[QUOTE=Gmod4ever;53053212]The problem isn't with the psychology of giving people the ability to sample the skins.
The problem is with you analogizing the skins with used catheter bags.
When you figure out how utterly inappropriate of an analogy that is, maybe you'll figure out how the psychology behind the move works.[/QUOTE]
You're right, I'm sorry. The catheter bags may have had use at some point by helping out a patient with a medical condition, to improve their lives in some form. They are worth far more than whatever bullshit skins Blizzard is giving away.
I guess I shouldn't have used an analogy. The only thing as utterly worthless and devoid of any meaning or ability to deliver gratification as skins are skins.
[QUOTE=SGTNAPALM;53053217]You're right, I'm sorry. The catheter bags may have had use at some point by helping out a patient with a medical condition, to improve their lives in some form. They are worth far more than whatever bullshit skins Blizzard is giving away.
I guess I shouldn't have used an analogy. The only thing as utterly worthless and devoid of any value or ability to deliver gratification as skins are skins.[/QUOTE]
Right.
You've made it acutely obvious you have no actual intention of trying to learn why this psychology works. I'm done trying to explain it to you.
If someone else wants to try, they can be my guest. I've better things to do with my time.
[QUOTE=Gmod4ever;53053220]Right.
You've made it acutely obvious you have no actual intention of trying to learn why this psychology works. I'm done trying to explain it to you.
If someone else wants to try, they can be my guest. I've better things to do with my time.[/QUOTE]
But the psychology doesn't make sense is my point. They're not giving away a delicious meal or a convenient razor blade. They're giving away absolutely nothing, something that doesn't improve your experience in any way. Why would that ever work? Who, of sound mind and body, is looking at [I]this[/I]...
[t]https://i.imgur.com/eYQGZb9.jpg[/t]
and going "Man, I didn't want this before but now that I got one I gotta have them all!"
Like, is it because of sports team fanaticism? "Gotta represent my boys, so I gotta buy em all!" which people do for traditional sporting teams and stars.
[editline]14th January 2018[/editline]
I guess I'm looking at it the wrong way. A lot of people talk about how predatory these systems are, preying on people with preexisting mental conditions who would be predisposed towards being addicted to these types of gazingus pins. Maybe applying logic to the psychology doesn't work because it's targeted specifically towards people who can't logically think their decisions through. And I don't mean to disparage them because mental illness and addiction can be a bitch. It's just that it inherently escapes reason at all and trying to hammer it into submission like that doesn't work.
[QUOTE=Coyoteze;53043283]Not [I]nearly[/I] to the same volume as during the first year, month or even weeks of release, however. It's hard to find graphs of sales figures since they're kept pretty internal, but after the first few weeks of release, the amount of purchases per day drop drastically. It typically peaks again around a sale, free weekend or whenever new content is released.[/QUOTE]
Legit everything you said is so fucking wrong this whole time and I base that point on what's been said by the owner of these very forums lol.
It doesn't cost loads of money to maintain a successful game at all or the services to support it.
And sales don't drop where on Earth did you get that idea? Everyone assumed Gmod was dead after all these years of released yet Garry has posted that sales have actually been increasing! And just look on the bloody top sellers list, top sellers remain top sellers for years!
And games arr all digital distribution now days so if anything it's far cheaper! How much do you think it costs to send a digital copy of a game compared to the days of making millions of DVDs and shipping them across the globe?
There's plenty of games today that have online servers running and constant updates without asking for more money.
I mean for gods sake the original battlefront 2 is back online!
I think this is his worst video on the subject. These skins are there to support the teams, which (hopefully) will support the players. The addition of these skins don't affect lootboxes (which I have mixed feelings on), you can pick exactly the ones you want, they all cost the same.
I mean, he starts the video mentioning how the new skins are just shit recolors of the base ones. In that case, what's there to really complain about? It weakens his argument when he has a problem with something that, by his own admission, is something he wouldn't deal with regardless.
I don't think I've ever seen more people who don't play Overwatch have strong opinions on Overwatch than in a Jim Sterling thread.
Jim Sterling has literally no idea what the real problems in the industry are and he's only supported because he parrots ideas you like to hear.
Oh, an eSport is merchandising a brand new franchise? Wow what an unprecedented travesty that in no way has ever been done before, certainly not in literally every professional sport league ever.
