Debate: PokeMMO become Pay to Win or No

[Paul]

9 hours ago, SacredDiver said:

I sincerely apologize if that came off to you as an insult, though if you're gonna get offended by your own words, I would recommend picking them more carefully in the future.

found the reddit user 🤓🤓🤓 

[SacredDiver]

46 minutes ago, Paul said:

found the reddit user 🤓🤓🤓 

Close enough, more of a natural :^)

[Etozuri]

I haven't read any replies to this topic so sorry if someone has said this already but I don't think its p2w. All buying £ does is speed things up.

 

Even if you have the best Pokemon you're not going to win the tourneys because its skill based.

and if you buy things to increase your shiny rate its still a horrible monotonous grind.

 

@ the end of the day though its a mmo, how do beat an mmo?

[Gengarcello]

How about this?

 

 

 

Honestly, grinding for the event-exclusive vanity when these sharks roaming on leaderboards are really frustrating

 

 

 

[ArtOfKilling]

 

Win what exactly? If you’re talking about PVE events I don’t think there’s an advantage within that aspect.

As for PVP the only advantage is grinding mons faster, but you won’t win if you have more teams because that comes down to skill ,luck and understanding the basics of PVP.

 

But if you tell me “those who pay 5000 RP can get a legendary mon which is only obtainable via RP” then yeah thats P2W

[Atumisk]

It never has been, nor will it ever be "Pay to Win".

Like a lot of other games, you do have the option to spend actual money to acquire things easier and quicker, but you're never pressed or put into a position where you actually need to spend money to progress.
It's a value that PokeMMO has upheld for the last 10 years, and I do not at all see them going that route.

On a side note, I don't think they legally could make it Pay to Win whether they wanted to or not.

[razimove]

On 12/30/2022 at 7:09 PM, LeZenor said:

As long as there is no clear explanation of how shinies and vanities give advantages to players, I will have to disagree, at least for pve. It's purely cosmetic and seems to me like a personnal win rather than anything or maybe an ego thing for some. Their value is mostly based on rarity and demand over supply, by the players and not set by default by the game (except their base RP price when first introduced, but then again it depends on how players are willing to pay with pokeyens at release). I would think differently if for instance shinies were stronger than their normal counterpart but that's currently not the case here. I can understand how one can feel this way if their sole purpose in the game was to collect them but to claim that everything is p2w based on this very limited and non-competitive part of the game is disingenuous, when the rest of the game is very accessible without investing any real money. 

 

Again, nobody is winning anything in an unfair manner over anyone when we talk about shinies and vanities, because there's nothing to win and no clear winners other than some personnal satisfaction. There's nothing competitive in flexing your wealth in Vermilion City.

Exactly, but this doesnt deny that you can obtain wealth ingame by spending thousands irl, especially comp wise where if I start today and bought 10-15k rp probably already can have a better pc than someone who is 1 month old and played that month outside of major events like halloween. There's no point trying to say its not p2w when it is, you cant reach my wealth if you arent a old player who hoarded a lot, without dropping quite a lot of money as  a newer playee. This is almost like saying gacha games arent p2w cause you can reach someone level of progression in a few years. Can you do every activity aside from maybe shiny hatching and collecting vanities easily as a new player? Sure. Will you be in a disadvantage vs your friend that bought RP? You will be, and then again, shinies/vanity are just different colored pixels, think a bit about competitive for newer players. Although, nowadays since the new tournament system, until late rounds of tournaments, its not as relevant as it was previously.

Edited January 1, 2023 by razimove
Typos

[LeZenor]

On 1/1/2023 at 10:28 AM, razimove said:

Exactly, but this doesnt deny that you can obtain wealth ingame by spending thousands irl, especially comp wise where if I start today and bought 10-15k rp probably already can have a better pc than someone who is 1 month old and played that month outside of major events like halloween. There's no point trying to say its not p2w when it is, you cant reach my wealth if you arent a old player who hoarded a lot, without dropping quite a lot of money as  a newer playee. This is almost like saying gacha games arent p2w cause you can reach someone level of progression in a few years. Can you do every activity aside from maybe shiny hatching and collecting vanities easily as a new player? Sure. Will you be in a disadvantage vs your friend that bought RP? You will be, and then again, shinies/vanity are just different colored pixels, think a bit about competitive for newer players. Although, nowadays since the new tournament system, until late rounds of tournaments, its not as relevant as it was previously.

