Salem is pay to win?

[Procne]

I am scared seeing how chief measures his fun from the game in amount of real-money damage he has done to other players

[ramuller]

I am scared seeing how chief measures his fun from the game in amount of real-money damage he has done to other players

I think you are missing his point. As I read it, he is showing how silly it is to think that the cash shop somehow allows you to win unless you don't mind spending huge amounts of cash whose effects can be so easily negated over and over again.

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Salem is very different from games that let you buy items that are better than those that are available in-game or which give you a significantly better chance to improve your character than those who don't buy them (I don't include things that just save play time since those just provide convenience). In Salem, purchased silver does very little other than save you time (ignoring the current problem of vendor booth purchase).

[G1real]

You can all argue how you don't get a super duper omega wtf advantage when buying things from the store, thing is, you still do get an advantage. Thus the game is pay to win. I don't care what argument you come up with like "the money to silver ratio is terrible" "you can't really get anything with silver alone" "the things you get with silver are common".

Thing is: The prioneer's pack saves a lot of time allowing you to do other things not buyable in the cash shop, if two equally new/learning capable players were to start at the same time and one were to spend money on the store, that one would certainly be ahead by some amount or other.

I don't understand why you're trying to defend against it, the fact is right there: You can pay, to gain an advantage, that itself is the very nature of pay to win. If people do not want it called pay to win, make a plea for the store to be only services and cosmetics.

Like a server transfer, the gender swap (jesus christ 8 euro for changing a flag on your character ), a name change (could perhaps be a little imbalanced and advantageous)

[ramuller]

You can all argue how you don't get a super duper omega wtf advantage when buying things from the store, thing is, you still do get an advantage. Thus the game is pay to win. I don't care what argument you come up with like "the money to silver ratio is terrible" "you can't really get anything with silver alone" "the things you get with silver are common".

Thing is: The prioneer's pack saves a lot of time allowing you to do other things not buyable in the cash shop, if two equally new/learning capable players were to start at the same time and one were to spend money on the store, that one would certainly be ahead by some amount or other.

I don't understand why you're trying to defend against it, the fact is right there: You can pay, to gain an advantage, that itself is the very nature of pay to win. If people do not want it called pay to win, make a plea for the store to be only services and cosmetics.

Like a server transfer, the gender swap (jesus christ 8 euro for changing a flag on your character ), a name change (could perhaps be a little imbalanced and advantageous)

The trouble with calling all of this "Play to Win" is that then we need another term for those games (Silkroad and many other F2P games come to mind) where the cash shop gives a real, lasting, endgame advantage to those players who buy things, be they

• weapons better than anything available in game or
• masses of upgrade crystals and buffs to make equipment work better, which are either not available in the game at all or are rare enough that those who don't pay for them can't compete in PvP at the high end

.

[jorb]

You can pay, to gain an advantage, that itself is the very nature of pay to win.

That is obviously not necessarily the case, though. I think what most people would mean by the term "pay to win" is precisely a game where you can pay money to avoid (more or less) *any* otherwise necessary step in the game structure, and not a game where you can pay to skip some. We have tried to be very careful to not sell raw power, and I think the present payment model is fairly generous in terms of not having detrimental in game effects.

But I'm obviously not going to argue a definition if that's what you intend this as. You can use the term however you like, but I don't think you are using it how most people would, and I don't think it's a very fruitful definition.

[Procne]

You can all argue how you don't get a super duper omega wtf advantage when buying things from the store, thing is, you still do get an advantage. Thus the game is pay to win. I don't care what argument you come up with like "the money to silver ratio is terrible" "you can't really get anything with silver alone" "the things you get with silver are common".

I don't understand why you're trying to defend against it, the fact is right there: You can pay, to gain an advantage, that itself is the very nature of pay to win. If people do not want it called pay to win, make a plea for the store to be only services and cosmetics.

No, the nature of "pay to win" is that you HAVE to pay if you want to win. You pay -> you win. You don't pay -> you don't win. Is WoW pay to win because you can use RAF to level up faster? No, because even though it gives you advantage, it's meaningless. Because it doesn't matter for the endgame at all.

