For me it’s pay2win if stuff is too hard to get without paying, which it currently is.
I don’t buy the whole sidegrades thing, the team with more options has an advantage, that’s all there is to say on it.
Anti said he’s reviewing the data on earn rates, so lets see if they get tweaked to make it a bit more balanced.
From my perspective, earning has not been too much of a grind. Within 4 or 5 days I have managed to earn 40k creds… double event weekend did not make that much of a difference, what with being balanced out between good farming matches and horribly camped/hacked/stacked ones where death was the primary experience. The vast majority of my credits has come from contracts.
I think it comes down to a strategic approach to how you work the contracts into your play style AND your play time. If your time is limited, like mine… stop playing when you have done your contracts, go do something else, then come back when the timer for the new ones has been exhausted.
The time it takes between grinding out the credits for a new merc, I think, is incentive for people to actually try and learn how to use that merc properly too, not just adding another “unlockable” to their collection.
I have noticed the comment about Kira wrecking on Chapel… for me personally I don’t like playing her, not yet anyway. Her laser is an awesome source of offensive griefing, but she is in no way unstoppable, nor is she a game changer.
Just like Rhino… even with an Aura station and backup, if you have the dodge skills and willingness to do a suicide run, he can be taken out very easily with a right-click melee, and that deadlock everyone was struggling with suddenly disappears for at least a few seconds, which can be a game changer.
All this OP talk and P2W comes down to semi-skill and very aggressive tactics/play style. Unlike CoD, random luck isn’t going to score anyone consistent kill streaks on par to the random bad luck pro players experience in CoD PUGs.
Bad play style and aim is a little out in the open in DB.
This contributes a vast amount to the problem, it’s balanced around jumping on for an hour or so just to bash out the missions and doesn’t actually reward people for playing the game, I’m not saying that all credits should be earned through grind play, just that at the moments it’s too heavily stacked towards a single demographic of player.
It’s a good starter to get the new people playing. Good in the sense that it generally keeps the servers populated and encourages people to do different things which helps the more zombiefied folk out there to learn through their addiction of grinding/unlocking. Both of those are crucial to this pseudo launch period we’re going through; populated and (relatively) motivated servers.
But long term, the reward you’re talking about and that many of us are after, I think, will come after all the ranked/competitive stuff (including proper profile stats), and the community that will help gel together.
It’s the little things too that are building the community. Ever since the Steam sales started with all the new players, I am invariably asked at least once per day that I log in; 'what’s that awesome card you have"… .and when I mention that the Obsidians are one offs only, but that there will be more with future limited events… the question’er thinks that that is super awesome.