Why shouldn't this game be pay to win ?

[Futurehero]

Just now, Letter13 said:

The arguments are 100% valid.

Pay to win means content only obtainable through real world money. Not platinum. Like guns or frames only available through Prime Access.

Items that are platinum only are not pay to win, precisely because platinum can be traded between paying and non-paying players.

Pay to win items would be items that are impossible to obtain without the expenditure of real world money; it is the concept that a paying player can have a quantifiable and unobtainable advantage over nonpaying players in competitiveness.

So then you would agree with what I proposed in the original post?

Also, as I posted above, they already done that with the premium extractors that give double the resources and have more chance to drop rare resources, in the Rhino Prime pack. How useful that is to people is up for debate, but it is an advantage.

[PoopManZ]

Just now, Bleak-Knight said:

In the beginning you were saying that this weapon be bought 300 platinum. Trust me. Only a complete idiot would buy a weapon 300 plat. You can get Sancti Tigris for sooo much cheaper and does more damage. (It also has syndicate proc)

  Hide contents

This is bait.

 

His next step in his plan is nerf all these other weapons.

[TrueHawkEye]

58 minutes ago, Futurehero said:

So, what if DE decided to release Sentient guns that deal 5k damage per hit and are full auto, and can only be bought for 300 platinum ? Would that really be a problem ?

-You can trade a lot of things for platinum, so at the end of the day, platinum just becomes another thing you can grind for.

-In fact, a lot of veterans are probably sitting on buckets of the stuff, earned JUST by trading.

-Since not everyone can afford a 300 platinum gun, you probably won't see everyone in Pub plays with this .

 

Honestly, except the knee-jerk reaction that people have to the term "pay to win", is there any argument as to why this couldn't be a thing? It would certainly make DE a lot of money, and players can still technically get this weapon for free through trading. 

 

well everything in the game can be gotten for free. Just might to take a little while to get it.

you can trade parts and items for the item or parts your looking for

this point here yes, I know I am sitting on buckets of stuff mostly items don't like to have a lot of plat (personal reasons)

its more of a pay to advance faster/not wait, not really to win

[Bleak-Knight]

1 minute ago, PoopManZ said:

His next step in his plan is nerf all these other weapons.

He shall make Sheev and Machete seem like great weapons when everything is nerfed.

[Letter13]

4 minutes ago, Futurehero said:

So then you would agree with what I proposed in the original post?

Also, as I posted above, they already done that with the premium extractors that give double the resources and have more chance to drop rare resources, in the Rhino Prime pack. How useful that is to people is up for debate, but it is an advantage.

No, because it is still a terrible idea, and your reasoning (such as how it would somehow fix enemy scaling or that paying players should be allowed to trivialize raids or challenges) is full of so many holes it could probably pass for Swiss cheese.

And premium extractors do not give paying players a competitive edge over non-paying players in game. Pay-to-win means paying players have an unobtainable and quantifiable advantage in competitiveness over non-paying players, be it through PvP or in their ability to make PvE enemies more dead-er than non-paying players.

[PoopManZ]

1 minute ago, Bleak-Knight said:

He shall make Sheev and Machete seem like great weapons when everything is nerfed.

More like make Lato a viable choice if this idea would ever be actually useful.

[Aurea_Hiigara]

Because "H T1 Exterminate, have PaidUberGun or GTFO".

That would be the very negative side of the pay-to-win coin. Anyone that DOESN'T pay to win essentially stops getting invited to groups. You think the meta is bad NOW? Imagine how it will be once guns like that are in the game.

[Futurehero]

Just now, Letter13 said:

No, because it is still a terrible idea.

And premium extractors do not give paying players a competitive edge over non-paying players in game.

No they don't , cause this isn't a competitive game.  They let you get stuff faster. 

A gun that does 1 million damage for 300 plat (or whatever values work for you) lets you run missions faster so you can get stuff faster .  In the context of Warframe, it's stil pay to skip. You're not killing anyone with that weapon in conclave, you're using it in a co-op mission to grind for stuff.

[Letter13]

Just now, Aurea_Hiigara said:

Because "H T1 Exterminate, have PaidUberGun or GTFO".

That would be the very negative side of the pay-to-win coin. Anyone that DOESN'T pay to win essentially stops getting invited to groups. You think the meta is bad NOW? Imagine how it will be once guns like that are in the game.

