POLL: RNG Gambling & Pay2Win ?

[Justfungus]

There is a catch on this subject.
It can be argued that it is 'possible' to work your way up the ladder and earn enough T-coin to purchase
all required dungeon packs and so on.
The 'catch'
From fresh start right now .... it would take YEARS
more years than DDO will likely be around.
So yes, you can pull yourself up by the boot straps and work your way
to the top without paying money,
IF ... you can go back in time about 3-4 years ago.
............
For all practical purposes 'To play end game in raids'
you have to buy your way there.
If your just into heroics and mainly solo dungeons ... your good to go.

 

[OG DM]

No, they would still need to lower the drop rate. It’s the whole artificial scarcity. The store item has the value that it does because it’s so insanely rare to get out in the wild.

Now if they sold +Reaper or +Mythic you can tag onto items in the DDO store… I would be totally cool with that. It helps out the game and it’s so out there in terms of rarity etc. it’s not even something I can even care about.

The people who don't reroll chests at the previous drop rates aren't going to start rerolling chests because the loot became even more rare than it already was.

When the drop rate is already at the "artificial scarcity" point, there's no need to lower it further to sell the loot straight cash. They only need to lower it further when the plan is to milk the heavy rerollers even harder. It essentially turns specific items deemed "rare" into luxury items everyone else gets priced out of. Sure, there will be a couple of extremely lucky people on each server, but no one can depend on looting a "rare" item they want in an amount of time considered semi-reasonable at the previous drop rate.

 

[Draknowin]

The game is absolutely Pay-to-Win. For me, P2W counts as any ability to buy outright power - and good god, DDO is drowning in it. Classes, races, Iconic races, tomes (good god the stat tomes), potions, hirelings... so much. Not to mention the 'pay for convenience features' like XP pots, loot rerolls (and bad drop rates to make it more appealing...) etc. Not saying these things are inherently bad, but they exist, and do provide incentives to make the base experience worse to annoy players into paying for them.

Now, don't get me wrong, a 'Free to play' game needs to make money to exist. I know this, and it's why I do buy expansions for more content. And yes, you can gain DDO points through just playing the game, but it does take a very long time to accumulate any *real* amount. So much time that you have to treat the game like a job anyway, it sometimes feels like.

So: "Yes, Pay2Win but with extreme time spent (beyond reasonable) can attain similar levels of power."

 

[kmoustakas]

But i got a button that says i won DDO when i first hit completionist back in the day.

And to Shear-buckler.....if they did not do these things...you would not be playing....none of us would. The trick is not being in business...any fool can be in business. No the trick is STAYING in business. SSG has managed to do this.

Erm, DDO is making more money today than it EVER made. So everyone going doomdoomdoom need a talking to by Deekin.

(and that button is awesome. I still remember people complaining in the forums about the effects of pushing it!)

 

[Rage]

I think DDO is at the height of it’s revenue even approaching launch levels back in the day.

Can someone reverse engineer DDO’s revenue through public Enad7 numbers?

 

[Buddha5440]

Personally, no. At least not yet but I feel like we’re dangerously flirting at the edge.

But, I have not played this game as a fresh newbie in a long , long while nor at the very “cutting edge” of min/maxing. And I think many of us are missing that perspective.

[How I define “Pay To Win”]

It’s not about buying a bunch of Otto’s boxes and maxing out a fresh character. (I mean, why? Just play the game!)

What I mean by Pay 2 Win is being able to attain the top 1% of the power scale with a much greater chance of probability and in a much shorter amount of time by spending real life $.

Whether that looks like buying a whole bunch of sovereign pots to blast through key past lives or being able to reroll as much as you like on chests AND have an army of alts/multi accounts to reroll on those chests as well. All of which costing real life dollars and cannot within a reasonable amount of time be replicated free without the use of real life $.

Being in an elite guild and being able to run much harder content much faster is not considered Pay2Win as this is just part of the game/MMO.

The quick n’ easy way is asking yourself the question: “If I bought something off the store could I get a noticeable increase in power by double or more speed ? (For comparative purposes, include time spent on getting said store products, in-game, if not spending real life $).”

There is no "Win" in this game. That's part of why there is no "Pay Wall".

 

[Rage]

There is no "Win" in this game. That's part of why there is no "Pay Wall".

There is definitely “win” in this game and it materializes as showing off your character in groups and raids. That is the win.

 

[Jack Jarvis Esquire]

There is definitely “win” in this game and it materializes as showing off your character in groups and raids. That is the win.

Only if you think, mistakenly, that anyone is seriously paying attention or gives a stuff!

Nothing wrong with it if you enjoy that sort of thing, but showing off, in any context, is by nature pretty much purely subjective, and therefore not a very good assessment of an objective winning concept.

