This is not my normal type of post, but after my children convinced me to join Clash of Clans (CoC) about a month ago, and my dissatisfaction with its pay-to-win model, I decided to write this. With CoC and its appeal to young kids and teens, there is a significant risk for these age groups--if they have access to money. It seems that a lot of people are confused about what "pay-to-win" means. I attribute this to people who do pay to win games defending their investment as fair play. It also seems people are confused about what "pay-to-win" means.
So, what does pay-to-win mean? Pay-to-win is not simply being able to pay a price and be declared the winner of a game. Pay-to-win also does not mean that you can only get some necessary content by paying for it--that would be more of a "freemium" model. So, although a video game might be classified as "pay-to-win" or "free-to-play," if it gives you only a small portion of the game for free and you have to pay to get the rest (not earn points over time, but actually pay or the ending is blocked), it would be considered freemium. An example of this would be games like the Diner Dash series or the Delicious Emily series. You cannot get past a certain level of these games without paying real money. That makes them freemium.
Free-to-play is a subset of the freemium business model. This is where you get all the content of the game for free--although there may be some ads in the game. Solitaire or minesweeper would be examples of this. You can download them for free and get access to all the content, but they have ads and sometimes your gameplay is stopped to display them.
Pay-to-win is a subset of the free-to-play model. A frequent mechanic of pay-to-win games is that you have to wait a certain amount of time before necessary content can be accessed. Both Dungeons and Dragons Online (DDO) and CoC use this model, as do other games like Candy Crush. However, there are vast differences in the way this model is implemented in these games that make DDO at pay-to-win that you cannot really pay-to-win and CoC entirely pay-to-win, with Candy Crush somewhere in the middle.
As I already said, I have played CoC about a month--I have never bought anything in-game with real money, nor do I ever plan to do so. I have been playing DDO about 8 years. I have occasionally bought in-game content with real money, and I plan to continue doing so. So why do I consider CoC pay-to-win and DDO not really pay-to-win?
Obviously, I cannot look at the actual programs. I can say that there is no way to determine if someone in DDO is VIP(regular subscribers who pay a monthly fee and may also pay additional fees) or Premium (what I am) or 100% free-to-play (they have never spent a real cent on the game). However, after playing CoC, I have begun to wonder if the programming itself is biased toward people who pay for things with real money. I have noticed that in player-vs.-player battles, I get constantly attacked by people who are a higher level than I am. My kids (who to the best of my knowledge have never bought anything in-game with real money because they do not have access to real money) agree that they also get constantly attacked by people of higher levels. When you get hit 20x in a row by someone who is higher level than you--no matter what time of day you play--and you only fight someone your own level on occasion, you begin to wonder how that can randomly happen. What are the odds of randomly drawing someone higher level than you and rarely drawing someone of equal level? In a regular attack on someone else, a person one level above you is difficult but not too difficult because you only have to get one star to win. But in a player-vs.-player battle, you have to score better than them. Getting stars is the priority. If you destroy 48% of their base and they destroy 13% of yours but happened to get your town hall and win one star--you lose. If both of you get 13%, but they lost all their troops quicker than you did, they win. In other words, you can fight people your own level and still lose on technicalities.
But the level differences are drastic. Between levels 3 and 4 at your builder base doubles the maximum number of troops you can field and the variety. It also doubles most of your defenses. After that, each level gives you a maximum of 8 more until level 7, where your maximum goes from 48 to 70.
As I said, I can't see the programming--perhaps the imbalance can be easily explained by other reasons than that people who pay are given preference to battle people of lower level, but even if it is a programming oddity, the frustration of losing battle after battle after battle to people who are higher level, with more defenses and troops, is very real.
