Musings on Progression as F2P

[ArIskandir]

So, the basic premise the game sells you is: "Grind your way to T10/T11, grind your way to a 21 special Captain and the world will be your oyster" 

I won't comment on the limited appeal of that premise if you are not a Powerplayer/munchkin. I'll only comment on how that premise makes no sense for a F2P player. 

From a F2P, Superships are a very very significant resource investment, a quick calculation:

• Supership cost avg 50.000.000 (50 million) credits
• Average per battle net credit earning for a F2P account is 100.000 (100K) credits
• Just in order to buy the ship you need to play over 500 matches, add extra expenses for modules. 

That's 500 matches (you won't be 'advancing' anything else meanwhile) required just in order to buy a ship you can't sustain to play frequently, in other words a very very expensive Port Queen. Superships make absolut no sense from a F2P perspective. 

But don't worry there's more. T10 ships as a concept are made redundant once Superships exist, wasn't the whole point of T10 to be 'top dog', never disadvantaged in tier? Well not anymore... why settle with a mere T10 when you can crank it to T11 if it is power what you want?.  Item plus, T10 ships are also very expensive to acquire and operate as F2P, you are not getting positive income playing TT T10 ships, so in terms of progression they are a dead end... you'll never amass the required credits to buy T11 if playing your hard earned T10 TT ship. In short, it makes no sense either to invest in T10 TT ships as they'll be most likely also Port Queens and just represent an extra 50% increase on the credits you need to invest to buy a T11 (if it is power what you seek), the optimal course is omitting T10 and shooting straight for T11.

Now into the uncomfortable place that is T9. T9 was designed as a stepping stone to T10, a significant time and resource tax required to reach T10. It was the long, thorny path you needed to thread in order to reach the pinnacle of T10, a place where all your undertiered, underpowered suffering would be exchanged for the promise of 'maximum power'... a promise we already established was tainted and sullied by Superships. So what's the point of threading T9 if the view from the pinnacle is now obscured and there's a thunderstorm ragging up there?

TL:DR:

• As F2P, Superships are 'unattainable', and even if you get them, they are 'unsustainable'
• As F2P, (TT) T10 ships are progression dead ends. No further progress possible if you play them, so why would you play them?
• As F2P, (TT) T9 ships are a road to nowhere, they lead to a place you won't enjoy so why go there if neither the destination nor the journey are enjoyable? 

In conclusion, progressing beyond T8 as F2P makes no sense. If progression makes no sense after a certain point, what's the sense in playing beyond that certain point in a game centered on progression?

[Daniel_Allan_Clark]

If you like or are good at a ship, you can make credits at tier 10.

My best consistent credit earner is Midway.

Agree with the rest of your post though.

Superships are completely pointless as a free2play account, which mine is.

There is little drive to play tier 10 tech tree ships if they aren't premium as a free2play account.

I liked the IJN CV line, but haven't really played Hakuryu much since unlocking it because there is no more grind and I like Midway more.

[Ferdinand_Max]

12 minutes ago, ArIskandir said:

In conclusion, progressing beyond T8 as F2P makes no sense. If progression makes no sense after a certain point, what's the sense in playing beyond that certain point in a game centered on progression?

My thoughts exactly. Another point is that for the most nations, historical ships only go up to Tier 8 at best (USA and Japan being the exceptions). So there is no point in going beyond that from historical perspective as well.

[ArIskandir]

9 minutes ago, Daniel_Allan_Clark said:

If you like or are good at a ship, you can make credits at tier 10.

My best consistent credit earner is Midway.

Your WR on Midway is over 57%, how 'translatable' do you think that performance level is for other players? Even in your case, what's your avg credit turnout at T10? 

I can also net positive income on a T10, but it's nothing to write home about...

[clammboy]

What is the mind set behind hardcore F2P is it some kind of a badge of honor? Always get the feeling that F2P players think they are better than people who spend money.
 

They also always seem to think there are getting screwed even though it’s just logic that you’re going to have it easier if you spend a few bucks. 
I am not talking about whaling either I mean like 50 a year. 
 

[Aethervox]

On my alt account (Antean, NA), I've only bought the one ship, the Viribus Unitas, otherwise I'm F2P here. I did spend some money with my main account.

All my premiums in my NA account are container drops (or bought with earned doubloons) with exception of Asashio which a player gifted me (& the VU).

