Pay 2 win argument for PvE games?

Actually I never had a problem with microtransactions in PvE coop games like Mass Effect 3. If a member of my team has an "unfair" advantage, that raises the chances of the whole team to succeed so why would I complain about that ?

Pay2Win = Having an unfair advantage over other players who didn't spend money on the game.
So this can also count for co-op games where it would be unfair advantage if 1 character who spend money can do way more damage, survive longer etc, compared to the exact same character of same skill level who didn't spend money on the game.
Often, co-op games also have some sort of leaderboard. So being Pay2Win will make it easier for you to get on those leaderboard, thus again, giving you an unfair advantage.
The most extreme version of Pay2Win in PvE would be that you can become so powerful, that you can run group dungeons by yourself, without having to need to go through the trouble of finding a group.

So, it's not as annoying as Pay2Win in PvP, but it's still considered Pay2Win.

P2W pretty much says "you can cheat, we have no problem with cheating, just pay us first".

Microtransactions in PvE doesn't bother me too much if done to a reasonable extent and I think I'm generally fairly tolerant of it.

My main issues are these:

1. It can get a little irritating when not spending endless amount of real currency means excessive grinding and having all luck stacked against you all the time. I'd generally not play these kinda games and would consider them a sort of money grab.

2. Some co-op groups (guilds I guess) would exclude you if you don't have all the absolute best of the best of everything but it's their group so whatever I guess, but the welcoming/friendliness of a game might be severely hampered in the process.

The argument is as simple as it gets, when everyone is equal, everyone's gains show based on how much effort they put into the game. The game being AI operated on one side has no effect on that, it being multiplayer is what causes problems. When you start making players unequal, aka P2W, giving other players special features in exchange for money, such as special gear and faster xp rates, things they wouldn't normally get that increase character progression, it's simply meant for it to be categorized as P2W because some person spent maybe 250 hours of hard grinding boring work to get to that level and get that gear because that's how the company that made the game makes it, so you actually spend money because it's a pain in the butt, while this new guy that's played for 2 days now is at the same level and has the same stuff cause he paid $30. It definitely has to do a lot with ego on both sides. Those who worked hard don't want to be in the same category as those who gained stuff easy, and those who gained stuff easy don't want to be called P2W, we get it, but they're not really equal. One of the two spent who knows how much more effort and time to get what the other one just spend in their money. Doesn't make much sense to call them equal and fair. It's business, but there will be trash talk. If I heard someone brag how they're max level after they spend x amount of money on a game I'd probably feel really bad for them. It's like paying someone to boost your wow character to max level and saying "WOOT I got all the way to max level I'm awesome!". Not the best example, but hopefully you get my point, you probably save 30 times the hours anyone else would have to spend without paying.

Because people can progress that much faster into the game and get all these special items with a little bit of cash even if it doesn't affect other players they can have access to much better content, much faster and be ahead of you, and in some games where trading is possible, even though it is pve, you can probably see how it can cause issues. Imagine being able to pay for a pack that drops an item like a mount that has a 20% speed increase you would then trade for like some other item that is highly valuable that you then use to make some final gear that you need in PvE raids. Imagine you can farm 1 of those a month, but you'll just pay $5 for each one instead for boots, pants, bracers, chest and head. Now you got a complete set for $25 that would've taken someone else 5 months to farm. You can basically just buy your gear instantly. How fair is that? Now let's take Adventure Capitalist(yes that free to play clicking game) for instance, you could just play the game normally, or spend who knows maybe 50 dollars and finish the game in 1 day(maybe, I don't know). It doesn't affect me, but personally I wouldn't consider someone who finished that game through paying, "finishing" it. Normally it will take around 5 months at least I believe, and the whole point of the game is to get to a point and restart, and be patient and just keep waiting, so if you finish it in one day, isn't it kind of like cheating? It doesn't affect me again, it's not like I'm getting no scoped through walls, but you did what takes around 5 months in 1 day and it's hard to expect anyone to treat you as they would treat themselves after they worked 5 months for it. IJS.

There's a reason why there's never any trash talk around any game that is supported by visual customization only, not physical items that affect attributes in some sort of way. Because it shows you supported the game on your own decision, but didn't pay for your level and gear, and that's how it should be. However more often that not this doesn't get companies enough money, so what they do instead is make the game a grind that makes you want to quit instead, almost to the point where you want to spend money to just make it easier. Which is sad, because they turn fun games into crappy games just to make them free to play, simply because since 2003 not a single company can make 1 mmo that's better than WoW.

When there is some kind of competition, ladders mainly for solo games.

So indirectly, it is PvP competition.

Sincerely? My take is just a bunch of people who mistakenly call collectively 'pay 2 win' any kind of microtransaction.

Was this idea sparked by the Payday 2 thread? :D

As to my opinion, in the end, the question lies is "Do you pay and does it help you achieve more?"
In Payday 2, you have the skins that boost your stats. You pay for the skins and you receive a positive stat modifier. That's P2W, even if it is just a minor one.

In CS:GO, one might also say that the skins are P2W, but I'd argue against it.
The reason they bring up is that when an enemy picks up the weapon and yours is flashy and cool, they might look at the gun more, taking ther focus from the rest of the game. I've seen that happen. I mean, it's even happened to me. (The reason I even brought it up was because of the chance of being against bots or something and having your teammate drop the weapon)

Overall, there's P2W as long as you can pay real money for any advantage. It's just a spectrum of how P2W it actually is.

How can pay 2 win exist when one team is made up of humans and the other team is made up of bots?

It's still pay 2 win if you pay to make the game a lot easier than it's intended to be, even if the opponent is just bots. And in co-op games, it does get rather iffy because you can easily end up in a situation where you either make the game too easy for people if you have someone on board who pays a lot of money to get the best equipment (thus that person ruins the fun for everyone else), or the game is designed so that you have to have someone on board that pays for the best gear, so the game gets too hard (and not fun) for everyone if you've got nobody paying. And it's never fun to feel like you're just worse than everyone else around you, despite playing just as well. It feels like real downer to have someone steal all the glory because they had deep pockets.

But my main issue with microtransactions in games is how they encourage, or sometimes even mandates design. In order to make microtransactions work you need to design the games systems around the idea that there are microtransactions in place (see Dead space 3). If you just slap them on top with little regard for how they work, you'll get a system where the microtransactions either are likely to break things, or where players have got no real reason to buy them (or both!) (see the recent Deus Ex for an example of this). And what's to say that we don't lower the drop rate of certain things in game to make it so that people are encouraged to spend some more real world money.... (this already happens. See Diablo 3 before they removed the auction house).

It depends on the game
When there is only a certain amount of XP to be gained from the bots and one player has an unfair advantage over non-paying players.
For example: Being able to dish out far more damage per minute or taking less damage from the bots thereby being able to stay alive longer.
Edit: That could mean more XP for progression or silver income or whatever.

If it's a PvE game where exp/drops are based on killshots or most damage done then it's a problem if people can spend money for massive damage boosts and hog all the exp and loot. Otherwise if it's strictly PvEI could care less, if someone wants to spend money to get everything RIGHT NOW let them.....if they get bored and quit because there's nothing left to do it's their own fault.