[QUOTE=Radical_ed;53053639][B]he's only supported because he parrots ideas you like to hear.[/B][/QUOTE]
shit man you're such an intellectual thanks for letting us know we were misled
[QUOTE=Radical_ed;53053639]I don't think I've ever seen more people who don't play Overwatch have strong opinions on Overwatch than in a Jim Sterling thread.
Jim Sterling has literally no idea what the real problems in the industry are and he's only supported because he parrots ideas you like to hear.
Oh, an eSport is merchandising a brand new franchise? Wow what an unprecedented travesty that in no way has ever been done before, certainly not in literally every professional sport league ever.[/QUOTE]
I played Overwatch and gave up on it because it's not fun and Blizzard doesn't listen to community feedback.
Every single map sucks and isn't fun. They keep releasing new heroes when they should be releasing maps and changing old maps to be more playable. Making maps is easier because you have to balance it towards the currently existing heroes, instead they're making heroes that have to be balanced around every other hero and every other map and all future maps and mechanics.
But nope gotta release more heroes so that you can sell lootboxes for those heroes. It's like thats the only driving force behind releasing them. Their double dipping has been a point of annoyance for me since launch. I was one of the first people calling out how gross the summer games lootboxes were and I got dumbed to hell for it here, looks like opinions change.
[QUOTE=JCDentonUNATCO;53053723]
......
[/QUOTE]
Wow, you're actually criticizing them for releasing heros? Literally anything they add to the game becomes "just for the lootbox cash" with that twisted logic.
[quote]Every single map sucks and isn't fun. They keep releasing new heroes when they should be releasing maps and changing old maps to be more playable. Making maps is easier because you have to balance it towards the currently existing heroes, instead they're making heroes that have to be balanced around every other hero and every other map and all future maps and mechanics.[/quote]
I currently play, I think the maps are p. great, what was your specific gripe with them? You are aware that they've also been adding new maps... right? Along with more game modes and custom servers? Furthermore, if "Every single map sucks and isn't fun" then maybe you just don't like Overwatch, I can hardly see how loot boxes change that.
[quote]But nope gotta release more heroes so that you can sell lootboxes for those heroes. It's like thats the only driving force behind releasing them. Their double dipping has been a point of annoyance for me since launch.[/quote]
"It's like thats the only driving force behind releasing them" isn't really a great argument either, or really an argument at all. How could you possibly justify this opinion? There are lots of reasons to release more heros, no the least of which is the fact that the community of [I]people who actually like the game[/I] want more hero diversity. Furthermore, there's only 2 holiday skins between the three newest heroes- 3 total holiday skins if you count all 4 they've added since launch. Don't you think there would be more event skins for them if that was the case? Sombra came out a [I]year[/I] ago.
[editline]15th January 2018[/editline]
[QUOTE=JeSuisIkea;53053719]shit man you're such an intellectual thanks for letting us know we were misled[/QUOTE]
What other reason would Jim Sterling receive such an ovation on every one of his videos besides that? He's certainly not accurate in his content, all that's left are the ideas he supports, such as vague fist shaking at AAA developers for just about anything involving cash money whatsoever.
Their whole choke heavy map design philosophy leads to extremely predictable and bland games where you spend 75% of your time bashing your head against a wall shooting rectangles. There's not a whole lot of room for variety when there's like, two chokepoints on each map where people actually fight. I definitely like the sense of communication and teamwork but between the frustrating chokepoint centered map design and their inexplicable obsession with fucking stuns and slowdowns I've really been driven away from overwatch for these last few months. I've gone right back to TF2, it's so much more well-designed than Overwatch. The maps are so much more open, there's so many different routes, the front line is constantly moving in different ways every game, there's so much more depth to the maps. I get that the choke heavy maps are fundemental to overwatch's design and some kind of bandaid patch where they reduce the amount of chokepoints isn't possible. I don't expect them to get rid of that design, and if some people like it then that's great, I wouldn't want to take away from their enjoyment of the game. But it's definitely driven me away from the game. If TF2 ever actually manages to get a functional competitive mode I don't know if there'll be much of anything to pull me back to Overwatch.
[QUOTE=Mort Stroodle;53044621]Blizzard didn't add in lootboxes a few years, months, or even weeks after launch though. Lootboxes were in the game since day one. There's no way to justify blizzard putting gambling crates in the game and making the drop rate so low other than "we're already making a preposterously large amount of money and we're going to wring these shits out for everything they're worth".
