There is an interesting assumption baked into the balancing act of the Pay 2 Win calculation... that is, that the 'grind time' is not otherwise valuable *except* to acquire the desirable goal-state (item, achievement, etc). If you are in a game, and you are seriously considering whether *not needing to play the game* for some amount of time has a monetary benefit to you, that heavily implies that that time playing the game would otherwise have *no value* of its own, except for the goal-state within the game. A goal-state that, in the Cash-Shop example, you are primed to associated with a real world value, even though its value is *entirely within the virtual world, and also subjective as a result*. In my opinion, if a game has come to the point where you are considering spending money to play less of the game, then *not playing the game* has become more valuable than actually *playing the game*, the thing we ostensibly do for FUN, in and of itself. The most profitable decision, it seems at that point, is to spend no money, and not play the game at all - I can 'not play the game' for theoretically infinite time at no monetary cost, after all, making that the best money and time for value. Remember getting excited to buy an expansion pack to a game you loved, because it meant you got *more game to play*? You paid money to be able to *play more fun game*. Somehow, we've reached a place where we're being asked to pay money to *play less game*, and being convinced that we're getting a good deal in the process... but that can only be a good deal if the game we're playing less of *wasn't fun to play*. In which case... why are we playing? When a game tries to sell you 'advantages' that 'save time' for real world money, they're saying, explicitly, "We think our gameplay isn't valuable, so we're giving you the ability to pay money to skip it."

josh should start a new series where he interviews whales of different MMOs

I have never understood wanting to pay money to play less of a game that you enjoy. If the 'grind' of playing a game isn't fun, you should not be questioning if it's pay to win, but instead questioning why you are playing a game you don't find fun.

something I think you should mention is that when grinding for something, the devs determine how long it takes you to get it. If the devs had infinite money and were only focused on making the best game, they would set the time needed to achieve a goal at X hours, for the most fun and feeling of achievement. If they make X much smaller it will be too easy, like playing with cheats. If they make X longer, it will be a grind. The game will start to drag and it won't be fun anymore. If they then offer to sell you the item instead, or if they offer to sell you a booster to gain more xp or money while playing, they are then very strongly incentivized to increase X, so that you will be more tempted too buy the item or the booster. So even if it is not strictly 'pay to win', cash shops give the developers a really strong motivation to INTENTIONALLY MAKE THE GAME WORSE!

Josh decided this was a good occasion to casually flex with 28 mugs and I can respect that.

When I was a student, I used to price things in terms of how many pints I could buy instead. There's a reason I don't have a great degree.

One important thing to remember: The creators of a game do not want you to earn it for free. They want you to pay, and they control the game. The house always wins.

I have become **incredibly** suspicious of games nowadays because so many of them are just so disrespectful to its playerbase, seeing actual people as nothing more than walking wallets to socially engineer into willingly letting themselves be robbed. I remember coming across a video long ago, my memory is not that great so it may have actually been another one of your videos but while I don't remember the video itself I do remember a valuable lesson from it that I keep in mind to this day: Your time is valuable, don't waste it. Considering I'm so busy nowadays, I'm glad I learned that lesson then instead of learning it too late.

Every time Josh drops a video like this, its about something I either don't have the patience to explain but really want to, or something I wanna explain but can't find the right words.

JSH: What does "Pay to Win" really mean? Gamigo: Yes

There are other advantages also. A single person vs having a child. Single: Higher concentration, no distractions. Child: Eventually you can have a farmer ;)

The mugs are always the highlight for me in these vids. love it!

Poke the bear: All TCG's are heavily pay to win.

The most pay-to-win thing in this video is that patron list, ALMOST need a magnifying glass, but not quite... not yet.

T-Rex mug is probably my favorite mug so far, keep up the good work!

YES! I love that you're not giving companies an unfair pass here, like hardcore fans always do. Call me a boomer, but I don't get how this is even a discourse. Of course it's pay to win with a complex hiding technique as soon as buying something that gives you any sort of advantage is possible and remotely viable to anyone.