Indeed, one can certainly acquire a lot of wealth by selling Reward Points, there's no denying that. I've also argued that wealthy players tend to be in a more comfortable position than newer players in a previous response. However, it doesn't seem fair to compare PokeMMO to gacha games since they're basically gambling games in most cases. You pay with real money in order to obtain an item/character and yet you don't have the option to choose what you receive. Meanwhile, the gameplay (if you could even call that gameplay) heavily depends on what you have obtained. Unless you're extremely lucky, looting the most powerful ones will require you to put in money in order to get what you want and to be somewhat up to par. Sure they give out free things to open every now and then but the odds of finding everything you need going the free-to-play path are ridiculously low and would require you to play for months or even years to achieve the likes of whales in p2w. You don't have that randomness to take into account in PokeMMO and it isn't actively preventing you from accessing part of the content unless you pay with real currency.

 

Now it may not be perfect for some, but I feel like the devs have been trying to make it so it is much less expensive and requires much less grind to breed perfect Pokemon through the years. They introduced a reward system for pvp matchmaking system which allow players to gain a wide range of prizes which can then be used in return in PvP. Matchmaking also rewards the player with Battle Points which can be used to purchase breeding items, among others, lowering considerably the cost of breeding. It is much more easier and more rewarding for new players to begin PvP than it ever was. It requires some farming initially but once you've build up a team or two, there's clearly a viable way to play matchmaking/tournaments and improving your PC at the same time with little need of grinding.

[caioxlive13]

12 hours ago, LeZenor said:

Indeed, one can certainly acquire a lot of wealth by selling Reward Points, there's no denying that. I've also argued that wealthy players tend to be in a more comfortable position than newer players in a previous response. However, it doesn't seem fair to compare PokeMMO to gacha games since they're basically gambling games in most cases. You pay with real money in order to obtain an item/character and yet you don't have the option to choose what you receive. Meanwhile, the gameplay (if you could even call that gameplay) heavily depends on what you have obtained. Unless you're extremely lucky, looting the most powerful ones will require you to put in money in order to get what you want and to be somewhat up to par. Sure they give out free things to open every now and then but the odds of finding everything you need going the free-to-play path are ridiculously low and would require you to play for months or even years to achieve the likes of whales in p2w. You don't have that randomness to take into account in PokeMMO and it isn't actively preventing you from accessing part of the content unless you pay with real currency.

 

Now it may not be perfect for some, but I feel like the devs have been trying to make it so it is much less expensive and requires much less grind to breed perfect Pokemon through the years. They introduced a reward system for pvp matchmaking system which allow players to gain a wide range of prizes which can then be used in return in PvP. Matchmaking also rewards the player with Battle Points which can be used to purchase breeding items, among others, lowering considerably the cost of breeding. It is much more easier and more rewarding for new players to begin PvP than it ever was. It requires some farming initially but once you've build up a team or two, there's clearly a viable way to play matchmaking/tournaments and improving your PC at the same time with little need of grinding.

The thing is: On p2w games you can only win paying. No way we can win without paying. PokeMMO isn p2w, but at same time isn't 100% a fair to play game, because donators have a advantage over non-donators. But PokeMMO devs reduced the advantage to donors over regular players a lot. We can buy the RP with In-game currency. Everything that Donors can buy, we can buy as well, including donator status. Only difference is speed. While donors can get it instantly, we need to invest time to get. But isn't absurd like games like Clash Royale, Clash of Clans, Dragon City, and a lot of other games, that you need to play... 5-15 years to maximize your account without paying. Farming gym for 2 hours with a amulet coin grants to you a Ocarina that a player with RP afford in minutes. A comp costs around 1m if you wish to do it 5x31 natured. While a player with RP afford it in minutes, you afford it in 3 days farming gym. But you aren't forced to use 5x31. You can use 2x31 3x25+ natured for example and spend less, needing less days to farm, 2 to be more precise. 

[Charmic]

I think it matters less whether it is pay to win, or if it matters that it's pay to win.

 

Personally, I would call it pay-to-win, because you end up gaining an advantage due to the paid aspect of the game. Cosmetically, obviously you don't. But as for the recent addition of Lures and obviously the Ocarinas existing, the ability to make all that cash nigh instantly using vouchers, etc., that certainly would make PokeMMO behave like a pay-to-win game, by the very definition of the phrase. You're paying and you're winning in the case where an unpaid player would find it significantly harder to win.

 

Again though, what really matters here isn't that PokeMMO is pay-to-win. A lot of people tend to ignore the concept of whether or not it even matters to be pay-to-win. Usually, this doesn't end up mattering because lots of those sorts of games step over the line heavily and are intensely pay-to-win. But what about games that follow similar concepts of 'partial' paying to win, as someone else in this thread said?

