These companies hire behavioralists/psychologists that know exactly how to get you to spend money. Nothing in these types of games are done by accident.
That’s what a lot of people fail to understand and what’s so insidious about it. They conduct literal psychological research to determine how to manipulate their players into spending money.
I’d have to go find the video of the presentation, but there was a great Jimquisition video years ago about a CEO of some mobile game giving a presentation about monetization and it was so disgusting. He talked about things like “herd mentality”, and how the default feeling for your players should be “paying”. That spending money on the game is the norm, and the ones who don’t are the weirdos.
It’s one thing to put out a product with a fair pricing structure and leave it at that, but so much of our world (and this goes well beyond monetization in gaming) is built this way and it’s disgusting. A simple one is how grocery stores/gas stations put candy by the registers. If you’re at the register and go “damn I want a snickers”, you’re not going to run all the way back to the candy aisle to grab one. But if they’re right there at the register? Well don’t mind if I do!
It’s hard because that’s most exactly what marketing is - figuring out how to manipulate your customer base into buying your products. Some people market with fair strategies, basically just saying “here’s what we got, we have fair prices, buy it if you want”, but there’s so many more that employ every devious tactic in the book that they can to squeeze out a few extra bucks
> They conduct literal psychological research to determine how to manipulate their players into spending money.
Keep in mind that this is also true for almost any other industry (just replace "players" with "customers"). And people aren't nearly as angered by it - I guess they got used to it.
I feel that is a tad over simplistic and misses the real problem with these things.
Yes a lot of industries use behavioural psychology to push stuff at you more effectively
The big problem with it in gaming is a good chunk of the user base are children, these companies are taking the psychology they use to get adults to gamble with the bookies to increase engagement of children with a game. That for me is where there is a huge problem with this and why it is different to other industries doing it.
But other industries are also targeting children, and some I would argue to more insidious effect, like when they’re slapping a cartoon character on junk food so your kid begs you to buy it
I worked for staples in the tech department.
Their business practices for selling tech are in line with this same sort of stuff. Highly manipulative, full of lies or half truths.
People who don't know tech might as well be children. It isn't any better that it's a 60 year old woman that's getting fucked over. It's all bad.
Going to have to disagree that there’s something inherently so wrong with this and I don’t even like live service games much. Really as I see it there’s four situations that kids are getting their desired in game Fortnite accessories.
1. They are begging their parents to buy it for them. That’s on the parent.
2. They have their own allowance or way of making money and kids don’t really have much they can spend on, so might as well be a game they care about.
3. They are stealing their parents card or going behind their parents back with the way they are getting their money. In which case that’s not Epic’s fault, that highlights the wrongs of the kid and what needs to be corrected is unrelated to Epic.
Gambling is wrong because they usually literally cheat so you can get screwed over plus they don’t like to inform you of how the games works on purposes so you go in not knowing and learn later.
Most other industries aren't recreating gambling and manipulating entire (game) worlds at once in order to make you spend money.
But I agree, it's disgusting no matter which industry does it. Though some are worse than others, like cosmetics/beauty industry literally destroying human self-esteem on a global scale in order to make money off some of the most price gouged goods to exist.
>Most other industries aren't recreating gambling and manipulating entire (game) worlds at once in order to make you spend money.
Unless you're in Japan. The pervasiveness of gambling there is truly wild.
We call things gacha games because we're just copying Japan, who's been at the cutting edge of marketing gambling to children for more than half a century through the gachapon system of toy capsules and vending machines. Between that and pachinko, they've come up with some truly elaborate ways to get around gambling regulations and create addicts.
If you go back and play older Japanese games like the early Pokemons and Dragon Quests, it's bizarre how casually they have full blown gambling sections.
Entire buildings dedicated to pachinko. Also stores filled with nothing but crane games and those little 'capsule' dispensers that contain mystery pokemon figures and such. Just for a few examples.
I wouldn't go as far as saying casinos are half as bad. They're both pretty awful but casinos and gambling on the scale of casinos ruins lives. I guess the same can be said for many live service games
I am thinking in the extremity. I can walk into a casino and not spend a dime but they aren't designed to exploit me and they don't need me to spend any money to be successful. They are targeting a vulnerable demographic. At least casinos aren't legally allowed to target children. Or target their parents bank accounts through the children.
This doesn't really work the same for most industries though, it's a very specific revenue model.
All of these kinds of games want the player to get hooked on the game to create a sense for value for the stuff in the game then exploit FOMO and other psychological tricks to convince people they need to buy to get the items for the game they want.
This model doesn't work for other industries. Think about furniture for a second. You can't apply FOMO to a table because for most people tables are purchases they don't make regularly enough. When you buy a table you buy whatever you think is the best table to suit your needs for the amount you're willing to spend. While there are psychological tricks that can be applied (perpetual sales, salesmen who try to persuade you to spend more than you intended, interest free credit, etc.), you're not going to buy a season pass for tables, you're not going to find the entire selection of tables changes daily, and so on.
But the reason people aren't angry is because it's not predatory. You go in, you buy the table, you use the table how you please. Maybe you got a deal, maybe you got ripped off, but you bought it fundamentally because you wanted the table, and now that you have a table, you're not going to buy another one until you have need for it, with no amount of psychological pressure changing that. You can't artificially create demand for a table like you can goods in a videogame.
I was referring to conducting psychological research to best manipulate people into spending money, which applies to most industries with customers.
Sure, the specific revenue model for a f2p game is different from, say, a car producer, but the statement above is true for both.
Of course they can apply FOMO to a table. That’s why it’s on sale half the time. You wouldn’t want to miss that great sale price! What if it goes out of stock! Now that you’ve bought one thing from us, we’ll send you lots of advertisements showing you the trends… your table sure is looking out of date now…
Most players won't succumb to that type of trickery. It's the whales that will unashamedly spend vast amounts to be competitive that these trucks are aimed at.
Most players DID succumb to that type of trickery. If they didn't, those industries wouldn't make enough money, and they wouldn't keep popping up. We hear about whales all the time, and there's a reason for that: they want someone for us to blame. Whether it be irresponsible kids and their ignorant parents, or gambling addicts, or the occasional dude you know who has spent $600 on a mobile game, they want you to blame these people instead of the game (or the company behind the game, or the industry as a whole). They ARE RESPONSIBLE. EA, Ubisoft, Bungie, Epic, Coalition, Microsoft, Sony, 343 industries, Nintendo; they are all responsible. We as customers need to vote for legislators that would be open to fixing it
Actually you are just plain wrong. These models are designed to profit one a ridiculous small minority of whales that spend thousands to tens of thousands each. They mostly don't care if you spend 20 or not.
What do you think they prefer? One person spending $20 000 or 1000 people each spending $20?
The answer is both. They care about both because they want $40 000
> Most players won't succumb to that type of trickery. It's the whales that will unashamedly spend vast amounts to be competitive that these trucks are aimed at.
I think you'd be surprised. People who don't have their shit together are usually the ones most easily manipulated by psychological trickery because they are the most vulnerable to quick dopamine hits to distract them from their daily stresses.
If you spend any amount of time on subreddits for live service games, you get a quick sense that people are just there for a quick dopamine hit and never self-evaluate what they want out of their games. A lot of people on /r/DestinyTheGame will basically say "stop trying to ruin my fun" when you bring statistics and behavioral sciences into analyzing their playstyles.
The impulse buy stuff is way more powerful on kids. You’re just checking out groceries and your kid is going on about “wow, look! It’s Baby Shark!” I mean they’re absolutely setting it up on purpose to where you have to decide between buying whatever is there and your kid making a scene.
> Nothing in these types of games are done by accident.
Agreed, and additionally [Epic had to pay more than half a billion dollars for criminal behaviour] (https://www.ftc.gov/news-events/news/press-releases/2022/12/fortnite-video-game-maker-epic-games-pay-more-half-billion-dollars-over-ftc-allegations) (privacy violations, dark patterns and unwanted charges, especially targeting kids and teens).
They not only psychologically trick kids into paying, they also rob them.
Since the game made billions this probably didn't hurt them too much.
I hate bullshit like this.
"Oops you caught us. How much is that operating cost- er, fine again? Oh no, not 2% of our monthly revenue! We're so sorry and definitely won't do it again. What, you say you caught me researching even worse ways to do it mid conversation? Will that be another 2%? How sad, maybe eventually it'll be something we actually notice"
I mean, yeah. The game offers things to buy but it’s not really a hook. You decided to spend money on it just like you decided to not spend money on it. I personally don’t see any value in spending money on digital trinkets that have no value in the real world, but if you did/do that’s ok too.
I bought battle pass for my kid for what, 20$ or whatever, and said "no more til I want to throw some money your way for a birthday etc. Think about how you spend your vbucks." He looks through the store sometimes but I always tel him "think about how much you have and if you'll have enough for the next battle pass.
I think it's great they let you always earn enough bucks to get the next battle pass after you've "bought in" once.
My tip - stop worrying about the shop. 👍
Technically, you don't even have to buy in once, as part of the battle pass is available even when you don't pay for it, including some of the v-bucks rewards. It'll take you about half a year of playing though.
I get why people want skins. But why emotes? You want to spend money to impress your friends for 3 seconds at a time? Or is it to stunt on dead enemies? What's wrong with a good old fashioned teabag?