For me its Also important how much of the grind feels like.. A grind. If the time commitment is high but the activity is fun im less likely to pay

I am an ancient Dinosaur, I expect. My ideal MMO is subscription based, $15 a month with zero MTX, not even cosmetics. 100% immersion. Everyone pays exactly the same thing as each other, and in-game, our characters are truly ours. A pure reflection of our accomplishments within the game. Beautiful. I miss those long-gone days.

I really liked your thoughts on real life advantages or disadvantages not following you into a game world. We can all come together as equals! That's the ideal at least. Thanks for the video, Josh!

My kid was very excited to see that you have her favourite dino mug! Awesome series Josh.

Basically everything non cosmetic should be considered p2w. Sometimes even cosmetics are p2w, if they for example provide an advantage through camouflage.

*Presents extremely controversial topic* "let me know in the comments" I respect the hustle sir.

Great explanation. I agree with your break down and the sliding scale. It really is a personal determination of your time vs. money.

When a game says “grind 40 hours straight to afford item X *OR* pay $9.99”, the game is pay to win. Who the hell has that kind of time…

I consider any game that gives you ANY paid advantage no matter how minor, to be pay to win

Love this video. I think a great example of 'pay to win' and 'pay for a neat thing' and how it can change is Star Trek Online. Once upon a time (with its original owners/creators) it was a pay-to-play game but had a cash shop, the cash shop had some neat ships, extra races to play as and cosmetics however none of these things made you super powerful you didn't WIN by buying the and regular players would be on par with you even though you couldn't get these items in the game by playing. They existed as extras to enjoy and support the game further beyond the fairly cheap monthly cost. However when the game was sold to another company, that company came in, jacked up the prices in the cash shop (by making you have to buy a different currency then convert it to STO's currency) started introducing loot boxes and then made the game free to play. The predatory practices continued as they started introducing more flat out powerful ships and items, introduced new systems to the game then introduced time saving or resources you could buy in the shop to improve these systems. I'm doing a poor job of explaining here as I'm trying to keep it short but I think this game and how its focus and monetization process/focus changed between companies is a good case study for shop done right and then shop made pay to win. Cheers

You could say something about the British charm, or the good looks, but I keep coming back for the mugs. I love that mug!

I think an important point you missed is how having a cash shop will cause the developer to design the game differently to make the cash shop worth it. They create problems to sell you the solution. They sell say, extra inventory space, which means at one point the devs sat down, thought about what would be the optimal amount of inventory for a good play experience, and then purposly gave you less than that in order to sell you the rest. Same with things like exp boosts, they found the rate at which it is most enjoyable to progress and then made the game worse on purpose to make you want to buy the boost. Cash shops lead to devs inventing problems to sell you solutions

If P2W had a definitive "break" point, than companies wouldn't be using it so much.

I'm really annoyed that people have this mentality that as long as you technically *can* earn something for free (which can also be purchased), that means that buying it isn't p2w. I deal with this a ton when interacting with HS players, when talking about how exorbitantly expensive the game is to play with reasonably powerful decks. And it's especially annoying when people act like "playing the game like it's a second job" is an adequate substitute for these obviously p2w systems. Granted, almost every f2p game will have *some* elements of p2w, especially a card game, but my point is that "pay to win" is a spectrum, and just because something isn't a flagrant ripoff doesn't make it *not* p2w.

Whilst I don't fully agrre with all your points, especially on pay to progress vs win I can appreciate how clearly put and comprehensive you phrase them.

The "perfect line" is no in game purchases. The game can be a one-time purchase, or subscription based, but in either case everyone pays the same amount. All in-game items are earned entirely in-game.