And that is where the pay-to-win comes in. You only get a certain number of builders--you can either build one thing or upgrade one thing and there is no way to queue what you want that builder to do next. I spent the first three days of my game experience watching my phone like crazy so I could immediately start another project when my builder was free. More builders cost emeralds. Just like builders are in short supply, resources are also in short supply. It, for example, only costs about 20,000 elixir and 20,000 gold to get from level 1 to 2. It would take 5 hours of constant play. To get to level 4 with everything maxed out would take about 2 weeks and over 3 million elixir. (Once fully upgraded at this level you can make 228,000 gold/elixir per day-- so you have to battle to get more if you want to meet the 2 week goal.) However, to max everything out at level 5 takes almost 6 million elixirs and gold (combined-about 3 million each). It will also take about a month. And that is just for your main base. Oh, and when you work on your defensive structures they are useless.
And this is how you pay to win. You can buy gems to (1) speed up the work, (2) purchase gold or elixir you don't have (3) buy a shield so no one can attack you for 18 days every 35 days (4) get buffs. Not only can you build your own village quickly and max out your level, you can also build an entire clan with gems. Since the key to winning battles and defending your village is having a maxed out village, you can pay to get maxed out as quickly as you can click. Place a guard on your village while you are maxing everything out and leveling up your town hall, and you will always be the top of your level. When you are done fighting other people, put another guard on your village to prevent defeats. Since having more wins raises you to the top of the leaderboards, you can pay-to-win, especially since every defeat lowers your status. Obviously, if you are level 4 and have maxed everything out and going against another level 4 who hasn't maxed everything out, you will probably win. Or if you go against a level 4 who happens to be upgrading his/her archer towers (and therefore they cannot fight), you are much more likely to win. At least one of the people at the top of the leaderboards has admitted to spending over $2,500 on the game.
This is why I think the algorithm is slanted in the vs. battles. As I said, it is easier to win multiplayer battles, where you just fight their defenses that it is to win vs. battles. If you win, you want to keep playing. If you lose every battle, especially after paying who knows how much, you are going to get angry and stop playing (and thereby stop paying). This is why I think the game is further slanted against those who do not play. Again, my suspicion is because I am constantly pitted against higher level players. Are there really that many more higher level players playing at any given time? But even if there is not a planned algorithm to make it easier for those who pay by pitting them against lower players, those who pay still have an advantage because they can instantly upgrade.
DDO has a similar game mechanic. Instead of emeralds, you can purchase DDO points. Like CoC, you can also earn these points in-game. In CoC, you get emeralds by completing certain tasks. Each time you complete a task, the next task is more difficult or requires a higher and higher level to achieve with less of a gem payout. For example, if you loot 20,000 gold, you get 10 gems. If you loot 1,000,000 (x50), you get 100 gems (x10); if you loot 100,000,000 (x100) you get 1000 (x10). As you level up and fight higher level villages, you get more loot. However, after the third achievement is completed, you can no longer earn gems. To get your first extra builder for gems it costs 500. Finishing a building that takes 8 hours to complete can cost 100-200 gems the longer it takes the more it costs.
In DDO, you earn DDO points for completing quests or you can purchase them. The quests give you favor--and you can get the most favor by completing the quest on elite difficulty. If you are a new character who is free-to-play, you can only open a quest on normal, so you have to run it three times to get the most favor out of it or run it with someone who can open it on elite or higher. Once you get to level 20 or above, you can start your character over (reincarnate) at level 1 again and re-earn the favor/DDO points indefinitely. The first time you reincarnate you can open quests on hard, the second time and thereafter you can open them on elite. Also, the first time you reach favor milestones on each of the 8 normal servers or on the hardcore server, you get bonus DDO points. You can then use these points to buy expansion packs for 100-4000 DDO points (they get cheaper the older they are). Further, most of the expansion packs are regularly offered for free or at greatly discounted prices.
DDO points can make you stronger by purchasing quests to get gear out of them--but you still have to run the quests to get the gear (sometimes repeatedly). There is nothing to make a quest go faster. You can level up and make your character stronger, but you don't get XP if you are too high a level and running a lower level quest. You can get an XP potion in the store that makes you collect XP at a higher rate, but you also get these through daily dice rolls randomly or by trading other items in-game--and you still have to spend the same amount of time running the quests at level or above. You can buy a box in the store that quickly gets you from level 1 to 20 or from level 20 to 30, but again, you will miss out on treasure that might have made your character stronger by not running the quests. The only thing these are really good for is improving established characters.
