Is Guild Wars 2 Pay2win?

[Dawdler.8521]

@White Kitsunee.4620 said:In direct you could call GW2 pay2win, gems -> gold -> buys a full exotic set. Which is what you need to raid, which could be considered 'winning'. which if you take two fresh accounts one with gems one without, yea 1's probably going to be going at it faster.In practice though the 'p2w' items you get are so easy to get through normal means I don't really think it matters. Besides that you can't buy ascended gear with money.And what's beyond that? The rune salvager? There's really nothing.This is like when people complain that league of legends is P2W, right by definition but no one caresThe key in that lies in the competition. P2w still assumes a tangiable advantage over your enemy by spending gems. In PvE there is zero competition between players since every resource is instanced per player. In sPvP gear doesnt exist. In WvW player numbers, classes, skill, builds, claim buffs etc, even the basic combat situation absolutely dwarfs any gear difference at exotic or above so you cant really buy your way to victory.

So gems to gold no matter where one look really doesnt offer you much, if anything at all.

[kharmin.7683]

@"frareanselm.1925" said:If you play for fashion wars yes is pay to win because gemstore skins are in other level. Also there are no cool capes and mounts in the game.

And yet, fashion wars is subjective. One might find another player's fashion to be the spot-on, epitome of what a character should look like in GW2 whereas other players may not. Who is to judge and say that one, single player has "won" GW2 Fashion Wars? And if they win, what exactly do they win that is unattainable by the rest of the entire playerbase?

[Danikat.8537]

@kharmin.7683 said:

@"frareanselm.1925" said:If you play for fashion wars yes is pay to win because gemstore skins are in other level. Also there are no cool capes and mounts in the game.

And yet, fashion wars is subjective. One might find another player's fashion to be the spot-on, epitome of what a character should look like in GW2 whereas other players may not. Who is to judge and say that one, single player has "won" GW2 Fashion Wars? And if they win, what exactly do they win that is unattainable by the rest of the entire playerbase?

Even if you go off just 1 player's opinion it's not easy to say who would "win". I have a folder of screenshots of characters I think look cool and it's wildly inconsistent, ranging from assorted bright, shiny clusters of effects to ones that would blend in flawlessly with NPCs or very realistic designs (some of which would not blend in with NPCs, because their designs tend to lean into the fantasy aesthetics at least a bit) and some crazy cosplay designs or unique designs which don't necessarily fit in with anything but have a very strong overall theme. Even if I wanted to I don't think I could rank them or say who is the best of the lot. There's a lot in there I don't necessarily like in the sense of wanting to do something similar with my own characters, but I love that someone else took the time to put it together.

But I definitely don't think gem store skins are a deciding factor. Yes some of them look good and can be part of an interesting overall design but I definitely wouldn't say they're consistently better than anything you can get in the game or needed to make a character look good. A lot of my favourite looks use no gem store skins at all (including the one of my favourites for my main character).

[Brandon Uzumaki.1524]

The year is 2030, Player A just bought the new Mythical gear that's exclusive to the Gem Store and only works in Open World, it's 50% stronger than Ascended, he's fighting Tequatl, dealing a gigantic 100k DPS, while all the plebs around him are still doing sub 10k, "haha, look at all these noobs", they kill Tequatl, Player A get's a spoon, Random Pleb Number 10 that was doing 5k DPS get's the new Sunless Infusion, "eef this shit, this is the worst p2w game ever".

[Leo G.4501]

On 4/14/2021 at 10:46 AM, Brandon Uzumaki.1524 said:

The year is 2030, Player A just bought the new Mythical gear that's exclusive to the Gem Store and only works in Open World, it's 50% stronger than Ascended, he's fighting Tequatl, dealing a gigantic 100k DPS, while all the plebs around him are still doing sub 10k, "haha, look at all these noobs", they kill Tequatl, Player A get's a spoon, Random Pleb Number 10 that was doing 5k DPS get's the new Sunless Infusion, "eef this kitten, this is the worst p2w game ever".

Well, that person would have "won" the ability to solo most small group events and carry large groups through content faster. If he wanted to get better drops, maybe they should have bought more +magic find.

