[QUOTE=Lime-alicious;52987851]This is just splitting hairs. Also rude, I'm not being dishonest. There are basically the same amount of active subscribers now as there was in 2011 (it was less last year). If you'll go back to my post before you started drawing your whole attempted strawman argument around this one example, you'll see that I only used it as an example of how servers cost thousands of daily (and WoW spends 100x more).[/QUOTE]
Yes, I'm "splitting hairs". That's what a conversation about details is.
[QUOTE=Mister Sandman;52987997]I think you kind of completely missed my point. It's not about those specific gamemodes it's about fantastic/substantial community made content as opposed to mediocre ass developer made content. I feel as though I have been made to trade for something far worse and I would take an Overwatch where people could mod Junkrat to have titties and make custom maps and crazy game modes that barely even resemble overwatch as it usually is, over, stupid shit mediocre ass characters like Doomfist and Ana, or awful maps like the moonbase.[/QUOTE]
ana is one of the most enjoyable to play healers i've ever played in a shooter and doomfist is/was a decently fun melee-oriented character in a game all about shooting people from far away (haven't played him post nerf but i'm p sure he's like tachanka-tier these days, oh well)
overwatch isn't perfectly balanced but it's a very tightly made and fun to play shooter and i don't think i'll go back on that. not denying that the lack of mod tools in basically every game made today is fucking stupid, but that's not really what I take issue with here. fuck, i played garry's mod custom gamemodes for years. they were usually shit, there were just fun moments interspersed in-between. it's the potential for stuff like that that's lost here, I get that. the potential for one golden gamemode mixed in with all the trash.
but people have this weird tendency of acting like games are unique from the developer, like they just pop into existence one day and the developer comes across it and starts abusing it on a whim. I'm not saying that you're not allowed to be frustrated with the turns a developer takes with a game but they're responsible for that game you like the idea of existing in the first place, right? i've played some bad games for far too long out of the hope that they'd get better but I still don't think it's fair to shit on the developers for not being perfect to your standards when you have literally no context whatsoever about the game's development?
[QUOTE=dark soul;52987897]So you'd rather have no updates for online games then? Maybe you would you rather it be behind an expansion that locks out half the player base like games used to?
Sorry that I'm not entitled enough to think that ALL post launch content should be be made free. Cosmetics are the best way to pay for development of content that actually matters. I'd rather have developers keep updating their games post launch with balance patches and free content that actually affects game play like new weapons or maps then get nothing at all.[/QUOTE]
Can you respond to the simple fact that the two options you laid out aren't the only two options available?
[QUOTE=Zadrave;52988000]In fact, look at community skin concepts people have. 9 times out of 10 they are better than anything Blizzard shat out.[/QUOTE]
Hell, Rust uses user-made content in the game too. Granted they're still sold for some monetary value, so that may not be the best example in context of microtransactions, but it at least proves the point that user made content is still valuable to some developers in some way (and again at least with Workshop items, your change isn't spent on something only technically different than gambling).
[QUOTE=RichyZ;52988154]blizzard is a struggling upstart indie developer waiting for those micropayments to drip in so they can turn the office power back on and get some more dev time in[/QUOTE]
No, blizzard is a company with a fuck load of employees and locations making constant, optionally free (most of the time) content updates to several high profile games. That costs more to maintain than an indie dev studio with 5 employees hosting a small server for their fighting game.
[QUOTE=Lime-alicious;52988208]No, blizzard is a company with a fuck load of employees and locations making constant, optionally free content updates to several high profile games. That costs more to maintain than an indie dev studio with 5 employees hosting a small server for their fighting game.[/QUOTE]
Spotted the Blizzard fanboy
[QUOTE=RichyZ;52988212]with over 35 million purchases of a 40 dollar game, i doubt they will be needing to get the gerbils on the treadmills for the power generators any time soon my guy[/QUOTE]
If they just turned off lootboxes, booster packs, skins, and any other micro-transaction across all blizzard games do you honestly think they wouldn't lose a massive amount of money?
[editline]19th December 2017[/editline]
[QUOTE=Zadrave;52988213]Spotted the Blizzard fanboy[/QUOTE]
[QUOTE=RichyZ;52988214]i think contrarian or corporate apologist is a much apt term at this rate[/QUOTE]
Ah, I thought we were being mature here. My apologies. Have fun boys, I'm not going to indulge this.
