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- Posts: 187
- Threads: 28
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2025-11-01(Sat)15:24:12
No.
58
<section>Starting this thread to at least catalogue ideas for how we can break down "pay-to-win" into less vague + more clear types.
It started with a poll I saw asking: "Do you agree that Pay for Convenience in online games is also a form of Pay to Win? [Yay / Nay]"
"Yay" won by a landslide.
At the very least, I know for a fact that there is what I would label as "pay-to-skip".
Specifically paying IRL money (that's the most common currency anyway) to skip some process that would otherwise take a long amount of time.</section>
- Posts: 187
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2025-11-01(Sat)15:26:51
No.
59
<section><span class="post-quote"><a class="post-backlink" href="#58">>>58</a></span>
Warframe is one example off the top of my head, of "pay-to-skip".
All the Warframes / Equipment / etc are available for purchase + immediate use with the "Platinum" premium currency - obtained via paying IRL money, or in-game trading (in-game trading of items is another angle I want to think about).
The usual option for acquiring new Warframes/Equipments
- Purchase Blueprint with Credits
- Do levels to acquire enough resources for the Blueprint
- Start building the item in your Foundry, and it will be ready after some amount of IRL time has passed, though you can spend some Platinum to reduce the amount of time you have to spend waiting for one item.</section>
- Posts: 187
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2025-11-01(Sat)15:36:16
No.
60
<section><span class="post-quote"><a class="post-backlink" href="#58">>>58</a></span>
War Thunder lets you purchase top-tier vehicles and play with them WITHOUT going through the game's basics.
And since top-tiers fight against other top-tiers, it's very likely you've bitten off way more than you can chew, and will get chewed up and spat out, a lot.
That and you drag your team down.<span class="post-quote">
>It's way too common to see new players who buy a top tier premium only to be complete garbage at the game and they're generally on your team because fuck you</span>
This very much falls into "pay-to-skip".
You're skipping things you really shouldn't skip: learning how to play the game and the finer techniques, and the failing + dusting yourself off to try again.</section>
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2025-11-02(Sun)21:17:24
No.
61
<section>There's just the one game I play that does things like this, holdover from facebook been going for 16 years now, you still have to play some but if you're willing to put the money down you could have a top level account with most of the best gear and such in very short order.
Pretty much the only way you can get into the higher ranks in any of the events that run on it is to buy energy refills and such, I get that it's a free to play game but it would be nice if they didn't center every event around the whales</section>
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2025-12-11(Thu)14:13:11
No.
136
<section><span class="post-quote"><a class="post-backlink" href="#59">>>59</a></span><span class="post-quote">
<a class="post-backlink" href="#60">>>60</a></span>
Probably the underlying idea behind both is that:
you're spending MONEY so as to avoid spending TIME.
E.g. Time spent on gathering resources; time spent on doing runs to get it to drop if it's a rare drop; time spent waiting...
"money-for-time" or something, with spending real-world money being a common case.
It would make sense to call it that in a situation where... the thing you're spending money to get truly cannot be achieved in any faster way that you the player have a high agency/control over.
Also I think it helps that "money-for-time" is neutral by itself, and could be further broken down into "spending real-world currency" vs "spending in-game currency".
We can all agree on "in-game money for time" being less of an ethical issue compared to "real-world money for time".</section>
- Posts: 187
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2025-12-24(Wed)13:56:29
No.
139
<section><span class="post-quote"><a class="post-backlink" href="#136">>>136</a></span>
Someone could say that in Devil May Cry 5's case the DLC to purchase 100,000 to 1,000,000 Red Orbs counts as money-for-time.
However, just before the 13th mission (out of 20, so around half-way through the game) you get Dante's "Faust Hat" ranged weapon, which is a risk-reward weapon that uses Red Orbs as ammo, but if used skillfully can let you farm huge amounts of Red Orbs.
So mastering usage of the Faust Hat would circumvent needing to purchase the "X00,000 Red Orbs" DLC. The DLC item itself falls into "money-for-time", but it's clearly possible to never need it.</section>
- Posts: 187
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2026-01-01(Thu)04:29:56
No.
140
<section><span class="post-quote"><a class="post-backlink" href="#136">>>136</a></span>
Path of Exile 2's gambling vendor is a very good example of "in-game money for time".
The Gambling vendor does not sell specific items; it instead presents various "categories of items", and you can spend Gold to pull out one random item of that specific category.
It's basically spending money to purchase a random drop, except you also have the privilege of specifying the specific category.
Though there's a limited amount of purchases you can do from this type of Vendor; the only way to increase that amount is to find and kill Unique monsters.
It helps that the only way to earn Gold is via playing the game and killing monsters, opening chests, all in-game stuff.</section>
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2026-03-07(Sat)10:16:28
No.
