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My Community Has Withdrawn Our Pledges


ChipPatton

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I wonder what games the OP's community approves... not WoW (game tokens)... not Star Citizen (cash purchase of game credits with a limit per time)... not Entropia (real cash economy - that one is certainly pay to win by any standard)... I was gonna say Runescape would quality - back when I was playing it they were stalwarts against pay to win... but gold farmers beat them and now they have a game token system (like WoW - a lot of their recent changes seem like WoW-light.). And of course, Second Life with game money on an open market - not that there's a clear way to win there.

 

Maybe I just don't travel in the right game circles, but I can't think of anything that would meet the OP's standard.

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Seems like there's been some activity with this thread since I've been on last.  Late to the party and couldn't read all of the posts but ...

 

DAC's don't mean PTW.  I see the argument but you are leaving out the other aspects of the game that keep your conclusion in check.  Player creations, LUA, skills, size of orgs, operation of orgs, learning/knowing the mechanics of the game, and safe zones for a start. 

 

From what we know DU will be, this is probably one game with the LEAST chance of PTW or the biggest orgs rule everything compared to any other. I may be missing something but that's my opinion.

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Okay so you want a game in witch you can't pay other things than your month fee? The thing is you can win your fee by playing the game but also use this money to trade within it. An organisation of 10,000 people not buying stuff with money will still be more powerful than another with even 2,000 with members spending 100k per month even by creating robots. Humans can do more than money I believe. Big organizations will be OP.

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Now that I know what DACs are, I can say the OP is being silly.

 

Game subscription tokens are a great idea. If someone has money but lacks time, he can buy and sell DACs to skip over some of the play that's less interesting to him. And someone who has more time than money, can do the work and buy DACs for game access.

 

It's a choice of pay to play or work to play - it's not pay to win.

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Yes @DaphneJones I thought the same way. If you have time to play you make money, it has to be balanced so that real players really are rewarded. If you can sell your stuff you earned to pay your subscription, or be into an army or another service, it's worth it. (edit: you could actually steal some of the people's stuff, wether or not it had been bought with real money).

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  • 2 weeks later...

Being as this DAC system seems to be modeled after EVE by the CR's quasi-admission I'll reply to that and be a little more specific. 

PLEX in EVE ran many corporations away.  It did not take long for many corporations to realize there were wealthier corporations IRL out there.  Before PLEX, if a corporation was obviously enlisting the services of illicit farmers, you could report that to CCP and the corporation could be shut down.  There were real consequences for inflating the markets including losing your time and money investments into your own character which was a great deterrent to know that CCP, before PLEX, would not tolerate the exchange of IRL money for ISK.

Until PLEX, and for the most part, wars were very fair and balanced.  No corporation really wanted to wage wars and if they did they were highly efficient where the loser would bow out to prevent a total loss while the winner would allow this bowing out because they were generally also taking losses either by pay for info schemes or their mercenary and office bills.  Once PLEX was introduced, the waters were muddied; those who are clearly losing a war now can just keep injecting PLEX for ISK into the market and can even turn the tide of a war by hiring their own mercenaries even after losing ALL their assets.  To say this is not a literal pay-to-win scheme is diminishing the definition to suit one's own agenda here, dishonesty at best.

To call this a deterrent to farming is a very desperate "hail marry" to say the least.  Looking just at CCP's EVE Online, the farming did not go away.  It did not even slow down, in fact, it only shifted focus.  There are MORE adverts in the game now selling PLEX for much lower prices than what you can even buy them from CCP.  If CCP's PLEX taught us anything, it is the farming gets worse when you give legitimacy to the use of IRL Money to purchase in-game items and makes it harder for the players to understand that the behavior is unacceptable. 

My community has a very simple defining method:  Place two hypothetical players in the game, one with a $100.00 budget and one with a $100,000 -- if the player with a $100,000 budget has broader access to the game, stats, money, etc because of his budget, it is pay to win.

I do have a disposable income as a disabled veteran and small business owner but I'm more than certain there are many, many more people here that has a much higher disposable income. But let's just be honest here, in no video game should my disposable income EVER be a factor.  Again, let's be honest here, PLEX and DAC are simply another pay to win scheme that has been glossed over and shrouded by claims of "equal access" when the only group of folks that these systems have ever benefited is those with high disposable incomes (or those fiscally reckless).