There are plenty of ways they could have chosen to monetize the game long term without fucking their customers. Free to play, selling cosmetics outright instead of the extremely shitty lootbox system, not arbitrarily locking content behind limited time windows (uprising skins being the most egregious example). Overwatch certainly isn't the [I]worst[/I] example of a game fucking over their customers for some sweet sweet $$$, but it's still pretty damn bad.[/QUOTE]
Futureproofing. It's easier to swallow mechanics like that (and I say that lightly) when they're in the game from release day, as opposed to introducing it later on. Case in point there was a, uh, similar post-release microtransaction introduction in a certain game I worked on at the time (seen referenced in my avatar) and well, that went horribly to say the least. :eng101s:
That said, I totally agree that lootboxes are a terrible source of income for a multitude of reasons, not only the gambling/addiction aspect, and it only gets worse the more content they introduce to the game due to the drop pool becoming more scattered. I won't argue that. I'm only neutral to them when it comes to Overwatch because of the cosmetic aspect - but only barely. I can't say I enjoy missing out on a Mercy-skin just because it was time-locked and I wasn't able to play at the time. :vs:
[editline]edit[/editline]
[QUOTE=Canary;53053280]It doesn't cost loads of money to maintain a successful game at all or the services to support it.[/QUOTE]
It really does, and the more extravagant or ambitious a game is in staying alive the more it costs. I've seen these kinds of numbers first-hand - it's not cheap.
[QUOTE=Canary;53053280]And sales don't drop where on Earth did you get that idea? Everyone assumed Gmod was dead after all these years of released yet Garry has posted that sales have actually been increasing! And just look on the bloody top sellers list, top sellers remain top sellers for years![/QUOTE]
GMod is a hard game to compare with because it's a complete sandbox game. It's literally 99% user-generated content keeping it alive and servers are user-hosted. Game-modes, player-models, weapons - all of it is made by the players and downloadable through the Workshop. You can't usually apply this to other games.
[QUOTE=Canary;53053280]And games arr all digital distribution now days so if anything it's far cheaper! How much do you think it costs to send a digital copy of a game compared to the days of making millions of DVDs and shipping them across the globe?[/QUOTE]
Costs like these are offset, companies can reap a bigger reward from digital distribution, but not by a wide margin since the game still needs to be hosted somewhere - and bandwidth is expensive.
[QUOTE=Canary;53053280]There's plenty of games today that have online servers running and constant updates without asking for more money.
I mean for gods sake the original battlefront 2 is back online![/QUOTE]
There's always going to be anecdotes on both the good and the bad end of the spectrum. Truth is there's too many variables to consider with every title. With Battlefront 2 there's no ongoing development aka. no ambitious content updates, so keeping the servers running is probably sustainable on sales alone (especially considering the game is so old at this point that it probably doesn't require a lot to keep up vs newer titles).
[QUOTE=Canary;53053280]Legit everything you said is so fucking wrong this whole time and I base that point on what's been said by the owner of these very forums lol.
It doesn't cost loads of money to maintain a successful game at all or the services to support it.
And sales don't drop where on Earth did you get that idea? Everyone assumed Gmod was dead after all these years of released yet Garry has posted that sales have actually been increasing! And just look on the bloody top sellers list, top sellers remain top sellers for years!
And games arr all digital distribution now days so if anything it's far cheaper! How much do you think it costs to send a digital copy of a game compared to the days of making millions of DVDs and shipping them across the globe?
There's plenty of games today that have online servers running and constant updates without asking for more money.
I mean for gods sake the original battlefront 2 is back online![/QUOTE]
Running the servers for OW is nowhere near cheap, you've got to be kidding. The games you listed are VASTLY different from the servers OW runs on.
[QUOTE=Radical_ed;53053788]Wow, you're actually criticizing them for releasing heros? Literally anything they add to the game becomes "just for the lootbox cash" with that twisted logic.[/QUOTE]
They should be releasing maps instead of bloating the game further with heroes and releasing balance patches constantly to fix their fuck ups is what I'm saying.