[Leo G.4501]

On 4/9/2021 at 5:21 PM, KryTiKaL.3125 said:

Unfortunately welcome to the reality that is the video game community in the West. Where "You can buy bag expansion slots" is an argument for why something is pay to win even though that literally makes no sense. People are far too concerned with what everyone else around them is doing on a video game to such a point that they view non-competitive open world PvE as a competition and how dare someone ever buy more bag space than they can. The fact not withstanding that gear and bag space contribute absolutely nothing to an actual competitive environment on GW2 because gear is irrelevant and bag space is also irrelevant as gold earned from grinding meta events and accumulating items has less value in attaining gear due to gear being irrelevant.

Really curious as to how people would apparently define "winning" in this game if "getting more bag space" is apparently part of that criteria.

Ah, lumping your opposition under a label of "whining westerners". Two can play at that game. The individuals that tout GW2 are B2P and nothing more are the soft casual players that want to dictate their game experience rather than participate in it as a group. They want to "choose" what they do in the game and earn all the same reward. They'd be the ones to complain about some PvP bonus gear that they can't get from doing PvE stuff. 

 

It's not a worthless perspective but it's an ad hominem to assume people are pointing out the P2W features because of envy about bank spaces lol

[Manasa Devi.7958]

On 4/14/2021 at 12:41 PM, kharmin.7683 said:

And yet, fashion wars is subjective. One might find another player's fashion to be the spot-on, epitome of what a character should look like in GW2 whereas other players may not. Who is to judge and say that one, single player has "won" GW2 Fashion Wars? And if they win, what exactly do they win that is unattainable by the rest of the entire playerbase?

"Winning" the fashion war is more often than not a sad delusion. Most "winners" are actually fashion victims.

[KryTiKaL.3125]

3 hours ago, Leo G.4501 said:

Ah, lumping your opposition under a label of "whining westerners". Two can play at that game. The individuals that tout GW2 are B2P and nothing more are the soft casual players that want to dictate their game experience rather than participate in it as a group. They want to "choose" what they do in the game and earn all the same reward. They'd be the ones to complain about some PvP bonus gear that they can't get from doing PvE stuff. 

 

It's not a worthless perspective but it's an ad hominem to assume people are pointing out the P2W features because of envy about bank spaces lol

 

You missed the point. Its not about envy of bag spaces, more specifically it tends to be about people believing everything is a competition and I do mean everything. Someone gets more bag space than them; how dare they thats not fair. Someone gets an exp booster to level an alt faster than they do; how dare they thats not fair. Someone transfers to another server for WvW purposes; how dare they thats not fair. Yes, I have seen people here consider server transfer as pay to win for WvW. People consider buying expansions for an MMORPG as pay to win.

 

They complain about all of these pay for convenience items because, like it or not, there are gamers today who are older and potentially don't have the time to spend getting or completing certain things to get more bag spaces or larger bags, or level alts as often as others do, or to get a character to max level as quickly when they first start out, or in the case of grindier games like BDO get the silver and other materials required for gear enhancements. The list goes on and can often times be very different based on the game.

 

Pay for convenience items are there for the convenience, what can be done with them is usually what can be done by players who tryhard and play a multitude of hours a day achieving. Which, by the way, people also complain about. "Well how come those players who spend 10+ hours a day grinding out all these things gets to have those things?" Often times its the same people, sometimes very different people; how dare they thats not fair.

 

I use the "whining westerners" (your words not mine) perspective because it can often times directly boil down to that if you really want to be that simplistic about it. Take KR developed MMORPGs. They typically don't do so hot in the western market, BDO being one of the few that has actually been pretty successful here despite that. The usual reason for this? Perceived pay to win by the western audience. There is a reason why the pay to win argument doesn't hold so much weight in the KR region for those games and its typically because those players tend to not care about needing to grind as an alternative to paying money. They will do the work and put in the time. Lost Ark being a recent one, people in the west will 100% call it pay to win or say it has pay to win, they already have in many places, yet its still the most popular MMORPG over in KR because despite those aspects people perceive as "pay to win" you can still achieve the same thing by playing more and for longer. Specifically with Lost Ark you can either pay money to speed up your gear enhancing or make several alt characters (can be different classes) to funnel materials into your main; materials gained through playing the content in the game.

 

Spoiler

Just spoilering this because its more of a footnote to the Lost Ark example; the reason one might not consider this pay to win is that gear has literally no effect in the instanced, Ranked Arena PvP that Lost Ark has. The only thing you need equipped are your weapons and they have an interface that simply lets you allocate points into the stats that you want. Gear does affect PvE, of course, but honestly I'm not sure when people started to think of that as being a competition rather than being cooperative. Pretty much only WoW has rankings for that stuff.