Therein rests my point regarding paying vs. non-paying discrimination. This is by far one of the biggest reasons why Pay-to-win is a terrible idea. It would turn the community toxic against itself.

[Bleak-Knight]

1 minute ago, Futurehero said:

No they don't , cause this isn't a competitive game.  They let you get stuff faster. 

A gun that does 1 million damage for 300 plat (or whatever values work for you) lets you run missions faster so you can get stuff faster .  In the context of Warframe, it's stil pay to skip. You're not killing anyone with that weapon in conclave, you're using it in a co-op mission to grind for stuff.

Why would it be fun to have no challenge whatsoever? Sorties would be a joke if such a weapon existed.

[Futurehero]

2 minutes ago, Aurea_Hiigara said:

Because "H T1 Exterminate, have PaidUberGun or GTFO".

That would be the very negative side of the pay-to-win coin. Anyone that DOESN'T pay to win essentially stops getting invited to groups. You think the meta is bad NOW? Imagine how it will be once guns like that are in the game.

I don't see "H T 4 Ext, Tonkor/Sancti Tigris or GTFO" in invite now, why do you think that will happen ?  

[Vali]

Just now, Futurehero said:

No they don't , cause this isn't a competitive game.  They let you get stuff faster. 

A gun that does 1 million damage for 300 plat (or whatever values work for you) lets you run missions faster so you can get stuff faster .  In the context of Warframe, it's stil pay to skip. You're not killing anyone with that weapon in conclave, you're using it in a co-op mission to grind for stuff.

This will bring issues when going to endgame situations like Sorties/ Raids, people will be discriminate you for not having paid weapons. I can see it already "H> Raid, UberGun users only." 

[(PSN)Rakiokon]

(I will be very thankful to the mods, if this topic isn't locked by the time I finish this post...)

So, here's the real question:  If you can shell out some cash to win the game forever, then why the hell would you even play the game in the first place?

For bragging rights?  No one's going to put you on a pedestal for digging out your credit card.

For 'fun'?  Really, how fun can it be to roflstomp everything in the game, over and over again, with zero challenge?  Especially when you took zero effort to get to that point...  If you want to play a game to feel like an untouchable god of death, there are plenty of games out there for you, especially indie-iPhone apps.  And guess what?  Many of them are, in fact, pay to win.  (In fact, it's those same P2W-trash apps that have made it so my friends absolutely refuse to pick up Warframe, 'because it's a free game, which means it's Freemium, and Pay to win.'  P2W isn't exactly an appealing thing to people who actually like to play video games.)

I know I can't speak for everyone, but when I play a game, I want to actually play the game, and not look at a menu screen with a bunch of numbers, that show me how theoretically powerful I am.  I like to be challenged, so I can learn, overcome, and adapt.  To me, that is fun.  And I know I'm certainly not alone.

Case in point:  After many years playing Diablo 2, I simply couldn't stand the that I absolutely adored game any longer, by the end.  Why?  Because literally no one was actually playing the game anymore.  Every single game that opened up was either rush runs for fast leveling, or "I made/am making a new character, give me free stuff/trade me end-game gear."  What happened to all the players after they rushed through the game to max level, got their ideal set of gear, and were at the absolute pinnacle of min-maxed power?  Well, they stopped playing.  There was nothing to do anymore, apart from start the grind all over again, which some did, but many did not.  I bet you could ask anyone who played Diablo 2, what the story of the game was, or what are some significant events even, and 90% of them would give you a blank stare.

Funny thing is, this exact same thing happened with one of my friends on Warframe, when I first started over on PS4.  He sat and grinded for stuff to trade for plat, until he had his perfect god-mode setup, and then he just stopped playing.  He wasn't interested in increasing MR, or getting weapons that weren't as powerful as the ones he already had.  He had zero reason left to play the game, because he could complete anything in the game with next to no effort, and saw no reason to keep playing.

Yes, there are always going to be issues with balance.  It's human nature to want to do things as efficiently as possible.  We're intelligent creatures, like that.  But the thing is, at least in Warframe, in order to get to that point, you still have to put in some sort of effort.  Be it social effort, to trade for all the gear you want, or actual game-time effort, grinding and building it from the ground up.  Not to mention that DE actually cares about this game, and the players.  They want people to have fun, and be challenged, and have a reason to keep playing.  And for more reasons than just so they can get a paycheck.  Even so, people do still get burnt out, for lack of anything worthwhile to do, besides grind.

