Lost Ark IS Pay-2-Win (here's why)

Your definition of pay to win is skewed. Please learn to use google: pay to win is to get an advantage over others with cash. This is very clear and concise. Doesnt matter how long or what for. There is no spectrum. You can use a dictionary to look up advantage if you need to as well (sounds like you should). If you were to state these things in an english class you would fail.

If you speak english; you should know how to use a dictionary and google too.

Warthunder is the only mmo that u wont stop playing

Left game a year ago and it's shame. The gameplay is incredibly enjoyable. Farmed every single zone. Got almost every single mokko seed and other collectible stuff aside from cards, than it become stale, cuz bots ruined the ecenomy and majority of the player base started to buy gold from them, so you had this urge to grab your wallet and pay for it and get advantage over others. No matter how hard you farm you'll be second class citizen. Also requires you to do dailies with every single character, if you're f2p to be able to keep up with whales... It's a shame, cuz i thought this game will be my next big MMO RPG, after WoW, D&D_O; ESO... It was a great disappointment for me...

Really disagree with that definition. Let's say there's a game without PvP drops that sells a sword that kills any other player in 1 hit with an unavoidable and huge-range AoE attack, and armor that reduces all damage dealt to you to 0 except by that special OHKO sword where it makes damage a normal amount instead. Clearly P2W, right? But instead, the game makes it so that you can only buy this gear once. The only thing you now lose is the repeatable ability to make in-game money off of it by vendoring it or trading it to other players, but you can still kill every non-cashshop-player in 1 hit while being invincible to them in a single purchase, so any money you could make was useless anyway as in-game money can't buy anything better. Yet now that wouldn't be P2W anymore?

I know that's an exaggerated example, but that doesn't change the fact it falls within his definition: everyone gets the same benefit for the same purchase and it's limited, no repeats for further benefits possible.

Think of Pay2Win as hard mode. If you pay, it's Legend of Zelda. If you don't, it's midway to Dark Soul.

I seriously can't stand the weirdos that argue the semantics of pay 2 win.
"Its not pay 2 win! Its pve!" Yap, still pay 2 win ya buffoon. You are quite literally paying to grant more power and make it easier to beat - ergo WIN - against the computer.

Lost ark is one of the friendliest free to play games, I don't consider it pay to win really its more like you can pay to skip ahead to more content... but everyone is at the same level and it doesn't make much of a difference, you might get into groups faster if you are a higher level but I did everything in the game for free and clearing all the latest content.. Lost Ark is a time-heavy based game for sure.

I consider game to be p2w when you can have an advantage over someone else especially in competitive environment and Lost Ark does not have this.

Josh is wrong since there is a "Ceiling" and you can't keep putting money into Lost Ark to get stronger, there's a limit and it's the same for free to play players and people who use the shop.

And the game is dead lol. Who could've seen that coming.

I think, that all games--this goes especially for MMOs--are in essence 'P2W'. Every MMO has a boosting method in the form of a monthly subscription. This is almost rudimentary, though some few have a buy-once-play-forever revenue model which I favour much more, and have perhaps some modular aesthetic microtransaction premium shop and that's it. It is just that some MMOs have a lightly defined P2W, and some have an excessive amount of P2W. I feel like a once-payment to boost yourself to anything s generally paying to win already,especially in an environment, though digitally, where you have divided the 'sub' class and the 'non-sub' class, there is a clear disparity already. But that is just in the nature of MMOs to do so, it is how they make money and upkeep their entire existence, and I am completely fine with that, rather it is mandatory or it will crumble entirely. Unless of course, this is like those games such as ESO where you pay once and get the base game forever, with some optional expansion packs and yet still a subscription-based model. At that point, things get convoluted and the nuance becomes less and less clear. Simply put, the MMO with a subscription-based system and/or a pay-once revenue, would be far less P2W in relation to say, something like Lost Ark or perhaps Diablo Immortal.

A little bit of a necro here, I just thought that though JSH has a good point, it is fallible from a the standpoint of an MMO, which is almost inherently always complex and intricate.

don't really care if game is pay to win if you can get there without paying and without too much pain

reads title umm, no shit.

lost ark sucks. pay to win and no australia server.

The thing most people forget is that you can separate pay2win and pay2progress. For me pay2win is when someone is able to buy stuff in such amounts that a normal player will never be able to compete or where he can buy stuff which f2p player wont be able to get. pay2progress for me is buying stuff to get something faster which you would be able to grind. which is the gear materials for example in Lost Ark. (and you get enough of that imo) I havnt seen anything you cant get as a f2p player except maybe some skins or stuff like that.

b-but p-pay to f-fast! its n-not p-pay to w-win!

I'd argue that we should be including even one time pay advantages.
for example:
Lets say you have a game that you get gear at the start of a session, when you die you lose it.
But if you pay once you get better gear every time at the start.
I'd argue this should be considered p2w.
and it's one of the worse ones at that.