12 minutes ago, ArIskandir said:

Supership

I refuse to play these.

 

12 minutes ago, ArIskandir said:

T10

On NA account, I have no T10s.

 

20 minutes ago, ArIskandir said:

T9

I got a free container drop Marco Polo 😁

14 minutes ago, ArIskandir said:

T8

As a basic F2P account in NA, T8 is my top tier. Turns out my grinding has me at T7 for more ships.

My alt account is more to run some ships I don't have on my main account or to play, again, a few of my favourites (eg: Emden 😁 & St Louis 😁).

22 minutes ago, ArIskandir said:

In conclusion, progressing beyond T8 as F2P makes no sense

Likely not. If I can only win one of those Auctions to rid myself of the  .... excess credits 😏.

[thornzero]

5 minutes ago, clammboy said:

What is the mind set behind hardcore F2P is it some kind of a badge of honor? Always get the feeling that F2P players think they are better than people who spend money.

I don't think so. There are die-hards who love and hate the game typically parroting 'well WG isn't going to get a red cent out of me...'

I'm in a particular situation as a American in Ireland without work permission. So I deal with cash when I conduct my business for the time being. If and when I am in a better situation, I probably would spend a little on the game. But as it turns out, I have done fairly decent in the game as F2P so I enjoy that for now. 

I have no interest in super ships and there is a time and a place for me to touch base with high tiers. There are good opportunities at T8 but also a few at T9 and T1o but its very selective and forgiving environments.

In the meantime when there is no premium time I try to get better at the low mid tiers. I am not really an idiot but my progression has been slow. 

[Justin_Simpleton]

A big reason I raced to T10 was to be able to play Clan battles so I could experience the joy of coordinating with teammates in battle.  Then I found the tech tree ships lacking in clan battles.  I don't think T11 ships will be any more fun to justify their immense cost.

[ArIskandir]

14 minutes ago, clammboy said:

What is the mind set behind hardcore F2P is it some kind of a badge of honor? Always get the feeling that F2P players think they are better than people who spend money.
 

They also always seem to think there are getting screwed even though it’s just logic that you’re going to have it easier if you spend a few bucks. 
I am not talking about whaling either I mean like 50 a year. 
 

I can't talk for other people, just my own experience as F2P and the reasons behind it...

First and foremost is I have a very long list of priority expenses, I simply don't have spare money to invest in WoWS even if I wanted to.

Second is I really don't want to invest in WoWS because they don't offer anything I find valuable at the prices they are asking, the 'goods' are too expensive (at least for me)

Third, investing into WoWS won't translate into improving or expanding my experience of the game. Most of the things I could purchase are either available for free or actually shorten the 'shelf life' of the game by making me reach the 'game over' screen sooner.

Fourth, if I were to invest money on 'entertainment', there's many many other options that would grant me a better more thorough return and satisfaction for my investment. That's generally reserved for 'family entertainment', any money I invest in 'solo entertainment' would come out from 'family entertainment' funds. 

Fifth, the intrinsic added value of further investing in the game is not as attractive as investing elsewhere, the same $50 would net me a brand new AAA title... instead of 'more of the same'

[thornzero]

I think if I were to spend a little, it would probably go to premium time with a few dubs left over for an emergency respec.

[ArIskandir]

4 minutes ago, thornzero said:

I think if I were to spend a little, it would probably go to premium time with a few dubs left over for an emergency respec.

Premium time is hands down the investment that will provide you the best return. 

[Daniel_Allan_Clark]

34 minutes ago, ArIskandir said:

Your WR on Midway is over 57%, how 'translatable' do you think that performance level is for other players? Even in your case, what's your avg credit turnout at T10? 

I can also net positive income on a T10, but it's nothing to write home about...

I usually use blue credit boosters on my Midway...so the 300-500k credit gains aren't normal anyway.

I use teal boosters on my other tier 10s, and those net decent returns (50-200k) per match.

29 minutes ago, clammboy said:

What is the mind set behind hardcore F2P is it some kind of a badge of honor? Always get the feeling that F2P players think they are better than people who spend money.
 

They also always seem to think there are getting screwed even though it’s just logic that you’re going to have it easier if you spend a few bucks. 
I am not talking about whaling either I mean like 50 a year. 
 

I don't like giving money to gambling companies, particularly unregulated ones.

But even if I didn't have that moral objection...the value proposition isn't good enough.