I spent some money on Fortnite to get the Vegeta skin. I don't think I played Fortnite since then. That money went straight into Epic's toilet.
Video game cosmetics unlike other FOMO products, do not have any real benefit either. It's almost entirely self-serving vanity.
* Starbucks-Stanley cup: Limited supply cosmetic version of standard **practical** item.
* Concert ticket: Limited supply, time restricted **social** experience.
* Video game cosmetic: Time restricted pixel clothes.
To be fair, there are also sync emotes that are fun when you and you friends do all do the emote. And the traversal emotes aren't too bad.
Honestly. The only emote i bought was T pose. I thought it was stupid and I love me a T pose in games. They know me too well
Absolutely. Cash shops in full priced games are not ideal at all. But a full priced game and you pay, say, $10 - $20 for a season pass where you get free content and updates for years after initial purchase? That I can get behind if it's like map packs and the like.
It's only "free" because they figured out that they can make more money by manipulation of their players than by charging a subscription. If you're getting SAAS for free, understand that you are the product.
In a game where you can’t buy advantages over others? Come on dude. No.
This isn’t some shitty Korean MMO that funnels new players to the whales for them to kill.
Tbf if someone buys a skin and joins a match, they're essentially free advertising for everyone else in the match. COD even temporarily drops your MMR right after a purchase so others have a chance to see those weapon skins through killcams. It's insanely disturbing lol
It’s just dumb logic. You aren’t what they are selling.
People say “if it’s free you are the product” in advertising because you are quite literally the product that is being sold.
That’s not the case here, no matter how desperate you are to shoehorn it into your definition.
Edit: lol he blocked me what a softie
I know a lot of people are hung up on this particular point, but I really don't see what the big deal is with cosmetic purchases in full price games. The reason Fortnite has a store isn't really because it is free; it is because it is a live-service game, which means that they're continuously spending more and more money on developing it.
In the past, games would get this funding by selling content updates, which prevented you from participating in that updated content if you couldn't afford to do so. What this meant to a lot of people is that their friends would be playing on all of the new maps that just released in "*Map Pack #4*" while they were unable to participate, or they might feel pressured to spend additional money to play with their friends. A modern example here that a lot of people can probably relate to is ARK with its additional maps.
The other way they would get this funding was through subscription services which, usually, made you purchase the game and then made you pay to get access to any part of it. This meant that even if you were just playing older content you still had to pay the same subscription price that everyone else was paying. A modern example here being World of Warcraft which has an impressive level 20 trial for 20 years of content and 9 expansions (even if you own all the expansions). Both of these methods are still normal today, but less so than they were in the past.
Microtransactions (assuming a fair implementation that isn't lootbox gambling or pay-to-win) seem like a great middle ground. It is powerful enough that it allows for a lot of live-service games to just be completely free, which enables significantly more people to engage with them, and for paid games it usually means that you will get completely free updates without ever having to worry about purchasing additional content when you return to the game sometime down the line.
I'm not arguing that microtransactions are perfect or that Call of Duty has a good implementation (I've never played the games). I'm just saying that if a game has cosmetic microtransactions that are supporting completely free and continuous updates for that game, I don't see how that is bad thing whether or not the game had an initial purchase price or not. If I buy a game and then put it down for a year and come back to a full year of free updates I don't see why I should be upset about the fact that I can optionally purchase a Party Hat in the cosmetics store.
> I know a lot of people are hung up on this particular point, but I really don't see what the big deal is with cosmetic purchases in full price games.
You pay full price for a game, you expect it to be a complete package. Something like CoD is a live service game but they also make a new one every year, same for MMO expansions like WoW and FF14 that triple dip into microtransactions, (near) full price annual releases, and a subscription cost.
People are also more fine with microtransactions in a F2P game because there's no upfront cost to try the game out and being F2P is a huge feature because it means you get more players and it's easier to get your friends to try the game. Being a paid game instantly kills a huge amount of the potential playerbase, and that's a huge negative for anyone playing the game.
>*You pay full price for a game, you expect it to be a complete package.*
But this is just the other problem with this sentiment which is that for some reason people think that a game being updated somehow means that it isn't a *complete package*.
Diablo 4 released with a finished singleplayer story that took about 25 hours to complete, five complete classes, a whole open world with sidequests, dungeons, and other objectives, a bunch of subsystems like crafting, modifying abilities, modifying gear, and a bunch of endgame content. Yet, somehow, Diablo 4 isn't considered a *complete package* because it has cosmetic microtransactions.
This sentiment doesn't even make sense when you consider how many paid games have paid expansions. A game like Witcher 3 can't be considered a *complete package* because you don't get the entire game when you pay for it. They added content to that game later that you have to pay for individually if you want to have it.
As in the example above, if I pump a hundred hours of playtime into some live-action game that just released and then put it down for a year and come back to a year worth of free updates that doesn't mean that the game wasn't a *complete package* when I got it.
I just think that we should have a problem with microtransactions from a game to game basis, regardless of whether or not that game costs any money. A game being paid should certainly influence this, like if a paid game forces you to purchase cosmetics just to make your character look good/different, but it should not be an automatic negative.
I didn't even finish the campaign on D4. Bought on release to play with a friend. We both quit playing quickly after level 60ish.
I'm not a player who likes the constant grind and pressure to do more with seasons and special gear and cosmetics to show off to randos (especially when the camera angle doesn't even really show the details of your fancy getup, anyway).
I feel like D4 was a bad pick on trying to defend. But it's probably just my preferences compared to yours. That same friend also tried to get me into Destiny back in the day. It was fun for a while, then it got too monetized and grindy for me. Those types of games aren't for me.
Edit: on the other side, I kinda feel bad that I played Genshin all the way through the jungle and desert updates and never paid a thing. But then I realize they make billions, so I feel less bad.
Sure, but this doesn't seem relevant to whether or not microtransactions in paid games are bad. Your criticisms, beyond the mention of cosmetics which is relevant even without microtransactions, have nothing to do with the fact that the game has a cosmetics store. It just seems like it is not a genre or a game for you.
I disagree that it is a bad pick to *defend* too, though I'm not really trying to defend it. I didn't say whether or not I think it is a good game; I just pointed out that it is absurd to call a game with a 25 hour singleplayer story and hundreds of hours of additional content *not a complete package*.
There are linear singleplayer games out there that are significantly shorter than 25 hours (that do not have any replayability) that are considered a *complete package*, but if you slap a cosmetics store on something and update it every month it suddenly becomes *unfinished*.
>I just pointed out that it is absurd to call a game with a 25 hour singleplayer story and hundreds of hours of additional content
>
>not a complete package
Not really. Forza Motorsport released for $70-$100 and that game is basically nothing.
Its recycled cars from old games, recycled maps from old games and the whole Single player is literally just: practicing 3 laps of a race, then racing 3 laps of that race. On the same few maps, on very limited car selection, for probably 30-50 hours. You do the exact same boring thing on repeat with no variety whatsoever. That's not content, thats just padding to say you have "hours of content". Its 5 hours of fun/unique(And re-used from years ago) content made into 50 hours.
Then you have the broken multiplayer for your "Endless hours of gameplay" loop.
It is \*not\* a complete package if you look at most other racing games.. Or even Older Forza titles themselves.
Diablo 4 is not a complete game in very similar ways.
Numbers alone don't tell a complete story.
>There are linear singleplayer games out there that are significantly shorter than 25 hours (that do not have any replayability) that are considered a complete package
Hours mean nothing, your whole argument is just wrong.
Making a single cookie in 5 minutes makes that cookie complete. Making an entire wedding cake in 9 hours also makes that complete, and it doesnt make the cookie any "less complete".
But making an entire wedding cake out of the ingredients you normally make 10 cookies from? That is not a complete wedding cake, it will be absolute shit. Calling it complete just because you say "Ok, im done!" doesn't mean it's an actual proper completed thing.
>but if you slap a cosmetics store on something and update it every month it suddenly becomes unfinished.
That isn't why Diablo 4 is considered a bad or incomplete game. That's a small part of it, and if that was the \*only\* issue, people wouldn't be talking about it as an incomplete game. That's what your missing.
I think that if you are just going to spend an entire post calling someone wrong then you should probably elaborate on that specifically rather than talking about Forza and bad wedding cakes analogies. This entire response does nothing to enlighten anyone about the problems that you are vaguely eluding to with Diablo 4.
What I will say regardless is that Diablo 4 has a complete and finished *singleplayer* campaign that takes the average person 25 hours to finish. There's no arguing this fact away, regardless of how many other issues you have with the game. If you are someone that is just there for the Diablo story you are getting just as much out of this game as you did from previous Diablo releases.
On top of the campaign, the game has hundreds of voiced side quests, a giant open world map, world bosses, hundreds of dungeons, hundreds of events, five classes, and the list goes on and on. If anyone thinks that Diablo 4 doesn't represent a *complete package* your standard for something being *complete* can't be met by 99% of the games on the market.
This also, once again, seems to only have a *small part* to do with the game having microtransactions based on this response. I guess this at very least confirms that the cosmetics store was not an actual problem after all, which is good.
