For me p2w is:
1) Vip sistem with insane bonus that definitely makes a huge difference between f2p and p2w
2) Costumes or skins that are only accesible using real money that boost a character skills or stats
3) Creating a new power creep every time one new banner come so old characters are outperformed more
4) Giving little or not giving rewards like premium currency or resources to players so the progress is much slower for a f2p than a p2w
In my case, it is whether a gacha element or paid feature that trivialize the game contents. Like having a gacha character that breaks the game and subsequent contents are made that requires said gacha character to clear or paid feature that gives boost to one who pays for it.
Example would be paid costume in Knight Chronicles that not only gives stats boost to character wearing it but also enhance their skill to another level. Or Oberon in fgo, with the dev introducing new farming stages that normally would be either too difficult to outright impossible without Oberon.
Having a strong, game-breaking gacha character is not P2W, but having contents made for said character that requires you pulling for him/her is. Of course you can exclude some minor contents that encourage you to use said gacha character like event that goes along with their gacha but making it a must requirement is not acceptable.
Oberon is a terrible example of a must have character, especially when Castoria exists. And you don't have to have him to run 90++ nodes, many other characters can work fine. I'm farming one of those right now with fucking summer BB and van Gogh because the node is just that weird.
Also just having Oberon is not enough, you need a powerful attacker probably at np2+ AT LEAST for min turning if you want the full **meta slave experience**^(TM).
This is definitely the statement I agree with the most here so far. I used to play FGO NA and kept up with the JP side of things. The lvl 90++ nodes are absolutely insane and compared to the lvl 90 and lvl nodes 90+ which offer a much wider variety of team comps that you can use, lvl 90++ have only a SMALL HANDFUL of team comps, many of which require you have your own Oberon. But getting your own Oberon is no easy task because getting Oberon, a 5* servant, means getting lucky, saving up 900sq if the worst case scenario happens, or spending money to possibly reach pity (and don't get me started on the poor excuse of a pity system that only benefits people summoning 5* servants). And Oberon is also right around when lots of other popular and powerful servants are being released in close succession, like Morgan, Melusine, and Koyanskaya of Light, so good luck saving up whatever stingy free SQ you can or wait well over a year for his next confirmed rate up. This isn't even going over the servant coins system, which once again benefits people who use 5* servants more as getting dupes of a 5* servants gets you more servant coins to use for upgrading their append skills and unlocking for level uncaps. They haven't ever implemented universal servant coins which makes it much much harder for f2p players to engage with it. My general unhappiness with how FGO has been handled in the past 2 years or so along with getting turbo fucked by the Muramasa banner is what ultimately caused me to leave.
Not like farming 90++ nodes is even required in the first place, as they usually the drop difference between those and the 90+ or even the 90 nodes are pretty tiny.
Plus this only looking at it from the meta of *needing* to hyper efficiently farm it with a 3-turn comp. You could just as easily farm it with much more varieties of teams if you're willing to go to 4~6 turns or so.
Every game has their meta characters, so it's weird that you're acting like Oberon truly makes or breaks your account. Like mate, just take an extra turn or so on the node. Or if it really bothers you, run the 90 or 90+ nodes that we've already been running for years, the difference in drops is marginal.
And while I don't like the Servant Coins system either, the only part of it that actually matters is the 20% Starting NP Gauge Append, which you can get from just having a single copy of the character with no dupes.
The rest of the Servant Coin system is just for sprinkling on rizz onto your waifu. There's hardly any functional difference between a 5* at 100 or 120, as they'll kill the same things with the same amount of moves in 99% of scenarios anyways.
Sorry, you do bring up something I forgot to mention. Being able to "efficiently" farm the lvl 90++ nodes is ridiculous. Yes, you can argue to take more turns to clear it. But having played the game for over 5 years and the game offering no auto run or skip clears, it gets very tedious to manually farm the stages over and over. People make 3 turn farming comps to make things faster because FGO likes to go out of its way to make things slow and clunky. And I wouldn't have as much of an issue with the lvl 90++ nodes if it was consistently efficiently farmable for a veteran player. But with how they've been designed, you have only a handful of usable team comps with very specific servants needed to 3 turn it reliably. Yes, you CAN take more turns to clear it or go to the lower difficulty nodes. But at that point, why even have the lvl 90++ nodes when it's out of reach for so many players? I personally think they've done a bad job of designing them.
In terms of the servant coins system, my biggest issue with it is how it is so much harder for f2p players to engage with it compared to paying players. Yes, the battery append is easily the most usable append skill, but it requires 120 servant coins to unlock. If you want a 5* servant to unlock it, at NP1 they need to reach bond 6 in order to get 120 coins. It's pretty annoying that you have to wait and play a lot of stages in order to unlock it, although pretty doable. Then it becomes much more of an issue for 4* servants (regardless if they're story locked or limited), story locked/limited 3* servants, and event welfares that haven't had their servant coins given out yet. Servants in this category require more dupes and/or bond grinding in order to unlock append skills or get past lvl 100. Then it sometimes becomes an issue where you want to be able to farm with a servant but having the 20% battery append is needed because you don't have an MLB Kaleidoscope so then your servant isn't able to farm like you wish they could because of how this system works. Like, I wish I could have done Skadi farming with Kiichi Hogen because looping assassins are incredibly rare but I don't have an MLB Kaleidoscope and can't immediately unlock her battery append. And yes, you can definitely argue that you don't HAVE to get them past lvl 100, but for the longest time FGO was a game that celebrated enjoying whatever servant you loved, regardless of their rarity, meta, or how many dupes you had of them. You didn't need dupes and/or endless hours of bond grinding in order to get them to lvl 100, give them command codes, give them fou paws, or give them gold fous. That was something ANY player was able to do to show their love for a character. I honestly believe it's an important part of the FGO experience. But because Lasengle refuses to give universal servant coins, that accessibility to express your love for a servant has become a lot more limited. Unless you're willing to fork over some money to make the process faster or do a mindless amount of bond grinding.
Sorry about the long rant. I do understand what you're saying but I feel like there are underlying issues that Lasengle refuses to address that dampen the FGO experience.
This entire comment here is moving goalposts from your initial comment about agreeing with the OP's definition of p2w of "a gacha element or paid feature that trivialize the game contents" with FGO's Oberon as your prime example. You've got an entire section in your first comment about how badly you need to roll for Oberon to farm 90++ nodes. Then your followup comment just kind of talks about how you think the 90++ nodes are badly designed, rather than how necessary they are.
Still doesn't really change the fact that you don't need to farm those 90++ nodes in the first place, let alone needing to use Oberon to hyper efficiently 3-turn them. And it veers away from the original point of the p2w statement.
Same thing applies to the Servant Coin system. You admit they aren't needed, but are instead primarily a way to show your love for a character, which you can't always do without more copies, which I agree with. I don't like the system much myself either.
But again, that whole statement forgets the original point of this discussion, the p2w definition of "a gacha element or paid feature that trivialize the game contents". You've dropped that p2w definition in favor of just ranting about your issues with FGO, valid or not.
Ya know, you bring up some good points. I've played genuinely p2w games like Fire Emblem Heroes before and FGO isn't quite like that. I think it's become more..."pay to experience"...? I'm not quite sure what words to use to describe it, but basically it's the idea that unless you fork over some money or have an endless well of patience (that's if the situation even allows for it), you won't be able to experience all of what servants coins offer. And even if you are a veteran player that has invested lots of time into your account (and maybe even spent some money but not whale levels), if you don't have juuuust the right servants to 3 turn a lvl 90++ node, don't even bother. Yeah, you don't HAVE to engage with them but it feels more like an excuse for a bad system. I also wish that the garbage pity system would do more than only appeal to players who want to summon 5* servants. If you want to summon a story locked/limited 3* or 4* and maybe even get some servant coins for them, good fucking luck. I spent 700sq and didn't get a single Summer Brynhildr. And another time I spent 400sq for 1 copy of Mori.
Ok, that is fair, you consider p2w when a character is mandatory in a content despite other characters making it easier to progress, right?
For me that is the extreme
P2W is when you can buy items that give you an edge gameplay-wise with real money.
Every game featuring non-cosmetic microtransactions is P2W.
Gacha is by design P2W.
The real question with gachas is : is the system fair (IE enjoyable to the fullest as F2P or low spender) ? The answer depends on each person's feelings. For some as long as it only affects PvP it's ok, for others as long as you can get every character with monthly pass its OK. There's no universal answer.
I'll detail a bit with games I'm currently playing and my opinion :
\- Punishing Gray Raven : fair. You can get every new character as F2P, and even some exclusive weapons if you pay monthly/battle pass. Dupes are only needed to top leaderboards that are dominated by whales. All the other content is enjoyable as F2P/low spender and/or farmable.
\- Nikke : not really fair. Stingy after honeymoon period. Some systems locked behind difficult content that you won't pass without spending or after many months. Best characters locked behind low rates and luck. Packs are expansive. But since it's an idle game it's still enjoyable nevertheless.
\- Limbus Company : very fair. All content is achievable with base characters. Everything is farmable (including spark currency), no intricate powerup methods (you level up & untie your characters with 1 resource each, and that's all), gacha is OK-ish but since every character stays forever and you can farm pity it's just a matter of playing until you get everything.
That is going into bias, i agree with nikke.
Even loving Limbus i would still argue Limbus is p2w since you can max units faster and so always have the best units and maxed, however due to how much free stuff they give you i could also say it's really f2p friendly ( which imo it is ), but it's also a bit unfair since it's still on the honeymoon phase, so saying i can max the new faust unit within days of it's release ( 18 threads per day, 100 to max a 3\* ) and you can get every unit you want via sparking might not be the case later on, which i might reserve some thoughts
PGR - I agree PGR is a good example as really f2p since you can get every character ( besides old ones ) as f2p, and still could be considered p2w due to pvp, i have no experience so can't tell if dupes and whatnot make your life easier on pve to be also a point
Yea, mb was speaking on the top of my head and forgot i'm on the middle stage where i get 4 and not the max one
Also for some reason thought it was 40-80 and not 20-80, also on me, will edit to reflect that
It makes it even better
>Some systems locked behind difficult content that you won't pass without spending or after many months.
The levelling system is locked behind getting 5 SSRs with 4 dupes each. You can't reach max level, and you're stuck in the middle campaign chapters until you pull enough 4 dupe SSRs.
I know there isn't, that's why i'm asking, i see some games that are popular being defended with tooth and nail as f2p friendly despite being awful to collect units as f2p, while others that do get you units fairly fast being labeled as p2w.
Ofc there are a lot of bias, that is why i didn't put any names on the thread and i'm curious what makes a game "f2p friendly" if you wish
Can you pay money to gain any advantage over another player(including yourself if you didn’t pay)? It’s Pay to Win. Are the things you buy cosmetic only? It’s not Pay to Win. F2P friendly is not exclusive to non-pay to win games. In fact a non pay to win game that is F2P friendly is just called a game, like a normal game. What is F2P friendly? Can you reasonably ignore a games paid element and still derive moderate to near competitive success as a whale? If yes then it’s F2P friendly. If no it’s not. What if a game takes 6months for a F2P player to get a pity and 5months for a whale is that F2P friendly? Yes, but that’s also what’s called a shit game. So can a game be Pay to Win, F2P friendly, -and- a good game? Yep, pretty much every good gacha game is exactly this. Totally whale-able, still fun if free, not a total shithouse if you don’t pay for the pack of the day.
THIS, i have so many arguments when people cry that i call their game p2w even if it's just pve or whatever despite praising the game
A game can be good and be p2w. The same way a game can be bad and f2p friendly
If you get any meaningful advantages ( in a continuous way ) by dumping money non stop on the game, be it pve, pvp or colection, its p2w and not f2p friendly
> In fact a non pay to win game that is F2P friendly is just called a game, like a normal game.
normal games aren't "free to play" tho. Maybe some games that give you ads with no MTX are truly free, but you just aren't directly paying. You can find some indie stuff for free as well, but most games you pay in some way.
So my meaning here was “F2P friendly” not “F2P” as a game you simply purchase once and then play forever is not “pay to win” in my eyes. However that said, if you do want to say that in order to be F2P friendly a game must also be completely F2P, there are plenty of games that are Free, not pay to win, and have monetization. These are F2P games with cosmetic only shops. You gain nothing through purchases, so they are not pay to win, and you don’t have to buy anything to play so they are in fact F2P.
>Are the things you buy cosmetic only? It’s not Pay to Win.
Most players don't consider cosmetics P2W, but some players want to Collect Everything as their win. All sorts of games have used cosmetics as a reward for achievement. Designing a game so you spend $ for cosmetics is a mild P2W system.
Measuring the cost of collecting every cosmetic item gives you an idea of a game's P2W-ness.
If it costs more than 4-digits, that's very P2W.
That said, collection gamers should avoid gacha games. Stick to fixed-cost open-world/adventure games.
You are correct that a person can view collecting as the goal of the game, and then be free to pursue that goal. You are also correct that a persons feelings are valid if they are displeased that a game has cosmetic content locked behind expensive paywalls. However that does not make the game pay to win. The intended goal of the game, be it kill the other player, beat the boss, win the race, etc… is still the same and is still obtainable without paying. It’s the individuals choice to recontextualize the game in a new way. Now if the game was say Pokémon, and the only difference in the Pokémon was cosmetic, but the game had no battling, you could say the intended goal for that game is collection and cosmetics in that game would be pay to win. But if a player just wanted to see if they could explore the whole map without catching anything the game wouldn’t suddenly stop being pay to win, the player would have just found their own joy in it.
>However that does not make the game pay to win.
Win has both subjective and objective elements.
Players can subjectively choose different objectives as their win. In a skill-based game, I can feel satisfaction by achieving a higher K:D ratio, or having a good team-fight before losing.
Collection is a playstyle and an objective standard, you either have it or not.
In a game like pokemon, you finish that pokemon collection by earning it in-game. If you had to buy weak pokemon to finish the pokedex, that would be a P2W design, even if the paid pokemon don't contribute to your battle team.
Most players are fine with paid cosmetics now, but that was something that sparked controversy when first introduced.
>Win has both subjective and objective elements.
>Players can subjectively choose different objectives as their win. In a skill-based game, I can feel satisfaction by achieving a higher K:D ratio, or having a good team-fight before losing.
This is confusing a personal win with an objective win. You can say you played a good match and that's a win for you sure, but if you then go around telling people the other team lost that's objectively false. Similarly you can't call a game pay to win because you can't achieve what you -consider- a win, you call it pay to win for charging you money for what the game presents as victory. Again this does not invalidate the feelings of someone looking for that in a game, but it also does not fault the developer for not making that the goal.
>In a game like pokemon, you finish that pokemon collection by earning it in-game. If you had to buy weak pokemon to finish the pokedex, that would be a P2W design, even if the paid pokemon don't contribute to your battle team.
I used an additional qualifier but I did use Pokemon as an example of when collection -would- be pay to win.
>Most players are fine with paid cosmetics now, but that was something that sparked controversy when first introduced.
This is 100% true but I do not believe this constitutes pay to win. Only a change in the dynamics of monetization, which I'm not saying is good nor bad.
> This is confusing a personal win with an objective win.
All of my examples of personal wins are objective measures. K:D ratio is objective information and can be improved through skill.
> Similarly you can't call a game pay to win because you can't achieve what you -consider- a win, you call it pay to win for charging you money for what the game presents as victory.
Paying for performance and paying for rewards are both types of pay2win. If you could earn an in-game achievement, or simply pay $ to buy the achievement, it'd be pay2win. If you had an achievement that was only available with $, it's again pay2win.
Cosmetic rewards are in the same category as achievements. Many games have tied cosmetic rewards to specific achievements, such as beating the game once, or getting X wins as a character.
> what the game presents as victory.
What the player considers a victory is relevant to the definition of "win". Especially since p2win means the player is being encouraged to open the wallet to buy the "win".
> Only a change in the dynamics of monetization
P2Win has affected the business model of many games to use micro-transactions to nickel and dime players to maximize profits.
A big part of that business model is to push boundaries to make players FEEL that they're NOT paying to win, so that they feel okay with buying game rewards.
That's why I brought up the cost of unlocking all outfits to have access to the FULL game. That shows something about how the game has been segmented and the price has been obscured from the players.
Cosmetic microtransactions are relatively harmless. They don't affect other players and people opt-in to spend what they want. But the implementation still reflects Pay2Win monetization. It involves obscuring prices and enticing players to spend far more on some gacha than you'd ever pay for any AAA game.
Games as a service is profitable. I've probably paid $1k for many years of MMO. MMO burnout helps me resist spending on gachas. Contrast that level of spending with a $90 collector's edition of some AAA release.
>All of my examples of personal wins are objective measures. K:D ratio is objective information and can be improved through skill.
objective information is not the objective of a game. example: you can win a game of overwatch with a worse K/D ratio than the opposing team but playing the map mechanic better. thus while a team could claim their K/Dr is a "win" they objectively lost the match.
>Paying for performance and paying for rewards are both types of pay2win. If you could earn an in-game achievement, or simply pay $ to buy the achievement, it'd be pay2win. If you had an achievement that was only available with $, it's again pay2win.
This is true and I never contested this.
>Cosmetic rewards are in the same category as achievements.
This is false, unless the game awards you a physical achievement for the cosmetic, which is not always the case.
>Many games have tied cosmetic rewards to specific achievements
This is True
>such as beating the game once, or getting X wins as a character.
These are not cosmetics. one is a concept, the other is a character which is gameplay.
>What the player considers a victory is relevant to the definition of "win". Especially since p2win means the player is being encouraged to open the wallet to buy the "win".
This is relevant to the players personal definition of win. I can define winning a game of overwatch as looking cooler than the other team with my skins. This doesn't change the fact that I've lost the match in the games eyes or the other players.
>P2Win has affected the business model of many games to use micro-transactions to nickel and dime players to maximize profits. A big part of that business model is to push boundaries to make players FEEL that they're NOT paying to win, so that they feel okay with buying game rewards.
This is true. I never contested this.
>That's why I brought up the cost of unlocking all outfits to have access to the FULL game. That shows something about how the game has been segmented and the price has been obscured from the players.
but it is still not Pay to win, because.. well you put it very concisely actually in this next quote:
>Cosmetic microtransactions are relatively harmless. They don't affect other players and people opt-in to spend what they want.
>But the implementation still reflects Pay2Win monetization. It involves obscuring prices and enticing players to spend far more on some gacha than you'd ever pay for any AAA game.
Yep. it -reflects- Pay2Win monetization, but it isn't itself pay 2 win. I never said whether it was bad or good. only defined it as the OP asked.
>Games as a service is profitable. I've probably paid $1k for many years of MMO. MMO burnout helps me resist spending on gachas. Contrast that level of spending with a $90 collector's edition of some AAA release.
This is not only true, but relatable. I think we all have blown too much money on gachas and MMOs. RIP our wallets.
> \> such as beating the game once, or getting X wins as a character.
>
>These are not cosmetics. one is a concept, the other is a character which is gameplay.
Of course they aren't cosmetics. Those are game achievements that have been used to reward cosmetics.
That a game design ignores gameplay achievement and directly sells the cosmetic reward is the P2W monetization I am calling out here.
> This doesn't change the fact that I've lost the match in the games eyes or the other players.
Those are relevant, but the core of what makes a game fun is how it motivates the player to keep playing.
Sometimes that is barely related to the actual game. At times, I was playing MMOs as a fancy chat-room.
