General

The Pay To Win Stigma

Recently, through cash shop changes, for better or worse, the phrase "this game is becoming more/less pay to win" is being used in abundance. I want to discuss the idea further.
A wise YouTuber named Wrel, who primarily makes content for PlanetSide 2 made https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=3KGhCzylZos (for all the comments not about this topic, maybe a quick lesson on how to make my links look less janky would be appreciated. Google didn't help much) this video to discuss Free to Play and Pay to Win and how it relates to gaming as a whole.

The thing about Maple is that there truly is no "win" there is vertical progression. You can pay to move through levels faster, okay. You can pay to make your gear strong, alright. But where do you win in this? The things you pay for are a convenience (Pay for convenience as Wrel says). With the addition of rewards shop and cube drops now, the convenience part is more apparent than ever before. You could spend a few days farming reward points, using what you do have to kill bosses and do quests, or you can get a cube now for 1.20$ (sorry other countries I don't know what it is after the changes). Now, granted, there are some cash items that are purely unreasonably priced. Shielding Wards I'm looking at you. I don't want to pay the price of a footlong at Subway to protect my item once against something that may or may not fail. Yeah...I'll have a Chicken Bacon Ranch please.

Essentially, this thread is a bit of a reminder that none of us win Maplestory. We log in, we have fun doing what ever we want in a vast world. If chasing a fernando kim 2m-2m range no clown is what you wanna do, then go merch all day, or buy what you'll need and pray to the RNGods for mercy. If you want to be, the very best, like no one ever was. To level up is your real test, to train is your cause, then grind for a few hours on normal exp, or buy a reasonably priced card that will speed up your progress.

In the end. We don't lose. We don't win. We merch, we train, we quest if we're completely insane like me, and we enjoy ourselves. Pay to win is a very negative identity for a game to have, and properly identifying what you can do for convenience and to flat out achieve that non-paying players can't (that isn't cosmetic...my guilty obsession in games. I have bought almost 200$ worth of Planetside 2 Helmets someone help me...)

Let's discuss. Be sure to watch the video, Wrel makes some very good points (and he's a great player at Planetside who is fun to watch).