Small PSA for people wondering how F2P the game is

[C.C. 折オリ枝 の 夫]

I played this game since release, and I mainly pay 5$ a month for the monthly pass, with occasionally the Battle Pass for 10$, by occasionally, I mean three times so far in 1 year, but that's mainly because I want to support the devs, rather than "you must pay for better experience".

Wuthering Waves, contrary to gacha belief, is not P2W and has next to no powercreep so far, to the point where some people are actually mad that new characters aren't much stronger than older characters.

Take Jiyan for example, he was the very first limited character released in the game, I got him randomly when doing like 20 pulls to try and get a Mortefi for a Jianxin team, and well, his day 1 team: Jiyan, Mortefi and Verina, is still one of the strongest teams in the game for end game, and by that I mean, top tier in Tower of Adversity and arguably the best character in the game for Whimpering Wastes.

Even the newest character, Zani, isn't that much stronger compared to everyone else. Some characters like Jinhsi and Carlotta can feel stronger than others because they are easier to use, but they actually aren't stronger.

Or take the "blatant case of powercreep", Xiangli Yao and Calcharo, where everyone considers Xiangli Yao to be Calcharo Deluxe, but in reality, that's not really the case. Xiangli Yao is easier to play, and has more utility in his kit, but if you can play Calcharo sweaty enough, he will deal a good bunch more damage. Yes, for the average joe who only does like 15 minutes of dailies, yea, Xiangli Yao is a better Calcharo, but if you have the time to put in the time and skills, Calcharo is a better DPS.

So yea, game is quite F2P friendly, and the devs are quite generous (even more so if you don't believe all the leaks), so you don't really have to spend, nor is it P2W.

Anyone saying that this game is P2W is a moron, because Danjin mains exist, and them peeps are built different, but that just proves the game isn't P2W. Danjin mains clear pretty much almost everything in the game with just Danjin, solo, and she's a 4 star.

The game rewards player skill much more than character power, and while yes, some characters can alleviate things such as #SkillIssue, at the end of the day, there's nothing you can't clear in this game as long as you put the time.

Building characters is also much much much easier than in other gacha games, so that helps a lot too.

If you do have any questions, feel free to ask, and I'll answer to the best of my abilities.

[Half-Life 3]

It's a gacha pay to win game.

[prezes_08]

If the creators were as generous as you write, then when drawing you would have a counter of how many tickets you have already made, and there is nothing like that

[C.C. 折オリ枝 の 夫]

Originally posted by prezes_08:

If the creators were as generous as you write, then when drawing you would have a counter of how many tickets you have already made, and there is nothing like that

A lot of games don't have that, but you can still manually count in the history of the banner.

[zerogear5]

Originally posted by Half-Life 3:

It's a gacha pay to win game.

Pay to win would mean you cannot win without paying which is not true in the slightest.

[___Andrei]

I haven't paid a single penny in this game and I got most of the characters I wanted to get. Even without the new units, you can still beat most of the content with 4-stars or even older 5-stars

[Kriya Takagi]

Originally posted by zerogear5:

Originally posted by Half-Life 3:

It's a gacha pay to win game.

Pay to win would mean you cannot win without paying which is not true in the slightest.

pay to win never literally meant you can only win if you pay. it just means you progress easier and able to over come progression blockers with less effort and time by way of using rl money to skip the grind.


on another note
im not sure why people are always on the defensive about a game not being p2w when it has p2w mechanics in the game. its perfectly fine to call it for what it is. if you still find enjoyment in the game then thats great. there are plenty of games iv played and enjoyed that were p2w. if it has p2w elements then it is what it is. let people decided whether the p2w is overbearing or minimal just dont out right say that the game is not p2w because thats just being disingenuous.

[Kriya Takagi]

Originally posted by TheZWolf:

Originally posted by Kriya Takagi:

pay to win never literally meant you can only win if you pay. it just means you progress easier and able to over come progression blockers with less effort and time by way of using rl money to skip the grind.


on another note
im not sure why people are always on the defensive about a game not being p2w when it has p2w mechanics in the game. its perfectly fine to call it for what it is. if you still find enjoyment in the game then thats great. there are plenty of games iv played and enjoyed that were p2w. if it has p2w elements then it is what it is. let people decided whether the p2w is overbearing or minimal just dont out right say that the game is not p2w because thats just being disingenuous.