WG sets prices ridiculously high for the items actual value in bringing fun.

I have plenty of disposable income for gaming, and I spend it elsewhere on other games because I get way more fun and value out of that spend outside of WoWs.

[Kynami]

Considering that my premium time has finally ran out again after running basically since Christmas... There is a reason my most played tier is T7 followed very closely by the adjacent two tiers. Yeah I do have some T9 credit grinders, and my most playable T10 would be the Bourgogne. I absolutely avoid superships and mostly avoid playing the tech tree T10s outside of CBs/ranked environments where extra rewards are paying for the expense of running them.

And yes, the difference in economy of premium time going down makes a gigantic difference in how sustainable the T9 and T10 ships are. A green credit booster and a close to 2k BXP game in the Bourgogne with premium time pays out close to 650k before expenses. Which means about 500k of that is the actual profit. With premium time not in effect the take home plummets to around 275k for a similar game. Standard T10 tech tree ships without the +50% credit booster from a bonus package and the full service fee are effectively concrete shoes for account progression.

Just bouncing over to any of my T7 and a few of my T8 premiums for credit growth is massively more rewarding when premium time is out. The T9s while still effective at making credits are a bit more influenced by the quality of teams I am getting. But from the seat of a T7 even a "bad" game is only being taxed ~40k credits in service fees which lets me take back to port 300k profit even without premium time pretty regularly.

[Kynami]

1 hour ago, ArIskandir said:

In conclusion, progressing beyond T8 as F2P makes no sense. If progression makes no sense after a certain point, what's the sense in playing beyond that certain point in a game centered on progression?

I have two counter points for that one, the first is flake events. The T10s you've laid hands on effectively give you infusions of additional super containers and santa crates every year. Which translates into more boxes dropping the occasional extra ship and more free premium time. And its that free premium time in particular that makes everything else considerably more comfortable. The second reason is time limited opportunities, because Weegee love doing things where you have one week to get some tasks done before a coupon runs out to get a T8 or T9 for free* and burning some banked blue boosters with some T10 ship usage is the sanest way to go about it without needing three times as many matches.

Yes these two points are not going to be on the table for a particular new account. But for those playing for over a year it becomes increasingly relevant and possible.

* Paid for via time played and leveraging past gains to your benefit. And lets be honest, some of those event acquired T9s are quite excellent.

[Daniel_Allan_Clark]

15 minutes ago, Kynami said:

I have two counter points for that one, the first is flake events. The T10s you've laid hands on effectively give you infusions of additional super containers and santa crates every year. Which translates into more boxes dropping the occasional extra ship and more free premium time. And its that free premium time in particular that makes everything else considerably more comfortable. The second reason is time limited opportunities, because Weegee love doing things where you have one week to get some tasks done before a coupon runs out to get a T8 or T9 for free* and burning some banked blue boosters with some T10 ship usage is the sanest way to go about it without needing three times as many matches.

Yes these two points are not going to be on the table for a particular new account. But for those playing for over a year it becomes increasingly relevant and possible.

* Paid for via time played and leveraging past gains to your benefit. And lets be honest, some of those event acquired T9s are quite excellent.

These are reasons to have tier 10s in your port...not reasons to play them regularly.

SuperContainer drops aren't worth much. Santa drops are only a bit better.

The real problem for many is just how boring and bad the tier 10 meta actually is.

I still stand behind my position that all battleship play gets significantly worse from a fun perspective once you get past tier 7. The ship design and the meta basically punishes anything other than parking somewhere and sniping.

It's boring as hell, and I really encourage folks who are new on battleships not to blindly rush up the lines. Tier 7 or 8 is the sweet spot.

For CVs, tier 8 is the sweet spot, IMO.

Edited June 22 by Daniel_Allan_Clark

[Unlooky]

2 hours ago, ArIskandir said:

In conclusion, progressing beyond T8 as F2P makes no sense. If progression makes no sense after a certain point, what's the sense in playing beyond that certain point in a game centered on progression?

I don't play this game just to grind. I play this game to have fun, first and foremost. For me, everything below Tier 10 is abysmal for various reasons depending on the tier, chiefly the amount of ships hard paywalled. Progression does not automatically equal fun, otherwise I wouldn't have 1 million XP sitting on MInotaur. 

