thats like when you go to a party and the drinks there are free, and you drink all the free beer that you can, and you say, "hey even though someone else payed for the beer, the beer wasnt for free, I had to drink it you know"
pretty words wont change the fact that youre playing for free
No, that's exactly not like that, and I'll explain you why.
There are a few instances (oil rigs and starting mission rewards) where actually MA is giving away free money, but except these, MA is not giving away free money... sweat, as well as fruits, have 0.01 PED / K value, so basically all their value comes from MU which is paid by other players. Practically, what a free player does is to sell their time, by working / being employed by a paid player; they pay us for doing something they don't enjoy doing themselves.
Let's take fruits for example.
A paid player has a pet that he wants to level up and for that he needs nutrio bars, for which, in turn he needs fruits; since these can only by manually collected by someone he has two options:
1. Spend a (big) part of his game time walking for fruits, and not generating any decay / profit for MA, then, when he found his fruits, make the nutrios, feed his pet and move on hunting/mining/crafting, for whatever game time he has left.
(making up numbers, let's say that he plays for 20 hours per week, from which he has to sacrifice five hours for fruit walking, so he is left with 15 hours for hunts/mines/crafts)
2. Decide that he can't be arsed with this mundane task, so just pay a free player to do this for him, and since he doesn't have to waste his time with fruit walking, he can spend all his play time hunting/mining/crafting; in the end, the free player would eventually also spend the money he earn to finance his own small hunting/mining/crafting.
(sticking up with the made up numbers, it means that the paid player hunts/mines/crafts all his 20 hours, plus the free player now affords to hunt/mine/craft for one hour by himself)
So, in the first scenario, there are 15 hours of decay-generating activities (profit for MA), while in the second scenario there are 21 hours of decay-generating activities (profit for MA)... which translates to:
- MA makes more money, from two different sources - the paid player has more time to effectively play, so he will spend more money and the free player will also have some money to play
- the paid player would have more fun, because he will only do things he enjoys (although he will have to deposit more for this, but that's his call)
- the free player would be able to play the game too
To keep with your drinks example:
- The main professions (hunting, mining, crafting) are the "drinks"
- MA is the "bar"; they don't give away the "drinks", but sell them and they have a profit margin on any sale
- So all "drinks" sold on the "bar" must be (and are) paid by someone
- Now someone may be too lazy or wasted to go to the bar himself and may just say to another guy from his table "look, here's $30, go buy me two beers and get one to yourself for the trouble too"
- Since every person can only drink so many "drinks" before "getting wasted or wetting themselves", the fact that more people get to "drink" means that, on total, more "drinks" will be sold from the "bar"
- So, in the end, the only person that loses something is the "lazy guy" that can't be arsed to move his a$$ to the bar, but prefers to have a "valet" to do this for him, but, even here, the cool thing is that he's OK with paying for his confort
- Now another guy (you), from a totally different table, comes and complain that "valets" should not be allowed in the "bar", since they don't pay for their own "drinks", but their "employer" does...