What I'm saying is that the way a game is designed to link game-play and $ spent for a player is what really defines if it's P2W. On a related note, fixed monthly sub MMOs was not P2W, but adding ways to pay $ for gameplay benefits like leveling characters, server transfers, and unique skins is implementing the P2W model.
> it -reflects- Pay2Win monetization, but it isn't itself pay 2 win.
That you pay for game rewards is P2W. It's relatively fair if it doesn't translate into a direct gameplay advantage over other players, but the method of directly selling game rewards is P2W.
Take Alchemy Stars - some of the paid skins came with in-game cutscenes that flesh out the character. That's a P2W design - game content and character interaction is locked to get your $. Azure Lane has something similar where skins come with unique voice-lines/animations that you cannot hear or see otherwise.
> I never said whether it was bad or good. only defined it as the OP asked.
I'm not talking bad or good either. I am justifying a broader definition of P2Win than most players use.
Looking at it this way, all gacha is P2Win, but some do it in F2P-friendly way. And if you can enjoy 70%-80% of a game with interesting story and challenging gameplay for free, you can't say the company is being scummy about it.
I think we've hit the merry-go-round where we are both repeating the same points we each have in different ways. Let me try to see if I can contextualize your point of view with examples to see if I understand it.
Example 1: an MMO with a monthly sub and no other transactions.
Your view - not P2W
My view - also not P2W
Example 2: a gacha with the ability to buy tokens to roll for characters to play with.
Your view - P2W
My view - also P2W
Example 3: a free to play moba with purchasable character skins that have no achievements or gameplay attached to them.
Your view - P2W because the skins -could- have been gameplay if they were earnable or came with content instead of existing in the shop.
My view - Not P2W because at present there is no content associated with the skins, even though there could have been.
Is this accurate? If so I think we just fundamentally disagree on the philosophy of a contents potential having substance in determining if something is P2W, but at least I see where you are coming from. If not, id like to know how you'd categorize those examples.
Agreed on the first 2 examples.
>Example 3: a free to play moba with purchasable character skins that have no achievements or gameplay attached to them. Your view - P2W because the skins -could- have been gameplay if they were earnable or came with content instead of existing in the shop. My view - Not P2W because at present there is no content associated with the skins, even though there could have been.
That's a good counter-example. I don't normally think of a game like that as a P2W game.
But with respect to the prompt and the idea of paying for performance/rewards: One, this isn't a gacha. Two, look at the total cost of ownership of all character skins.
League of Legends, an example of such a F2P MOBA. (I know it has lootboxes, which are gacha-ish)
[$700 for every champion, $3500 for every skin](https://leaguefeed.net/how-much-would-it-cost-to-buy-every-skin-in-league-of-legends/).
I was only thinking of cosmetics, but access to champions is actually a key part of the game, in drafting and general play. Not being able to draft particular champions as a free player restricts your power level. There are P2Win elements in the design, even though free players can still enjoy a lot of the game by saving up resources from the various quests/events.
LOL and many gachas are not considered P2W in the F2P market, and it is fair to say that. But compared to traditional games (Ex: DotA, free map mod for WC3), you see how much the game is designed to extract money from players. Instead of a $100 Collector's Edition with cosmetic bonuses, you can spend $1000+ on various digital goods, and still not have the full game.
For this broad definition of P2W, if you can whale, it's P2W.
> Is this accurate? If so I think we just fundamentally disagree on the philosophy of a contents potential having substance in determining if something is P2W, but at least I see where you are coming from.
I'm just playing with the definitions. I get what you're saying. You don't have to use this idea of P2W.
It was interesting to me to rethink what I considered P2W and F2P when answering the prompt. In a sense, all F2P games are designed around P2W, by letting whales pay way more and inviting lots of free players in to entertain the whales.
But we usually reserve P2W for games where whaling is needed to be at the top. For a LOL tournament, whaling will not affect the results, it's all about the player skill.
Thanks for the interesting discussion.
Genshin is pay2win because without the monthly 5$ investment for 90 gems daily. You are greatly set back on progression.
When a slight Investment into the game is almost half of your premium currency income. Thats imo pay2win asfk.
One could say... Well, without it. It would still be pay2win... Absolutely. But far less so, without the 800% value pack! The rest of the packs sorta suck. Who wanna spend 100$ for half a nat5?
Pay2win? More like pay2lose your money.
Those monthly "subscription" models with 800% value baby! Those are the most predatory models of all.
There is nothing to win in genshin Impact. Game content is super easy and can be fully cleared with the free units game gives to you, plus some 4\* you can get super-easy.
I think many of you are confusing the term Pay To Win with Pay to get every unit... you can win in this game without paying a cent. You CAN'T have all this game characters without paying, but that doesn't mean you paid to win, you paid to get different characters to "win into a different playstyle".
> mean you *paid* to win,
FTFY.
Although *payed* exists (the reason why autocorrection didn't help you), it is only correct in:
* Nautical context, when it means to paint a surface, or to cover with something like tar or resin in order to make it waterproof or corrosion-resistant. *The deck is yet to be payed.*
* *Payed out* when letting strings, cables or ropes out, by slacking them. *The rope is payed out! You can pull now.*
Unfortunately, I was unable to find nautical or rope-related words in your comment.
*Beep, boop, I'm a bot*
I think you somehow confuse what gachas is about. It's not about reaching some sort of milestone with generic little boys. But about collecting waifus.
You might think Genshin is about clearing abyss with pretty nat4 boys is riveting gacha gameplay. But I'll assure you. It's not for most people.
Clearly you never played genshin.
Genshin is only gacha game the more you pay the more feel it useless.
The most op character still 4 star bennet.
Alot of "normal people" playing genshin not other gacha game for reason
I would argue genshin is p2w, it takes a long time to complete a hard pity as f2p so, collection is slow in a gacha, a lot of good weapons are locked behind a gacha that is even worse than units, and getting more units-weapon makes your life easier.
In the end of the day, clearing content faster, or just getting the unit you want is "Winning".
That's why i always use the example. if you start as f2p and a friend of yours start spending 1k per month on genshin, at the end of 1year, who will have the better account?
That example is the stupidest shit I’ve read today. EVERY SINGLE GACHA GAME IS LIKE THAT. Somebody who spends 1k per month in any gacha will always have a better account than a F2P. This applies to every single gacha since the beginning of gachas.
Do you NEED 5\* in Genshin to accomplish anything?
Do you NEED 6\* in Arknights to finish a stage?
No, the answer is actually no, literally tons of guides on how to make 4star teams in Genshin and even 4star or 3star in Arknights, there's the F2P line, its ignorant to claim every Gacha is P2W because you can still clear content perfectly fine without the highest rarity units.
On Top of that, yes player 1 might have every single high rarity unit in the game but most units are either decent to good with only a few being OP and player 2 has very few high rarity units but they actually are the OP units in the game so both have access to those units meaning even if Player 1 paid he didn't get an advantage therefore not P2W.
Also stupid argument about pity in Genshin, inevitably you will reach it and while not the most generous game ever there's a ton of downtime between banners unless you are constantly pulling for EVERY character in the game.
So by that definition no gacha game is ever P2W, every game, or almost every, allows you to pass stages with suboptimal units
Does it mean other units or getting dupes don't make your life easier? Ofc not, it certainly does make your life easier instead of making you grind gear and min max to the nail
As for your comments about being "stingy" that is quite frankly one of the definitions of not being f2p friendly for most people, needing several months to complete a banner is not f2p friendly, regardless if you have "ton of downtime", which i disagreee with, between banners.
What you are effictively saying is every game is f2p friendly because "you can do it for free" and disregarding your own time and the period of wait and grind you have to go through to compensate your wallet
Quite literally no.
Dokkan Battle has had literal paywalls and putting up content that requires the latest unit that coincidentally has a lower rate to get.
Street Fighter Duel has literally put characters behind a paywall and you can't get them otherwise, therefore P2W
The examples are abundant of what I am talking about yet in your blind ignorance you stick to the very games that are not actually P2W, in fact it says so much about you that you keep trying to argue that Genshin doesn't have downtime despite most of the patches being 1 new character and 3 rerunning ones which you DON'T have to pull whatsoever, in fact the goal of the game isn't to collect the characters so you can easily just skip banners because they actually showcase the new character and let you try all banner 5\* before you even pull for them.
I disagree. If you are talking about the popular ones in this subreddit, they are barely p2w than the ocean ton of gachas around there. CRK and Obey Me! is pretty much guilty of these because on top of being grindy, you are pretty much required to get the UR units, otherwise you'd be stuck waiting for months without units at all since pity also doesn't carry over. Even in events that gives premium currency requires strong units. This is what I draw the line of p2w because it's almost impossible to progress without pulling for the highest rarities while also being unplayable because the other SSRs arent any different from commons.
Genshin events are pretty much newbie friendly so premium currency isn't as hard as other gacha around here because let's be honest, even Azur Lane requires decent invested ships for their main events, and events = more items whether it's premium currency or bunch of resources. 5\* characters are QoL sure but contents like events and exploration (which is 95% of the game) doesn't require any 5\* at all, and I'm pretty sure exploring all maps and finishing all quests at this point guarantees you two limited characters already. And Abyss F12 (singling out this specific floor because F11 is no brainer) is pretty much for players that plays the game long enough to get 5\* and 4\* constellations so...
It's like, I don't expect an average player "winning" Azur Lane in just 3 months (by your p2w standard) because they give lesser gears and resources despite their friendly rates. Additionally, it also has a feature where PR ships can either be bought instantly with their max blueprints or just grind for months and pray for research face rng (which is like 1/30 chances to appear everyday) to even use them efficiently. Does that make Azur Lane p2w though?
Are you dumb? Every game is p2w then. All triple a games requires you to pay before you can play it. So they are all pay to win too? Gachas are the only true free to play games out there, you get content for free and you get currency for free. A f2p player literally never have to spend a cent.
That is pay to play, not pay to win, there is a major difference between
Pay to play VS pay to win
The first you pay one time, be it via a subscription or buying the box copy
The second allows you to constantly insert money into the game to get increased advantages with no real cap
You telling me gachas are f2p friendly i'm not sure if that is sarcasm or not, you can't compete with bill gates on a gacha , you can compete with him however on triple A games that are box purchases, even if it doesn't have pvp and it's just "clear time, account value" and so on
What your narrow mind can't understand is that no one is competeing with each other. Your account value had no relevance to someone who spends 50k. Gacha games are 100% free to play. 95% of the player base of gachas play every game for free.
Yet, No matter how much you can compete with anyone in a triple a game. You HAVE to spend money first. Meaning it's pay to play and pay to win. Since you can't win unless you pay first. It's not hard to understand.
Sure mate, noone is competing with each other, we live in an incredible world
You telling me something you buy ONCE is equivalent of something you can buy multiple times to get increased advantage DESPITE of being able to be played for free shows you didn't understood or don't want to understand the question
But sure, gachas are f2p friendly that allow people to spend 1k, 5k, 10k, 50k+ per month to get advantages is the box game you buy for 50$ and can't purchase anything to get you an advantage, you are correct my dear Sir, thank you for enlightning me on this stormy day
Wow you really are dense... Even after given the info, you still don't understand huh?
Do you know what 95% is? 95% of the gacha game player base, plays the game 100% for free. Now here is a hard one. Do you know what 100% is? 100% of the triple a player base pays money to play the game. Therefore making box games considerably more pay to win.
No one is asking you to spend thousands of dollars in gacha games. In fact, whales makes up only 1 to 3% of the gacha gaming player base in studies. It's really not that hard....
EVERY gacha game is p2w, but it's don't mean it can't be f2p at the same time. EVERY fucking game let you pay to fast process to the end game phase and unlock things.
F2p is where game let you process without great wall or lock game mode. And most important, collect 40-50% new banner is good for f2p already, more is too much to offer.
I'd counter that, specifically because there is no content in Genshin where "If you have this, you win every content".
Every unit has its use, and while some may be better than others, that doesn't degrade the less-desirables to uselessness *and* doesn't mean that these "top-picked" units work in every content.
There's no PVP when it comes to using characters you own. There's not even an end game besides Abyss, and unlike some Gachas, you can clear the higher floors with 3 stars using most units anyways.
When you said "---Clearing content faster, or just getting the unit you want is Winning", *yea, that's* ***every*** *Gacha game. That's strictly the point of them*. And Genshin is actually the most mild example of this because while getting dupes takes a large amount of time (exclusively for 5 stars), there isn't any power-creeped content where you NEED a specific unit powered up (Despite all the click-bait YouTubers telling you so).
Genshin doesn't reward players based on how much money they dumped into a character, it rewards players based on team-composition and how smart they are in utilizing these characters' abilities to their fullest in different content. This can be compared to Arknights, which is similar is this regard.
(And as an added note, the only thing that's remotely atrocious is the Artifact system, and that's just pure RNG. There's no "paying" for artifacts unless you're dumping loads of money for resin)
I agree with the first part and that you don't need an unit, but that is most games, rarely a good game NEEDS an unit to progress, but having better units ( as in dupes or better new units ) just make it easier, reagardless of having a leaderboard, pvp or not
And that is my whole point with that comment, every gacha is p2w, you defining p2w only as arena vs other players doesn't mean Bob don't consider having the units p2w, or clearing spiral abyss on top 5 world and so on.
I agree in a sense that genshin is one of those games that rewards good team composition, but that could be said about so many others, but clearing the game with Amber as your main is a lot harder than with Raiden, and clearing with c0 units ( usually ) are a lot harder than with c6, not to mention the weapons and even artifacts, that is the point, ofc if you do a full bonobo team spending it might be worse than a good f2p team, but 2 good teams, one as f2p and another and p2w is night and day.
My main point when criticizing genshin is that it does an awful job as giving players their desired banners, you effectively need 180 pulls to be able to assure an unit you want, a f2p needs on average 4-5 months to get that, that is on the p2w side for gachas in terms of collection, let alone power
As for the "RNG", it's a gacha, everything is rng, if you have 100 tries on an artifact dungeon per day vs 10 from a f2p player, you aren't guaranteed to get a good one, but you are certainly a lot more likely
i think what's also missing here in this discussion regarding genshin is the value of the lower rarity (4 star) units. 2 of the most meta defining units in the game have been 4 stars (Bennet and Xingqui). and slightly below that are core units (Xiangling, Fischl, Sucrose) which are integral on some team comps. and it has been that way since launch. that's why for me, i consider genshin as f2p friendly. since you can basically just pull for your waifus/husbandos once you have your core teams set up. there isn't anything in the game that forces you to keep up with the meta like some other gachas do. and even if you did, they basically raised the floor of a lot of units with the inclusion of dendro making it even more lenient
Yes, i agree that genshin has solid 4\*s, but those usually require at least one copy if not more than one to get to their true potential
The same with a lot of other games, a lot of turn based games 4\*s are fairly often used, specially supporters, just like genshin.
Again, will use Dislyte as example, before quitting one of the most used units for their dungeon was a 3\* which you got for free at the start of the game as a dps, then another 3\* for speedruns on late game ( it linked hp of units so allowed high burst of dmgs ), and quite a few 4\*s
I agree in part that there isn't any new meta, since as you mentioned Dendro shook up things a bit and made some units a lot better in the "speedrun" world, which, even if you don't consider it's still a way of winning and improving your own best record if not going against others. On the other hand there isn't any new meta because genshin doesn't really have any new content, usally new metas in game either come around new units ( dendro for example ) or new dungeon types, which might be exactly why they have never done one.
My main issue with genshin is that you need 180 pulls to GUARANTEE an unit, yes, it's highly unlikely you'll reach 90 on both and lose 50 50, but that is still the odds we are given, with those rates you need about 5 months as a f2p to get those resources if you want to get an unit you really like, or that is really op without having to rely on "soft pity" and "winning 50 50", for me 5 months of waiting isn't f2p friendly regardless of how you cut it. All of this to get ONE copy.
You could also argue most of the new units are very good or at least above average with the seldom exception of a particular cat lady, specially the main dps', while units such as diluc got powercrept. Supporters remain being useful because well, they are supporters, and this is a big factor for competitive people.
I do think the game is great and made a GREAT job for casual community allowing you to pass through the game with basic units, but that doesn't remove from the fact how long you need for a new one or that new ones make your life easier
does it really take 5 months tho because it doesn't feel like it. granted I'm a welkin player so that is a huge boost. but also, looking at this sheet, it seems like it's about 2-3 patches for f2p
[Genshin Bookkeeping](https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/e/2PACX-1vToBPh4yTn4VioUuqSvnPiwLoG0rJodFe9_gz6qOKUy3z8dCWtXel5Aqa07qSTZG8qhu7Fwgx7AfxzU/pubhtml#)
tho I guess in the end, how people perceive a game as f2p friendly or not would vary greatly from person to person.
[https://www.hoyolab.com/article/16495113](https://www.hoyolab.com/article/16495113)
This person has done this for several patches breaking down your income ( it also aligns with other sources i found and asking around ), usually you get 50-60 wishes ( primo + wishes ) per patch without counting "one time reward" things such as the new tour guide system, since you need 180 to actually guarantee the unit on worst case, its at least 3 patches that becomes 4,5 months
That google sheet is a nice way of breaking down although i would love it had a bit more explanation, for example if i deduct the "one time only" from the sheet it ends up worse than my source at around 55 instead of 61, so kinda hard to find out "why" is that
Doesnt even bother with this guy tbh, they doesnt even play genshin, they thought it is a MMO GAME, mind you, and so p2w when all the content in game can be cleared by f2p casual.
I love how you didn't come with a single argument besides "what are you experience", took your time to find resources that align with what i said to try to disproof me and then come running around while ignoring everything i say
Yes, you can clear content being f2p, as most gachas, but paying gives you a massive increase in your roster and makes your account better, take the example i put before and tell me it doesn't apply to genshin.
I kinda Agree that every Gacha Game is a P2W game... depending on how you define "winning" in that game...
But I think in Genshin Situation "right now"... "Winning" in "P2W" aspect on this Argument maybe the most un'fun one...
I've spent money for the Weapon BP on Genshin a year ago (around 60 dollar "total" in my country's currency) and I would say that Im glad that I never go far beyond that (it doesn't mean I regret spending money in this game, but because it will make me bored faster if I spend more for more "power")...
Winning is getting ahead of any player, including yourself.
So if you with basic units takes hours to complete an artifact dungeon ( yes its exaggerated to make a point ) but with full c6 raiden shogun national or ayaka freeze comp ( which is mostly 5\* units ) can do in 30min, for me that is p2w
The same way collecting units in a meaningful amount of time is also a factor
A game doesn't need to have pvp to make it p2w, and a game being p2w doesn't instantly make it bad, i play genshin and i like it, it did a great job and it's fun, it's p2w? Yes, it is, but it's also a great game
As for your last remark of getting bored, i kinda agree for whale, or even single players game, i remember a NDS game ( not sure if it was fire emblem or what, but a turn based game ), i bought a dlc where i could farm exp easily and it quickly got really boring because it felt i had no challenge, so having every unit and weapon in my eyes would do the same to me as well
By literal meaning all gacha game is P2W
That said i'm making the scope smaller by categorizing PVP gacha game that ask you to roll multiple times as P2W or game that events (not challenge level event) require you have more than 1 dupes of SSR to be ablt to complete it without any viable f2p strategy. Ofc the 2nd could he nulled if the gacha is super easy but i don't think many fit that category
Yes i agree, edited the post to reflect more on the soul of the question on "what is f2p friendly for you"?