It's like kill count. I've not looked at that as any kind of sensible metric in years, yet still have the odd person mention it in chat as to how good theirs or mines is. But in all cases, it's a pretty meaningless delusion for all concerned.

Could equally argue that winning is not caring about any of that and simply enjoying the game. That too, whilst nothing wrong with it, is only a subjective view, however valid it may be to the person making that self-assessment.

Fundamentally an objective concept of winning is incompatible with a pve cooperative game. If you want to win something you'd be better playing football or tennis or darts or chess or F1 or engage in some other competitive endeavour.

Here though? Just doesn't work. Except in your head.

The very fact we have so many different attempts to justify what winning looks like in DDO bears that out.

 

[Oliphant]

Doesn't matter Jack, the motives of the person paying are the operating mechanism here.

 

[Shear-buckler]

But i got a button that says i won DDO when i first hit completionist back in the day.

And to Shear-buckler.....if they did not do these things...you would not be playing....none of us would. The trick is not being in business...any fool can be in business. No the trick is STAYING in business. SSG has managed to do this.

I dont remember the game being shut down before the rare loot of myth drannor or the induction bar to teleport.
There are many player friendly ways to make money, and the player friendly methods are likely far better in the long run.

 

[Bjond]

winning looks like in DDO bears that out.

This is it precisely: bears are a win, especially with butterfly wings.

There is only one potential improvement: owlbears (with ice skates).

 

[Greyhawk5]

DDO has been pay to convenience for a long time. Not sure its pay to win though. Maybe pay to make it a bit easier.

I'd like to see some evidence that products being sold actually work though.

For instance the rare loot boosts, at least in my experience, do absolutely nothing. Or so little that its lost in the RNG background noise.

Also get rid of some of the "waste that potion" mechanics. Putting quests miles away from the entrance to an explorer area for instance so you waste xp pot time getting there or deliberately adding long recall times to quests so that your pots countdown after the quest has completed. Its small but over time it can add up. To me, this is 100% pointlessly adding delays since the quest is already completed.

On the flipside, the free rolls can get some decent freebies so there is that - well gold rolls can at any rate.

 

[Jack Jarvis Esquire]

Doesn't matter Jack, the motives of the person paying are the operating mechanism here.

Which is of course fine, for them, but isn't objectively true or useful. Personal motives can be insane at worst and are often irrational. You can't really judge anything or make an objective argument for much of anything on that basis.

 

[paddymaxson]

I haven't voted in the poll as I'm not sure I agree with any of the optiions but yes DDO is in a sense "Pay2Win"

Because what you sometimes don't realise (at least I didn't till I rolled a hardcore toon the first time) about a new toon on a new account is they're missing:

1. All AP Tomes
2. All Ability Tomes
3. Destiny Tomes
4. Tomes of Learning
5. Adventure packs with good gear
6. Past Lives
7. Reaper Points

All of those things are buyable in one way or another (XP pots to make getting past lives and reaper points faster)

Some of this stuff is free sometimes or grindable, or deeply discounted and some good builds don't need them as badly or can get by wiuthout them
But fundamentally there's kind of a lot of upfront cost to DDO to even be getting the same levelling experience as a veteran, never mind how powerful you are once levelled up.

While DDO persists in giving extra power for doing extra past lives, gaining XP at an accelerated rate will always be kind of P2W in my eyes. While DDO locks the best levelling gear behind old expansions (which in some cases, mercifully are now much cheaper) it's pay 2 win.

"But Paddy, of course expansions give better gear and are costed"
Well, yeah I guess, but many games make their older expansions free, and few of them work in such a way where gear from older expansions is still extremely valuable to the core gameplay loop 10+ years later.

I'm just glad tomes of learning aren't temporary, I think I'd have quit the TR grind without that.

 

[Greyhawk5]

ToL are convenience items IMO, not P2W. P2W is basically being able to buy item x that bypasses Y so you can get benefit Z. Ie say a "complete saga token" - allows you to buy a saga completion. That would be P2W. But XP pots and one quest flag for VIP definitely aren't that. Or DDO market exclusive OP weapons and gear.

All the stat tomes still do not guarantee a win for a quest. Again, may make things a bit easier but the tomes themselves are also level gated so they are not OP at low levels. Its also not that hard to get some tomes in-game.

The past life mechanic means buying levels with Otto's boxes is also not necessarily P2W, getting extra lives give a small boost at best and completionist is nice but not OP in any way.

Thats my 2p anyway

 

[Bravgji]

Pay-for-convenience or Pay-for-progress is a term that is not mutually exclusive with P2W. In fact, both are many times tied. It reduces the time it takes to "achieve" the "winning condition" significantly.