P2w is meaningless in a single player non competitive game, you're paying to play the game less at best

i agree it is meaningless. however it is what it is and i dont have any issue with calling games with p2w element and mechanics as they are. ill still play them if i find them fun.

[C.C. 折オリ枝 の 夫]

Originally posted by Kriya Takagi:

Originally posted by zerogear5:

Pay to win would mean you cannot win without paying which is not true in the slightest.

pay to win never literally meant you can only win if you pay. it just means you progress easier and able to over come progression blockers with less effort and time by way of using rl money to skip the grind.


on another note
im not sure why people are always on the defensive about a game not being p2w when it has p2w mechanics in the game. its perfectly fine to call it for what it is. if you still find enjoyment in the game then thats great. there are plenty of games iv played and enjoyed that were p2w. if it has p2w elements then it is what it is. let people decided whether the p2w is overbearing or minimal just dont out right say that the game is not p2w because thats just being disingenuous.

When people say P2W, they almost always mean that if you don't pay, you are at a severe disadvantage over people who pay, and that's simply not the case for this game.

It's more of a "pay to progress" than "pay to win", yes, you can progress faster, but that ultimately just means you play the game less, and if that's what you're going for, then mate, I got no clue why you'd want to play this in the first place, as the goal doesn't seem to be to "play the game".

And yes, you could consider pulling for units as "P2W", if there was a "need" for it.

Unlike in a game like Honkai Star Rail, where if you don't have newer units, you don't clear end game, here you can clear end-game even with 4 stars. People were even mad that characters like Roccia, Brant and Cantarella weren't tier 0 on release.

[Kriya Takagi]

Originally posted by C.C. 折オリ枝 の 夫:

Originally posted by Kriya Takagi:

pay to win never literally meant you can only win if you pay. it just means you progress easier and able to over come progression blockers with less effort and time by way of using rl money to skip the grind.


on another note
im not sure why people are always on the defensive about a game not being p2w when it has p2w mechanics in the game. its perfectly fine to call it for what it is. if you still find enjoyment in the game then thats great. there are plenty of games iv played and enjoyed that were p2w. if it has p2w elements then it is what it is. let people decided whether the p2w is overbearing or minimal just dont out right say that the game is not p2w because thats just being disingenuous.

When people say P2W, they almost always mean that if you don't pay, you are at a severe disadvantage over people who pay, and that's simply not the case for this game.

It's more of a "pay to progress" than "pay to win", yes, you can progress faster, but that ultimately just means you play the game less, and if that's what you're going for, then mate, I got no clue why you'd want to play this in the first place, as the goal doesn't seem to be to "play the game".

And yes, you could consider pulling for units as "P2W", if there was a "need" for it.

Unlike in a game like Honkai Star Rail, where if you don't have newer units, you don't clear end game, here you can clear end-game even with 4 stars. People were even mad that characters like Roccia, Brant and Cantarella weren't tier 0 on release.

p2w doesnt require there to be a need. all it requires is an option to use rl money as an alliterative method than just grinding in the game normally. so long as the option exist then it is considered p2w. which is perfectly fine so long as its not crazy egregious.

[C.C. 折オリ枝 の 夫]

Originally posted by Kriya Takagi:

Originally posted by C.C. 折オリ枝 の 夫:

When people say P2W, they almost always mean that if you don't pay, you are at a severe disadvantage over people who pay, and that's simply not the case for this game.

It's more of a "pay to progress" than "pay to win", yes, you can progress faster, but that ultimately just means you play the game less, and if that's what you're going for, then mate, I got no clue why you'd want to play this in the first place, as the goal doesn't seem to be to "play the game".

And yes, you could consider pulling for units as "P2W", if there was a "need" for it.

Unlike in a game like Honkai Star Rail, where if you don't have newer units, you don't clear end game, here you can clear end-game even with 4 stars. People were even mad that characters like Roccia, Brant and Cantarella weren't tier 0 on release.

p2w doesnt require there to be a need. all it requires is an option to use rl money as an alliterative method than just grinding in the game normally. so long as the option exist then it is considered p2w. which is perfectly fine so long as its not crazy egregious.

Ok, humor me, what advantage do you get in Wuthering Waves?

