How do YOU define "pay to win"?

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Lagruell escreveu:

Paid respecs wouldn't be a problem if the loss in experience you're suggesting would represent as much time investment to recover as getting enough Orbs. If so: there is no point to do it...

If not: it's unfair and therefore unacceptable.

Fair point, though it would be impossible to balance xp loss against time to gain orbs. What if you lost half your total xp and your new level was calculated based on the remainder? That way you effectively lose as much work as you gain in what amounts to a new character.

Pay to skip grind is just as bad.

The most recent offender would be Hawken. Nearly everything is locked by default and you can unlock it by using currency that's either paid or earned. That's okay with me if you can earn currency by playing in a reasonable amount of time, but that's not the case.

It takes ~20+ hours to unlock a new class.

If it gets to the point where it's quicker to earn currency by working a minimum wage job than it is to invest time into the game, it's a problem.

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zat0x91 escreveu:

If it gets to the point where it's quicker to earn currency by working a minimum wage job than it is to invest time into the game, it's a problem.

About summed up my view on P2W and F2P microtransactions there. :D

For me, pay to win is using real life currency to gain some sort of advantage with in game content, such as in game currency of in game items. This is problematic as some people have an inherit advantage of simply being better off than other players. And we should be playing games on a level playing ground.

GGG's stash tabs are in a grey area, especially so since the changes to the rare recipes.

It seems that there is no definite consensus on what makes a game "pay to win" or even what makes features "pay to win". So it kind of gets left up to each individuals perception of it. If GGG wants to make sure they stay away from the "pay to win" dilemma, I suggest running recurring game surveys (this could also help in other areas of including users in the design process). There are plenty of easy, free/cheap survey tools that can be used for it.

Encourage regular players to also participate, and then GGG might get a result that very clearly reflects the userperception of the game. A simple question like "To what degree do you think "pay to win" describes PoE in it's current form?" could help.

Then define a threshold that you don't want to go aboeve. For instance no more than 2% saying "High Degree" and 5% saying "To a certain degree". When you introduce new elements to the game shop, check if it makes the player perception break the defined threshold.

Like this you make decisions based on the majority of your users, instead of a minority (us forum users).

As long as there will never be a RMAH I'll be happy lol

A poll to find out just how much of the player base is against different types of transaction would be interesting. Nice idea CiceroSUN!

For some players, the only time they're even remotely competing with other players in PoE is during league events. Is it right that such players should be restricted from buying stuff that saves them grinding time outside of events? P2W in that context seems out of place.

e.g. paid respects in Default league perhaps with an XP penalty.. how harmful can they be?

Given GGG are fundamentally against paid advantage I doubt they will ever introduce anything that makes the game blatantly P2W - at least by their definition.

My definition of pay2win:

pay: There must be something you can spend your real money. And there is no other "good" way to get that something. At the last part comes the opinion of each player. For some people it is ok to grind 1h, for others 5h are fine and some people have no problem to grind 100h. Depends on the game, too.
win: There must be a competive part in the game. If I do not fight against somebody I can not win. So it can not be pay2win. Examples that can not be pay2win for me are Borderlands, Diablo (1-3), Drakensang Online and Path of Exile. With a huge 'but'. Those games can be played against other players. As a direct PvP or just a ladder - short or long time. If you use this game modes it can be pay2win.
So as long as I am not interested in ladder races, Path of Exile can sell an huge sword of awesomness +100 and will still not be pay2win for me.


As you can see this is not an easy yes/no question. You have to look at the whole game and the way the player plays the game and his opinion about grinding.

More interesting question: HOw does GGG define Pay to Win?

Edit: In my opinion every multiplayer game that allowes you to buy things that arent completely cosmetic (even cosmetic stuff can be kind of pay to win e.g. something like -40% charactersize in PVP) is pay to win (inlcuding POE and LOL). Same rules for everybody!

To me pay 2 win, is like playing a FPS game, and you are "forced" to buy better weapon because the free ones are inferior to the paid weapon, and the paid weapon are imba. Well I have played Free MMOFPS game, and almost all of them is pay to win..