If you put in a 'pay to win forever' method, I guarantee you that 90% of new players will bite, and stop playing the game after two weeks, and most of the vets will follow shortly thereafter.  In the end, it won't be just a case of burnout.  There will be a massive pay spike for the devs, in people buying this 'win forever button', and then the revenue will completely dry out.  People will stop playing the game en masse, and Warframe will become as barren as the current star chart past Saturn/Jupiter.  The game will die.

If you just give people the ability to bypass playing the game, then they might as well not play the game at all.  That is the problem with pay to win.

[AurumandArgentum]

1 minute ago, PoopManZ said:

More like make Lato a viable choice if this idea would ever be actually useful.

You mean Sicarous

 

Just now, Futurehero said:

No they don't , cause this isn't a competitive game.  They let you get stuff faster. 

A gun that does 1 million damage for 300 plat (or whatever values work for you) lets you run missions faster so you can get stuff faster .  In the context of Warframe, it's stil pay to skip. You're not killing anyone with that weapon in conclave, you're using it in a co-op mission to grind for stuff.

Future, It's time to stop and sit down, the community hates this idea, let it die and don't bait again mate.

Seriously this idea is disgusting and you misspellt absolutely bloody trivial. Because that's what this gun would be, hard sortie mission DW GUYS I GOT THE P2W GOD GUN.

This idea is bad, get over it.

[Azrael]

Just now, Bleak-Knight said:

Why would it be fun to have no challenge whatsoever? Sorties would be a joke if such a weapon existed.

You're missing the really sinister part of this. DE could then buff the enemies to make the new gun relevant, making other weapons LESS relevant. Thus, you have to pay in order to stay relevant at all. When the only way to progress or complete missions is to pay up, you know you have truly entered... the pay2win zone.

[Letter13]

5 minutes ago, Futurehero said:

No they don't , cause this isn't a competitive game.  They let you get stuff faster. 

A gun that does 1 million damage for 300 plat (or whatever values work for you) lets you run missions faster so you can get stuff faster .  In the context of Warframe, it's stil pay to skip. You're not killing anyone with that weapon in conclave, you're using it in a co-op mission to grind for stuff.

It very much is a competitive game. Why do you think we have % damage dealt, # enemies killed and % damage received in the end of mission results?

The competitive nature of the game exists in whether or not you're as (or more) efficient at killing the enemies as your teammates.

I can guarantee you that a non-paying player would up and quit the game VERY fast if paying players sprint through missions like a tornado without giving non-paying players a chance to get kills or do anything at all (read: trivializing content).

It also (as I previously mention) creates discrimination and toxic attitudes between non-paying and paying players; non-paying players would be excluded from high level content because they won't be invited to it ( "Hosting LOR Raid HARD MODE, must have uber$$$gun to get invite!" ).

[DeMonkey]

15 minutes ago, Letter13 said:

The arguments are 100% valid.

Actually, they're not valid at all.

Yes you can trade for platinum in the game, but someone has still purchased it. If we all stopped buying plat, and just tried to get it from trade it would dry up within a few days. No more plat for anyone. Invalid argument.

DE made prime gear better than normal gear to entice people to buy, why not do something similar now? Apart from Excal P and extractors hardly anyone ever uses, every single prime has been obtainable in game for free. Invalid argument.

I understand you're a com mod and you've gotta be polite, but still.

Never mind, you were saying yours were valid, not his. Whoopsie.

Edited June 19, 2016 by DeMonkey

[Bleak-Knight]

Just now, Lord_Azrael said:

You're missing the really sinister part of this. DE could then buff the enemies to make the new gun relevant, making other weapons LESS relevant. Thus, you have to pay in order to stay relevant at all. When the only way to progress or complete missions is to pay up, you know you have truly entered... the pay2win zone.

Ah yes. Thank you for pointing that out! ^^

[Dumfing]

If there was a blueprint for this hypothetical weapon we'd be okay with it.

