Top Mud Sites Forum - View Single Post - Pay-to-Play vs. Pay-to-Advance

Burr · 05-29-2005, 06:38 PM

While I wish only success for Traithe and others who hope to positively modify the pay-for-play systems, I'm not sure how any implementation where payment affects access to any subsystem of the game or metagame can effectively solve the fundamental disadvantages of PFP.

If you give a player access to a race other than human, then that means they have access to any power that makes the race distinguishable from humans. You might as well allow them to purchase a weapon they could not otherwise obtain. If there is no advantage to playing that race over playing a human, then the system is unfortunately more pay-for-cognitive-dissonance than pay-for-play.

There may be an even greater impact on gameplay if players must pay to access a particular zone of the game, unless there is no way to transfer the rewards of that zone back to the free areas. If the latter is true, then once more the net value added is zero -- or less, since the paying player will feel they've been wasting their time.

Suppose you only offered one service: players can store an extra description of their character that only they can view, and only when offline. The only thing that makes this service worth paying for is that it takes slightly less time to store the description there then putting it on a person website or saving it as a Word document. How can this possibly affect the gameplay of other players? Well, as the logos said, time is a resource, and one that we all know has an affect on gameplay. Even one second taken out of your day is one second less to plan out one's gameplay actions, whether you do that planning in the game or out of the game.

There is little point in trying to distinguish between game and metagame. If they can be effectively separated, then at least one of them is not worth considering in the first place.

05-29-2005, 06:38 PM	#40
Burr Member Join Date: Apr 2002 Posts: 123	While I wish only success for Traithe and others who hope to positively modify the pay-for-play systems, I'm not sure how any implementation where payment affects access to any subsystem of the game or metagame can effectively solve the fundamental disadvantages of PFP. If you give a player access to a race other than human, then that means they have access to any power that makes the race distinguishable from humans. You might as well allow them to purchase a weapon they could not otherwise obtain. If there is no advantage to playing that race over playing a human, then the system is unfortunately more pay-for-cognitive-dissonance than pay-for-play. There may be an even greater impact on gameplay if players must pay to access a particular zone of the game, unless there is no way to transfer the rewards of that zone back to the free areas. If the latter is true, then once more the net value added is zero -- or less, since the paying player will feel they've been wasting their time. Suppose you only offered one service: players can store an extra description of their character that only they can view, and only when offline. The only thing that makes this service worth paying for is that it takes slightly less time to store the description there then putting it on a person website or saving it as a Word document. How can this possibly affect the gameplay of other players? Well, as the logos said, time is a resource, and one that we all know has an affect on gameplay. Even one second taken out of your day is one second less to plan out one's gameplay actions, whether you do that planning in the game or out of the game. There is little point in trying to distinguish between game and metagame. If they can be effectively separated, then at least one of them is not worth considering in the first place.