In Salem, even if you spend 10000$ you are still nobody if you don't build your base and raise your skills. Silver doesn't matter in the endgame.

Thing is: The prioneer's pack saves a lot of time allowing you to do other things not buyable in the cash shop, if two equally new/learning capable players were to start at the same time and one were to spend money on the store, that one would certainly be ahead by some amount or other.

When 2 people start at the same time, and one gets 2h advantage - so what? This isn't some race. Does it matter in WoW that you level up to level 20 faster than some other guy? Especially when everyone is level 90?

[MagicManICT]

No, the nature of "pay to win" is that you HAVE to pay if you want to win. You pay -> you win. You don't pay -> you don't win. Is WoW pay to win because you can use RAF to level up faster? No, because even though it gives you advantage, it's meaningless. Because it doesn't matter for the endgame at all.

Bad example because you DO have to pay. You can't get past lvl 20 in WoW without paying.

Take Zynga's Poker room as an example. You get so many free chips and can always add extras by doing various things without paying, but if your sole goal is to have the most chips in the game, you're going to be playing a LOT of poker... or you can just buy thousands of dollars in chips and go straight to #1. That, in my book, is one definition of Pay to Win.

Another example is a game like Travian (haven't gone deep enough into some of the newer MMORTS games like Stronghold Kingdoms or Settlers Online to really get to know them). You can play your ass off in that game without paying a dime. You might even become part of one of the top alliances in the game, maybe even make it into the top 10% of players, but you'll never be able to crack that top spot, let alone "win" the game (by having built one of the ruins) without ponying up some money on a regular basis. (I think in the games history, there have been a few to get up there completely free, but it seemed just out of my reach over the approximately two years I played it.)

[Procne]

No, the nature of "pay to win" is that you HAVE to pay if you want to win. You pay -> you win. You don't pay -> you don't win. Is WoW pay to win because you can use RAF to level up faster? No, because even though it gives you advantage, it's meaningless. Because it doesn't matter for the endgame at all.

Bad example because you DO have to pay. You can't get past lvl 20 in WoW without paying.

I didn't even mean WoW trial. I meant full subscription WoW and the services you can buy for real money. Pay-to-win doesn't relate only to F2P games.
And while we're at it, WoW's trial doesn't even count as F2P, despite what the ads say.
The bottom line was that even if cash shop purchases may give you small boost or make things easier in specific situations it's not automatically pay-to-win.

If paying alone lets you win, or if winning is impossible without paying THEN it's pay-to-win

[MagicManICT]

The fact is that you still have to pay a $15 USD subscription every month (for North American players, not sure of the European subscription rate) to play the full game and not even going to mention buying the new expansions when they come out. That's what makes it a bad example. Sorry if I wasn't clear there.

[G1real]

You can pay, to gain an advantage, that itself is the very nature of pay to win.

That is obviously not necessarily the case, though. I think what most people would mean by the term "pay to win" is precisely a game where you can pay money to avoid (more or less) *any* otherwise necessary step in the game structure, and not a game where you can pay to skip some. We have tried to be very careful to not sell raw power, and I think the present payment model is fairly generous in terms of not having detrimental in game effects.

But I'm obviously not going to argue a definition if that's what you intend this as. You can use the term however you like, but I don't think you are using it how most people would, and I don't think it's a very fruitful definition.

I agree that you could lay off the discussion as semantics, especially to the masses, but let I remind you that people use the word "hack" very easily when an account was just compromised and nothing else.

As for your selling raw power argument: The store is relatively tame, I know that.

I didn't even mean WoW trial. I meant full subscription WoW and the services you can buy for real money. Pay-to-win doesn't relate only to F2P games.
And while we're at it, WoW's trial doesn't even count as F2P, despite what the ads say.
The bottom line was that even if cash shop purchases may give you small boost or make things easier in specific situations it's not automatically pay-to-win.

If paying alone lets you win, or if winning is impossible without paying THEN it's pay-to-win

If p2w is only when you can totally buy yourself to victory then no game is, and p2w is a moot term. Only few games do f2p right. To give two famous contrasting examples: Dota 2 does it right, League of Legends does it not.