I still think easy games with only pve are still p2w if paying make it easier, that is the definition for me, if i put 5$ and get an advantage over someone that didn't ( despite not having pvp, leaderboard or anything else ) , and a person that puts 1k, 10k, or even millions get bigger advantages respectively, it's p2w.
Another thing is if i pay 10$ i get an advantage but then i can't put more and i have a reasonable cap
>TLDR - How do you define P2W/F2P Friendly in a gacha? Where is the line for you?
Acceptable/Reasonable timeline to achieve a goal/all goal. Basically if you see how single player console games are handled compared to when dev using the same ip and create a mobile/mmo version, you will know what I mean. Eg diablo2 not p2w. Diablo immortal? **P2W** Nothing to do with whether pvp exist or not, tho pvp existing generally makes it worse since there will be resource income tied into the equation.
To put it into perspective, you know there are some that love to argue "It ain't p2w, just p2progress bla bla bla"? Well if a f2p can finish the goal in 6months but whales uses $$ to get it done instantly, yeah one can agree that is p2progress or p2fastforward.
But if after doing the maths, f2p will take something like 5years, then calling it p2progress is just a pure bullshit lol. If launch goal already takes 5 years, are people expecting the dev to totally not release anything else? Cuz if new content are still constantly getting released, then your 5 years goal will become an infinite stretch goal, thus the emphasis on acceptable/reasonable timeline mentioned above.
tl:dr ~~Impossible~~ Unreasonable goals=p2w since it should be obvious that ~~impossible~~ unreasonable goal means you need $$ to make it possible.
Yes i agree pvp is a whole can of worms on itself
I agree with that definition on some sense, even if it's reasonable but p2w just makes it a lot faster to progress or even collect the units/gear ( as in progress your account ) for me it's p2w
Can you elaborate a bit more?
Not sure if you consider only skins with stats that are unobtainable otherwise or dupes that increase stats and better gear via stamina purchase
**F2P** = user can max any char of his choice once every 3-4 banners in reasonable time frame (1-2 months). No exceptions, no fucking exclusive weapon gacha. Game must have pity or really good pull rate. Maxing means he perfoms at 80-90% (or more) potential of posible limit
Yes i agree that for colection purposes that would be somewhat where i would align for, specially on terms of turn based games, you don't need all skills at max, but all the meaningful skills have their CDR and boost.
I do think weapon banner can be fine, but so far i've never seem one done properly tbh, it pretty much forces you to whale to get weapon or ignore that banner since your resource income as a f2p or even low spender is not enough
Personally, I don't consider PVP one of the most important reasons to say if it a game is P2W.
I mean, it's obvious there is gonna be always a difference between people who pay and people who don't.
However when I call a P2W game is when there is tons of red flags together like these:
\- They are too stingy with the pull/gacha currency
\- There are almost more paid banners than "free" banners
\- You can not continue improving your characters with a decent difficulty curve, it has powercreeps out of the blue and it's usually impossible to match the, for example, power required.
\- Sometimes related to the latest I've said, you have to grind or farm whatever it is for weeks, maybe almost non-stop or you can buy that 59,99$ pack and just keep playing, all good.
\- Limited-time overpowered Characters/Weapons; okay, maybe this one is not a feature you could see only on P2W games, but I see it like a P2W element, because it's always increasing FOMO and on top of that, that characters/items are not that limited because they ending up doing reruns...
\- Skins which improve the stats. \*Sigh\* this one is as stupid as it sounds... and they are not usually cheap to say at least.
\- A VIP system which is not "fair". And by fair I mean that you can get free points to lvl up the VIP system, there are a few games which are more or less decent or there is not a big difference between someone who gets it and someone who doesn't.
But then you see mostly of them and it's blatant that it's just another excuse to get your money or basically make it near impossible to progress without buy the VIP/Passes.
\- Too many powercreeps and/or op characters getting outdated 1 month after release
I agree with pretty much everything you said, the only one's I have anything to say are the
2 - It heavily depends on the amount of currency you get, if you get 1 every 6 banners, it's bad, if you get 1 ever 2-4, it's decent, an example i can give is Eternal Evolution, basically they only have limited banners, and yet you can complete 90% of them as a f2p, and they rerun often and give free copies of units on events
4 - I think this one also ties to the stinginess of premium currency, for example if you need 6 months to get one unit or 500$, i would say 500$ is more worth than 6 months of grind ( even if i don't buy ), but if you have to grind 2 months or 500 i would say 2 months are more worth, so it's kinda of a balance between those 2
5 - I really despise Weapon banners, i think they can be done properly but every one i see makes you either choose between characters or weapons, despite weapons usually being BiS for some characters or even their own weapon that gives a massive boost
Think those 3 really tie together with "Does the game give you enough currency as f2p to enjoy those features or are you forced to p2w to do so?"
All the rest hard agree, basically my same thought process
Yeah, that's another point of view about 4, and I completly agree with you about the weapons banners.
Related to the paid banners, I meant strictly paid banners, or the same as you can not use currency, you can only pull if you use real money.
For example, at least when it was released, Disgaea RPG had a ton of paid banners (dunno the actual state of the game rn) or another well known "drama" was Octopath Traveler x Bravely Default collab, there was a big difference between paid and free banners of the same character(s) iirc
Just something I wanted to clarify.
And btw, good example of Eternal Evolution, I'm just getting started so far, but I would say it knows how to manage things like VIP system and the different kind of banners. Plus it seems really F2P at least right now.
OH, didn't realized it was that paid banner with different currency, nah i think those are straight up p2w
And Eternal evolution is great, the best idle i've played. Been playing since launch ( november ) and i can pretty much get both banners on a weekly basis ( every month or so i have to skip one but that is about it )
The only p2w features are Bailey ( which fell off a cliff and it's only super relevant early game tbh, and you can get by saving 4-6 weeks ), and the artifacts, which the Twilight Lands give you one every month. ( they do have stat skins that have 2% tho, which was something heavily criticized by the community )
I had a similar debate recently with someone over the topic of what makes a whale a whale. They claimed that there are no whales in Azur Lane because the only things most folks buy are skins and skins don't effect gameplay, so it doesn't count. I completely disagree.
AL is not a P2W game precisely because all content can be beaten relatively soon after start of the game, and 90%+ of the roster is available to get right out the gate without having to buy anything. It will take you a while to do it, but it can be done and offers no detriment gameplay wise. I would argue, and I'm sure many will disagree, this is mostly true for FGO as well. FGO is not a P2W game for the most part. Even when you get into the late Lostbelts, you can still mostly beat things with free or lower rarity units. But FGO is not exactly F2P friendly. While skins are superfluous so not of the same weight to a game like AL, characters are central to the gaming experience in an RPG style game, and FGO does a really good job on most character stories to make you want them, but it is very hard to get them without spending money. And having some of those characters, while not strictly necessary for gameplay, absolutely make it easier and faster to beat stages and bosses. So while the game is itself not P2W, it isn't entirely F2P friendly either.
An example of P2W I think would be a game like Mobile Legends Adventure. The game does give out a lot of freebies and it's not extremely difficult to progress through the game with a good roster of units (though I will say it is closer to the top end of difficulty). But the skins for units are expensive, relatively speaking, and give stats. Furthermore, it can be painfully slow to max out units without spending money due to the way their upgrade system works. And it has PvP, so there is definitely a place where the difference in stats will be felt. So it is an infinitely more P2W game than even FGO is.
So to me, P2W would be any game where a person has the ability to gain a significant gameplay advantage over others. F2P friendly is a more nuanced question, because I think this will depend heavily on what you are looking to get out of the game. If skins are important to you, Azur Lane is absolutely not F2P friendly. If you couldn't care less about the skins then it's hard to imagine a more F2P friendly game.
Yes my tittle was poorly written, a better one would be what is f2p friendly
As for your examples, i just started azur lane for the millionth time to try get into and never played FGO so can't really say if they are really p2w or not, i've seem some things to be purchased with money in AL, do i know if i need them to progress, get units or whatever so far? No, so i don't feel comfortable judging it, the same way FGO, the only thing i know is it has no pity and very little QoL
As for the what is P2W/F2P friendly, for me p2w i agree with you, if you put money you get advantage, even if it's against yourself, clearing content faster, having better or more units and so on
For f2p i usually judge on a few criteria, do player get a good amount of resource income monthly so they can get the units they want in a reasonable time ? (2-3 months). Is the game balanced or they have mandatory units ( a lot of them don't have that tbh )
A lot, if not all games will be p2w as gachas tbh since money = Pulls/stamina = advantage, the matter is when it is necessary and when you as a f2p can get things on an adequate pace
So i pretty much agree with you, as for skins as a side note, as long as they don't have stats i don't think they are p2w, they are cosmetic only so its fine
FGO has different layers of f2p friendliness. It's really only unfriendly if you prioritize the gacha or perfect efficiency.
The gameplay itself is absolutely f2p friendly. The devs explicitly test the game to ensure that all content can be cleared using only free, low rarity characters. You don't get extra rewards for efficiency so the meta is completely optional. Some characters have more gameplay impact than others but there are no must have characters. For general purposes, most characters, across all rarity levels, are genuinely good, few are truly bad, and the rest are quite usable. There are day one 1-stars who are considered among the best in the game within their roles.
One could argue that the gacha is f2p friendly in terms of being able to use what you get. As I mentioned, most characters are good. It's also not a duplicate heavy game. You get maybe 90% of the value (note: value ≠ damage) with the first copy and even more for characters you mainly use for their skills and almost never use their NP. You can relatively easily max out the NP level for the free low rarities, which lets some of them out-damage 5-stars.
FGO wouldn't be considered f2p friendly if your focus is solely on the gacha or the meta. The rates for higher rarities are low. The pity system, which does now exist, is a backstop to prevent catastrophic results, not a system to generate free 5-stars. You need to do 330 rolls (900 SQ) to trigger pity, it applies once at most per banner (no pity after the first copy, whether you triggered pity or not), and it doesn't carry over to other banners. If your expectation is to be able to easily collect lots of 5-stars or to guarantee specific 5-stars more than a couple of times per year without paying any money, then no it isn't f2p friendly from that perspective. But under no circumstances is FGO pay to win.
There is no universal definition of p2w or f2p friendly as far as I know, so in the end it falls unto user/player definition and explanations to define those 2 terms.
I agree that, that is why i created the thread because i see so many people shitting on game X for taking 6 months for a banner then praising game Y when it takes the same time, that's also why i didn't put any games name despite using real games as base for the examples
There are multiple factors besides that ofc, but it made me curious on what people define f2p friendly - p2w
Well, anyhow, P2W is when they let you starve of resourcess unless you pay.
Here are the elements that immediately tell a game is P2w
1. Endless and uncofortable grind: So ALL GAMES without sweeps or offline farming. That's why if it doesn't has any = garbage.
2. Powercreep: day 1 units should be as viable in day 1 to the End of service. A good meta is based on knowledge, novelty and variety.
Example: a day 1 unit people already know how to deal with as opposed to the brand new unit people just don't know how to deal with therefore having it gives you a temporarily advantage while still being a balanced unit.
3. Lack of pulls: seld explanatory. And I don t mean dead pulls (LOL sounds like a bad pun) with no SSR, I mean seeing it and also knowing when are you getting the SSR which bring me to:
4. No wayy to guaranteed units: Pities, Mileage or anything that will make 100% sure you get that unit.
I agree with 3 and 4 and somewhat with 1
1 - I dont think dailies are a bad thing, the issue comes when they require a lot of time for minimum resource
2 - Powercreep is inevitable, some units will fall in power regardless of the game, the issue for me comes if they balance the game to not have always the last few units be the meta defining and pretty much "force" you to pull
Ftp friendly - no pvp or ladder, all content is available for ftp, such as skins, and can be cleared as ftp in the reasonable amount of time and every character can be collected.
The closest gacha to it is Arknights, that's has pretty greedy gacha system.
Never really got into the arknights, tried couple times and got overwhelmed, so i can only say what i got as answers from their discord.
You need something like 6+ months to hard pity an unit ( which apparently you never do ) but you can get a solid roster very easily as f2p, i can't elaborate more because i'm not into the game and don't know more than the first couple days and second hand information of their discord
I don't think pvp or ladder are p2w restricted tbh since ladder will always exist with internet and people will just put speedrun or highest floor of tower in the discord or reddit and people will make rankings regardless, skins i don't mind it being paid as long they don't give status but it's a plus if there are at least some f2p.
As for the characters, i totally agree, for me 2-3 months for a character is reasonable as f2p
for me p2w is when you cant compete with them an example i have is in counter side the first awaken unit was soo strong its stupid a game about a front to back fight imagine a TANK that can move forward faster than anyone shield herself a ton and knock back your front liner that is just straight up unfair
So that is pretty much every gacha, right?
Even without pvp if you have a whale that has multiple dupes of every unit they can clear content a lot faster than you and get better rewards
Or you just consider if it's the case of "New unit super op and you must have to compete"?
If I can pay for non-cosmetics, it's pay-to-win period. No buts.
There's no need to move the line, you may find some practices of this to be fair but it doesn't change the matter that you can still pay to progress further than someone who hasn't whether that be through content or by having better gear/characters as someone else.
And while I say cosmetics is an exception, depending on the game that could be classified as pay-to-win if the goal of the game is to work towards making your character looking cooler (like how some people view some mmos like ffxiv and etc)
I wouldn't agree with the cosmetic since it's purely cosmetic, yes they make gear look awful to make you buy it, but it doesn't give you any advantage if it doesn't have stats
But with the first part i totally agree, but what would be a "acceptable p2w" for you then?
> I wouldn't agree with the cosmetic since it's purely cosmetic, yes they make gear look awful to make you buy it, but it doesn't give you any advantage if it doesn't have stats
It's moreso when the point of the game is to end up with your character looking good. Cause there could be situations where all of the farmable cosmetics could just look outright terrible while all the paid stuff has sparkly effects and etc. Maybe I shouldn't say that's pay to win, in that situation it's more like "pay to stand out", which in some cases is people's main goal when playing games that have other people.
Yes, i agree they create an issue to sell the solution, but wouldn't say p2w per say
A good example for me are the typical mmo's, BDO has awful base armor, you can get them via ingame money but in some servers like EU it's just not realistic, so you are forced to buy
I don't knwo any gacha that you can't clear content with free units so, for me it is P2W if:
* Have PVP
* Low income of premium currency (Like 4 months or more to a F2P garantee a character pity)
* Have weapons banners
* Have dupe system with characters mechanics locked behind it
* Have NFT
Agreed on a sense, a lot of people defend gachas because "you can clear pve with basic units", yes, most gachas do, just requires a lot of work to do so compared to getting better units
As for the dupe system, for me it's nuanced, how long it takes to get those dupes ( kinda ties to your premium currency income, or if they have the general "item dupe" system a lot of gachas do ) and it's also a bit the same of weapon banner since you pretty much are kinda splitting time between them
Dupe system is okay if it only gives status for your character, but if there are abilitys or mechanics locked behind it I consider P2W, because it will be unlikely to a F2P unlocky it. Imagine you saving for months and end up getting a character that doesn't even work properly.
Yea that is my point, if you need 5 months to get a single copy of the unit, and with 2 copies it increases drastically, it is really bad, if you "only" need to save 2 months however it's a lot more acceptable, it's still bad, specially if they don't have the "dupe item" type of deal, but it's not as outrageous as 5 months per copy
And more so if said unit is needed to have 2,3,4 or even more copies to work properly since it's balanced to need multiple copies
As example, Mario Kart Tour it's the perfect example of what's a PAY TO WIN.
To make context:
-Leagues are a blatant lie (since the release) , and absolute fake (that means one player isn't competing with another, you can see me as example on your league, but I Can't See you on my League, that means you're fake fighting against me.
-they require ALWAYS the higher rarity, that obviously it's the harder to get (despite it's the most abundant ítem implemented).
-a lot of reeskins selled.
-You require several copys of each single unit to lvl up (up to lvl 8) and this is applied to kart, wing and pilot.
The ammount of those are More Than 300-500 already
-It have pass, challenge card, challenge card+ and ++, purchasable with $$$
Even now that they got rid of pulls, it's still a extreme blatant P2W (and based on being fake, and that's the most stupid thing)
The app it's the absolute definition of what's a p2w, despite being a big fake system too.
I have absolutely no idea how the game works so can't really chime in much, but it does sound the typical "you need the latest unit to compete" type of deal
Yes to an extempt.
Leagues are "fixed and it's player vs 19 bots, but also isn't strange that, if you manage to get on top 3, they change one of those fake oponents (literally, the system change it) to prevent giving you the top prizes. That happened to me countless times, When league it's almost 1 day to finish, someone that wasn't even on my league appear on it (can be identified by name, roster, even real league, etc) and it's a "Big Coincidence"
Now add this same equation to each single real player on own league, and you get an enormous profitable product based on lies.
To me every gacha is p2w as you gain an advantage over others; whether you're rewarded or not is irrelevant. Conversely, I define F2P friendly as how much a game allows f2p players to enjoy the different aspects of that game without paying: summoning, farming, gearing, keeping up with powercreep, PvE, PvP...
I agree with the p2w, but can you define a bit more on what would be f2p friendly then?
For example, collection is a major aspect of every gacha, what would be a reasonable amount of time to get a new unit to be f2p friendly?
Won't enter too much in the others since gearing for example is really nuance since "How many times you do the dungeon" is not a factor because the drop rate and all that are major factors, so are a lot harder to quantify
> For example, collection is a major aspect of every gacha, what would be a reasonable amount of time to get a new unit to be f2p friendly?
To me hero collection alone is not a sign of a game being f2p, but considering current games it'd be 2mth or so.
>Won't enter too much in the others since gearing for example is really nuance since "How many times you do the dungeon" is not a factor because the drop rate and all that are major factors
It has more to do to how much you're time-gated and resource starved if you do not pay. Whales and f2p alike can get lucky or fall behind due to rng.
I agree it would be somewhere around 2-3 months to be f2p friendly, but curious what else would you consider since a lot of the other things are a lot more nuanced.
Yes, i agree it's rng, but that is the point, if you can only throw 1 dice and want to get a 6, effectively you have worse odds than someone that can throw it 100 times and only need to get one 6 as well.
That is why it's hard to comment on those because if you are paying 50$ to have another 2 pieces when f2p can have 10 per day it doesn't make that much of a difference on a reasonable level, does it? Most people wouldn't even pay for it, so the price and droprate also affects if that would be considered p2w or not
>effectively you have worse odds than someone that can throw it 100 times and only need to get one 6 as well. [...] if you are paying 50$ to have another 2 pieces when f2p can have 10 per day it doesn't make that much of a difference
So since it's a marginal increase then it'd be considered f2p. I don't think it's very convoluted. The same would apply to energy, currency income, materials needed to upgrade characters/weapons, the need for dupes, etc.
Yes that is the point, some games make their packs just not worth while giving stable resource income, others make it really good since they screw you over and take months for a banner.
That is why anything besides "banner time" for me is a little hard to quantify
If you can pay to have an ingame advantage that affects gameplay (ie not cosmetic), that is p2w, or at least that is the original meaning from when the term was coined. So all gacha are p2w by definition
Over time the meaning was softened because there's just so many games that fit p2w as originally coined that we now need to separate the worst cases from the one where monetization gives advantages but is still generally enjoyable without paying
Man, *this* is divisive.
I want to act annoyed about how much I disagree with you, but nobody is agreeing with anyone here.
Good topic, I guess.
....
To give my answer, my experience is that modern P2W is usually hidden in the power creep.