 

Warframes current model that rewards players for their work is solid and has elevated it to where it is today. If you look at steam's top 4 play for free games (the ones I've played), the one thing in common with all of them is that they allow you to be the best player possible without the need to interact with others or pay money, instead of forcing players to buy the god tier weapon, they allow you to access the entire game without money but give you the option to use money if you want cosmetics or a slightly accelerated leveling experience. But in the end, what they all do the same is allow every single person, no matter how much money they have, to be on the same level as each other.

[PrVonTuckIII]

Well answer me this. Currently, what sets Warframe apart from many similar games? The fact that literally everything short of Prime Accessories can be obtained for free. Either through a little work, or by being good at trade. 

Now, let's get a bit more specific. Currently, you're giving off the air of a noob who has a huge wallet, and is used to playing 'Korean MMOs' as the saying goes. You're used to being able to rush through the game simply by dumping a few hundred bucks on it. Well, you want that here? 

Over my dead body.

Look, you're going to get a lot of salt for saying this stuff:

57 minutes ago, Futurehero said:

-This game is Co-op. You're not going against someone who is paying for better gear, in fact, them being in your party is only a benefit.

False logic. Co-op isn't an excuse to let people simply pay their way to the top of the leaderboards. Lemme tell you, you will not enjoy a MR[insert high number here] running into your mission with a [insert cheese 'Frame] with [insert cheese weapons] and simply 100% killing everything while you trail behind. It's braindead boring and stupid.

1 hour ago, Futurehero said:

-You can trade a lot of things for platinum, so at the end of the day, platinum just becomes another thing you can grind for.

Wrong. You can get 90% of the stuff (or 100% of the important stuff) in the game simply by working. The other 10% constitutes cosmetics and whatnot. Also, you don't really grind out plat. Plat takes skill to acquire on trade in large amounts.

1 hour ago, Futurehero said:

-In fact, a lot of veterans are probably sitting on buckets of the stuff, earned JUST by trading.

I don't even know how this is a valid point by any measure.

1 hour ago, Futurehero said:

-This would finally put an end to the enemy scaling problem .

Again, this makes literally no sense as an arguable point.

1 hour ago, Futurehero said:

-Whoever thinks those weapons are too much, can simply not use them. This same thing is said about things like the Tonkor, or Ember. So why would this be different.

Bad point. Tonkor and Ember are completely free to get. It's optional because you can still get them as easily as any other item in the game. Whereas for your hypothetical 'super-weapon only available by paying $$$,' you're basically nerfing everyone who doesn't pay money. Also, you're going to be creating a rift in the community between the players who pay to get the good weapons, and those who simply work hard. This is screaming to me that you're a player who wants to be special because they have a big wallet.

1 hour ago, Futurehero said:

-Since not everyone can afford a 300 platinum gun, you probably won't see everyone in Pub plays with this .

Except for all the players like you who P2W their way through, amiright? And FYI, for anyone with the ability to play high level Void and can get the parts, as well as is decent at trade, 300 plat isn't amazingly hard. 

That's not the point, anyways. You're basically asking to be elite because you have money, once again.

1 hour ago, Futurehero said:

-People finally have an option to easily finish raids.

Bruh, do you even Trinity/Nova/Cheese? Do you even realize how insipid your logic is right now? Raid are hard, so we'll make a P2W weapon that only wallet-warriors can access? Guess what? 2 dozen such weapons already exist, and are completely free.

1 hour ago, Futurehero said:

-"Trivializing content" is not a thing . People have been trivializing content for years and it's still  being played just as well.

Wrong. Trivializing content is a thing, and is bad. And again, you're coming off pretty stupid. You're sayin 'let's solve cheese by adding more cheese.' And the current 'trivialization of content' is a result of unbalanced mechanics, nothing else.

1 hour ago, Futurehero said:

-Players would still have incentives to make other guns ,the same way people are still crafting things like the twin Basolk when Broken War is given to you for free.

That's not incentive, that's just people wanting something other than cheese. Incentive means giving them a valid reason to use other weapons. Again, this has literally nothing to do with your proposal. P2W weapons aren't a way to solve power-creep.

1 hour ago, Futurehero said:

Honestly, except the knee-jerk reaction that people have to the term "pay to win", is there any argument as to why this couldn't be a thing? It would certainly make DE a lot of money, and players can still technically get this weapon for free through trading. 

