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what kind of people play pay2win games?
bishbosh
Member Posts: 388
the fact these games exist suggests there is large number of people that pay2win.
1.do they just impulse buy and not realise how badly they are being ripped off. Some people aparentyl spend $100s or even $1000s of dollars on these games. they could have been playing sub games.
2.do they play these games with the intent of purchasing advantage so they can be the best.
Comments
Can you name a pay to win game ? Or are you making the assumption that all that are free to play games have some component in them that gives a significant playing advantage ?
edit: needed a verb...
I think there are varying degrees of the spending money on gaming. Some people spend money here and there for companion pets, others spend it on ingame currency, still others spend it on items that enhance/improve their gameplay, and I even read an article about a man who mortgaged his home to pay the developer to create ingame real estate for him (which he then sold for real money). I think he made a profit, but that's the extreme end of the scale to me. If I'm not mistaken, the game was Second Life. Anyway, the P2W mentality seems to be largely embraced by the casual gamers who have money to spend, and that's how they enjoy spending it.
Paying 60$ for a game and hoping the fun lasts more than one week is any better?
Any Nexon game (MapleStory, DFO, DragonNest, Vindictus, etc.).
@OP
I often spend $100s a month on P2Ws. When I buy, it is because I am enjoying the game and something that costs the real-life money will further enhance my experience. It may be more impusle, since there isn't much thought between when I see the item/expansion to when I buy it, but I never go into a game actually wanting to buy everything at whatever the cost.
I [b]would[/b] rather play a subscription based MMO, but I have yet to find one I can spend all my time on. All the big ones are bland, no-choice themeparks with tab-targetting and intensive grinds.
Don't try to cathegorize people, you end up with Antisemithism and sorts. No really, it's bad.
I played top AAA+ titles, payed for them, now I play RealmOfTheMadGod - which is kind of an Free2Play MMO.
What I am trying to say is, you could not classify me - so will you not be able to classify others. Statistics are for the lulz.
-allods
-perfect world + most of its games
btw i never mentioned anything about f2p or made any assumptions. i just said pay2win (trying to avoid naming games to prevent fanbois from getting upset but you made me)
Actually a lot of "P2W" games have a large base of younger gamers (teens) who use their parent's money (don't have any hard data, but going under the assumption of what I've seen on forums of such of said games) to fund their habit. They generally have no concept of money so they are more willing to throw out money. I've played a few F2P games with some P2W elements and the majority of the "whales" (players who spent small fortunes on the cash shop) were children when I asked about their age they were generally 16 or younger.
Most F2P don't require you to spend money and aren't pay to win. In fact, the trend on focusing more on quality and less on cash grabs seems to be increasing over the years. The ones I find most notorious are ones from certain publishers I avoid (Gpotato being the worst offender I've seen, and Nexon is bad also). Many browser based facebook-esque casual games are the worst, where shelling out money is the only way to get certain progression done in them. They tend to make progression really easy in the beginning of the game (and free) offering you taste of cash shop items then increasing make it more difficult without paying for the game to the point where you NEED to pay for any progression.
the things is lots of people can be categorized. i dont see amything wrong with this as long as judge on them on an individual basis.
eg
*sees blonde with fake tan and daisy dukes *
most likely stupid/useless according to stereotypes but i will not categorize he just yet
"blonde picks up phone "zomg haanah can u beleive that X did Y on "insert generic prime time american sitcom here" last night"
ha looks like she fits the stereotype
well most f2p games are just really really really bad WOW style mmorpgs that just cost more.
Joo got proof of your claims there Mr. Rogers? lol
I met someone in Maple Story that said he/she had spent over 3,000 dollars in the first 2 months they played the game..... There were a couple of other games where I met players that had spent alot but I dont remember the games offhand...... Generally speaking though there does seem to be a certain personality type that pays ridiculous money for some of these games......ITs probably no different than some people who spend thousands more on a car, a pair of shoes, a dinner, clothes, whatever.....Some people have zero sense of how to handle money and some will spend every dime they have to either try to impress others or try to be better than others.
Sad people.
They're the easiest targets though, so...
I don't think the amount of money has anything to do with it.
It's all about what GAMES are all about. There is an old saying that the only time when a begger can be greater than the king is while thay're playing chess... and this is equally sweet for both the beggar and the king. The moment RL circumstance begins to influence the outcome of the game, the spell is broken and the game stops being a game.
The very point of games, the reason why we play them is that they divorce us from the mores of our everyday life and status. Games which are dependent on your social circumstance are pointless and useless as games, pretty much by definition. They might be called "entertainment" of sorts but they are not really games because they do not fulfill one of the basic psycho-social functions of the phenomena we call "games."
I'd never play a game that has a "P2W" component, not because I'm cheap but because I can see no point or entertainment value whatsoever in that. I'll pay a 100 $ a month sub for a game that really entertains me, but if i see that someone, including me can get 1% edge over the others for just one measly cent, I'm gone. It's not a game anymore, it's an ego whorehouse and I'm out.
