Is DE starting to turn in the direction of P2W?

[RX-3DR]

1 hour ago, Bioness said:

You can prepare in advance to purchase new champions in League of Legends as soon as they come out without paying money. You cannot do that in Warframe and in fact without paying platinum are made to wait 3 and a half days before accessing new frames.

They have different models of gameplay so the comparison is not quite right. Ultimately, the similarity here is that you can spend no money to get Gauss, who is just recently released much like how you can spend no money to unlock any Champion that was recently released. However, Warframe generally starts people off on a more level footing where an old player will still have to play whatever new mission while League of Legends completely favors the old-stockpiler who has played the games for years and have every champion unlocked. This is because of the gameplay model of introducing new content to obtain specific equipment. League of Legends cannot afford such a model because it does not introduce champions with an accompanying game mode for you to obtain said Champion.

The way you're using the term Pay-To-Win makes absolutely no sense when you're making this comparison. The general consensus when it comes to pay to win, PvE or PvP, is that paying money grants you an numerical advantage, not granting you access 3 days sooner or later. Usually, we only look at time when it reaches into the extremes such as making 50 billion Gold over 40 hours to afford a costume piece that gives you extra stats that someone can buy for $8. Even then, this is still often tied to a tangible advantage rather than choice. You might have a point if new frames and weapons are direct upgrades from older equipment but that's not the case.

[KIREEK]

None of that is P2W, platinum is pretty much farmable even for newer players so everything becomes futile to farm directly, so you can play your favorite nodes nonsop and then trade what you found for plat, enabling you to buy the lens and aura forma.

However, depending on how you look at the P2W, i'm sure you will find negative steam reviews from many years ago that state the game is P2W, you see, not everyone agrees what that term is, so there is a minority that trully believe the game is p2w since the game is grindy and forces you to buy content directly, like neurodes and endo, 2 very hard things to farm.

Yes yes i know it's not that hard, but for those that don't know any better and don't place any effort into the game, the game from the very 1st tutorial mission, is P2W, just because they feel like it

[(PSN)Midcall]

Am 31.8.2019 um 16:57 schrieb DarkRuler2500:

I doubt it... you can really easy farm those too.
I had 7 Aura Formas before and only spend 2 in the frames so far. I kind of like the "possibility" in case of RNG not liking you.

yeah same here.  used 2, one for nekros one for chroma. i ve build 6 another and could build 5 more. but since they cost 4 forma i ll do it when i need. i honestly would not know where to put them. i changed my aura on all frames before , mostly naramon. where did u put yours in ?

[(PSN)Midcall]

Am 31.8.2019 um 18:30 schrieb fatpig84:

Aura forma ? I even forgot those exists lol and have a bunch of them laying around.

The only aura worth running is CP anyway in endgame, since all enemies can gain armor now, even Corpus.
Energy siphon is too weak, the classic rejuv and physique deal too little. Radar mods help for sneaking spy mission... But there is Ivara and Primed Animal Instinct so...
Steel Charge only matters if your frame has no forma and need all the points it needs (but if you are formaing soon, that doesn't matter), otherwise it is either Power donation / Growing Power.

I supposed the only reason why you want an aura forma is for certain frames like Nova, so you can make super speed enemies with Power donation (V) without losing your natural (-) power slot.

 

Hey. can u give me some info about armor on corpus ? first time i hear this. havent found anything useful in wiki. thank you very much.

[Alpha_Tango]

On 2019-08-31 at 7:54 AM, Knight_Ex said:

Wooo, touchy subject I know, but in light of the recent update and looking at the store, aura forma bundle and eidolon lenses, doesn't seem that big of a deal? However these are extremely rare drops in the game, because people were complaining DE decided to appease the wallet warriors, we already have boosters in game, and I understand the argument of P2W in a PVE game not being relevant however there are people that dedicate time and effort into farming these things, for DE to just pop them on the store and says "Hey guys, give us money and we will give you these rare drops", is quite a bit disheartening, not because I don't want this available to other people, I just don't want to see a habit of DE meeting complaints with "Oh lets just throw it on the store", whats next? Umbra forma?

You don't need to look far to set an example. From the start, we are conditioned to buy weapon slots, WF slots, forma, resource bundles etc. They are rare for newbies to consider and is easily fair game to be labeled P2W elements  But if you can grind for it and there are other options available to earn them (e.g. trade with Platinum), then I seriously doubt they are or will ever be P2W as long as those conditions stay the same.

On 2019-08-31 at 9:12 AM, Goodwill said:

I'd definitely say Warframe is more pay to lose unless you like cosmetics. Then hopefully your vanity will comfort you in your loss.