Because once DE listens to this argument, they'll lose the vast majority of their playerbase, as being F2P with a fair business model is one of WF's main selling points? 

[Bleak-Knight]

1 minute ago, Dumfing said:

If there was a blueprint for this hypothetical weapon we'd be okay with it.

 

Warframes current model that rewards players for their work is solid and has elevated it to where it is today. If you look at steam's top 4 play for free games (the ones I've played), the one thing in common with all of them is that they allow you to be the best player possible without the need to interact with others or pay money, instead of forcing players to buy the god tier weapon, they allow you to access the entire game without money but give you the option to use money if you want cosmetics or a slightly accelerated leveling experience. But in the end, what they all do the same is allow every single person, no matter how much money they have, to be on the same level as each other.

I it would probably cost 100+ Nitain though...

Edited June 19, 2016 by Bleak-Knight

[Azrael]

5 minutes ago, Futurehero said:

I don't see "H T 4 Ext, Tonkor/Sancti Tigris or GTFO" in invite now, why do you think that will happen ?  

Two reasons. First, everyone assumes that anyone above a certain MR will have such weapons, or other equally powerful ones. Second, I HAVE seen such posts, only they are worded "H nightmare raid, MR 21 only" because of the first reason. People assume that you have good weapons.

If you make a pay2win god gun, people will HAVE to ask whether you have it, specifically. They won't assume you do because it's possible you just haven't paid up yet.

[PoopManZ]

9 minutes ago, Futurehero said:

I don't see "H T 4 Ext, Tonkor/Sancti Tigris or GTFO" in invite now, why do you think that will happen ?  

Dont know why you arent adressing the fact these weapons already do what your weapon does at no hassle to obtain. The only way to get your gun bought is to nerf everything else or just simply have it where you just walk to extract. Nobody is going to waste 300 plat in turning a game into a not game and would just go find another game. Its just dumb.

[Vali]

Just now, DeMonkey said:

Actually, they're not valid at all.

Yes you can trade for platinum in the game, but someone has still purchased it. If we all stopped buying plat, and just tried to get it from trade it would dry up within a few days. No more plat for anyone. Invalid argument.

DE made prime gear better than normal gear to entice people to buy, why not do something similar now? Apart from Excal P and extractors hardly anyone ever uses, every single prime has been obtainable in game for free. Invalid argument.

I understand you're a com mod and you've gotta be polite, but still.

 

I'd disagree, as it stands both paying and non-paying players can still be on equal footing (aside FashionFrame cuz of those accessories). With our current system, if people bought traded platinum it would benefit everyone. However, if DE released weapons which are plat only it will only ever benefit the plat buyers. 

[Letter13]

4 minutes ago, Agentawesome said:

I'd disagree, as it stands both paying and non-paying players can still be on equal footing (aside FashionFrame cuz of those accessories). With our current system, if people bought traded platinum it would benefit everyone. However, if DE released weapons which are plat only it will only ever benefit the plat buyers. 

 

Pay-to-win means that a player needs to expend their own money to obtain gear or items that are otherwise inaccessible. This means weapons that cost real world money, or cost a premium currency that cannot be traded.

But because platinum is tradeable, items that can only be obtained through platinum are not pay-to-win. An example of this: Player A (who has not paid a dime) invests their time to obtain rare items which player B (who has bought platinum for real money and who does not have the time to invest in obtaining the items player A has obtained) purchases from player A by trading platinum with them. Player A then uses the platinum to purchase gun C, which is only obtainable through platinum. Player A now has gun C, a platinum-only weapon, and has not spent a dime of their own money. Gun C is platinum only but the game is not pay to win, as player A has demonstrated that they can get to the same competitive level that player B (who has spent money) is on simply by investing their time to obtain items which paying players specifically buy platinum to purchase.

Player B will always purchase platinum to trade with player A so long that player A is able to invest a resource (such as time) into obtaining things that player B wants which player B does not have the same resource to expend. In that respect, DE has set up the current trading system (platinum for prime parts) VERY smartly.

A platinum-only weapon or frame would not benefit just those who purchase platinum; as long as supply and demand for other items in the game drive platinum trades (which allow non-paying players to obtain platinum), platinum only gear would just take a bit longer and require more effort/time to obtain.