I understand the developers need a payment model to fund the longevity of the game, but IMO if you have a subscription service, DAC is unnecessary and only seeks to undermine the awesome idea of this game, especially when the game already has a funding method: KS and Subscriptions. Other funding methods could be employed that my community would have no objections to; Fluff, IRL Merchandise, etc.  Anything that doesn't affect or leverage a PVP fight within the game is fair game as far as we're concerned and we've never complained about the notion that a company employs these methods, no matter how cheesy they're said to be by other players.

I do regret that my community pulled out of this kickstarter, it was quite sad watching the game fall from ~$440,000 pledged to ~$412,000 in just a few hours. I really did have great expectations for this game and hoped it would be a pleasant relief to the genre after the NMS debacle.  While I understand my community's support was just a small drop in the bucket you must understand if this KS fails, it will likely be directly due to the poor choice of funding, as I'm more than certain we could contribute in the realm of $30,000 to this game.  But we're simply not going to fund another pay-to-win game, we've been burned way too many times on this front.  Sorry.
 

Now that I know what DACs are, I can say the OP is being silly.

 

Game subscription tokens are a great idea. If someone has money but lacks time, he can buy and sell DACs to skip over some of the play that's less interesting to him. And someone who has more time than money, can do the work and buy DACs for game access.

 

It's a choice of pay to play or work to play - it's not pay to win.

 

The DAC system, like the PLEX system, also serves those who do not play and have very large wallets. Sure, I can use a gun to hunt and defend myself, but I can also use it for nefarious purposes as well just as the DAC system will be used and unregulated because the capital gains from the nefarious uses will far outweigh any moral compass any employee at Dual has, I'm sure of that.  Imagine this: While you're paying for your access to the game by farming in-game currency, the guy that's getting ready to sell you plex/dac spent 0 time and is likely poising himself to buy a better ship than you currently have to grief a group of players that have been playing for months and have months or even years worth of structures that are about to be obliterated.  So yes, while you are using this as a pay to play or work to play scheme, it only takes ONE person that is using it for Pay to Win (which it will be used as) to completely ruin your experience. That is the bitter truth, how that is silly is beyond me, not unless you're one of those guys with big wallets ready to sell all the DAC you can for an end-game ship on day one.  I imagine if that is the case, then DAC is very critical to your experience.

Even if you are that guy, what you don't understand is there is always more to buy, more upgrades, etc after every update which means you are on an endless treadmill of forking over exorbitant sums of cash to the developers just to stay ahead of the curb.  Some people will be completely fine with that because they would pay anything to massage their own egos and feel better in virtual reality.  I'm not, and there is nothing that can be said or otherwise told that would make me ok with that.  It's not because I can't participate, I could; I'm just not that intellectually challenged to participate.

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My community has a very simple defining method:  Place two hypothetical players in the game, one with a $100.00 budget and one with a $100,000 -- if the player with a $100,000 budget has broader access to the game, stats, money, etc because of his budget, it is pay to win.

 

Can you give an example of a game that has resources, ownership of some kind, and a means of transfering those resources between players, and is not pay-to-win?

 

Your pre-PLEX EvE example doesn't work. At best, disallowing real world trading (to borrow the Runescape term) is a hindrance (but there will always be ways around any detection system, report system, whatever -- it's a cat and mouse game like virus scanning, hack-antihack, etc. and it cannot be solved), and at worst it does nothing but waste developer time (you have to screen reports, comb through logs, develop fluky, heuristic detection algorithms, etc.)

 

In the end, the best, sneakiest and most successful corporations will simply be doing it without you even knowing about it. Example: instead of buying ships offline in some obvious manner where resources trade hands in an obviously imbalanced fashion, they could just pay people to play the game under their corporation, and they'd just be regular members funneling in resources through legitimate means. And yet on the corporate level, they're buying -- to win!