[QUOTE]I currently play, I think the maps are p. great, what was your specific gripe with them? You are aware that they've also been adding new maps... right? Along with more game modes and custom servers? Furthermore, if "Every single map sucks and isn't fun" then maybe you just don't like Overwatch, I can hardly see how loot boxes change that.[/QUOTE]
Their maps are fundamentally poorly designed which I think is because Blizzard has had no prior experience with first person shooters (aside from SC:Ghost in the early 2000s which I don't count) let alone competitive arena shooters. I find most of the characters fun to play but the map design leads to the Overwatch meta of camping chokepoints and then rushing the chokepoints when your ultimate is up, and then countering that rush with your own ultimates. It becomes old very quickly and they've even tried to combat this but it hasn't worked because the ultimates are a core part of Overwatch.
A few maps they've released have been interesting like Eichenwald but the rest are still horrific chokepoints that instantly turn any momentum and fun into a slog.
[QUOTE]"It's like thats the only driving force behind releasing them" isn't really a great argument either, or really an argument at all. How could you possibly justify this opinion? There are lots of reasons to release more heros, no the least of which is the fact that the community of [I]people who actually like the game[/I] want more hero diversity. Furthermore, there's only 2 holiday skins between the three newest heroes- 3 total holiday skins if you count all 4 they've added since launch. Don't you think there would be more event skins for them if that was the case? Sombra came out a [I]year[/I] ago.[/QUOTE]
The heroes still come with their usual set of various rarity skins to unlock so of course people are going to suck up lootboxes from the store like a vacuum cleaner to get legendarys, if they haven't already spent so much on lootboxes that they have enough coins to just buy all of the skins outright.
To me it's just a fundamental design problem and I suspect there's simply less incentive to release maps because there's not map skin lootboxes.
I've played Blizzard games since Warcraft 2. I've been a long time fan of the company. But ever since they merged with Activision I've disagreed with pretty much every business practice they've put into their games and they aren't improving.
[QUOTE=Coyoteze;53041116]However, nowadays games are often released with the intention of keeping them alive for a long time through updates, and added content - even single-player games, i.e. through an expanded story-line. This means a game needs to have developers on it at all times, even post-launch, to create new content - even while the company moves on to the next game. With dedicated servers, you need to have those available worldwide for the unforeseeable future - hosting isn't cheap, and some countries will be a pain-in-the-ass about how your game is connected to them (see: China with PUBG). [URL="https://www.reddit.com/r/gaming/comments/2ve5m4/how_much_does_it_actually_cost_a_company_to_run/cogwjck/"]This guy on Reddit [/URL]paints a pretty good picture of how much servers could cost a company. Not only that, but the technology is always expanding, as are the teams making the games. Bigger and more impressive work is being done all the time.
[/QUOTE]
Let's do some math with "Reddit guy's" numbers:
$200.000/year divided by $60 per copy equals [I]3.333 copies[/I]. Evolve didn't sell very well, but it still sold [I]300.000[/I] copies in its first month. [B]Plus DLC, skins and other shit.[/B] Evolve has now completely dropped off the top hundred most played list, so server costs overall for that game must've been pretty small compared to any other cost.
While Overwatch has shifted [I]tens of millions of copies[/I], the concurrent player base is surely much smaller. A large portion of people have probably bought the game, played maybe 50 hours, and then never touched it again, because they moved on to PUBG or whatever. Server costs might be a lot of money in isolation, but I'm very confident that Overwatch could turn a profit simply from the initial sale of a copy alone.
[QUOTE=GoDong-DK;53053990]Let's do some math with "Reddit guy's" numbers:
$200.000/year divided by $60 per copy equals [I]3.333 copies[/I]. Evolve didn't sell very well, but it still sold [I]300.000[/I] copies in its first month. [B]Plus DLC, skins and other shit.[/B] Evolve has now completely dropped off the top hundred most played list, so server costs overall for that game must've been pretty small compared to any other cost.
While Overwatch has shifted [I]tens of millions of copies[/I], the concurrent player base is surely much smaller. A large portion of people have probably bought the game, played maybe 50 hours, and then never touched it again, because they moved on to PUBG or whatever. Server costs might be a lot of money in isolation, but I'm very confident that Overwatch could turn a profit simply from the initial sale of a copy alone.[/QUOTE]
Oh definetely, Overwatch being the absolute smash hit that it is and with the relatively low ambitions in content development that it has could survive well on just sales. I just found an article that states OW has grossed[URL="https://venturebeat.com/2017/05/04/with-1-billion-in-revenue-overwatch-is-blizzards-fastest-growing-franchise/"] about $1 billion in revenue[/URL], (if that's before or after expenses isn't clear). Doesn't say how much of that is lootboxes and how much of it is sales, but I'll bet my left nut that a good 50% of that is through lootboxes, if not more. Once you offset that $150 million of initial development cost, plus maybe ~4 million in salaries a year (1.5 years since release, about $6 million then), server maintenance & upkeep for say 500,000 players would land (with the estimations) ~$10 million. Not including legal fees, potential licensing, office equipment maintenance & other operating costs we've landed at $166 million needed in the first year to offset the development cost of the game, and they [I]well[/I] surpassed that.