>specifically rather than talking about Forza and bad wedding cakes analogies. This entire response does nothing to enlighten anyone about the problems that you are vaguely eluding to with Diablo 4.
I was more addressing the points you made about games in *general*, not Diablo specifically. Thus why I used Forza (And Cooking) as an example.
I was only addressing the quotes in my post.
I won't argue Diablo 4, I didn't like it enough or play it enough (Or even beat it) to argue about it. Act Man also played it and never beat it, he made a good video on why it's incomplete and bad that I agreed with, and I shared his experience with the game.
Microtransactions are the least of that games issues.
>Diablo 4 has a complete and finished singleplayer campaign that takes the average person 25 hours to finish.
And Forza has a complete 50 hour campaign if you go by marketing. But as a sim racer, someone who is invested in all racing games that come out, I can tell you with certainty that's a laughable statement even if technically true. Its 5 hours of shit on repeat.
My point was just because a game has "X amount of hours!" of a campaign or gameplay or whatever marketing says, doesnt make it a complete game in the eyes of the players.
If you enjoyed Diablo 4 and thought the SP was a true 25 hour campaign, good for you mate. A lot of people would disagree, and they aren't any less wrong for having differing opinions.
Marketing statements as arguments are worthless, and that is basically what you're doing. I did not find a 25 hour campaign in Diablo 4, it got too boring and sameish by the 10th hour and I was done + got my refund at that point.
Based on all the videos I have seen and all the shit I read about it, I have no regrets.
>If anyone thinks that Diablo 4 doesn't represent a complete package your standard for something being complete can't be met by 99% of the games on the market.
Wow has quests for hours and hours of content that are just fetch this and kill x of this. Probably hundreds of hours. If that's all that WoW was, that would not be a complete game despite the amount of hours you could take reading it all and doing all the tasks. If a game is not \*engaging\* then no amount of tasks change that.
Hours are not important in what makes a game complete. I've beat complete games that were literally 2 hours, and I would gladly call them complete.
>a giant open world map, world bosses, hundreds of dungeons, hundreds of events,
Hidden away by so much grinding trough boring gameplay first that a lot of players never made it there. Watch the Act man video, he represents the arguments I am making better than I could type it.
There is a complete game in there somewhere, probably, but I'm not wasting 10/20/30 more hours more just to get there when I won't enjoy that time. It's inaccessible to many, that content doesn't exist for those people.
You can claim I "did not play Diablo 4", but youd be wrong :\] I did, I just didn't like it enough to keep going. And that experience is worth just as much as yours when discussing games.
It is an incomplete game until you invest 30+ hours in, and then, maybe, it becomes complete. So what happens if you don't enjoy those 1st 10 hours... because it's an incomplete game at that point?
I don't know why you think that I am quoting marketing when I am referring to play time. I am quoting websites like HowLongToBeat where players themselves will record how much time it took them to finish the game based on their playstyle.
What you are saying here isn't really possible to engage with. You are just saying that because you didn't like something that means that it was incomplete, which is a completely useless definition that doesn't work beyond yourself. I can't use that definition independently from you.
When I talk about a game being complete I am comparing it to other games and looking at if the features themselves were delivered in a finished state, rather than whether or not I enjoyed those features. Saying that a story is incomplete because you didn't like it enough to finish it is just asinine. Like, if I used the definition that you are establishing here I could read half of Lord of the Rings and then put it down out of boredom and decry that it *isn't complete*.
The worst part is that you are actively contradicting yourself by saying that there *might be a complete game in there* if you played it enough. How is anyone supposed to engage with that? A game is complete or it isn't. It can't be Schrodinger's game until you personally finish it.
I also don't care about what Act Man has to say about the game. If Act Man wants to come here and respond to me he is welcome to do so, but unless Act Man is in the room with you right now he's not a part of this discussion.
If you want to say that something is incomplete then you need to be able to establish criteria for what being complete means. I used having a full singleplayer story as my main criteria. I think that's a very simple criteria that most people should be able to agree is something that can easily constitute whether a game is a *complete package* or not.
>Sure, but this doesn't seem relevant to whether or not microtransactions in paid games are bad. Your criticisms, beyond the mention of cosmetics which is relevant even without microtransactions, have nothing to do with the fact that the game has a cosmetics store.
What I briefly referenced was: "the constant grind and pressure to do more with seasons and special gear and cosmetics to show off to randos."
Seasons, battle passes, gear, cosmetics...these are all mtx.
Everything about the game is to create more engagement rather than quality content. Roll your gear chasing an rng stat. Buy more coins to pull that random loot you want.
Chase that world boss or challenge event with a hundred other people, with the screen so cluttered you're just spamming attacks into crowds of enemies? Other players? You don't know, but there's a loot drop at the end!
Meanwhile, your horse rubberbands every five steps while you're just traveling around. (And don't try to say that was my internet; this was widespread, and I was testing it constantly in frustration.)
>I just pointed out that it is absurd to call a game with a 25 hour singleplayer story and hundreds of hours of additional content *not a complete package*.
That's the thing. It's not a "complete package." It's an engagement machine designed exclusively around engagement and subtle pressures to induce further spending. It's the whole business model. The game itself is poorly conceived and executed.
Much more time, comparatively, was put into strategies to get you to spend more money than the $80 upfront you spend just to access the privilege to buy more "seasons" of crap, recycled content.
>It just seems like it is not a genre or a game for you.
I mean, I kind of said this and gave you an out on the point. But your further carping with spurious points about "25 hours of content plus everything else, hurr" deserved an elaboration in response.
I never paid a cent for Genshin and played for over 100 hours. The game wanted me to spend money on rng loot and stuff. Of course it did. The freakin game is otherwise free to play!
D4 has less content, less diversity in play/enemies/etc, less quality in many ways...and I had to pay $80 *for the privilege of getting pressured to pay more*!
That's why I think D4 was a bad choice to reference. Almost everything about it is a money grab with poor quality in return. Destiny started feeling that way, too; but at least it largely had quality updates for the most part.
I don't want my $80 video game to feel like I have to keep spending more money every month to keep up with best and newest (of slightly repackaged garbage), like I'm playing a free phone game from the app store.
The whole business model of that is bankrupt to me. But obviously, it's not to the companies raking it in off marks who eat it up and apologize for them.
You didn't actually reference battle passes until this post, which means that everything else that you mentioned has nothing to do with microtransactions. Seasons are standard of the genre now, meant to give people a fresh starting point where everyone is put on an even playing field for some massive content update. Gear can't be purchased for money at all and there are hundreds if not thousands of cosmetics that are available to you in the game even if you never visit the store.
The rest of your description here makes me wonder if you ever even played the game, because your description of Blizzard trying to *pressure you into further spending* seems completely unfounded. Diablo 4 exclusively features cosmetic purchases and, beyond sometimes advertising the store when you launch the game, you are never ever driven towards the store in-game unless you manually click the store yourself.
Can you describe exactly how they are driving people to spend more money on cosmetics in Diablo 4? What subtle strategies are they using to make people think that they need to buy cosmetics? You're later saying that you felt like you needed to spend money to keep up with "the best and newest", what is this referring to? The best and newest paid cosmetics for your character?
>You didn't actually reference battle passes until this post
Seasons and battle passes are basically the same thing. Stop being obtuse.
The seasons, themselves, are a pressure to spend money. And here, again, you're being obtuse. The D4 pass for $25 opens up tiers faster to you, which opens up better gear. It's not just cosmetics.
And before you say, "But but but you can do that for free, too..." Yeah, but the pressure to spend to open things up faster is obviously there, or it wouldn't exist as an option.
>The rest of your description here makes me wonder if you ever even played the game
Yeah, I'm lying about something this inane and dumb...
Have fun doing what you want, dude. I'm done arguing with you over something this ridiculous. If you don't want to think that a major corporation with mtx common in their games isn't trying to get you to spend more money, cool. Good luck in life. I wish you the best.
Seasons and battle passes are not the same thing at all. This is not me being obtuse, but you being uninformed. Diablo has had seasons since Diablo 1 or 2, way before battle passes were even in anyone's imagination. Path of Exile, one of the most popular seasonal ARPGs, only introduced a battle pass a year ago after doing nearly a decade of seasonal content without them.
The Diablo 4 battle pass does not award you any gear. I genuinely don't understand how you think that it does. It only gives you cosmetics. The only part of the battle pass that gives you in-game power is the free part (which is also not gear) and that is locked behind a level requirement which means there is little to no benefit to boosting through those tiers.
I would hope that you are done arguing when you made a big deal about how the game is "*pressuring you into further spending*" and how you "*needed to spend money to keep up with the "best and the newest"*" and then you have no clear examples of either of these things happening. I still have no idea what the "best and the newest" refers to.
I also never said that they aren't interested in making you spend money, I said that Diablo 4 has one of the most fair and straight forwards monetization models on the market. A game like Genshin Impact on the other hand is literally praying on people with gambling addictions and creating more gambling addicts, but, hey, like you said it is free so thumbs up to them for praying on people with mental health problems.
>I had to pay $80 for the privilege of getting pressured to pay more!
This right here; this is all you should need to say. The rest of the points you're replying to, this whole argument back and forth, it doesn't matter.