[QUOTE=Lime-alicious;52988208]No, blizzard is a company with a fuck load of employees and locations making constant, optionally free (most of the time) content updates to several high profile games. That costs more to maintain than an indie dev studio with 5 employees hosting a small server for their fighting game.[/QUOTE]
... you know their profit margins are massive, right?
games have had long term support and "content updates" with far more content than blizzard does without needing to do these kind of long term monetizations for a long time.
Also notice they haven't dropped the price, OW is still at it's launch price $40. What does that tell you, genius?
If games like Overwatch gave you coins per match to buy specific skins with instead of lootboxes, with the option to pay a small amount of real money for a particular skin, I would far rather that than the current system.
[QUOTE=Lime-alicious;52988219]If they just turned off lootboxes, booster packs, skins, and any other micro-transaction across all blizzard games do you honestly think they wouldn't lose a massive amount of money?[/QUOTE]
No fucking shit, are you paying attention to the arguments people are actually making?
Corporate apologist is putting it lightly
[QUOTE=Mister Sandman;52987955]I know I sure as shit prefer trouble in terrorist town to cosmetics in overwatch and the benefits they supposedly bring.[/QUOTE]
Wait, I don't play Overwatch. What did they do to skins?
[QUOTE=omarfr;52987103]I understand that people can be obsessive about skins, but honestly it's your fault if you feel the need to buy loot boxes for skins. I haven't spent a dime on Overwatch. The full games there, and if I don't get the skin I want, I just forget about it.[/QUOTE]
I thought the same thing when I started playing these games. Then one day I saw a youtuber opening a loot box and he got a nice item. So I figured one box wouldn't hurt. All it takes is one box to hook someone on these types of systems. You have the urge to open more, and more. Get better items. Look cool as fuck. Or in CSGO's case, make tons of money. Sadly this rarely happens with these loot boxes. It's a slippery slope that needs to corrected because it can happen to anyone.
[QUOTE=Lime-alicious;52988208]No, blizzard is a company with a fuck load of employees and locations making constant, optionally free (most of the time) content updates to several high profile games. That costs more to maintain than an indie dev studio with 5 employees hosting a small server for their fighting game.[/QUOTE]
The game is out. Most of those people who worked on Overwatch got paid and are already working on the next project. They've cut costs to a fraction of the full team and still making mad cash from their gambling scheme.
Anyway, that isn't even the point. The point is that cosmetics matter because they directly affect our enjoyment of the game. If they didn't, nobody would be buying them.
[QUOTE=Lime-alicious;52988219]If they just turned off lootboxes, booster packs, skins, and any other micro-transaction across all blizzard games do you honestly think they wouldn't lose a massive amount of money?
[/QUOTE]
Yes.
Nothing says Microtransactions, or loot boxes are the only way forward.
You can try and offer up a third alternative to the false dichotomy you and the other guy keep peddling as the only way forward.
Stop letting these corporations take advantage of you. Yes, they cost money to make. They also, in the case of any company like Blizzard, make that money back hand over god damn foot. Then they make MORE money by using these methods.
They have more than paid for the development of this game.
Ok, so imagine coming across this skin DLC list on a store page, we've all seen them.
[t]https://i.imgur.com/KkRxIIN.png[/t]
But now imagine that instead of seeing all those individual numbers next to them, there was one button at the bottom that said "Spin: $5.00" So instead of actually buying what you wanted, you had to put in your wallet to spin the wheel and accept whatever you got. You could "sell" it back for a fraction of what it is supposedly worth, let's say $0.30 but that is only usable in this closed off system for more spins, nothing else, and the item just disappears, it doesn't get traded to another player or anything.
This would be ridiculous, and people (I hope) would rightly call it out and not want to participate and would hopefully want it taken off of the store page and changed. But for some reason, if you dress up this exact same system in a nice shiny in-game box instead, it's ok? It's literally the same thing, but now there are people who are all for it to the point of defending it with increasingly flimsy and provably untrue excuses just because it's in a cube with a pretty animation. I just don't get it.
[QUOTE=Mattk50;52988225]... you know their profit margins are massive, right?
games have had long term support and "content updates" with far more content than blizzard does without needing to do these kind of long term monetizations for a long time.
