How 'Pay To Win' ruins the gameplay in MMO's - [MMOPINION] 

That's why we must stay cautious and never let them take that one step forward, two steps back approach

@@X1erra i think we shoud just vote with our monny. spend money on the games without the bs so they know it's worth making games like that. not buing the pay to win stuff in a game still leaves other to do it and as long as someone does it's worth to put more and more in it

@@lv100Alice You got it. The best example of a game inching towards total pay2win from a standard model is WoW. Very slow but steady progress into that territory. Brand worshipers and people who rationalize this stuff are responsible for it.

Craptic Studios

and the non-pay to win micro-transactions ensure that the game is ever blander with the better looking loot hidden away. Micro-transactions are the sign of a shitty game.

My favorite is eve online. Levelling skills takes from several minutes to a month of real life time (also continues when you are offline). Its faster with a premium account, of corse. Then theres this fascinating system called skill extractor. You can extract "skill points" from one character, bottle them into an item and sell this thing on the "auction house", where another player can pick it up and boost the own progression. How convenient that theres also the plex, a token you can buy for real money and sell for ingame currency. Before they introduced all of those systems, it took over a year to be able to fly the biggest, meanest ships in a good way. Not perfect, but good. Now you can spend several hundred or even thousand (insert your currency here) to skill up your character, skip the skill time and immediately buy one of those big ones. Funny, aint it? Of corse, its still eve and you are most likely going to loose it the first time you take it out for a ride because a new player doesnt know when and how to use it...but thats another story :)

You forget to add “current” so you can keep buying when you get to higher levels to keep getting the ultimate sword for your current level!

@@termagant425 You are not wrong... i've played EvE Online twice in my life, once before all the microtransactions. There were massive skill gaps, either you were part of the Super Powerful elite, or you were part of the weak peasant class. I was part of the peasant class.... weeks of unrewarding grinding and missioning caused me to leave the game. it wasn't fun. Second was after the Micros were put in, skill extractors could be bought. New account as i couldnt remember my old ones info. Spent 80 bucks on Plex to buy multiple skill extractors. INSTANTLY had enough ISK to buy a good ship, and all the skills to fly that ship. Looked up a few good builds online, and WHAM... i was off and into the game having fun. No grind... no boring screen staring while my crappy mining ship shot lasers at rocks. I was able to compete with other players on a Serious level, My ship was a worrisome target to see in space.

@@termagant425 before skill extractors, this was done within the game rules by character transfers. People would have accounts where they simply had characters training for a particular purpose, then sold them on the market for ISK (which could be obtained "legally" through PLEX). Both of these systems were introduced to counter out of game RMT(account and ISK selling), which often result in hacked accounts and such. What I'm trying to say is if a MMO doesn't provide ingame options to buy power, people will use out of game options to do this. It's human nature, really..

​@@ioanbotez7128 You are right, but i was mostly pointing out the amount of pay to win you can have in eve. As Josh already mentioned, it not really easy to find a definition for pay to win everyone is happy with. For me, it means: You pay reallife money and get an advantage over someone who doesnt. Whereever such a service is possible, the game is pay to win. Be it at your own risk by taking third party offers, or by legal terms via buying plex. The difference which truly matters here is the amount to which its possible. When you buy a boost in dota2 for getting to a higher rank...yeah, that doesnt really helps you much, right? You'll most likely get your ass kicked by players who deserved the ranking. Eve online is the interesting part. You will, most likely, get your ass kicked there as well "if" you dont know how to fly your shiny new plex-armored ship. But then again, the skills you have bought as well will(!) you make better, objectively. And since you can have all the skills on one character, you can, potentially, become best in the game by just spending enough money. I dont say you will, but you can, potentially. And thats why i think eve one of the more dangerous ones. Heres an example (old data, i know, but im too lazy to look for the correct values right now): The max amount of skillpoints a character can have is 425million. Source: forums.eveonline.com/t/maximum-number-of-sp/57455 A large skil injector costs around 600 million isk. Sorce: evepraisal.com/a/zix41 One skill injector will grant you 500.000 SP up to a total of 5 million skillpoints,400.000 up to 50 million, 300.000 up to 80 million and 150.000 from there on. Which means you will need (10+113+100+2300)*600million=1513800million ISK. To get that amount, you will have to sell 663.947,36 plex. Source: evepraisal.com/a/zix68 That is 30.119 Euro if we take the first offer. Source: secure.eveonline.com/plex and yeah im too lazy to convert it into dollar xD. So yeah...@JoshStrifeHayes was really generous here on how he treated eve (referring to another video where he summed up how much it would cost to play every mmo, was a great one!)