 

Now like it or not there are cultural and societal differences that make games either succeed or be much less popular based on the region they are in. It can also affect how they are played or how players interact in them. Just taking GW2 as an example of this, the EU meta for PvP has consistently been different than the meta you see in NA in terms of team comps and build popularity. EU has also maintained a wildly better population in sPvP and WvW than NA has. These things are true for many MMORPGs currently out today. So yes, unfortunately it can boil down to "whining westerners" (again your words not mine) due to societal differences in any given gaming community based on region.

 

Want another example? KR accounts for games are tied to resident numbers or resident IDs. Now they obviously have infrastructure in place that does not allow these companies to disclose this information or use it maliciously (as do we), but that means if you get banned from one game that a company owns you are banned on all of them. So if you hack, exploit, or honestly do what you see a lot people here in the west do online you're gone from that game and any other game owned by that company. Here in the US a system like that would not fly. A lot of concern over privacy here in the US, freedoms and such, which is understandable but at the same time they are accessing things like Facebook, Twitter, Reddit, etc which all collect personal data for your searches, activity and otherwise and literally sell it to other companies.

 

I apologize for the lengthy post, but its a fairly lengthy topic to discuss.

[Keitaro Dragonheart.9047]

6 hours ago, Leo G.4501 said:

Ah, lumping your opposition under a label of "whining westerners". Two can play at that game. The individuals that tout GW2 are B2P and nothing more are the soft casual players that want to dictate their game experience rather than participate in it as a group. They want to "choose" what they do in the game and earn all the same reward. They'd be the ones to complain about some PvP bonus gear that they can't get from doing PvE stuff. 

 

It's not a worthless perspective but it's an ad hominem to assume people are pointing out the P2W features because of envy about bank spaces lol

If the shoe fits. There's literally no Pay to Win in this game, by any stretch of the imagination. The things people in this thread have called "Pay to Win" are downright hilarious; Bank Slots, Inventory Slots, Expansions, Elite Specs. The level of entitlement in this thread....

 

"I'm greedy and want everything for free" - Literally everyone calling GW2 P2W

Edited May 18, 2021 by Keitaro Dragonheart.9047

[Dondarrion.2748]

I think the only element I would find somewhat pay2win is the gem-to-gold conversion, but even that, it's not a big deal. Gw2 has one of the least p2w cash shops I've seen in MMOs.

[KryTiKaL.3125]

12 minutes ago, Dondarrion.2748 said:

I think the only element I would find somewhat pay2win is the gem-to-gold conversion, but even that, it's not a big deal. Gw2 has one of the least p2w cash shops I've seen in MMOs.

I want to preface this by saying I am by no means one of GW2s biggest supporters right now, especially not now, and will probably criticize ANet and this game more than I will praise it...

 

But what exactly is it that you're buying with the gold converted from gems that translates to anything "pay to win"? Gear is comparatively irrelevant on GW2 compared to practically any other MMORPG on the market. You barely even need Ascended gear and you don't "need" Legendaries for anything.

[lezbefriends.7516]

Just now, KryTiKaL.3125 said:

I want to preface this by saying I am by no means one of GW2s biggest supporters right now, especially not now, and will probably criticize ANet and this game more than I will praise it...

 

But what exactly is it that you're buying with the gold converted from gems that translates to anything "pay to win"? Gear is comparatively irrelevant on GW2 compared to practically any other MMORPG on the market. You barely even need Ascended gear and you don't "need" Legendaries for anything.

 

You don't *need* to do anything, does that meaning winning is not winning?

[KryTiKaL.3125]

2 minutes ago, Mortifera.6138 said:

 

You don't *need* to do anything, does that meaning winning is not winning?

Isn't that the point? What in GW2 translates from money to winning? Nothing. Thats what makes GW2 nowhere near "pay to win" because these aspects don't in any way translate towards "winning" anything. For "winning" to be a variable there must first be a competition to make it one. Its like someone trying to claim they "won" at blinking against another person and that person had no idea they were even competing over blinking, and also probably wondering why that was even happening in the first place. Extreme example, of course, but to be honest it probably illustrates how bananas some people are about these things.

