The MMORPG Genre Is P2W, but it's even worse than that

mmorpgs are p2w, more news at 11.

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#mmorpg #p2w #2023

[harfharfful]

The reason I don't like p2w in the game is that it fundamentally poisons the game. It encourages the devs to intentionally sabotage their own gameplay to water-drip torture you into open your wallet. Willpower is an exhaustible resource. The devs find an accidental problem or inconvenience with the game... do they fix it? No! It's an opportunity to nickel and dime people! It makes the game objectively worse. [edit: Kira got to this 10s after my frantically typing this up]

[ekki]

"Pay for convenience" is just hostile design. It's that Spotify ad saying something like "Wouldn't it be cool if this ad wasn't here? Then pay!". Only designed to be camouflaged into the grind of the game. It really is the most insidious form of p2w but I don't think most people understand that. Most people are annoyed at others buying power while they think that pay for convenience is a "lesser evil".

[grimvisionz]

The kind of p2w that will stop me from playing an MMO is when they design the problem and sell the solution to you or when game progression hits a hard wall that requires p2w to get over.

[OhCanadaGamer]

There's a massive difference between box price, sub model, early 2000's where you could do back alley ebay "Pay 2 Win" deals but the games would still ban you for stuff like that. As opposed to now where the games sell you everything from gold, xp pots, mounts, loot boxes and it's "Pay 2 Everything" where the company is now designing the game with problems to sell you the solution.

Your point about this crap in a single player game hits the nail on the head. I think people tolerate it a lot more in MMORPGs. I know if I saw a single player game with loot boxes, cash shop, mounts, cosmetics, xp pots, etc, I would walk away in disgust.

I also think there is a massive opening for a small team to make something with box and sub, plus no cash shop, and do what BG3 did only with an MMORPG.

[DeathMetalDerf]

I exclusively play single-player games these days for two HUGE reasons. Number one is I just don't like being forced to play the game with other people because otherwise I can't accomplish very much on my own, number two is pay-to-win being a rampant disease that's killing gaming in general for me.

[dONALD-fortytwo]

My problem with P2W is that because it's gaining popularity, corporations will gradually design worse games, and they will have the player's support.

[DNU]

I've never been of the idea to letting a company paywall me content still using space inside my hard drive

[Trairan]

Totally agree with Kira. I loved to trade stuff in MMOs, and we all knew some people did RMT, but them doing it didn't really impact others experiences, so we just didn't care, the games themselves were fair and square for everyone. Nowadays this trend of just cutting edges everywhere to inconvenience players and force them to buy shit just to be able to play normally absolutely sucks, I no longer play MMOs in fact.

Having a blast with Baldur's Gate 3 btw, it's a fantastic old school feeling game made with som much love and respect for their customers.

[DungeonDragon]

I prefer box price with no subscription. I played WoW for a long time, and the subscription made me feel pressured to get my money's worth by playing as much as possible, even when I didn't really feel like it. Now I play Guild Wars 2, which is a free base game, paid expansions, and no subscription, albeit with a major cash shop. But it's easier to avoid the cash shop than to avoid the pressure of a monthly subscription.

[markholland]

The most fun I ever had in an MMO was when I played a private WoW server. You could go from lvl 1 to 60 (or whatever it was) in like an hour, drop rates were through the roof and getting hundreds of even thousands of gold was a breeze lol.

It allowed me to try a bunch of things that I could never do playing normally. It was, for me anyway, super fun. Only stopped b/c the site got shut down.

[nakano]

I was actually wondering about that like last month:
How could the players of a free to play game, help the game keep up and running and having its employees paid, without making it pay to win?

Well, the thought itself leads to subscription service, which not only will not exactly make the game accessible by everyone, but also, by experience, that doesn't automatically mean the game will not be pay to win, not even means the game will not have any other way of trying to get more money from players..

[ferrouswheel]

I was in a top 100 guild in WoW. The amount of real money we made from our guild selling raid runs was crazy. I agree, always been that way.

[OhCanadaGamer]

It's beyond Pay 2 Win, it's Pay 2 Everything.

[Eta_Hoyimi]

The distinctive factor that makes people care about p2w when they didn't care about RMT is because RMT isn't something that the company making the game can directly profit from. Sure there are knock on benefits like more players or botting driving up MAUs. However, that doesn't substantially threaten the mechanics of the game itself like most have alluded to. When the game itself facilitates p2w via shop functions then the studio has an active, profit driven, interest in ensuring that the practice of P2W continues. Up to and including encouraging the practice by kneecapping the game itself in various ways.

[anonanon]

I can't think of any time that any MMO wasn't p2w, you could always buy in-game currency and accounts with real money. It just used to be against TOS to buy advantages, now it is officially/unofficially endorsed for profit.

But it has gotten significantly worse, and much more toxic to the in-game economies and overall game design, over the years, due to the publishers consciously choosing short-term financial incentives over enforcing action against bad actors to keep the game healthy long-term.

[MrGrogan]

I clearly remember in the beta patch notes they mentioned xp boosts in the New World cash shop and everyone freaked out.

[jekkareznikov]

I think that what people mean by saying "Pay to win" is regarding games that are designed with ways to pay to the developers (Or rather the publishers) of the game to skip designed grind to encourage you to pay to skip the grind designed by the developers themselves

[AcornElectron]

Final Fantasy a shining example of how to treat players. The game was a mess initially, so here’s a complete reboot that works and we’ll support it for years on end.

[sdc]

When mainstream MMOs came out I hated them because they sucked all of the oxygen out of single player games. I see p2w, micro-transations, battle passes, non-ownership, forced online, ftp, auto save, no pausing...all coming from the original sin of WoW. MMO gamer are all responsible for creating the modern games industry and I enjoy content that highlights how much they have to suffer for it.

[dzigawalker]

I haven't played MMORPGs for years for exactly these reason. I'm an old Spectrum/Amiga gamer where games seemed so much more tailored to an enjoyable experience despite low hardware specs of those days. These days I get more fun out of indie games than most AAA games. BG3 is a refreshing exception.