Not talking to you Barcelona, not talking to you

Shots fired... :D :D

Why imagining, it was happening since the money start to exist and it's happening right now and it will happening in the future as well. The conclusion, the more money you're willing to pay in real life the more will you get in return, that's the reality and not imagination :D

@@Cr4sHOv3rRiD3 almost like that was the joke or something

@SaiyanPride If it weren't money people would find another way to exploit each other, that's just the way it is. Money is just the most convenient and legal option.

I played Naruto Online for years, I feel that.

Don't take this the wrong way. I don't mean to insult but... why?! Why would you play those games? Why would you tolerate those shady, predatory companies?

Pfftt try Gravity games like Ragnarok, it fell same too.

@@sparkofcuriousity why do people keep on living when there are many billionaires doing whatever they want whilst we have to work just to pay out bills? He probably stayed for the people he knew there

same

Ex,actly this. I feel this way about the games I play.

Ok

A very healthy approach

i am strongly agree... a game is a game. in this perspective, i would also complain about game that heavily and mainly about PvP especially when it involved resource and progress like MMO and even more if it's open world PvP "role playing" that balance > role

Really if this is the Case better to play buy to play mmo Or better, quit mmo altogether. Fact of life: Nothing in life is free, if you see something that's free and too good there's always a catch...

And then there's another thing added in - cheap power consumables or worse lootboxes - designed to get you to waste those leftover points.

And besides the "valuation" disconnect,so that you don't really think about how much the item costs in real life money, there's also that people tend to consider the money already spent. A disconnect from the real world money entirely, as it were. So if you buy $100 worth of premium currency (because that's the best deal, of course), and only use half of it, you're far more likely to spend the remaining half on things you wouldn't have bought otherwise.

No. It's not beautiful. It's despicable.

@@sparkofcuriousity He's being sarcastic. Because in a vacuum, a game encouraging you to be productive with your time by getting a job is a good thing, the reality is the game is encouraging it for nefarious reasons. The joke is that he's deliberately only considering it in a vacuum.

Nice

@@mrSaber79 Because the vast majority of adults already have jobs...finding the time to play multiple hours a week leaves you short spending time on other important things...like your family. I saw my younger brother and his wife put more time into WoW than their children, with predictable results.

@@rikk319 And that's why you don't get a family

What's worse, this crap is seeping into single player games too. The AAA games section is doomed and a waste of time at this point.

This is why I only really play indie games. They might not have the "big triple a budgets" they at least generally respect my time and money. My favorite game is rimworld and it has no microtransactions or other bullshit. Only the occasional optional dlc expansion thing and those are only when there is somthing worth selling. Somtiems it'd years before we get a 20 dollar paid expansion. Most of the time it's free updates/patches. Anyway sorry for my off tangent post. Just wanted to get it off my chest.

The only one who can save us is Riot. Legends of Runeterra is by far the most accessible card game to date. P2W elements are there but F2P players have so much easier time.

As long as we remember that this is because companies have realized people will p2w. It's just as much, of not more, the fault of players.

we have grown up, it's not a matter of encouraging us to annoy our parents into spending money to we can play more anymore, it's about making us spending our own money, and so we need to earn money xD

i mean that is the cycle of capitalism

I absolutely believe this. It's why many MMO's shifted from the design that encouraged players to stay up chugging energy drinks for days on end to accomplish various goals. Nowadays the system is set so you go to work, then come home and log on for a couple hours to knock out all your "daily objectives" and then rinse repeat the next day. "No life" gamers who don't buy microtransactions are MMO creators worst enemy. Basically these players take up 24/7 server space while providing no extra profit to the company than the guy who gets on for 2 hours a day to do daily quests. In fact, these "no life" players can often get everything in game on their own as well, and therefore are less likely to purchase currency or other p2w items from the microtransaction shop. MMO's have learned from the mobile market how to stretch out a small amount of content over a large period of time to encourage longer retention. . People don't realize there really are entire meetings at these companies designed to figure out how to most effectively part the player from their wallet. Oftentimes game development is left to a small dedicated team, while the company puts the rest of their resources towards figuring out how to best scam people. And yes, there are economic psychologists who specifically work in this field to help them better take advantage of people. If you think that's absolutely disgusting and harmful to game design... You have a working brain, congratulations.