So true. It is odd, sometimes I feel guilty to be able to buy anything with platinum hoarded from trading. All I ever do is enjoy playing the game. The whole platinum system is just too good and exploitable that it can be both the bane and boon of DE's existence. Those Aura bundles selling for 80 plat is a reasonable currency sink. I doubt it will make a dent to any players coffers who also play the market. 

Edited September 4, 2019 by Alpha_Tango

[SneakyErvin]

6 hours ago, Bioness said:

You can prepare in advance to purchase new champions in League of Legends as soon as they come out without paying money. You cannot do that in Warframe and in fact without paying platinum are made to wait 3 and a half days before accessing new frames.

You are comparing a PvP only game to a PvE only game. That simply doesnt work. And as you said in an earlier post, WF falls on the low end of the P2W spectrum. That just isnt possible. Either something is P2W or it isnt, there is no upper or lower mark on it. If the game isnt P2W then you apply the appropriate term to it, terms that were around far longer than P2W, terms that were and are still used even though the P2W term became a thing.

The pure PvE games out there that deserve to suffer the P2W stamp are so very few and far in between and WF doesnt belong in the same ballpark, city, planet or galaxy.

[SordidDreams]

22 hours ago, kuciol said:

According to your (wrong) definition there isnt a single game out there that isnt pay 2 win and thats just silly. 

Nonsense, there's plenty of such games.

21 hours ago, mikakor said:

Can we agree that there is a spectrum of severity for P2W ? Star wars Battlefront II = on the highest of high, needing thousands of hours to get everything

 

Warframe, often cited as the best example of F2P = very low, and after around 100 hours, if you were playing seriously, you can already have a set Warframe/Primary/Secondary/Melee that will shred most content of the game with relative ease, with clear cut chances of getting something, with clear places where to get them...

 

Well, you get my point. Can we call Warframe pay to win? I wouldn't be from that perspective, but... If it has to, it's clearly on the lowest spectrum, along with PoE

It's definitely a spectrum, and yes, WF is quite low on it in comparison to some other games, but I don't think it's low enough. Unfortunately I don't think you can completely avoid P2W or pay-to-skip in a F2P model. Cosmetics alone are not enough to bring in the revenue that's needed to support a game dev studio.

And the problem with pay-to-skip is that it warps the design of the game. People keep complaining that kuva is too tedious and boring to farm. Of course it is, the whole point of it is to sell resource boosters. It has to be frustrating and unsatisfying, otherwise players would have no reason to pay real money to skip it (or at least half of it). Nobody would pay extra to have less fun. So while a pay-to-play game has the designer thinking about how to make the game as fun as possible to entice people to pay for it, a F2P game designer is thinking about how to make the game simultaneously addicting, so people won't just leave it, and annoying, so they'll pay to not have to play it (as much).

I've realized what the true king of online game business models is. EVE Online. It's pay-to-play, but you can also use in-game trade to extend your subscription. It's the best of both worlds, you can play for free if you're good enough (much like vets in WF don't need to buy plat anymore, they just trade for it), but it doesn't have any of the F2P bullsh*t that comes as a result of basing your entire business model on having players pay to not have to play your game.

Edited September 4, 2019 by SordidDreams

[mikakor]

1 hour ago, SordidDreams said:

pay-to-skip

I find the pay-to-skip in Warframe pretty fair, actually. The time needed Versus Reward ration is often amazing. 24 hour to build the monsters that are Tiberon Prime, Ignis Wraith and Amprex, which destroys everything? Worth it.

3 days for Saryn, a beautiful monster of scaling and good design which will bubonic plague the entire map , no matter the level?

 

I mean, pay to skip sucks, yes, but you can't deny that in Warframe, the waiting isn't so harsh, when you know that what you'll get us god damn terrifyingly good ^^

 

As for the kuva... T-T I'm pretty sure that if Kuva was earned is GOOD amount, like, a rotation 10 and above in disruption gives you 1550, and with a booster, you get the double, or enough to make a riven roll, there would be WAY MORE people willing to buy for booster ( I know I would, because I would want to get literally a roll at each rotation, which would made me stuck in the mode for... Ever? XD )

[Kaotyke]

I'm just coming to the thread to wonder how this is still going.

OP raised a contraversial topic, which I'm pretty sure was done before by the same person, aside from doomsaying, and bailed.

[Volinus7]

P2W is really an outdated term. 

[SordidDreams]

14 minutes ago, mikakor said:

I find the pay-to-skip in Warframe pretty fair, actually. The time needed Versus Reward ration is often amazing. 24 hour to build the monsters that are Tiberon Prime, Ignis Wraith and Amprex, which destroys everything? Worth it.