 

Unless we're talking "Well technically games are trivial" and "its just game so you're not really winning anything anyway", "none of its important and you don't need to do it" which is just an irrelevant point to make. If that is the point you're trying to convey, of course its all trivial and of course its all just a game but doesn't that just make the whole pay to win argument equally as pointless if its all just nonsense and trivial anyway? At that point who cares, right?

 

To which I'd personally say; yeah exactly.

[lezbefriends.7516]

29 minutes ago, KryTiKaL.3125 said:

Isn't that the point? What in GW2 translates from money to winning? Nothing. Thats what makes GW2 nowhere near "pay to win" because these aspects don't in any way translate towards "winning" anything. For "winning" to be a variable there must first be a competition to make it one. Its like someone trying to claim they "won" at blinking against another person and that person had no idea they were even competing over blinking, and also probably wondering why that was even happening in the first place. Extreme example, of course, but to be honest it probably illustrates how bananas some people are about these things.

 

Unless we're talking "Well technically games are trivial" and "its just game so you're not really winning anything anyway", "none of its important and you don't need to do it" which is just an irrelevant point to make. If that is the point you're trying to convey, of course its all trivial and of course its all just a game but doesn't that just make the whole pay to win argument equally as pointless if its all just nonsense and trivial anyway? At that point who cares, right?

 

To which I'd personally say; yeah exactly.

But if everything is trivial, so is your argument that it's trivial, so why say anything at all?

[KryTiKaL.3125]

3 minutes ago, Mortifera.6138 said:

But if everything is trivial, so is your argument that it's trivial, so why say anything at all?

Thats the point I was trying to make to you. If your point was that "its all trivial anyway" then why even point that out? All you've done now is derail the discussion in another direction and contribute nothing to it.

[scerevisiae.1972]

I would say yes.

 

elite specs, numerous boosters and time-saving convenience items, buying gold directly... these are all pay to win.

 

if you can spend real money and get a time or combat benefit over someone who didn't spend any extra money then that is literally the definition of pay-to-win.

 

GW2 is not extreme pay-to-win but it is nonetheless clearly there in plain sight.

[Linken.6345]

1 hour ago, scerevisiae.1972 said:

I would say yes.

 

elite specs, numerous boosters and time-saving convenience items, buying gold directly... these are all pay to win.

 

if you can spend real money and get a time or combat benefit over someone who didn't spend any extra money then that is literally the definition of pay-to-win.

 

GW2 is not extreme pay-to-win but it is nonetheless clearly there in plain sight.

None of the combat boosters work in pvp.

In pve the guy with boosters help you kill so how is he winning?

 

Elite specs are part of expansions and noone have said expansions to continue to play the game were p2w before.

 

Please elaborate how time-saving convenience items and buying gold is p2w?

 

You bring up time so the unemployed guy being ableto play 16-18 hours a day is winning?

[Firebeard.1746]

It's potentially pay to progress, but I have to put a huge star next to that saying it's no where near the grind of other games if you're just looking at raw character power. Just do some festivals and turn profits, heck do ley line 5 minutes a day, sell the coin, level your professions and then craft that perfect ascended set & level cooking. If you don't have the living world seasons, you're looking at PVP, WvW and/or fractals for selectable stat trinkets. That's a little annoying but still doable.

Additionally, Anet showers people in free perks all the time. They're giving out living world seasons, which they normally sell once they're over, for free, for the second time since I came back in Spring of 2019. When they added templates, they gave everyone an additional gear template at no cost, essentially giving everyone the ability to gear up their characters for two different roles at once, and you still get 2 templates on every new character slot. How many companies do you know that are this generous with their players, that whenever they add a feature in the cash shop, they also give it out for free? Or like when they decided to bundle HoT with PoF, they game me a free cosmetic as a thank-you for buying the previous expansion. I would say Anet isn't greedy at all, maybe to a fault, but I don't want them to change anything. I just want players to be more generous and realize what they have.

With gem to gold conversions you can accelerate legendary acquisition processes, but even then, it's only really weapons. Remember legendaries are equal in power to ascended gear, and are a combination of convenience/cosmetic/build tinkering tool (this ability does confer minor advantages in some game modes, but it's far from a determining factor). Trinkets and armor all take achieves from various game modes or game mode specific currency that can't be bought with gold. Even some Gen2 weapons need achieves (and heck, doing Gen2 requires masteries and you can't purchase core tyria with gold either). The only asterisk here is raids, but even clears aren't sold through normal means. You have to do deals with people based on trust, the game doesn't naturally support trading them or the items acquired through them, you have to pay for carries. I wouldn't shell out until after each kill. And purchasing legendaries in this way is thousands of dollars, but I assure you people using raw cash to do this, is probably extremely rare. And they're not getting over the top power you'd see in other games for the same price.

