Yes and no, Eve will have benefits when you pay but does not allow you to win by paying. Winning has a lot of different definitions for different players so it depends on your idea of winning whether the game is P2W.
In your example both players are flying the same ship, have the same skills and same piloting skill in an 1v1 battle, and the only difference is the extra expensive modules Larry has put on his ship, while Harry is flying with regular tier II modules.
In this case Larry will most likely win the 1v1. But is that ‘pay to win’?
Let’s say Larry’s modules are worth 10 times as much as Harry’s modules and they fight 4 times. Larry wins 3 out of 4 matches because of his paid advantage. Has Larry won the total fight or has Harry won?
I’d say Harry has won, he lost the least amount of isk and has been far more efficient than Larry.
Also, you made the assumption that Larry had more expensive modules because he paid for it, while Harry didn’t. It’s a wrong assumption though, because Harry can buy any of those expensive modules as well if he wants to, by getting the ISK for it ingame.
Sure, Larry skipped that grind by paying, but that would make eve a pay-to-skip-grind game rather than a pay-to-win game.
Harry and Larry have their fair fight in perfectly equal ships. They both get through shields, then armor at the same time. They both get down to structure, then Larry pops while Harry with only a few structure hit points left. Why did Larry win? He had the luck of being in sync with the server tics. But hold on…in jumps Barry with an alt fleet of capitals an pops Larry then loots both wrecks. Harry now spends the next two weeks grinding ISK to replace his lost ship while Larry, having spent all that real money on plex replaces his ship right away although His I-net will be turned off since he now dosn’t have money to pay the bill. Barry, the alt army capital guy, who’s operations are funded by bots, who also has a trader alt profits as Harry and Larry buy new ships from him. I think that about covers it.
Despite the fact that I see both definitions used all over the place, I’ll cede the debate of definitions here (gonna get old quick).
So, moving on from the P2W definition, my claim is that in EVE you can get almost unlimited advantage by spending lots of real $$$ on the game. Does this not seem to be something relevant to tell someone who asks about P2W in EVE?
If I ask a company I am thinking about investing in whether they are profitable, and their yearly profit is $0.01, an answer of “yes” is rather misleading, despite being technically correct.
Similarly, comparing EVE to WoW, EVE allows a much bigger advantage to those who spend extra real money on the game. Under your definition neither are P2W, but someone concerned about P2W will want to know how they differ in these regards.
Neither, it’s a catch22.
Since both Harry and Larry are Omega they are equal in opportunity.
Harry needs more ingame time. Larry uses RL-work-time. If Harry is unemployed he can make ISK while Larry is at work.
If Larry isn’t stupid he makes alts so he can play on the other side of the universe while Harry keeps on injecting thousands of dollars without any way to counter this.
There are so many variables your question cannot be answered. All I can say is “It depends from player to player”.
Skipping grind (part of gameplay) also means that you will get bored of the game earlier. In that sense paying to accelerate your progress in game is kind of “pay-to-win”:
I think here comes difference in ISK amounts. What if you can throw away tournament ships? Ignoring all “hard counters” will it provide better chances in this hypothetical scenario?
Lets say we decide to develop a linear regression model to predict whether we will win a fight (this may be an incorrect model choice, but it will suffice to make my point I think).
We might start with something like:
Chance_of_Win = ( a * my_skill ) - ( b * opponent_skill )
Such a model would represent what most consider to be a fair fight. If we fit it to data only from fights that are 100% fair it would probably be pretty accurate.
But, as so many of you have correctly pointed out, fights in EVE are rarely fair. So…
What makes fights unfair? We need to add predictor variables for these factors to our model, to help it better reflect the true chances we have of winning a fight. Obviously we can’t model all possible variables, but we can pick those that seem to be significant (easier with actual data, but our domain knowledge can work as a substitute).
Some factors I think most of us will agree are important are:
-Relevant SP
-Ship Strength (hull/fit)
-Distance to desired range
-etc.
If we add relevant_sp to our model, we get:
Chance_of_Win = ( a * my_skill ) - ( b * opponent_skill ) + ( c * my_relevant_sp ) - ( d * oponnent_relevant_sp )
This reveals the point I have been trying to build to. Sure, there are too many factors at play to consider them all, but many factors can only have a positive impact on our chance to win. The more relevant SP I have, the higher my win chance is. There is a positive correlation between relevant SP and my win chance. This means that if we hold all other variables constant, but increase relevant SP, then the result is an increase in win chance.
The fact that some of these factors are capped ends up being irrelevant because not all of them are hard capped. There is always something you could spend isk on to improve your odds of winning, even if it’s just hiring a lot of mercs.
Ok, lets not take into account everything outside a ‘duel’.
In a 1 vs 1 skillpoints applied to the right skills [EXTREMELY IMPORTANT] the person with more skills and better fitting (but tactically equal) [THAT IS NOT COUNTERED BY THE OPPONENTS FITTING] and in every case equal in experience , bookmarks, tactics and is not related to a corp or alliance and is in a 1.0 zone doing a duel with that other player, the ‘rich’ guy will win the duel if no one suicideganks the rich guy with his bling fit. But those chances are statistically lower than the chances of anything coming from mars.
Not irrelevant at all, you have brought a theoretical fight to the table and now need to define what you consider “winning” in your chance of winning formula.
You missed key points here. Whatever factors are important, if we include them in the model but then hold them constant while we increase something like relevant SP, then our win chance goes up. Period. That takes into account all other factors. Whatever the model is, we are talking about the effect on the outcome if we change only certain values.
I’ll help ya out, to prove me wrong you need to show that all possible predictor variables that can be increased by spending more real $$$ are not always positive in their contribution to our win chance.
