Contract Wars, Pay to Win?

Hello Contractor,

As you know, Contract Wars is Free to play. Meaning you can play it for free without having to spend 1 coin of your local currency. However, there is no such thing as a free lunch. Theory behind all F2P games is to try and make you change your mind about spending money. Every aspect of the game is carefully designed to make you want to spend gold! This often results in a Pay to Win game, where at some point you loose every advantage over players that do spend money.

Now, before i go any further; CW is a superb game, being continously improved by a team of highly motivated developers. Their efforts should not go unrewarded. These guys deserve compensation for their hard work, and you can have a blast in cw by spending about as much money on CW as you sometimes do on nice-price-sale-dump games from your local store.

Are the guns Pay to Win?

Before patch 1.4310 i would wholeheartedly say no, as guns like the IZH, KACPDW, M4A1 and AK105 can be made just as good as any GP weapons. However, in the last patch guns were introduced that are slightly better then some of the mentioned CR guns.  So yes, in theory you can get guns for gold that are better then the free guns.
So, the guns are pay to win? NO, improvements of these guns dont make the guns more powerfull, just a pinch of extra  "this 'n  that"  doesnt change the fact that a skilled user will handle the M4A1 far better then a noob with an ACR-C.

Most GP guns seem way better then CR weapons at first but from an honest point of view, GP weapons only offer more customisation. For example, the TKPD carbine. It's damage is unmatched by any other gun in the game but it comes at the toll of really shitty firerate and some seriously crappy mobility. So, is the TKPD better then CR weapons? I think not. If the devs were to give each and everyone a TKPD for free i doubt you'd see masses of people using it. The TKPD is a speciality weapon, as goes for most of the GP guns.


So the game isn't pay to win?

Unfortunately it is pay to win, and for a really silly reason as well.

CW offers boosters to increase Experience gain. The design of these boosters imho is flawed to the core.
I use boosters, i love boosters. I use boosters to boost my clan 6six6 hoping to attract more members. I use the premium booster package of 500gp to feed 6six6 and my donation is set to 75%. I have no hope of getting to level 70, so if i could set my donation slider to 100% i would do so.

Now, the boosters are flawed; instead trippling just my experience, the boosters tripple my score as well, often resulting in being the "best player of the match" while in fact another player outperformed me.

Personally, i hate that. I want the experience, the extra credits are nice too, but i do not want to rob someone out of their well earned victory.  When you see me leaving a match while i'm winning...it's not because i'm ragequitting or i'm having connection problems. It's because i see someone who deserves credit and i want them to get the credit instead of me.

So, by using boosters, you can tripple the chances of finishing first, making CW undeniably "pay to win".

Boosters;  i use em, i love 'em , but i beg the devs; "Fix the boosters" , dont make them influence scores and keep the results of the boosters personal!...it's just not right as score should be earned, not bought!

Now, CW being P2W, does that mean that you shouldn't play it?

Helllno. personally i think that if you know you outperformed the "rich guy" eventhough he wins is a humiliation to them (well, i atleast feel humiliation when i win over someone who deserves it more!), forget scores....take a look at K/D... there you will see the real winner!

CW, free or not free, pay or not pay to win remains "Fun to Play" and i think in time the dev's will fix boosters because they fix "wrong's" without discrimination.. Guaranteed detection (the games build-in wallhack) has been nerfed, Thermal vision has been nerfed... i have good hopes that one day they will fix score as well.

Orgy out!