From what I can tell, you can buy Pizza with real money, and can then exchange Pizza for gold. Gold can be used to buy all the best items available. This would seem to be close enough to the definition of "pay to win" for it to be true or mostly true. Am I misunderstanding the system?
There is no gating. You can not pay a dime, and just grind and still wind up with the same levels and items. Benefits you get from paying just gets you there faster - in the end (after a certain amount of time) everyone is the same. So yes, you can pay to have a shot at a starting edge - but the game isn't "P2W" as it doesn't keep certain cards or items et c for the people who pay.
So as long as one could--in principle--grind out those same benefits from tens or hundreds of hours of play, it is not "pay to win"? That seems a rather technical distinction. Edit--Perhaps "pay or be bored" or "pay to avoid annoyance" or "pay to avoid a bad power curve".
Yes, but spending money doesn´t equal=winning. It's less p2w than magic or any other ccg - as CH is a free to play game. You as a lucky free player can have the same exact build as a player who's spent cash. Ofc someone spending insane amounts of cash will have access to all cards, but you can't a) buy skill b) keep the edge forever as people will catch up. I played it as a totally free player (apart from premium adventures) in an earlier beta phase and I did pretty well in PvP vs people who'd splurged on free chests. So I see it being reasonable. Edit: Also this thread.
Okay, but couldn't I simply claim that CCGs are the same amount of pay to win because I could, in principle, work a job for months or years to afford chase rares? They are accessible to everyone, just gated by time and effort.
Did you want to argue semantics or did you want to discuss your question about this specific game being p2w? Well, in that case life's pay to win as well - and I'm not going there (also, as you need an internet connection and a computer to play - it's not free if you're using that parable)
I should be clear in stating that I don't want a perfectly "free" game, I want one that is self-contained and awesome, with an up-front price. If the power curve were truly great, no one would feel motivated to pay, thus designers are motivated to add grind. Thats what bothers me. This game looks great, but having constant reminders of possible purchases built into the very interface makes it feel...yucky.
Me personally would prefer the game to be free of all microtransactions and instead have an upfront payment method, but this is the least pw2 freemium model game I've ever seen, so I can deal with it (and already spent 50 bucks - which I won't use on chests, only content and cosmetics). I've played a lot of freemiums as a free player and have been a staunch free player in the past.
I always saw pay to win to be special powers you only give to paying customers. Example VIP players Draw more cards a round or something like that. However, I understand your point that If it takes 1000 hours of grind into get one really good card that can be seen as pay to win as well. Since I am not in the beta I cannot tell if that is the case. (hint hint BM) So the grind has to be balanced. It has to take some time or else no one will pay, but it cannot take to much time or people will feel cheated.
when i tried it early on 200$ came out to about 2 weeks of play but that was before the pvp chests so now i would guess that 200$ would be something like 3-4 days of playing not sure if that information helps you at all. Personally i think calling this game p2w is a joke unless you consider games like LoL to be p2w and then you are just confused.
If you find the game so dull that you would rather pay real money for items than be bored by playing for them perhaps it's not the game for you in the first place.
Card Hunter uses a business model that depends on there being a non-trivial number of individuals who are bored or frustrated by the default power curve. If this game were not "for" them, the business model wouldn't work.
It does not as there is both optional content and cosmetic upgrades to spend money on. Ofc some people will spend money on chests if they want to, but claiming the game relies on whales is not true - do you have any metrics we don't know about or just guessing again?
I never claimed a dependence on whales, only the acknowledgement of how they make money. Most revenue streams are power or probability modification of some form, not cosmetics.
Well some of us have more money then time. If I can only play for a few hours a week. It may take me months of grinding lower level stuff to be able to try newer higher level stuff.
Well, seems to me you're not really interested in discussing different views on this rather than stating your beliefs.
To undercut a lot of this . . . The argument depends on "You can spend real-world money to buy all the best items available." You'd asked at the start whether you were misunderstanding things, and Pengw1n (in an edit) linked to a thread where we discussed what was in place to combat that. I'll just copy this: The present thread, as far as I can tell, doesn't bring up any new points except to question "a bad power curve." I don't believe the game has that. At least in single-player, new players can march straight from start to end of the beta (with more XP than they need) and just post on these forums when they find one adventure for which they lack the cards. Multiplayer is an odd case, given that you can directly fund it from your single-player exploits OR work in multiplayer OR purchase yet more randomized chests. I don't know what people have to say on that subject.
In a ideal world people would be weighted on their available game time and work time and those who had little time to play but worked a lot earning a decent income would be able to pay to be on the same level as those who grind. But this is not the case as it is both impractical and unethical to analyze peoples working habits and income and balance games around that. So to putt people on a mostly even level anyone can spend money to catch up and some people will spend more money to push ahead. This is a flaw in the system but it is not one big enough to warrant concern in my personal opinion.