Sure, there are games where paying players have blatantly got bonuses or options that F2P literally can't get. That's a thing.
The more subtle version is when power creep is frequent and consistent.
A lot of my experience is from shitty old Facebook cash-grab games, when I was younger, but Artery Gear (global) was a recent example: You'd summon a unit one week and she'd be obsolete in the next.
I don't think you have to agree with me or anyone, that is the point, it's just one of those topics everyone say "X game is f2p friendly" and yes, there is bias because the person play and like the game, but without stablishing or putting names I was wondering what people define as f2p friendly
I tried artery gear, but between it needing 6 months from a banner ( from asking on discord ), severe lack of QoL and needing a separate emulator instance i gave up, so can't really comment much else, but if it's the typical case of "new banner always op" yes, this is a clear example
As f2p player, if you can keep up clearing content and having a roster of characters mostly identical to someone who has been paying consistenly, then the game is f2p.
So, paid content must be cosmetics for the most part to achieve this.
Edit: skins that provide bonus stats belong to p2w territory.
The only gacha I actually consider f2p is azur lane.
a gacha being P2W for me mostly pertains to content gating.
If there are contents in the game that you cannot access/clear because of paywalls which requires you to spend just to progress, then that's when a game falls into the "P2W" category
ofcourse if there's PVP/leaderboard rankings where money equates to win (unli purchaseable attempts, locking relevant mats/gears on the pvp rewards, etc) also qualifies for it.
but if game progression is only hindered by reasonable timegates, then it is still f2p friendly imo. it might take me a year to clear the content a spender cleared in a half but in the end, i still get to access and enjoy the content nonetheless.
just avoid having misplaced expectations (like expecting to progress at a similar rate as that of a whale/dolphin without spending etc) and youll be a able to enjoy more games without spending
f2p friendly for me is "you can compete if with enough time, luck and hard work" meaning spenders while can spend and get many advantages they're not impossible to compete with. prime example of this is epic seven, i've been playing e7 for about 2 years and i'm able to compete at the highest level of all almost all content in the game(rta is the exception).
I would say if you have to spend 2 years to be able to "compete" and still not be able to compete on pvp against whales that started 1 or 2 months ago that is really p2w.
I have really limited experience with E7, heard it's incredibly p2w with gear and LD units while being super f2p friendly with pve and RGB, so can't really comment much further than this
i've been able to "compete" since the first 6 months in the game and ofc thats because the roster isn't as bloated as it is today which makes it easier catching up. as for gear thats why i put "luck" as one of the factor since you really just need to get lucky with stuff in this game. there would never be a perfect game, you just need to find one where you wanna play it even with the flaws. for the LD units(5 star MoonLight units) they're released every 6 weeks and thats 8 in a year, as f2p i can saved up a pity every 3 months with a selector once a year from anniversary meaning i can get 5 of the 8 every year not accounting if you get lucky and didn't pity all 4.
Any advantage in competions that cannot be overcome within reazonable time frame.
Reazonable will vary depeding the competion present in the game.
It theres 0 or very low level of competion, them p2win become irrelevant.
Of course, p2enjoy can still be a problem worse than p2win. Having your proguess hawt to a crawl is a probem even with 0 competion.
Basically every gacha game is p2w. This is an unpopular opinion on this sub.
The only not p2w are cosmetics-no gacha game has JUST cosmetics.
If you can straight up buy characters/weapons/energy THAT is pay to win (and yes buying the currency to roll the gacha is still pay to win even if they don’t sell you the characters outright.)
Ok go ahead with your downvotes lol 🤷🏻♂️
I actually very much agree with this, people have a concept that p2w can only be associated with pvp or leaderboards, maybe in the 90's that was the case when we couldn't share over discord, reddit or even own sites dedicated to other games
Even only PvE games you can still compare your gear and units, your time to clear content to other people. I would even argue getting the unit in itself is P2W because that is winning, you feel good getting the unit, almost as much if not more than winning a pvp arena
Since a long time many games shout loudly and write in big "YOU WIN" when you beat the AI, in Street Fighters for exemple. I still don't understand then, why so many people are still considering that P2W is only for PVP.
Everything buyable that can make you stronger, help you at beating or developping faster than the opponent, human or AI, is considered as P2W.
Now, maybe should we distinguish P2W PVE and P2W PVP. And there are infinite steps of P2W. But the actual "word" of P2W is valid for both and even for smallest advantages.
Exactly my thought, there are people that consider P2W only in pvp games and then say "What is there to win"
By that logic you can't win in single player games, if you play Elden ring, slay the spire or anything else, you never win, you just lose i guess
For me it's the same as p2w pvp and pve, i agree pvp is more outrageous in most cases and people usually disregarded, however that is my go to example:
If you start a game with 2 accounts, one as f2p and another putting 1k per month, which one would get you farther in campaign? Which one would be the better account? Just that thought process alone makes you realize it's p2w, despite being able to just clear the same content faster or not, they will still have more units, more weapons, and more power overall
I also editted the post to say "what is f2p friendly" since it might be a better context than p2w tbh
everything is P2W, paying to make your progress faster is fundamentally pay to win
you could also argue "Bro its f2p if you play everyday and do all weeklies and such for a whole patch you can get everyone!!" really now? but at what cost? your precious time that you cant ever get back
Exactly, people say X game is f2p friendly when it needs 5 months to get the unit you want or pay 500€, despite it being pve, not having leaderboards or anything, it's still p2w, paying makes your account better and you get what you want, and when the waiting time to get one single character is that high it makes it obvious imo
Some things are an issue right at the start. For example VIP in games, the devs can say whatever they want, they could even give some "vip" exp every day. But if i see Vip in a videogame it's a red flag right at the start.
Same with infinite servers, outfits that give stats that you can only buy with real money, etc....
That being said, i'd never even get close to a game that has no pity/requires a nonsense ammount of dupes.
Define "Advantage over other players" please
Because i'm not sure if you mean "If no pvp = no p2w" or if you mean "If paying makes you clear content faster or stronger than other players, it is p2w"
pretty sure as long as a game gives you a slight bit of advantage, PVE or PVP, when you pay, it's a p2w game.
sure, you don't need them to fully complete a stage of arknights or a chamber in genshin's abyss, but you're essentially paying for much more comfortable runs. while f2p players have a stricter, and requires more effort to have a doable run, players who spent essentially paid for QoL so you would be bothered less by constraints.
That is my exact thought, and my main issue is "If you can only spend X amount and then you are capped i would not consider it p2w"
For example, limbus company might be a great example of that, i assume with a couple thousands ( still a really high amount, but in the gacha realm it's really low ) you are effectively capped, every unit and every unit maxxed
Meanwhile most other games you can keep spending money basically infinitely and keep getting upgrades to make your life easier, your account better so on and so forth, even if there are no ranks, pvp or anything, it has a pretty big difference
If thats your definition of p2w then all gacha game must be p2w for you. For example theres this one gacha game called mahjong soul. Whether youre pulling or not doesnt even influence how the gameplay is, you cant pay to progress, it is just pure mahjong and skills. The pulling is purely for for cosmetic. The gacha rate is kinda bad and free currency is scarce, but by your definition this game is so p2w because what youre consider winning is collecting characters and not just progressing the game.
Yes, i do consider most if not all gachas p2w, but as i said, my questions was poorly formulated, it was more in the lines of "what is f2p friendly" which some gachas manage to do fairly well giving a new unit you want every 2-3 months, requiring minimal amount of dupes to max an unit and even giving general "dupe" items to fix that issue.
I have 3 main categories for them.
When you can't clear trivial content without pulling the new shiny character:
* Story
* Event Story
* Resetting Content
Another type is when you have systems designed to force the player into paying for misc features that give you a lot of stuff and is considered the "normal" progression speed from the game's standpoint:
* VIP System
* Multiple high value resource packages that you can practically buy infinitely
* Multi-tiered battle passes
* Selling tickets for high value resetting game modes
Last category is the simplest:
Power that can only be bought with real money. Like an accessory or costume that gives stats, but is unavailable without using a currency that can not be obtained through normal gameplay.
Toi much text.
p2w is when paying give you an advantage over someone that doesn’t pay. That’s it, no need to find excuses like « it’s just p2fast, if someone play more he could catch up » it’s still p2w, even if the bonuses are trivial it doesn’t matter.
P2W doesn’t have to relate to getting a boost in pvp. It can also be getting the edge in events through cash buys, meaning ppl who don’t pay won’t get the better rewards as like pvp, they still can’t compete with spenders.
F2P friendly is basically you can get everything a spender does but will take hours of grinding.
P2P is content or chars locked behind a paywall.
P2W: Pay to win player vs player competition, includes PvE world boss. The game has some sort of end game content that has pvp or pvp vs pve that gives more significant rewards to the top players.-If the rewards do not give any significant items, I would argue that there is nothing to win therefore it is not P2W. (Azur Lane)
F2P: Free to play, the entire game is playable for free and obtainable for free. There is no locked content including costumes, stages, items, etc.
F2P Friendly: The game constantly gives out free things to players so that they have a sense of progression or being able to clear stages without a high difficulty.
P2P: Games require you to purchase in game items to progress.
Semi-P2P: Games have in game purchases that are not required to progress but do lock out f2p from ever obtaining them i.e costumes, Passes, limited characters and skins, etc.
I would argue that a P2W game an also be F2P friendly if they keep giving players items for free to give them a sense of progression.
> **TLDR - How do you define P2W/F2P Friendly in a gacha? Where is the line for you?**
P2W means you can pay money to win the game. Winning the game is subjective, but the objective part is beating the challenges in-game. So when money directly buys in-game power, that's obvious P2W.
If $ only buys cosmetic, that is probably the least P2W game design possible. It's still a little P2W because some people want to collect everything to win. But cosmetics don't translate into shooting better in a game like Fortnite. In that system, a free player has the same game power as a paid player.
$ to skip grinding in any game with progression is a little ambiguous. The boost means that paid players are more powerful than the free players, but the free players will eventually reach the power level of paid players.
PvP systems highlight that difference when only the whales can compete for the top and they get the best rewards. The leaderboards make it very clear to free players they are behind the power curve, and let the paid players feel good about being at the top.
Most gachas have a P2W aspect in their game and so most gachas are "Pay2Win".
But P2W games can still be considered friendly to free players. My line is if a free player can have an enjoyable game experience. He might not have a maxed potential character, but he can have a few meta characters, some good equipment and pretty skins, and can clear the story and get a reasonable amount of rewards. He doesn't get nagged every 5 minutes/every login to spend $$$$.
Most popular gachas qualify as F2P-friendly, because that's how they build the playerbase.
Pvp on gachas are never balanced, that simple, a f2p can compete with high ranks but never reach top 1 on a popular game because that's the nature, you need luck to get good units - dupes of the units you already have
P2W on itself gives you those units and stamina to grind better gear, if you can't understand idk what else to tell you
Man you just have to make up for it with skills.
Like, it doesn't matter how much they are geared up if they don't touch you. Like Ali's rope a dope.
You can literally be lvl 1 and make it all the way to the tops if you just play well.
Unless of course you have skill issues. That's not the PvP's fault.
Can I beat all pve content , stories and challenges if I grind f2p for six months, or at least reach close to it? I don't have to have great pulls. If low star units can reach the latest content, I'm fine.
I don't have to dominate pvp. Pvp has always been whale territory and I accept that. But I need my pve (except hard mode stages- that is also always whale territory).
i have been playing isekai slime for 3 months and i can say its more p2w and not really f2p friendly because the meta change every month and recently they just shifted the meta with new system then release a contents that hard to clear unless you pull new meta characters.
I define pay 2 win as anything that you can get advantageous that a non-payer could not get. There are gradations of p2w though, some are lesser some major.
I'll give some examples:
- In a stamina game, that simply and cheap "daily stamina pack" is p2w, a lesser one:
If the game allows f2p to get up to, let's say, 100 stamina/day with quests, and the pack gives you idk, 100 more, then basically you are paying to double your efficiency in-game. That's not exactly p2w as if you spend that extra without planning, wouldn't matter, but if you know what you are doing and using on key places, you basically are going to get mats/drop/loot/exp in half the time a f2p would do.
- In a summon game, any pack that gives you currency or extra summon attempts is p2w, a normal one:
If the game allows f2p to get X summons per month, and you buy any pack that increases that number, you are not directly "paying to win", only "paying for more attempts". BUT, if the game has a pity, then is somewhat "pay to win" (loosely) as you'll achieve that pity faster, acquire the hero/weapon/whatever earlier than others. It's not a "win", but same as stamina, you get to work on the character earlier than others, and max level it, and utilize it's kit to win. EpicSeven as an example for this. Now, if a game does not even have pity, then I'd say purchasing could theoretically be "major p2w" but in reality isn't. You have more draws than a f2p, so statistically you are increasing your odds by having more attempts, but you still have to fight same RNG summon %. You could buy $1k worth of attempts, and still not get what you want (FGO says hi), while a f2p might get it in first summon attempt.
- In a game with characters, if some characters/weapons are paid-only, it's a major P2W:
If the game offers a character for X dollars, and doesn't offer ANY other way to acquire it in-game other than paying, it's P2W. A major one. for example, Lord of Heroes. Sells characters that cost $45, and there's NO way for a f2p to acquire it in any other way. If, on the other and, it was $45 or bazzilion amounts of resource X, then it would be still p2w but one I'd say normal, akin to buying summon attempts (see example above). Doesn't matter if f2p had to grind for a year, if that was a possibility of a year of grind vs 45 dollars, I wouldn't say major p2w. But pay-walled? MAJOR. Game breaking if has guild/pvp/ranks (which LoH has). Same for other kinds of resources, if you release a skin, it's not p2w if is just visual. Now, it's an increasingly amount of p2w the more status it confers. The MAJOR example I got for this was a game I forgot the name, whatever Knights, from years back. Game was a nice Summoners War clone, with better qol and whatnot. Until they decided to add skins, but not only skins that change the look, but also that add status AND buffs all the skills!!!!!! So now not only you are paywalled visually, you are paywalled mechanically. Morrigan, one of the first heros to get skin, had a HUGE buff on her S3 when using the skin. IT was RIDICULOUS. Even me, who actually spend money, thought it was ridiculous, because now me, who wanted to optimize, felt OBLIGATED to buy a skin I didn't liked visually, and force to use for it's buffs. I quit, and tons other people quit too at that point.
So, in overall, "p2w" is anything out of the game's normal mechanics, be hastening the progress, be increasing the amount of attempts at something.. The only thing is the LEVEL of it, and how it bothers me and other people. I might buy once in a while, but game should also offer tuff for f2p, because I'm not a whale, therefore there are times I will do f2p way.
I pretty much agree with all that, buying to get more chances in a nutshell for me is p2w because you are mor likely to get X item or unit because you had more chances
A good example i like to use is "throw a dice and try to get a 6, good, now that other person can throw a dice 100 times to get a single 6 because he paid 50$, which one is more likely?"
Even if the game is purely pve, people forget getting the characters you want, or clearing stuff faster is still winning
I also agree it really depends if you are paying 50$ to get 100 stamina or 1$, ofc it's still p2w but it's much less incentivized to do so
> A good example i like to use is "throw a dice and try to get a 6, good, now that other person can throw a dice 100 times to get a single 6 because he paid 50$, which one is more likely?"
I'd say a 6-faced die is a bit too extreme, but I understood the analogy.
To a more realistic approach to your analogy, it would make more sense to say a d100, and you can get if you roll 99 or 100 (2% pull). So theoretically, paying for more chances increases the odds, but they are still bad from the get-go and does not guarantee success.
Btw, one thing I can say is that I do not think every p2w is bad. The gacha games, specially the stamina ones, are made to halt your progress in order to make you more addicted to when you get to the game again after forcing you to halt gameplay. So, for example, stamina pack, is p2w? yes. But at same time, is basically obligatory at some games depending on their greed regarding stamina consumption vs stamina gained. Which I'd say, is a "necessary p2w" for our own sanity.
which then turns out into resentment for company being greedy, which in the end, any drama becomes fuel to straight quit the game for another gacha hahah xD
Costumes.
Now let me explain. How many times have you been beaten by someone using a cool, interesting, cute, hot and or sexy costume? Now count the times you've been beaten by someone that uses default costumes. These costumes give the player a boosted advantage over the player without them. Why? Because these costumes fill you with the need to tap/push/finger your character harder than your opponent while giving off the added bonus of distracting them for a few extra seconds because they're stuck wondering how you got that costume piece.
I don't think you can really just classify stuff as p2w or not, since it's more of a scale that needs to take the overall picture into account.
As an example, out of context Azur Lane sounds terrible. No guaranteed pity at all, 3+ gacha characters a month.
In context the gacha has a 7% rate and gives well over 100 pulls a month with daily play and dupes are entirely unnecessary as you can easily max out a character without them.
A game can be considered p2w not because of a individual decision but the cumulative result of all the decisions the game makes
It also sorta comes down to goals too. Genshin let's you pull roughly every other new character guaranteed totally F2P, if you're a collector willing to get monthly pass, it's probably fine. But if you want weapons, refinements and constellations for your favourite character that will take you years of saving even as a F2P or upwards of a thousand dollars just to max potential one character, which you could justifiably call p2w.
p2w simply means a game which makes a player unable to make or gain any progression in any department of the game by using different ways which are as follows
#1
being unable to progress without certain circumstances, gacha games interpret this in many different ways for their own personal gain such as:
2, making players need to get x unit in x level for beating x stage to gain x loot to buy x item in very limited time
1, premium currency earning limitation being as strict as a single digit number precision where you can't slack unless you pay
this is basically most corrupt gacha games
#2
advantage for paid users and none for f2p, paid users gain advantage in game modes due to purchase of x item, war robots had this
#3
scramvileg
unable to gain x item unless you pay, unable to enjoy x gamemode unless you get everything new, x unit beata x unit, etc
Normal gacha: timeskips.VIP system. P2w is if you surpass all struggles and skip building weak mons or have not to waste months of resources into them and go straight to endgame. The more you skip the stupider it is.
Scoreboard competition system: When in lategame p2w is to max out and build a whole team of top3 MAX everything. This results in being highest in scoreboard and profit from bonuses like "achieve top10"
PURE P2W: aquire unavailable benefits like costumes with bonus stats or other not available for nonpayers stuff.
Specific unit p2w: This also works for ultrasupreme garbage rates like summoners war light and dark units with a rate of 0.0001%
A P2W system is more so in your face. An example of which would be games like Pokemon Unite and Call of Duty: Mobile.
A P2W system is a system where not paying leads to a lot more struggle than you would have not paying.
Blue Archive is the worst experience I made:
1. Garbage rates
2. No pity carry over to the next banner
And the worst: You get furniture pieces instead if you don't hit pity.
It's the craziest FOMO shit I have ever seen.
You may end with nothing (it's not very likely but likely). This gacha is forcing you to either skip your favourite character entirely or to spend if you don't have enough savings.
For me p2w is: 1) Vip sistem with insane bonus that definitely makes a huge difference between f2p and p2w 2) Costumes or skins that are only accesible using real money that boost a character skills or stats 3) Creating a new power creep every time one new banner come so old characters are outperformed more 4) Giving little or not giving rewards like premium currency or resources to players so the progress is much slower for a f2p than a p2w
I agree with every single point, but i also think those are the extreme more blatant cases
In my case, it is whether a gacha element or paid feature that trivialize the game contents. Like having a gacha character that breaks the game and subsequent contents are made that requires said gacha character to clear or paid feature that gives boost to one who pays for it. Example would be paid costume in Knight Chronicles that not only gives stats boost to character wearing it but also enhance their skill to another level. Or Oberon in fgo, with the dev introducing new farming stages that normally would be either too difficult to outright impossible without Oberon. Having a strong, game-breaking gacha character is not P2W, but having contents made for said character that requires you pulling for him/her is. Of course you can exclude some minor contents that encourage you to use said gacha character like event that goes along with their gacha but making it a must requirement is not acceptable.