 

The model you're proposing is mathematically impossible, intractable, completely futile. It cannot be done. So long as the real world is ruled by money, you'll be able to pay someone to win at a game. This mainly applies to games with persistence, with resources, and with stats. In games like CS:GO, you won't see the problem to the same extent, because the only real resource is skill, and to a lesser degree rank. The problem still manifests in a different form, however. In CS, you can pay someone to boost your rank (completely twisted way of looking at ELO, but our world warps our psychology in many F'd up ways), or you can pay someone to make cheats for you, to essentially "buy skill". No way around it. No permanent solution. You want to get rid of pay-to-win? Get rid of money, bring about world peace, transition to a post-scarcity, egalitarian society. Basically make utopia happen, and then we can have true equality. Until then, you're chasing your tail, and wasting your breath. Sorry =/

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Can you give an example of a game that has resources, ownership of some kind, and a means of transfering those resources between players, and is not pay-to-win?

 

I thought it was obvious, EVE before Plex.  You also have Elite Dangerous which is by far zero pay to win and NO re-occurring payment model either.  Both games actively (or did in EVE's case) seek out farmers and had zero-tolerance policies for them.

 

 

 

Your pre-PLEX EvE example doesn't work. At best, disallowing real world trading (to borrow the Runescape term) is a hindrance (but there will always be ways around any detection system, report system, whatever -- it's a cat and mouse game like virus scanning, hack-antihack, etc. and it cannot be solved), and at worst it does nothing but waste developer time (you have to screen reports, comb through logs, develop fluky, heuristic detection algorithms, etc.)

 

You missed the point as it wasn't targeted to pre-PLEX but post-PLEX.  Even after PLEX was introduced it is still a problem and farmers still sell plex at much lower prices than CCP does. This can't happen unless farming is still a MAJOR problem meaning PLEX negated nothing, however, it does legitimize the trade of IRL money for in-game currency.  IMO if there were any improvement at all in the farming, it is not worth the submissive reckless abandonment of decades of ethos in the "can't beat'em, join'em" mantra.

 

In the end, the best, sneakiest and most successful corporations will simply be doing it without you even knowing about it. Example: instead of buying ships offline in some obvious manner where resources trade hands in an obviously imbalanced fashion, they could just pay people to play the game under their corporation, and they'd just be regular members funneling in resources through legitimate means. And yet on the corporate level, they're buying -- to win!

 

And if caught the game would lose its reputation and likely fold within a few weeks once players tell news outlets like RPS and Polygon about it. I'm sorry to burst your bubble, but this is an entirely self-correcting issue.

 

 

The model you're proposing is mathematically impossible, intractable, completely futile. It cannot be done. So long as the real world is ruled by money, you'll be able to pay someone to win at a game. This mainly applies to games with persistence, with resources, and with stats. In games like CS:GO, you won't see the problem to the same extent, because the only real resource is skill, and to a lesser degree rank. The problem still manifests in a different form, however. In CS, you can pay someone to boost your rank (completely twisted way of looking at ELO, but our world warps our psychology in many F'd up ways), or you can pay someone to make cheats for you, to essentially "buy skill". No way around it. No permanent solution. You want to get rid of pay-to-win? Get rid of money, bring about world peace, transition to a post-scarcity, egalitarian society. Basically make utopia happen, and then we can have true equality. Until then, you're chasing your tail, and wasting your breath. Sorry =/

 

How has Elite Dangerous pulled this off then? I realize all ED provides is match making but still they have infrastructure to maintain. How did EVE pull it off for so many years?  Moreover, how does my son's football team pull off playing without paying the refs for a first down, or extra yards?

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We're still sitting at 441,396 euros and over 6270 backers that believe DAC will work.

You are missing an important metric, that is 6 days to raise €62,000.00 (in my defense, there is still about $70k to go which converts to about €62k)

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I thought it was obvious, EVE before Plex. [. . .] You missed the point as it wasn't targeted to pre-PLEX but post-PLEX.

 

Which is it? You've got to make up your mind. I'm not sure if you're ignoring the point on purpose or if you misread what I wrote. In either case, I won't repeat myself.

 

 

And if caught the game would lose its reputation and likely fold within a few weeks once players tell news outlets like RPS and Polygon about it. I'm sorry to burst your bubble, but this is an entirely self-correcting issue.

 

I just explained to you how you can do it without getting caught, therefore this point is moot.

 

 

How has Elite Dangerous pulled this off then? I realize all ED provides is match making but still they have infrastructure to maintain. How did EVE pull it off for so many years?  Moreover, how does my son's football team pull off playing without paying the refs for a first down, or extra yards?