I do spend money in the gem store and on convenience items, but anet did a good job of making me believe I was doing it because I enjoy the game, not because I had to buy them to enjoy the game.

I don't consider elite specs pay to win as the game has always been a buy to play model, I kind of see F2P PVP players whining about that not really grasping the business model of the game. PVE players are locked out of more recent zones and all the goodies they have. The F2P is supposed to lure you to buy the game in its entirety, and compared to other games, what you get with that one-time purchase, is freaking amazing.

Edited May 19, 2021 by Firebeard.1746

[Dondarrion.2748]

13 hours ago, KryTiKaL.3125 said:

I want to preface this by saying I am by no means one of GW2s biggest supporters right now, especially not now, and will probably criticize ANet and this game more than I will praise it...

 

But what exactly is it that you're buying with the gold converted from gems that translates to anything "pay to win"? Gear is comparatively irrelevant on GW2 compared to practically any other MMORPG on the market. You barely even need Ascended gear and you don't "need" Legendaries for anything.

 

I know, which is why I put that IF I had to admit to anything being pay2win - if at all - it would be that you can pay real cash to get in-game gold, and in-game gold is what will get you pretty much everything if "winning" equals to having tangible items to show for it.. i.e. buying all legendaries.

 

Again - I don't even think it's an issue - but it's the only thing in the gem store that I would think let someone pay their way to endgame goals. You can't pay for power since it's not an issue in GW2, and you can't pay for skill so you won't be able to pay for an advantage to become top dog in pvp or a legend in wvw... you could probably pay to be carried through all raids and get all those achievements etc, but again... not something I think of as winning.

[Goettel.4389]

It's a win to play, all I know

[Firebeard.1746]

On 4/14/2021 at 3:41 AM, kharmin.7683 said:

And yet, fashion wars is subjective. One might find another player's fashion to be the spot-on, epitome of what a character should look like in GW2 whereas other players may not. Who is to judge and say that one, single player has "won" GW2 Fashion Wars? And if they win, what exactly do they win that is unattainable by the rest of the entire playerbase?

My favorite fashion wars are people that stack ridiculously expensive infusions but it obviously looks like garbage. Like any sane person who didn't know what those infusions were worth would literally ask themselves "Wtf is wrong with this person"?

Edited May 20, 2021 by Firebeard.1746

[XerMeLL.6042]

omg, the only thing you'll pay for this game is the LOOKS! 

[scerevisiae.1972]

20 hours ago, Linken.6345 said:

None of the combat boosters work in pvp.

In pve the guy with boosters help you kill so how is he winning?

 

Elite specs are part of expansions and noone have said expansions to continue to play the game were p2w before.

 

Please elaborate how time-saving convenience items and buying gold is p2w?

 

You bring up time so the unemployed guy being ableto play 16-18 hours a day is winning?

it's "pay to win", not "pay to win pvp" - all boosts and time-convenience items allow you to "win" over someone who spends the equivalent amount of time and no money at all.

as i said, GW2 is a _mild_ P2Win game, but the P2W is definitely there.

[Linken.6345]

26 minutes ago, scerevisiae.1972 said:

it's "pay to win", not "pay to win pvp" - all boosts and time-convenience items allow you to "win" over someone who spends the equivalent amount of time and no money at all.

as i said, GW2 is a _mild_ P2Win game, but the P2W is definitely there.

Uhm how are they winning over you when you can hit the same monsters and be rewarded aswell.

 

Its not like we got mob taging in this game.

[Vayne.8563]

1 hour ago, scerevisiae.1972 said:

it's "pay to win", not "pay to win pvp" - all boosts and time-convenience items allow you to "win" over someone who spends the equivalent amount of time and no money at all.

as i said, GW2 is a _mild_ P2Win game, but the P2W is definitely there.

Getting to 80 faster isn't winning, because it's not the goal of the game.  Arguably everyone who buys the expansion has a level 80 booster, so I can get to 80 before anyone else can.

Cash shop boosters can be bought with in game gold anyway. Thus not pay to win.