The definition by Josh is a pay 2 win without a single excuse that no one with even a tiny bit of self respect should play ever unless you're making a video to bash it to oblivion and not paying a single dime.
Its literally one of the worst kinds of p2w.

thats not what pay to win means to me

I played now 1000h around and at the beginning i was happy with all Mechanics are in the Game.Big Inverntar and Storage,free Pet and Mounts.Some Liitle Things like this Aura was ok for me.Lost Ark is realy good in to give you all what you wanna have,but....
In the Endgame you can do only 2 Time Chaos Dungeon and 1 Time p Week Raids.There are no new Quests who give you Enchant Mats you need.The Gold Income is caped per Week and Pirat Coins are hard to get.The Problem you dont see at the beginning how much Mats you need to get from 1325-1445 Itemlevel.I have 6 Chars,3x 1325,2x1370 and my Main 1420.If i do allDaylis you can get i can make maybe 1 klick to enchant my +17 Wep,becouse it cost 1100 Stones and the most Time it works only if you reach 100% and get save echant.And there is no Grind you can do to get that Mats you need.Shure you can go on Chaos without Energy and do it 10h than you get maybe 1k Stones but thats to much for me.The only Way to get more ist to Buy with Gold or RealMonney.
And at this Point Valtan Gear comes next and it is much harder and much more expensife than Argos, i realy loose my Fun becouse i ask myself for what to Hell i dothis?Next upcomming Boss to start all over again??I think im out.
And Yes,Lost Ark is Pay2Win and i realy think now that the Goldseller comes from Lost Ark to.They can win with that so much more Monney,thats why.

Luckily we don't have to agree with this definition of pay2win. For me, pay2win always meant that other players could directly affect your own gameplay just by buying better things. Mostly this applies to games with a PvP aspect (buying better gear which dominates other players for example) . As long as the game is basically an instance for each player and PvE power doesn't matter in general, than I wouldn't categorise it as pay2win.
Same thing I wouldn't say "The Sims" is pay2win only because people can consistently buy better furniture in the money shop. It doesn't affect your own game and experience in the slightest.

P2W = pay to WIN (please pay attention to a "win")
- As long as there is a competitive way, such as Ranking or fight against other human being, then "win" apply.
But what if the PVP is optimalized regardless of the gear?
What is PVE doesn't show any ranking, not even fake one such as DPS meter?
Where is the "win" ? is it simply the gearscore being higher? Are people really "that" ego-hurt, to call something "win" only because other has more flashy gear, or higher item level when I inspect him ?
In this case calling somebody not having at least 8 hr job, and playing whole day, is P2W, I can call people doing speedruns a P2W as long as they don't work 8hr days, because they have more time to do more attempts, to learn faster, you see how stupid it sounds? Stop saying everything is p2w, as long as there is no direct advantages against other people, such as "I can never reach Rank 1 in this dungeon time clear" or "I can never be top rank 1 player in PVP, cus of my low gear" then there is no WIN.

I've been playing lost ark since release and I haven't put any money in honing my gear a d I'm at 1455 ilvl.

There's whales in my guild who are at 1490 and above but so what. I got to valtan hard the week it was released and we all have to do the raid mechanics etc falling off the edge.

Money doesn't give you skill and there's nothing to win cept increasing your e-peen. The game itself is very f2p friendly with all the events and freebies they throw around.

Paying doesn't give you any competitive edge in the game someone that doesn't.

Lost Ark honing hidden mechanic . Pay to Win scale.

Honestly I dont want anybody who whales to be on the same level as me that's depressing

It's really interesting cuz you can break it down to the minutiae would you consider guild wars 2 to be paid on if you can buy gold when the ceiling is super low for cap in power pretty much all of the content is horizontal. I'm not saying it is but I'm not saying it's not either

shouldn't it be "does it have exclusive items that is better that can only be bought with real world money?

time to go back here ---
after tis video was release i got the motivation to continue Lost Ark ---
Lost Ark Sucks tho --- leveling up 1-50 is too boring (unless ya pay to rush it)
i want challenges along the way while leveling not rushing ma self to reach the peak of tis game ---
im glad i did play PoE before tis bullshit game ---
imagine grinding for those mats but end up failing it multiple times? ( unless ya pay and for less grind)
--- i just literally give up and go back to PoE (just only pay the storage then ya good)

World of warcraft is completely pay to win yet I dont here the same shouting at that. The world first race is litteraly comprised of guilds that rmt gold. Millions of dollars worth of gold to pay for all their boes, ect. Plus with how boosting is in most games every game is p2w now. Suck at a game? Thats fine just pay Mike the 12 year old to beat it for you.

I disagree: what if a game offered a 1-time payment of £1,000,000 for permanent double damage and HP? Technically that has a ceiling, but that super minority who can actually afford £1,000,000 would be paying to have a massive advantage over 99.999% of the playerbase. That's P2W.

Todd's up to his usual shenanigans again!