 

I'll preface this by saying I haven't played ED, and I'm not very familiar with its mechanics. However, I asked around, and apparently there isn't much to be gained by paying in ED, and the progression is mostly lateral, as opposed to vertical (amassing wealth and power). A bigger ship isn't a difference in power, it's a difference in kind/style.

 

As for your son, I haven't the slightest. Presumably, he doesn't play at a high enough level for there to be enough competitive incentive to cheat. However, if you look at a more reasonable example of professional sports with big money involved or other compelling reasons to seek an advantage, people cheat bribe and especially use illegal substances all the freaking time. Your example kind of defeats itself.

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Hey man, as we have said many times, you are free to not support this game.

 

NQ-Nyzaltar has tried to engage you on the topic. You did not pick up his offer. You left and now you come back repeating the same message.

 

To say the slow burn of the kickstarter is because of the DAC system is very biased. And ignorant of what is happening in the wider genre.

 

You have said before your community has withdrawn their pledges, 2 weeks ago?

And now again?

 

Good luck finding a future game that upholds your high standards.

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Which is it? You've got to make up your mind. I'm not sure if you're ignoring the point on purpose or if you misread what I wrote. In either case, I won't repeat myself.

 

It becomes pretty tough to carry on a reasonable debate when you're purposely using ambiguities.  The point you were trying to make is that no games can survive without P2W, you are wrong, and history proves you are wrong.  There is nothing to make my mind up on as EVE was NOT pay to win before PLEX was introduced.

 

 

I just explained to you how you can do it without getting caught, therefore this point is moot.

 

Yet ESO lost big-time when they were caught siding with cheaters -- overnight they lost nearly 80% of their PVP population. I bet they thought their methods were foolproof as well.  They were wrong and they had to go free-to-play because of it.

I'll quote their Community Manager as Beth/Zenimax's excuse, "exploiting is a gray area in the TOS".

 

I'll preface this by saying I haven't played ED, and I'm not very familiar with its mechanics. However, I asked around, and apparently there isn't much to be gained by paying in ED, and the progression is mostly lateral, as opposed to vertical (amassing wealth and power). A bigger ship isn't a difference in power, it's a difference in kind/style.

Sorry, but you are misinformed.  An anaconda in ED can pretty much do everything, fighting (very well), trading (very well), and exploration (very well). It is the end-all-be-all ship.

 

As for your son, I haven't the slightest. Presumably, he doesn't play at a high enough level for there to be enough competitive incentive to cheat. However, if you look at a more reasonable example of professional sports with big money involved or other compelling reasons to seek an advantage, people cheat bribe and especially use illegal substances all the freaking time. Your example kind of defeats itself.

That is why you have referees, you trust them to ensure that both teams play fair and by the rules.  Currently, there are no rules that say you can pay for yards.

 

 

Hey man, as we have said many times, you are free to not support this game.

 

NQ-Nyzaltar has tried to engage you on the topic. You did not pick up his offer. You left and now you come back repeating the same message.

 

To say the slow burn of the kickstarter is because of the DAC system is very biased. And ignorant of what is happening in the wider genre.

 

You have said before your community has withdrawn their pledges, 2 weeks ago?

And now again?

 

Good luck finding a future game that upholds your high standards.

Thanks for the wishes of good fortune and luck finding that game.  As for Nyzaltar, I did not engage because it seemed canned and exact to the message he sent another one of our members on the KS page when he directly questioned him on DAC.  When you are dealing with canned replies in which my member says after he explained our community's experience, there was never any reply, there isn't a great chance that I will get any civil discourse here that is based in honesty rather undertones of greed and justifications for those undertones.

 

I would love nothing more than to sit down and explain to him why DAC isn't cool, but this is obviously already in stone so there is no conversation that can actually help here because Nyzaltar is already convinced that DAC is some whiteknight tool to use against farmers when it is anything but. I hated finalizing the officer's vote in my community to abandon this project because I was honestly in love with the concept of a Space Engineers/EVE MMO, but the DAC system just threw up everything about EVE we all hated and the reason we abandoned EVE a little after PLEX came out and we realized just how pay-to-win it was when abused by certain players.