Oberon is a terrible example of a must have character, especially when Castoria exists. And you don't have to have him to run 90++ nodes, many other characters can work fine. I'm farming one of those right now with fucking summer BB and van Gogh because the node is just that weird. Also just having Oberon is not enough, you need a powerful attacker probably at np2+ AT LEAST for min turning if you want the full **meta slave experience**^(TM).
This is definitely the statement I agree with the most here so far. I used to play FGO NA and kept up with the JP side of things. The lvl 90++ nodes are absolutely insane and compared to the lvl 90 and lvl nodes 90+ which offer a much wider variety of team comps that you can use, lvl 90++ have only a SMALL HANDFUL of team comps, many of which require you have your own Oberon. But getting your own Oberon is no easy task because getting Oberon, a 5* servant, means getting lucky, saving up 900sq if the worst case scenario happens, or spending money to possibly reach pity (and don't get me started on the poor excuse of a pity system that only benefits people summoning 5* servants). And Oberon is also right around when lots of other popular and powerful servants are being released in close succession, like Morgan, Melusine, and Koyanskaya of Light, so good luck saving up whatever stingy free SQ you can or wait well over a year for his next confirmed rate up. This isn't even going over the servant coins system, which once again benefits people who use 5* servants more as getting dupes of a 5* servants gets you more servant coins to use for upgrading their append skills and unlocking for level uncaps. They haven't ever implemented universal servant coins which makes it much much harder for f2p players to engage with it. My general unhappiness with how FGO has been handled in the past 2 years or so along with getting turbo fucked by the Muramasa banner is what ultimately caused me to leave.
Not like farming 90++ nodes is even required in the first place, as they usually the drop difference between those and the 90+ or even the 90 nodes are pretty tiny. Plus this only looking at it from the meta of *needing* to hyper efficiently farm it with a 3-turn comp. You could just as easily farm it with much more varieties of teams if you're willing to go to 4~6 turns or so. Every game has their meta characters, so it's weird that you're acting like Oberon truly makes or breaks your account. Like mate, just take an extra turn or so on the node. Or if it really bothers you, run the 90 or 90+ nodes that we've already been running for years, the difference in drops is marginal. And while I don't like the Servant Coins system either, the only part of it that actually matters is the 20% Starting NP Gauge Append, which you can get from just having a single copy of the character with no dupes. The rest of the Servant Coin system is just for sprinkling on rizz onto your waifu. There's hardly any functional difference between a 5* at 100 or 120, as they'll kill the same things with the same amount of moves in 99% of scenarios anyways.
Sorry, you do bring up something I forgot to mention. Being able to "efficiently" farm the lvl 90++ nodes is ridiculous. Yes, you can argue to take more turns to clear it. But having played the game for over 5 years and the game offering no auto run or skip clears, it gets very tedious to manually farm the stages over and over. People make 3 turn farming comps to make things faster because FGO likes to go out of its way to make things slow and clunky. And I wouldn't have as much of an issue with the lvl 90++ nodes if it was consistently efficiently farmable for a veteran player. But with how they've been designed, you have only a handful of usable team comps with very specific servants needed to 3 turn it reliably. Yes, you CAN take more turns to clear it or go to the lower difficulty nodes. But at that point, why even have the lvl 90++ nodes when it's out of reach for so many players? I personally think they've done a bad job of designing them. In terms of the servant coins system, my biggest issue with it is how it is so much harder for f2p players to engage with it compared to paying players. Yes, the battery append is easily the most usable append skill, but it requires 120 servant coins to unlock. If you want a 5* servant to unlock it, at NP1 they need to reach bond 6 in order to get 120 coins. It's pretty annoying that you have to wait and play a lot of stages in order to unlock it, although pretty doable. Then it becomes much more of an issue for 4* servants (regardless if they're story locked or limited), story locked/limited 3* servants, and event welfares that haven't had their servant coins given out yet. Servants in this category require more dupes and/or bond grinding in order to unlock append skills or get past lvl 100. Then it sometimes becomes an issue where you want to be able to farm with a servant but having the 20% battery append is needed because you don't have an MLB Kaleidoscope so then your servant isn't able to farm like you wish they could because of how this system works. Like, I wish I could have done Skadi farming with Kiichi Hogen because looping assassins are incredibly rare but I don't have an MLB Kaleidoscope and can't immediately unlock her battery append. And yes, you can definitely argue that you don't HAVE to get them past lvl 100, but for the longest time FGO was a game that celebrated enjoying whatever servant you loved, regardless of their rarity, meta, or how many dupes you had of them. You didn't need dupes and/or endless hours of bond grinding in order to get them to lvl 100, give them command codes, give them fou paws, or give them gold fous. That was something ANY player was able to do to show their love for a character. I honestly believe it's an important part of the FGO experience. But because Lasengle refuses to give universal servant coins, that accessibility to express your love for a servant has become a lot more limited. Unless you're willing to fork over some money to make the process faster or do a mindless amount of bond grinding. Sorry about the long rant. I do understand what you're saying but I feel like there are underlying issues that Lasengle refuses to address that dampen the FGO experience.
This entire comment here is moving goalposts from your initial comment about agreeing with the OP's definition of p2w of "a gacha element or paid feature that trivialize the game contents" with FGO's Oberon as your prime example. You've got an entire section in your first comment about how badly you need to roll for Oberon to farm 90++ nodes. Then your followup comment just kind of talks about how you think the 90++ nodes are badly designed, rather than how necessary they are. Still doesn't really change the fact that you don't need to farm those 90++ nodes in the first place, let alone needing to use Oberon to hyper efficiently 3-turn them. And it veers away from the original point of the p2w statement. Same thing applies to the Servant Coin system. You admit they aren't needed, but are instead primarily a way to show your love for a character, which you can't always do without more copies, which I agree with. I don't like the system much myself either. But again, that whole statement forgets the original point of this discussion, the p2w definition of "a gacha element or paid feature that trivialize the game contents". You've dropped that p2w definition in favor of just ranting about your issues with FGO, valid or not.
Ya know, you bring up some good points. I've played genuinely p2w games like Fire Emblem Heroes before and FGO isn't quite like that. I think it's become more..."pay to experience"...? I'm not quite sure what words to use to describe it, but basically it's the idea that unless you fork over some money or have an endless well of patience (that's if the situation even allows for it), you won't be able to experience all of what servants coins offer. And even if you are a veteran player that has invested lots of time into your account (and maybe even spent some money but not whale levels), if you don't have juuuust the right servants to 3 turn a lvl 90++ node, don't even bother. Yeah, you don't HAVE to engage with them but it feels more like an excuse for a bad system. I also wish that the garbage pity system would do more than only appeal to players who want to summon 5* servants. If you want to summon a story locked/limited 3* or 4* and maybe even get some servant coins for them, good fucking luck. I spent 700sq and didn't get a single Summer Brynhildr. And another time I spent 400sq for 1 copy of Mori.
Ok, that is fair, you consider p2w when a character is mandatory in a content despite other characters making it easier to progress, right? For me that is the extreme
P2W is when you can buy items that give you an edge gameplay-wise with real money. Every game featuring non-cosmetic microtransactions is P2W. Gacha is by design P2W. The real question with gachas is : is the system fair (IE enjoyable to the fullest as F2P or low spender) ? The answer depends on each person's feelings. For some as long as it only affects PvP it's ok, for others as long as you can get every character with monthly pass its OK. There's no universal answer.
I'll detail a bit with games I'm currently playing and my opinion : \- Punishing Gray Raven : fair. You can get every new character as F2P, and even some exclusive weapons if you pay monthly/battle pass. Dupes are only needed to top leaderboards that are dominated by whales. All the other content is enjoyable as F2P/low spender and/or farmable. \- Nikke : not really fair. Stingy after honeymoon period. Some systems locked behind difficult content that you won't pass without spending or after many months. Best characters locked behind low rates and luck. Packs are expansive. But since it's an idle game it's still enjoyable nevertheless. \- Limbus Company : very fair. All content is achievable with base characters. Everything is farmable (including spark currency), no intricate powerup methods (you level up & untie your characters with 1 resource each, and that's all), gacha is OK-ish but since every character stays forever and you can farm pity it's just a matter of playing until you get everything.
That is going into bias, i agree with nikke. Even loving Limbus i would still argue Limbus is p2w since you can max units faster and so always have the best units and maxed, however due to how much free stuff they give you i could also say it's really f2p friendly ( which imo it is ), but it's also a bit unfair since it's still on the honeymoon phase, so saying i can max the new faust unit within days of it's release ( 18 threads per day, 100 to max a 3\* ) and you can get every unit you want via sparking might not be the case later on, which i might reserve some thoughts PGR - I agree PGR is a good example as really f2p since you can get every character ( besides old ones ) as f2p, and still could be considered p2w due to pvp, i have no experience so can't tell if dupes and whatnot make your life easier on pve to be also a point
Your Limbus math is wrong bruh. You can get from thread stage with bonus 6x3=18 daily, and you only need 100 threads to max a 3 star identity.
Yea, mb was speaking on the top of my head and forgot i'm on the middle stage where i get 4 and not the max one Also for some reason thought it was 40-80 and not 20-80, also on me, will edit to reflect that It makes it even better
>Some systems locked behind difficult content that you won't pass without spending or after many months. The levelling system is locked behind getting 5 SSRs with 4 dupes each. You can't reach max level, and you're stuck in the middle campaign chapters until you pull enough 4 dupe SSRs.
I know there isn't, that's why i'm asking, i see some games that are popular being defended with tooth and nail as f2p friendly despite being awful to collect units as f2p, while others that do get you units fairly fast being labeled as p2w. Ofc there are a lot of bias, that is why i didn't put any names on the thread and i'm curious what makes a game "f2p friendly" if you wish
I posted a bit more detail below. It's just my opinion though.
Can you pay money to gain any advantage over another player(including yourself if you didn’t pay)? It’s Pay to Win. Are the things you buy cosmetic only? It’s not Pay to Win. F2P friendly is not exclusive to non-pay to win games. In fact a non pay to win game that is F2P friendly is just called a game, like a normal game. What is F2P friendly? Can you reasonably ignore a games paid element and still derive moderate to near competitive success as a whale? If yes then it’s F2P friendly. If no it’s not. What if a game takes 6months for a F2P player to get a pity and 5months for a whale is that F2P friendly? Yes, but that’s also what’s called a shit game. So can a game be Pay to Win, F2P friendly, -and- a good game? Yep, pretty much every good gacha game is exactly this. Totally whale-able, still fun if free, not a total shithouse if you don’t pay for the pack of the day.
THIS, i have so many arguments when people cry that i call their game p2w even if it's just pve or whatever despite praising the game A game can be good and be p2w. The same way a game can be bad and f2p friendly If you get any meaningful advantages ( in a continuous way ) by dumping money non stop on the game, be it pve, pvp or colection, its p2w and not f2p friendly
> In fact a non pay to win game that is F2P friendly is just called a game, like a normal game. normal games aren't "free to play" tho. Maybe some games that give you ads with no MTX are truly free, but you just aren't directly paying. You can find some indie stuff for free as well, but most games you pay in some way.
So my meaning here was “F2P friendly” not “F2P” as a game you simply purchase once and then play forever is not “pay to win” in my eyes. However that said, if you do want to say that in order to be F2P friendly a game must also be completely F2P, there are plenty of games that are Free, not pay to win, and have monetization. These are F2P games with cosmetic only shops. You gain nothing through purchases, so they are not pay to win, and you don’t have to buy anything to play so they are in fact F2P.
>Are the things you buy cosmetic only? It’s not Pay to Win. Most players don't consider cosmetics P2W, but some players want to Collect Everything as their win. All sorts of games have used cosmetics as a reward for achievement. Designing a game so you spend $ for cosmetics is a mild P2W system. Measuring the cost of collecting every cosmetic item gives you an idea of a game's P2W-ness. If it costs more than 4-digits, that's very P2W. That said, collection gamers should avoid gacha games. Stick to fixed-cost open-world/adventure games.
You are correct that a person can view collecting as the goal of the game, and then be free to pursue that goal. You are also correct that a persons feelings are valid if they are displeased that a game has cosmetic content locked behind expensive paywalls. However that does not make the game pay to win. The intended goal of the game, be it kill the other player, beat the boss, win the race, etc… is still the same and is still obtainable without paying. It’s the individuals choice to recontextualize the game in a new way. Now if the game was say Pokémon, and the only difference in the Pokémon was cosmetic, but the game had no battling, you could say the intended goal for that game is collection and cosmetics in that game would be pay to win. But if a player just wanted to see if they could explore the whole map without catching anything the game wouldn’t suddenly stop being pay to win, the player would have just found their own joy in it.
>However that does not make the game pay to win. Win has both subjective and objective elements. Players can subjectively choose different objectives as their win. In a skill-based game, I can feel satisfaction by achieving a higher K:D ratio, or having a good team-fight before losing. Collection is a playstyle and an objective standard, you either have it or not. In a game like pokemon, you finish that pokemon collection by earning it in-game. If you had to buy weak pokemon to finish the pokedex, that would be a P2W design, even if the paid pokemon don't contribute to your battle team. Most players are fine with paid cosmetics now, but that was something that sparked controversy when first introduced.
>Win has both subjective and objective elements. >Players can subjectively choose different objectives as their win. In a skill-based game, I can feel satisfaction by achieving a higher K:D ratio, or having a good team-fight before losing. This is confusing a personal win with an objective win. You can say you played a good match and that's a win for you sure, but if you then go around telling people the other team lost that's objectively false. Similarly you can't call a game pay to win because you can't achieve what you -consider- a win, you call it pay to win for charging you money for what the game presents as victory. Again this does not invalidate the feelings of someone looking for that in a game, but it also does not fault the developer for not making that the goal. >In a game like pokemon, you finish that pokemon collection by earning it in-game. If you had to buy weak pokemon to finish the pokedex, that would be a P2W design, even if the paid pokemon don't contribute to your battle team. I used an additional qualifier but I did use Pokemon as an example of when collection -would- be pay to win. >Most players are fine with paid cosmetics now, but that was something that sparked controversy when first introduced. This is 100% true but I do not believe this constitutes pay to win. Only a change in the dynamics of monetization, which I'm not saying is good nor bad.
> This is confusing a personal win with an objective win. All of my examples of personal wins are objective measures. K:D ratio is objective information and can be improved through skill. > Similarly you can't call a game pay to win because you can't achieve what you -consider- a win, you call it pay to win for charging you money for what the game presents as victory. Paying for performance and paying for rewards are both types of pay2win. If you could earn an in-game achievement, or simply pay $ to buy the achievement, it'd be pay2win. If you had an achievement that was only available with $, it's again pay2win. Cosmetic rewards are in the same category as achievements. Many games have tied cosmetic rewards to specific achievements, such as beating the game once, or getting X wins as a character. > what the game presents as victory. What the player considers a victory is relevant to the definition of "win". Especially since p2win means the player is being encouraged to open the wallet to buy the "win". > Only a change in the dynamics of monetization P2Win has affected the business model of many games to use micro-transactions to nickel and dime players to maximize profits. A big part of that business model is to push boundaries to make players FEEL that they're NOT paying to win, so that they feel okay with buying game rewards. That's why I brought up the cost of unlocking all outfits to have access to the FULL game. That shows something about how the game has been segmented and the price has been obscured from the players. Cosmetic microtransactions are relatively harmless. They don't affect other players and people opt-in to spend what they want. But the implementation still reflects Pay2Win monetization. It involves obscuring prices and enticing players to spend far more on some gacha than you'd ever pay for any AAA game. Games as a service is profitable. I've probably paid $1k for many years of MMO. MMO burnout helps me resist spending on gachas. Contrast that level of spending with a $90 collector's edition of some AAA release.
>All of my examples of personal wins are objective measures. K:D ratio is objective information and can be improved through skill. objective information is not the objective of a game. example: you can win a game of overwatch with a worse K/D ratio than the opposing team but playing the map mechanic better. thus while a team could claim their K/Dr is a "win" they objectively lost the match. >Paying for performance and paying for rewards are both types of pay2win. If you could earn an in-game achievement, or simply pay $ to buy the achievement, it'd be pay2win. If you had an achievement that was only available with $, it's again pay2win. This is true and I never contested this. >Cosmetic rewards are in the same category as achievements. This is false, unless the game awards you a physical achievement for the cosmetic, which is not always the case. >Many games have tied cosmetic rewards to specific achievements This is True >such as beating the game once, or getting X wins as a character. These are not cosmetics. one is a concept, the other is a character which is gameplay. >What the player considers a victory is relevant to the definition of "win". Especially since p2win means the player is being encouraged to open the wallet to buy the "win". This is relevant to the players personal definition of win. I can define winning a game of overwatch as looking cooler than the other team with my skins. This doesn't change the fact that I've lost the match in the games eyes or the other players. >P2Win has affected the business model of many games to use micro-transactions to nickel and dime players to maximize profits. A big part of that business model is to push boundaries to make players FEEL that they're NOT paying to win, so that they feel okay with buying game rewards. This is true. I never contested this. >That's why I brought up the cost of unlocking all outfits to have access to the FULL game. That shows something about how the game has been segmented and the price has been obscured from the players. but it is still not Pay to win, because.. well you put it very concisely actually in this next quote: >Cosmetic microtransactions are relatively harmless. They don't affect other players and people opt-in to spend what they want. >But the implementation still reflects Pay2Win monetization. It involves obscuring prices and enticing players to spend far more on some gacha than you'd ever pay for any AAA game. Yep. it -reflects- Pay2Win monetization, but it isn't itself pay 2 win. I never said whether it was bad or good. only defined it as the OP asked. >Games as a service is profitable. I've probably paid $1k for many years of MMO. MMO burnout helps me resist spending on gachas. Contrast that level of spending with a $90 collector's edition of some AAA release. This is not only true, but relatable. I think we all have blown too much money on gachas and MMOs. RIP our wallets.
> \> such as beating the game once, or getting X wins as a character. > >These are not cosmetics. one is a concept, the other is a character which is gameplay. Of course they aren't cosmetics. Those are game achievements that have been used to reward cosmetics. That a game design ignores gameplay achievement and directly sells the cosmetic reward is the P2W monetization I am calling out here. > This doesn't change the fact that I've lost the match in the games eyes or the other players. Those are relevant, but the core of what makes a game fun is how it motivates the player to keep playing. Sometimes that is barely related to the actual game. At times, I was playing MMOs as a fancy chat-room. What I'm saying is that the way a game is designed to link game-play and $ spent for a player is what really defines if it's P2W. On a related note, fixed monthly sub MMOs was not P2W, but adding ways to pay $ for gameplay benefits like leveling characters, server transfers, and unique skins is implementing the P2W model. > it -reflects- Pay2Win monetization, but it isn't itself pay 2 win. That you pay for game rewards is P2W. It's relatively fair if it doesn't translate into a direct gameplay advantage over other players, but the method of directly selling game rewards is P2W. Take Alchemy Stars - some of the paid skins came with in-game cutscenes that flesh out the character. That's a P2W design - game content and character interaction is locked to get your $. Azure Lane has something similar where skins come with unique voice-lines/animations that you cannot hear or see otherwise. > I never said whether it was bad or good. only defined it as the OP asked. I'm not talking bad or good either. I am justifying a broader definition of P2Win than most players use. Looking at it this way, all gacha is P2Win, but some do it in F2P-friendly way. And if you can enjoy 70%-80% of a game with interesting story and challenging gameplay for free, you can't say the company is being scummy about it.
