I could talk for weeks about the sheer nepotistic corrupt bullshit in the early years, when an Ayn Rand roleplaying group (not kidding, they were called "Taggart Transdimensional") got unique advantages from the devs that no one else could access all in the name of "roleplaying." They conjured up fictional characters that gave those advantages (the very first and exclusive t2 mining laser blueprint originals) to their Randroid favorites, and over and over again changed the rules to fit their favorites, year after year.
The dystopian corruption of the setting was coming from inside the development company.
P2W only applies if you have the game knowledge to know where and how to spend it.
You could have a purple paladin, and then immediately die to 8 frigates once you jump it into Tama.
A more pertinent example is the Casino Guy who bankrolled the most recent successfull eviction of Goonwaffe injecting a max skilled Erebus, putting the toon in PL, and then immediately eating shit on his first lowsec jump towards staging.
I do think you have somewhat of a point there with the amount of shitfit marauders you see on zkill with 6 month old characters, but it is absolutely nothing like WoT gold ammo, or a gacha mobage.
E:spelling, readability
Holy fucking shit don't even remind me, it was bad enough but passable when it was just real cash gold ammo because considering how full of bots and casuals that game was chance you encounter someone shitting out gold on random battles was pretty small, but when they did gold ammo for silver (because of fucking course why else people are gonna buy premium tanks) entire pretense of balance was violently defenestrated.
That's so much worse, it's pay to be scammed instead of pay to win then
v0v in a competitive game with noncosmetic monetization, I would rather stomp whales than have the leaderboards consist entirely of Gulf princelings.
Whales aren't rich people, they're neurodivergent vulnerable people 99% of the time. It's jus bullying
The addictive cost of predatory video game monetization
I found a YouTube link in your comment. Here are links to the same video on alternative frontends that protect your privacy:
I am not watching a 35 min video, so I think this a natural place to end this discussion.
I am not trying to continue the argument but I would like to summarize the video because it is definitely too long
tl;dw predatory monetization practices are primarily targeted at neurodivergent and vulnerable players because things like the impulsivivity symptoms of ADHD and the generally lower quality of life they experience can make them easier than other demographics to be lured into predatory and addictive monetization strategies. Lootboxes specifically are particularly guilty of this as they directly mimic slot machines and other gambling mechanisms. As someone who is neurodivergent I can confirm this makes perfect sense to me.