@@TTMILKYTT your not wrong time= money in either case

Reality: Sheeps supports this very idea of p2w. Their standards of amusement is so low that they're willing to pour their hard-earned money... to NOT play a game. This is the future of gaming, folks.

@@Omniaverage I heard that in the goblin voice.

Useless nobody

Stranglethorn Vale, at least before Cataclysm.

Oof. I’d rather pay $150/game and have no micro transactions.

@@ShaveItDown is it good for the player?

@@Store_bought_plutonium I mean, I’d rather pay for a complete game designed without micro transaction revenue in mind. Also, with a steep price, game companies would need to pump out quality games for players to invest in them. Doesn’t need to be $150, I just said that as an example.

@@ShaveItDown we are speaking about MMOs here so $150 is too low price

@@75yado even with potential expansions and perhaps having some collectors edition and perhaps paying to have more than 5 characters per server? Or paying for changing name, server and perhaps changing character appearance? Sure, these are microtransactions but not p2w and just technical or cosmetical.

Lol and that shit isnt here in Merica, where politicians will stab their own mother to make a penny.

Asien have also a complete different attitude to games they think every game is like a gaming machine(e.g one armed bandit). Western gamers prefer to be in control of their game which even when you have no p2w you never have control in an MMO. e.g in Gw 2 I have really trouble to understand the developers balancing.

Your on to something there. If you are of a fan of LitRPG you have probably read stories about VRMMOs that are blatently pay to win. One of the first that I have read, and I think was one of the stories that launched the genre at least in the east was called "Legend of the Moonlight Sculptor." The MMO featured in that story, "The Royal Road," has a triple whammy of monetization. There's the proprietary VR equipment that costs thousands of dollars, the VR game is subscription based, and there is an in game auction house that you can spend and make real money on. This isn't really shown as a bad thing, mearly a thing for the protagonist to overcome.

Also Asians (Japan e i think China) work on a 6/7 week day, 10 to 12h a day

That's just capitalism in general - don't tell me in western countries absolutely no one flaunts wealth, cos I sure as heck don't believe that. Even back in GW2 there were many map comments where someone would literally say they would just pay X amount to convert gems to gold to get what they want (and shoot down anyone that grinds by telling them to "get a job loser") since its way cheaper - and easier - to get a job that pays enough than grind for a legendary. It is true however that over here in asia we tend to have 5/6 work days ( almost 7 if you're an unlucky sod) so the mentality is, if you have money and want to spend it ingame, go right ahead - literally no one will judge you for flaunting wealth because as far as most of us are concerned, your real life wealth is more important than some numbers in a game and if you only have 1 day out of 7 to play, might as well spend it to flaunt and/or save time.

They also get free BS currency from the companies to tempt their watchers into paying.

Most of them are trying to justify to themselves more than you. They know they are paying for an advantage, but they use a lot of mental gymnastics to try and pretend they are not "Oh well it's pay to _skip!_ not pay to win!" or other such things because "pay to win" has a stigma attached. At least the ones who acknowledge it's pay to win and are fine with it are not bullshitting themselves or anyone around them.

@@DrewPicklesTheDark its just like real life when people gonna justify their evil. they always gonna say something to themselves to make them feel better about it. But the truth is the truth no matter what u say.

That's a point I often make as well. Rich brats ruin everything they touch.

While the latter are at least being honest, they're still just as pathetic as the delusionals.

yeah for real. and real life game is just as pay to win. haven't had good pay for workers in decades. still on 1970's wages.

@Tanner Austin like how you immediately assumed it's because the person choose a artist degree and not because each job has terrible income

@@AlmaHeartfire Only 30% of Americans have a college degree, and most of those are 2 year degrees. Most people who work for a living do exactly that--they work to live and survive, not because they love their work.

@@rikk319 look the comment I responded to is gone so I forget the context lol all I was saying is everyone should be paid more in this economy sorry if you thought I was saying something else?

This is literally the same as CMC and MCM' from Das Kapital.

Grinding is one of my least favourite thing about mmos it's idiotic and boring

@@rat6554 well it can be very zen. like mediating

One of the few MMOs I actually played for a long time had rather monotonous combat. So grinding levels was the perfect moment to turn on some movies and just have a nice evening. And recently I put my first few € into a gacha game I play for over 2 years. Because it has solid mechanics, a fair shop system and can be completed via playing. And the money I spend was basically just for skins. Spending a tenner for 2 years of fine gameplay seems fair to me.

