Debate: PokeMMO become Pay to Win or No

[MukutsixLisana]

Hello to all
I open this debate because I and many people are wondering if PokeMMO has taken the Pay to Win path.
I would like everyone to be able to give solid ideas in order to clarify newcomers who want to get started.
For example the Lure system, Is it a start of Pay to Win or is it a misconception.
I was able to understand that with the Lure you have much less chance of encountering Starter Pokemon and that the majority of rare Pokemon are only accessible with these Lures.
This is why I open this debate which aims to clarify the situation of PokeMMO
I await constructive answers thank you 🙂

[McTermi]

34 minutes ago, MukutsixLisana said:

Hello to all
I open this debate because I and many people are wondering if PokeMMO has taken the Pay to Win path.
I would like everyone to be able to give solid ideas in order to clarify newcomers who want to get started.
For example the Lure system, Is it a start of Pay to Win or is it a misconception.
I was able to understand that with the Lure you have much less chance of encountering Starter Pokemon and that the majority of rare Pokemon are only accessible with these Lures.
This is why I open this debate which aims to clarify the situation of PokeMMO
I await constructive answers thank you 🙂

just dont use it, problem solved

[MukutsixLisana]

very constructive response

[SacredDiver]

I feel like as long as it's possible to buy reward point vouchers on the GTL I wouldn't exactly call it Pay to Win, or rather, the point that I'm trying to convey is that it's not any "more Pay to Win" than it was. You can get anything that a person that spends real money on reward points can for in-game currency, which is usually not the case in a lot of games. A person who spends real money can also sell their gift shop items for Pokéyen on the other hand and I feel like nothing about that has changed with the Lure system. Though don't get me wrong, it does make your life a lot easier if you make regular donations to the game, the reason I'm not calling it Pay to Win is that gift shop items are also accessible to people who don't.

I understand that a lot of people might think that the Lure system is a step towards that path but I don't really see it that way since there's an affordable non-premium option in every Pokémart. Both a person that pays real money and a person that has grinded their Pokéyen have access to both premium and regular Lures. The premium option seems to be more of a luxury given its price and I feel like the extra perks of the Premium Lures aren't that huge, just like the very slightly higher shiny odds and the extra exp/faster hatch times that you can get with Donator Status.

I think there's always gonna be a bit of a pay-to-win aspect if you can trade your reward points for Pokéyen on the GTL but it's really not that significant and makes the game enjoyable for "non-payers" as well.

[Spixi]

I mean, it was pay to win already wasn't it?
You can buy shop items or vouchers, sell them, and then get any Pokemon you'd like from the Global Trade Link. 
The good side is is that you can also farm money to buy vouchers, so it goes both ways,

whether this is pay to win to someone is mostly personal opinion i think.

Edited December 27, 2022 by Spixi

[OGQT]

24 minutes ago, Spixi said:

I mean, it was pay to win already wasn't it?
You can buy shop items or vouchers, sell them, and then get any Pokemon you'd like from the Global Trade Link. 
The good side is is that you can also farm money to buy vouchers, so it goes both ways,

whether this is pay to win to someone is mostly personal opinion i think.

Yeah. Pay to win would imply that you'd have an unfair advantage over others by having irl money. There isn't really anything ingame that can't be done with just in-game money, it'll just take more of your time. I'd say it's Pay To Chill moreso than Pay To Win, but that's just my opinion.

 

[Jgaw]

yo bro, money brings money, deal with it .. life is like that
don't pay and try to win .. accept that fact
good luck
merry christmas

currency matters :D

[Sebat]

just buy rp vouchers in gtl and you have your free method...

[MightyMichele]

PokeMMO only accepts donations. This idea would never allow make a fully paid resource available only.

 

I know lots of friends who didn't pay anything and are super hot players, but I believe everyone should consider donate for help the server keep up, at least on every events donate some 

 

 

 

Edited December 28, 2022 by MightyMichele

[jhonesath]

Fyi, i can still get 1M pokeyen in one day by rematching gym, e4, and trainers. With that pokeyen, i can buy some RP.

 

Does a pay to win game will let you earn that much in one day? You decide.

[OGQT]

1 hour ago, jhonesath said:

Fyi, i can still get 1M pokeyen in one day by rematching gym, e4, and trainers. With that pokeyen, i can buy some RP.

 

Does a pay to win game will let you earn that much in one day? You decide.

In a Pay2Win game it wouldn't matter even if you did make 1M in a day, because the most OP items/pokemon would be behind a irl paywall. PokeMMO doesn't hide anything behind an irl paywall, just makes it so that if you do have irl money, you can have an *easier* time in the game, but doesn't make you somehow superior to anyone, or give you access to things others can't access. I think some people have a warped idea of what Pay2Win actually is.