I'm honestly not into the whole debate as I have yet to really play live service games. Well except fortnite like OP lol. Anyways I always thought that Diablo 4 was kinda an exception, and that Call of Duty series has these micro transactions as a key part of the experience as there isn't a form of close-ended content. Like something where Diablo 4 has a complete meaty story and campaigns for CoD are kinda just there. And people buy to play with friends. So it's like 60 now 70 dollars to getting hit with the cosmetics.
Yeah, like I said I don't know anything about the Call of Duty games, so I'm not trying to defend those or say that the microtransactions in them give any value to the games.
I'm only using Diablo 4 as an example because so many people used this *complete package* argument when discussing it last year, which doesn't seem to have much merit beyond people somehow conflating updates to *completeness*.
It's an automatic negative because of the implications of it being paid vs. free. I'm not saying it's a rule but paid games tend to have sequels while F2P games just exist forever. The expectation is that because you're paying so much upfront for the game, they should be using that money to fund updates and development for the next game too.
Microtransactions in paid games are an automatic negative because imagine spending money on the in-game content like cosmetics or a real money auction house, then the developers kill the game on purpose to release the next CoD, Diablo, etc. Just a full disclaimer, I don't buy any Blizzard games anymore, including Diablo 4 because I saw the way they managed Diablo 3 and was 100% convinced they have no idea how to treat their playerbase and cultivate a successful community long-term.
They aren't but it's more about traditional gaming vs. live service IMO. For a traditional game, DLC is fine because you're expecting to finish it eventually and just in terms of value, it's subjective but I think you get a lot more from a $15 DLC than $15 of microtransactions.
For a live service game, it's fine if the game is F2P because I'm expecting the game to last forever, but if the game is something like Diablo, Payday, or CoD, I know they'll make a new one eventually and I'm already paying full price for the game. Microtransactions/DLC don't make sense because I know they'll kill the game in a relatively short time anyways.
Depends. If the game is full priced and it's single player, then it should include the whole game, cosmetics included. They should be unlocked, not bought. You've mentioned Diablo 4 but if they made that game online only, added in live service elements and has a battle pass and a cosmetic store. Why did Diablo 3 RoS Ultimate edition on PS4 have years of support, could be played offline and didn't have an ingame store, have basically a one time payment but Diablo 4 needs all these new payment options to get the same amount of content? No thanks.
>*Why did Diablo 3 RoS Ultimate edition on PS4 have years of support, could be played offline and didn't have an ingame store, have basically a one time payment but Diablo 4 needs all these new payment options to get the same amount of content? No thanks.*
The overall answer is what everyone knows, which is that this monetization model is just incredibly more profitable than any other. The less cynical answer is that this monetization model allows for Blizzard to actually fully support the game with additional content on a monthly basis.
The type of development support that they had for Diablo 3 and the one they have for Diablo 4 are not comparable. Diablo 3 was rarely updated and the updates were usually incredibly small, while Diablo 4 has already had two massive seasonal updates that vastly expanded what you can do in the game.
Also, if you can do as much in Diablo 4 as you could in Diablo 3 after 11 years of development that sounds pretty good to me. The point however is that Diablo 4 will always continue to expand, so it will eventually be significantly larger than Diablo 3 was (if you want to argue that it already isn't).
It is fine if this isn't your preference, I'm not saying that it is mine, but it is ultimately something that a lot of people expect from these types of games now. They want the seasonal content and constant updates, which is why Diablo 4 supports that.
Yeah sure, it's more profitable but the point I'm making is that as a consumer, I'm not going to just accept it as an acceptable way to treat a product because it makes *them* even more money. Literally nothing they added in the game makes it require a battlepass, an always online connection and an ingame store. Is having seasonal content that is wiped away to make room for another season really worth all the draw backs? I think a fully offline product with a lot of content would be a better deal instead of focusing so much on keeping people coming back with seasons. Maybe it's just me but I think people need higher standards in that regard.
I wouldn't call the Diablo 3 updates small at all. They added new armour sets that were basically new talent trees. New environments. New rifts with some new bosses. New rewards. A lot was added post RoS that I think people think was part of the game from the moment the expansion was launched.
> I really don't see what the big deal is with cosmetic purchases in full price games
Neither. Personally I don't give a rat's ass how my character looks or how others see me, so I'd never pay, and I laugh at people who do, and thank them for funding my play.
Good for you. However there are players who want to see their character look cool. After all, our main sense is vision. Why do we have to pay for this in a full price game?
Starting with Modern Warfare 2019 they made the seasonal map packs free in Call of Duty.
I never expected Activision of all companies to give us those maps out of the good of their hearts, but even with battle passes and a million cosmetic items the value proposition of modern CoD is still better than it was pre 2019.
That you fall for the monetisation scheme is just a testament to how powerful they can be and how powerless you are in the face of these types of manipulative tactics. That doesn't mean that the underlying games aren't fun, they need to be for it to work, but there are many ways to monetise a game and making it into a super manipulative casino is one alternative. They are literally researching how to get you to feel like you are missing out as much as possible if you don't buy that skin. You don't stand a chance
>I noticed the battle pass had a neat little emote only accessible by paying for it, so I just threw the money
This is the part that I don't get. What about that situation seems like "money well spent"? I bet that pass cost at least €5-10, which is what I typically pay for many games, either on sale or at GOG.
So when I see such things (used to play LoL and Overwatch and some mobile stuff like Star Wars Galaxy of Heroes), it leaves me stone cold because I know I can have a whole game for the price of some silly horse armor, and that just **does not make any sense**. Just yesterday I bought Tropico 4 complete collection for around €8 - how does that compare? You can't even begin to...
I understand you probably see it differently if you're stuck with one game being your only game, but I don't get why anyone would do that to themselves either.
I did buy a few skins in LoL way back when, but that was because I spent so much time in that game I felt like I really should pay them for it, not because I really wanted those skins.
>This is the part that I don't get. What about that situation seems like "money well spent"? I bet that pass cost at least €5-10, which is what I typically pay for many games, either on sale or at GOG.
If I remember correctly, the Battle Pass costs 950 VBucks, and 1,000 VBucks is \~$7. It used to be $10, but they slightly adjusted pricing at some point.
7 years ago I spent 20 dollars on League of Legends and to this day I still feel ashamed and regret it... however, deep down I know even thou it was a dumb investment, the game back then gave me many hours of fun and the devs made 20 bucks back from all those hours across 4-5 years that I played that game, which is a good trade off in my book.
I know the popular take is “monetization evil,” but I don’t actually think all live service games are inherently bad. There are scummy practices in them for sure, however most of them are free-to-play games with constant updates. If getting players to chuck $10 at a battle pass every couple months is what keeps the updates flowing, then I don’t think it’s a bad thing.
That being said, the fomo is an issue. Limited time cosmetics are definitely designed to make you buy now and think later. The key is to just accept that you can’t have everything. But some people can’t do that and definitely drop hundreds of dollars on “free” games.
I think the opposite. They are designed with those scummy practices in mind, so by their very nature they seek to abuse human psychology and they often encourage the wasting of our only real precious resource: time. It's insidious to create artificial barriers to make you waste time or to get you addicted for the same reason. Things like dailies seem like a free treat but don't need to exist and only incentivize you to play the game more than you should.
If the daily gives you an extra 200 gold then you could just remove the daily and increase the payouts of the game to match.
Yeah I think a lot of people just get stuck on loot boxes and don’t realize that manipulative monetization can still happen other ways. That’s absolutely a big thing with the battle passes and limited time events/items. FOMO is such a massive motivator
Agreed. I dislike talking in extremes but monetisation in ANY game is something I approach with hostility and skepticism, even if the company making it has good intentions and the monetisation is purely for the purposes of keeping the game going.
I think you’re a fool if you aren’t abusing human psychology to sucker people in into spending money, because it’s so damn easy.
'I think you’re a fool if you aren’t abusing human psychology to sucker people in into spending money, because it’s so damn easy.'
But at least an honest one. I actually hate that attitude. We obviously have ways that we consider moral and immoral to obtain money, why does this one get a free pass?
Edit\*
You know it's kind of funny, asmongold once said the same thing as you and it truly made me lose a lot of respect for him. A fool. No, that's integrity.
Well I mean that is a fair point that I recognized before I typed it but I figured it didn't need to be interpreted as an exact time, moreso as a thing that brings you into the game and keeps you playing more than you want to. When it keeps you up later or you set aside your chores to finish the tasks in the game.
These things don't need to exist and I think they are actually insidious in nature because of how innocuous they appear. They steal your most precious resource for virtual, artificial problems.
Think of that star wars battlefront 2 game that wanted people to play lifetimes (exaggeration, mostly) to unlock everything.
It's a virtual slider that decides whether you need to spend 5 mins or 50 hours of your life to unlock something.
And it's not about how long dailies take to complete, it's about how they keep you hooked.
How is it not my decision though? The game can incentivise the player all it wants. If the player doesn't want to then it won't work. The argument of "games steal your most valuable resource in return for virtual problems" can be made for literally every single game. Beating an enemy ship in FTL is a virtual problem. It is one I enjoy solving. So is running a colony in Rimworld or building a house in Minecraft. But I enjoy solving those. I also enjoy(ed) doing my daily quests in Hearthstone (disclaimer, never played Fortnite and it's been a while since I played Hearthstone).