It has less to do with the inability to handle money and more to do with the personality of the person IMO. People that can't control their impulses, much like gamblers or even a drug addicts, are the ones who spend all that money. If it wasn't in a video game, it would be somewhere else. Many f2p publishers know this and they prey on those people. F2p publishers have figured out that only a small percentage of people actually spend money on f2p games, and a very tiny percentage of people are the ones doing most of the spending, so some of them really take advantage of said people. In the end, it doesn't really matter because it is their money. As long as they aren't hurting the people around by spending the money it doesn't much matter. It sucks that people support this predatory payment model, but IMO it will eventually die out. The f2p market is oversaturareted and will hopefully thin itself out at some point...hopefully.
People who win the lottery
DAM U LUCKY PPL!
Addiction and the need to compete.
Velika: City of Wheels: Among the mortal races, the humans were the only one that never built cities or great empires; a curse laid upon them by their creator, Gidd, forced them to wander as nomads for twenty centuries...
I dont' know about other game. So I can only speak for my game, Atlantica Online, it's a Nexon game.
First of all, most people don't pay any money. They play completely free, no string attached. In Atlantica Online, they sell power, aka pay 2 win. So really you don't have to pay at all. There are some free to play MMORPG sell content, which in that case you almost have to pay to progress.
And the reality is the best geared people in Atlantica Online are usually people who dont' pay at all. They are people who just play alot. The best gear in Atlantica online cost like 60,000$ to get. No one have that kind of money. There are a few selected few who spend that money. But in reality is very few can spend that much. So what happen is the best gear people are actually usually the people who play too much, like 8+ hour everyday for 2 years. Even if you spend 1000$, you won't actually improve your gear that much.
So my conclusion is actually most of people dont' pay at all in pay2win game. The game is supported by the few who spend alot of money every month. And even if it's pay2win, you can still compete, in the sense you can still have the best gear. You just have to work(play alot more) to get it, while the pay2win people can just buy their way to the top.
Most of the people I met who spend lots of money are just people who have jobs. The way I see it is those guy work long shift everyday in real life. In the same time they are addicted to video game, so they don't mind using a fraction of their pay to compete in video game.
Stupidity and pathetic lack of anything resembling self-esteem, more likely.
I had thought of it once. I spend a lot of time on work and make good money. If I can't spend the hours grinding for gear with the free time others have I could easy drop a few bucks a month to cover the percieved difference. The only problem is that is not how it works at all and I just don't care
I would rather work my way through a game.
It is sort of like the first time I tried a cheat code in the 90s. . ruined the game.
Wa min God! Se æx on min heafod is!
I don't think people go into a game thinking it's pay to win. If a game is fun enough to warrant further playing some people will pay for those higher levels. Although at the time they are thinking 'oh man I get to play more!' the terrible side effect is that it begins to separate that person form the general population.
Now that's not the only reason people will pay2win. The competitive nature of some players will make them think 'oh snap I want the character that guy is using!' and at the time they may only be thinking about beating ONE person as opposed to paying to win over large amounts of the community.
Some people set out to pay to be better, sneakier games have you pay over 100 dollars to get to max lvl.
People are not thinking about power gaming at the time, they are thinking about their personal level of enjoyment. This inadvertently takes away from the poorer community. Hell if I wasn't thinking about it for this post I would never have come to this conclusion.
Play for fun. Play to win. Play for perfection. Play with friends. Play in another world. Why do you play?
No idea and I don't want to know tbh. There is demand for them so companies do them and make a fortune on them as well.
I just avoid games like that even if that mean avoiding playing really alot of games these days (and propably even more in future).
If there is possiblity to get in game things instantly then it is pointless for me to play. Like using cheat codes ,but those are paid ones lol
I did say I didn't have any hard data and I was going under the assumption of my experience on the forums and people who I've grouped with in said games (who were using power items).
People with a lot of disposable income or their parents credit card. Also Pay 2 Win is fairly popular in Asia.
Bren
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beat();
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The pay2win people I met are pretty much exclusively to people who have a job. I really never met any pay2win people who are kids. But to me that's probably because more people are willing to admit they bought the money out of their own pocket, not from their parents.
And I think that have alot to do with the game itself. The games I play, you really need to spend 1000$ plus to compete. I dont' think most parents will let their kids spend that much.
I don't know if you're talking about all F2P games, or just the ones that allow you to buy some form of power in the game.
I've actually noticed little of the 'kid using mom's card' in most. I find that it's usually the adults that are willing to put in a lot of money into one of these games. When I played Spiral Knights, I remember a cool guy from reddit who put $600 into the game over the years he has played (before the Steam launch, for sure). Maybe they just like the game but don't have the time to play as much.
That said, F2P games aren't completely innocent. They do things like obfuscating the amount you spent (by using a premium currency - Turbine Points for example) in order to not remind you about the money you've spent. One step into a casino and you can see this in effect - most machines display the amount of 'credits' you have. If you sit at a quarter machine and stick a $20 in, you have 80 'credits' - to some, it certainly feels better when you're playing with 'credits' and not 'your real money'. You also feel quite rich when you put that $20 in a penny machine and have a whopping 2000 credits!
Some F2P games carefully plan how they sell points. For example, a point pack might be $5 for 50 points, which isn't enough to buy that 60 point item. So you buy the $10 package for 110 points and you buy the item - now you have 50 points. So when you want to buy that 60 point item again, you have to give them more money.
It all depends on the game, in the end. Some games can have harsh models, and some have more lenient ones. While Turbine games use the cash shop to gate content, some games use it to gate gear progression in the form of +1's. Find a game you enjoy with a model you can tolerate, and you will be more willing to put down money. Simple.