 

It is not just me who has decided to not support this game, it is an entire community who has strongly backed a few other games before including Elite Dangerous that is saying "no" to this solely because of the DAC system, and when we brought that up as an issue on the KS, we were told "you are wrong and morons if you think it is pay to win".  The only moronic thing there was someone who thinks first-hand accounts is moronic.  Obviously, the KS page was non-caring, Nyzaltar was non-caring, so what is the point to argue it?  Honestly, what is the point of me continuing beyond here as these forums minus some 22 people here liking the post? I don't think there is one and think the game is a lost cause, which is tear-jerkingly sad.  When the fancamp is in the forums before the game is released making excuses for the developers for making decisions that are blindly obvious show-stoppers in other games that already had the reputation and playerbase to absorb the fallout, I'm sorry but the game doesn't even have a snowball's chance in hell.

 

Experience has taught my community one thing when a company goes pay-to-win they never go back, they double down on it, in fact.  Look at EverQuest (Mercenaries then outright levels for money) and other Daybreak/SOE games, and look at Ark: Survival Evolved -- I mean they put their big toe in pay to win with Scorched Earth and now they're going "all in" from what I hear in their Discord by getting ready to release a DLC that allows you to build a character who can cast spells for the price of $49.95.  Meh, maybe just fundimentalists like me are a dinosour in gaming now and have no place any more.

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It becomes pretty tough to carry on a reasonable debate when you're purposely using ambiguities. 

 

Even harder when your counterpart is incapable of deductive reasoning.

 

 

The point you were trying to make is that no games can survive without P2W, you are wrong, and history proves you are wrong.

 

No, it is not the point I was trying to make. The point I was trying to get across that every game that has resources, exchange and competition, will always to some extent be pay-to-win, and it is inescapable. There will always be some way of paying somebody to gain an edge. All you can do is try to minimize it, incentivize against it and provide alternatives to level the playing field.

 

 

Yet ESO lost big-time when they were caught siding with cheaters -- overnight they lost nearly 80% of their PVP population. I bet they thought their methods were foolproof as well.  They were wrong and they had to go free-to-play because of it.

I'll quote their Community Manager as Beth/Zenimax's excuse, "exploiting is a gray area in the TOS".

 

Strawman.

 

 

Sorry, but you are misinformed.  An anaconda in ED can pretty much do everything, fighting (very well), trading (very well), and exploration (very well). It is the end-all-be-all ship

 

Then I can't affirmatively comment on it, but I will say that this leads me to believe your method of determining what's pay-to-win is biased and you've failed to identify the game as such. Or alternatively, the mechanics/balance of power aren't as you assert. But again, I'm not an authority on the game and hence this branch of the conversation is a dead end.

 

Riddle me this: what's stopping me from paying someone cash money, dolla dolla bills to give me one of those sick-ass ships?

These cats knew what they were talking about. With this bullshit status quo we've got to settle with for now, it's the green that makes the world go round.

 

 

That is why you have referees, you trust them to ensure that both teams play fair and by the rules.  Currently, there are no rules that say you can pay for yards.

 

And this has completely thwarted cheating, and doping isn't an actual thing and I've just dreamed up all this corruption in virtually every facet of the sporting world?

Ok, cool, I guess you win then.

 

*laughs out loud*

 

Seriously, man? Get real xD

I've never met anyone with glasses that rose tinted...

 

Jokes aside, you probably intend something like "Oh but they get caught and the system works and punishments are dealt" etc. etc. But none of that matters. Sure, people might get caught, sometimes we figure it out soon-ish, often only several years later. Point is, people cheat, and however temporal and transient, they still PAY to WIN, even if just for a moment. And that's all that matters to them, and to this conversation.

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Lots of points already made but the simple test I use to determine P2W or not is: All factors in Pay to Win must occur. Paying is the constant but what exactly are you winning and how? What insurmountable advantage are you gaining by throwing rl cash into the game? Are you able to buy in game items (gear, weapons) that can't be gotten any other way? Those IMO are the most important questions when talking P2W if you want to be real about it and not just run around like chicken little the second you see any kind of RMTs.