Your comment is logical for gamers...but not logical for gaming companies, as it doesn't make them profit in the short term. Long term gaming companies' profit motive is killing the golden goose, as gamers become more cynical and less likely to play games that take advantage of them economically. Instead companies are moving to the mobile platform, with the most mindless games, because that's where they make the most money. Civilization loses.

Surfing pikachu in Pokemon stadium

He made the mistaken assumption to take UK minimum wages as the norm when 90% of the planet lives in countries with minimum wages a lot lower than that (~£8/hour).

@@danciagar Solid point. US Federal minimum wage is $7.25 which is roughly 1 bond per hour (accounting for sales tax) compared to the ~2 per hour of the UK. That showcases that most western games with authorized RMT tend to be tuned around the US/Canadian rates rather the the UK rate.

@@danciagar not a mistake, it’s what he has to base the cost on as an Englishman. The cost of most in game purchases are altered for each area of the world (though not all). So an in game purchase is relatively more expensive for someone in the UK than it is is in $ for example, in some games.

@@senzavolto People abused it so much that most mobile purchase got the same price, even steam dialed down on it.

@@danciagar Peoples used to switch countries with VPNs to get 50% or 70% less than their country price. Then it was "fixed" by making it the same for every country regardless of income.

And we have since come full circle since MMOs became a thing. What was once a world you could enter to get away from IRL P2W mechanics, has since become the opposite.

Good point about short circuiting. I'm not sure it is the *most* damaging aspect of pay to win, but it definitely reflects the preference of short term monetary gain over long term sustainability for companies. Personally, the most damaging aspect for me is simply that I find no enjoyment playing a game that does not value my time nor my enjoyment.

As one profit of the oncoming doom said "Don't you guys have phones?"

Test of a game: if you have admin commands that would allow you to have anything you would want in the game, what then? If you still enjoy the game play when the reward is only a .additem # away, then you know there is something more than simply grinding for gear (or whatever other reward).

@@mcfarvo Yes, there is a reason we test the gameplay with cubes and spheres and no anim/only key poses to see if it's "fun" or "good" before even thinking about all the rest. A fun game will be enjoyable to play regardless of rewards. This sounds cliché, but it's explained in the book "Flow" in a way. If one sets constant future goals, all it will lead to is boredom and disappointment, because as soon as you reach the goal, you set yourself a new goal and always crave for more. Same goes for Whales. Yes, they pay for something, but then they want to pay for more, and the cycle repeats. They have the money, so they can do it, but that does not make their experience more enjoyable. Especially since not that many players are into hardcore PvP, others can enjoy the content of the game without paying. But still, I agree with most of the video, it's simply that a game can be enjoyed regardless of who's whaling

while I agree, there's the problem that they make games annoying now in an effort to get you to spend some money. It's not that there's a cash shop added on top of the game, but the game is intentionally made much more frustrating to get you to consider the cash shop.

@@ourbulwarkisjesuschrist9435 Well yes, some games do that, if that's the case, don't play the game, the devs don't deserve your support. Some games have purely cosmetics cash shops, or quality of life cash shops but can be played normally without frustration as a free to play, I think we should focus on those games.

besides of good gameplay one of the major things in rpg for many players is progression of character, as soon as u stop progressing u lost interest. Grind, low drop rate, overrandom stats on gear etc doing a good job for killing temp of progression = kill game.

I don't think i could do vorkath for 10 hours though. I think vorkath is probably harder than a minimum wage job lol.

Too bad the ratio is more like 1:50. 1 hour of work is 50 in game. And it's not even good gameplay, it's the boring money-grind professions or something that enable you to do osmething amazing / fun. Vorkath requires A TON of investment... average player doesn't earn 3 mil per hour in RS< more like 500k... so it's 1:20 or 1:30 even.

3 mil an hour is extremely generous.

The kinds of people who can play fighting games on average as long as mmo players do are one in a million. Not quite the same.