I'm not purely free to play but I rarely spend money on this game. I've made two purchases, Atago with a cashback coupon, and an extra 500 doubloons to purchase Massa B, with a combined 38 games in both. Both of those I purchased around my 4000-5000 battle mark, well after I unlocked multiple tier 10s. Therefore, I'd say that while I'm not a F2P by definition, I have a fairly close experience since I do not regularly buy containers, boosters, or premium time. 

Having all that out the way, I haven't had an issues maintaining a tier spread that looks like this:

 

From my experience, it's not hard to stay afloat at Tier 10 or any tier really. The difficulty comes from when acquiring new ones. When I'm not grinding a line, my total credit balance sits in the 60-90 millions. When I am grinding/recently completed a grind, it's anywhere from 10-40 million. 

Experience is never the bottle neck in climbing the tiers: it's always the credits. On my fresh account speedrun, I literally sold both the freebie premiums Arizona and Repulse in order to purchase Minotaur. This is almost certainly by design: speeding up the amount of XP you earn in a ship is limited to boosters, but credits can be grinded in premium ships, thus incentivizing their purchase. 

 I'd agree that perhaps if one were to look at it from a purely "optimization" standpoint then progressing makes no sense since costs rise dramatically, but you are overstating how much superships "ruin" tier 10. More often than not you won't be put in a supership match, unlike other tiers where uptiers feel extremely common. Even when you are in a supership match, the most common outcome is one or two superships, and everyone else tier 10. In contrast, it's extremely possible to be the only tier 8 or 9 in a tier 10 match. For these reasons tier 10 remains the "top dog." 

[Kynami]

19 minutes ago, Daniel_Allan_Clark said:

These are reasons to have tier 10s in your port...not reasons to play them regularly.

SuperContainer drops aren't worth much. Santa drops are only a bit better.

Ahh, but his posed question was why even bother going beyond T8. And to you I simply state a few things.

1) Those super containers you are disparaging are the most common source of mass amounts of signals and blue boosters for F2P. A big drop of signals is often 5m or more credits of savings for resources to be used in competitive modes like CB. Yes we get tired of RNG getting stuck on giving us smoke signals instead of a more generally useful fire related or heal efficiency ones. But newer accounts take a while before they are drowning in them. So, suffering from success much?

2) Having options is good. Because come dockyard or obnoxious short-term mission there are times where substitutions are emphatically sub-optimal.

3) If you feel the stay back and snipe while parked is the only valid way to play higher tier BB that tells me more than anything you are mostly looking at it from solo randoms play. Plenty of options that have near cruiser levels of concealment that can be fairly aggressive especially if you have a division mate smoking you in or providing radar. It just requires this funny thing called communication to pull off. And sure, you will be sunk now and then. Its part of the game even. But plenty of games have been won by having the reds kite backwards away from the cap and then finding out the destroyers and cruisers on your team now have it on lock down and are going to be an absolute pain to dislodge.

[Daniel_Allan_Clark]

9 minutes ago, Kynami said:

1) Those super containers you are disparaging are the most common source of mass amounts of signals and blue boosters for F2P. A big drop of signals is often 5m or more credits of savings for resources to be used in competitive modes like CB. Yes we get tired of RNG getting stuck on giving us smoke signals instead of a more generally useful fire related or heal efficiency ones. But newer accounts take a while before they are drowning in them. So, suffering from success much?

Actually, no. I don't get most of my blue boosters from supercontainers...I get them from the events and the 'free' track of the monthly battlepass.

I don't buy signals. So getting them isn't a credit savings.

I also don't play competitive modes (clan battles, or ranked outside of bronze) because I'm never going to be equipped properly to do my best there...and I'm just not interested in having to slavishly follow the meta.

I'm here for meme builds and fun.

I play a secondary specced Midway and boast a 57% win rate in randoms. Playing for fun doesn't mean I'm bad...far from it. It just means I don't min-max optimize my ships for perfect performance.

9 minutes ago, Kynami said:

2) Having options is good. Because come dockyard or obnoxious short-term mission there are times where substitutions are emphatically sub-optimal.

Indeed.

Of course, you vastly overestimate my 'need' to grind dockyards or missions. Most dockyards I completely ignore as there is nothing that I value that is within reach of my limited playtime. The same for most missions. Sometimes I'll go for something, but it's maybe...MAYBE...10% of the missions on offer.

Most missions and events I just ignore.