Also notice they haven't dropped the price, OW is still at it's launch price $40. What does that tell you, genius?[/QUOTE]
This isn't corporate apology, it's applying faulty logic to an industry that doesn't work the way you think it does.
At no point does a corporate board room ask the question 'how do we make less money?', this is the first and last step to getting fired - corporations are largely autonomous entities that exist for a single purpose, there is no single man at the top who takes the entirety of their 'profit margins' and puts it in a giant golden vault to swim in.
Corporations are there to raise their post-taxes profits so that their stock looks more enticing on the market, this allows them to raise even more capital which feeds into a cycle of constantly improving revenue and assets which provides even more benefits to their shareholders. Corporations are owned primarily by their shareholders, the people working at the top of the corporation work entirely for THEIR interests - for if the top shareholders aren't paid then the people at top get the axe.
This system is utilized across the entire planet for nearly every industry thanks to the fact that it's nearly automated in it's efficiency, there is no morality involved (unless being a moral company = more profits or curtails losses in some way) and appealing to a company to 'make less money because you already make enough' is like pleading to a car building robot to stop building cars because the world has too many cars - you're barking up the wrong tree.
If someone theoretically really wanted the system of micro-transactions to change or disappear, then the following would be necessary:
A.) Make the act of putting MCs in a game a guarantee to lower profits, make it so publicly toxic to one's image that the impact would be unsustainable.
or
B.) Go work at one of these big companies and craft a new monetization system that is less predatory but also produces similar or greater profits.
[QUOTE=Fr3ddi3;52987585][IMG]http://cdn.akamai.steamstatic.com/steam/apps/1257/header.jpg?t=1447352643[/IMG]
This is what use to be known as a skin pack. You paid £5 (or there abouts), and in it you got what you see in the picture, they did absolutely nothing except change your appearance. Later on some of them were single charecters with unique voices which were somewhat extortionate but again it did not alter the game play. (Game affecting weapon packs came later but thats another story).
Anyway, these packs funded the development of free Killing floor 1 content for over 5 years, developers made money, people who liked the skins got them and everyone in the playerbase got free maps, skins, weapons and events as a result. The icing on the cake? No one got a damn gambling addiction from it.
I had no problems with that practice, Loot boxes can fuck off.[/QUOTE]
This was a little bit less ridiculous because these were made after the games release, they were new content. Overpriced, but they were at least new. This isn't the same as the modern cosmetics bullshit where they lock stuff away on day one and force you to buy loots boxes to get anything.
I don't have much of a problem with developers creating ADDITIONAL cosmetic items post game to compliment the already existing selection as long as it's priced properly, what I have a problem with is this trend of taking stuff from the existing content and making people pay extra on top of what they already paid and then trying to justify it as okay because it's "only" cosmetic.
[QUOTE=SGTNAPALM;52988234]Wait, I don't play Overwatch. What did they do to skins?[/QUOTE]
basically most of their profit is based on skins which you can get either out of lootboxes (which you can buy) or by buying them with in game money. It used to be that you could get duplicates that gave you additional in-game-money so you could eventually just buy what you wanted but people got pissed at getting duplicates so now you just get whatever you don't have, except a side effect of this is that you get far less money than you used to (only for specific money drops) so despite being guaranteed to get something you don't have you now have far less control over getting the thing you want
some people are angry because events often have more skins than they do new gameplay content and event-only skins are far more expensive to buy with in-game money so you're incentivized to try and gamble for them with lootboxes but odds are this is going to cost you an absurd amount of money if you go for one in particular or god forbid all of them, not to mention they're limited time only so you have a timer on getting them
thankfully i can ignore this because i could not personally care less about cosmetics and i just enjoy the free updates and the community benefits of a premium game but not everyone is the same on the matter
[QUOTE=ntzu;52988298]This isn't corporate apology, it's applying faulty logic to an industry that doesn't work the way you think it does.
At no point does a corporate board room ask the question 'how do we make less money?', this is the first and last step to getting fired - corporations are largely autonomous entities that exist for a single purpose, there is no single man at the top who takes the entirety of their 'profit margins' and puts it in a giant golden vault to swim in.
Corporations are there to raise their post-taxes profits so that their stock looks more enticing on the market, this allows them to raise even more capital which feeds into a cycle of constantly improving revenue and assets which provides even more benefits to their shareholders. Corporations are owned primarily by their shareholders, the people working at the top of the corporation work entirely for THEIR interests - for if the top shareholders aren't paid then the people at top get the axe.