The best way a person could use money to make their character stronger is buy creating a guild--but even if you buy the best ship in the game (which is difficult to do immediately without DDO points), you cannot get any buffs out of it until the guild itself is leveled up. For example, you cannot get any buffs if you guild is below level 10. Again, you can buy potions to speed up XP (or get them free in daily rolls), but you still have to run the quests and do the work.
Unlike CoC, DDO does not have a "leaderboard" except for the Hardcore League Server. There are two leaderboards there: Most Favor and Most Reaper XP. You can drink a potion to increase your XP, but you cannot drink a potion to increase your favor. Again, the only way to get on either of these is to run quests without dying. (If you die once on the Hardcore server, you need to create a new character--and as soon as you die you are removed from the leaderboard. There isn't something you can buy to keep you from dying.) You can fight other players in a tavern brawl, but there isn't really anything you get out of it except broken armor. Telling others you are king of tavern brawl won't impress them as much as saying you are a triple completionist (you have been from 1 to 20 forty-five times). But, let's say you wanted to buy the boxes and become a triple completionist as fast as possible. You can still only reincarnate once every three days. It would take you about five months to do that. At the end, you could tell people you were a triple completionist, but no one would believe you because you wouldn't have run the quests to get needed gear and your character would still not be able to survive. Considering there are some people who reincarnate every three days without having to buy the boxes, you really haven't given yourself an advantage over anyone else. And, when new classes come out, you have to run those three times, too, to keep the small buff triple completionists get.
Whereas money in CoC gives you an advantage by allowing you to max up your stuff and win battles, in DDO it gives you wants not needs. If you want more bank space, that costs DDO points. Being able to keep a bunch of old junk or spell materials you aren't using doesn't give you a marked advantage over other players. It's a nice amenity.
This leads me to the danger of CoC. Unlike DDO, which is not targeted to kids, CoC uses cartoons and easy play to attract children to it. DDO has a complex mechanic that makes it difficult to play without the help of the gaming community (many are more than willing to help new players). CoC can be figured out by a six-year old without parental guidance. However, kids are impatient, and many want the recognition of being at the top of game leaderboards. We usually get video game purchases or gift cards for presents at Christmas, but if a parent were to put their credit card information into CoC, the child could potentially keep making purchases. (This is also a potential problem with DDO--which used to allow parents to buy things for others and gave them a code for the child to put in, but now you have to put in and then delete your purchase information.) Again, parents have to be aware of this. We do not put our credit card information into games as a general rule, but had we done this our youngest child would have spent tons of money the first few years she was online gaming. We had to repeatedly tell her not to get into that screen and that they wanted real money. With CoC, its easy and cheap on the surface --99 cents here, $14.99 there. The cheapest packs from DDO points are $9.99 and expansions usually have three tiers starting at $39.99. Points and expansions also go on sale throughout the year. If you are a serial spender--constantly wanting new cosmetic armor, pets, or bank space to store them--who can't wait for purchases, you may find yourself repeatedly buying DDO points, but again none of these things are necessary for game success. Once the expansions are bought, they are yours permanently. They usually have one or two new expansions each year. We generally only buy points or expansions at Christmas when they are on sale. Are we paying to win DDO? It certainly doesn't feel like it. If I spent money on CoC it would feel like I was getting much more of an advantage.
In short, there is nothing wrong with pay-to-win games or those who can afford to pay in them. I am sure there are many people in CoC who play and who pride themselves on the fact they have never spent a dime (just as there are in DDO). However, when children are targeted or when people who can't afford it find themselves addicted to the must-complete gimmick, they can become troublesome. In DDO, this manifests in players who zerg through quests without concern for others who are enjoying it more than in people constantly hitting the "buy" button.
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