 

Take, for example, a game like Pokemon Go. Pokemon Go allows you to purchase Poke Balls, Incense, Lucky Eggs, etc. en masse so long as you're a whale ready to splurge on those sorts of items. The same is true of PokeMMO, except in the form of RP Vouchers. Both games follow this partial format but there's a very key difference between the two games. Pokemon Go has a 'set' way to progress. You catch Pokemon, with Poke Balls you get from Pokestops. There's two limiting factors there, one being how many Pokemon or the quality of which spawn around you, and the amount of Pokestops around an individual player. PokeMMO does not suffer from this issue. This is due to the numerous ways of making money, as seen on various guides on these forums and ingame. You could redo Unova, breed, farm Berries, rerun Gyms, rerun E4, participate in tournaments, flip, etc. and there's no limiting real world factor like money or time involved here. The way time is actually removed from the equation here is because flipping is possible, and there's already a complex and thriving economy at play. In Pokemon Go, there's a closed system and everything is made by you. In PokeMMO, if you really wanted to, or if you had the luck, you could find a Shiny or a high IV wild Pokemon and make just as much as someone making a single transaction on the game, potentially even more if you find a rare Shiny or something. When you have multiple players of a game able to create a financial ecosystem for other players to manipulate and benefit off of, the whole concept of pay-to-win becomes irrelevant unless the rewards presented by pay-to-win are so absurd that they knock the unpaid system out of balance.

 

You can get practically everything without having to donate a single dime to PokeMMO, whereas with Pokemon Go, in order to get certain rare Pokemon locked behind Community Day passes or whatever, you might have to. The difference between having an open and fully functional economy to new players and being a closed economy game where the only real form of 'monetary' transactions is between you, Niantic and maybe if you're lucky any local players is staggering. That major difference means that whilst PokeMMO actually is technically pay-to-win, it doesn't represent it in the traditional, malicious form that modern entertainment companies like to present it as and instead portrays pay-to-win as a much more diluted form of the equivalents in other games with a lot less strength towards it.

 

However, one change that I am absolutely against is the idea of Lures, specifically the Premium ones. Many players have brought this up in their comments on this thread and some are defending it but in my opinion, this is exactly the sort of path that modern pay-to-win tactics evolved through and used to manipulate their audiences out of money. My key issue with it is that it relies on the usage of monetary transactions for Premium Lures to exist. Personally, I would have literally 0 issues with it if they threw it in a department store in Celadon or something and priced it as it is on GTL right now. There would be nothing wrong with it and it would effectively remove the necessary donation requirement to receive it. However, because this isn't a thing, the price of Premium Lures, and their availability, is entirely locked behind a paywall which means that ordinary players have no method of receiving it other than from other players who donated. Whilst I did go on and on about the benefits of a large, thriving economy in that long drawn out paragraph up top, what I also mentioned is important for PokeMMO's continued lack of malice via currency is that paid players don't have a lot of swing. By that, I mean that they don't have a foothold of monetary power within the community where they are absolutely superior to the average unpaid player. An unpaid player is still capable of achieving, say, a Psychic Bird Mask, same as a paid player. The paid player might get it quicker, but they'll both very likely get it regardless. When it comes to something like Premium Lures, that's not a possibility. You're denying free players an item and instead placing control of supply of that item to a paying player. That is an incredibly dangerous and close-minded approach to this situation, because what the developers are welcoming here is the concept of exclusivity among paid players. Yes, free players could get it if they saved up enough, but only on the GTL. They're relying on paid players for access to that item, which makes it a very pay-to-win item in the more modern sense of evil business practices. You're preventing everyday players from receiving an item for the first time and that is completely overruling any previous notions that the developers may have created by making everything possible to get without paying, no matter how tedious or boring or timewasting it was to get. It was possible, but now that it's not, a precedent has been set that states that free players don't deserve the same kind of treatment as a paid player.

 

People might argue that this applies to RP Vouchers as well, and whilst it does to an extent, there are also other ways to receive RP, specifically through contests. Those happen literally all the time. So long as you have even an ounce of skill or experience at competitive battling or even just catching Pokemon for the PvE events, you're guaranteed a good chance to get RP and a good chance to get it at least once given how often the events are. Whilst the RP can of course then be translated into Premium Lures, that isn't the point. A direct purchase is the only way to receive an object like Premium Lures which are so useful and are heavily sought after for the additional effects which they produce, as compared to something as simple as a way to fly without a Pokemon in your party dedicated to it (Fly Ocarina) or an easier way to EV train (Training Kit thingy).