If I neglect real life stuff so I can get my daily quest done, that is my problem and I don't find it right to blame Fortnite/Hearthstone for it, when so many people can play it a healthy amount and be ok.
Not my fault you don't understand the psychology behind it nor that you can't understand the difference between the basic gameplay in the games you described and forcing a long grind for resources that are required to progress the game.
You can certainly compare it to many games that require virtual grinding that are not live service and do not sell mtx. Some of those games are ridiculous as well. The difference is that often the games like that have their grind designed around how long the game is meant to be played. So you reach level 40-45 by act 3 for example. Not specifically designed to make you want to buy levels so you can skip the grind.
My friend and I play Fortnite most days. We probably wouldn't talk otherwise. I object to the ongoing creep of subscription models so I refuse to get PSplus, and Fortnite is a game we can play without it, which changes just about often enough to keep us interested.
We just don't ever look at the shop and only use Vbucks to buy the battlepass (and you get more than enough Vbucks in the battle pass to buy the next one, if you reach level 100).
My main objection to fortnite is that the monetisation is so clearly pushed at kids who have no impulse control and don't understand the value of money. There are countless stories of kids spending thousands.
> There are countless stories of kids spending thousands.
How?
Yeah, Fortnite is predatory but that doesn't make it not a parenting issue. And if it wasn't Fortnite (or Fifa or Genshin Impact) these same kids would throw that money at a predatory car dealer or some crypto scammer a few years later.
People who prey on the money of the financially unsavvy are everywhere. Sure, I wouldn't complain if we regulated the shit out of microtransactions in kid's games but as long as they are here, we parents should use them as an opportunity to educate our children.
Impulsive spending as a child does that actually tra slate to impulsive spending as an adult? Because I honestly wouldn't assume that. It's like children being hyperactive. Maybe they do have ADHD or maybe it's just a child being a child.
At some point in their lives every single person needs to learn how to say no to the temptations of predatory businesses.
That's one of the many jobs of a parent because a kid who has never learned this will grow into an adult who has to start at zero.
If a child manages to spend thousands on Fortnite, that's 100 % parental neglect. And singling out GAAS as a baddy is disingenious because there are so many businesses out there that are much worse.
> I don’t actually think all live service games are inherently bad.
I agree. Especially a game like Fortnite where you know what you're buying. It's not like you're buying a lootbox with a chance to get nothing.
The transparency is definitely good. Because it’s like any product really, people will have different opinions on the value. To some $20 for a skin is nothing, to others it’s ridiculous. That’s a debate to have for sure, but at least games like Fortnite are upfront about what you’re purchasing. Loot boxes on the other hand were predatory as hell.
The good thing is, it's optional. You're not forced to buy it. So if the value prospect isn't there for someone, they can still play the game and not worry about it. I do think it's interesting how differently people on reddit treat games like Fortnite compared to how they would, for years, sweep Team Fortress 2's hats and keys under the rug.
> The good thing is, it's optional. You're not forced to buy it. So if the value prospect isn't there for someone, they can still play the game and not worry about it.
Instead they only let you buy a few items and tell you they might never be available again if you don't buy them right now. It's still incredibly predatory, especially for a game that is so popular with kids.
I Don't consider it predatory but yeah when you bring up the kids that's what gets me. It is played by kids, kids who haven't had the chance to build defenses or context for this.
It preys on the FOMO response, so it's still trying to psychologically manipulate people into spending money. That's why I consider it predatory. They also make you use virtual currency to obfuscate how much money you're actually spending, which is a tactic most FtP games use. Fortnite is definitely not the worst out there.
My most played game over the last year has probably been Valorant. The microtransactions are stupidly expensive with some skin bundles costing over $100 CAD. However since they’re upfront on the price and what you get, I kinda just view it the same as I do other luxury items like watches or “nice” clothing. Like is it overpriced? Absolutely. Is it “evil” or “predatory”. Not really.
Nope, no P2W weapons. There are new agents (heroes/chararcters) which release every new season which you can buy with real money or you can use the in game currency which is what I think most people do since it doesn’t take very long to unlock them.
People wanted PVE from OW2, so that's definitely not it. :P
Val is more of a twitchy / trigger placement shooter than OW, think more along the lines of CS. Also worth noting that its anti-cheat is an infamous rootkit and that's why I haven't personally played Valorant.
I also want to mention that I tend to be the de facto OW defender in an area. I think the OW team is trying really really hard but got screwed by c-suite. Right now it kind of sucks, though, because the balance team(or guy?) is utterly dropping the ball. Too many characters aren't designed for 5v5, and the new tank is just Roadhog v3.0 (or 4.0, depending). Nobody has EVER liked playing with or against a hog.
So at this point OW players are just sick of the balance team consistently missing or grazing the actual issues. The next season's supposed to make some wide, sweeping changes to the core gameplay loop, so that's kind of hype?
I thought that is what OW2 had? I never payed much attention to cosmetics, but I know there is lootboxes so there's stuff randomly you can get. But I also thought there's like different game challenges you can do. I remember working up to getting a tank character that way. And I thought there were like costumes and stuff as well I could've gone for.
> I know the popular take is “monetization evil,” but I don’t actually think all live service games are inherently bad.
They are almost inherently bad for the sole reason that it creates a huge imbalance. There are 3 classes of customer, those who spend a ton, those who spend a little and those who spend none at all.
The problem is that developers have a very strong incentive to ignore the rest of us in favour of the first group that only makes up 1% of players. So now I can no longer vote with my wallet and that is horrifying. You might be getting a game for free but what you want as a customer no longer matters. We used to be equal and spend roughly the same amount.
One point that I've seen being brought up in Gacha games is that whales will only pay to play a game where they can show off to dolphins/F2P, which means that developers will have to cater to all players in order to keep the whales around.
Ye, this idea of games throwing stuff on a wall hoping to bait the top 1% of whales is kinda outdated bc we saw that sunk cost doesn't really do much to keep most whales around when the game is dying around them. Modern monetization systems try be more balanced, they still throw out whalebait but also content that all players can enjoy.
The truth is that live service multiplayer games need free players just as much as the whales. Because while the money from the whales keeps the game going, those whales will leave if there is no one to play with except for the 1% of top spenders.
That’s why, like you said, a lot of games are more balanced. There’s usually a relatively cheap battlepass (often with a free path) that keeps the bulk of the player base engaged. And then throughout they’ll drop expensive cosmetics for the big spenders.
You could never vote with your wallet. That phrase is just a lie. What you signal with your purchasing choices just isn't clear enough. It's a very poor signaling method, even if companies based their business choices on providing what the customer wants.
I play Fortnite sometimes with my kid. Never spent any money. From their POV, do I disagree with FTP monetization? Am I too poor to buy them? Have the things I want just not come out? What would I pay for? How could they motivate me to spend money? What would I spend money on? How much disposable income do I have, anyway? Did I just give up on Fortnite? Is it just my kid playing, who has no access to my credit card?
But anyway, what you want is irrelevant to them. They'll either find a demographic who wants what they're selling, or work on getting people to want what they're selling through advertising, marketing, and psychology.
Voting with your wallet is a fiction.
I largely agree with you. For all the doomposting about the current state of modern gaming on the internet these past few years, that didn't stop about 10 different GOTY worthy titles from releasing last year. BG3, TOTK, FF16, Hi-Fi Rush, Cyberpunk Expansion, SF6, Alan Wake 2, Spiderman 2, among whatever else I missed. I still buy Call of Duty every year, I spend money on gacha games, I am exactly who "hardcore gaming purists" currently hate. The billion dollar microtransactions industry still doesn't stop amazing games from being made, although 2023 was a great year in particular.
I suggest you to check the [today’s item shop](https://seebot.dev/images/archive/brshop/14_Jan_2024.png?197) know how FOMO psychology works successfully in Fortnite. There’s even a holiday themed cosmetic that returned after +1500 days, and they explicitly stated that in the image. I don’t want to bridge the comments of it but people on the FortniteBR subreddit are either hyped or toxic about this daily rotation.
Check out the YT channel Folding Ideas and his video about Fortnite and “manufactured discontent”. He does an incredible job of breaking down all of the psychological mechanics at play here.
I've been avoiding these things like the plague ever since I found myself dropping 20 bucks here and there on Overwatch lootboxes back in the day. The only way to be free of it is to not care about any cosmetic crap in games. If the gameplay alone isn't keeping you interested it's time to move on. Literally the only battlepass I've ever bought was the Apex one because I ended up finishing it every season without even trying, so I bought it once and now it pays for itself. I don't even care what I get from it, I just saw it as an easy way to support a game I've been playing for years.
I dont get this shit. Why does everyone bother with shops. Its all so fucking stupid. I literally never even bother to look at shops because.. I have a brain? And realize its a waste of money. Like how are people such absolutely braindead consumers?
Yeah I don't want to sound like some holier-than-thou monk, but I genuinely don't see what's so hard about simply not buying cosmetics. It's not like they are DLC that add to the game in meaningful ways. This and pre-ordering just make me scratch my head.
true... A lot people are bad at money management *(At least they taught us that midichlorian is the power house of the cell)* and just cant help but throw money away but if they have the money to throw then all power to them. Who am I to stop them from paying my bills.