But that all just kind of solidifies what I've been saying throughout this thread, that there are anecdotes on every end of the spectrum. Blizzard is an anecdote on the bad end, where they clearly don't need the lootbox system to run a profit or to even keep the game alive. I'm attributing that to the games overall success, though. If the game hadn't been as successful, maybe this would be a different story completely.
[QUOTE=SGTNAPALM;53053227]
[t]https://i.imgur.com/eYQGZb9.jpg[/t]
.[/QUOTE]
I find the most telling thing out of this whole OWL fiasco is these utter no-name organizations. No heavyweights; no TSM, no Cloud 9, no Liquid, no EG, etc. The big organizations have no faith in OWL at all and can't be assed to buy into it. Call me retarded if one of those names are actually a big org that I've just never heard of. The fact they can't entice a single staple org just screams that this will fail.
[QUOTE=Aman;53054271]I find the most telling thing out of this whole OWL fiasco is these utter no-name organizations. No heavyweights; no TSM, no Cloud 9, no Liquid, no EG, etc. The big organizations have no faith in OWL at all and can't be assed to buy into it. Call me retarded if one of those names are actually a big org that I've just never heard of. The fact they can't entice a single staple org just screams that this will fail.[/QUOTE]
EnvyUs is Dallas Fuel, Cloud 9 is London Spitfire, OpticGaming are Houston Outlaws. Teams got rebranded for OW competitive for whatever reason.
[QUOTE=AbbaDee;53054322]EnvyUs is Dallas Fuel, Cloud 9 is London Spitfire, OpticGaming are Houston Outlaws. Teams got rebranded for OW competitive for whatever reason.[/QUOTE]
Lmao I'm retarded. But still. Point kind of stands.
[QUOTE=Aman;53054341]Lmao I'm retarded. But still. Point kind of stands.[/QUOTE]
Blizzard has a weird fixation of wanting to mimic real things, so they want to mimic a real football league and have local teams.
I feel like this video is pretty exaggerated and is just capitalizing off of the rage and discontent of the "games as a service / micro transaction" debacle. Don't be so quick to raise your torch and pitchforks folks. I'm not gonna argue for and against, but at the end of the day, they were there so players can show support for their favorite teams... your not meant to actually collect all those skins. Please don't turn it into anything more.
[QUOTE=Coyoteze;53054031]Oh definetely, Overwatch being the absolute smash hit that it is and with the relatively low ambitions in content development that it has could survive well on just sales. I just found an article that states OW has grossed[URL="https://venturebeat.com/2017/05/04/with-1-billion-in-revenue-overwatch-is-blizzards-fastest-growing-franchise/"] about $1 billion in revenue[/URL], (if that's before or after expenses isn't clear). Doesn't say how much of that is lootboxes and how much of it is sales, but I'll bet my left nut that a good 50% of that is through lootboxes, if not more. Once you offset that $150 million of initial development cost, plus maybe ~4 million in salaries a year (1.5 years since release, about $6 million then), server maintenance & upkeep for say 500,000 players would land (with the estimations) ~$10 million. Not including legal fees, potential licensing, office equipment maintenance & other operating costs we've landed at $166 million needed in the first year to offset the development cost of the game, and they [I]well[/I] surpassed that.
But that all just kind of solidifies what I've been saying throughout this thread, that there are anecdotes on every end of the spectrum. Blizzard is an anecdote on the bad end, where they clearly don't need the lootbox system to run a profit or to even keep the game alive. I'm attributing that to the games overall success, though. If the game hadn't been as successful, maybe this would be a different story completely.[/QUOTE]
Gross revenue is gross revenue, not profit. The game definitely has turned a tidy profit, however.
Why would you bet your left nut half of the gross profit is through loot boxes? Do you have any substantiating evidence whatsoever for this claim?
[QUOTE=Radical_ed;53055452]Gross revenue is gross revenue, not profit. The game definitely has turned a tidy profit, however.