[gbwead]

Urban Dictionary Definition of Pay to Win:
 

Quote

Games that:
1) let you buy better gear or allow you to make better items then everyone else at a faster rate
and
2) then makes the game largely unbalanced even for people who have skill in the game without paying.

For 1)
Does PokeMMO allow players to pay in order to get better Pokemons at a faster rate? Yes, absolutely.

In order to get a 5x31 Competitive Mon, it takes several hours farming, grinding and breeding. With your credit card, you can purchase Reward Points, sell those on the GTL and then buy any Competitive Mon you want in a couple of minutes. There is no question that the PokeMMO players that pay will be advtanged over the ones that do not pay.

 

For 2)
Is the game largely unbalanced even for people who have skill in the game without paying? Yes the game is unbalanced, but not because some players are paying and others are not. The game is unbalanced because it's an MMO. A player that farms and grinds will have the resources to compete. A player that doesn't farm or grind won't have the resources to compete. Skills are secondary to grinding in this game and that's how it is for any MMO. These games are by design competitively unbalanced since skills are the secondary factor when determining who will win.

My point is that, since PokeMMO respects the first Pay to Win criteria, but not the second one, this means imo that PokeMMO is partially a Pay to Win game.

Edited December 27, 2022 by gbwead

[OGQT]

4 minutes ago, gbwead said:

Urban Dictionary Definition of Pay to Win:
 

For 1)
Does PokeMMO allow players to pay in order to get better Pokemons at a faster rate? Yes, absolutely.

In order to get a 5x31 Competitive Mon, it takes several hours farming, grinding and breeding. With your credit card, you can purchase Reward Points, sell those on the GTL and then buy any Competitive Mon you want in a couple of minutes. There is no question that the PokeMMO players that pay will be advtanged over the ones that do not pay.

 

For 2)
Is the game largely unbalanced even for people who have skill in the game without paying? Yes the game is unbalanced, but not because some players are paying and others are not. The game is unbalanced because it's an MMO. A player that farms and grinds will have the resources to compete. A player that doesn't farm or grind won't have the resources to compete. Skills are secondary to grinding in this game and that's how it is for any MMO. These games are by design competitively unbalanced since skills are the secondary factor when determining who will win.

My point is that, since PokeMMO respects the first Pay to Win criteria, but not the second one, this means imo that PokeMMO partially a Pay to Win game.

Bro, did you really post a definition from Urban Dictionary? At least use an actual dictionary definition if you want to sound smart. Like I said before above, it's not pay to win because you don't get any advantage over other players in getting things they can't just by having irl money. Does it make some things faster? Sure. But it doesn't take the option from those players that don't have irl money to spend. They'll just have to grind more, take a bit more time. It's a convenience moreso than Pay to win

[Mugii]

pagar no te garantiza la victoria solo ser mas rico no ganar. para ganar hay que tener habilidad puedes tener 5b y tirarle terremoto a charizard. creo que ya rajais por rajar. 

[gbwead]

12 minutes ago, OGQT said:

Bro, did you really post a definition from Urban Dictionary? At least use an actual dictionary definition if you want to sound smart. Like I said before above, it's not pay to win because you don't get any advantage over other players in getting things they can't just by having irl money. Does it make some things faster? Sure. But it doesn't take the option from those players that don't have irl money to spend. They'll just have to grind more, take a bit more time. It's a convenience moreso than Pay to win

There is no actual definition of pay to win. It's a gaming concept and Urban Dictionary is litteraly the first thing that appears on Google when you type it.

 

I'm entitled to my opinion on the matter and I don't know why you would think you are the authority on what defines pay to win and what does not.

 

I apologize if I sound smart, I didn't mean to make you feel belittled.

 

Edited December 27, 2022 by gbwead

[LeZenor]

18 minutes ago, OGQT said:

Bro, did you really post a definition from Urban Dictionary? At least use an actual dictionary definition if you want to sound smart. Like I said before above, it's not pay to win because you don't get any advantage over other players in getting things they can't just by having irl money. Does it make some things faster? Sure. But it doesn't take the option from those players that don't have irl money to spend. They'll just have to grind more, take a bit more time. It's a convenience moreso than Pay to win

I dunno man, urban dictionnary or not, it's pretty close to how I would define pay to win personally lol and it doesn't make his arguments less valid

[jhonesath]

1 hour ago, OGQT said:

In a Pay2Win game it wouldn't matter even if you did make 1M in a day, because the most OP items/pokemon would be behind a irl paywall. PokeMMO doesn't hide anything behind an irl paywall, just makes it so that if you do have irl money, you can have an *easier* time in the game, but doesn't make you somehow superior to anyone, or give you access to things others can't access. I think some people have a warped idea of what Pay2Win actually is.