​@@theremix54bc people who play fighting games have friends in real life lmao

It's the skinnerbox mechanic unfortunately. These games give a lot of progress very quickly, then make it slower and slower over time. People want to keep progressing smoothly so they're convinced that they can unlock the fun with money. It helps them a bit, but it doesn't last forever. Then there's the cosmetics that will make them feel more important, more powerful, etc. A lot of psychology goes into it. You're lucky that you're immune to it hehe :D

You can ask the same of gambling addicts. "Why do you keep gambling when you just keep loosing your money? Just stop and walk away! " They cannot stop because they are addicts, and the gambling companies actively work to keep them addicted. The comparison is valid because game devs use the same psychological tricks to addict people. So much so that EA has recruited Gaming Psychologist from Las Vegas to help them design their games.

@@musingartisan Wow, that’s pretty sad. But maybe you’re right?

MMOs quite often use grind as a gating tool - grind enough and acquire enough resources to then be rewarded with fun and interesting content. It's a way to artificially build up playtime and player involvement (often going into sunken cost fallacy territory), but it tends to work, and players to enjoy being rewarded for all their hard in-game work. Various ways of pay2skip or trading grind results for premium currency with other players essentially boil down to one player paying (either the game or another player) to do the grind for them, letting them access rewarding content immediately. It's like cooking - from time to time it's fun, normally it becomes a chore and some people pay others to cook for them (takeaway food etc) just so they don't have to do the chore themselves; end result (tasty food) being the reward.

@@asmonull Reminds me of some bad singleplayer games. There because the grind whas excessive I just cheated myself lot of money. Then I bought all the upgrades to get further and I realized, the content you grind for is actually fucking boring. One of the reasons I now prefer Singleplayer Games on computer again. Nobody stressing you and no need to go to work for bad passages.

Fvck craptic

as an addition. you could already buy gold from farmer that sell it illegally. you couldn't really stop that. also people got scammed because it was a shady business. nowadays they can legally buy it and blizzard took the meat of the farmers away which still exist. but I would rather buy it from blizz than from some service that actually aren't allowed to do it.

I partly agree. Problem is, Blizzard put in time limeted rewards like the caravan Bruttosaurus or heroic or mythic rewards. That is what you can not get later and if you lack time or skill you would need to buy for boost.

For me it was Skyforge. Had unlocked all the classes, and my toon was pretty well geared. Then they changed how you unlock classes, and rerolled all the accounts back to the start. All the time and effort I invested into unlocking and gearing the classes, gone. And now, you either have to grind months on end to unlock 1 class, or to pay up to unlock them (with each class costing around 15€)

WoW and FFXIV every new expansion

@@urg6941 Wow, damn, i would have quit on the spot and took a big smelly dump on game's forums if it has those if that happened to me, while insulting publishers, and devs if these are at fault too.

@@DiabolicCrusher I definitely stopped playing, didn't go on the forum because imo, if they are willing to ruin their game like that and screw all players in the process, they won't care. I still play from time to time, but the game is a lot less enjoyable. When they changed the class system they also removed the leveling system, which in my opinion made the game 10 times more fun. You still had to grind, and there was a bullshit weekly limit, but at least you could choose where to invest your time. But nowadays, if you want your toon to get stronger you need to mindlessly grind every day to get your dailies and weeklies done.

@@urg6941 They might not care but going apeshit is a good way to let the steam out, might be just me.The last part sounds like mobile game or korean mmorpg to me.

Seems so.

If so, good for him.

Peeve has been watching some of his videos on stream. I'd guess that's why.

Who doesnt want to watch a british man play an abandoned super trippy video game?

if so that's nice, I wish him and all of you the best

You may like Black Desert Online then. The game is not Pay to win because of Pearl Abyss. They have a premium item market cap which resets every monday, and a lot of the items, you cant sell on the market. For example, the only cosmetic boxes that can be sold are the classic ones and they are not always available. and are capped(For example at 2 purchases/5 depending on the type. A new player can sell a maximum of 5 Pearl shop items. Black Desert is a good example of 'Pay to loose' because the ammount of silver you can get from just playing the game, heavily outweighs the Premium purchasing of items.

@@mclovingihavenofirstname9072 you can sell now 35 outfit a week and outfit are twice more expensive than before. It's completely p2w

@@raikto6715 That is based on family fame. I have 1400 hours on the game, with 6 characters at 58 and 59, with my main at level 60. I can sell 15 boxes a week. However, even If I could sell 35, anyone who would sell 35 would actually be loosing, thus the pay to loose. At the point of selling 35 a week, you should have multiple characters at level 63, and to sell those 35 at that point would be innefective, considering you can get 500 million/1 billion at Guru making boxes overnight =7 Billion a week. Plus wraiths which drop Deobroka necklaces and Lungs. Per hour of work, even at 10 dollars an hour, You would have to work at least 90 hours a week to sell the 35 boxes at this hourly salary. You can make the value of 3 boxes every night, times 7=24 boxes. Wraiths or playing whatever you want will make you more money than selling boxes. This means you pay to loose.

