Ice Bear On Pay2win

Preface

With the thread https://forums.wynncraft.com/thread...-should-be-in-the-game-change-my-mind.286398/ I thought I'd weigh in and give my opinion on this, but it seemed better to make my reply its own thread. I am disappointed with the direction the server is going in right now. Wynncraft was a breath of fresh air in Minecraft with how unique the gameplay was and how it was one of the few non-pay2win servers existing. Unlike other servers, it felt fair. With the champion rank and its features of the bomb bell and /switch in particular this unique fairness is fading.



What is Pay2Win?

The most common understanding of pay2win is when a player can gain ANY gameplay advantage over a non-paying player. It is clear that the champion rank does this with /switch, bomb bells, and pet tasks. Many are fundamentally opposed to pay2win so even the tiniest amount is unacceptable to them. I am one of those players who oppose any pay2win and here is why.



Precedent

Pay2win even small pay2win features can be dangerous to the long-term health of a game. It is undeniable that pay2win is profitable and definitely can bring in money for devs to do their jobs so true you can argue that pay2win is good in the long term because of this. However, the profitability of pay2win is also a curse. It is so easy to make money from pay2win features that once it starts it is hard to stop and even more pay2win features appear gradually degrading the game. But this is all speculation, right? Yes. However, these are real risks. How "benevolent and fair" can we expect the admins to be and draw a clear set limit on how pay2win their server can be when massive profits are attached to this? Even if the admins and owners didn't take the extra profit for themselves and instead used the profits to hire more devs there still would be problems. It doesn't matter how developed your game is if players perceive it as unfair and don't play it.



Fairness

As mentioned earlier it is important for players to perceive the game as fair, but why is this? Most games are competitive and when it is not a fair competition it isn't fun. Wynncraft isn't competitive in the traditional sense putting players against players however there is a competition for resources because of the economy. If there is an advantage a player gains in Wynncraft it is more than likely going to affect the economy in some way. Bomb bells and /switch directly affect the competition for prof worlds and in a way the valuable resource of time. There is no longer fair competition among players for this resource. Players want their game to be an expression of skill and effort (rng sucks but players have accepted it as fair for the most part). This is why players like me get so upset to see even the smallest pay2win feature because it detracts from this. Maybe this is jealously but I don't want to see another player get more money or levels than me because they paid for it while I'm putting in twice the time and effort for the same results.


What do we want?

I would like every player to ask themselves if they are okay with this and where the line should be drawn. Would it be better to draw the line clearly and say no to every pay2win feature or to allow pay2win and possibly see the line be redrawn constantly? We have to be vocal and firm about where we want the line drawn on pay2win and lest the admins just brush us off knowing that they have enough players who will buy-in.



Solutions

Outright removing these features without any sort of compensation would be problematic in itself. I'd like to compliment the brilliance of bombs in general. It seems so pay2win but it isn't... Genius. Players are clearly getting something for their money but it gives everyone an advantage. We need more things like this. We need something that makes us happy to see champion-ranked players in our lobby. Below are some of my solutions. This goes without saying but I AM NOT A GAME DEVELOPER. What I propose may be entirely unbalanced but I think it is important to offer solutions when presenting a problem and this is the best I could do.



Solution 1: Weekly bombs

Instead of a bomb bell Champion players can get a few free bombs such as 2-3 free bombs of their choice weekly. These bombs can like any other bomb accumulate and be stored. This still allows a lot of value for the rank because it will like a long-term investment while coming with all the cosmetic perks.



Solution 2: Champion Slot Bonus

For each champion slot filled on a server, everyone gains a 4% xp bonus including combat and profession xp. The thought behind this idea is that people will buy the rank for that guaranteed xp bonus but because other players also get this it isn't pay2win. Even though they could rely on other champions for the xp boost there is no guarantee they will find a nonfull server with the champion slots filled. I think some sort of bonus for a server the more the champion slots are filled would be an interesting and non-pay2win feature. Also, this solution assumes that the champion slots leaking into normal slots are fixed.

These are just a few ideas I had and need work to be completely balanced but do share your ideas on what could replace the bomb bell and /switch.

