The Extra Queen: Why War Robots is destined to fail

What is Pay to Win?

Pay to win shouldn't be taken literally. Money isn't spent to buy wins, rather it is spent to get a competitive advantage that increases the chance of winning. If pay to win were applied to Chess, it might mean being able to pay to replace a Rook with a Queen. Doing so wouldn't guarantee a win, a skilled played could still defeat an unskilled player that starts with an extra Queen, but it increases the chances the unskilled player wins.

Paying to win in War Robots means paying for content (Shocktrain, Dash Robots, ect) that gives a competitive advantage over free content. Therefore, a game becomes a pay to win not when you can buy content, but when buying content offers a competitive advantage. And Pixonic openly admits it does, stating the Haechi is "the best of the best."


But how should Pixonic make money? People don't play games forever...

One of the primary arguments we see defending Pixonic on this forum is that Pixonic needs to make the game pay to win to "keep the lights on" and that games have a lifespan, so Pixonic needs to cash in now. This argument has been pedaled by moderators, "trusted contributors," and long terms members. And it's complete garbage. The argument shows a narrow focus that ignores the history of gaming and lack of understanding of both games and human behavior in general.

The League of Legends world championship, Worlds 2017, finished two days ago. Riot filled an arena and the best teams in the world battled for millions of dollars. Last years Worlds was watched by 43 million people worldwide. This year, I was one of them, watching as Samsung Galaxy led by Ruler defeated SK Telecom and the best player in League history, Faker. It was sensational.

A free to play game released in 2009 that offers no competitive advantage for buying content, makes billions of dollars a year and created this storybook ending:



That is what I want for War Robots.

So how did League of Legends make a billion dollars a year as a free to play game and spawn an E-Sport? By being a good game. It is entirely skill and teamwork based, and no matter how much money you spend, you'll never have a competitive advantage. Ever. People don't just want to play good games, they want to watch them. And sponsors pay big money to reach males 18-34, and that is the primary audience of League. Sponsorships and a huge player base due to it being a good game is how League makes more money than any other video game.


Can you imagine crowds like that, tens of thousands of screaming fans watching people play against each other in War Robots?

And people do play good games for forever. Chess is still played today because it is a good game... and I can hear it now "but Chess isn't a video game!" But Starcraft Broodwar is, and it's from 1998. The Afreeca Starleague Season 4 is ending on November 10th, 2017, with Flash and herO battling for an $87,650 prizepool. Broodwar has had competitive tournaments for more than half of my life. Hundreds of thousands of people will watch the finals worldwide, generating huge profits from sponsors. And tens of thousands of people still play Broodwar regularly. Because like Chess it is a good game.

Good Games last forever.


The Extra Queen

League, Chess and Starcraft are great games because there is balance in game design, which is necessary for one of the key areas of game design to shine: counterplay.
It has been a false belief among many on this forum that availability is the problem with the new content, that players are complaining because they don't have access to the new strong content (ie they won't pay for it). But cost was the never the problem, the problem was always balance.

It could be argued that if everyone did have the same access to the new content in War Robots then there wouldn't be balance concerns because everyone could just run the new content. And then the new content would make nearly everything else obsolete. But wouldn't that be the same as allowing rock to beat both paper and scissors in Rock-Paper-Scissors? Surely, it wouldn't be a good game then, everyone would throw rock and we'd have no way of deciding who is going to change the diaper or where we are going out to eat. And no one would play it. It'd lack counterplay, and counterplay is a requirement in good game design.

An extra Queen, even if given to both sides in Chess, would ruin the balance of Chess and degrade it because it would reduce the amount of counterplay opportunities in the game. And the more Queens you add to the game, the less skillful and trivial Chess becomes. Pixonic is adding Queens to War Robots. Each new piece of content they add outperforms the last severely. And we have reached the point where this new content must be increasingly skilless to use in order to be more powerful than existing content. And so we have the Shocktrain. It deals damage instantly leaving no room for reaction, and can spread to multiple players. Its existence increasingly limits opportunities for counterplay and real shows of skill in War Robots.

And just like Rock-Paper-Scissors without counterplay, War Robots without counterplay is not a good game. So people aren't going to play or watch it. That explains the sad exodus of players from War Robots.

Counterplay isn't just what League of Legends is built on, it is what all good games are built on. And Pixonic is failing to provide it.


It was never about cost

Dredd alluded to this in his article, Pixonic and the $300 Bot, stating "as long as they don't break the balance of the game, rare and exclusive bots are not the problem" and he is absolutely right. Pixonic could make a thousand dollar robot and as long as it is essentially an even fight to the other robots in the game, it is fine. But if that thousand dollar robot was easy acquire for free or offered no competitive advantage, who would buy that robot? Probably no one.
So it goes without saying then that the only way for Pixonic to justify the sky high price tags for new content is to make the new content both incredibly strong and incredibly difficult to acquire. If either of those things weren't true, people wouldn't be willing to shell out big bucks, they'd either use cheaper alternatives or grind the content for free.

But Pixonic doesn't seem interested in balancing War Robots. The Ember and Shocktrain are literally game breaking in terms of balance. The Dash Robots and Inquisitor are clearly overpowered. Thus, everything that is really strong in the game is also very difficult to acquire, justifying the massive price tags. So here we are, clearly in pay to win territory, as the competitive advantage of the new content is undeniable.

This again explains why League of Legends doesn't have expensive transactions. As a game that isn't pay to win, Riot understands how ridiculous it would be to overprice new content. No one would buy it unless it offered people some kind of advantage. I've played Karthus since the beginning in League, and while I don't play League much anymore, I know that anytime I can step back into the game and Karthus will be relevant in the game and balanced against whatever else I face, just as nearly every champion in the game is. You can't say the same for War Robots.

The Rhino that was the meta robot just a short time ago, isn't viable anymore. There is no play or counterplay that allows any kind Rhino to defeat an Orkan Haechi (save the Orkan Haechi making huge mistakes). But there is play and counterplay that allows Karthus to be viable against nearly every champion. Play and counterplay is what make games great. The lack of it in War Robots shows we've lost the meta, which is the heart of any game.


There is no the meta

A sad consequence of War Robots becoming a pay to win game is that player involvement in developing the meta is non-existent.

Many of the most impressive moments in Starcraft history came when a player reinvented the meta by developing a unique new strategy, often in a highstakes tournament. The following days on the ladder, players of all skill levels would try to emulate the new strategy, and overtime it would be refined and remain dominant until it was "figured out" and then other new strategies (or sometimes old ones would come back) would be developed and take over. The meta is almost completely out of the control of Blizzard, left entirely to the players. What drove the meta was player creativity and what made the game exciting is anyone can reinvent the meta at any time. And that can only happen if there is no way to pay to gain a competitive advantage.

But Pixonic has created a game where the meta is governed not by player skill, but by expensive new content that outperforms anything released previously, ensuring that the new releases become the meta. Thus, it is no longer a game of skill, there is no strategy to discuss and speak of. War Robots is a sad shell of a game where the meta is driven by cash, not creativity. That makes it destined to fail; War Robots will never be as successful as League of Legends in game design quality or profits because it offers players a way to pay for a competitive advantage.

War Robots is the definition of a pay to win game.