9 minutes ago, Kynami said:

3) If you feel the stay back and snipe while parked is the only valid way to play higher tier BB that tells me more than anything you are mostly looking at it from solo randoms play. Plenty of options that have near cruiser levels of concealment that can be fairly aggressive especially if you have a division mate smoking you in or providing radar. It just requires this funny thing called communication to pull off. And sure, you will be sunk now and then. Its part of the game even. But plenty of games have been won by having the reds kite backwards away from the cap and then finding out the destroyers and cruisers on your team now have it on lock down and are going to be an absolute pain to dislodge.

I didn't say it was the only way to play...just that it's most often what is best to do. And yes, I mostly play solo randoms...because I'm not often playing and most of my friends don't play this game.

Kind of hard to coordinate in a randoms setup that is full of randoms who aren't interested in coordination. Meanwhile, in tier 7 games, you can actually maneuver and push or kite without the inanity of the ship / tier design punishing you.

So, yeah.

Thanks for the advice...but most of it doesn't really address the reasons why I'm not all that excited for high tier play.

Edited June 22 by Daniel_Allan_Clark

[Aethervox]

49 minutes ago, Unlooky said:

I play this game to have fun, first and foremost.

If only Wedgie considered this sentiment more ....

 

50 minutes ago, Unlooky said:

For me, everything below Tier 10 is abysmal for various reasons

You are limiting yourself to T10 (& T11?). Your opinion about the other tiers, ofc, however, there's a great deal of fun, imho, to be had in those other tiers 😁.

 

8 minutes ago, Kynami said:

posed question was why even bother going beyond T8

You don't have to if one doesn't want to.

 

2 hours ago, Daniel_Allan_Clark said:

WG sets prices ridiculously high for the items actual value in bringing fun.

 

One can buy all sorts of games that give much better value for the money than what WG offers. WG offers  😒 are sick JOKES in comparison.

[Aethervox]

5 minutes ago, Daniel_Allan_Clark said:

yes, I mostly play solo randoms.

This is what I do too.

5 minutes ago, Daniel_Allan_Clark said:

hard to coordinate in a randoms setup that is full of randoms who aren't interested in coordination.

Agreed. 

[pepe_trueno]

3 hours ago, ArIskandir said:

So, the basic premise the game sells you is: "Grind your way to T10/T11, grind your way to a 21 special Captain and the world will be your oyster" 

I won't comment on the limited appeal of that premise if you are not a Powerplayer/munchkin. I'll only comment on how that premise makes no sense for a F2P player. 

From a F2P, Superships are a very very significant resource investment, a quick calculation:

over the last years WG has been on a crusade to reduce the overabundance of resources player had accumulated. from the flags/captain rework to auction events they are all aimed to draining the excess of resources player have.

Superships is no different, They only exist to make the player burn their stock of credits.

 

personally i rather have resource sinks like:

1 millon captain exp: grants 3 points to upgrade skills of a commander without enhanced skills. By 3 points i mean 3 skills of 1 point or 1 skill of 2 points + 1 of 1 point or 1 of 3 points.

25 million credits: sidegrade modifications to the ship that can be done up to 4 times like -3% to main gun dispersion, 5% reduced main gun rate of fire or +10% to AA range, -2 flaks.

1 million free exp that let you select and buff  parameters of the ship and then the ship will be treated like a tier higher.

 

 

[Ensign Cthulhu]

5 hours ago, ArIskandir said:

T10 ships as a concept are made redundant once Superships exist,

I disagree with this. 

5 hours ago, ArIskandir said:

wasn't the whole point of T10 to be 'top dog', never disadvantaged in tier?

Not necessarily. I regard it as a matter of "Do you find this ship historically interesting and its playstyle worth trying out?"

5 hours ago, ArIskandir said:

As F2P, Superships are 'unattainable', and even if you get them, they are 'unsustainable'

Not a bad call.

5 hours ago, ArIskandir said:

As F2P, (TT) T10 ships are progression dead ends. No further progress possible if you play them, so why would you play them?

Because you have an interest in the ship.

5 hours ago, ArIskandir said:

As F2P, (TT) T9 ships are a road to nowhere, they lead to a place you won't enjoy

Unsupportable as a blanket statement. See above. 

As a Free to Play player, you still have access to a fairly broad range of coal premiums. They are your money generators. What's required after that is a very careful, meticulous and patient accumulation of credits, and of playing your premiums to zero out the losses you made playing high tiers. 

