I never totally understood the P2W thing with planets either just had a lot of hardcore people that are against any form of P2W say they don’t want to pay the game as Gleam Club and Sovereigns are a P2W aspects of Boundless.
Depending on how you look at it I could see it as such. Even though you have access to most everything, the game gives players willing to spend money on the game something extra.
It’s as simple as that … Money for something extra a player that doesn’t buy something won’t get.
I think it’s very important to view this “P2W” thing as a spectrum rather than a binary. Boundless is fairly low on the P2W scale because almost everything can be done reasonably for free. GC is monetized QoL/convenience, which is a paid advantage, but it’s not like it’s hard to log in once every month or whatever the advanced fuels do, so it gives faint readings on the P2W-ometer.
I think using the name “Pay to Advance” or “Pay for Advantage” is more accurate, but “Pay to Win” is what people use, so I have to use that term.
Being able to grind for the stuff, cosmetics included, doesn’t make it “not P2W”, but because the grind is minor, that makes the P2W-ness pretty weak. It’s low-pressure.
Sovereigns… is complicated. Owning a private planet is just renting the server, and being able to make it private is part of that. Being able to bring stuff back from those private worlds into public worlds starts getting readings on that P2W-ometer. When you factor in that you could spend buckets of money spinning for “the perfect world” and make it private, you get even stronger readings. But… I don’t view it as all that strong, personally, since there isn’t really any pressure to do that. If you really want to, you can find a way to get something out of the sov system, but it’s not like it’s presented or designed that way.
Note that if this looks like I’m arguing, I’m just expressing an opinion. I’ve been spending a pretty large amount of time contemplating the ethics of monetization recently, so I have opinions abound.
@Rydralain quit arguing with me damn you. (Kidding)
From the new player perspective or someone contemplating buying the game would view the sovereigns and gleam club P2W and having talked to a number of people I had given keys to that decided not to play the game said that very thing.
Regardless, how we view it as current and veteran players, if you can spend money to gain an advantage over another player that in itself can and usually is viewed as P2W. I may or may not agree with that, but my view is pretty irrelevant if 10 people I spoke to viewed it as such even after I tried my hardest to use your exact points as a counterargument to their P2W complaints.
it doesn’t come across as arguing to me. I think we just have different aspects of what “winning” is and therefore different views on what P2W is.
Winning to me is progression first, access second, achievement third. There is (in my opinion) no way to buy progression with real money in boundless (which is a good thing). Progression is levels, skill improvement, tools, and fancy block types. Other types of progression is prestige, building interesting or impressive stuff, becoming a great merchant (like amassing lots of coin or building a trading empire), and none of those things can be paid for with irl either.
Access is kinda tricky and i do agree with you that you can speed up access to land (more space to build in) by using money, even getting an “ideal spot” with lots of money in Sovs. What I don’t think it does is: interrupting normal game play to say, ‘you know, that build area is rather small, want to buy some cubits and reserve space to make it something grand?’. If it did that then I could understand why people would say it felt more P2W because it is invoking some FOMO with land and space, but generally those really aren’t in short supply so all you are buying is a speed up to getting land, which isn’t necessary because by the time you can fill it with interesting things naturally you already have enough cubits to buy more plots, and then can get things to put into it, etc.
Gleam club is paying for a convenience of not having to fuel portals manually (which you can get the advanced fuel that’s good for like 16weeks, so a task to opt out of for every 15-16 weeks isn’t a major thing by my judgement), and other than that its purely cosmetic. I like what it offers, and normally am glad to keep it running because I think this game is worth a sub at that price, but that is me, I have been playing mmo’s for awhile and boundless’ optional sub feels like the least needed sub out of any mmo Ive ever played.
Until we get leader boards with prizes for the top 3 places, dungeons with loot for defeating the boss, or level-locked gear/prizes, I personally don’t see any P2W aspects. There is no game goal to “win” anything right now. It’s just an open-world sandbox.
So what if you can buy cosmetics, cubits to reserve a block of digital air, or GC to auto-fuel your beacons. Eh. A 1st day NP can fuel their beacons for a month for free with foliage. Planets aren’t finite, therefore neither is land. If people plot too many chunks or resources, Boundless can expand the universe as they did before. There are no limits on the # of planets.
The one thing that I did see as a bit P2W when sovereigns came out was resource amounts and density. With the right knowledge and luck, you can fine tune a world to produce much greater amounts of gems, for example, than the homeworlds. In theory players who roll really high resource worlds can keep them private and farm those worlds and sell into the economy. In this theory, a player who is paying for sovereigns could make double the coin in the same amount of time a non-sovereign player could selling mined resources.
Now, thankfully, the Boundless community isn’t like that. Most people here keep their worlds very open and even put up mining spots so we can all benefit from it. But, I don’t really think developers should be releasing features that rely on the benevolence of the playerbase. Perhaps a cap on resource % would solve that. Maybe there is one, I don’t know.
As for Gleam Club, I don’t see that as P2W at all. It’s literally the difference between setting a reminder to refuel every 4 months or not having to worry about it.
I agree with you and as I stated I don’t view it as P2W. Sadly though, if you can purchase an advantage over another player regardless of what that is it’s P2W in some people’s eyes.
Buy millions of cubits to gain more plots than me so you will in turn have more footfall than me etc. etc. It all depends on your POV. Some people view simple cosmetics like gleam sunglasses a P2W… not that I do, but people do.