 

Somewhat related but champ slots in and of themselves are very flawed with how they work right now, because ANY slots being filled makes it impossible for any non-champion to get in. There's 15 slots on each server right now, which makes it effectively impossible to get into any bomb server after 5s or so of the bomb being thrown.

 

i like your ideas! its just kinda sad how this one rank has split a community apart. im not gonna give my opinion on current benefits because i dont like to argue. but i do like the suggestions you made

 

Very nice ideas! Right now it is pretty broken, and should be adjusted. Pet Task should be accessible to everyone, not only CHAMPS, maybe giving the Champions like one slot more or decrease the task time for them. /switch should have a cooldown, for it allows you to jump between servers all the time. The problem with the slots could be solved if the champ slot are filled first, and then the champion players fill up the normal slots, not the other way around. If the normal slots are full, but there's still place in the champion slots, you can just join and the result will be the same as now.

 

The Champion slots filling normal slots was a bug from what I heard and my solutions are all assuming that bug is fixed first. As for the pet tasks I'm iffy on even giving the champions 1 extra slot as it still would be pay2win and it gives them a small advantage over others. Pet tasks are pretty hard to balance because they are so personal.

 

You know it's serious when ice bear talks in first person

 

Nice, I like the champion XP bonus.
another solution for Champion slots would be to have champions always use champion slots and never normal slots, but increase the number of champion slots per server.

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Wait I've been informed that champions using normal slots was a bug, nvm then.

 

*waiting for wynncraft staff to see*

 

Just gonna drop this doc here btw:

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wtf???? paste this ig:
docs.google.com/document/d/1Rd8vkKvpln6uhgO4XIUctWS5VkaxyZRc0h8Bb9GaxLI/edit

 

i agree with most of the ideas on this post (except solution 1#) but other than that its pretty summed up, the exp bonus solution would be nice, especially in prof parties however it would be rather janky to implement, and as Witch3r said above nons should also get access to pet tasks, maybe they coukd pull it in a similar fashion as to how pets with vip+ works, if youre a non you can only have 1 pet out at a time but if youre vip+ you can have 3 out at a time, similary if you're a non you can have 1 pet doing 1 task at a time and if you're champ you can have 3 pets doing tasks, either way thats just my grain of salt

 

I really like this idea, but it could be argued that this then decrease revenue that the players would’ve spent on bombs? I don’t think it would be a problem tbh, but it’s something to consider.

 

Yeah, that was something I was thinking of. Champion players are the players most likely to buy bombs and with this idea it would cannibalize the bomb sales. However, in the wynncraft discord hypomfc brought up the idea that it could be like daily mob totems where if you don't use it you lose it or it could be a happy hour like command where you type a command once a week to get an hour of xp. This still probably would lower bomb sales unless it stacked with bombs which in that case it would not.

 

I was going to bring this up but I think this is a great solution

 

/switch also is for hero and it is mainly a QoL feature, the only thing that makes it very strong on champion is the bomb bell + /switch combination.
Bomb bell clearly gives champion a huge advantage but don't forget that champions usually are the ones who throw bombs so this might be fair (but I don't have champion; I don't know how the bomb bell works exactly so I can't say much about it)
Pet tasks just are a QoL feature; you don't have to go back to a town and that's it

 

LOL

 

bombs were a good idea. they arent pay to win as everyone on the server gets it, but there is still an incentive to buy due to the fact you can choose when to throw it. But all the features of champ have completely destroyed this. The bomb bell tells them when ones been thrown, they can /switch into the server and almost ALWAYS get into due to champ slots. its really broken rn

 

I understand the arguments made against bomb bell and /switch combined. But pet tasks don't seem to me at least to be pay to win. The reason is that its timed. Like 5-15 minutes for the pet to return after its task has been completed which kinda takes as much time as it would doing it yourself. However I don't use pet tasks (due to that time being a waste of my time, a scroll is easier or just walking to a town) so there could be unfair parts that i have failed to notice.

I like your suggestions Ice Bear i think theyre reasonable.