How does this apply to DDO? Depends. Some builds need past lives or big gear investment more than others. You can also technically get everything for free but the time spent is much bigger. Time is, by the way, money.

What is the "winning condition" in DDO, though? That also depends on player preference, but I would personally say that it is the general sense of getting stronger. You may get everything in few years if you grind enough or 1 or less if you pay for it. I dunno, I haven't done the calculations.

 

[Jack Jarvis Esquire]

Just to be clear then:

None of you are winning anything in here. No matter what you may choose to think. Nobody. Nothing*.



















*Except maybe for them remnant roll lotteries!

 

[Bravgji]

Just to be clear then:

None of you are winning anything in here. No matter what you may choose to think. Nobody. Nothing*.



















*Except maybe for them remnant roll lotteries!

You may keep repeating that but it doesn't mean that it's true just because you say it is. A PVE MMO can be "won."

Although an MMO has no traditional final boss or end goal, "Winning" can be defined.

To progress? DDO features TOL and EXP pots, plus Otto's. How much time are you saving, overall, with money?
To contribute in a party? DDO doesn't feature DPS charts, but one's contribution in a party can be noticed. One might be 'losing' when they feel like they might not be helping enough.
To acquire the best gear? See rare loot, mythic & reaper bonuses, curses, etc.
To perform particularly hard content? See 1st and 3rd questions.

We can define winning in MMO in many ways, but it is usually defined by an individual player. And so, P2W can also be noticed.

Now, do I think that DDO is P2W? No, because I treat DDO as a P2P MMO instead of a F2P, and I do think that it should be treated in that manner. The core experience is completely covered in VIP, Tomes, and XPACs (P2P ≠ P2W). I do not pay an egregious amount of money for the best gear, and I do not do high reaper content. I don't see these as "winning" because I don't care as much about these. Yes, everything can be obtained freely, but time spent is a metric used to determine if a game is P2W.

There are arguments to be made, though, that the P2P portion of the game is too pricey. But that's not the topic of this thread.

However, some might have different objectives when playing this game, and to those people the game is P2W. That is totally fair. It's a costumer decision (I think that people can decide where they spend their money) and one might feel like another game can provide more fulfillment with the same investment. The game is P2W to them and their opinion might be valid.

However, to say that you cannot "win" in this game is an outright lie, or ignorance.

 

[Jack Jarvis Esquire]

You may keep repeating that but it doesn't mean that it's true just because you say it is. A PVE MMO can be "won."

Although an MMO has no traditional final boss or end goal, "Winning" can be defined.

To progress? DDO features TOL and EXP pots, plus Otto's. How much time are you saving, overall, with money?
To contribute in a party? DDO doesn't feature DPS charts, but one's contribution in a party can be noticed. One might be 'losing' when they feel like they might not be helping enough.
To acquire the best gear? See rare loot, mythic & reaper bonuses, curses, etc.
To perform particularly hard content? See 1st and 3rd questions.

We can define winning in MMO in many ways, but it is usually defined by an individual player. And so, P2W can also be noticed.

Now, do I think that DDO is P2W? No, because I treat DDO as a P2P MMO instead of a F2P, and I do think that it should be treated in that manner. The core experience is completely covered in VIP, Tomes, and XPACs (P2P ≠ P2W). I do not pay an egregious amount of money for the best gear, and I do not do high reaper content. I don't see these as "winning" because I don't care as much about these. Yes, everything can be obtained freely, but time spent is a metric used to determine if a game is P2W.

There are arguments to be made, though, that the P2P portion of the game is too pricey. But that's not the topic of this thread.

However, some might have different objectives when playing this game, and to those people the game is P2W. That is totally fair. It's a costumer decision (I think that people can decide where they spend their money) and one might feel like another game can provide more fulfillment with the same investment. The game is P2W to them and their opinion might be valid.

However, to say that you cannot "win" in this game is an outright lie, or ignorance.

No it's really not. I'll refrain from responding in kind to call you a liar or an idiot. Tempting though that may be there is no need for it, nor would it be accurate. But you do you if it makes you think your argument will be enhanced by insults.

Bottom line is, objectively we're winning nothing here, and "subjective winning" is purely in your head and a pleasant form of delusion. It may make you feel better and happy which is fine, but it's actually quite meaningless otherwise.

I won a game of football is easy to define. How did you win? We scored more goals than the opposition. Easy.

Any other answer is ridiculous - Oh but we had more corners, for example. Fine. But the score was 1-1. Nobody actually won that game.

I won DDO. How did you win? Erm well in my head I define it as... <Insert answer here>

When actually the score here is always 0-0.

 

[Shear-buckler]

If you feel you cannot win in DDO you just need to learn to play better