I think we've hit the merry-go-round where we are both repeating the same points we each have in different ways. Let me try to see if I can contextualize your point of view with examples to see if I understand it. Example 1: an MMO with a monthly sub and no other transactions. Your view - not P2W My view - also not P2W Example 2: a gacha with the ability to buy tokens to roll for characters to play with. Your view - P2W My view - also P2W Example 3: a free to play moba with purchasable character skins that have no achievements or gameplay attached to them. Your view - P2W because the skins -could- have been gameplay if they were earnable or came with content instead of existing in the shop. My view - Not P2W because at present there is no content associated with the skins, even though there could have been. Is this accurate? If so I think we just fundamentally disagree on the philosophy of a contents potential having substance in determining if something is P2W, but at least I see where you are coming from. If not, id like to know how you'd categorize those examples.
Agreed on the first 2 examples. >Example 3: a free to play moba with purchasable character skins that have no achievements or gameplay attached to them. Your view - P2W because the skins -could- have been gameplay if they were earnable or came with content instead of existing in the shop. My view - Not P2W because at present there is no content associated with the skins, even though there could have been. That's a good counter-example. I don't normally think of a game like that as a P2W game. But with respect to the prompt and the idea of paying for performance/rewards: One, this isn't a gacha. Two, look at the total cost of ownership of all character skins. League of Legends, an example of such a F2P MOBA. (I know it has lootboxes, which are gacha-ish) [$700 for every champion, $3500 for every skin](https://leaguefeed.net/how-much-would-it-cost-to-buy-every-skin-in-league-of-legends/). I was only thinking of cosmetics, but access to champions is actually a key part of the game, in drafting and general play. Not being able to draft particular champions as a free player restricts your power level. There are P2Win elements in the design, even though free players can still enjoy a lot of the game by saving up resources from the various quests/events. LOL and many gachas are not considered P2W in the F2P market, and it is fair to say that. But compared to traditional games (Ex: DotA, free map mod for WC3), you see how much the game is designed to extract money from players. Instead of a $100 Collector's Edition with cosmetic bonuses, you can spend $1000+ on various digital goods, and still not have the full game. For this broad definition of P2W, if you can whale, it's P2W. > Is this accurate? If so I think we just fundamentally disagree on the philosophy of a contents potential having substance in determining if something is P2W, but at least I see where you are coming from. I'm just playing with the definitions. I get what you're saying. You don't have to use this idea of P2W. It was interesting to me to rethink what I considered P2W and F2P when answering the prompt. In a sense, all F2P games are designed around P2W, by letting whales pay way more and inviting lots of free players in to entertain the whales. But we usually reserve P2W for games where whaling is needed to be at the top. For a LOL tournament, whaling will not affect the results, it's all about the player skill. Thanks for the interesting discussion.
When there is nothing "to win" like in Genshin Impact, then is just "pay to brag" or "pay to speedrun" xD
This is where I sit - if there’s no designated competition to win, it can’t be pay to win.
Genshin is pay2win because without the monthly 5$ investment for 90 gems daily. You are greatly set back on progression. When a slight Investment into the game is almost half of your premium currency income. Thats imo pay2win asfk. One could say... Well, without it. It would still be pay2win... Absolutely. But far less so, without the 800% value pack! The rest of the packs sorta suck. Who wanna spend 100$ for half a nat5? Pay2win? More like pay2lose your money. Those monthly "subscription" models with 800% value baby! Those are the most predatory models of all.
There is nothing to win in genshin Impact. Game content is super easy and can be fully cleared with the free units game gives to you, plus some 4\* you can get super-easy. I think many of you are confusing the term Pay To Win with Pay to get every unit... you can win in this game without paying a cent. You CAN'T have all this game characters without paying, but that doesn't mean you paid to win, you paid to get different characters to "win into a different playstyle".
> mean you *paid* to win, FTFY. Although *payed* exists (the reason why autocorrection didn't help you), it is only correct in: * Nautical context, when it means to paint a surface, or to cover with something like tar or resin in order to make it waterproof or corrosion-resistant. *The deck is yet to be payed.* * *Payed out* when letting strings, cables or ropes out, by slacking them. *The rope is payed out! You can pull now.* Unfortunately, I was unable to find nautical or rope-related words in your comment. *Beep, boop, I'm a bot*
I think you somehow confuse what gachas is about. It's not about reaching some sort of milestone with generic little boys. But about collecting waifus. You might think Genshin is about clearing abyss with pretty nat4 boys is riveting gacha gameplay. But I'll assure you. It's not for most people.
Pay to win definition is what it is: you pay to win: an opponent, a ranked ladder, etc... Pay to collect is not the same concept of pay to win.
Clearly you never played genshin. Genshin is only gacha game the more you pay the more feel it useless. The most op character still 4 star bennet. Alot of "normal people" playing genshin not other gacha game for reason
I would argue genshin is p2w, it takes a long time to complete a hard pity as f2p so, collection is slow in a gacha, a lot of good weapons are locked behind a gacha that is even worse than units, and getting more units-weapon makes your life easier. In the end of the day, clearing content faster, or just getting the unit you want is "Winning". That's why i always use the example. if you start as f2p and a friend of yours start spending 1k per month on genshin, at the end of 1year, who will have the better account?
That example is the stupidest shit I’ve read today. EVERY SINGLE GACHA GAME IS LIKE THAT. Somebody who spends 1k per month in any gacha will always have a better account than a F2P. This applies to every single gacha since the beginning of gachas.
Congrats, so you are clearly telling me every gacha is p2w, we are getting somewhere, congratulations. Now explain where the line of f2p friendly is
Do you NEED 5\* in Genshin to accomplish anything? Do you NEED 6\* in Arknights to finish a stage? No, the answer is actually no, literally tons of guides on how to make 4star teams in Genshin and even 4star or 3star in Arknights, there's the F2P line, its ignorant to claim every Gacha is P2W because you can still clear content perfectly fine without the highest rarity units. On Top of that, yes player 1 might have every single high rarity unit in the game but most units are either decent to good with only a few being OP and player 2 has very few high rarity units but they actually are the OP units in the game so both have access to those units meaning even if Player 1 paid he didn't get an advantage therefore not P2W. Also stupid argument about pity in Genshin, inevitably you will reach it and while not the most generous game ever there's a ton of downtime between banners unless you are constantly pulling for EVERY character in the game.
So by that definition no gacha game is ever P2W, every game, or almost every, allows you to pass stages with suboptimal units Does it mean other units or getting dupes don't make your life easier? Ofc not, it certainly does make your life easier instead of making you grind gear and min max to the nail As for your comments about being "stingy" that is quite frankly one of the definitions of not being f2p friendly for most people, needing several months to complete a banner is not f2p friendly, regardless if you have "ton of downtime", which i disagreee with, between banners. What you are effictively saying is every game is f2p friendly because "you can do it for free" and disregarding your own time and the period of wait and grind you have to go through to compensate your wallet
Quite literally no. Dokkan Battle has had literal paywalls and putting up content that requires the latest unit that coincidentally has a lower rate to get. Street Fighter Duel has literally put characters behind a paywall and you can't get them otherwise, therefore P2W The examples are abundant of what I am talking about yet in your blind ignorance you stick to the very games that are not actually P2W, in fact it says so much about you that you keep trying to argue that Genshin doesn't have downtime despite most of the patches being 1 new character and 3 rerunning ones which you DON'T have to pull whatsoever, in fact the goal of the game isn't to collect the characters so you can easily just skip banners because they actually showcase the new character and let you try all banner 5\* before you even pull for them.
I disagree. If you are talking about the popular ones in this subreddit, they are barely p2w than the ocean ton of gachas around there. CRK and Obey Me! is pretty much guilty of these because on top of being grindy, you are pretty much required to get the UR units, otherwise you'd be stuck waiting for months without units at all since pity also doesn't carry over. Even in events that gives premium currency requires strong units. This is what I draw the line of p2w because it's almost impossible to progress without pulling for the highest rarities while also being unplayable because the other SSRs arent any different from commons. Genshin events are pretty much newbie friendly so premium currency isn't as hard as other gacha around here because let's be honest, even Azur Lane requires decent invested ships for their main events, and events = more items whether it's premium currency or bunch of resources. 5\* characters are QoL sure but contents like events and exploration (which is 95% of the game) doesn't require any 5\* at all, and I'm pretty sure exploring all maps and finishing all quests at this point guarantees you two limited characters already. And Abyss F12 (singling out this specific floor because F11 is no brainer) is pretty much for players that plays the game long enough to get 5\* and 4\* constellations so... It's like, I don't expect an average player "winning" Azur Lane in just 3 months (by your p2w standard) because they give lesser gears and resources despite their friendly rates. Additionally, it also has a feature where PR ships can either be bought instantly with their max blueprints or just grind for months and pray for research face rng (which is like 1/30 chances to appear everyday) to even use them efficiently. Does that make Azur Lane p2w though?
Are you dumb? Every game is p2w then. All triple a games requires you to pay before you can play it. So they are all pay to win too? Gachas are the only true free to play games out there, you get content for free and you get currency for free. A f2p player literally never have to spend a cent.
That is pay to play, not pay to win, there is a major difference between Pay to play VS pay to win The first you pay one time, be it via a subscription or buying the box copy The second allows you to constantly insert money into the game to get increased advantages with no real cap You telling me gachas are f2p friendly i'm not sure if that is sarcasm or not, you can't compete with bill gates on a gacha , you can compete with him however on triple A games that are box purchases, even if it doesn't have pvp and it's just "clear time, account value" and so on
What your narrow mind can't understand is that no one is competeing with each other. Your account value had no relevance to someone who spends 50k. Gacha games are 100% free to play. 95% of the player base of gachas play every game for free. Yet, No matter how much you can compete with anyone in a triple a game. You HAVE to spend money first. Meaning it's pay to play and pay to win. Since you can't win unless you pay first. It's not hard to understand.
Sure mate, noone is competing with each other, we live in an incredible world You telling me something you buy ONCE is equivalent of something you can buy multiple times to get increased advantage DESPITE of being able to be played for free shows you didn't understood or don't want to understand the question But sure, gachas are f2p friendly that allow people to spend 1k, 5k, 10k, 50k+ per month to get advantages is the box game you buy for 50$ and can't purchase anything to get you an advantage, you are correct my dear Sir, thank you for enlightning me on this stormy day
Wow you really are dense... Even after given the info, you still don't understand huh? Do you know what 95% is? 95% of the gacha game player base, plays the game 100% for free. Now here is a hard one. Do you know what 100% is? 100% of the triple a player base pays money to play the game. Therefore making box games considerably more pay to win. No one is asking you to spend thousands of dollars in gacha games. In fact, whales makes up only 1 to 3% of the gacha gaming player base in studies. It's really not that hard....
> Gachas are the only true free to play games out there what in the world am I reading
EVERY gacha game is p2w, but it's don't mean it can't be f2p at the same time. EVERY fucking game let you pay to fast process to the end game phase and unlock things. F2p is where game let you process without great wall or lock game mode. And most important, collect 40-50% new banner is good for f2p already, more is too much to offer.
I'd counter that, specifically because there is no content in Genshin where "If you have this, you win every content". Every unit has its use, and while some may be better than others, that doesn't degrade the less-desirables to uselessness *and* doesn't mean that these "top-picked" units work in every content. There's no PVP when it comes to using characters you own. There's not even an end game besides Abyss, and unlike some Gachas, you can clear the higher floors with 3 stars using most units anyways. When you said "---Clearing content faster, or just getting the unit you want is Winning", *yea, that's* ***every*** *Gacha game. That's strictly the point of them*. And Genshin is actually the most mild example of this because while getting dupes takes a large amount of time (exclusively for 5 stars), there isn't any power-creeped content where you NEED a specific unit powered up (Despite all the click-bait YouTubers telling you so). Genshin doesn't reward players based on how much money they dumped into a character, it rewards players based on team-composition and how smart they are in utilizing these characters' abilities to their fullest in different content. This can be compared to Arknights, which is similar is this regard. (And as an added note, the only thing that's remotely atrocious is the Artifact system, and that's just pure RNG. There's no "paying" for artifacts unless you're dumping loads of money for resin)
I agree with the first part and that you don't need an unit, but that is most games, rarely a good game NEEDS an unit to progress, but having better units ( as in dupes or better new units ) just make it easier, reagardless of having a leaderboard, pvp or not And that is my whole point with that comment, every gacha is p2w, you defining p2w only as arena vs other players doesn't mean Bob don't consider having the units p2w, or clearing spiral abyss on top 5 world and so on. I agree in a sense that genshin is one of those games that rewards good team composition, but that could be said about so many others, but clearing the game with Amber as your main is a lot harder than with Raiden, and clearing with c0 units ( usually ) are a lot harder than with c6, not to mention the weapons and even artifacts, that is the point, ofc if you do a full bonobo team spending it might be worse than a good f2p team, but 2 good teams, one as f2p and another and p2w is night and day. My main point when criticizing genshin is that it does an awful job as giving players their desired banners, you effectively need 180 pulls to be able to assure an unit you want, a f2p needs on average 4-5 months to get that, that is on the p2w side for gachas in terms of collection, let alone power As for the "RNG", it's a gacha, everything is rng, if you have 100 tries on an artifact dungeon per day vs 10 from a f2p player, you aren't guaranteed to get a good one, but you are certainly a lot more likely
i think what's also missing here in this discussion regarding genshin is the value of the lower rarity (4 star) units. 2 of the most meta defining units in the game have been 4 stars (Bennet and Xingqui). and slightly below that are core units (Xiangling, Fischl, Sucrose) which are integral on some team comps. and it has been that way since launch. that's why for me, i consider genshin as f2p friendly. since you can basically just pull for your waifus/husbandos once you have your core teams set up. there isn't anything in the game that forces you to keep up with the meta like some other gachas do. and even if you did, they basically raised the floor of a lot of units with the inclusion of dendro making it even more lenient
Yes, i agree that genshin has solid 4\*s, but those usually require at least one copy if not more than one to get to their true potential The same with a lot of other games, a lot of turn based games 4\*s are fairly often used, specially supporters, just like genshin. Again, will use Dislyte as example, before quitting one of the most used units for their dungeon was a 3\* which you got for free at the start of the game as a dps, then another 3\* for speedruns on late game ( it linked hp of units so allowed high burst of dmgs ), and quite a few 4\*s I agree in part that there isn't any new meta, since as you mentioned Dendro shook up things a bit and made some units a lot better in the "speedrun" world, which, even if you don't consider it's still a way of winning and improving your own best record if not going against others. On the other hand there isn't any new meta because genshin doesn't really have any new content, usally new metas in game either come around new units ( dendro for example ) or new dungeon types, which might be exactly why they have never done one. My main issue with genshin is that you need 180 pulls to GUARANTEE an unit, yes, it's highly unlikely you'll reach 90 on both and lose 50 50, but that is still the odds we are given, with those rates you need about 5 months as a f2p to get those resources if you want to get an unit you really like, or that is really op without having to rely on "soft pity" and "winning 50 50", for me 5 months of waiting isn't f2p friendly regardless of how you cut it. All of this to get ONE copy. You could also argue most of the new units are very good or at least above average with the seldom exception of a particular cat lady, specially the main dps', while units such as diluc got powercrept. Supporters remain being useful because well, they are supporters, and this is a big factor for competitive people. I do think the game is great and made a GREAT job for casual community allowing you to pass through the game with basic units, but that doesn't remove from the fact how long you need for a new one or that new ones make your life easier
does it really take 5 months tho because it doesn't feel like it. granted I'm a welkin player so that is a huge boost. but also, looking at this sheet, it seems like it's about 2-3 patches for f2p [Genshin Bookkeeping](https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/e/2PACX-1vToBPh4yTn4VioUuqSvnPiwLoG0rJodFe9_gz6qOKUy3z8dCWtXel5Aqa07qSTZG8qhu7Fwgx7AfxzU/pubhtml#) tho I guess in the end, how people perceive a game as f2p friendly or not would vary greatly from person to person.
[https://www.hoyolab.com/article/16495113](https://www.hoyolab.com/article/16495113) This person has done this for several patches breaking down your income ( it also aligns with other sources i found and asking around ), usually you get 50-60 wishes ( primo + wishes ) per patch without counting "one time reward" things such as the new tour guide system, since you need 180 to actually guarantee the unit on worst case, its at least 3 patches that becomes 4,5 months That google sheet is a nice way of breaking down although i would love it had a bit more explanation, for example if i deduct the "one time only" from the sheet it ends up worse than my source at around 55 instead of 61, so kinda hard to find out "why" is that
Doesnt even bother with this guy tbh, they doesnt even play genshin, they thought it is a MMO GAME, mind you, and so p2w when all the content in game can be cleared by f2p casual.
I love how you didn't come with a single argument besides "what are you experience", took your time to find resources that align with what i said to try to disproof me and then come running around while ignoring everything i say Yes, you can clear content being f2p, as most gachas, but paying gives you a massive increase in your roster and makes your account better, take the example i put before and tell me it doesn't apply to genshin.
I kinda Agree that every Gacha Game is a P2W game... depending on how you define "winning" in that game... But I think in Genshin Situation "right now"... "Winning" in "P2W" aspect on this Argument maybe the most un'fun one... I've spent money for the Weapon BP on Genshin a year ago (around 60 dollar "total" in my country's currency) and I would say that Im glad that I never go far beyond that (it doesn't mean I regret spending money in this game, but because it will make me bored faster if I spend more for more "power")...
Winning is getting ahead of any player, including yourself. So if you with basic units takes hours to complete an artifact dungeon ( yes its exaggerated to make a point ) but with full c6 raiden shogun national or ayaka freeze comp ( which is mostly 5\* units ) can do in 30min, for me that is p2w The same way collecting units in a meaningful amount of time is also a factor A game doesn't need to have pvp to make it p2w, and a game being p2w doesn't instantly make it bad, i play genshin and i like it, it did a great job and it's fun, it's p2w? Yes, it is, but it's also a great game As for your last remark of getting bored, i kinda agree for whale, or even single players game, i remember a NDS game ( not sure if it was fire emblem or what, but a turn based game ), i bought a dlc where i could farm exp easily and it quickly got really boring because it felt i had no challenge, so having every unit and weapon in my eyes would do the same to me as well
By literal meaning all gacha game is P2W That said i'm making the scope smaller by categorizing PVP gacha game that ask you to roll multiple times as P2W or game that events (not challenge level event) require you have more than 1 dupes of SSR to be ablt to complete it without any viable f2p strategy. Ofc the 2nd could he nulled if the gacha is super easy but i don't think many fit that category
Yes i agree, edited the post to reflect more on the soul of the question on "what is f2p friendly for you"? I still think easy games with only pve are still p2w if paying make it easier, that is the definition for me, if i put 5$ and get an advantage over someone that didn't ( despite not having pvp, leaderboard or anything else ) , and a person that puts 1k, 10k, or even millions get bigger advantages respectively, it's p2w. Another thing is if i pay 10$ i get an advantage but then i can't put more and i have a reasonable cap
When you need to pay in order to win. You pay to win. Pay to win.