Why would you bet your left nut half of the gross profit is through loot boxes? Do you have any substantiating evidence whatsoever for this claim?[/QUOTE]
Not really, but I think it's fair to say that most people who bought into lootboxes didn't just stop at one, or five, or ten. It piles up, per player. And then there's the outliers, people who spend hundreds/thousands of lootboxes just to become completionists.
[QUOTE=Coyoteze;53055549]Not really, but I think it's fair to say that most people who bought into lootboxes didn't just stop at one, or five, or ten. It piles up, per player. And then there's the outliers, people who spend hundreds/thousands of lootboxes just to become completionists.[/QUOTE]
So you have no supporting evidence.
[QUOTE=JCDentonUNATCO;53053920]They should be releasing maps instead of bloating the game further with heroes and releasing balance patches constantly to fix their fuck ups is what I'm saying.
[/quote]
Well they've released several full maps so far (since launch, Horizon, Junkertown, Eichenwalde, Oasis (which is 3 small maps)), and 5 DM maps for a largely experimental arcade scene (Black forest, Castillo, Ecopoint, Necropolis, and Chateau), and Blizzard World is coming soon, which is extraordinarily huge
[img]https://dotesports-cdn-prod-tqgiyve.stackpathdns.com/thumbor/29229r2O8AP6SJN6DJ-FwPpyH4w=/1200x0/filters:no_upscale()/https://dotesports-cdn-prod-tqgiyve.stackpathdns.com/article/67eec8d4-c3af-432e-b331-0172e254eb9b.jpg[/img]
As for the second half of that post.... what? Balance changes are a [I]good[/I] thing. To use your own argument against yourself, why would they release balance patches if there aren't any balance patch loot boxes? This statement is honestly confusing.
[quote]
Their maps are fundamentally poorly designed which I think is because Blizzard has had no prior experience with first person shooters (aside from SC:Ghost in the early 2000s which I don't count) let alone competitive arena shooters.
[/quote]
You've gotta qualify these statements, how so are they fundamentally poorly designed? Do you not think that blizzard has access to top-tier talent across the industry? (tip; no matter what your opinion on this one is, [B]they do.[/B]
[quote]
I find most of the characters fun to play but the map design leads to the Overwatch meta of camping chokepoints and then rushing the chokepoints when your ultimate is up, and then countering that rush with your own ultimates. It becomes old very quickly and they've even tried to combat this but it hasn't worked because the ultimates are a core part of Overwatch.
[/quote]
Also gonna say that this statement is unqualified, none of your [B]opinions[/B] are bringing forth any evidence at all of this. As far as I am aware, the only big change blizz has done for chokes and "trying to combat" the problem is add a small secondary pathway to Eichenwalde's first point.
[quote]
A few maps they've released have been interesting like Eichenwald but the rest are still horrific chokepoints that instantly turn any momentum and fun into a slog.
[/quote]
Eichenwalde is one of the most ideal examples of a map with a bad choke point...
[quote]
The heroes still come with their usual set of various rarity skins to unlock so of course people are going to suck up lootboxes from the store like a vacuum cleaner to get legendarys, if they haven't already spent so much on lootboxes that they have enough coins to just buy all of the skins outright.
[/quote]
Or they play the game with any frequency at all and can easily get the skins they want for the heroes they play. Overwatch's economy simply isn't designed as you're framing it. No skin on the market is harder to obtain than a few days of playing casually, it's nothing like csgo, especially once you've been playing for a while- nearly every crate will contain stuff you already have, which will turn straight into credits.
[quote]
To me it's just a fundamental design problem and I suspect there's simply less incentive to release maps because there's not map skin lootboxes.
[/quote]
So you're just straight admitting that your opinion is completely based off of a hunch?
I actually like this system and have no issue buying a product and receiving said product I want.
Rather this than lootboxes.
[QUOTE=Aman;53054341]Lmao I'm retarded. But still. Point kind of stands.[/QUOTE]
This is only kinda the case. Some of the teams don't belong to endemic orgs and were just straight bought out (see Fusion, Uprising, Gladiators, Shock, a few others) and the reason you don't see any other endemic orgs like Liquid or TSM is because they all dropped their teams because the buy in for Overwatch League was like $10m minimum and no money-conscious eSports org could do that unless they had a secondary investor like these US sports backed teams could (Immortals, EnVy, Optic).