3 days for Saryn, a beautiful monster of scaling and good design which will bubonic plague the entire map , no matter the level?

 

I mean, pay to skip sucks, yes, but you can't deny that in Warframe, the waiting isn't so harsh, when you know that what you'll get us god damn terrifyingly good ^^

 

As for the kuva... T-T I'm pretty sure that if Kuva was earned is GOOD amount, like, a rotation 10 and above in disruption gives you 1550, and with a booster, you get the double, or enough to make a riven roll, there would be WAY MORE people willing to buy for booster ( I know I would, because I would want to get literally a roll at each rotation, which would made me stuck in the mode for... Ever? XD )

True, for guns and frames it feels okay. That's an excellent point, thank you for making it. It seems to me the reason for that is that guns and frames are a one-time thing, you only need one of each such item. So by having a build timer, the pay-to-skip model feels similar to pay-to-play, because you're paying to be able to play with them already, because you want to play.

In contrast, kuva farming is perpetual. If you want to roll rivens, there's no such thing as "enough" kuva, so you have to keep farming it, and it becomes tedious and boring pretty quickly. So there you really are paying to not have to play (as much), because you don't want to. Call me old-fashioned, but I think games should be a fun activity that you want to do. A game (or game mode) so unfun that you'd pay money to not have to play it? Sounds like a bad game to me, and not something I'd want to make if I were a game dev. My #1 suggestion for improving WF as a whole would be to get rid of boosters entirely and halve resource requirements on everything.

Edited September 4, 2019 by SordidDreams

[kuciol]

9 hours ago, Bioness said:

You can prepare in advance to purchase new champions in League of Legends as soon as they come out without paying money. You cannot do that in Warframe and in fact without paying platinum are made to wait 3 and a half days before accessing new frames.

Of course you can, just trade for plat. Thats the difference between Warframe and other games. Premium currency is main currency. I dont care that "somebody has to buy it" if game gives you access to it without paying it cant be P2W. What shop sells has nothing to do with it. Also whats is there to "win" in warframe? You gain absolutely nothing by having something faster. In LoL you gain direct advantage and farming for new champion takes month not  3 or 4 days.

2 hours ago, SordidDreams said:

Nonsense, there's plenty of such games.

Prove it. I dont know about a single game without at very least exp booster.

[cmacq]

1 hour ago, SordidDreams said:

My #1 suggestion for improving WF as a whole would be to get rid of boosters entirely and halve resource requirements on everything.

What then would be your #1 suggestion for DE to make money to keep the game going? It has to come from somewhere...

[SordidDreams]

On 2019-09-03 at 4:07 PM, kuciol said:

According to your (wrong) definition there isnt a single game out there that isnt pay 2 win and thats just silly. 

45 minutes ago, kuciol said:

I dont know about a single game without at very least exp booster.

Skyrim.

30 minutes ago, cmacq said:

What then would be your #1 suggestion for DE to make money to keep the game going? It has to come from somewhere...

They already said the big piece of cheese for them is Prime Access.

[DeMonkey]

2 minutes ago, SordidDreams said:

Skyrim.

You had to pay for Skyrim, as well as any DLC (which includes gameplay items) with real money.

[SordidDreams]

2 minutes ago, DeMonkey said:

You had to pay for Skyrim, as well as any DLC (which includes gameplay items) with real money.

No, you didn't. Arr.

[DeMonkey]

1 minute ago, SordidDreams said:

Arr.

I'm not going to say you have a point, but that did get a chuckle out of me so fair play.

[SneakyErvin]

1 hour ago, SordidDreams said:

True, for guns and frames it feels okay. That's an excellent point, thank you for making it. It seems to me the reason for that is that guns and frames are a one-time thing, you only need one of each such item. So by having a build timer, the pay-to-skip model feels similar to pay-to-play, because you're paying to be able to play with them already, because you want to play.

In contrast, kuva farming is perpetual. If you want to roll rivens, there's no such thing as "enough" kuva, so you have to keep farming it, and it becomes tedious and boring pretty quickly. So there you really are paying to not have to play (as much), because you don't want to. Call me old-fashioned, but I think games should be a fun activity that you want to do. A game (or game mode) so unfun that you'd pay money to not have to play it? Sounds like a bad game to me, and not something I'd want to make if I were a game dev. My #1 suggestion for improving WF as a whole would be to get rid of boosters entirely and halve resource requirements on everything.