@@mclovingihavenofirstname9072 First it's not about winnning or loosing , you can pay to progress faster in this game with real money Second i have 7k family name without a single 63 lvl because they are 22 class in bdo so it's easy to push to the 35 limit (full char 60 is enough). Third BDO has many inconvenient ingame design with a pay 2 convenience that push player to spend money , like weight , villa buff , tent , value pack , maids , ghilie, lifeskill outfit

@@raikto6715 Guru Boxes are tax free, you get a free tent for progressing in the story, you can buy all the same tent requisite from Old Moon Managers. At the point of doing every character to level 59 e.t.c, you have spent more time doing so than playing the game ,just to spend money on the game, which eats into game time.

since minecraft server owners are not companies they are free to implement wacky cash shop systems lol

Those are the people Selling the gold, not buying.

Also fails to mention that if you're on a low population realm, there may be no mythic carries to buy with your gold.

yeah on world of tanks we had loads of ukrainians and south americans just selling accounts to make some side income. while the rich americans whale the game. eventually they nerfed gold payouts though to combat it. at one point it was more lucrative to buy sold gold from clans than from the game company itself back in like 2014. tons of russian clans got banned for it.

Where in Eastern Europe? I get 10€/Day :'(

@@MagnaGresh Latvia

Most p2w games have open world pvp so you can flex your wealth by killing people that don't whale. If someone falls hard for p2w they usually feel validated and "god-like" by killing undergeared low level peasants.

@@RiseInAfterlife But its boring as hell xd I don't know if its only me but whenver itried to cheat in single player game i just got bored so fast of that game i quit in hour. I just hate getting something easy, however i feel super proud if i get something hard in a good way.

@@TN51234 Same. But you forget: People are generally idiots. Which is why the whales that go around pvping low level players are usually extremely toxic asshats. They don't play for fun (cause they skip content and p2w stuff) they want to feel superior. At least after a while, I doubt they'd pick up a game and go in with the aim of p2wing but for fun.

@@RiseInAfterlife That's why its sad, if more people actually focused on game and generally fun then games wouldn't die so fast.

oh no have I been marked for death?

I agree that it is a massive advantage, IIRC many players I used to play with basically consider it as a monthly sub rather than proper "pay to win"

ESO+ is a sub. If you don't pay for it you are playing the trial

@C V "only". My guy there are other countries outside the US you know where the dollar value is quite high.

@@B1u35kyur brainwashed lmfao

@@fedorkochemasov4533 In Germany if you pay monthly you pay around 12-13 €, so it still sounds not to much. When ESO was released it was sub-only with these costs

Yeah everyone loses The non-payers get extra grind *and* see payers leapfrog them The payers skip all the actual content of the game

@@mitchellhorton9382 I've never believed that the F2P model should exist, to be honest. It is not a model I support. I always pay at least one month's subscription, even if I only play the game for less than an hour. It is purely a matter of integrity, on the part of both players and developers; but I understand that integrity is becoming an increasingly rare thing, these days.

On the bright side, 100k is really not that much gp. (just by comparison, the game itself hands you 10k for sitting through the account security tutorial) It's helpful starter cash that'll smooth out the early game a tad, but it won't destroy the journey.

@@deathpyre42 This is good to know. Thank you.

@@petrus4 You also could have just not taken the 100k (you had to click 'accept') or not followed the person around the map. That's all on you buddy.

This may be very late, but a bag of holding is a magic item that is larger on the inside than outside.

apples to oranges but okay lol

too hard for big mmos. they ban em so fast. especially osrs. every foreigner out there is trying to run some to make side income. Idk if BDO bans em yet though. When i played that game they were everywhere.

Prime weapons and frames that are lvl locked and can be purchased from the prime vault with real money and used regardless of your lvl..