 

In this game and many like it items must be produced by players. There is no NPC vendor you pump a bunch of credits into and get gear and weapons from. Resources still have to be gathered by players and items need to be assembled by players. There also isn't anything that can't be acquired by simply playing the game. At worst its pay to progress faster but again nothing you gain from buying a bunch of DACs and selling them in game will give an insurmountable advantage.

 

If gear was the end all be all then might have a point but its clearly not as skills, stats, attributes and such also play a role in character power. This is a sandbox game, not some arena instance grinder heck combat in this game isn't even the end all be all experience.

 

Besides if one is so strict and non-tolerant of paying for stuff in these games not sure what games you can play anymore nowadays. There a clear examples that are P2W, there a clear line that they shouldn't cross and honestly I haven't seen anything yet form this Dev and this game that comes anywhere close to that line.

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Actually, you know what. Since I don't think you're very good at presenting a cogent argument, I'll do you a solid. I've played devil's advocate for this side, now I'll present a better case from your point of view.

 

The one cogent argument you've made, is that doing DAC versus doing a non-transferable subscription based model, is that the former will probably have a lower barrier for people to use their money to gain influence in game. That's what you should focus on if you want to convince people. Does this effect (more paying for resources) translate to more pay-to-win, and does the cost of that outweigh the benefits (devs get more money, have to spend less on policing, and so on)?

 

 

Well, let's see what we've got.

 

On the DAC side:

 

    Pros:

  • Developers get the revenue from wealthy people buying in-game resources
  • Developers don't have to spend resources like development time on defeating means of people using their money to gain resources
  • As I've shown, it's not  possible to completely remove this outside influence, as people can always just pay people to play for their org and legitimately create resources for them. You might say this doesn't apply to single persons, but a dictatorial org effectively is one person wielding all the resources.

    Cons:

  • Even honest people with money can buy resources, which might be socially acceptable (more on this later). I'd predict at least a 2/4-fold increase in flow of real money into in-game money (might be generous, but let's just stick with that for the sake of argument)
  • Legitimizing this mechanism might make it less frowned upon by the community (kind of the same con, but I wanted another bulletin point)

 

On the non-transferable/non-liquifiable subscription model side:

 

    Pros:

  • Probably reduces the amount of flow to some fraction
  • Enables enforcement of ban on real world influence with money, based on TOS

    Cons:

  • Enforcement only applies to cases that are detectable and don't exploit obvious, easy loopholes I've mentioned
  • Creates a black market for unsanctioned trading of in-game resources outside the game
  • -> revenue leaves the game, we get less features because devs get less money (only from subs used for playtime, not ones bought to use as currency)

 

In summary, I think DAC overall is better, but I'll also posit that neither model completely addresses the issue of pay-to-win -- they both miss the mark.

 

 

Let's examine the dynamics of what makes pay-to-win possible.

 

The more the game is set out to be a competitive environment, the more mechanics we have that pit players against each other, the more incentive there will be to pay for in-game advantages. Conversely, the more gameplay revolves around co-operation, the less need people will have to seek an advantage over one another or pay-to-win. In other words, what do we consider "winning"? If I win by making you lose, "pay-to-win" (in the anal discomfort inducing sense) becomes possible.

 

Also, it kind of depends on how you gain an in-game advantage. We need to promote mechanisms that are not achievable through resources that you can acquire with real money.

 

How you actually reach these goals is a super complex topic. You could discuss things like not having a monetary system in game at all, somehow simulating a post-scarcity society a la Iain M. Banks' Culture society... But we might be too set in our ways and fixated on our money-based world view for this to be possible. Again, really tough to come up with workable models.

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Lots of points already made but the simple test I use to determine P2W or not is: All factors in Pay to Win must occur. Paying is the constant but what exactly are you winning and how? What insurmountable advantage are you gaining by throwing rl cash into the game?

 

In this game and many like it items must be produced by players. There is no NPC vendor you pump a bunch of credits into and get gear and weapons from. Resources still have to be gathered by players and items need to be assembled by players. There also isn't anything that can't be acquired by simply playing the game. At worst its pay to progress faster but again nothing you gain from buying a bunch of DACs and selling them in game will give an insurmountable advantage.

 

You can make your organization win a war. You buy DACs, you use them directly to buy ships, crew, ammo, etc. (I mean, either directly or through some proxy medium of exchange, it doesn't matter)

You then use these resources to straight-up out-gun your opponents.