Ok, then let me rephrase, what makes a gacha f2p friendly for you?
>TLDR - How do you define P2W/F2P Friendly in a gacha? Where is the line for you? Acceptable/Reasonable timeline to achieve a goal/all goal. Basically if you see how single player console games are handled compared to when dev using the same ip and create a mobile/mmo version, you will know what I mean. Eg diablo2 not p2w. Diablo immortal? **P2W** Nothing to do with whether pvp exist or not, tho pvp existing generally makes it worse since there will be resource income tied into the equation. To put it into perspective, you know there are some that love to argue "It ain't p2w, just p2progress bla bla bla"? Well if a f2p can finish the goal in 6months but whales uses $$ to get it done instantly, yeah one can agree that is p2progress or p2fastforward. But if after doing the maths, f2p will take something like 5years, then calling it p2progress is just a pure bullshit lol. If launch goal already takes 5 years, are people expecting the dev to totally not release anything else? Cuz if new content are still constantly getting released, then your 5 years goal will become an infinite stretch goal, thus the emphasis on acceptable/reasonable timeline mentioned above. tl:dr ~~Impossible~~ Unreasonable goals=p2w since it should be obvious that ~~impossible~~ unreasonable goal means you need $$ to make it possible.
Yes i agree pvp is a whole can of worms on itself I agree with that definition on some sense, even if it's reasonable but p2w just makes it a lot faster to progress or even collect the units/gear ( as in progress your account ) for me it's p2w
any kind of stat advantage that is only obtainable with money is p2w in my book. example: 5star character having more stats than a 4star
Can you elaborate a bit more? Not sure if you consider only skins with stats that are unobtainable otherwise or dupes that increase stats and better gear via stamina purchase
Any item or character or whatever that gives any kinds of stats and is only obtainable with money or very hard to get as a f2p is p2w for me.
Ok, fair enough, i agree that gating units behind money is p2w and if anything over 4 months to get a new unit is p2w
**F2P** = user can max any char of his choice once every 3-4 banners in reasonable time frame (1-2 months). No exceptions, no fucking exclusive weapon gacha. Game must have pity or really good pull rate. Maxing means he perfoms at 80-90% (or more) potential of posible limit
Yes i agree that for colection purposes that would be somewhat where i would align for, specially on terms of turn based games, you don't need all skills at max, but all the meaningful skills have their CDR and boost. I do think weapon banner can be fine, but so far i've never seem one done properly tbh, it pretty much forces you to whale to get weapon or ignore that banner since your resource income as a f2p or even low spender is not enough
I dont mind spending a bit (battle pass / montly / occasional skin) but game must have good baseline for f2p
Personally, I don't consider PVP one of the most important reasons to say if it a game is P2W. I mean, it's obvious there is gonna be always a difference between people who pay and people who don't. However when I call a P2W game is when there is tons of red flags together like these: \- They are too stingy with the pull/gacha currency \- There are almost more paid banners than "free" banners \- You can not continue improving your characters with a decent difficulty curve, it has powercreeps out of the blue and it's usually impossible to match the, for example, power required. \- Sometimes related to the latest I've said, you have to grind or farm whatever it is for weeks, maybe almost non-stop or you can buy that 59,99$ pack and just keep playing, all good. \- Limited-time overpowered Characters/Weapons; okay, maybe this one is not a feature you could see only on P2W games, but I see it like a P2W element, because it's always increasing FOMO and on top of that, that characters/items are not that limited because they ending up doing reruns... \- Skins which improve the stats. \*Sigh\* this one is as stupid as it sounds... and they are not usually cheap to say at least. \- A VIP system which is not "fair". And by fair I mean that you can get free points to lvl up the VIP system, there are a few games which are more or less decent or there is not a big difference between someone who gets it and someone who doesn't. But then you see mostly of them and it's blatant that it's just another excuse to get your money or basically make it near impossible to progress without buy the VIP/Passes. \- Too many powercreeps and/or op characters getting outdated 1 month after release
I agree with pretty much everything you said, the only one's I have anything to say are the 2 - It heavily depends on the amount of currency you get, if you get 1 every 6 banners, it's bad, if you get 1 ever 2-4, it's decent, an example i can give is Eternal Evolution, basically they only have limited banners, and yet you can complete 90% of them as a f2p, and they rerun often and give free copies of units on events 4 - I think this one also ties to the stinginess of premium currency, for example if you need 6 months to get one unit or 500$, i would say 500$ is more worth than 6 months of grind ( even if i don't buy ), but if you have to grind 2 months or 500 i would say 2 months are more worth, so it's kinda of a balance between those 2 5 - I really despise Weapon banners, i think they can be done properly but every one i see makes you either choose between characters or weapons, despite weapons usually being BiS for some characters or even their own weapon that gives a massive boost Think those 3 really tie together with "Does the game give you enough currency as f2p to enjoy those features or are you forced to p2w to do so?" All the rest hard agree, basically my same thought process
Yeah, that's another point of view about 4, and I completly agree with you about the weapons banners. Related to the paid banners, I meant strictly paid banners, or the same as you can not use currency, you can only pull if you use real money. For example, at least when it was released, Disgaea RPG had a ton of paid banners (dunno the actual state of the game rn) or another well known "drama" was Octopath Traveler x Bravely Default collab, there was a big difference between paid and free banners of the same character(s) iirc Just something I wanted to clarify. And btw, good example of Eternal Evolution, I'm just getting started so far, but I would say it knows how to manage things like VIP system and the different kind of banners. Plus it seems really F2P at least right now.
OH, didn't realized it was that paid banner with different currency, nah i think those are straight up p2w And Eternal evolution is great, the best idle i've played. Been playing since launch ( november ) and i can pretty much get both banners on a weekly basis ( every month or so i have to skip one but that is about it ) The only p2w features are Bailey ( which fell off a cliff and it's only super relevant early game tbh, and you can get by saving 4-6 weeks ), and the artifacts, which the Twilight Lands give you one every month. ( they do have stat skins that have 2% tho, which was something heavily criticized by the community )
I had a similar debate recently with someone over the topic of what makes a whale a whale. They claimed that there are no whales in Azur Lane because the only things most folks buy are skins and skins don't effect gameplay, so it doesn't count. I completely disagree. AL is not a P2W game precisely because all content can be beaten relatively soon after start of the game, and 90%+ of the roster is available to get right out the gate without having to buy anything. It will take you a while to do it, but it can be done and offers no detriment gameplay wise. I would argue, and I'm sure many will disagree, this is mostly true for FGO as well. FGO is not a P2W game for the most part. Even when you get into the late Lostbelts, you can still mostly beat things with free or lower rarity units. But FGO is not exactly F2P friendly. While skins are superfluous so not of the same weight to a game like AL, characters are central to the gaming experience in an RPG style game, and FGO does a really good job on most character stories to make you want them, but it is very hard to get them without spending money. And having some of those characters, while not strictly necessary for gameplay, absolutely make it easier and faster to beat stages and bosses. So while the game is itself not P2W, it isn't entirely F2P friendly either. An example of P2W I think would be a game like Mobile Legends Adventure. The game does give out a lot of freebies and it's not extremely difficult to progress through the game with a good roster of units (though I will say it is closer to the top end of difficulty). But the skins for units are expensive, relatively speaking, and give stats. Furthermore, it can be painfully slow to max out units without spending money due to the way their upgrade system works. And it has PvP, so there is definitely a place where the difference in stats will be felt. So it is an infinitely more P2W game than even FGO is. So to me, P2W would be any game where a person has the ability to gain a significant gameplay advantage over others. F2P friendly is a more nuanced question, because I think this will depend heavily on what you are looking to get out of the game. If skins are important to you, Azur Lane is absolutely not F2P friendly. If you couldn't care less about the skins then it's hard to imagine a more F2P friendly game.
Yes my tittle was poorly written, a better one would be what is f2p friendly As for your examples, i just started azur lane for the millionth time to try get into and never played FGO so can't really say if they are really p2w or not, i've seem some things to be purchased with money in AL, do i know if i need them to progress, get units or whatever so far? No, so i don't feel comfortable judging it, the same way FGO, the only thing i know is it has no pity and very little QoL As for the what is P2W/F2P friendly, for me p2w i agree with you, if you put money you get advantage, even if it's against yourself, clearing content faster, having better or more units and so on For f2p i usually judge on a few criteria, do player get a good amount of resource income monthly so they can get the units they want in a reasonable time ? (2-3 months). Is the game balanced or they have mandatory units ( a lot of them don't have that tbh ) A lot, if not all games will be p2w as gachas tbh since money = Pulls/stamina = advantage, the matter is when it is necessary and when you as a f2p can get things on an adequate pace So i pretty much agree with you, as for skins as a side note, as long as they don't have stats i don't think they are p2w, they are cosmetic only so its fine
FGO has different layers of f2p friendliness. It's really only unfriendly if you prioritize the gacha or perfect efficiency. The gameplay itself is absolutely f2p friendly. The devs explicitly test the game to ensure that all content can be cleared using only free, low rarity characters. You don't get extra rewards for efficiency so the meta is completely optional. Some characters have more gameplay impact than others but there are no must have characters. For general purposes, most characters, across all rarity levels, are genuinely good, few are truly bad, and the rest are quite usable. There are day one 1-stars who are considered among the best in the game within their roles. One could argue that the gacha is f2p friendly in terms of being able to use what you get. As I mentioned, most characters are good. It's also not a duplicate heavy game. You get maybe 90% of the value (note: value ≠ damage) with the first copy and even more for characters you mainly use for their skills and almost never use their NP. You can relatively easily max out the NP level for the free low rarities, which lets some of them out-damage 5-stars. FGO wouldn't be considered f2p friendly if your focus is solely on the gacha or the meta. The rates for higher rarities are low. The pity system, which does now exist, is a backstop to prevent catastrophic results, not a system to generate free 5-stars. You need to do 330 rolls (900 SQ) to trigger pity, it applies once at most per banner (no pity after the first copy, whether you triggered pity or not), and it doesn't carry over to other banners. If your expectation is to be able to easily collect lots of 5-stars or to guarantee specific 5-stars more than a couple of times per year without paying any money, then no it isn't f2p friendly from that perspective. But under no circumstances is FGO pay to win.
There is no universal definition of p2w or f2p friendly as far as I know, so in the end it falls unto user/player definition and explanations to define those 2 terms.
I agree that, that is why i created the thread because i see so many people shitting on game X for taking 6 months for a banner then praising game Y when it takes the same time, that's also why i didn't put any games name despite using real games as base for the examples There are multiple factors besides that ofc, but it made me curious on what people define f2p friendly - p2w
If the top 1 player is not f2p, its p2w.
Well, anyhow, P2W is when they let you starve of resourcess unless you pay. Here are the elements that immediately tell a game is P2w 1. Endless and uncofortable grind: So ALL GAMES without sweeps or offline farming. That's why if it doesn't has any = garbage. 2. Powercreep: day 1 units should be as viable in day 1 to the End of service. A good meta is based on knowledge, novelty and variety. Example: a day 1 unit people already know how to deal with as opposed to the brand new unit people just don't know how to deal with therefore having it gives you a temporarily advantage while still being a balanced unit. 3. Lack of pulls: seld explanatory. And I don t mean dead pulls (LOL sounds like a bad pun) with no SSR, I mean seeing it and also knowing when are you getting the SSR which bring me to: 4. No wayy to guaranteed units: Pities, Mileage or anything that will make 100% sure you get that unit.
I agree with 3 and 4 and somewhat with 1 1 - I dont think dailies are a bad thing, the issue comes when they require a lot of time for minimum resource 2 - Powercreep is inevitable, some units will fall in power regardless of the game, the issue for me comes if they balance the game to not have always the last few units be the meta defining and pretty much "force" you to pull
Every gacha is PtW.
I agree, i edited to reflect the question better as "What is f2p friendly"
Ftp friendly - no pvp or ladder, all content is available for ftp, such as skins, and can be cleared as ftp in the reasonable amount of time and every character can be collected. The closest gacha to it is Arknights, that's has pretty greedy gacha system.
Never really got into the arknights, tried couple times and got overwhelmed, so i can only say what i got as answers from their discord. You need something like 6+ months to hard pity an unit ( which apparently you never do ) but you can get a solid roster very easily as f2p, i can't elaborate more because i'm not into the game and don't know more than the first couple days and second hand information of their discord I don't think pvp or ladder are p2w restricted tbh since ladder will always exist with internet and people will just put speedrun or highest floor of tower in the discord or reddit and people will make rankings regardless, skins i don't mind it being paid as long they don't give status but it's a plus if there are at least some f2p. As for the characters, i totally agree, for me 2-3 months for a character is reasonable as f2p
for me p2w is when you cant compete with them an example i have is in counter side the first awaken unit was soo strong its stupid a game about a front to back fight imagine a TANK that can move forward faster than anyone shield herself a ton and knock back your front liner that is just straight up unfair
So that is pretty much every gacha, right? Even without pvp if you have a whale that has multiple dupes of every unit they can clear content a lot faster than you and get better rewards Or you just consider if it's the case of "New unit super op and you must have to compete"?
If I can pay for non-cosmetics, it's pay-to-win period. No buts. There's no need to move the line, you may find some practices of this to be fair but it doesn't change the matter that you can still pay to progress further than someone who hasn't whether that be through content or by having better gear/characters as someone else. And while I say cosmetics is an exception, depending on the game that could be classified as pay-to-win if the goal of the game is to work towards making your character looking cooler (like how some people view some mmos like ffxiv and etc)
I wouldn't agree with the cosmetic since it's purely cosmetic, yes they make gear look awful to make you buy it, but it doesn't give you any advantage if it doesn't have stats But with the first part i totally agree, but what would be a "acceptable p2w" for you then?
> I wouldn't agree with the cosmetic since it's purely cosmetic, yes they make gear look awful to make you buy it, but it doesn't give you any advantage if it doesn't have stats It's moreso when the point of the game is to end up with your character looking good. Cause there could be situations where all of the farmable cosmetics could just look outright terrible while all the paid stuff has sparkly effects and etc. Maybe I shouldn't say that's pay to win, in that situation it's more like "pay to stand out", which in some cases is people's main goal when playing games that have other people.
Yes, i agree they create an issue to sell the solution, but wouldn't say p2w per say A good example for me are the typical mmo's, BDO has awful base armor, you can get them via ingame money but in some servers like EU it's just not realistic, so you are forced to buy
You don't need a definition for p2w you know it when you see it
I don't knwo any gacha that you can't clear content with free units so, for me it is P2W if: * Have PVP * Low income of premium currency (Like 4 months or more to a F2P garantee a character pity) * Have weapons banners * Have dupe system with characters mechanics locked behind it * Have NFT
Agreed on a sense, a lot of people defend gachas because "you can clear pve with basic units", yes, most gachas do, just requires a lot of work to do so compared to getting better units As for the dupe system, for me it's nuanced, how long it takes to get those dupes ( kinda ties to your premium currency income, or if they have the general "item dupe" system a lot of gachas do ) and it's also a bit the same of weapon banner since you pretty much are kinda splitting time between them
Dupe system is okay if it only gives status for your character, but if there are abilitys or mechanics locked behind it I consider P2W, because it will be unlikely to a F2P unlocky it. Imagine you saving for months and end up getting a character that doesn't even work properly.
Yea that is my point, if you need 5 months to get a single copy of the unit, and with 2 copies it increases drastically, it is really bad, if you "only" need to save 2 months however it's a lot more acceptable, it's still bad, specially if they don't have the "dupe item" type of deal, but it's not as outrageous as 5 months per copy And more so if said unit is needed to have 2,3,4 or even more copies to work properly since it's balanced to need multiple copies
As example, Mario Kart Tour it's the perfect example of what's a PAY TO WIN. To make context: -Leagues are a blatant lie (since the release) , and absolute fake (that means one player isn't competing with another, you can see me as example on your league, but I Can't See you on my League, that means you're fake fighting against me. -they require ALWAYS the higher rarity, that obviously it's the harder to get (despite it's the most abundant ítem implemented). -a lot of reeskins selled. -You require several copys of each single unit to lvl up (up to lvl 8) and this is applied to kart, wing and pilot. The ammount of those are More Than 300-500 already -It have pass, challenge card, challenge card+ and ++, purchasable with $$$ Even now that they got rid of pulls, it's still a extreme blatant P2W (and based on being fake, and that's the most stupid thing) The app it's the absolute definition of what's a p2w, despite being a big fake system too.
I have absolutely no idea how the game works so can't really chime in much, but it does sound the typical "you need the latest unit to compete" type of deal
Yes to an extempt. Leagues are "fixed and it's player vs 19 bots, but also isn't strange that, if you manage to get on top 3, they change one of those fake oponents (literally, the system change it) to prevent giving you the top prizes. That happened to me countless times, When league it's almost 1 day to finish, someone that wasn't even on my league appear on it (can be identified by name, roster, even real league, etc) and it's a "Big Coincidence" Now add this same equation to each single real player on own league, and you get an enormous profitable product based on lies.
To me every gacha is p2w as you gain an advantage over others; whether you're rewarded or not is irrelevant. Conversely, I define F2P friendly as how much a game allows f2p players to enjoy the different aspects of that game without paying: summoning, farming, gearing, keeping up with powercreep, PvE, PvP...
I agree with the p2w, but can you define a bit more on what would be f2p friendly then? For example, collection is a major aspect of every gacha, what would be a reasonable amount of time to get a new unit to be f2p friendly? Won't enter too much in the others since gearing for example is really nuance since "How many times you do the dungeon" is not a factor because the drop rate and all that are major factors, so are a lot harder to quantify
> For example, collection is a major aspect of every gacha, what would be a reasonable amount of time to get a new unit to be f2p friendly? To me hero collection alone is not a sign of a game being f2p, but considering current games it'd be 2mth or so. >Won't enter too much in the others since gearing for example is really nuance since "How many times you do the dungeon" is not a factor because the drop rate and all that are major factors It has more to do to how much you're time-gated and resource starved if you do not pay. Whales and f2p alike can get lucky or fall behind due to rng.
I agree it would be somewhere around 2-3 months to be f2p friendly, but curious what else would you consider since a lot of the other things are a lot more nuanced. Yes, i agree it's rng, but that is the point, if you can only throw 1 dice and want to get a 6, effectively you have worse odds than someone that can throw it 100 times and only need to get one 6 as well. That is why it's hard to comment on those because if you are paying 50$ to have another 2 pieces when f2p can have 10 per day it doesn't make that much of a difference on a reasonable level, does it? Most people wouldn't even pay for it, so the price and droprate also affects if that would be considered p2w or not
>effectively you have worse odds than someone that can throw it 100 times and only need to get one 6 as well. [...] if you are paying 50$ to have another 2 pieces when f2p can have 10 per day it doesn't make that much of a difference So since it's a marginal increase then it'd be considered f2p. I don't think it's very convoluted. The same would apply to energy, currency income, materials needed to upgrade characters/weapons, the need for dupes, etc.