When the ability for player to use their cash translates into the ability to dominate a given game, you're already in the deep end of P2W. When Mr. Moneybags doesn't have to learn the game and can still highly outperform Mr.shallow pockets the game is broken. The items in question don't even need stats to be unfair. Even games that do not sell things with stats at all can still be P2W if what they do sell is outfits/emotes that make you indistinguishable from your environment. Fortnite did this so much to the point that some players would only go to places that looked like their character and camp the whole game or when the storm arrived. Some outfit/emote combos were so bad with this that other players could look straight at a player in point blank range and have no idea till the unsuspecting person gets a shotgun to the face.

One thing that drives me crazy is the arguments the Star Citizen community makes that the game isn't P2W: 1. The obvious, all ships are available in game 2. All ships fill a niche and none is outright better than the other for the exact same purpose (this is just false in many cases) 3. Well the expensive ships require a big crew, what really matters is people not the ship They fail to realize that an Org who comes out of the gate day 1 with a capital ship and an entire perfectly balanced fleet will stomp any org with a ragtag assembly of starter ships. The paying org can immediately set up a money making enterprise with a capital ship base, refueling ships on hand, medical ships, mining ships and refining, while the free org will be stumbling around in caves manually going back and forth to stations with a backpack of hand minables. They fail to realize the time aspect, where there will be a land rush to claim the best land for housing, and the paying players will have expensive massive base building ships day 1, while free players will pick up the scraps weeks later after they can afford it. Every time I discuss it on Reddit I feel like I' m taking crazy pills.

I see it simply as if a game is P2W, it has mechanics that are not fun so that you skip the "not fun" part. A game that is not P2W, is sold as an entire package and focuses on delivering the most fun experience possible.

I would love to have your point of view in regards to Warframe's, F2P and shop model. They seem to be constantly re-evaluating their choices to hit that fair point

Part of the reason I never played Pokemon Unite is that the system came off as too "pay to win" for me, a lot of MOBA feel pay to win for me because they are balancing characters and each character can be buffed or debuff and has to be purchased. And in Unite, you have 3 equip slots where you can put items that alter how your stats are and they can level. There was a huge debate on if it was "Pay to Win" or not. To me, Unite was and still is pay to win because they can always shift to keep people from being the strongest. Nerf this character, buff this hardly used item, add a new item that is stronger, etc ... you will always benefit by paying. Yes, it is 100% possible to grind everything out, but it is way easier just to pay. But people defended it saying "There isn't a huge difference." or "there isn't a difference once you get to this level item." etc ... if I can get the best gear and character before I even play the game, to me that is pay to win.

It'll be interesting to see if my definition matches that of the majority. Pay to win, I suppose "Pay real money to give the player an advantage over others". Be that more powerful, less grinding, more inventory, 'scrap /crafting boxes.' Regardless if poorer players could grind it or not.

Enough teasing, already, Josh - hit us with that LotRO review :D

As a fellow mug collector, I would like to see your mug collections in one of the videos :D

Another factor here is that time spent towards grinding for an item you could have bought, is time not spent engaging with other content. Whether or not that grind is (somewhat) enjoyable is of course relevant when people decide how much their time is worth, but it's something I rarely see mentioned.

The moment a player can obtain an advantage over other players by spending money makes it Pay2Win in my view. Neither the money cost nor a time sink to unlock it via grind changes this fact. The matter of it being fair or acceptable is a completely different question.

Great video, thank you. What was that pdf at 7:20? Can’t find it :/ And are there any similar collection of recent games?

I NEED that dinosaur mug..

8:34 I would love an entire video on how poorly that 2013 article on Wargaming removing P2W options has aged. Last I heard they were locking the USS Missouri (Warships) behind gambling.

Honestly, I'd say buying the weapon period, regardless of how long it would take to grind for it is pay to win. Anytime you can buy things that directly affect gameplay, it's p2w.

I love these types of videos. Good work Josh!

I actually never thought about how often grinding for gear instead of buying it, makes it outdated once I get it. Great video

There's if course also how much fun the grind is. Having to do the same activity for weeks or even months to get the item isn't much fun. Not to mention people have limited time. If you can only play an hour per day, would you rather play through a fun and entertaining story mission or do the same mindless, boring activity you did for the last few days?

