Pay 2 Win Premium Tabs Features - why GGG lies

I think top ladder players got there because they have a crew of people helping them. Do you think that they would not be top ladder players if there was a league that limited everybody to the base 4 normal stash tabs? Do you really think there would be different people at the top of the ladders?
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@scrotie, @mark

The issue with your definitions of p2w is they aren't objective. When you talk too narrowly about what constitutes a win rather than is there a win at all using a much more universal measuring stick that assessment becomes only an opinion on that win, not an objective assessment if it is one.

Try to think of a yes/no win condition question that can apply to literally any game - this would be an example of an unbiased determining factor.
What bothers me most is that this system should have made item sale accessible to everyone. It didn't, because it was gated through a paywall.
I know it's not a huge paywall (5$, don't bother with the 1.5$ nonsense), but still. I am certain a lot of people would be putting interesting items for sale if there wasn't that barrier, which would have been beneficial to the player base.
"Players are content." Trade is an area where this holds particularly true, so gating it isn't a good thing, whether it is behind a paywall, third party programs, or simply extremely tedious methods that require you to use the forums.


To be clear about something: what makes standard tabs sale fine is that it is impossible to offer unlimited storage to the playerbase. Simply because you cannot have unlimited data storage to keep up with it. So there needs to be a limited amount of tabs available for each player, and offering them to get some extra by participating in the cost of that storage is a decent compromise.

In the case of the trade tabs, nothing justifies not making that content available to everyone (at least nothing that easily comes to my mind). I am convinced there were ways to make at least the most important parts of that change available to everyone (making a tab public and let players put a price on its content). I could be wrong, but I haven't seen GGG expressing anything on the matter, so I don't have any relevant information that could make me go their way.
I mean, the currency tab does show that they are able to make interesting QoL changes that many players would love to pay for, without adding new content that is gated behind a paywall.
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mark1030 wrote:
I think top ladder players got there because they have a crew of people helping them. Do you think that they would not be top ladder players if there was a league that limited everybody to the base 4 normal stash tabs? Do you really think there would be different people at the top of the ladders?
I imagine 60-90% of the top ladder spots wouldn't shift. There probably would be some minor movement, a +1 here, a -3 there. I doubt very much anyone would have a shift in excess of ten places.

However, what you're asking here isn't if it's p2w, but how much it's p2w. As far as the ladder ranking game goes, any MTX which can act as a tiebreaker, allowing a player to defeat another player who her be otherwise tied with, is p2w. If it is little more than that - a tiebreaker, a very slight advantage - it's only a little p2w. If an MTX allows a player to defeat those vastly more skilled and/or time-committed than they are, that's very p2w.

Now, if you were to say "well, that's a really minor effect, I don't think it's really that bad for the health of the game, and it makes GGG a shitload of money"... I would agree with you. There is a threshold of p2w which is acceptable.

However, any non-zero amount of p2w is p2w. One shouldn't claim to be utterly free of something they have only a little bit of. It's like a guy who advertises publicly that he's a vegan but you catch him eating bacon. Is the problem the bacon? Not really (it's doubtful he eats it to such excess as to cause health problems). The problem is in the claim.
When Stephen Colbert was killed by HYDRA's Project Insight in 2014, the comedy world lost a hero. Since his life model decoy isn't up to the task, please do not mistake my performance as political discussion. I'm just doing what Steve would have wanted.
Last edited by ScrotieMcB#2697 on Apr 3, 2016, 11:46:50 AM
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ScrotieMcB wrote:
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mark1030 wrote:
I say if you take screenshots of your character screens before and after clicking the buy premium tab button and those character screens don't change, it's not p2w.
I say any microtransaction which makes you more efficient at XP per hour, either directly or indirectly, is p2w. ...

Pay2Win isn't bad simply because somebody said so. It is bad for a reason. It is not bad, because it involves money transactions. It isn't bad, because somebody gets something for their money either. It has nothing to do with some players being jealous or wanting to deny others what they cannot have or cannot afford.

It is about the devaluation of past game play. Pay2Win is about avoiding effort, about avoiding to play the game. You pay to avoid playing the game, in order to progress faster, to gain more items, which then upsets those who have been playing for a long time and who've put a lot of effort into the game. Their past efforts are then being devalued, and that's bad. This is what it's about.

