I have transfigured in almost 50% of my last 20 games.

Honestly, if someone has a problem with any sort of pay advantage, it's unlikely they'd make it all the way to Avatars which is actually super cheap and isn't going to be a factor for most new players anyway... and they are also available for Gold.

 

So, imagine the typical new player scenario:

• installs game
• logs in to game
• does tutorial
• plays some single player

Most new players don't actually look or check out the store before this point, but let's imagine he does so now, he will see that you can buy packs of cards. If this is an issue (paying for content), he's gone right here before he even gets to the Avatar tab. Most players who visit a store don't pay much attention to tabs beyond the first so he may or may not look at the Avatars tab at all. If he does, he may or may not understand what they mean, but would see they can be purchased for Gold, which he would have earned some of already at this point.

So let's say now he plays some PvP, and sees an Avatar. He might reasonably ask someone "what is that?" And someone tells him, "Oh, it makes your shrine more powerful!" "Does it cost money?" "You can buy it with money, but you can also grind for the gold." "Oh, okay."

At no point in this scenario (or its various permutations) do I see much of a chance of a player discovering Avatars and considering it to be a pay to win element.

 

There's a lot to discuss here, but I'll keep it short:

• The vast majority who stop playing games do so long before they really understand the economy
• It is true that some will do the research and decide, but those people also tend to hard to please in this regard, and it is unlikely that Avatars (out of all the things you can pay for in Pox) would be the deal breaker
• Additionally, Grind/Progression elements like these have great effect in actually RETAINING players and getting them to play long enough to stay
  • In various games, I've seen decreased retention and play session length when we made things easier to obtain (even in direct A/B testing). It doesn't always happen, but it's a real possibility.

All that said, of course I agree with you in principle that there is a point where people will look at something and give up, but I don't think Avatars is one of those things as by the time players would really discover what it means, they are either IN or are already OUT in most cases.

 

Yea, like I said, lots to talk about. Another thing it does is give you that "one more game/turn" feeling, especially when you are close to getting something. The long and short of it is that there is a general perception amongst players that "easier progression" = "more retention" but empirical evidence tends to point in the other direction (and thus why so many games have "unlock" mechanics whether or not it's free to play, for example, the Tower Defense genre is built this way).

Whether or not Avatars really count in this manner, of it's a good implementation is also debatable, of course

 

I think it depends on what you are looking at and what you consider "relatively level playing field." I think you overstate Pox's while undervaluing the other games.

In almost all cases, skill/experience is far more of a determinant than any form of in-game progression, so that's already a big deal right there no matter what level of grind there may or may not be. In general, what you will find is that it doesn't matter all that much because new players are new and these sort of things aren't the main reasons why someone is going to like or dislike a game.

TF2/DOTA 2

I'll give you these. These don't any competitive grinds but they do have other forms of progression, the latter case, the ladder progression is a big deal.

League of Legends

It is certainly true you have theoretical access to the same set of champions that people who have played longer do. But in reality the choices greatly limit your actual ability to play what you want, or something that is actually decent against what you are playing against. It also has to do with player numbers. If no one is new and largely uses the new rotations, then you are going to find your access is more limited than your opponents (which is no different than Pox when you think about it, will expand on this later).

Knowledge is also important, so if you've only ever seen a couple of week's free champions (it's gotten better now, but the free champs used to repeat a lot more often), then someone who has bought a champion has a large knowledge advantage over you because you have no idea what the champion does. Again, most of this isn't actually a huge deal to new players - they know they have a gap in skill and knowledge. There's also runes to consider - which does make a fairly large difference if you end up laning against someone with a bunch of runes - even if you have runes, they might be terrible for your champion, but you can't help it because rotation rotated out the champions your runes are good for, etc. , and someone who has access to Flash/Ignite is also going to be more effective than someone running Garrison/Clarity. The nature of League does mean that the progression matters less, since a lot of the relevant progression is actually in-game (but that also means other new player problems where being new is further punished because you are bad and feed).

Hearthstone

There's plenty of grind here. So I am not sure what to say about it. People complain about P2W and inaccessibility there as much as I've seen them do so in Pox. If you actually play the new user experience in Pox, you will find it gives you quite a bit of stuff too. The problem is that there aren't really any other new players to play against most of the time - creating the uneven playing field. Of all the games listed, Hearthstone is really the closest in terms of how Pox work in terms of the grind, with Pox actually having better Shard rates than Hearthstone does in their forge. Pox also has lots of premade/free decks (tho not being able to customize is an issue in theory). There's also the problem of getting cards for factions you don't care about/aren't currently playing etc.

Consider that it is not infrequent to hear people complain about P2W on Hearthstone, and imagine what Hearthstone would play like to a new player with Pox Nora's amount players.

That said, Arena is genius.


World of Tanks

World of Tanks is the grindiest of the bunch, and actually, if you buy your way thru the grind you are going to be VASTLY more effective, tho it somewhat depends on what you are doing. Either way you need experience to actually do anything, but a great player in a stock (non-leveled up) tank is going to significantly less effective than an average player in a fully kitted tank. There's also equipment and crew skills to consider. A slightly better crew alone will make you win almost any 1v1 fight against a similarly skilled opponent in the same tank. All of this can be significantly sped up by paying money, and you have a DIRECT advantage over anyone who hasn't gotten the same upgrades you have. World of Tanks makes the majority of their revenue (around 40% last I heard) precisely by allowing players to pay their way past this grind via their Locked-to-Free XP conversion - no one likes playing stock tanks, and for good reason because when you get a new tank it is usually worse the fully leveled up tank you had that is one tier lower! Premium allows a decent player to fire significantly more premium ammo (gold ammo) which is almost certainly a form of pay to win mechanic (since non-premiums will lose in-game money hand over fist trying to do the same). But again, a new player is going to be so behind on knowledge alone that none of this REALLY matters - even if you gave a new player a fully kitted tank, he is still not going to perform very well most of the time. This is the same with Pox, where a good player can get to top ranks on a new account using a pre-made deck - but that's because they know the game.

In fact, the entire World of Tanks design is one of imbalance and uneven playing field - you get to decide how you react to that, but almost all aspects of the way the game works, from the way tank upgrading works, to crew skills, to the matchmaking, to SPGs and to their RNG all point to this embrace of imbalance. And even the worst player can have a great game every so often because of all this. In all honesty, the first 200 games or so of WOT is probably the worst 200 games of it you will ever play and, as much as I love the game now, I don't really understand how people manage to grind through it (and I wouldn't have if I wasn't playing the game for work/research purposes). I have talked to a lot of game designers about this and we generally agree that the grind itself is actually what keeps players going - "I could get more powerful if I play just a few more games."

That said, the 15v15 one death nature of the game also makes these things matter less. I died? New tank, new game. Someone's advantage is also extremely hard to see most of the time since you are rarely in a 1v1 situation where you both start out equal. And it's over quickly (unlike Pox, where a guy with a slight advantage can snowball it to a victory in 40 minutes).

~

Don't mistake this as me saying that grind = good game or anything. My point is largely that I have no evidence that Avatars is scaring anyone away. And also that, GENERALLY (not talking super specific Pox), players tend to want things cheaper/easier, but empirical suggests that some amount of grind is good for retention.

Anyway, cool discussion, hope you are enjoying it