No, its not the people who have no problem with P2W who treat it as ‘win’. Fact is, the only reason anyone would have any problem with P2W in the first place would be if they did see it as ‘win’. Why otherwise complain ?
The whole silly argument then gets bogged down in whether ‘advantage’ is ‘win’…with the equally silly addendum that somehow it is ‘win’ even if there is no ‘advantage’. There’s even posts where people deny arguing about ‘unfair’…yet if nothing is ‘unfair’ then what is there to argue over ?
Every time I point out that paying does not automatically mean winning…the whole silly cycle repeats. Every time a hint of ‘unfair’ comes in…and I point out that time available for logging in contains an equally unfair element…the dictionary is brought out again. I’m not the one who keeps moving the goal posts.
Rather than keep bringing out that alleged ‘dictionary’ and then cascading though endless semantics, how about defining precisely what the problem with P2W actually is ?
Nope, you referred to ‘unfairness’ in only your second post here…before I even posted a single word…yet you now try to pretend you were only arguing about dev focus.
And nowhere have you actually said what is ‘bad for the game’ about it. You speak with forked tongue, trying to slip in a load of ‘its unfair’ and ‘eroding the purpose of the game’…whilst making out that your only care is ‘CCP focus’.
Heck, in your first post you even refer to 'learn to be better at ( Eve ) over time '…yet you casually dismiss any suggestion that time available for logging in equally contains an element of unfair advantage.
And you totally ignore the fact that my first posts here pointed out that I had not bought SP because I considered it absurdly expensive. Heck, the money spent to reduce the skill queue by 9 days would have bought the Nightmare that the skills were for ! That’s a ‘win’ ?? ( or ‘advantage’, or whatever is the current vogue word ).
Anyone is perfectly free to see for themselves the sheer extent to which you have contradicted yourself again and again. Denying that ‘pay to win’ necessarily means winning…yet at the same time referring to it as if it necessarily meant an ‘advantage’. You claim that P2W is P2W regardless…and has some concise meaning…yet you earlier claimed…
“if two new players of equal skill join and one can pay for an advantage over the other, it’s P2W.”
Which means it is only P2W if there is an advantage. I don’t need to contradict you. You do a damn good job of it yourself.
Which should include time…the one thing you try to leave out.
You give the example of two players with equal start. But what if one can mine 10 hours a day and the other can only mine for one ? If the player with less time to log in pays to catch up…by your definition that is ‘pay to win’, yet all he is doing is negating the unfair time advantage the other player has.
I very much doubt whether all factors are ever equal. Hell, not in a universe that’s already populated with mega-corps before one even joins.
I think that is pretty much the same as my assertion that inequality exists in time spent logged on, which itself provides an ‘unfair advantage’ to those with more time. Thus it is not inherently ‘paying to win’ to make a purchase to catch up. Of course, a person could exceed that and bring in so much that they have an ‘advantage’…but then someone could equally mine 18 hours a day for the same advantage.
I do wish people would see that TIME is part of the currency in Eve.
Well, the “advantage” to be logged in and playing partially involves honing the practical skills (besides gaining/losing isk from activities). Sure, people who spend more time on EvE in general (playing, looking things up, theorycrafting, experimenting with play styles, etc) are at an advantage vs those who don’t or can’t.
In that sense you are certainly correct that TIME spent on the game is an asset, but in my opinion not a tradable one (hence not a currency), since it is mostly the buildup of knowledge and personal skill.
On a more personal experience level, the way EvE forces its pace of “becoming better” as a pilot, via the training of skills (which is slow by any standard) and learning to assess and deal with risk factors, makes the selling of e.g., PLEX, SP and ISK via cash merely an opportunistic business tactic, in line with modern expectations and conditioning by playing other games.
It is, and in fact is one of the one most valuable and irreplaceable assets in any game. It’s also something that factors into many games business model, as “pay for convenience” and “pay to progress faster” and “pay to skip the grind” are extremely common in games (including in EVE).
However one thing to note is that while unequal amount of available play time does affect things (such as games where you skill up by ‘doing’), it’s less applicable to discussions of “pay for advantage” or monetization.
Because if there’s one thing no game developer can sell you, it’s more leisure time.
But you are then inventing a scenario that never actually exists. No two people ever actually log in for the exact same time, have the same speed internet connection, have the same quality of PC, or the same sized screen, or have the same cat jumping on the keyboard in the middle of fleet ops. All other factors will never be equal…no matter how often you repeat it as a mantra.
But that’s the whole point. Inequality exists even without ‘pay to win’. P2W is a two edged sword, because although it can be used for advantage, it can equally be used to make up for prior disadvantage.
The ‘grind to win’ model is not an equal race in the first place.
You cannot possibly measure anything objectively against an ‘all other factors equal’ scenario that does not exist.
And I gave an example right here in this thread where the 900m ISK for 9 days off the skill queue was not worth it. In fact my initial position on this thread ( and ever since ) has been that the cost of SP is ludicrous to the extent that only a fool would see it as a ‘win’.
Everyone in Eve would…and everyone would be flying Titans the following day.
What was that about the cost of SP not being an important factor ? Going on about ’ is more SP better than less SP ’ completely misses whether the purchase is worth it .
Simply arguing ’ I have more SP so I am winning’ is silly…if the cost of those SP would buy two of the ships you are skilling for and you could simply wait 14 days !
What’s more…simply arguing about ‘more SP’ is absurd. One of my Omega accounts has 4.2m SP yet cannot fly the Gnosis fitting that my 1.4m SP Alpha flies. So much for more SP being equated to ‘winning’. Why aren’t I ‘winning’ with 3 times as much SP ??
Having more SP does not automatically mean being a better player. Someone with 20m SP is not automatically twice as good as someone with 10m SP.
So no, I wont bite at your loaded question…because it attempts to imply something that is simply not true. Some players might even need more SP in order to be just as ‘good’ as someone with less. Some players might buy 20m SP and still be utterly useless.
All that SP do is bring forward time. A person is either ready to fly whatever it is they are aiming for, in which case where is the ‘advantage’…or they are not…in which case they lose their blingy new ship and wasted a lot on SP.
I would also ask…if a person is ready and able to fly a Paladin ( for example ), why shouldn’t they ? Expecting a person to grind for x months in a game they are already paying for…maybe that is the unreasonable thing, and not P2W.
No, you don’t get to demand the terms of debate. I have answered your question. End of. If you are not happy with the answer that is your problem, not mine.