I would just also like to point out what i saw someone else say above and that was that champions usually are the ones who throw bombs and honestly that has partially some weight to it. There is however another angle to this that i havent seen anyone bring up. Many (not most, but a significant part of) parties whether it is prof or dungeons or whatever are sometimes planned ahead of time. You get friends or a group to go to a world, fill it up and then start a party. Here its basically the host that decides who gets told and basically gets a guaranteed xp boost and those planned events are hard for non-friends to get into since they can be filled up rather immediately. For example take prof parties. The top proffers right, they usually host their own parties and whenever there is a prof party, the world has basically always been filled by that elite. It was like that before champion rolled around. I've been in many prof parties/party worlds rather, and seen how basically everyone online was one of the prof elite (i call em elite, they would prob call themselves tryhards, but you probably know which kind of general group i'm refering to). Now they would many times either be warned ahead of time, or just stalk people who host parties and the world would always fill up with that elite and not "normal/regular/everyday" players. Now after Champion came out, theyve just upgraded their rank, from hero to champion, but the situation remains the same. In this particular case, it is not the fault of the bomb bell, its just how the prof party community works, stalk / be friends with a host and as soon as they throw, fill up the world with proffers. And in that scenario, bomb bell has become the scapegoat when the actual issue would be that there are more tryhards/elites stalking for bombs than a world could contain.(this is not to say that its bad that proffers hunt bombs or whatever, this is just to point out that its rare for the average player to actually get bombs, it usually only benefits the buyer and a few others)

- A fix to that could be a bomb would effect the entire server and not just the world, but that would lead to less bombs being purchased, because for example during dxp there are usually like 60 worlds with at least every other (30 in total) has bombs, but if 1 bomb affected all worlds then wynn would miss out on sales on 29 bombs.
- I did hear about someone suggest that wynn gets like a patreon similar funding system, i just dont see that panning out. People normally pay when they get something in return so im not sure if that would be a fix either

another aspect of bombs that i havent seen brought up yet is that theyre supposed to only guarantee dxp or whatever its a bomb for, to the one who paid right. you pay for something you're guaranteed to get it which seems fair. but to not have it be pay to win, it gives the boost to those on that world too. And one perspective of the bomb bell feauture is that its money people spent for the bomb bell and its kind of like buying a subscription to bombs. you pay, you're guaranteed the effect. instead of buying many bombs, some wouldve chosen to pay for champion instead. money to wynn, same effect. Now this is not my opinion on the matter, its just an observation.

I do have champion, i did in fact buy 2 of those ranks. And many will say that a reason people bought champion is to get bomb bell, i am not a part of that category, I purchased the rank because i like to give money to wynn when i can and a nice cool title for it is nice.

Ive also seen many people argue about it being a "180 dollar rank" and what not, which sounds hilarious to me, because yes over time it might be that, but with the upgrade and sale it only cost 60 bucks which is less than buying hero no upgrade and no sale. So do keep in mind that most of us probably just paid 60 bucks in the moment for it. Yes 3 years ago we maybe bought hero but that was also prob just a 20 buck upgrade. I think i paid total of like 10 bucks vip, another 20 for vip + another 20 for hero and then 60 for champion, which ultimately is only 110 bucks. so when people argue for it being super expensive and what not, keep in mind many got it preorder sale and upgrade discount and stuff. anyway, that is just another side observation, not an argument about this or that.


anyways, have a nice day everyone who reads this :)
//olinus

 

very true

 

I know some champions don't really think pet tasks are super useful but I think that people just haven't had enough time to optimize the pet tasks, for instance, I know not many people use Seavale Reef, but without using pet tasks, the average you can earn tends to be 2-3 LE per hour, however with pet tasks average is 5-5.5 LE per hour. Its also useful for lootrunning, especially if you focus on things like powders and basic weapons and armors for scraps and quick cash. Correct me if I'm wrong but you only can send three pets on different tasks at a time, even then, that's nine whole slots in your inventory being freed up at a time every five minutes, that's pretty useful for lootrunning and even more useful for Seavale. I think pet tasks should be available to everyone.

Also I agree with Olinus and their last statement about the Champion price, 180$ is a bit pricey, but most of the Champions I know, including myself, didn't buy Champion straight up from no rank, we upgraded over time.

 

As sad as I am to not see you speaking in the third person, you make a lot of really good points. I especially like the champion slot bonus, as it actually benefits other players when champions are online, but I would be concerned that this gives even more of a bonus to bomb party servers with filled champion slots. I think that this would work really well though if they change the way champion slots work as people are requesting.