 

I also have to question the thought process of the developers who decided to apparently lock away certain starters and Pokemon behind this new Premium Lure. That's a foul idea and it should absolutely never be promoted or replicated again. You're removing content that was present for god knows how long simply to try and source another avenue for donations, but all this seems to tell us is that you're desperate enough for donations to start removing aspects of what made PokeMMO special and instead having to lock them behind a paywall instead of producing any new and interesting content to add to the RP Shop to keep players interested and willing to pay more. I doubt that there really was much good thought lying behind the concept when it was proposed, and I completely and utterly despise whoever decided that this was a good idea. What a joke.

 

TLDR: yeah pokemmo's not really p2w but it's getting kinda funky recently

[Charmic]

I realise I made a mistake above by saying that the Premium Lures are only available via paying, which I kind of later disproved but I'll redo that point and say that not putting it directly in a shop is making contest entry mandatory for non-paying players to get it without relying on other players which not only makes the method of receiving it highly convoluted but also ends up yet again removing part of what makes PokeMMO special in that you can play it however you want, and forcing players to do one specific thing that's so secretly hostile and so desperately begs for your money is simply a vile way of making someone play and a terrible way of making players happy with the game as they'll feel limited to their options. That's not something you want to be represented in a fucking MMO, of all things.

 

But what do I know. This is a very surface-level view. My play time on PokeMMO doesn't go over probably 70 hours. I've been playing for a week and I've not spent anything yet. Take my view with a nice, chunky mound of salt.

[Ryuto]

1- There is no exclusive content restricted to sponsors. Actually, you can get RP by trading or GTL.
2- Talking about PvP, you not only need good mons but also skill and intelligence. It's not like some games where you can actually purchase op stuff with x10 times stats or better skills than the regular f2p items

3- About PvE it's the same stuff, there are no events restricted to sponsors

 

I would say PokeMMO is as much P2Fast

[caioxlive13]

2 hours ago, Ryuto said:

1- There is no exclusive content restricted to sponsors. Actually, you can get RP by trading or GTL.
2- Talking about PvP, you not only need good mons but also skill and intelligence. It's not like some games where you can actually purchase op stuff with x10 times stats or better skills than the regular f2p items

3- About PvE it's the same stuff, there are no events restricted to sponsors

 

I would say PokeMMO is as much P2Fast

Is exactly like i sayed:

 

7 hours ago, caioxlive13 said:

The thing is: On p2w games you can only win paying. No way we can win without paying. PokeMMO isn p2w, but at same time isn't 100% a fair to play game, because donators have a advantage over non-donators. But PokeMMO devs reduced the advantage to donors over regular players a lot. We can buy the RP with In-game currency. Everything that Donors can buy, we can buy as well, including donator status. Only difference is speed. While donors can get it instantly, we need to invest time to get. But isn't absurd like games like Clash Royale, Clash of Clans, Dragon City, and a lot of other games, that you need to play... 5-15 years to maximize your account without paying. Farming gym for 2 hours with a amulet coin grants to you a Ocarina that a player with RP afford in minutes. A comp costs around 1m if you wish to do it 5x31 natured. While a player with RP afford it in minutes, you afford it in 3 days farming gym. But you aren't forced to use 5x31. You can use 2x31 3x25+ natured for example and spend less, needing less days to farm, 2 to be more precise. 

About PvE, on XMas event you have advantage being donor - Skip queues to enter on server. But queues on this game you need to wait 10 minutes to enter on highest queue possible- I've experienced it on 3rd part of Anniversary Update, and it's only on the first 12 hours of event, after that queue drastically reduces until vanish. Same logic to Lunar New Year and Halloween event.

Edited January 4, 2023 by caioxlive13

[OGQT]

46 minutes ago, caioxlive13 said:

Is exactly like i sayed:

 

About PvE, on XMas event you have advantage being donor - Skip queues to enter on server. But queues on this game you need to wait 10 minutes to enter on highest queue possible- I've experienced it on 3rd part of Anniversary Update, and it's only on the first 12 hours of event, after that queue drastically reduces until vanish. Same logic to Lunar New Year and Halloween event.

