Open Letter to Mr. Garriott - the pay to play thing

-1 to Pay to Win Discussion

Lets focus on the real concern. They need money to make it a good game.

 

Yes sota that officially allow players to "cheat" that is buy gold and power level. This offer a p2w advantage.

"Like all other mmo" wow doesn't allow players to do either above. Those players that try are at risk to compromise their security.

Are you not contradicting yourself when you just stated all mmo are the same?

 

"Buy to Play" sounds like the old school model we had back in the early golden era of gaming. Ah those were the days. Having to go out and actually buy a game to be able to play it. Imagine that!

 

But without the Add-on store items having a special or unique skin,which drives sales with real life money,it would affect game funding. If anyone 'wants' the unique look the store items have,there are multiple ways to achieve that in game without using cash,thru the want to buy and want to sell forums,along with in game vendors. Without the unique look that the store bought items have,people would be way less inclined to spend money to fund the game,which affects everyone's game play. Just my thoughts.

 

And the entire game came in the box. At worst maybe a little extra for a speech pack if you were lucky enough to have a sound card. But the entire experience nonetheless.

 

Time vs money. Isn't using money to speed up progress or advancement in game a sort of p2w?

We are not talking about players choice here? At the end of the day it's a free world including whether to play this game. We are just trying to establish here if this game allow money to accelerate advancement or gain a distinct advantage in game.

 

Again not true. UO is a subscription base game, hence require periodic payment but in no way is that correlated to faster advancement in game other then more time to play.

 

You can pay $100 to buy a dolus hood or a lich ring. Or pay $1000 to buy a house and trade for both. In this game you can do both.

 

I've qualified it several times to say that all MMO's that allow trading and acquisition. If you don't allow trading and acquisition, you're limiting your players to a very static world. That is different, but not how you meant it.

 

If you want to focus on the prosperity tools or the obsidian potions, I think that's a good observation, but it's not pay to win.

I can take 10k of in-game gold and buy plenty of potions in-game (no money needed). I can take 30k in-game gold and buy prosperity tools. (no money needed)

If I was unable to use in-game gold, yes that would be pay to win. But that's not the case here, and the benefits are proportionally small.

 

Yes. Or you could just go kill a Cabalist a few times, sell all that stuff and buy whatever you want.

What's the problem?

 

Nothing just p2w that's all.

 

Killing a Cabalist and getting a hood that you sell or trade for a house is p2w? On what planet?

 

The person buying the hood yes. Using cash to gain an in game advantage?

 

No. I'm saying that if someone gets a Cabalist drop, and then takes the hood and trades it with another player with a home or deed for sale, that's not p2w.

There are all kinds of in-game transactions that have nothing to do with real cash.

 

But I am saying this game explicitly allow players to buy advantage in game. Granted a dolus hood won't win you any combat but I feel it should offer some distinct advantage. How can that not be a indirect form of p2w? Yes, you probably reply like all other mmo. Circular logic don't work here. At least not on me. We will never convince each other. But I got my point across. You can have the last word.

 

So a niche game from kickstarter, that was backed by childhood memories of an idea. That went from a story driven mmosingleplayercoop... to a straight up grind mmo. Added Pot's with unexpected demand and direct official RMT sellers, all but forgot about what actually made the games great from those childhood memories. And then asks why? about different sects splitting hairs, all the while trying to be virtuous. Where's the plan? Can we get a glimpse?

 

@reuge I'll save you some typing because he'll likely not want to see it from your point of view

@Baron Drocis Fondorlatos doesn't see it as pay 2 win because of the way he chooses defines pay 2 win. Anyone can get a Cabalist hood. So to him, based his his particular definition, whether you get it with money or with time, it's the same.

So you go on to point out that it's a payment for time advantage (a starting play could just pay money and get a hood) , or money = time argument which is a usual characteristic of phone p2w or pay for convenience game.

He'll say all MMOs have rmt trades, whether illegal (aside from games with bind on pickup type loot) and therefore it's okay that sota has it.

Or

He'll say, in his opinion, it's outside of the developers design. Despite the explicit encouragement of rmt by the devs.

Have I summarized it right?

There are people who feel that the particular choice of money making affects the, for lack of a better word, "goodness" of the game. That's why the share their view.

 

Yes, I think you have. Although I think you're over simplifying a key component.

Cabalist hoods drop randomly in the game, there's no way to buy them from the store. If you buy them from a player then you're paying for the TIME they spent getting the hood. The TIME has value equal to what players are willing to pay not to do it themselves. But what you're over simplifying is the fact that someone could have 6 million US dollars to spend and that Cabalist hood is not going to drop until someone has paid the TIME. There's no way to "win" just because you paid. You have to pay for time, which means time has value that it wouldn't normally have in other games.

Other games still have RMT, but SOTA has created a way to make the average players time more meaningful and more valuable by not shutting down these transactions and allowing players to trade items and gold between one another. It's an incredibly smart and sophisticated way to allow for organic economic growth within the game, and it's also an additional funding stream whenever store credit is involved.

I was really surprised when reuge was discussing this with me and he was saying that buying a Cabalist Hood was p2w. Here I was explaining that someone that went into the game, killed a Cabalist and got a hood, could then sell that hood for in-game gold or trade it for something of value, and that had nothing to do with RMT. Yet he (and you) seem to think that it does because if RMT is allowed in the game then the whole thing is tainted and everything is RMT.

Do I have that correct? You think that RMT is the entire economy even though someone like myself has never cashed out a dime? Or to put it another way, players trading with other players is RMT?

 

Yes, I'm totally with you on this. The end game achievement that was present in Ultima and what made UO great isn't here yet.

There is never a sense of awe of achievement when you look at another player's house or character. All I see is, oh... This player possibly paid quite a bit of money for this.

I mean yes, you could technically buy a house, or buy some cool decoration from a player in uo, but those things didn't originate from a an add on store.

A player must have fished for that rare painting, or crafted the pot of dye, or spent effort to tame that rare black nightmare, or amassed enough in game gold to purchase a keep deed. While item trades happened. The original source of the items from UO were in game, not the add on store.

Items had value because we knew how much work/how rare it was the players players put into it, not because the developers decided to price a bigger moondial more than a smaller one.

But sadly (for you and I at least) , this is the path that portalarium has chosen to take.

It is not necessarily a wrong choice, because it is evident that there are people who enjoy the ultimate collector aspect of the game and the company is making money from it.

Portalarium might have not made a good RPG (in my opinion) but they have made a really amazing macro transaction game where items cost many times the price of the original game, they can be sold for real cash is it isn't a total money sink and can and so far have usually been profitable. I marvel at the company's acumen at spotting and tapping on this group of players.

Will this change? Realistically I think no. The bottom line is important.