I absolutely love how you're explaining economics in an interesting and applicable way! I'd watch an entire educational series.

Absolutely amazing video as always! And I think GW2 hit the perfect line between cash shop and grinding. My worst game I've ever played was BDO where even the UI was forcing you to open the shop. And I am so curious about what you think on this topic: Why it is more accepted to pay to win in eastern MMOs? What is the culture behind? Why they are succesful there? They have more time or more money? I'm genuinely curious what you think.

oh my god this is my favorite mug of yours

I feel like a lot of these discussions end up being just about how shitty and predatory microtransactions are in general. P2W, for me, is a further extension of that to where you are buying a competitive edge against other players. Nearly all games that have microtransactions are built in such a way to incentivize you to purchase them. Some do it better than others but EVERY game wants you to spend as much as possible on their microtransactions. P2W is just the natural extension of that business model. Any F2P game with a focus on PvP is almost always a hard pass for me because it's almost a guarantee that I'll be hounded and pressured to spend in order to feel competitive. I'm much more tolerant of games that give you the option to pay for convenience. The game is specifically designed to encourage the player to spend but if the gameplay is fun enough I'm willing to deal with that. Warframe is a great example of that

You forget an important argument: Selling any advantage whatsoever in the cash shop means the game will be balanced around that time and cost perspective from the developer's perspective, not the player's, since there's now a real world financial incentive to do that. This means the game loses part of the identity it would have otherwise had, since the game will not be designed for the game's own sake anymore. The game designers are forced to think in terms of 'time and money invested' rather than 'is the game fun to play'. Adding to this, consider how games could have been enriched by putting gameplay and fun above investment, like for instance Black Desert. Currently, the pet system is basically an autoloot option which can only be (realistically) enabled by spending real money. Imagine now if pets were not in the cash shop but were still doing autolooting, but were part of a gameplay loop on their own by being catchable and breedable, creating a whole new avenue to enjoy the game with. BDO is rumoured to have planned this gameplay mechanic in the early alpha stages, but it was dropped for the monetization potential. Lastly, any type of 'convenience' - inventory slots, xp boosters and the likes - basically tells the player that the game is designed to be and feel tedious unless they play, either by making inventory management tedious and boring, or progression as a whole. Again, selling these types of 'services' is a drastic interference directly in the game's core design values, where the developer is forced to account for real world time and money investment over the player's actual experience. In this way i think selling any advantage whatsoever should not only be considered pay to win, but also absolutely toxic to any game's design as a whole.

You know, I would love to see an actual lawyer try to come up with a drawn-out "legal description" of what Pay-To-Win actually is and means, just as a thought experiment.

Everytime Josh drops a video im most excited for what cup he uses in that video :D

"By the time you get them, they are no longer relevant" as someone who's only played GW1 and 2 this is so strange to me.

"It isn't pay to win because you can't win in this game" is a phrase I've come to loathe. Just because the game doesn't give a "you win!" screen it doesn't mean it can't be pay to win. I've most recently taken a system that If I notice wanting to buy something in the game I take a moment to consider why I feel like paying to skip playing. I play games for fun and if playing is so unfun I'd rather pay to skip it, why am I still playing the game in the first place?

Very simplistic view, because things like "do you personally feel the grind is fun", "do you get other things for the grind on the way to what you want" and so on and so forth will further muddle the waters.

"Massively Multiplayer Online Role Playing Games Games" -Josh Strife Hayes, 0:38 (A funny joke if by design, an easy to understand insignificant mistake if by accident)

The fact you were holding the dinosaur's paws the whole time is so much cuter than I'd like to admit....