161
<section><span class="post-quote"><a class="post-backlink" href="#58">>>58</a></span>
I am a bit of an MMO junkie, so one I see a lot that hasn't been touched upon in this thread exactly, is players buying gear items using real money.
There is obviously a lot of in-game money for time conversions when it comes to buying gear; this more applies to drops from game dungeons, raids, or sometimes "high rank" PvP.
Designers see these items as a challenge to obtain, meant only for skilled players, and sometimes make them as practically peerless items (for a few months, at least). They're often much better than what a player could buy with in-game money.
However, unlike games where you're trading either real or fake money for time, this is trading for skilled play. There is a huge market on several games for buying "carries", as in, you are paying a skilled guild to boost your character through a difficult raid, so you have an associated special achievement, gear, or mount. These guilds then take a real money fee. Players who don't want to, or cannot, commit the time or 'personal training' to reach these difficult areas of the game can buy it from other players.
A few games notice these kinds of trades among players and implement systems in their stores to substitute. In a more straightforward money-to-time transactions, many MMORPG started to include a "boost" that sends you to max level, and/or completes story content for you. Before this, players might pay another person to level their character.
However, most developers are less keen to sell gear items - the most they do is enable RMT (buying in-game money with real money) that lets you buy slightly lower level gear, like crafted gear, from other players. This can be disastrous for in-game economies. Also, these items are generally intended as starter gear or catch-up mechanics for returning players, and are slightly worse than the best available from difficult content; and even when they are comparable in stats, players buying carries are usually interested in either bragging rights, or PvP.
I'll continue on the PvP part in a new post.</section>
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2026-03-07(Sat)10:23:36
No.
162
<section><span class="post-quote"><a class="post-backlink" href="#161">>>161</a></span>
Presumably you have heard of, for example, a League of Legends player buying an account with a high MMR ranking, just so they can boast about their high rank.
I assume many people here heard of a similar scenario of Elon Musk playing Path of Exile... and it was blatantly obvious he'd purchased a carry, or an account from someone else.
In these cases, people often want a rating achievement (in MMORPGs with achievements) or a public-facing profile with a high rating that makes them "look cool". In MMORPG it can also translate to gear items or vanity items exclusive to these high ratings.
In less common cases, players believe they are "stuck in MMR hell" (or, stuck with bad teammates) and need a "boost" to get them out, and from then on they would have better teammates that allow them to reach higher levels. This belief is mostly false... and a good enough player can easily solo-queue their way to higher MMR. Especially in games that reward higher MMR values to people that contribute more to the game (more kills, objective captures, etc..)
In MMORPG PvP scenarios, there is an additional consideration: the gear you farm from the game does indeed make you a more powerful player and makes wins easier. This is one of the worst pay-to-win scenarios possible and perhaps the one that frustrates other players the most. Unlike in War Thunder (post #60) the upgrades can be very direct and don't necessarily involve a skill gap in skipped tutorials.
Buying gear items with real money is a long standing feature on WoW private servers, and it's motivating to enough players to fund these otherwise free servers, especially when a player can instantly buy eg. a high-rank weapon and bring it into PvP against new players for an edge.
However, even when it's not directly supported by the game's publisher, it can be possible players buy this gear by getting another player to use their account, by "carry" in team PvP, or even by using sophisticated bots to play better than humans can.</section>
- Posts: 8
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2026-03-07(Sat)10:42:47
No.
163
<section><span class="post-quote"><a class="post-backlink" href="#58">>>58</a></span>
A very popular one today: specific character unlocks, or gacha games (and also League of Legends)!
I would be remiss not to mention this is how Trading Card Games have been working, long before gacha and large-roster PvP videogames like these took off in popularity. So perhaps I should be calling it "TCG P2W" instead. (:
Gacha is almost a case of overgrown DLC, where you're paying for tiny parts of the game in little bundles. Plus gambling.
Of course, some games are kinder than others in terms of the characters you can buy through gameplay, vs. with real money.
League as an example: (take with a grain of salt as I haven't played in 15 years)
when a new character is released, this character is often extremely powerful at release, and quite expensive for in-game currency, that you would have to be playing about as much as a full-time job if you wanted to buy every single new release character. The imbalance prompts more and more players to buy the champion with real money, so they can win their matches, and later (when they want to release the next one) the character is nerfed to fit in with the rest of the character roster.
I've heard that due to this repeatedly happening over the game's lifespan, it also causes power creep, making the older champions basically useless compared to the recent years' releases.
This is similar to gacha game character draws; you might not be able to beat the level you're currently stuck on, *but* if you happen to draw that one, really powerful character that has a high droprate, you can progress in the game!
Basically, it's taking League's system example above, and making it even more unfair since the draws are random.
Interestingly, in TCGs, you can gamble on the cheaper booster packs, or shell out a bit extra money for specific cards from a card shop. (If you were to keep buying booster packs, you would probably spend more money anyway.) But gacha games generally don't offer individual sales of characters at all.</section>