With the 3rd part of Anniversary Event it really depended a lot on what time you'd try to log in. Even after 3 days of the event, you could still get a 20+ minute queue, if you logged in at a busy time, because the event was such a big event. Queues still suck, and it's honestly the one thing I could accept as being Pay2Win, because you can actually get an advantage over others by skipping queue (a lot of people missed the first Alpha, for example, in the 3rd part of the Anniversary Event, due to really long queues). Made no difference however since Alphas eventually respawn, but imagine it were limited like the starters, yikes

[caioxlive13]

4 hours ago, OGQT said:

With the 3rd part of Anniversary Event it really depended a lot on what time you'd try to log in. Even after 3 days of the event, you could still get a 20+ minute queue, if you logged in at a busy time, because the event was such a big event. Queues still suck, and it's honestly the one thing I could accept as being Pay2Win, because you can actually get an advantage over others by skipping queue (a lot of people missed the first Alpha, for example, in the 3rd part of the Anniversary Event, due to really long queues). Made no difference however since Alphas eventually respawn, but imagine it were limited like the starters, yikes

taked 10 minutes picking a 4000 player queue, idk if have more high queues than this but 100% certain no. And eventually devs do a update to help, increasing alpha time to 75 minutes and it helped.

[Mashroomm]

8 hours ago, Charmic said:

Take, for example, a game like Pokemon Go. Pokemon Go allows you to purchase Poke Balls, Incense, Lucky Eggs, etc. en masse so long as you're a whale ready to splurge on those sorts of items. The same is true of PokeMMO, except in the form of RP Vouchers. Both games follow this partial format but there's a very key difference between the two games. Pokemon Go has a 'set' way to progress. You catch Pokemon, with Poke Balls you get from Pokestops. There's two limiting factors there, one being how many Pokemon or the quality of which spawn around you, and the amount of Pokestops around an individual player. PokeMMO does not suffer from this issue. This is due to the numerous ways of making money, as seen on various guides on these forums and ingame. You could redo Unova, breed, farm Berries, rerun Gyms, rerun E4, participate in tournaments, flip, etc. and there's no limiting real world factor like money or time involved here. The way time is actually removed from the equation here is because flipping is possible, and there's already a complex and thriving economy at play. In Pokemon Go, there's a closed system and everything is made by you. In PokeMMO, if you really wanted to, or if you had the luck, you could find a 1995 mewtwo pokemon or a high IV wild Pokemon and make just as much as someone making a single transaction on the game, potentially even more if you find a rare Shiny or something. When you have multiple players of a game able to create a financial ecosystem for other players to manipulate and benefit off of, the whole concept of pay-to-win becomes irrelevant unless the rewards presented by pay-to-win are so absurd that they knock the unpaid system out of balance.

That is my opinion. Last week, I went on a trail walk (which has plenty of stops and gyms along the 6 miles I walk to and from), and by the end of my walk, my ball supply was no different than any other trail walk I go on. My ball supply has been no different than any other deal in the small little deals I've done this week. I'm wondering if the OP is catching more than usual, or at least using more balls than usual.

[caioxlive13]

20 hours ago, Mashroomm said:

That is my opinion. Last week, I went on a trail walk (which has plenty of stops and gyms along the 6 miles I walk to and from), and by the end of my walk, my ball supply was no different than any other trail walk I go on. My ball supply has been no different than any other deal in the small little deals I've done this week. I'm wondering if the OP is catching more than usual, or at least using more balls than usual.

Well, the thing about being partially p2w is because the same features can be accessed by non-paying and paying players. The difference is the speed. There are games that you can't consider partially p2w because simply for a player who doesn't pay to reach the same level as a player who pays, he has to invest ABSURD amounts of time. It is the case of famous games like Clash Royale and Free Fire, which to have a full account without putting money in the game, it takes about 5 to 15 YEARS. Here, on MMO, for you to build a competitive team you can use Showdown and build it here to have saved the paste, then get the resources. Farming a gym for 1 day gives you 400/k, which is enough to breed a 2x31 3x20+ comp, which is good enough for pvp. 6 days and your team is bred. +2 days and you farm enough to buy all TMs and Items. In 8 days you have everything ready and you can play PvP. From there, your skill is all that counts. Do you see the difference between the time that a player without paying and one who pays can reach success? On PokéMMO a player can start pvp with 1 week - 2 months depending of their free time, and reach on top rank without problem if play well. On games like Clash Royale you need to grind for years to have a chance to win the players with level 12+ cards having a deck with lvl 11 average. On Free Fire basically you had no chance without paying if you're above Diamond I, vs a player that have Characters that can be buyed with diamonds only and he play the minimum required to be on that rank.