I’ve seen a few comments scattered about from Error and Antibus that makes me suspect the Developers don’t know what “Pay to Win” means, so I thought it’d be useful to have a topic that explains it.
Pay to Win is essentially this: Any game where paying money grants access to power unobtainable by free players.
So, let’s look at what is not Pay to Win about Star Conflict:
Premium Ships: Prior to the 0.9.0 disaster, Premium Ships were a good idea and a solid inclusion into the game. Higher tier ships were arguably overpriced, but that’s not an issue that impacts play. These ships were not pay to win. Why? Because there was nothing about them that couldn’t be equaled or bettered through free grind. Examples:
- Stats. Premium ships have the same stats as the highest ships in their tier. A Scout has the same stats as a Dwarf 2; a Kalah has the same stats as a Deimos 2, etc. Because the free ships have identical stats, this is not pay to win; it’s pay to skip.
- Synergy. Free ships can amass the same total synergy as a Premium ship. It just takes longer. As such, it’s not pay to win; it’s pay to skip.
- Abilities. This… this is the only place the “pay to win” argument may hold water. People go back and forth about whether Premium ships are better or not, but as long as they are not clearly superior they are not pay to win. Best example of this done right is the Scout vs Dwarf 2 - the Premium is better at raw damage, but the “free” Dwarf 2 gets a module boost.
So, Premium ships are mostly “pay to skip”. You can fly free ships and work your way up the tree, or you can bypass the tree and just fly the ships you want. This was a great system, and the Development team should not have done away with it.
Next…
Premium Equipment: Pretty much covered; Premium is equal to Mk III gear. Any player who grinds enough can get Mk III gear; you’re just paying to get it sooner. This is not pay to win as, in theory, the ships you are flying against will have had the opportunity to grind to Mk III gear. Plus, there’s Experimental gear, which cannot be bought (although the loot system is sort of “Pay to win” - you pay, you get more purples) so you can’t spend real money to get the best gear anyway.
Now, alas, there is Pay to Win in this game. Or was, depending on how you want to look at it.
Steam ships: Prior to the screwup, it seemed pretty much universal that the best Tier 3 Fighters were the Desert Eagle, Dragonfly and Bear. They probably still are the best in fairness, it’s just there’s a lot less reason to fly them. Likewise, the Wasp and Superswift are/were the best Recon and CovOps in Tier 2.
That is Pay to Win. Spend real money on DLC, get the best ships in the game, xxxx the free players over with your vastly superior ships. Gaijin, you have claimed that “you don’t want pay to win”, yet you reserved the best ships you had for people who spent real money on your DLC packs.
If those ships were obtainable in game, it wouldn’t be Pay to Win. If they were comparable to other ships of their tier, it wouldn’t be pay to win. But when you go out of your way to make ships with significant advantages over their normal counterparts, you are making Pay to Win content.
Let us reiterate:
Pay to win is where paying money grants access to power unobtainable by free players.
Pay to skip is where paying money gets you content sooner.
We are fine with pay to skip, so long as it is not put in at the expense of free player’s enjoyment of the game. Free players bulk up the numbers and make the game fun for the paying people. Screw them over, and the payers will leave. Look after them, and they’ll not only encourage payers to stay, but they may become payers themselves.
Now, as an aside, there is another issue that should be mentioned. It’s not directly linked to Pay to Win, but I figure I’d save myself the hassle of making another topic. Your three tier payment system.
You should not have three tiers. You should not have DLC. If you do, it should be a way to get Gold Standard items cheaper by buying in bulk. Gold Standards should be able to obtain everything in this game. If I want to repaint my ship, I should pay GS. If I want better loot chance, I should pay GS. If I want a pirate ship I should pay GS. If I want all six pirate ships, I should have the option of buying a DLC bundle that costs less money than buying them all individually via GS would.
The reason you need to pay attention to this is simple: being Pay to Win is not a problem, but a symptom. The cause of Pay to Win is greed, and if people look at Star Conflict and think “this is a scam game. The Devs are just trying to farm money off the players”, they leave. This is what 0.9.0 did by the way - it turned Star Conflict from a game into an exercise in stealing from people. Saying you don’t want to be a Pay to Win game is fine, but when you then lock desirable content behind a payment scheme that is entirely different from your primary one, you are essentially being a Pay to Win game in disguise.