I just want to say that farming in pokemmo is easy. Thats why im not consider pokemmo as pay2win. Not even close tbh.

 

In pay2win game, base on my experience, farming is kinda difficult. And no matter how much we farm, we never get into the same level as players who pay. 

[OGQT]

1 hour ago, jhonesath said:

I just want to say that farming in pokemmo is easy. Thats why im not consider pokemmo as pay2win. Not even close tbh.

 

In pay2win game, base on my experience, farming is kinda difficult. And no matter how much we farm, we never get into the same level as players who pay. 

My point exactly. In PokeMMO, spending irl money might make you breed comps faster, for example, but if you're dog** at PvP, it won't give you an advantage over someone who doesn't spend irl money. If spending irl money to breed a Magikarp, for example, gave you the ability to change it's stats to whatever you wanted, then yes it would be Pay2WIN

[Doctor]

I don't think it's pay to win, but the lures are an absolutely horrible mistake. Instead of just boosting the chance of getting starters or something like that, they've decided to gatekeep them behind a paywall, doesn't matter if it's with in-game currency or not. It's a cheap move, the only things behind said paywall were vanities until now (and Training Link, but that's a pretty specific tool so it didn't matter that much), and now they've taken content that was available for 10 years from us just to do a cash grab. The "now noobs will value shiny starters!" excuse is just another poor attempt at justifying and doing gatekeeping, btw. It's just a cheap move and if you agree with content being taken from the game and put behind a paywall you're enabling them to do it with more content in the future, and setting a dangerous precedent.

[caioxlive13]

Also, about the lure, i will comment the exactly thing i commented on other thread. Premium lures have advantage over normal lures? Yes. But, the advantages don't justify you pay more than 50x price of a regular lure. The secret shiny rate is ridiculous, increase in 25% but you see the rolls before talk? it's a 1/16 roll when you find a shiny, that it will be secret shiny. and the rolls for shiny are 1/30000, and aren't increased by lures. 8% for found a lure encounter? Let's say you find one encounter for each 3 steps with the lure normal and 2 with premium, let's compare 5x premier lures that you buy with 450000 pokeyens(current estimated price for 200 RP), and 300 regular lures that you buy with same amount of money: 

Steps:
5x 400 = 2000 Steps of premier lure
300x 250 = 75000 steps of lure

2000/2 = 1000 encounters
75000/3 = 25000 encounters

8% of 1000 = 80 Lure encounters

5% of 25000 = 1250 Lure encounters

Well, who is the pay to win here? Absolutely insane how premier lure don't compensate, it need to be selled 100 unitys for 200 RP to really compensate.

[SacredDiver]

54 minutes ago, Doctor said:

I don't think it's pay to win, but the lures are an absolutely horrible mistake. Instead of just boosting the chance of getting starters or something like that, they've decided to gatekeep them behind a paywall, doesn't matter if it's with in-game currency or not. It's a cheap move, the only things behind said paywall were vanities until now (and Training Link, but that's a pretty specific tool so it didn't matter that much), and now they've taken content that was available for 10 years from us just to do a cash grab. The "now noobs will value shiny starters!" excuse is just another poor attempt at justifying and doing gatekeeping, btw. It's just a cheap move and if you agree with content being taken from the game and put behind a paywall you're enabling them to do it with more content in the future, and setting a dangerous precedent.

I don't think it's such a horrible mistake personally. Each of the lure-exclusive Pokémon aren't supposed to be catchable in the wild in the first place. I don't really see the gatekeeping nor the big paywall if a 100-step lure is gonna cost you literally the price of 3 Pokéballs. If you stack it with the Illuminate/Swarm abilities you're pretty much gonna get an encounter every two steps which makes the process of getting the Lure-exclusive you're after a lot faster than before, for a very low cost. Lure-exclusive encounters aside I absolutely love this feature, I think it's a game-changer when it comes to single-encounter shiny-hunting and I appreciate the fact that you can also get non-lure-exclusives in different spots as well. I understand that some people aren't happy about some species being exclusive to it but I don't feel like it's such a big deal personally. And I feel like you're completely ignoring the fact that the premium lures are just a more luxurious option that doesn't give you good value for its price regardless of whether you actually pay with real money or not, and that a cheap affordable option was made available for everyone.

[Poufilou]

23 minutes ago, SacredDiver said:

Each of the lure-exclusive Pokémon aren't supposed to be catchable in the wild in the first place..

Um... yeah, we weren't able to freely catch starters in the wild before... and complete your whole dex in an intuitive way...  this (awesome) particularity of PokeMMO being removed is a downgrade to what we had. 