Let's take Zani as example, say both of us just pulled her, we both have 0 resources, so we both have to go from scratch, we're both UL 80, highest world level.

You start spending on refreshes, etc to frontload the grind from several days (excluding weekly bosses as got no option there) into day 1. She's not really usable right now because you can't really get her abilities high enough while also unlocking her intrinsics.

On the other hand, for me, it takes a few days to reach the same level as you have on her.

What did you achieve by spending money? You frontloaded the grind, sure, as you did it all in one day, but the character is still worse than whatever character you used to grind for her mats because she's not leveled properly due to a lack of weekly bosses, so you can't use her day 1.

What did you win? After all, it's in the name, "pay to WIN. Nothing, you gained nothing, you just wasted money. You can't use the character faster than me at an optimal level. By the time of the next weekly boss reset, I will have the materials to be on the same level as you, and I got to play the game daily and have fun, while you spent money and then just fumbled around waiting for the weekly boss reset.

There is a reason why majority of people use P2W for games that give you an advantage over players who don't pay, while for games such as Wuthering Waves or Warframe, they started coining the term "pay to skip".

Hell, even the definition implies that paying gives you an advantage over players who don't spend money:

https://dictionary.cambridge.org/dictionary/english/p2w

[Wauxx_]

Originally posted by Kriya Takagi:

Originally posted by C.C. 折オリ枝 の 夫:

When people say P2W, they almost always mean that if you don't pay, you are at a severe disadvantage over people who pay, and that's simply not the case for this game.

It's more of a "pay to progress" than "pay to win", yes, you can progress faster, but that ultimately just means you play the game less, and if that's what you're going for, then mate, I got no clue why you'd want to play this in the first place, as the goal doesn't seem to be to "play the game".

And yes, you could consider pulling for units as "P2W", if there was a "need" for it.

Unlike in a game like Honkai Star Rail, where if you don't have newer units, you don't clear end game, here you can clear end-game even with 4 stars. People were even mad that characters like Roccia, Brant and Cantarella weren't tier 0 on release.

p2w doesnt require there to be a need. all it requires is an option to use rl money as an alliterative method than just grinding in the game normally. so long as the option exist then it is considered p2w. which is perfectly fine so long as its not crazy egregious.

The game is P2W? By definition yes. You pay more, your character gets stronger (somehow is irrelevant)

Thing is: Is this game more P2W than... World of Warcraft? (for example) No it isn't. You can play without playing a dime, the game is balanced around S0 characters and 4 star weapons. Some endgame events LITERALLY give you premade characters to beat the event. In WoW you NEED gold to get consumables, repair, better gear... even buying carrys to kill the last boss from the <current> highest difficulty raid. You can, technically, buy tokens and then buy carrys with the gold that you got so World of Warcraft is more P2W than this game.

WoW is a suscription based game. This is F2P. There are TONS of other examples of games having some time of "WIN" when you buy something extra. Even ACShadows you can BUY a map for money so...


Again, is this game P2W? Yes. But in the lower end scale of modern gaming.

[Saiha]

ITT people trying to shove their personal definition of P2W toward each other

[Nizam]

🍿

[mnotas_]

Originally posted by Kriya Takagi:

Originally posted by zerogear5:

Pay to win would mean you cannot win without paying which is not true in the slightest.

pay to win never literally meant you can only win if you pay. it just means you progress easier and able to over come progression blockers with less effort and time by way of using rl money to skip the grind.


on another note
im not sure why people are always on the defensive about a game not being p2w when it has p2w mechanics in the game. its perfectly fine to call it for what it is. if you still find enjoyment in the game then thats great. there are plenty of games iv played and enjoyed that were p2w. if it has p2w elements then it is what it is. let people decided whether the p2w is overbearing or minimal just dont out right say that the game is not p2w because thats just being disingenuous.

Wuthering Waves is primarily a single-player game with some optional co-op. There’s no PvP, no rankings, and no real competition between players—so calling it “pay-to-win” doesn’t really fit in the traditional sense.

Yes, you can spend to progress faster, but you don’t get an advantage over other players. You’re just saving time, not buying power that others can’t access. F2P players can still clear everything in the game if they’re patient and skilled.

So really, spending is more about short-term convenience, not long-term dominance.

[Miha-Sith]

Playing three months, didn't pay anything