 

My main original point being that if you set up the rules of the game such that this kind of advantage seeking behavior is a part of your gameplay and the world is not somehow forced to be symmetric and fair, you WILL end up with some degree of pay-to-win, and DAC or no DAC isn't about removing this aspect, because it can't.

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Lots of points already made but the simple test I use to determine P2W or not is: All factors in Pay to Win must occur. Paying is the constant but what exactly are you winning and how? What insurmountable advantage are you gaining by throwing rl cash into the game?

 

In this game and many like it items must be produced by players. There is no NPC vendor you pump a bunch of credits into and get gear and weapons from. Resources still have to be gathered by players and items need to be assembled by players. There also isn't anything that can't be acquired by simply playing the game. At worst its pay to progress faster but again nothing you gain from buying a bunch of DACs and selling them in game will give an insurmountable advantage.

 

If gear was the end all be all then might have a point but its clearly not as skills, stats, attributes and such also play a role in character power. This is a sandbox game, not some arena instance grinder heck combat in this game isn't even the end all be all experience.

 

Besides if one is so strict and non-tolerant of paying for stuff in these games not sure what games you can play anymore nowadays. There a clear examples that are P2W, there a clear line that they shouldn't cross and honestly I haven't seen anything yet form this Dev and this game that comes anywhere close to that line.

 

Exactly!  I'm sure with all of these pages this point has been made, including my earlier post but Patton is making his own definition which doesn't apply to this game. The flaw in the arguement isn't the arguement itself but the definition it is based on. 

 

It is like saying a rainbow is only blue because I define it by saying it ends where the constant ends (color change).  Ok ... maybe not the best analogy but there is no use in arguing with Patton b/c his definition is this issue .... he is looking at a cell and not the body as a whole.  There are two different perspectives BUT!!! each is looking at two different things; the arguments aren't about the same thing.

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I would love nothing more than to sit down and explain to him why DAC isn't cool, but this is obviously already in stone so there is no conversation that can actually help here because Nyzaltar is already convinced that DAC is some whiteknight tool to use against farmers when it is anything but.

 

From your own admission, you're NOT going to convince Novaquark to change their mind.

 

You and your "community" have already withdrawn your pledges.

 

Why are you here?  To Troll?  To cause strife within the community?  To undermine the Kickstarter?

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You can make your organization win a war. You buy DACs, you use them directly to buy ships, crew, ammo, etc. (I mean, either directly or through some proxy medium of exchange, it doesn't matter)

You then use these resources to straight-up out-gun your opponents.

 

My main original point being that if you set up the rules of the game such that this kind of advantage seeking behavior is a part of your gameplay and the world is not somehow forced to be symmetric and fair, you WILL end up with some degree of pay-to-win, and DAC or no DAC isn't about removing this aspect, because it can't.

They still have to fight though against other players who got that same stuff either the same way or through playing the game. they don't live in a vacuum and all those credits they spent don't just disappear they get used to buy stuff as well.

 

Like said at worst its pay to progress faster or pay to be lazy but not Pay to Win.

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They still have to fight though against other players who got that same stuff either the same way or through playing the game. they don't live in a vacuum and all those credits they spent don't just disappear they get used to buy stuff as well.

 

Like said at worst its pay to progress faster or pay to be lazy but not Pay to Win.

 

Are you familiar with the notion of initial value problems? You're essentially ignoring the constant terms here.

 

Sure, group X, with nothing but the sweat of their brow can reach the same military strength as group Y can, given enough time (KEY THING TO NOTE).

 

The point is that group Y can amass that same military might basically within an arbitrarily short span of time, limited only by A ) the amount of real money they are spending per unit time and B ) Skill tree progression, whose change per unit time is constant. We can more or less ignore B for the purposes of this discussion, because it's the same constant factor for both parties and we're comparing the derivatives.

 

End result, group with real-life clout gets army basically instantly if they want, group without gets rekt because they can't put resources on the field at the same rate.

 

As for where the money goes? It gets diffused into the economy. Where it goes doesn't matter since it gets distributed evenly (unless you literally buy from your enemy like a fucking idiot, haha xD).

 

So yes, it is indeed pay-to-win. And I'll stop here because the rest is me repeating myself.

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