This is why stash tabs are classed as a convenience feature. These do not devalue anyone's time they've put into the game. Any loss people may perceive are merely subjective, possibly based on jealousy, greed or some other fault.
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greyspear wrote:
Pay2Win is about avoiding effort, about avoiding to play the game. You pay to avoid playing the game, in order to progress faster, to gain more items, which then upsets those who have been playing for a long time and who've put a lot of effort into the game. Their efforts are then being devalued. This is what it's about.
This is exactly what paid Public tabs do. Listing a forum thread (even with automation tools like Acquisition) was, until very recently, part of the game. You can now pay to avoid the effort put into that part of the game (not a huge amount of effort, but saved effort nevertheless), in order to progress faster, to gain more items, which should (slightly) upset those who still have to do it the old-fashioned way.
When Stephen Colbert was killed by HYDRA's Project Insight in 2014, the comedy world lost a hero. Since his life model decoy isn't up to the task, please do not mistake my performance as political discussion. I'm just doing what Steve would have wanted.
Last edited by ScrotieMcB#2697 on Apr 3, 2016, 12:00:41 PM
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GeorgAnatoly wrote:
@scrotie, @mark

The issue with your definitions of p2w is they aren't objective. When you talk too narrowly about what constitutes a win rather than is there a win at all using a much more universal measuring stick that assessment becomes only an opinion on that win, not an objective assessment if it is one.

Try to think of a yes/no win condition question that can apply to literally any game - this would be an example of an unbiased determining factor.


Anything that change the behaviour of the game on the server is P2W. There could be also some P2W features that does not change the behaviour on the server but are P2W (example: a fanfare on the client when an exalt drops)
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ScrotieMcB wrote:
It's like a guy who advertises publicly that he's a vegan but you catch him eating bacon. Is the problem the bacon? Not really (it's doubtful he eats it to such excess as to cause health problems). The problem is in the claim.
This is slightly off-topic, but I feel obliged to mention that I believe any health problems incurred due to excessive bacon consumption are totally worth it.
When Stephen Colbert was killed by HYDRA's Project Insight in 2014, the comedy world lost a hero. Since his life model decoy isn't up to the task, please do not mistake my performance as political discussion. I'm just doing what Steve would have wanted.
Last edited by ScrotieMcB#2697 on Apr 3, 2016, 12:05:57 PM
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ScrotieMcB wrote:
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greyspear wrote:
Pay2Win is about avoiding effort, about avoiding to play the game. You pay to avoid playing the game, in order to progress faster, to gain more items, which then upsets those who have been playing for a long time and who've put a lot of effort into the game. Their efforts are then being devalued. This is what it's about.
This is exactly what paid Public tabs do. Listing a forum thread (even with automation tools like Acquisition) was, until very recently, part of the game. You can now pay to avoid the effort put into that part of the game (not a huge amount of effort, but saved effort nevertheless), in order to progress faster, to gain more items, which should (slightly) upset those who still have to do it the old-fashioned way.

No, wrong. You can still list your items and more importantly, you could have done so in the past.

You haven't lost any of your past time and efforts you've spend on the game.

What you then do with it, or don't do, in the future is entirely your problem and not the game maker's. That's probably what you don't get. It's not about what you can do, but what you did do and that your past efforts retain their value. That a game can change and that it changes for all isn't the problem however.
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HellGauss wrote:
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GeorgAnatoly wrote:
@scrotie, @mark

The issue with your definitions of p2w is they aren't objective. When you talk too narrowly about what constitutes a win rather than is there a win at all using a much more universal measuring stick that assessment becomes only an opinion on that win, not an objective assessment if it is one.

Try to think of a yes/no win condition question that can apply to literally any game - this would be an example of an unbiased determining factor.


Anything that change the behaviour of the game on the server is P2W. There could be also some P2W features that does not change the behaviour on the server but are P2W (example: a fanfare on the client when an exalt drops)


Not super sure what this has to do specifically with what I said. But in general a good determiner of what is p2w that would apply to any game would be something like 'does it increase the ability to progress in the game?'. Doesn't matter if it's direct, indirect, has diminishing returns, player skill dependent or whether it applies to gold/exp/items etc.
Last edited by GeorgAnatoly#4189 on Apr 3, 2016, 12:33:42 PM

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