 

Before : pokemons. 

After : pay for pokemons. 

 

It's as simple as that and I feel like you're stretching far to try and defend it like it's a mechanic that actually adds something while it effectively removed the most important part. 

 

Even the single hunting thing argument is worse, since non-premium give the same rate  as before except you now spend money to get simple encounters (it do be faster to get enc but still not worth). 

 

In my opinion lure would be absolutely a fine item if it wasn't locking mons from spawning normally. 

[SacredDiver]

1 hour ago, Poufilou said:

Um... yeah, we weren't able to freely catch starters in the wild before... and complete your whole dex in an intuitive way...  this (awesome) particularity of PokeMMO being removed is a downgrade to what we had. 

 

Before : pokemons. 

After : pay for pokemons. 

 

It's as simple as that and I feel like you're stretching far to try and defend it like it's a mechanic that actually adds something while it effectively removed the most important part. 

 

Even the single hunting thing argument is worse, since non-premium give the same rate  as before except you now spend money to get simple encounters (it do be faster to get enc but still not worth). 

 

In my opinion lure would be absolutely a fine item if it wasn't locking mons from spawning normally. 

Just to clarify, "Not supposed to be catchable in the wild in the first place" refers to the original games and how you can't catch the starters in the wild in FireRed/LeafGreen for example, I'm not sure whether that was genuinely misunderstood or whether it was supposed to be a bridge to the sarcastic intro lol.

You can call it a downgrade in that sense, but is it a "horrible msitake"? I wouldn't say so. I'm not really "defending" the fact that starters aren't available for free as they used to be (Shoot, could've spent that precious 600$ on a Great Ball instead, what a scam.), I just don't see how it's supposed to be this big scheme that's being used as an excuse to "do a cash grab" when Lures aren't exclusive to the gift shop. I don't see the big "paywall" that the starters are supposed to be behind when I can just buy a cheap lure and encounter one faster than before for a small price. I'm rather defending the Lure feature as a whole and not the detail that starters are Lure-exclusive, the feature does "actually add something" by making you encounter some Pokémon in more locations with a Lure (not just the Lure-exclusives). It actually adds something when it comes to starters too since not only is it faster to get starters but they're also available in more locations (Second stages of evolution replaced the previous locations and first stages are available in different locations.). Charmander can be caught as early as Route 3 and Bulbasaur as early as Viridian Forest now, if that isn't "awesome and interactive" then I don't know what is. Only issue I see with it is shunting starters in the wild not costing 0$ anymore.

The "single hunting thing" as you call it was never intended as an argument towards anything, was just my opinion about the feature as a whole Lure-exclusives aside, as stated in my message. Apologies if that was misunderstood. I never said anything about rates of starters being higher with the non-Premium Lures, was solely talking about it do being faster to get encounters. Not worth it for you, worth it for me. (Was also not talking about shunting starters necessarily.)

I understand where you're coming from, I never said "Starters should be Lure-exclusive". All I'm saying is it's not such a big deal to me.

Edited December 28, 2022 by SacredDiver

[razimove]

7 hours ago, jhonesath said:

I just want to say that farming in pokemmo is easy. Thats why im not consider pokemmo as pay2win. Not even close tbh.

 

In pay2win game, base on my experience, farming is kinda difficult. And no matter how much we farm, we never get into the same level as players who pay. 

Farming or not, how long will you take today, if you started fresh today, to afford a skull with grinding methods, vs some random that just swipes a couple thousand dollars and buys it shortly after? The game is and always was p2w by the definition, especially after they introduced vouchers.

 

With that said, you can play the entire game without spending a dime, and you'll be more than fine, maybe competitively wise you are at a big disadvantage early on, but thats about it.

[Deliburd]

In my opinion, if being rich is winning then if it is pay to win but to win as some say you need skill, you can charge a lot of RP but if you don't know how to manage it you will still have much less than someone who spends his time farming gyms but manages his resources well . If your question is whether by farming you can get to what someone who loads RP gets, the answer is yes. It will take you years but you can get even much further by doing things right, now, someone who carries RP has a different growth rate, don't compare yourself, just find your way and be patient, my motto is that patience is the key to success in PokeMMO. Unfortunately or not, the world works like this, the one with the most money is the most powerful but not the one who always wins, maybe you can never have an electrical storm in your life, a kyu hat, etc. but you can have your little things that also help you They will make you happy, it is not equal, but you can still have fun and go far, add luck, anything can happen. Something that I think is very difficult to start, for someone new if they want to go far they must investigate, learn a lot and think a lot, even so it will be very difficult, but... without fear of success, patience is the key to success and have a lot of faith. Success in your Pokemon adventure, I know you will go far since I see that you are interested in it!