store/exchange.


it really makes no difference what company is doing it, it's a rose by any other name.

[Nobody]

Added a little thing about history as far as I can figure it out - it's not like the history is online almost at all anyway. Comment if you remember any of that stuff from playing. Also added the video about RMT where the everquest guy explicitly talks about how cool it was at first when some guy paid for a sword of uberness on ebay.

For other people that have replied - can you draw an arrow and range like dk did with your spectrum of cash shop items on the way to p2w? You've said where your threshold on the spectrum is as a customer, but it'd be helpful to know if the spectrum is consistent even between players.

The really weird thing about writing all that above is that I pretty much came to the conclusion that the main reasons we're in this mess to begin with are that game developers are being lazy and not developing more interesting mmo games for people to play long term. Which is why people want to trade time for power in the first place so much - they're bored.

[dirtyklingon]

in their fight against RMT, dev s have progressively hobbled hte single actual differentiating point of mmo's vs non mmo games - the large scale player interactivity.


as the level of interaction between players has continually and progressively been handicapped and restricted and put in neat little seperate boxes with every little care given that no one should have their feels hurt, so too has the reason to stick with any game for any period of time diminished.

no longer are mmo's a type of game that can not ever be truly beaten, but rather, they are games that are routinely beaten with the same speed an regualrity of any given sp campaign, and much teh same properties without the production value in terms of story elements and gaemplay elements.


devs instead attempt to keep players in game by offering incentives that can be paid for, while at the same time offering less content per dollar than the average EA game DLC.

[Neb]

P2W for me has always been about you need to pay XX dollars to compete with others who've spent that much.

The whole idea rests on what your idea of 'winning' is. The idea of 'winning' in an MMO has changed drastically over the years. And everyone has varying ideas of what 'winning' entails.

GW2 isn't 'p2w' in my view, because there isn't that power boost associated with spending money. The 'max stat' cap keeps this from being an arms race about who can spill out more dollars. But, if you think 'completing the game', 'leveling to 80' etc. are what amounts to 'winning' then GW2 is indeed p2w.

Diablo 3 is 'p2w' for me. Simply because if you spend XX more money, you'll be XX more powerful than someone who didn't. This is because you can increase your stats exponentially depending on how much money you're willing to dump into it.

Note that this isn't to say I agree with the whole gems to gold thing. I dislike it.

This post has been edited by Neb: 11 February 2013 - 11:39 AM

[BlackOrchid]

Games have evolved, Industry has evolved and RMT has evolved aswell. If we start introducing to many variables, we won't reach any conclusion or we will end up with a bible instead of a simple definition.

Quote

"i don't have time to grind out the levels, i just want to have fun when i do have time, and i have money, so why not buy levels and gear?" is a classic player defence agaisnt accusations of paying 2 win via RMT going back to EQ1. and ironically it's exactly how anet chose to sell it's first party monopolized pay2win RMT system, aka the gem store/exchange.

Regarding this, this isn't pay to win for me. Because that kind of player usualy gets droped by groups in PvE or just die in a snap in PvP, so as far as I am concerned he is not paying to win anything he is paying to shine, but as we all know not everything that shines is gold.

Again as far as I can see P2W is when someone gains a leverage over you just because he has cash and you don't. With P2W stuff he doesn't need to know how to play e only needs to be able to smash the keyboard to be able to beat your skill.

Now we are kind of geting to a mish mash of stuff here, we are bringing together P2W,RMT,F2P Item Shops etc...so if we look at this from this point of view there ain t a single game out there that won't be p2w because to some point they all have something in them.

Still here the big problem is the comunity and not the company. If someone wants to skip levels ...he is not playing the game, he is skiping the game, as far as I can see that beats the porpouse of the playing in the first place...

Regarding your claims about Gw2 being p2w just becaus eit has a gem store... like I said before it's just unfounded stupidity. As far as I am concerned vanity items won t make a diference when it comes to balance. Regarding the Xp boosts, no mater how hard you boost yourself with xp boosts you will still have to level your char, hence you need to learn how to play to get to max level.

[dirtyklingon]

that's a bette rarticulation than i've seen from others with that pov.



back in l2 i thought legitimizing RMT would be a good idea, but i don';t think gw2 or eve does it right, and d3 RMAH goes too far.

[Nobody]

BlackOrchid, I agree that I probably put too much into the OP because they're things that I see misused all the time and I wanted to try and highlight their relationships to each other. Not sure if I should try to remove stuff or not from the post... it's kind of nice that it's in there in some ways, but I understand the confusion when we start talking about different issues in the same thread.

Regarding the argument with gw2, I've noticed a trend of 2 different definitions of "win".

If your definition is to get to the end game and "finish" the game first, then gw2 is certainly p2w because of the direct gem to gold conversion and what all those gems can give you to help you get to the end sooner.

If your definition is that "winning" is being the more powerful because you paid (aka as Neb said), then again that holds in gw2 while leveling (again, thank you anti-farming code), but it goes away (or at least mostly goes away - legendaries are still a minor issue as they are designed as a large cash shop sink) at max level.

Any other defs of winning we want to clarify?

[Neb]

I suppose you could add 'market control' as a type of 'winning. Lots of people dump money into games like these to get an edge on a market and monopolize it. You can see this happening with the legendaries in GW2. A very small minority are buying them all and keeping the prices very high.

Not sure if that'd really count as winning, but it is certainly a relatively large issue.

[dirtyklingon]

Neb, on 11 February 2013 - 12:46 PM, said:

I suppose you could add 'market control' as a type of 'winning. Lots of people dump money into games like these to get an edge on a market and monopolize it. You can see this happening with the legendaries in GW2. A very small minority are buying them all and keeping the prices very high.

Not sure if that'd really count as winning, but it is certainly a relatively large issue.

a fair number of people play mmo's entirely to play the market.


i had 2 guys in my guild quit because they failed in their aspirations to become wealthy quickly.

[Nobody]

So, instead of pay to win, maybe we actually have:

Pay to Finish (p2f)
Pay to Beat (p2b)
Pay to Market (p2m)

???

I like p2f best I admit - what do you guys think?

[Neb]

Pay for Advantage would be a more all encompassing definition.

(Lose the 2 though, oh god!)