[QUOTE=Coyoteze;53043236]Revenue =/= Net Profit. You seem to very grossly underestimate the [I]expenses[/I]. A team of 350 people with an avg. salary of $2,500 would alone cost a company $10+ million dollars. I'm not even factoring in running costs, R&D costs, licensing, employers fees & benefits, internal office expenses (rent, supplies, maintenance, equipment), marketing, publishing (ie. physical copies) - there's hundreds of VERY large expenses that are being overlooked in favor of painting a anarrative that every game developer is some scheming evil that just pockets every cent. The world doesn't work like that.[/QUOTE]
Obviously this is an aside from what you're saying and from overwatch in general, but publishers sometimes can't figure out that more money doesn't mean 'more quality'. publishers commonly seem to love cutting corners and time alike, while still spending insane amounts of money and over-estimating sales. They could have easily done just as good with a more effectively used team.
Obviously a huge part of it is taking risks, but some games look like shit even though a cheaper game looks better.
If publishers weren't such shitheads, expenses wouldn't be such a problem.
[QUOTE=SGTNAPALM;53053227]But the psychology doesn't make sense is my point. They're not giving away a delicious meal or a convenient razor blade. They're giving away absolutely nothing, something that doesn't improve your experience in any way. Why would that ever work? Who, of sound mind and body, is looking at [I]this[/I]...[/QUOTE]
Cosmetics from a community standpoint and selling standpoint are touted as a large part of the experiance
you don't buy cosmetics because you're getting anything
you buy cosmetics because its a part of the community experience and a part of making yourself stand out from other people
the psychology is in peer pressure
[QUOTE=RenegadeCop;53059405]It's funny, Overwatch, a $40 game with scummy microtransactions aswell, has released 3 heroes last year.
[b]Heroes of the storm[/b], a F2P game by the same company, [b]released 14 heroes last year.[/b] Obviously there may be more or less work making heroes for different games, but from a consumer standpoint, [b]Heroes of the Storm has superior content development.[/b] And it's god damn free.
Why the difference? [b]Because new heroes make money in HoTS.[/b] New heroes and maps do NOT make money in Overwatch.
[b]Greed ruins games[/b], Overwatch is just another example.[/QUOTE]
Not to argue your point, but your conclusion is a bit at odds with your arguments.
You start out by saying that HoTS has better content development because it has more heroes being made. You then say that making heroes is how HoTS makes its money, and that is why HoTS has more heroes made. Ergo, you are saying that HoTS has better content development because making heroes makes HoTS money.
And then you conclude that "things that make games money" ("greed") ruins games. Ergo, you're saying that making HoTS new heroes (which is what makes HoTS money) is ruining HoTS (since "making new heroes" makes games money, and HoTS is a game).
:what:
[QUOTE=RenegadeCop;53061987]Greed ruined Overwatch, sorry. I had like 3 points, thought the post looked like a mess, and tried to condense it down.
I don't give a shit if greed ruins HoTS, its free to play. But damn Overwatch was 40 bucks. Money shouldn't be the major player in post content development, thats what the pricetag is for. They're making content as if the game was f2p (i.e. what makes money comes first), and that's ruining the game.[/QUOTE]
There are other factors to consider in all fairness. I noticed this too, but I think it can be chalked up to hots only taking pre-existing ideas, while overwatch generally needs to make everything up on it's own.It's a lot easier to port a hero idea between games with similar mechanics (abilities wise) than it is to fantasize new ones.
However, while HotS is a poor comparison, League of Legends is not. They design characters completely from scratch pretty much. In 2017 they released 5 new characters, in 2016 6, and years before that generally land somewhere between there. While it's not MUCH more than 3 from a numbers perspective, in terms of gameplay 2 or 3 more heroes can be a big refresher, especially in a game that currently has so few compared to others in the same form (rolling heroes release that doesn't stop at a stable number) that it stands out a lot more.
[QUOTE=Radical_ed;53053639]I don't think I've ever seen more people who don't play Overwatch have strong opinions on Overwatch than in a Jim Sterling thread.
Jim Sterling has literally no idea what the real problems in the industry are and he's only supported because he parrots ideas you like to hear.
Oh, an eSport is merchandising a brand new franchise? Wow what an unprecedented travesty that in no way has ever been done before, certainly not in literally every professional sport league ever.[/QUOTE]
i dont want video games to turn into a professional sport league, professional sports leagues are fucking cancerous
i enjoy overwatch btw
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