To me there are almost no games that are equally pay 2 win or even more than Lost Ark. This is the full definition of p2w. You gate players behind dungeonlocks and such only to have them bypass those with an endless amount of cash. You make the upgradesystem random so the only real way to deterministically get upgrades quickly is too smash endless amounts of cash and slam upgrades. Only way to play the game w/o cash as a hardnolifergamer is to have 723 chars so you don't get gated after a day or 2. It's even a well established p2w form in Asian games. Tera for instance used the EXACT same way to milk their customers. So far Lost Ark doesn't seem to be a bad game anyways. But its p2w in its truest form ULTRAGABBERGIGAP2W to the utmost degree and beyond. It is a disgrace that some say it wasn't!

It is p2w whoever is thinking otherwise needs to go invest in getting a brain

buy mods

lol

Warframe is one of those games that would make your life a hell of a lot easier with money but its still fun either way.

It is shit. Because there is no game. Its all loot boxes. Its all different systems flooding you. Its cutesy garbs and pets and mounts. But there is NO GAME.

Pay 22 win means that people buy something that you can never obtain without spending money. Lost ark is pay to progress at one point everyone can get where the whales are. And there is only Argos any free2play player can get there within 1 month my friend pushed with the 2 events from 1340 to 1370 easily without that much time each week. Once you are at Argos p1,p2,p3 what do the people that spend money have over you? they can't get more then 4 engraving even if they spend 10000000 euro's

In theory lost ark will reach a point where people that spent a lot and people that just play a lot will end up at the same point, max gear score and waiting for new content, but that could be months or years…

It is true. When people ask "is it P2W" they are really asking is it bad or is it good. Mobile games have tainted the landscape.

is it pay to win? my answer would be "its a grey area"

Hi, I'm Andrew, and I'm an addict. I sunk over a grand into lost ark before coming to my senses and uninstalling. Please help me.

Judging from your definition of p2w, it's clear you've never played KR online/mmo games in the late 2000s that started all these predatory p2w aspects that we commonly see in mobile games nowadays. I've whaled before and played normally in other games and Lost Ark in its current state, is still far from being p2w. Anyone who has played KR mmo games like Rohan knows that p2w is when there are cash shop exclusive items only that will give you an edge whether it be small or big against other players in PvP. I don't see that anywhere in Lost Ark. There are PvP islands, but no one takes that seriously and in places like illusion isle, the stats are equalized so it doesn't matter that much. Rewards don't have huge gaps between 1st and last. How can people keep pushing this new and incorrect narrative of what p2w is?

I think even in RuneScape now u can buy membership and sell tokens to other players in game for money

Honestly pay to win isn't about strictly being able to pay your way to 100% chance to win a situation. It's a gradient beginning at cosmetic skins that give you slight gameplay advantages all the way to stat boosts.

You could say some expansions are p2w but for the most part expansions are semi-mandatory paid updates for the game that simply require the entire player base to pay up or stop playing in most cases.

The spirit of the argument can be summed up by "are there unfair advantages you can attain through money that it feels like the game is strong arming you into buying something." I mean just look at wow tokens most people see them as less of a problem because it's not like people didn't buy gold before the wow token it just made a black market legal, shit change in my opinion but that's a whole different kettle of fish.

All the People that disagree, Lost Ark Devs even said its Pay to Win... Go to their site, new post, they apologize for the P2W :)

mmo is a Stretch

P2W is a game that gives you something for money that you can not achieve by playing the game. Pay to play and pay to advance is not the same as pay to win.

P2W = items that change overall gameplay that's only acquired through cash shop like BDO gillie suit. If you can obtain everything through playing the game which you can in lost ark then what you got is Pay4convenience or pay 2 be lazy. You can put $10,000 into lost ark and still never win a proving grounds match, fail all T3 content

jfc don't read the chat text scroll 🤮

Josh, omg you where right! I didn't believe you the first time I saw this, but now a month later it finally hit me: Lost Ark is p2w. Probably not a surprise, but I had to quit after this recent drama unfolded.

the question shouldnt be is it pay to win but... what are they winning? being bored at an item level higher than all existing content ? i love lost ark, i have over 500 hours played since the game came out. i dont care that some people can pay $ to get ahead of my main, cause guess what, the mats they are buying are mats that I AM SELLING. I take the same approach to lost ark that i take in wow, probably why i have multiple characters and guild banks sitting at 9.999 million gold . I set myself up to be super self sufficient and a gold generating machine, i then turn that gold into stuff i need. same with lost ark, sell all my stuff early, set up a good gold making machine of alts, buy mats back when they're cheap and pump item level up. people complaining about p2w just dont understand or are too lazy to abuse it. i currently have my main at 1350, 2 alts at 1325 and 3 more alts sitting around 1050-1080 and will be in t3 in a week or two. once all 6 are in t3 they'll be farming abyss dungeosn for me every week plus feeding mats into my main.. i feel i've gotten more out of the game than some whale that spent $15000 and has a single char sitting at a high item level. but thats just me i guess