The problem with pay 2 win (and no, there's no pay to get a simple advantage, as getting an advantage IS pay 2 win) is NOT that other players can have better itens, unless the game have a pvp system and those itens interfere on the pvp directly. Problem with pay 2 win is that whenever things get on a cash shop on a pay 2 win game, like, experience boost potions, gold boost potions, magic find boost potions, companies who own those kind of games tend to make the game REALLY hard on those points (like taking forever to level up without the aid of xp boost potions, or making you get almost no gold and gold sinks costing a LOT if you don't use gold booster and cash shop repair canisters) to try and force the majority of the playerbase to buy those things on the cash shop. So they just try to force you to use the cash shop by making the game almost unenjoyable if you don't use the cash shop.

Thank you for ridiculing some of the most common rationalizations of pay to win mechanics. Well deserved.

I died at Vorkath watching this, lol. Great vid. Thank you, for the A+ content.

I think GW2 monetization is damn near perfect. Make it pay to play upon release, then after the game does well, make it F2P with selling expansions, give limitations to the F2P like no trading, no map chat. Sell quality of life items in the cash shop at a relatively cheap price for first world countries median income. Also give the ability to convert in game currency to premium currency within the game at a reasonable rate in terms of time to get.

Neverwinter kept screwing up and alienated a lot of players, including me, by doing this long time farm for the best pieces for your class and immediately releasing new half assed expansion with just better items and mediocre content, I still got Guild Wars 2, but I don't feel like MMO's in general are worth the time anymore.

My OCD triggered with the unopened boxes at the GW2 sample 14:00 in.

This video just saved me from a very lengthy argument about Lost Ark.

The perfect way is to do it like Digital Extremes (warframe) where the "win" condition is just playing the game and having fun. That way it doesn't even matter whether someone buys an item for premium currency. If anything, they lose out on the time spent playing the game to farm that item. :P

Only acceptable "P2W" experience I've ever had was Path of Exile. Full campaign is completely free but it's accepted that to be functional in the end game you need a few stashtabs. At which point it feels more like you finally "purchased" path of Exile rather than temporary purchases for power. Still bad, but better

where can i find that PDF with the listing of the games?

CC had your name at "Josh Droif Hays" so maybe that could be your next character name! Love the mugs.

I mostly played Guild Wars 2 and by my definition I would call it p2w since you can buy gold with real money but I don't mind it at all because the game doesn't force me to grind for hours for the best gear since endgame gear is VERY easy to get and leveling is also very quick. That's why i don't demonize the term p2w because I do think I can work even though 99% of the time especially with mobile games it just doesn't My Problem though with EVERY type of monetized games is that Games are changed around them, be it p2w, pay to progress or even pay for cosmetics. If you feel you HAVE TO grind or do something in game, that's in my opinion a very bad signal.

To put the time sink into perspective : 10 000 hours of practice will take you to a level of mastery in a craft if you have any talent at all

me in the few secs of the videos: man i do hate p2w me for the rest of the video when josh pops up with a rex mug: man i want that mug

josh's flex's: karate hair handsome mug collection

No mention of the WoW token? It's one thing when you trade your money for your own time and progress faster, but when you gain something in the shop that other players will gladly trade their in-game efforts for it's a much deeper issue. Either way the play as the developer is to make the in-game progression a slog, because if it was fun to not skip to "endgame" why pay at all? Even if you don't actively try to design your game as such, once the players in-game efforts can be sold indirectly it's no longer a themepark ride, it's punching the time clock. Trying to curb the whole problematic with timegating and daily quest rewards just makes it worse, it's trying to cure the symptom of a poison you happly administer yourself with every patch. I hope this gets discussed on this channel sooner or later, even tho he'd prefer to avoid talking about blizzard. I know it's very complicated (by design ofc), but if anyone can make sense of why it's such a bad idea to double dip in a subscription themepark mmo it's Josh.