This system is utilized across the entire planet for nearly every industry thanks to the fact that it's nearly automated in it's efficiency, there is no morality involved (unless being a moral company = more profits or curtails losses in some way) and appealing to a company to 'make less money because you already make enough' is like pleading to a car building robot to stop building cars because the world has too many cars - you're barking up the wrong tree.[/QUOTE]
Yep this is how the world works.
Why can't someone complain when it effects things negatively?
The drive for short term profits has hurt our world and helped it at the same time, it is not a system above reproach as you suggest here.
[editline]18th December 2017[/editline]
[QUOTE=Simplemac3;52988301]basically most of their profit is based on skins which you can get either out of lootboxes (which you can buy) or by buying them with in game money. It used to be that you could get duplicates that gave you additional in-game-money so you could eventually just buy what you wanted but people got pissed at getting duplicates so now you just get whatever you don't have, except a side effect of this is that you get far less money than you used to (only for specific money drops) so despite being guaranteed to get something you don't have you now have far less control over getting the thing you want
some people are angry because events often have more skins than they do new gameplay content and event-only skins are far more expensive to buy with in-game money so you're incentivized to try and gamble for them with lootboxes but odds are this is going to cost you an absurd amount of money if you go for one in particular or god forbid all of them, not to mention they're limited time only so you have a timer on getting them
thankfully i can ignore this because i could not personally care less about cosmetics and i just enjoy the free updates and the community benefits of a premium game but not everyone is the same on the issue[/QUOTE]
Maybe, just maybe, not everyone being like you in regards to gambling is why that's not a particularly valuable view point in the discussion? It doesn't effect me either but some people are vulnerable to certain stimuli, especially those designed to break our risk reward centres.
[QUOTE=HumanAbyss;52988304]Maybe, just maybe, not everyone being like you in regards to gambling is why that's not a particularly valuable view point in the discussion? It doesn't effect me either but some people are vulnerable to certain stimuli, especially those designed to break our risk reward centres.[/QUOTE]
i didn't exactly imply otherwise, i'm pretty familiar with the concept of being driven by intense irrational urges having lived with nowadays mostly videogame-focused OCD for half of my life now, playing games i'm not enjoying just to finish them, grinding collectibles and the like despite hating them, etc
[QUOTE=Simplemac3;52988317]i didn't exactly imply otherwise, i'm pretty familiar with the concept of being driven by irrational urges having lived with mostly videogame-focused OCD for half of my life now[/QUOTE]
No you didn't, and I'm sorry to come across strongly about the issue.
Most people who lead with that kind of phrasing don't see it that way. They think they have no problem, so therefore there is no problem.
[QUOTE=HumanAbyss;52988304]Yep this is how the world works.
Why can't someone complain when it effects things negatively?
The drive for short term profits has hurt our world and helped it at the same time, it is not a system above reproach as you suggest here.[/QUOTE]
You have every right to complain, and i'm not saying this is 'above reproach', I made no such suggestion.
What i'm saying is essentially this, and I apologize for any bluntness, I hold no ill will towards anyone here:
You are barking up the wrong tree, the system of micro-transactions have been shown to work magnificently well and are EXACTLY what companies look for to massively boost their profit margins at relatively little cost. It isn't the company's fault, its the [B]FAULT OF THE CONSUMER[/B], and in response to the predatory nature of these systems at worst? This is a [B]FAILURE OF GOVERNMENT REGULATION.[/B]
Yes, its predatory; yes, it could be seen as inferior to the content we used to get in the past for free; but none of that matters - it makes more money than any other previous system could have even dreamed of making - and the consumers of video games are the ones making it happen.
If you want it to stop, stop crying at the doors of corporate and start pestering your congressman, stop your friends from buying lootboxes, this is what you can do. Shaking your fist at the biggest and most successful form of business on the planet because they're ruining video games is going to get you exactly nowhere - they do far worse and ignore far bigger voices.
[QUOTE=ntzu;52988325]You have every right to complain, and i'm not saying this is 'above reproach', I made no such suggestion.