We luckily have some tremendous people that buy sovereigns and open them up to others so they can farm them and that is always my counterargument to anyone mentioning sovereigns as a P2W, but regardless, if I can buy a sovereign and someone else can’t technically it is buying an advantage over another player.
Gleam Club is kind of a silly argument that it’s P2W to me, but it does give someone the ability like myself to fuel over 250 beacons that I have without visiting each and every one and never having to create or buy fuel for it. I wanted to let my Gleam Club expire a few times, but then thought about how painful it would be to have to visit all 250 beacons across the Boundless Universe to fuel. P2W? Depends on your perspective, but it is convenience only a paying player gets.
I am not missing the point you are making, but obtaining a ton of plots and placing them does not give you footfall or coin. You have to earn that by playing the game. Placing blocks. Building something useful (like a portal hub & maintain it) or an attraction for people to enjoy. And it can’t be one person, one time. It has to be something that draws people, over and over. You can’t buy that. Lots of plots does not = any footfall or coin.
Sovereigns - I would imagine at least 1/2(or more) are rented to be used as a private club or place to build your own virtual world. It’s also a way someone could play single-player. I’m certain everyone is thankful for the rentals that have been made public - especially ones with gems and good resources. It provides everyone with more options and expands the universe.
I think the free, temporary Exo planets that spawn are the balance to any advantages rentals may seem to have (as far as resources go).
If I had 5 accounts, each one grabbed 4 shops in every mall near the portals I in turn could generate footfall over someone that has no plots or simply plots in 1 mall or 2. This is just one example and one example that isn’t that great, but one that was brought up to me.
I agree there are enough public sovereigns out there thanks to a lot of the community. Still doesn’t make it any less P2W to some people. Someone has an advantage over someone else. I know I once had a sovereign with an insane amount of Stardrops, Sapphire and Topaz and I was selling those a lot. Could someone do that on another Sov? Sure? On top of that, one could change the colors to whatever they want technically giving someone access to more colors than a player without a sovereign. It’s all POV as I stated… and all these points were said to me by players I have played with in other games. Even though I provided a fair and pretty solid counterargument.
The Exos planets are free, kind of. They do cost coins, materials and time … they do kind-of balance the rentals some, but they are temporary and require a player to be online almost constantly in order to get to all of them whereas a sovereign is always there. On top of that, the resources are battled for usually mostly the lucents of course, but still … sovereign still has the advantage in my eyes.
These are all arguments I have had with numerous people and many of whom won’t even install the game even with me begging them to give it a try. The others just gave up during the first week or so.
It’s about speculating the game is going free to play and speculating how if things don’t change pretty much at the core level the game won’t gain much more popularity than it has.
My main point is, from what I can tell, the term “Pay to Win” has expanded past its literal meaning. P2W does not require literal winning. Using real money to gain any advantage over other players in any way is on the P2W spectrum. Plots, character sheets, sovs, all of it. In a way the costumes have a P2W-ness, but that’s more complicated.
I see this as an opportunity to say “we don’t need to disagree on the definition of P2W, but instead discuss how sensitive different people are to different parts of the P2W spectrum.” But that’s me, and unless I make waves in the general game discussion scene, what I think probably doesn’t matter
Yea this was my whole point of even bringing it up. There was mention of a season pass and that would really be… well just something else that will be considered P2W.
I’ll be honest I don’t really care if the game gains more people as much as just bringing everyone back that was playing previously. I would like to see more people though … and addressing some concerns mentioned to me that some people have said about what they consider P2W aspects of the game.
P2W = ANY advantage that a person can get by purchasing.
Some people have varying degrees here, mostly around cosmetic vs actual in game benefits such as buying levels, buying more of something that actually affects gameplay etc.
Haha, literally any monetization falls somewhere on the P2W spectrum. I could make an argument for an upfront price tag being P2W if I wanted (spoiler: I don’t). I had a work friend that quit playing ESO because one of the expansions has the BiS gear for soloing the hard level dungeons designed for 5 players and he viewed that as P2W. Crazy to me, but okay.
From a practical standpoint Boundless has to sell something or the game ends up being shutdown. The fact it is an mmo means someone has to pay for the servers. Either you use a subscription model and everyone pays every month or you have to sell other things to generate revenue. Boundless chose to sell other things which allows a player to pay once and essentially never have to spend any other money to support the game.
So either you are on the P2W spectrum or you pay every month. There really is not any other option, unless you eliminate the public universe entirely and rely on players to host planets. That eliminates the cost of maintaining the public universe but definitely splits the player base and provides no single place for all players to interact. With all the calls for Boundless to be F2P, do we really think we would get more players with a subscription model? And if you go F2P then you are even more dependent on players buying something to fund the universe and any future development.
I just don’t think GC or Sovereigns are P2W by any stretch. Even if someone rolls a planet with great resources and keeps the planet private, they would still need to commit time and effort to harvesting those resources to sell or build with. It doesn’t matter how many planets you own, you only have a finite amount of hours in the day to do anything with them.
The game is PLAY to ‘win’ if anything. Someone who is retired or unemployed has a greater advantage over someone who is working. Should we limit how many hours per day you can log in for just so that a person only able to play 1 hour per week isn’t disadvantaged versus anyone with more spare time? Of course not.
And as @majorvex has stated, there is no end goal in an open mmo, so the notion of winning is laughable.
