Lost Ark IS Pay-2-Win (here's why)

Josh Strife Hayes talks about Lost Ark and it's store, "Is it Pay to win" and what determines pay to win in MMO's.

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#LostArk #JoshStrifeHayes #clips #twitch

[kevinamery]

"Why have you crashed, Skyrim?"

"Because it's my nature."

[gdark]

An important point is that Josh clearly defined what P2W was for his argument. A lot of the "is it P2W or not" arguments, the actual definition of P2W is not agreed upon so each person arguing is using their individual interpretation of P2W, which leads the argument going nowhere. He also stated that being P2W does not make something "bad" just by being P2W. Separating those two concepts helps define the argument more clearly.

[LautaroQ]

Josh Strife Jr: Dad [Question?]

Josh: Yes/No - And I'll explain why.

[Molimo]

it's pay to win, but free to have fun.

[mewimi]

I used to play STO and would argue with the fanboys on the forum all day long about how it was becoming Pay to Win due to the cash shop having the best of the best. Their main argument was, "it isn't pay to win because you can buy the cash shop currency with in game currency." What they conveniently leave out is that it would take nonstop grind for months on end to get anywhere near paying for even one of those cash shop items of $20s or more. Fanboys/girls really ruin video games with their corporate shilling.

[VideogamesPang]

Ultimately, MTX-based games which sell gameplay improvements are an insidious business model, regardless of whether those improvements give you a direct power/progression advantage, because it incentivizes developers to make their games worse on purpose. By creating grinds, they can sell you boosts. By creating annoyances, they can sell you skips. By creating problems, they can sell you solutions.

The objective of an MTX game developer is not to entertain you as best they can, but to frustrate you JUST the right amount that you want to pay, and when you do, they mete out JUST enough fun to make you feel like it was worth it and want to do it again. It is gaming human psychology on a truly disturbing and dystopian level.

People get hung up on the definition of pay-to-win because they see it as like the only label capable of succinctly condemning a game's monetization model. If it's not pay-to-win then it's too hard to attack, they need that catchy phrase, so they try to fit the definition of pay-to-win to align with their values, but all it does is create long arguments in the youtube comments section. "Oh that's just 'pay for convenience' or 'pay to progress faster' not p2w" (as if that's meaningfully better). We need a better term that just lets us skip the debate.

[Maxbillion.]

Buying gold is even more p2w in Korean games because gold is more directly tied to power. They typically require you to gamble vast amounts of it in expensive RNG gear upgrade systems.

[ayylmaotv]

I'd 100% agree. I just hit level 50 in lost ark and had decent fun playing it however in order to progress in the end game it basically becomes who has the biggest wallet. The reviews on steam already dropped down to 70% mostly positive, people are going to drop it like a stone soon once they hit endgame

[mechanomics]

Pay to Win models generally rely on predatory business practices. The argument that Pay to Win doesn't make the game bad is only addressing part of the point and giving a free pass to predatory business practices.

[thedarkfox]

Todd Howard: Quick make him stop, we need to monetize TES 6 somehow

[zhongjie]

"pay to win is an oversimplification, for mobile games it's more like pay to progress"

Kind of sad people have been brainwashed to the point where they actively defend the developers that predate on people with bad financial management skills

[Catmato]

Paying for expansion packs or RunEscape memberships is paying for content.

[omgoshlawlgtfo]

i think it's not a characteristic of eastern mmos but one of free mmos. BUT most eastern mmos are free to play so it carries its meaning.
and also by your definition if wow decides to limit the purchase of wow tokens to a random number for a seemingly random amount of time, does it mean that system is not p2w?

[novikovPrinciple]

This is an incredibly good explanation, and with a graph it would have made it quite easier to get the message across.

[veckgames]

I've stacked platinum and gold founders packs in Lost Ark and have been enjoying the game quite a lot since the headstart began, however I agree with Josh. With that being said, I believe it's also important to note that Lost Ark is not "free-to-lose" and that free-to-play players do not exist solely to serve as fodder for the whales' egos as it so happens in many other games.

As a free-to-play player, you obviously will not progress as quickly as someone who splurges obscene amounts of money on the game however nor will you find your progress halted by artificial roadblocks designed to push you to spend money. If you're not obsessed with always being first and having instant gratification, then there is a lot of enjoyment to be found in Lost Ark even as a non-paying player.

TL;DR: Can people spend real world currency to gain an advantage over other players? Yes. Will that ruin your experience as a non-paying user in Lost Ark? Probably not.

[themomaw]

Seems to me that pay2winedness isn't a binary value, it's a fractional one. The answer isn't "yes" or "no", it's "to what degree". A one time purchase expansion pack that includes the most powerful equipment in the game (that you cannot get any other way), is still paying to win in my view. It's just a lower value than some other game that lets you keep spending money to get incrementally more silly upgrades to your most powerful equipment.

[anti-macro]

People trying to defend Lost Ark by saying it's not p2w really worry me about the future of games. Just a few years ago those kinds of business models would have been ridiculed or at least relegated to C tier games, now they're almost becoming mainstream. I can see the whole medium going down the drain if stuff like p2w becomes the new norm.

At least we'll always have indie games, even as big companies become increasingly greedy and corrupt

[revesw]

What I feel watching these videos on p2w is that people's perception of spending money on games is very different in the East and the West. Like very very much different.
In Korea there were and still are those shitty p2w MMO games. Those games that are "if you don't pay you can't play after a certain point"
Lost ark was a sucess in korea because it was so much better than those games. We didn't like those games too much as well.
Lost ark? Yes there are some p2w elements but it's just so much better. We think it's a free to download game so... why shouldn't there be some p2w?
The company makes the game and gives us amazing raids and content. So we don't care that much about pay to go faster.
I know that pay to go faster is p2w. But that doesn't make the game bad. Everyone can do the end game legion raids if you just play the game.

[domsadventure]

I'm quite surprised how people make it seem complicated when it's not. I guess people are enjoying the game and they feel invalidated when this kind of discourse happen. Life itself is P2W, but that doesn't mean it's not worth living. Playing a F2P P2W game isn't stupid if you're truly enjoying it, after all you're playing it for free. The worst thing that can happen is that you become a fodder for whales to feel better about themselves. However, saying a game isn't P2W when it obviously is, is an intellectual dishonesty. It muddles the quality of gaming discourse while gaming industry profits from it without much responsibility.

[TheNerd]

The thing is... I have seen nothing (yet) in Lost Ark that would let me get more and more power by putting money in. There is a lot of "buy this and you can do it faster" stuff but so far I have seen nothing like "buy this and your dps will go higher". At least in the western version. At some point (the long tail) it will get pay to win, but so far it seems fine. For example, you can buy a Pet that gives you 5% more max HP, but you don't need to, since you get one gifted early in the MSQ anyway. EDIT: Pay to win is by definition (Wikipedia) a System where you can get an advantage over others than you can ONLY get by investing real life money.