571–580 of 769 posts
There are single BAYC NFTs that have sold for more.
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Time is money. Paying for progress or items provides accessibility to that experience for people who just dont have the time to grind.
Don’t play the “accessibility” nonsense argument with us old-time gamers. You know what I could have done in D3 to skip the grind, if I wanted to? Use cheats or trainers or a save file from the internets, in a single player game, for which I paid for. Not this nonsense today, where even single player games are gated behind “sErViCeS” backend to prevent cheating, aka DRM for the payed DLC stuff, that is already on dis…
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This take seems off to me specifically in you last paragraph. Whether it is MTX in the form of cosmetics or p2w mechanics both are predatory to people with addictions to games and kids. I feel like people are upset about p2w mechanics in the game but at the same time say "I'm fine with cosmetic mtx" which makes the whole argument read to me as you are upset that people want to use money to win and that means they sho…
Your take is even more off since you didn't see the blindingly obvious difference: having a choice in your game progression. - Cosmetics are a choice. They don't affect your progress in any way. - Bought character power is not a choice. You can happily play X amount of hours but at one point you'll hit a brick wall you can't overcome without money. And no don't tell me that "eventually you will", because elementary p…
If manipulative psychology is the issue at hand than quantitatively speaking if you spend 10k on cosmetics or 10k on p2w through manipulative psychology what is the ethical difference?
If you think I'm arguing for a side you are mistaken. I just don't think people actually care about people who are victims of this. They just don't like p2w games, and that's fine. I'm just calling a spade a spade.
Also I feel like you are going down a rabbit hole of being gated on a game from being top 10 on a leaderboard, because the story mode and making it to level 60 seem completely accessible with no money. This is kind of a crazy path to walk down especially for PC gamers, who seem to be the most outraged, where affluence is definitely an advantage even if the game isn't the one making the money off it. For instance, the difference between a refresh rate of 250hz vs 60hz on a competitive FPS game. Try and tell me there isn't an advantage between a $800 gaming rig vs a $10k gaming rig...
I am not a gamer, but I am fascinated by all manner of monetization. Is Diablo Immortal unique as a free-to-play game that has a microtransaction model to support continued development, or do other games do this? It seems the equivalent of the freemium model with web applications. Does buying the so-called Legendary Gems enhance "winning" or just game playing? And can "winning" result in a financial reward (like in L…
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True, this seems to be Blizzard's thing. I also hated WoW for this reason, I played along with friends but it took me 3 years to teach level 60
WoW is much worse than Diablo on that front...
Here's the problem with this game: - Blizzards slew of beloved franchises makes it easy to entrap nostalgia addicted masses to a number of pay to win clones. Or slowly implement these types of features into existing games. - Half of the assets are from a 10 year old prequel. This game was cheap to make and will have an insanely high profit margin. Leading to perpetuation of this model. - Scummy mobile pay to win is a…
I don't think its inevitable and I don't think it's a good long term monetization strategy. It's just short term planning with complete disregard for the long term health of the company. How the board of directors doesn't see this is shocking. Maybe they do and also want to milk it today instead of tomorrow just like the C-suite. Yes, exploitative mobile gaming is profitable as hell - but in the current world is alie…
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Your take is even more off since you didn't see the blindingly obvious difference: having a choice in your game progression. - Cosmetics are a choice. They don't affect your progress in any way. - Bought character power is not a choice. You can happily play X amount of hours but at one point you'll hit a brick wall you can't overcome without money. And no don't tell me that "eventually you will", because elementary p…
What point are you making? I'm making a point that you can spend $100k on cosmetics in Roblox or Fortnite, and people do spend thousands of dollars over time almost unknowingly. I assume you would think this is bad right? If manipulative psychology is the issue at hand than quantitatively speaking if you spend 10k on cosmetics or 10k on p2w through manipulative psychology what is the ethical difference? If you think…
Of course I agree with that. I was under the impression that we're not discussing whether addiction is bad -- it's widely known that it is.
I was arguing that "Minecraft and Roblox and millions of other games feed off the weak minds of virtual cosmetic addicts" does not at all make the pay-to-win model of other games okay. Because it did seem like you went off on a whataboutism road.
That the world is screwed up doesn't mean we have to give up. We can try and improve little corners of it.
There's an interesting amount of misinformation regarding MTX in Diablo Immortal. But the TL;DR is that the significant gameplay advantages from MTX only really apply at higher Paragon levels, requiring hundreds of hours to hit. The primary way of increasing power before that is the same as it was in any Diablo; get better gear, which can't be accelerated by MTX at all.
Hitting lv. 60/completing the main story content is very easy and does not benefit much even if you did spend money to get 5-star Legendary Gems (although there are level gates once you hit lv. 35; daily quests provide the best way to get around those, those aren't paywalls). That takes about 20 hours, which is good value for a free game even if you bounce off.
I consider the Twitch gift sub market. And I consider that weird crypto game Axie Infinity. It seems we are only considering the purchasing power of whales that want to flex. What about whales that want to collaborate. Whales that want to demonstrate their generosity.
I remember a reddit post about a guy who had a rich friend that would constantly take him on wild adventures that the poorer friend couldn't afford. The rich guy didn't care about spending the money and the poor guy was good company.
I think an interesting monetization mechanic would be a game where the pay-to-win aspect was in the recruitment and outfitting of other players. So as a poor player I could have the opportunity to earn high-level gear based on the spending of a whale whose campaign I was joining.
It's even more frustrating, because the game is good . I really enjoyed playing the first 30 levels or so. Good story, good controls, very satisfying gameplay. If I could pay $60 and just have a "classic" Diablo on my phone, I might. But I won't spend a cent on consumable in-app purchases. It is so sad that "make good game, sell it" model no longer works. It's all a wonky curve of "free - couple of dollars - hundreds…
Unfortunately, since investors have figured out that the subscription model extracts the most profit possible, I have a feeling we're going to be seeing more and more of that rather than a simple price increase.
Wouldn't surprise me if we even see Steam unveil something like Xbox Game Pass for their marketplace within the next few years. Maybe the worst part is the fact that you no longer actually own anything when all you're paying for is a subscription, but that's more or less how Steam already works, minus the recurring payments.