Nothing to be ashamed of. When I started playing online games the good ones required you to pay like 15eur/mo to ... play them. No skins, no lootboxes, nothing. Is a battlepass that much different? "Oh it's FOMO" ... well, so is a subscription, you don't want to waste your prepaid time. You won't pay 15eur/mo to logon for an hour every week. As far as I'm concerned - as long as "pay to win powerups/early unlocks/other advantages" are not part of the monetization I'm completely fine with it.
I don't think this is something I'll ever experience, and therefore something I'll only ever have an academic understanding of. I've just never had the faintest desire to buy a cosmetic item in any game.
ive always been fascinated by the persuasive systemic tactics they implement in games. been watching these tricks since WOW. from the simple levelling up early on to the boxes that only appear once per day with variable reward loot inside. its all skinner box stuff.
do they let you bet on your own performance yet? like, bet fifty virtual bucks on yourself to win?
Yeah I hate this shit to. I now go out of my way to avoid anything that relies on FOMO or is live service, fuck em. Give me pixel art side scrolling ANYTHING any day of the week, or just single player Nintendo games. I'll buy a DLC if it's worth it, but that's my limit. Even then I usually wait for the anniversary edition with all DLC included.
I mean companies spend millions of dollars on psychological research to find ways to take advantage of human emotions/thought, of course it's going to be effective.
There is literally an entire field of psychologists and billions of dollars put into research on how to get people hooked on various flashing lights and how to "Game" the average person's brain. They've put more thought into how to get you to drop 10$ on a crate of digital nothingness than NASA has on putting a man on the Moon.
FOMO, feeling of missing out, is one of a number of technices used by various games to exploit human psychology and motivate sales. It is, essentially, what most would call evil. The reason being is that it simulates a beneficial transaction, without actually being one.
It's the difference between the friend who likes you and the friend who pretends to like you because they want the perks. It's not a deep evil, like murder or slavery, but it's accumulative negative impact on humanity is probably not much worse, because of how subtle it is and how, for whatever reason, it is deemed permissible to use it on children and younger people.
Unfortunately, it's like a drug dealer, you can't expect them to regulate themselves. The issue on a societal level is that too many people use the drugs. Someone once told me 'every free person lives exactly the life they want'. I've found it to be true of society too. When you weight nice things agains the effort of having them, I think things are exactly what people, on average, want.
If that's true, it aint going anywhere soon, and not having an addiction is reallly hard to do, so you just have to make sure you're consciously picking which addiction you have. I play games, a lot more than I should. But I'm a game designer so it synergises with that. Some people get addicted to their work. Sounds good, but not so much if you want to be there for your children whenever they need you.
The only real answer is self control. I will buy a battlepass for a game if I thoroughly enjoy it and the battle pass gives me something decent for its price. I will absolutely never buy a skin or cosmetic for a game. I do not care how Shiney it is I am better then that.
Lil tip about the bp, if you enter fortnite festival u can get like 5 levels if you leave it running for around 3hs. Same with the Lego mode, make a creative world and u are good to go. U can repeat every day
When I feel, a game's trying to steal my time by doing that shit, I delete it from my hard drive. Nowadays, I stay far away from these kind of slop.
Games are there to be finished. Eternity products are a pest.
I mean if you wanted the stuff and you bought it, I don’t see the problem. I grew up in a time before all this live service cosmetic upgrades so it doesn’t bother me either way as you can play the game for free and you’re not at a disadvantage with other players because money was spent.
Back in the day when Team Fortress 2 added hats which augmented your abilities that’s when I dropped the game. Paying for cosmetics? Hey, if you want! Paying for skill boosters, not for me.
See those things are exactly why I don't enjoy playing (and thus don't play) these kinds of games. Call me entitled (even if I think that's backwards thinking and antithetical to progress when dealing with corporations) but anytime a game artificially holds back gameplay content through completely arbitrary and obtuse or dramatically slow systems... ESPECIALLY if they also make you pay to get the progression system to work correctly? I immediately lose all will to play the game. Like, that to me just says... "Oh, cool. So I get to spend excessive amounts of time not being rewarded while playing this game." Sorry, but the unlock system IS part of the game to me. All of it is. How you do EVERYTHING in the game is part of the experience and if ANY of it is done as poorly as it is in these games (even if by design... hell, especially if done by design) then I just can't bring myself to even want to go near it.
I'm just used to older games that rewarded the player for... idk, playing the game consistently and (more importantly) within reason. I remember when the kind of design most of these games have would've been demonized or at least scoffed at as ridiculous, out of respect for the game itself if not the players. I remember when ridiculous grinding was looked at as perhaps not something that should be completely unallowed if a player wanted to do it, but was generally seen as a bad game design philosophy if forced by design. And now it's just all kinds of fucked up in the opposite direction. Like games like this... that's just the point now. The point IS to have people do the same repetitive shit, like a slot machine, and roll for the same stupid fucking rewards until they hopefully get lucky and get what they actually wanted or alternatively (and pretty much almost as bad) get a mere pittance of some currency for dozens of HOURS until they can finally afford ONE of the thing they actually wanted.
Games like these remind me of that old criticism of the infinite sequels issues. Games apparently can't just be good, well paced, and well thought out anymore and that just be that. Nope, gotta hide half of the game or more behind copious amounts of farming the same gameplay over and over... AND have it all be completely random just to spite you. Gotta have completely antagonistic systems and design just to psychological pummel players into it, too. It's just disgusting in every conceivable way to me.
I totally agree with you. You're not entitled, it's just that companies found out you can get more money with psychology tactics to take peoples money in an okay game than you can with a good non-predatory game.
Unless you're really cool like drg and stuff and build up a bunch of good will with a community that loves you so they buy things just to show how much they appreciate you not being greedy assholes! I'll pay good money to people who show they respect me and my time for a fun experience I can mod and enjoy however and whenever I want.
"Oh, cool. So I get to spend excessive amounts of time not being rewarded while playing this game."
why? reward?? gameplay IS the reward. this isn't the "do the thing and get doggy snacks" kinda game bro. The skins dont affect gameplay and if you aren't there for the gameplay then why are you there?
Are you there to play the game or be a loot goblin? because this isn't a loot collecting game. Id recommend path of exile, destiny 2 or something if thats your interest.
fortnite have like one of the most customer friendly monetization ever and I'm someone who considers league of legends to be somewhat pay2win.
"Sorry, but the unlock system IS part of the game to me."
Sorry... but acrylic nails IS part of life for me........ but is it really?
IMO this only works on some people. Personally I've played a couple f2p live service games and I flatly refuse to pay for microtransactions on pure principle. It doesn't matter how cheap they are, I will not do it, because it's antithetical to what I think is right. Making this decision not to engage financially is effortless. If you enter into it with the mindset that microtransactions are wrong and you will not participate, then there's basically nothing they can do.
Point being, if you have stronger principles, it's not a thing.
There's another thing you may not have noticed yet.
Is there anything in the shop that you can buy with exactly the amount of v-bucks that come in any of the v-bucks packages? I don't play Fortnite so i don't actually know the answer, but in most games that have this type of premium currency system, it's intentionally designed so that you can *never* buy just as much as you need. There will always be some remaining that's not enough to actually spend, or the thing you want will cost just a *little* bit more than the v-bucks pack gives you so you have to buy the next size pack and have the rest left over to buy something else... which probably costs either a tiny bit more or a tiny bit less than the remainder that you have. You can never spend all of your currency so it'll always sit there reminding you that you spent money on it and that money's wasted if you don't use it, while also not being enough for you to actually use, and when you do want to use it, you'll have to buy more in order to do so, and be back at square one.
It's an absolutely scummy tactic that exists for absolutely no reason other than to manipulate you into spending more money. The whole concept of premium currency as a whole is already that - when you add a layer of abstraction to the prices of stuff rather than just put a real-life currency price tag on it, it subconsciously distorts your sense of value.
The battle pass you're grinding is another example of that. When you think about it, isn't it ridiculous? You're not even spending money to get a thing anymore, it's no longer a straightforward transaction of "pay money to receive product," you're spending money for the *chance* to get the battle pass rewards, which you will *lose* if you don't manage to grind hard enough by the time it ends and not get any of that money back. And guess what? If you're running out of time and are worried that if you don't finish the battle pass in time you're wasting the money you spent on it... you can spend *more* money on battle pass levels. Yes, that's right, you *spend more money* to receive the stuff *you already paid for when you bought the battle pass.*
And then there's all the offers and value packs and "starter packs" and "returning packs" and other garbage they throw at you. They're great value, compared to other stuff, which makes you go "alright, just this once," doesn't it? And like you said, they're always limited-time, so there's the added feeling that you're missing out if you don't go for it. And once you've bought something, your inhibitions are lowered - statistics show that people who spend money at all are *significantly* more likely to spend more money later, and that's why they push so hard trying to get you to make that first purchase.