@@JoeyTheOnlyOne1975 That's true, but they're usually the set included with the prime frames not the actual top-tier weapons I'm not saying it's perfect but they've done a pretty good job

Also, paying to advance in WoW is entirely player-driven and there's literally no way to stop it. The pay-real-money-to-advance thing would still exist (and did exist) without tokens. If players aren't buying the gold from WoW tokens, then they're buying from third-party sites. Even if you tried something drastic like disabling all trading completely, it would still exist. A person could just pay to join a raid and loot the items directly (I know of one specific instance where this happened 15 years ago the first time BWL was released). Blizz added tokens because the gold farmers disrupt the game for everyone else. An important difference is that the devs aren't designing the game around selling tokens. Games like NWN had pain points then sell "solutions" to the pain points. WoW tokens exist to reduce farming bots.

WoW tokens are basically outsourcing the grind - you pay another player in form of WoW subscription to do certain amount of grinding gold for you.

except that is a false logic do to a thing called inflation, the same reason as to why irl even though most countries have never seen more wealth generated the gap between the wealthy and poor has actually significantly widened

agreed and same with tanks

their communities are really hard in tryna say they're not p2w... its actual insanity

which never goes over well because people want to trade with friends

Somewhere in the future we'll have a system that can detect and prevent trading in-game advantages for real money and it's gonna be glorious. Way better than flying cars

@@furiousdestroyah9999 It's when AI got sentience

all u have to do is make it so players cant control the prices of an economy. but just set them to some standard. then u prevent ppl playing money games to try to get richer than everyone else by price gouging. then u eliminate most of the botters, and money incentive. Then it becomes who can sell the most at the set price. But even if u get huge coin stack u can never flex it because none of the items are priced based off of price gouging. like 2Billion GP for twisted bow on runescape. The only way u could flex would be through quantity. But then u can limit quantity on an account. Then u can only allow accounts to be made off a social security number. Then only allow so many accounts per security number and u get rid of like 1000's of farmers in one fell swoop. Then u can also do crap like lock accounts to IP address and make people pay real money if they move ip address in real life. To prevent botters from selling accounts to new person at new ip.

i generally agree though. People will always find a way to get power with money. period. money is the root issue. but we can't fix it anymore. at least not with the current world order. its the "haves" and "have nots" and to take away from the "haves" will probably start some sort of conflict.

unless u have rich inheritance from boomer overlords who pinchapenny their whole life. Or work a non minimum wage job. But yeah this video's premise is just highlighting like a game junkie addict. Who'd spend their whole paycheck on the game which isn't realistic. But its still realistic to think a whale would spend this each day or week on a game and it does happen quite often. So anyone who is just chill and doesn't wanna participate in blowing their savings is at a loss.

I just created a new char in GW2 last Monday. What I wanted to do was play a raw character, not using anything I generated from other characters, or had stocked in the bank. I did use my mounts. Between mounts and knowing the game, it didn't take all that long to blow through the 80 levels.

With Ironman mode you are no longer playing an MMO. Trading is what separates the MMO from the other genres.

@@Numbers_Game for me the social aspect of mmo's is what makes it an MMO (like raids, dungeons, events, etc.). Trading and auction house are just a convenience.

@@frednicht1 Social aspect, a sense of community and even multiplayer acitvities aren't what defines MMO's. All of those aspects are shared by different genres. Hell, you could almost label Fortnite as a kind of MMOFPS by such standards (PVE raids - check, every BR game is a PVP instance - check and events are very much a thing - check). It has a community, online interaction, multiplayer modes, a world that changes every couple of months and, ironically enough, it has professions in the form of fishing, woodcutting, mining and construction. What it doesn't have is an ingame economy where players can interact with one another. If ironman mode can be considered an MMO, then the same must apply for Fortnite, Diablo 3 post RMAH, Overwatch, Dauntless, possibly League of Legends and on and on it goes.

​@@Numbers_Game You've got some valid points there. And I would say that the current state of most battle royal games, or online games in general atm shouldn't be classified as an MMO. But if you were to add a social hub of some sort where you could chill and talk with an in game avatar of some sort, while waiting for a queue. I would find it enough added to classify it as an MMO, because you'd be in seeing hundreds of players also waiting for a game. With an opportunity to chat with them. That extra added social feature and seeing a couple hundred people at the same time makes *For me* an MMO. But I completely see where you're coming from, most if not all games that have the option of high player count on screen + social features also include trading.

@@Numbers_Game lobby games can't really be MASSIVE multiplayer online games considering interaction is completely regulated by the lobby. There is only a predetermined set of players you can encounter in Fortnite, LoL..., hence the first M doesn't check out.