What you bring up are only issues when it comes to the power gamers, those that need to have the absolutely highest yield of rewards per hours spent. Most people dont actually care about that and when you look at it, Kuva is pretty decent to get when you compare it to endgame currency of most other games (including sub based games). You spend about as much time grinding Kuva without a booster for a single reroll as you do farming mats in D3 to reroll/gamble one single item. Both end up with RNG results. Have you ever tried solo self-found play in Path of Exile? You'd wish you were rerolling rivens and grinding kuva instead. Ever tried to get the right runes for BiS runewords in D2 or Marvel Heroes? You'd beg for unboosted kuva farming in the end. To give you a little example. I played Marvel Heroes for nearly 4 years, during that time I managed to find 4 Tyr, 1 Zod and a handful of Thor runes. That was with a roster of 60+ heroes. Tyr runes were used for both some of the best runewords aswell as BiS "left and right hand" enchants. Each requiring 1 rune. Well you can obviously do the math regarding how many heroes I could possibly gear out with that amount of runes. Did I dislike the system? Heck no! It really gave both the enchants/runewords an actual impact and something of a thrill when you were able to make them. Plus you were always on the hunt for those things.

No one knows what the drop rates would look like if boosters werent available. They likely wouldnt be higher because they are already in the general spot where most rare drops and currencies are in other arpgs and even regular rpgs.

People also seem to forget that everything is obtainable 100% free in WF if you just decide on grinding the currency needed, not very unlike how everything is free in a subgame aslong as you bother to grind the in-game currencies (copper, silver, gold, tokens and so on.) or materials.

[kuciol]

33 minutes ago, SordidDreams said:

Skyrim.

They already said the big piece of cheese for them is Prime Access.

Skyrim is a single player B2P game. It also has DLC so by your definition its still P2W.

[SordidDreams]

30 minutes ago, kuciol said:

Skyrim is a single player B2P game. It also has DLC so by your definition its still P2W.

I think you fundamentally, and most likely wilfully, misunderstand my definition, then.

48 minutes ago, SneakyErvin said:

What you bring up are only issues when it comes to the power gamers, those that need to have the absolutely highest yield of rewards per hours spent.

Yes, which in a looter/farmer game like WF is going to be the majority of players. A game filled with rich lore and expansive environments to explore like Skyrim, this ain't. Grinding mats and optimizing your build is the only thing there is in WF.

48 minutes ago, SneakyErvin said:

You spend about as much time grinding Kuva without a booster for a single reroll as you do farming mats in D3 to reroll/gamble one single item.

Not even close. Also, D3 allows you targeted crafting that significantly reduces the RNG, letting you roll a specific stat while preserving others, something that DE is virulently opposed to.

48 minutes ago, SneakyErvin said:

Have you ever tried solo self-found play in Path of Exile?

Yes, I did, and I gave up very quickly. But I also hate having to trade for everything, a problem that the D3 AH suffered from, where you'd just farm for gold and buy items instead of finding them. So I gave up on the game entirely. My #1 suggestion for improving PoE would be to up the drop rates of everything by a couple orders of magnitude in SSF and disable SSF-to-Standard transfer.

48 minutes ago, SneakyErvin said:

No one knows what the drop rates would look like if boosters werent available. They likely wouldnt be higher because they are already in the general spot where most rare drops and currencies are in other arpgs and even regular rpgs.

I disagree. The couple games you menioned hardly qualify as "most".

48 minutes ago, SneakyErvin said:

People also seem to forget that everything is obtainable 100% free in WF if you just decide on grinding the currency needed

Technically yes, but in a completely unreasonable amount of time.

Edited September 4, 2019 by SordidDreams

[kuciol]

1 minute ago, SordidDreams said:

I think you fundamentally, and most likely wilfully, misunderstand my definition, then.

Your definiton is having any gameplay impacting items be sold for rl money being P2W. In Skyrim you must shell out money to even start playing + items are locked behind payed DLC therefore its P2W.

[kuciol]

3 minutes ago, SordidDreams said:

Technically yes, but in a completely unreasonable amount of time.

Buahahahahaha. Unreasonable? Have you ever played any game?

[SordidDreams]

2 minutes ago, kuciol said:

Your definiton is having any gameplay impacting items be sold for rl money being P2W. In Skyrim you must shell out money to even start playing + items are locked behind payed DLC therefore its P2W.

I see I was right.

[kuciol]

Just now, SordidDreams said:

I see I was right.

I see you are trolling.

[Bioness]

10 hours ago, Volinus7 said:

P2W is really an outdated term. 

That video describes Warframes business strategy within the first 5 minutes and even points out that "pay for convenience" is possibly more insidious than "pay to win" because it isn't so obvious.

Edited September 5, 2019 by Bioness