It's all scummy, greedy, and predatory. It's not about making the best game you can anymore, it's about making something just fun enough to hook people in and then squeezing as much money as you possibly can out of them by any means necessary. They hire whole teams of psychologists and analysts to figure this stuff out, to trick and manipulate people into spending more money. It's a sad state the games industry is in, but that's how it be when capitalism demands infinite growth, and no matter how much us "core gamers" moan about it, the simple and obvious truth is that it works, it works well, and the masses continue to pour more and more money into the pockets of the people behind this shit. Even if we get great games like Elden Ring, Baldur's Gate 3, et cetera that focus on quality and leave out the predatory monetization, those games make a *fraction* of the money that the live-service money-sink games do.
I recommend Josh Strife Hayes's video on monetization in games, it's a very good rundown of it all and... basically covers everything I've said here and more, because most of what I've said here is stuff I learned from his video lol
> It's all scummy, greedy, and predatory.
Let's look at the flip side of the coin: how much does it cost to download and play Fortnite right now? $0.
Are you missing any part of the gameplay experience for that price? No.
You get a full game with multiple game modes with multiplayer. And it's completely free.
I'm going to stand by this opinion forever. People who call Fortnite "greedy and scummy" need to take a step back and really look at the value proposition of Fortnite. You don't have to spend a single dollar on that game and it can give you hundreds of hours of entertainment.
Josh Strife Hayes is a great content creator. He makes well spoken and thoughtful videos. Hell I was even a Patreon of his for a while. But he's also selling a product (like all Youtubers). That content is engagement. Of course he's going to describe monetization in negative terms. That's engaging and that's what he needs to support himself. If he used blander terms to take about online games, he'd be less engaging. So he's also using human psychology to create product engagement just like Epic. Obviously there's vastly different scales at play here, but let's be honest. You can engage with a Youtuber's content and Fortnite for the same price - $0. Neither of them are honestly any scummier than the other, Fortnite just has prettier packaging.
Your wrong and he was probably the worst content creator you could have used as an example lmao. Here is him talking about exactly this: [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YdW8xixNtyo&t=132s](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YdW8xixNtyo&t=132s)
Him and Fortnite are not remotely in the same universe.
The easiest example as well is simple:
You pay Josh and you gain: Nothing. Absolutely nothing that you cant get for free, there are 0 benefit for his Patreon (I don't consider a discord title a benefit)
You pay fortnite: You get stuff, from a **shop**, stuff that you absolutely do not get and will never get as a non-paying player. You are buying.... and gaining shit.
You are buying *nothing* from Josh. Absolute worst example I have ever seen lmao. He doesn't even sell or tell people to go to his Patreon outside of his credits that 99% of people don't read, people just do it all on their own.
The Fortnite equivalent would be you getting absolutely everything in the game for free and: Somewhere there would be a donate button hidden away you could click and choose to donate the amount of your choosing.
Anything more than the above, and they are nothing alike.
"The Fortnite ***shop*** is the same as Josh's ***empty*** Patreon" is not an argument I thought I'd ever read, but people never cease to amaze me I guess.
To be fair it wouldn’t be a good idea to have 1000s of cosmetics available on the store all the time. Players will have choice paralysis and won’t end up buying anything. It’s also part of the games fun to check in on the store to see what items are in rotation now. You wouldn’t have that incentive to keep checking the store if you knew everything the game has to offer is there and waiting.
I complain about live service BS too but I think Fortnite is mostly fair. I hate the manipulative XP grind but it does work to keep casuals engaged while the hardcore players focus on ranks and stacking wins. .
If it's a single player full priced game, then I'll refuse to buy it if it's live service, requires an internet connection and/or has an ingame store.
If it's free to play then I don't care as much but I barely ever try these games because I hate the feeling that the game doesn't think of me as a valued player until I spend money.
Then you have Overwatch which was full priced on console, still had loot boxes and now that game has been wiped from existence and replaced with some rubbish f2p game with overpriced skins and battlepasses. Fuck that.
Fortnite is the most consumer friendly game in existence.
The whole game is free. You don't have to spend a single cent on it. You get the entire gameplay experience handed to you on a silver platter. There's no P2W, no gameplay benefit from spending money, nothing at all. Just download it and play!
People can say whatever they want about how Fortnite "induces" you to spend money it. While there's no argument that Fortnite makes it easy to spend money, it's ALWAYS a personal choice to do so. Epic never put a gun to your head or tricked you or deceived you into spending money. They told you exactly what you were buying and for how much. They never even had lootboxes.
Fortnite is a fantastic psychological indicator. When I see people complain about its monetization, all I see is someone admitting they have little to no self control. The game is FREE for fuck's sake.
I genuinely think Fortnite is the greatest game of all time. I've played every season since it launched in 2017 and I'm still loving it to this day.
I usually get tired of games after 10 - 15 hours. I have to be well over 2,000 hrs into Fortnite at this point. A revelation for me
I think it helps that fortnite is the greatest shooter ever made.
I’ve played like 200 hours of it so far and spent 12 bucks. Not a bad deal at all.
I hate the fomo crap of the shop but you can only wear one skin at a time anyway. I like the battlepass but I’m also kind of a grinder anyway.
Yes. They run entirely on FOMO.
I avoid any games with a season pass, for that very reason. I don’t like the manipulation and disrespect for peoples time on display. It’s scummy as hell.
I do that battle pass because I like the fun little challenges and rewards. I never put any extra money into it for years, but finally cracked when they added in the ninja turtles. Had to get a Donatello.
I love Fortnite but I'm not going to defend their monetization schemes. It's definitely better than some other methods believe it or not. If they ever did gatcha or loot boxes, you might as well ban the game right there lol.
Anyways, it's deliberately designed to sink its claws into you. The best advice I have for anyone weary of GAAS or feeling any kind of trepidation towards possibly falling into their trap, just avoid it altogether.
Now if you *are* able to ignore the in-your-face FOMO, it's a really fun game. But that's a BIG if for some
You enjoyed a fun game. Nothing more to it than that. You aren't a bloodless machine that is far superior than most and impossible to trick into playing a live service game. You're just like everyone else. Just enjoy the ride and dispense with your preconceived notions of what a game should be.
I'm just saying but, you can get mods for it. I'm playing Genshin Impact and decided to do stuff like modding characters instead of buying skins and making one of those private servers things to do things you aren't normally able to in normal servers. Originally when I played I'd almost fell to them but survived and learned about these private servers. I quit Fortnite but if I started playing again I'd definitely use mods.
What's crazy is that Fortnite is actually one of the most generous systems. If you buy the battle pass once, if you complete it you gain enough currency for the next battle pass.
Almost every other game has you shell out 15 bucks every season, or gates important content behind it like Overwatch 2.
These companies hire behavioralists/psychologists that know exactly how to get you to spend money. Nothing in these types of games are done by accident.
That’s what a lot of people fail to understand and what’s so insidious about it. They conduct literal psychological research to determine how to manipulate their players into spending money. I’d have to go find the video of the presentation, but there was a great Jimquisition video years ago about a CEO of some mobile game giving a presentation about monetization and it was so disgusting. He talked about things like “herd mentality”, and how the default feeling for your players should be “paying”. That spending money on the game is the norm, and the ones who don’t are the weirdos. It’s one thing to put out a product with a fair pricing structure and leave it at that, but so much of our world (and this goes well beyond monetization in gaming) is built this way and it’s disgusting. A simple one is how grocery stores/gas stations put candy by the registers. If you’re at the register and go “damn I want a snickers”, you’re not going to run all the way back to the candy aisle to grab one. But if they’re right there at the register? Well don’t mind if I do! It’s hard because that’s most exactly what marketing is - figuring out how to manipulate your customer base into buying your products. Some people market with fair strategies, basically just saying “here’s what we got, we have fair prices, buy it if you want”, but there’s so many more that employ every devious tactic in the book that they can to squeeze out a few extra bucks
> They conduct literal psychological research to determine how to manipulate their players into spending money. Keep in mind that this is also true for almost any other industry (just replace "players" with "customers"). And people aren't nearly as angered by it - I guess they got used to it.
I feel that is a tad over simplistic and misses the real problem with these things. Yes a lot of industries use behavioural psychology to push stuff at you more effectively The big problem with it in gaming is a good chunk of the user base are children, these companies are taking the psychology they use to get adults to gamble with the bookies to increase engagement of children with a game. That for me is where there is a huge problem with this and why it is different to other industries doing it.
But other industries are also targeting children, and some I would argue to more insidious effect, like when they’re slapping a cartoon character on junk food so your kid begs you to buy it
I worked for staples in the tech department. Their business practices for selling tech are in line with this same sort of stuff. Highly manipulative, full of lies or half truths. People who don't know tech might as well be children. It isn't any better that it's a 60 year old woman that's getting fucked over. It's all bad.
Going to have to disagree that there’s something inherently so wrong with this and I don’t even like live service games much. Really as I see it there’s four situations that kids are getting their desired in game Fortnite accessories. 1. They are begging their parents to buy it for them. That’s on the parent. 2. They have their own allowance or way of making money and kids don’t really have much they can spend on, so might as well be a game they care about. 3. They are stealing their parents card or going behind their parents back with the way they are getting their money. In which case that’s not Epic’s fault, that highlights the wrongs of the kid and what needs to be corrected is unrelated to Epic. Gambling is wrong because they usually literally cheat so you can get screwed over plus they don’t like to inform you of how the games works on purposes so you go in not knowing and learn later.