For me there are two things that are mostly relevant. How much time does it save and how much does this advantage impede others. For example, even if I can "just" buy boosters that allow me to grind faster (more xp, more gold, ...) this doesn't sound that bad at a first glance. However, if your game allows for basically an increasing growth rate it leans towards p2w. Because then faster leveling equates to arriving at higher-level drop zones earlier than others, which equates to more money and better gear earlier, which just spirals out of control and those who reached the endgame first (and played the most) are now the "winners". And now the second point comes into play. If nobody is really affected by you being far ahead, it doesn't really matter to me as there is no "winning" then. My prime example for this would be AFK Arena (ye I know I know, a mobile game..). It is p2w as shit, you can literally buy everything ever by just throwing immense amounts of money at the devs (and it is REALLY expensive). BUT.. unless you are trying to join the top 1% in the leaderboards, nobody gives a fuck. I am not losing anything due to those whales, quite the opposite actually, in coop-events it can even be helpful. Another game that, for me, falls into this category is GW2. If you just look at the cash shop people would probably think it is pay2win af. You can buy pretty much everything that's "pay4convenvience" in other games like all sorts of boosters, inventory slot expansions, bank expansions, etc. However, with the way GW2 was designed this is really not an issue. Not only can you convert ingame gold to cash shop currency and buy literally everything via ingame means, (and now comes the important part) it also doesn't give you any real advantages over others. Personal advantages yes, but they don't interfere with the fun of others. And I think that's a crucial thing the vast majority of games don't accomplish.

This vid felt like jsh was explaining Schroedingers monetisation strategy

Neverwinter is one game where it’s free to play but u have to pay to get to end game faster to stay in line with other people coz people won’t invite u to party when u are under required level so this game forces u to buy in-house real money to get gear and other equipment

I know this is an MMO channel but some FPS games have this blurry pay to win line where you can buy character skins that give better camouflage. It doesnt inherently make the user stronger, but it does give an advantage.

I fall into the category that if you can buy it in a shop, its pay to win. Doesn't matter if you can obtain it in game with any amount of effort. You're paying, and you're getting an in game advantage. Its that simple.

Gw2 for me is the line where I say "That's p2w" since everything endgame is a gold grind and you can buy gold

I really like your channel. Thank you for the content.

You do such a good job explaining the relative grind time for some p2w. Neverwinter became such a disappointment to me because of exactly that. Even if you grind and spend some money the pace of acquiring new stuff without paying more is way longer then the campaigns. I don't think anything kills my love of a game more then grinding for stuff then having it replaced in just a few months.

Yeah I can't agree with all the people defending P2W with things like "You're only buying a slight advantage" or "you're only skipping a grind" and such. The thing you have to realize is that this is a created universe. Every aspect of it is completely arbitrary and decided upon by the developers. There's no inherent reason why it *has* to take 100 hours to get that great sword. There's no inherent reason why it has to cost 50 dollars if you want to buy that sword instead. Those are just numbers they decided upon because they felt that it would optimize the amount of people that would pay for more things. They're selling you a solution to an arbitrary problem that they themselves created. It's like if someone stole your hard drive data and said you could decrypt it if you either wait 1 year or gave them 10,000 dollars. Your response shouldn't be to start considering which option is more valuable to you, your response should be to call the police and get this undone. Here's my overall view on this kind of stuff. If you're playing a single player game, then it doesn't matter how you play it. You're free to modify things however you want and have your own fun. Sure maybe running through a game like Devil May Cry with tons of cheat codes might ruin the intended experience, but if you're having fun with it, it ultimately doesn't matter as long as you know what you're getting into. But if you're playing a multiplayer game, the point of a multiplayer game, whether it's co-op or competitive or whatever, is that you're in an environment where you're comparing the skill of different players at the game. If you would look down on a player for using cheat codes in an attempt to perform better than they would have otherwise. Why should we in any situation excuse a player for paying money to do the same thing? Plus why should we be okay with people paying money to skip grinds and unlocks and such? Isn't the point of a game to, I don't know, *play* the game? This monetization strategy literally amounts to paying real money so that you can play the game *less* than you would need to otherwise. They're just tricking people with not as much time on their hands into paying more money to play less of the game. Letting players pay money for anything from skipping a grind to getting equipment directly to indirectly boosting their abilities to make the grind easier or whatever, is essentially letting players pay to turn on cheat codes that they won't get banned for. I mean think about it like cheat codes for a second. If you were playing an MMO, and you figured out a way to hack the game so that you could get XP faster than everyone else, or so that you could deal more damage or travel across the world faster or whatever. You would be banned from that MMO as soon as the devs found out you were doing that. And other players would complain about it constantly for being unfair. Even if the cheats were only for slight advantages that were barely detectable, I'm still willing to bet it'd warrant at least a temporary ban and you'd be reported by any players that found out you were doing it. Yet it's somehow suddenly okay when it's officially sanctioned by the game because you paid real money for it. There's no reason why another player should be okay with this. It's no different from them paying for a cheat engine or something. And they're getting an explicit advantage. And of course the only reason the Devs are okay with it is because it's making them money. All that has happened is that instead of people paying for cheat codes by going to shady people on weird websites on the net, they're paying for cheat codes made by shady people on the dev team itself.

