71–80 of 179 posts
And without knowing anything about the game, they've guaranteed that I'll never buy it. Corrupted or incompatible saved games is a great way to kill interest in your game.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Most free to play games have completely different mechanics to traditional games. Typically you get to a certain level, after which you are hooked, then you are faced with a choice: Pay or keep grinding. There's no real end, so even if you choose to pay now, you will face the same decision again. I assume a lot of users will abandon the game at this point, because most games purposely don't make the grinding fun to e…
There are games like EU4 or other paradox games that kind of straddle the barrier. You don't need the DLC, but your game is updated and the AI and all other players you play with has it so your game will get worse over time unless you pony up.
> Also, we like games with mods and we want mods. Real-money shops make little sense with mods, when you can just download a mod to quadruple the number of rubies you get. Also, it is simply too easy to cheat. I think this touches on an important aspect of microtransactions that to my knowledge remains largely unexamined (but maybe I'm just not reading the right critics). Specifically, games are traditionally built a…
If they want me to pay for simply giving me a higher value of X resources, it's bad.
If they want me to pay for adding new content to the game, that's fine.
There is a grey area when it becomes apparent that they removed key content from the "full game" in order to charge extra for it. The new Battlefront 2 debacle shows that.
This should also cover the cases of user added mods since making your own content or hacking your copy of the game would be fine.
I'm really surprised to see this from a company that makes, of all possible genres, clicker games . Clicker games usually have almost no actual gameplay, and pretty much only interest people because they exploit many of the same type of psychological tricks that free-to-play games use to keep players hooked. They're a great demonstration of how the illusion of progressing at something is all you need to keep people i…
If anyone wants to try this type of "game" give cookie clicker a try.
effective cost per new unique user 1. New user
2. Recurring user
3. Paying user
Additionally, if users invite other users, that lowers your effective cost per new user, increasing your profitability.
The process of getting paying users is very lossy, with only a small minority becoming paying users. That's why paying users have to pay so much.
For a while it was generally accepted that freemium games monetize more than premium games. But with the recent proliferation of games I am unaware if that is the case anymore.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Most free to play games have completely different mechanics to traditional games. Typically you get to a certain level, after which you are hooked, then you are faced with a choice: Pay or keep grinding. There's no real end, so even if you choose to pay now, you will face the same decision again. I assume a lot of users will abandon the game at this point, because most games purposely don't make the grinding fun to e…
There are games like EU4 or other paradox games that kind of straddle the barrier. You don't need the DLC, but your game is updated and the AI and all other players you play with has it so your game will get worse over time unless you pony up.
And for multiplayer just 1 player (I think the host) has to have the DLCs, everyone else gets them for free.
And BTW, Cities: Skylines is distributed by Paradox :)
Awesome, good on them! Another studio who dipped their toe in the F2P model then ran away screaming (in their case, to great success) is Butterscotch Shenanigans--three brothers in Saint Louis who released the game Crashlands for mobile and Steam which I've probably sunk 300 hours into (but I'm weird like that). I really hope this works well for the Clicker Heroes 2 developers. I've enjoyed Clicker Heroes and I'm rea…
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Clash Royale brands their philosophy as pay-to-advance. You can upgrade faster with real money, but that doesn't mean you will win matches. At some point at the top I assume everyone is spending a lot of money, and is matched up with similar level cards. As a player it doesn't really bug me.
That is an interesting point, but I think most companies incentivise whales by putting them up against people who they can crush, whether it is deliberately (as in the case of activision's patent) or by having a matchmaking system that doesn't strictly separate people by their in-game power. Imagine a game where players only interact if they are the same level. If you can pay to gain levels, that doesn't necessarily…
Right after purchasing a new gizmo, you (in PvP matches) would be matched against players who don't have that gizmo. So you get to enjoy yourself with the purchase for a while. After that, the matchmaking system would then send you against players who have some other more awesome gizmo which you don't have yet. So you get to lose more, and are they incentivized to but the new gizmo too.
I'm really surprised to see this from a company that makes, of all possible genres, clicker games . Clicker games usually have almost no actual gameplay, and pretty much only interest people because they exploit many of the same type of psychological tricks that free-to-play games use to keep players hooked. They're a great demonstration of how the illusion of progressing at something is all you need to keep people i…
> They're a great demonstration of how the illusion of progressing at something is all you need to keep people interested, even when the only thing they're progressing towards is... the opportunity for more progression. If anyone wants to try this type of "game" give cookie clicker a try.
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I go back and forth on this, because there seems to be material disagreement on whether whales are, in fact, a) folks with problems or b) folks with hobbies which are, relative to a single video game, expensive. There is a good presentation from the CEO of Kongregate talking about this here: https://www.slideshare.net/emily_greer/dont-call-them-whales... I share your moral intuitions about exploiting whales if whales…
Right, but I don’t think 100/mo is quite what is considered a whale. Just as in casino gambling, where I believe the term came from, a whale is someone who throws a few hundred to several thousand into a game in a month, possibly in a large number of smaller transactions so they don’t even realize their running total. It’s the people for whom the “10’000 rubies for 49.99” in-app currency chests are meant for.
So they kept adding new packages at higher prices until it reached about 120$ IIRC. All intermediary packages are just there to make the "best value" (read highest price) package more enticing.