@Icarian said:
Pay-2-Win is simply ANY situation where you can spend real world money to obtain an item/upgrade/etc in a game that gives an advantage, period, regardless of the item being available in the game or not. Cosmetic stuff is ok, but if you can buy any advantage it goes to Pay-2-win territory. Before starting to call people dumb, you probably should check the definition of win first.
Just examine your own logic. Let's say you pay money for an advantage. Another player grinds and gets that same advantage via ingame means. Despite your pay, you do not gain an exclusive advantage. Ergo, no pay to win. Alternatively, let's use WoW as an example. Let's see you spend some money to buy a max level character. Sure, you will win against a level 1 who didn't buy a character, if that can be considered a win in any form or dimension, but you will get killed by other max level characters. You may have an easier or faster time getting an advantage, but it's not exclusive. It's reachable by other players, and those players would gain greater skills in the process.
As I see it there are five types of transactions in a F2P model (some of these transactions are seen in P2P games as well, namely WoW):
Cosmetic items: Almost purely fair. Pet shop in WoW, skins in LoL, hats in TF2.
Expansions: These purchases add a permanent upgrade to your game, and usually they do offer gameplay advantages over players who don't have the expansions. Examples include expansion packs or hero purchases in LoL. Indeed, buying champions is actually better than regular expansion packs - a) expansion packs usually raise level caps, making it nearly impossible for the lower level player to defeat the higher level player; b) the benefits of an expansion pack can be overriden by new expansion packs. In the case of buying heroes, it's a matter of different skill-sets and play-style instead of higher level, and new heroes won't make the purchased hero a worthless investment in the long run.
Mild convenience items: Either boost or direct purchase. The key is that these items do not offer a nearly insurmountable difference in required grind time, or they simply don't affect gameplay at all. Examples: experience boosters, but nothing crazily unfair like 300% exp; additional inventory slots; higher log-in priority, etc.
Strong convenience items: Although these items appear to be convenience-based at first glance, due to the design of the game it may be nearly impossible or highly implausible to obtain the same advantages through in-game means. The best example is Diablo 3. Although all the top items being sold on AH for cash are technically drops any player can acquire in-game, due to the design of a loot system that drives such good drops to astronomical probabilities it is no longer feasible to grind for good gear. As such, those good gear on AH are practically exclusive to people who are willing to pay, unless you are really lucky.
Exclusive advantage: These are pure and simple gameplay advantages that can only be acquired by paying money. For example, some F2P games have special PVP consumables or equipment that can only be bought with money.
The first three types of transactions have been commonly accepted as reasonable. Games that include elements of all three transactions include: Team Fortress 2, League of Legends, Warframe, Guild Wars 2, etc. The majority of F2P games belong in this category. It's the best of both worlds - not significantly unfair to non-paying players, yet financially viable enough to consistently add new content. Some purists may say that DoTA 2, which offers only cosmetic items, is even fairer. It is, but at the same time it earns the dev much less than other F2P games. If it doesn't have a backing as strong as Valve, the game would have a very hard time introducing any new content. Further, Valve is willing to earn smaller profits on its games just to attract people to Steam. It pays off when new Steam users buy games off Steam. Most other F2P game developers don't have such luxury.
The games commonly known as "Pay 2 Win" contain elements of the last two transactions. Aside from Diablo 3, there isn't a lot of notable examples. Most Pay 2 Win games are low profile short-term cash grabs or Facebook/iOS games. Don't group any F2P game that offers some convenience as a Pay 2 Win, since such a definition is purely laughable in the face of true Pay 2 Win games, that require you to rent the best gun for a month if you want to stay competitive, or pay money for revival if you want to continue raiding as part of a group.
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