What i'm saying is essentially this, and I apologize for any bluntness, I hold no ill will towards anyone here:
You are barking up the wrong tree, the system of micro-transactions have been shown to work magnificently well and are EXACTLY what companies look for to massively boost their profit margins at relatively little cost. It isn't the company's fault, its the [B]FAULT OF THE CONSUMER[/B], and in response to the predatory nature of these systems at worst? This is a [B]FAILURE OF GOVERNMENT REGULATION.[/B]
Yes, its predatory; yes, it could be seen as inferior to the content we used to get in the past for free; but none of that matters - it makes more money than any other previous system could have even dreamed of making - and the consumers of video games are the ones making it happen.
If you want it to stop, stop crying at the doors of corporate and start pestering your congressman, stop your friends from buying lootboxes, this is what you can do. Shaking your fist at the biggest and most successful form of business on the planet because they're ruining video games is going to get you exactly nowhere - they do far worse and silence far bigger voices.[/QUOTE]
It's not a failure of government regulation, it's a failure of gamers being morons with their money and feeling this bizarre sense of loyalty towards corporation which I haven't seen in any other industry, except perhaps with apple.
No other industry would get away with calling their consumers "entitled", it's absolutely mad.
[QUOTE=carcarcargo;52988339]It's not a failure of government regulation, it's a failure of gamers being morons with their money and feeling this bizarre sense of loyalty towards corporation which I haven't seen in any other industry, except perhaps with apple.
No other industry would get away with calling their consumers "entitled", it's absolutely mad.[/QUOTE]
The failure of government regulation is in the common complaint that 'predatory practices' unfairly entice gambling addicts or otherwise suss out addict-like behavior - this is firmly in the territory of government regulation, to protect those who cannot protect themselves.
[QUOTE=Xion21;52988297]Ok, so imagine coming across this skin DLC list on a store page, we've all seen them.
[t]https://i.imgur.com/KkRxIIN.png[/t]
But now imagine that instead of seeing all those individual numbers next to them, there was one button at the bottom that said "Spin: $5.00" So instead of actually buying what you wanted, you had to put in your wallet to spin the wheel and accept whatever you got. You could "sell" it back for a fraction of what it is supposedly worth, let's say $0.30 but that is only usable in this closed off system for more spins, nothing else, and the item just disappears, it doesn't get traded to another player or anything.
This would be ridiculous, and people (I hope) would rightly call it out and not want to participate and would hopefully want it taken off of the store page and changed. But for some reason, if you dress up this exact same system in a nice shiny in-game box instead, it's ok? It's literally the same thing, but now there are people who are all for it to the point of defending it with increasingly flimsy and provably untrue excuses just because it's in a cube with a pretty animation. I just don't get it.[/QUOTE]
but in overwatch you can get every skin for free if you play long enough.
[QUOTE=carcarcargo;52988339]It's not a failure of government regulation, it's a failure of gamers being morons with their money and feeling this bizarre sense of loyalty towards corporation which I haven't seen in any other industry, except perhaps with apple.
No other industry would get away with calling their consumers "entitled", it's absolutely mad.[/QUOTE]
It is a failure of the government. They need to control gambling in video games and make it non existent.
[QUOTE=Vilusia;52988353]It is a failure of the government. They need to control gambling in video games and make it non existent.[/QUOTE]
It's not even just the lootboxes though, the whole things fucked. They're gauging consumers to ridiculous levels even if we ignore the lootbox system.
its not so much devs calling gamers entitled as it is gamers calling other gamers entitled when calling out their bullshit
[QUOTE=HumanAbyss;52988319]No you didn't, and I'm sorry to come across strongly about the issue.
Most people who lead with that kind of phrasing don't see it that way. They think they have no problem, so therefore there is no problem.[/QUOTE]
i think ntzu has summed it up fairly well in that I just think that Overwatch has one of the least offensive monetization systems out there [I]right now[/I] in the grand scheme of things in that you aren't paying for anything that will affect your ability to play the game. You aren't getting anything game-changing faster, locked out from any maps, heroes, or weapons, there's no grind. i don't mean to play down the genuine concerns of those susceptible to gambling compulsions asi can't even imagine as someone with OCD being compelled to waste money, I just think that this problem is a problem the entire industry has and that corporations aren't going to stop doing it unless they're somehow forced.
[QUOTE=Lime-alicious;52988349]but in overwatch you can get every skin for free if you play long enough.[/QUOTE]
Do you know how long that is?
Saying "in nearly 5,000 hours you'll unlock everything" is a horrible excuse
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