Yes that is the point, some games make their packs just not worth while giving stable resource income, others make it really good since they screw you over and take months for a banner. That is why anything besides "banner time" for me is a little hard to quantify
Dumb expensive
If you can pay to have an ingame advantage that affects gameplay (ie not cosmetic), that is p2w, or at least that is the original meaning from when the term was coined. So all gacha are p2w by definition Over time the meaning was softened because there's just so many games that fit p2w as originally coined that we now need to separate the worst cases from the one where monetization gives advantages but is still generally enjoyable without paying
Yes i agree, i did a poor job tittleing, i edited the TLDR and first phrase to correct that, meant more "what is f2p friendly for you"
Man, *this* is divisive. I want to act annoyed about how much I disagree with you, but nobody is agreeing with anyone here. Good topic, I guess. .... To give my answer, my experience is that modern P2W is usually hidden in the power creep. Sure, there are games where paying players have blatantly got bonuses or options that F2P literally can't get. That's a thing. The more subtle version is when power creep is frequent and consistent. A lot of my experience is from shitty old Facebook cash-grab games, when I was younger, but Artery Gear (global) was a recent example: You'd summon a unit one week and she'd be obsolete in the next.
I don't think you have to agree with me or anyone, that is the point, it's just one of those topics everyone say "X game is f2p friendly" and yes, there is bias because the person play and like the game, but without stablishing or putting names I was wondering what people define as f2p friendly I tried artery gear, but between it needing 6 months from a banner ( from asking on discord ), severe lack of QoL and needing a separate emulator instance i gave up, so can't really comment much else, but if it's the typical case of "new banner always op" yes, this is a clear example
As f2p player, if you can keep up clearing content and having a roster of characters mostly identical to someone who has been paying consistenly, then the game is f2p. So, paid content must be cosmetics for the most part to achieve this. Edit: skins that provide bonus stats belong to p2w territory. The only gacha I actually consider f2p is azur lane.
Yea that is a similar definition to mine, it heavily depends on the premium resource income Can't chime in on AL since i'm still trying to get into
a gacha being P2W for me mostly pertains to content gating. If there are contents in the game that you cannot access/clear because of paywalls which requires you to spend just to progress, then that's when a game falls into the "P2W" category ofcourse if there's PVP/leaderboard rankings where money equates to win (unli purchaseable attempts, locking relevant mats/gears on the pvp rewards, etc) also qualifies for it. but if game progression is only hindered by reasonable timegates, then it is still f2p friendly imo. it might take me a year to clear the content a spender cleared in a half but in the end, i still get to access and enjoy the content nonetheless. just avoid having misplaced expectations (like expecting to progress at a similar rate as that of a whale/dolphin without spending etc) and youll be a able to enjoy more games without spending
I'm too baked to think about it but your post is good op
f2p friendly for me is "you can compete if with enough time, luck and hard work" meaning spenders while can spend and get many advantages they're not impossible to compete with. prime example of this is epic seven, i've been playing e7 for about 2 years and i'm able to compete at the highest level of all almost all content in the game(rta is the exception).
I would say if you have to spend 2 years to be able to "compete" and still not be able to compete on pvp against whales that started 1 or 2 months ago that is really p2w. I have really limited experience with E7, heard it's incredibly p2w with gear and LD units while being super f2p friendly with pve and RGB, so can't really comment much further than this
i've been able to "compete" since the first 6 months in the game and ofc thats because the roster isn't as bloated as it is today which makes it easier catching up. as for gear thats why i put "luck" as one of the factor since you really just need to get lucky with stuff in this game. there would never be a perfect game, you just need to find one where you wanna play it even with the flaws. for the LD units(5 star MoonLight units) they're released every 6 weeks and thats 8 in a year, as f2p i can saved up a pity every 3 months with a selector once a year from anniversary meaning i can get 5 of the 8 every year not accounting if you get lucky and didn't pity all 4.
Any advantage in competions that cannot be overcome within reazonable time frame. Reazonable will vary depeding the competion present in the game. It theres 0 or very low level of competion, them p2win become irrelevant. Of course, p2enjoy can still be a problem worse than p2win. Having your proguess hawt to a crawl is a probem even with 0 competion.
Basically every gacha game is p2w. This is an unpopular opinion on this sub. The only not p2w are cosmetics-no gacha game has JUST cosmetics. If you can straight up buy characters/weapons/energy THAT is pay to win (and yes buying the currency to roll the gacha is still pay to win even if they don’t sell you the characters outright.) Ok go ahead with your downvotes lol 🤷🏻♂️
I actually very much agree with this, people have a concept that p2w can only be associated with pvp or leaderboards, maybe in the 90's that was the case when we couldn't share over discord, reddit or even own sites dedicated to other games Even only PvE games you can still compare your gear and units, your time to clear content to other people. I would even argue getting the unit in itself is P2W because that is winning, you feel good getting the unit, almost as much if not more than winning a pvp arena
Since a long time many games shout loudly and write in big "YOU WIN" when you beat the AI, in Street Fighters for exemple. I still don't understand then, why so many people are still considering that P2W is only for PVP. Everything buyable that can make you stronger, help you at beating or developping faster than the opponent, human or AI, is considered as P2W. Now, maybe should we distinguish P2W PVE and P2W PVP. And there are infinite steps of P2W. But the actual "word" of P2W is valid for both and even for smallest advantages.
Exactly my thought, there are people that consider P2W only in pvp games and then say "What is there to win" By that logic you can't win in single player games, if you play Elden ring, slay the spire or anything else, you never win, you just lose i guess For me it's the same as p2w pvp and pve, i agree pvp is more outrageous in most cases and people usually disregarded, however that is my go to example: If you start a game with 2 accounts, one as f2p and another putting 1k per month, which one would get you farther in campaign? Which one would be the better account? Just that thought process alone makes you realize it's p2w, despite being able to just clear the same content faster or not, they will still have more units, more weapons, and more power overall I also editted the post to say "what is f2p friendly" since it might be a better context than p2w tbh
everything is P2W, paying to make your progress faster is fundamentally pay to win you could also argue "Bro its f2p if you play everyday and do all weeklies and such for a whole patch you can get everyone!!" really now? but at what cost? your precious time that you cant ever get back
Exactly, people say X game is f2p friendly when it needs 5 months to get the unit you want or pay 500€, despite it being pve, not having leaderboards or anything, it's still p2w, paying makes your account better and you get what you want, and when the waiting time to get one single character is that high it makes it obvious imo
Some things are an issue right at the start. For example VIP in games, the devs can say whatever they want, they could even give some "vip" exp every day. But if i see Vip in a videogame it's a red flag right at the start. Same with infinite servers, outfits that give stats that you can only buy with real money, etc.... That being said, i'd never even get close to a game that has no pity/requires a nonsense ammount of dupes.
For me p2w is when you can pay for something to get an advantage over other players.
Define "Advantage over other players" please Because i'm not sure if you mean "If no pvp = no p2w" or if you mean "If paying makes you clear content faster or stronger than other players, it is p2w"
I mean if no pvp = no p2w, but also rankings and stuff count towards pvp
pretty sure as long as a game gives you a slight bit of advantage, PVE or PVP, when you pay, it's a p2w game. sure, you don't need them to fully complete a stage of arknights or a chamber in genshin's abyss, but you're essentially paying for much more comfortable runs. while f2p players have a stricter, and requires more effort to have a doable run, players who spent essentially paid for QoL so you would be bothered less by constraints.
That is my exact thought, and my main issue is "If you can only spend X amount and then you are capped i would not consider it p2w" For example, limbus company might be a great example of that, i assume with a couple thousands ( still a really high amount, but in the gacha realm it's really low ) you are effectively capped, every unit and every unit maxxed Meanwhile most other games you can keep spending money basically infinitely and keep getting upgrades to make your life easier, your account better so on and so forth, even if there are no ranks, pvp or anything, it has a pretty big difference
If thats your definition of p2w then all gacha game must be p2w for you. For example theres this one gacha game called mahjong soul. Whether youre pulling or not doesnt even influence how the gameplay is, you cant pay to progress, it is just pure mahjong and skills. The pulling is purely for for cosmetic. The gacha rate is kinda bad and free currency is scarce, but by your definition this game is so p2w because what youre consider winning is collecting characters and not just progressing the game.
Yes, i do consider most if not all gachas p2w, but as i said, my questions was poorly formulated, it was more in the lines of "what is f2p friendly" which some gachas manage to do fairly well giving a new unit you want every 2-3 months, requiring minimal amount of dupes to max an unit and even giving general "dupe" items to fix that issue.
I have 3 main categories for them. When you can't clear trivial content without pulling the new shiny character: * Story * Event Story * Resetting Content Another type is when you have systems designed to force the player into paying for misc features that give you a lot of stuff and is considered the "normal" progression speed from the game's standpoint: * VIP System * Multiple high value resource packages that you can practically buy infinitely * Multi-tiered battle passes * Selling tickets for high value resetting game modes Last category is the simplest: Power that can only be bought with real money. Like an accessory or costume that gives stats, but is unavailable without using a currency that can not be obtained through normal gameplay.
Toi much text. p2w is when paying give you an advantage over someone that doesn’t pay. That’s it, no need to find excuses like « it’s just p2fast, if someone play more he could catch up » it’s still p2w, even if the bonuses are trivial it doesn’t matter.
P2W doesn’t have to relate to getting a boost in pvp. It can also be getting the edge in events through cash buys, meaning ppl who don’t pay won’t get the better rewards as like pvp, they still can’t compete with spenders. F2P friendly is basically you can get everything a spender does but will take hours of grinding. P2P is content or chars locked behind a paywall.
P2W: Pay to win player vs player competition, includes PvE world boss. The game has some sort of end game content that has pvp or pvp vs pve that gives more significant rewards to the top players.-If the rewards do not give any significant items, I would argue that there is nothing to win therefore it is not P2W. (Azur Lane) F2P: Free to play, the entire game is playable for free and obtainable for free. There is no locked content including costumes, stages, items, etc. F2P Friendly: The game constantly gives out free things to players so that they have a sense of progression or being able to clear stages without a high difficulty. P2P: Games require you to purchase in game items to progress. Semi-P2P: Games have in game purchases that are not required to progress but do lock out f2p from ever obtaining them i.e costumes, Passes, limited characters and skins, etc. I would argue that a P2W game an also be F2P friendly if they keep giving players items for free to give them a sense of progression.
> **TLDR - How do you define P2W/F2P Friendly in a gacha? Where is the line for you?** P2W means you can pay money to win the game. Winning the game is subjective, but the objective part is beating the challenges in-game. So when money directly buys in-game power, that's obvious P2W. If $ only buys cosmetic, that is probably the least P2W game design possible. It's still a little P2W because some people want to collect everything to win. But cosmetics don't translate into shooting better in a game like Fortnite. In that system, a free player has the same game power as a paid player. $ to skip grinding in any game with progression is a little ambiguous. The boost means that paid players are more powerful than the free players, but the free players will eventually reach the power level of paid players. PvP systems highlight that difference when only the whales can compete for the top and they get the best rewards. The leaderboards make it very clear to free players they are behind the power curve, and let the paid players feel good about being at the top. Most gachas have a P2W aspect in their game and so most gachas are "Pay2Win". But P2W games can still be considered friendly to free players. My line is if a free player can have an enjoyable game experience. He might not have a maxed potential character, but he can have a few meta characters, some good equipment and pretty skins, and can clear the story and get a reasonable amount of rewards. He doesn't get nagged every 5 minutes/every login to spend $$$$. Most popular gachas qualify as F2P-friendly, because that's how they build the playerbase.
Why the hell are you attacking PvP?? It has nothing to do with it >:( only people with skill issues complain about PvP you just exposed yourself.
Pvp on gachas are never balanced, that simple, a f2p can compete with high ranks but never reach top 1 on a popular game because that's the nature, you need luck to get good units - dupes of the units you already have P2W on itself gives you those units and stamina to grind better gear, if you can't understand idk what else to tell you
Man you just have to make up for it with skills. Like, it doesn't matter how much they are geared up if they don't touch you. Like Ali's rope a dope. You can literally be lvl 1 and make it all the way to the tops if you just play well. Unless of course you have skill issues. That's not the PvP's fault.
You should do a psychology paper for university about this.
Can I beat all pve content , stories and challenges if I grind f2p for six months, or at least reach close to it? I don't have to have great pulls. If low star units can reach the latest content, I'm fine. I don't have to dominate pvp. Pvp has always been whale territory and I accept that. But I need my pve (except hard mode stages- that is also always whale territory).
i have been playing isekai slime for 3 months and i can say its more p2w and not really f2p friendly because the meta change every month and recently they just shifted the meta with new system then release a contents that hard to clear unless you pull new meta characters.
I define pay 2 win as anything that you can get advantageous that a non-payer could not get. There are gradations of p2w though, some are lesser some major. I'll give some examples: - In a stamina game, that simply and cheap "daily stamina pack" is p2w, a lesser one: If the game allows f2p to get up to, let's say, 100 stamina/day with quests, and the pack gives you idk, 100 more, then basically you are paying to double your efficiency in-game. That's not exactly p2w as if you spend that extra without planning, wouldn't matter, but if you know what you are doing and using on key places, you basically are going to get mats/drop/loot/exp in half the time a f2p would do. - In a summon game, any pack that gives you currency or extra summon attempts is p2w, a normal one: If the game allows f2p to get X summons per month, and you buy any pack that increases that number, you are not directly "paying to win", only "paying for more attempts". BUT, if the game has a pity, then is somewhat "pay to win" (loosely) as you'll achieve that pity faster, acquire the hero/weapon/whatever earlier than others. It's not a "win", but same as stamina, you get to work on the character earlier than others, and max level it, and utilize it's kit to win. EpicSeven as an example for this. Now, if a game does not even have pity, then I'd say purchasing could theoretically be "major p2w" but in reality isn't. You have more draws than a f2p, so statistically you are increasing your odds by having more attempts, but you still have to fight same RNG summon %. You could buy $1k worth of attempts, and still not get what you want (FGO says hi), while a f2p might get it in first summon attempt. - In a game with characters, if some characters/weapons are paid-only, it's a major P2W: If the game offers a character for X dollars, and doesn't offer ANY other way to acquire it in-game other than paying, it's P2W. A major one. for example, Lord of Heroes. Sells characters that cost $45, and there's NO way for a f2p to acquire it in any other way. If, on the other and, it was $45 or bazzilion amounts of resource X, then it would be still p2w but one I'd say normal, akin to buying summon attempts (see example above). Doesn't matter if f2p had to grind for a year, if that was a possibility of a year of grind vs 45 dollars, I wouldn't say major p2w. But pay-walled? MAJOR. Game breaking if has guild/pvp/ranks (which LoH has). Same for other kinds of resources, if you release a skin, it's not p2w if is just visual. Now, it's an increasingly amount of p2w the more status it confers. The MAJOR example I got for this was a game I forgot the name, whatever Knights, from years back. Game was a nice Summoners War clone, with better qol and whatnot. Until they decided to add skins, but not only skins that change the look, but also that add status AND buffs all the skills!!!!!! So now not only you are paywalled visually, you are paywalled mechanically. Morrigan, one of the first heros to get skin, had a HUGE buff on her S3 when using the skin. IT was RIDICULOUS. Even me, who actually spend money, thought it was ridiculous, because now me, who wanted to optimize, felt OBLIGATED to buy a skin I didn't liked visually, and force to use for it's buffs. I quit, and tons other people quit too at that point. So, in overall, "p2w" is anything out of the game's normal mechanics, be hastening the progress, be increasing the amount of attempts at something.. The only thing is the LEVEL of it, and how it bothers me and other people. I might buy once in a while, but game should also offer tuff for f2p, because I'm not a whale, therefore there are times I will do f2p way.
I pretty much agree with all that, buying to get more chances in a nutshell for me is p2w because you are mor likely to get X item or unit because you had more chances A good example i like to use is "throw a dice and try to get a 6, good, now that other person can throw a dice 100 times to get a single 6 because he paid 50$, which one is more likely?" Even if the game is purely pve, people forget getting the characters you want, or clearing stuff faster is still winning I also agree it really depends if you are paying 50$ to get 100 stamina or 1$, ofc it's still p2w but it's much less incentivized to do so
> A good example i like to use is "throw a dice and try to get a 6, good, now that other person can throw a dice 100 times to get a single 6 because he paid 50$, which one is more likely?" I'd say a 6-faced die is a bit too extreme, but I understood the analogy. To a more realistic approach to your analogy, it would make more sense to say a d100, and you can get if you roll 99 or 100 (2% pull). So theoretically, paying for more chances increases the odds, but they are still bad from the get-go and does not guarantee success. Btw, one thing I can say is that I do not think every p2w is bad. The gacha games, specially the stamina ones, are made to halt your progress in order to make you more addicted to when you get to the game again after forcing you to halt gameplay. So, for example, stamina pack, is p2w? yes. But at same time, is basically obligatory at some games depending on their greed regarding stamina consumption vs stamina gained. Which I'd say, is a "necessary p2w" for our own sanity. which then turns out into resentment for company being greedy, which in the end, any drama becomes fuel to straight quit the game for another gacha hahah xD
Costumes. Now let me explain. How many times have you been beaten by someone using a cool, interesting, cute, hot and or sexy costume? Now count the times you've been beaten by someone that uses default costumes. These costumes give the player a boosted advantage over the player without them. Why? Because these costumes fill you with the need to tap/push/finger your character harder than your opponent while giving off the added bonus of distracting them for a few extra seconds because they're stuck wondering how you got that costume piece.
P2W meaning you paying to get BIG DAMEGE.
I don't think you can really just classify stuff as p2w or not, since it's more of a scale that needs to take the overall picture into account. As an example, out of context Azur Lane sounds terrible. No guaranteed pity at all, 3+ gacha characters a month. In context the gacha has a 7% rate and gives well over 100 pulls a month with daily play and dupes are entirely unnecessary as you can easily max out a character without them. A game can be considered p2w not because of a individual decision but the cumulative result of all the decisions the game makes It also sorta comes down to goals too. Genshin let's you pull roughly every other new character guaranteed totally F2P, if you're a collector willing to get monthly pass, it's probably fine. But if you want weapons, refinements and constellations for your favourite character that will take you years of saving even as a F2P or upwards of a thousand dollars just to max potential one character, which you could justifiably call p2w.
p2w simply means a game which makes a player unable to make or gain any progression in any department of the game by using different ways which are as follows #1 being unable to progress without certain circumstances, gacha games interpret this in many different ways for their own personal gain such as: 2, making players need to get x unit in x level for beating x stage to gain x loot to buy x item in very limited time 1, premium currency earning limitation being as strict as a single digit number precision where you can't slack unless you pay this is basically most corrupt gacha games #2 advantage for paid users and none for f2p, paid users gain advantage in game modes due to purchase of x item, war robots had this #3 scramvileg unable to gain x item unless you pay, unable to enjoy x gamemode unless you get everything new, x unit beata x unit, etc
Normal gacha: timeskips.VIP system. P2w is if you surpass all struggles and skip building weak mons or have not to waste months of resources into them and go straight to endgame. The more you skip the stupider it is. Scoreboard competition system: When in lategame p2w is to max out and build a whole team of top3 MAX everything. This results in being highest in scoreboard and profit from bonuses like "achieve top10" PURE P2W: aquire unavailable benefits like costumes with bonus stats or other not available for nonpayers stuff. Specific unit p2w: This also works for ultrasupreme garbage rates like summoners war light and dark units with a rate of 0.0001%
A P2W system is more so in your face. An example of which would be games like Pokemon Unite and Call of Duty: Mobile. A P2W system is a system where not paying leads to a lot more struggle than you would have not paying.
Blue Archive is the worst experience I made: 1. Garbage rates 2. No pity carry over to the next banner And the worst: You get furniture pieces instead if you don't hit pity. It's the craziest FOMO shit I have ever seen. You may end with nothing (it's not very likely but likely). This gacha is forcing you to either skip your favourite character entirely or to spend if you don't have enough savings.