I'm buying a run through timewalking Black Temple in WoW for the warglaive transmog at the end. It's only available a few times a year and I only play on weekends and don't have the time to find a group myself. Would that be considered pay to win? I'm paying with in game gold but you can buy gold with money

can't wait for the next new world video! forums are spicy!

It also depends on what someone sees as "winning". Having the "coolest" looking character could be seen as winning thus making skins pay to win. The only way to not be pay to win at all is to sell nothing besides the game itself. In fact DLC could be pay to win too if they are not free. lol

How many patrons is that now? Like, damn. Wow

This video he has made sounds like a meeting they would have before releasing a game with P2W. Good job on video. Always enjoy your content.

The term I prefer for the "middle-ground" stuff that doesn't give you a numerical advatage but a time advantage is PTWF - "Pay to Win Faster".

I'm semi-tolerant of the pay to skip model of Warframe, as it is a PvE game. But I detest any and all non-cosmetic micro/macro-transactions as they are All P2W(including Warframe).

I'm a simple man. I like to pay for my game and just play it without having to worry about convoluted monetization and microtransactions. If the game has those things, I'll be very quick to quit. Pay to win is just radically opposite to the concept of a fun game in my opinion.

Watching your videos gives a great depth on topics that I previously put off as very simple (For example, pay 2 win = cash shops, ingame weapon etc.) Yet you found a way to explain the personal breaking point where people in discussions (think of Reddit lol) would either argue that a game is P2W or not P2W (Reason is everybody's own stance on the relation between MoneySpent and TimeSpent to get a P2W ingame item 6:50) props man, the more you know ;)

I've played games like Crossout, where its Pay to Compete. If you want to go above noob brackets, which you are forced to do after lvl 30. You either spend outrageous money, which alot of people do, or you get your ass handed to you in a high hat. Forever.

Even RS bonds and WoW tokens can be seen as pay to win, even though they're meant to undercut gold sellers. Many disagree simply because it allows them to play the subscription game for free.

You've said it before and I think it summarizes it well, when the most efficient way to progress doesn't even involve playing the game. I think it's entirely possible to have a functional "P2W" game as long as it's done in a smart way. Warframe sells you currency with which you can buy power, but you can only get that power from trading for exclusively F2P efforts (such as prime parts from opening relics) meaning the premium currency is simply a token to skip doing content that *someone* had to do If no one is doing content because the game is being predatory, the platinum prices rise due to lack ot supply so doing the content and trading the loot for platinum starts looking more appealing, it's self balancing.

This is his best mug yet.

I remember in RIFT there was a Tier 3 raid gear , in the shop they were selling T2 for 400$ . Make new toon reach max lvl and buy that set aaaand you just jumped over 1 year of grinding