Yes, Tier 8 is the tier where it starts to get expensive and Tiers 9 and 10 are where the service costs seriously start to bite. Yes, operating superships regularly is a non-starter unless you've been FTP-ing it for a long time. But they were never meant to be operated regularly. They are the WOWS equivalent of a fine, expensive cigar or the best French champagne. 

[Wulf_Ace]

If there were no superships in the game there would be nothing I could spend my credits into. Got all the tier 10 ships, so they are only here for credit sink, nothing else.

[Andrewbassg]

I Wanted to give my 2cents coz I am a F2P for quite a loong time now.

5 hours ago, Unlooky said:

Experience is never the bottle neck in climbing the tiers: it's always the credits. On my fresh account speedrun, I literally sold both the freebie premiums Arizona and Repulse in order to purchase Minotaur. This is almost certainly by design: speeding up the amount of XP you earn in a ship is limited to boosters, but credits can be grinded in premium ships, thus incentivizing their purchase.

Yes, as a new player credits are a problem and without PT it is painful. Ops used to be a nice revenue making place. Now,... it is a bit different.

I've got this....

 ....for this.

Keep in mind that I know what I'm doing in ops. Battle played with only the freely available perma bonus and a 13 capt.

It is worse than I remembered. When ops were tier separated, purchased camo/bonus for Leander and Nurn, specifically to help with FXP, CXP and credits. Also got the Molotov coz she used to be the bane of AEGIS.

So yeah without PT is pain. On the bright side, as a new player one can get quite bit of  PT from the various collections and campaigns. i can't remember when I run out of PT as a F2P. Play ranked primarily so I get dbl, which allows me to buy PT with some luck from SC's.  Which also allowed me to get quite a few premiums, again, as a F2P. 

5 hours ago, Unlooky said:

I play this game to have fun, first and foremost

Yes. I also try to avoid grind for purpose. Advancing lines not necessarily my cup of tea, tho I have around 200 ships. of which 14 are T10's. That's  on NA, on EU I have more 🙂 .

And this my  balance sheet 🙂 

 

 

 

Edited June 23 by Andrewbassg

[SunkCostFallacy]

I signed on board in 2021. Obviously there have been some marked changes since then. And one of those changes which is extremely pertinent to this topic is that WG have clearly been trying to 'take the heat out of the economy'. We're seeing changes which primarily serve to try to get players to spend their accumulated resources, and to encourage players to spend money on silver and gold.

The economy changes have ALWAYS been to the players detriment, regardless of the spin put on them by the company.

The econ rework resulted in fewer rewards to the players over time. We just do NOT get as many boosters as we used to.

The move to the BattlePass system replacing the Daily/Weekly quests ended up providing fewer rewards to players over time. Then they converted the BattlePass to 'event passes' which meant that you were no longer getting BatlePass rewards AND event rewards, just the one set. Fewer rewards to the players over time.

The Super Container rework resulted in ... yes, fewer rewards to the players over time.

Superships were designed, from the start, to be a credit sink. Luckily they just aren't worth it in COOP, so I don't have to worry about that.

Now because I signed on before all the economy nerfs, and because I play COOP (and Asym when it's available) I don't NEED to worry about flags (I don't use them), and I've accumulated a very nice supply of boosters for those occasions when I want to accelerate ship or commander XP.

Now we have to acknowledge that I am weird. As I write this I currently have 19546 games played. 11058 of them are in my Salem because I just love playing that ship. And because the Salem is premium (and because of clan bonuses) I get +50% Credits, +105% Ship XP, +115% Commander XP, and +150% Free XP. Which makes it pretty easy to accumulate resources if you are, like myself, really really REALLY keen on playing a ship with those kind of bonuses.

So if I were to create a new account, I'd clearly grind as efficiently as possible to get enough coal to buy the Salem, and start accumulating. Not because I wanted to accumulate resources, but because that is the ship I want to play.

But as I noted ... I'm weird. I can't see many new players coming in to the game, and grinding enough coal to actually DO that. And unless they were as weird as I am, they wouldn't have any fun doing so.

I am, and will always be, F2P. Everything I've got in the game has been accumulated in game:

 

But I have to question if, with the continued reduction of rewards to players, even someone as weird as I would stick with the game long enough to achieve that sort of wallet again.