I am a FFXIV raider. Gear has been earned. But there is now a lack of culture. The game has lost it’s way. It might not be the game though. It might be all MMOs.
We are in the worst timeline.
My recollection is that in 2006 we would say, “wow, they must know 39 other people who are also unemployed to earn that armor”
My friends wow clan was called “the dole army”.
Lmao that’s great. I remember a clan called Vapaaherrat (freiherren) because you’re free from work and just live on gibs
I hate in-game purchases, they ruined gaming for everyone.
I hate more how people are okay with it.
IMO, it’s fine as long as it’s not PTW… Let them have their $50 virtual clothes… They finance the devs, so I have to spend less on that…
Microtransactions have gone wildly past financing devs
The entirety of the Starcraft wings of liberty campaign made less money than a single mount cosmetic in WoW. That money definitely didn’t to to the developers
Something can be not Pay to Win and still use tactics to trick people into spending money
imho, cosmetics are fine, as are sizeable expansion packs on games that were worth the money without them.
But generally, yes. In-game purchases usually suck.
The problem is what follows from microtransactions. When the managers see line go up because they released a paid element to the game, all the incentives push toward more paid elements. This means any dev hours that can be redirected away from work on the core game to the paid elements will be redirected.
I don’t see these as a problem with what I’d said for two reasons:
- The people making cosmetic elements are generally different from the people coding actual features
- If an expansion pack is successful, what’s the harm in putting future development hours towards more expansion packs?
Regarding the first point, if they can hire someone to make a feature happen, and maybe get an unpredictable increase in revenue, or hire someone to crank out cosmetics, which are much easier to make, and for which they often have metrics to show how much they expect to get, which do you think they’ll pick?
As for the second, I’m not sure if I’m understanding you.
If game companies are firing their developers upon launching a game and not doing the same to their design team, there are probably bigger problems.
My point about expansion packs was related to my original comment – I gave an example besides cosmetics of DLC I thought was ok
I’m not talking about firings, or even other specific examples. The talk of hiring A vs B is just an example, not the whole concept. I’m talking about the inputs that influence internal decisions. Microtransactions incentivise decisions that put the focus on generating microtransactions, often to the detriment of other objectives.
And, okay, I get you now. DLC is kind of a case by case thing, but still not great to me. Some devs put out incredible DLCs that actually add something to an already complete game. However, some companies put things into DLC that should just be in the base game. (playable characters, etc.) The practice of having paid DLCs incentivises that approach, so I’m not a huge fan, even if some of them are good. It’s kind of like political donations. I can like the effect some of them have, but I recognize the problems that come from a system that uses them.
I think cosmetics can be fine, but they aren’t always. I remember spending a lot of time and effort unlocking all the armor in Halo 3, and it made it feel rewarding. Now, skins can be interesting customization, but they’re never rewarding.
I like MTX to an extent, because it let’s other people pay for continued development of games I like. However, even cosmetics only absolutely still has an opportunity cost to the feel of the game that’s being payed. I think we should all be aware of this. I know at this point most people probably don’t remember when cosmetics were opportunities to make the game feel more fun, not just products to sell, but that is how it used to be.
Oh, definitely. The one issue with cosmetic DLC is that they used to be unlockable. Sometimes paid cosmetics are more development work than the kinds of things that were unlocked in-game back in the day, but not always.
Sometimes cosmetic DLC is a way to support the developers. Sometimes cosmetic DLC is a cashgrab. But if the game stands on its own, players generally aren’t missing much if cosmetics are paid DLC. Smash Bros. Ultimate comes to mind – there’s plenty of stuff to unlock in the game even with lots of costumes and such being behind paywalls.
My dude, people were buying Stones of Jordan on eBay at silly prices so they could trade for set items over 2 decades ago
True, but that was kind of black market and gauche , not advertised every time you log into the game
Agree it was black market and gauche, but it was always advertised to you indirectly as soon as you signed on to battle.net
Every 3rd message in the public chat was either an eBay SoJ seller or people buying/selling based on SoJs.
Perhaps I’m wrong, but the prevalence of all of that had me believing at the time that anyone with a complete decent 5 piece set had just paid for it.
Yeah but that was insane and those people sucked ass
So true it hurts