I heard Neverwinter is owned by china, maybe that's why it sucks

I'd like to second that notion and i'm convinced that josh is up to the task

Cuz the eastern culture they are workaholics. They don't have time to think about these kinds of things. and anyone who isn't gets shunned.

that's basically what addons are for.

That presupposes that the Devs actually play their own games and if they do, do they *ever* play it on anything but "god" mode!

i mean that's obvious and existed in OG wows prime days. thats 1 reason blizzard introduced the token. gold sellers always existed but nowadays you can do it without getting scammed and legally. and you can maybe even finance your sub with your playtime

i mean that's obvious and existed in OG wows prime days. thats 1 reason blizzard introduced the token. gold sellers always existed but nowadays you can do it without getting scammed and legally. and you can maybe even finance your sub with your playtime

Nice to see someone else who genuinely knows what's going on in BDO. I'm getting tired of hearing the same recycled "BDO is just p2w" or "you just pay to skip to max level" bullshit. never has a game inspired me to actually enjoy the grind like BDO because it's not just "a grind." it feels like a learning experience. did I just spend three days learning life skills to craft an outfit when I could've just bought a different one? absolutely. but I enjoyed the grind and in the end the outfit truly feels like my own and not just another store bought cosmetic

@@beebeebe5916 artisans memory essentially allows you to have 20 memory fragments act as having 100 of them, and they are essential for upgrading boss gear. pets. the tent. value pack. kama blessing. book of combat. bdo is by all definition p2w, as you pay to advance faster. much faster. have fun grinding zones with two tier 1 pets

You probably found your answer, already, but for posterity, I will note that this was the topic of the previous video in the series, "Free to Play VS Monthly Sub, which is better?" In short, the most healthy way to sustain a massively-multiplayer online game in the long term is to charge the players a subscription fee. This will cover your infrastructure expenses, and creates an incentive for you to spend your resources on making the game fun in the long term, for purposes of player retention, because there is no benefit in tricking the player into spending a longer amount of time interacting with the game within any given payment cycle*. * For example, if you charge a monthly subscription, there is no difference to you if a player plays for one hour per month or 100 hours per month, as long as they are excited about doing it the next month as well.

Well, the whole practise of ingame microtransactions stems from that. Devs (or most probably : publishers) watched people happily paying real money for ingame currency, and though "hey, that's a good idea ! Now let's have all this money flow to us instead of these botters !"

well WoW gold selling is making people on South America put their kids trough college, and survive our economic crisis cause we have a lot of dumb leaders on South America putting almost every country into an economic crisis just so they can steal more money from tax and getting more money from lobbyes

@@GengArvore That is an interesting viewpoint and one I had not heard before. Is there a link to find out more on this phenomenon?

@@HighPriestFuneral well here is the link to the news about WoW gold worth 7 times the Bolivares, Venezuelan currency. edition.cnn.com/2018/05/08/world/world-of-warcraft-token-worth-more-than-venezuelas-currency-trnd/index.html people related that news to an increase to South American gold sellers, which i have no prof, it was an frequent topic on in-game conversations tho

Well back in the 2000s gold sellers would be punished in-game. Now the parent company doesn't even care.

MMORPGology by Josh Strife Hayes

The original three games, are the best imo. Use this information as you may

Game is def still worth playing. But Its so fucking cringe the way they try and sugarcoat it "no bro its not p2w its pay for convenience" literally BS you have Outfits that give XP, The p2w tent, pets that give better abilitys than the free ones. Not to mention the fucking inv slots I practically need to buy em so Im forced to haul a fucking wagon with me all the time.

Bdo has nice graphic and combat but that's kinda where it ends

Yeah BDO has alot of whales and when you mention it being P2W they are quick to defend it since they participate in it, the game is not worth playing as a f2p imo.

@@sonfable8809 You got weight and inv slots you get like 50 by playing the MSQ and im still playing and havent got a slot in a very long time. You got outfits they can be paid for with in game currency assuming someones selling them. Value packs in order to get your moneys worth you NEED value packs losing 30% of profits sucks. You got the p2w tent that you can carry everywhere that repairs gear has a vendor that sells Large HP/Mana potions and has like 25 storage slots. All you gotta do is take a look at the pearl shop

@@Dark74111 Imo its def not F2P friendly you need to buy value packs and there like 10 bucks a month just to not lose profits. You dont need pets but some give a def advantage