What's the most "Pay to Win" MMO you've ever played?

Oh, I've been pretty vocal about this game being Pay2Win, you can look through my post history if you want.

However, I think you went a litter hard on that argument of the auras. They are a cosmetic item, they serve no advantage, stat-wise. I never fully defined something as being a convenience solely by being in the game, I described pay4convenience as the process of of getting something you get later on just by playing the game, and not paying. The only way you can get a an aura is by buying a membership or whatever and getting it in a lootbox. The lootbox inadvertently is paid for, by someone. It isn't randomly dropped on someone without having to be paid for. The difference with the things in warframe, is that no matter the player, they all have a chance to get a certain drop. If you paid for something, you might get an item; if you didn't, you might get an item.

In DCUO, you are at a disadvantage, just because you haven't shelled out cash for the newest DLCs. I haven't played in months, but I'm pretty sure new 30s are going up against whatever-the-highest-tier-is, tiered players. I bought a couple dlcs on the summer sale like 3 years ago, and I'm stagnant. I can't get the newer gear without buying a DLC. I can't get the best gear in the game without buying DLC. And that's fine really, it's that type of MMO. I'm able to do all the content I can with ease, seeing as I have the best armor I can get, but step out of the content and you're in a universe where you're hours away, and dollars away from getting to where the players around you are at now, solely because you did not by DLC(s). I've said this before in a post buried in my history. There's no way around it, especially when some skill points require PvP, and you're likely to get stomped.


The thing with the auras though is that they are cosmetic, and in Warframe you can't buy cosmetics from people. I don't know why DCUO introduced, and then removed them, obviously to entice people, but that through the economy into the shitter with overpriced stuff that has barely any face value. That being said, the price and grind of getting those items is entirely the player-base's fault. In Warframe, for example (I'm just gonna keep referencing it since it's the only F2P game I'm playing right now, apart from TF2 and Planetside2, which don't have comparable trading systems) the rarest items that are tradeable go for reasonable amounts, and it's easy to find deals. The fact that auras cost so much is crazy really, but you are able to trade other things for it. The price gouging is unfortunate, but there's still a work around, though normally it's more expensive than alternatives in Warframe. That's kind of how it goes with any free market, anywhere, but in the case of DCUO no matter how low demand is, it's weird seeing price decrease. In Warframe you actually see price decreases. For example, some of the rarest mods were given out through alerts. These mods would go for huge amounts. Now, trade chat is completely devoid of "WTB (Mod That Was Given Out)" and if you do see it, it's more than a hundred less than what it used to sell for.

Warframe has no financial advantage, where as in DCUO money is something you actively need. In warframe you can decide "I'm done" and just keep playing, because there is no need to repair, buy consumables (you build them after buying an initial blueprint, and they are almost defunct thanks to certain mods). The only thing that would actively need money is a pet you have the choice of getting, and it's a credit sink solely based on the fact that it'd die without you buying consumables for it. I hate it, but damn it's handy sometimes.


To reiterate, the auras are something that needed to be paid for, and the free market that is DCUO is toxic, it's the reason why the grind to trade is so tedious and why the cosmetics are crazy expensive, while Warframe can have you trade just a couple lesser stuff, and boom, you've got a sweet scarf-cape-thing.

I should also say that the timesink is much more evident in DCUO than Warframe. You can spend weeks getting to the top, while in Warframe you can be at the top in days, because "the top" is up to interpretation. No frame is inherently better than the other, but in DCUO there are tiers set in stone. In the end - I've said before in arguments like these - more power to the people that pay, but with DCUO they're using a car while you walk, definitely. In Warframe, it's more like an alternate path.

Bold, red. That's the point where opinions/believes etc interact with arguments based on facts. Fact: They are a cosmetic item, as you said. Fact: They are worth up to a seven digit sum in ingame currency, as I said. Now depending on where one sets his personal line - and this is based on taste, perception, principles, "ethics" - one starts to define advantage. You think stat-wise. Just stat-wise as your examples point out. To me an MMO is consisting of more than stats; there is an ingame economy, player dependency, a social aspect and the "cosmetics" are part of the game as well, as players want to look different from other players - character design is to some type of players even more important than stats. There was e.g. a large "style over stats"-movement in SWG; the game had no "style" tab and SOE added it after repeated requests 5 years after the game was released.

Saying that, there is also our problem in communications. We use the word "advantage", but we think different of the concept behind it. If a player gains from buying in the store in the listed fields of the game, I call it advantage. I don't care if the player pays 10 bucks for 50% bonus in stats or for saving 1-2mio credits in the ingame economy - to me it's a bought advantage. You just have the 50% bonus in stats on your list. There will not be a solution for this as long as one of us changes the point of view on "advantage". I won't however and I'm sure you won't either as it's at that point not about a word, but about the perception of what makes the game, of whether somebody favors a certain part of it or if all parts are treated equally. It's the parts of us that would lead us into designing two totally different games given the opportunity.

Final note: I do not perceive "pay2win" as something bad. I know large parts of gaming community do; I know many games could close down the second they openly admit they are "pay2win", I know trying to make "their" game look not "pay2win" is an essential motive of the fan-base when coming up and defending a game. "pay2win" is an incentive to sink extra cash into a basically free product, it's why F2P games make money at all - and thus, why they can exist. Still, a company openly admitting "we will have this new game, it will be f2p but also pay2win" can stop development the very same second this is announced; for some reason, the same group of gamers sinking so much cash in games like these to stay on top/get to the top would never join a game that is openly pay2win

While it might not technically be an MMO, Marvel Avengers Alliance was by far the most P2W game I've played.