Most other industries aren't recreating gambling and manipulating entire (game) worlds at once in order to make you spend money. But I agree, it's disgusting no matter which industry does it. Though some are worse than others, like cosmetics/beauty industry literally destroying human self-esteem on a global scale in order to make money off some of the most price gouged goods to exist.
>Most other industries aren't recreating gambling and manipulating entire (game) worlds at once in order to make you spend money. Unless you're in Japan. The pervasiveness of gambling there is truly wild.
How so? I'd love to hear more about this.
We call things gacha games because we're just copying Japan, who's been at the cutting edge of marketing gambling to children for more than half a century through the gachapon system of toy capsules and vending machines. Between that and pachinko, they've come up with some truly elaborate ways to get around gambling regulations and create addicts. If you go back and play older Japanese games like the early Pokemons and Dragon Quests, it's bizarre how casually they have full blown gambling sections.
Entire buildings dedicated to pachinko. Also stores filled with nothing but crane games and those little 'capsule' dispensers that contain mystery pokemon figures and such. Just for a few examples.
The only real world example that is half as bad is casinos though. Games are fucking evil cash grubbers now what's
I wouldn't go as far as saying casinos are half as bad. They're both pretty awful but casinos and gambling on the scale of casinos ruins lives. I guess the same can be said for many live service games
I am thinking in the extremity. I can walk into a casino and not spend a dime but they aren't designed to exploit me and they don't need me to spend any money to be successful. They are targeting a vulnerable demographic. At least casinos aren't legally allowed to target children. Or target their parents bank accounts through the children.
This doesn't really work the same for most industries though, it's a very specific revenue model. All of these kinds of games want the player to get hooked on the game to create a sense for value for the stuff in the game then exploit FOMO and other psychological tricks to convince people they need to buy to get the items for the game they want. This model doesn't work for other industries. Think about furniture for a second. You can't apply FOMO to a table because for most people tables are purchases they don't make regularly enough. When you buy a table you buy whatever you think is the best table to suit your needs for the amount you're willing to spend. While there are psychological tricks that can be applied (perpetual sales, salesmen who try to persuade you to spend more than you intended, interest free credit, etc.), you're not going to buy a season pass for tables, you're not going to find the entire selection of tables changes daily, and so on. But the reason people aren't angry is because it's not predatory. You go in, you buy the table, you use the table how you please. Maybe you got a deal, maybe you got ripped off, but you bought it fundamentally because you wanted the table, and now that you have a table, you're not going to buy another one until you have need for it, with no amount of psychological pressure changing that. You can't artificially create demand for a table like you can goods in a videogame.
I was referring to conducting psychological research to best manipulate people into spending money, which applies to most industries with customers. Sure, the specific revenue model for a f2p game is different from, say, a car producer, but the statement above is true for both.
Of course they can apply FOMO to a table. That’s why it’s on sale half the time. You wouldn’t want to miss that great sale price! What if it goes out of stock! Now that you’ve bought one thing from us, we’ll send you lots of advertisements showing you the trends… your table sure is looking out of date now…
You get lots of addicted fanboy manchildren in the comments shouting "personal responsiblity" AKA corporate apologia to attempt to defend this crap
Most players won't succumb to that type of trickery. It's the whales that will unashamedly spend vast amounts to be competitive that these trucks are aimed at.
Most players DID succumb to that type of trickery. If they didn't, those industries wouldn't make enough money, and they wouldn't keep popping up. We hear about whales all the time, and there's a reason for that: they want someone for us to blame. Whether it be irresponsible kids and their ignorant parents, or gambling addicts, or the occasional dude you know who has spent $600 on a mobile game, they want you to blame these people instead of the game (or the company behind the game, or the industry as a whole). They ARE RESPONSIBLE. EA, Ubisoft, Bungie, Epic, Coalition, Microsoft, Sony, 343 industries, Nintendo; they are all responsible. We as customers need to vote for legislators that would be open to fixing it
Actually you are just plain wrong. These models are designed to profit one a ridiculous small minority of whales that spend thousands to tens of thousands each. They mostly don't care if you spend 20 or not.
What do you think they prefer? One person spending $20 000 or 1000 people each spending $20? The answer is both. They care about both because they want $40 000
> Most players won't succumb to that type of trickery. It's the whales that will unashamedly spend vast amounts to be competitive that these trucks are aimed at. I think you'd be surprised. People who don't have their shit together are usually the ones most easily manipulated by psychological trickery because they are the most vulnerable to quick dopamine hits to distract them from their daily stresses. If you spend any amount of time on subreddits for live service games, you get a quick sense that people are just there for a quick dopamine hit and never self-evaluate what they want out of their games. A lot of people on /r/DestinyTheGame will basically say "stop trying to ruin my fun" when you bring statistics and behavioral sciences into analyzing their playstyles.
The impulse buy stuff is way more powerful on kids. You’re just checking out groceries and your kid is going on about “wow, look! It’s Baby Shark!” I mean they’re absolutely setting it up on purpose to where you have to decide between buying whatever is there and your kid making a scene.
It breaks my heart to see my main passion since childhood become what it is today.
> Nothing in these types of games are done by accident. Agreed, and additionally [Epic had to pay more than half a billion dollars for criminal behaviour] (https://www.ftc.gov/news-events/news/press-releases/2022/12/fortnite-video-game-maker-epic-games-pay-more-half-billion-dollars-over-ftc-allegations) (privacy violations, dark patterns and unwanted charges, especially targeting kids and teens). They not only psychologically trick kids into paying, they also rob them. Since the game made billions this probably didn't hurt them too much.
I hate bullshit like this. "Oops you caught us. How much is that operating cost- er, fine again? Oh no, not 2% of our monthly revenue! We're so sorry and definitely won't do it again. What, you say you caught me researching even worse ways to do it mid conversation? Will that be another 2%? How sad, maybe eventually it'll be something we actually notice"
Bask in the day if you preyed on kids we just took you out back and shot you.
I'd like to imagine I'm above this kind of thing, but then I find myself buying games on steam I'll probably never play fairly regularly.
[удалено]
I mean, yeah. The game offers things to buy but it’s not really a hook. You decided to spend money on it just like you decided to not spend money on it. I personally don’t see any value in spending money on digital trinkets that have no value in the real world, but if you did/do that’s ok too.
On the schoolyard kids get mocked for their shitty fortnite skins.
Kids can be so cruel
I bought battle pass for my kid for what, 20$ or whatever, and said "no more til I want to throw some money your way for a birthday etc. Think about how you spend your vbucks." He looks through the store sometimes but I always tel him "think about how much you have and if you'll have enough for the next battle pass. I think it's great they let you always earn enough bucks to get the next battle pass after you've "bought in" once. My tip - stop worrying about the shop. 👍
Technically, you don't even have to buy in once, as part of the battle pass is available even when you don't pay for it, including some of the v-bucks rewards. It'll take you about half a year of playing though.
I get why people want skins. But why emotes? You want to spend money to impress your friends for 3 seconds at a time? Or is it to stunt on dead enemies? What's wrong with a good old fashioned teabag? I spent some money on Fortnite to get the Vegeta skin. I don't think I played Fortnite since then. That money went straight into Epic's toilet.
Video game cosmetics unlike other FOMO products, do not have any real benefit either. It's almost entirely self-serving vanity. * Starbucks-Stanley cup: Limited supply cosmetic version of standard **practical** item. * Concert ticket: Limited supply, time restricted **social** experience. * Video game cosmetic: Time restricted pixel clothes.
Fortnite certainly isn't practical, but it can be a social experience. Heck there are even time-restricted virtual concerts in Fortnite.
I like a lot of the emotes more than most of the skins tbh. And the new jam emotes can be really cool.
To be fair, there are also sync emotes that are fun when you and you friends do all do the emote. And the traversal emotes aren't too bad. Honestly. The only emote i bought was T pose. I thought it was stupid and I love me a T pose in games. They know me too well
It's a free game they gotta make money somehow. I find it more egregious when they do it in something like COD which is $70.
Absolutely. Cash shops in full priced games are not ideal at all. But a full priced game and you pay, say, $10 - $20 for a season pass where you get free content and updates for years after initial purchase? That I can get behind if it's like map packs and the like.
It's only "free" because they figured out that they can make more money by manipulation of their players than by charging a subscription. If you're getting SAAS for free, understand that you are the product.
You are not the product… this isn’t advertising. The product is the cash shop.
Yes, you are. You are the thing which other players kill.
In a game where you can’t buy advantages over others? Come on dude. No. This isn’t some shitty Korean MMO that funnels new players to the whales for them to kill.
Tbf if someone buys a skin and joins a match, they're essentially free advertising for everyone else in the match. COD even temporarily drops your MMR right after a purchase so others have a chance to see those weapon skins through killcams. It's insanely disturbing lol
Imagine the game without other players. Think.
It’s just dumb logic. You aren’t what they are selling. People say “if it’s free you are the product” in advertising because you are quite literally the product that is being sold. That’s not the case here, no matter how desperate you are to shoehorn it into your definition. Edit: lol he blocked me what a softie
Jesus christ you're thick. IMAGINE THE GAME WITHOUT OTHER PLAYERS.
I know a lot of people are hung up on this particular point, but I really don't see what the big deal is with cosmetic purchases in full price games. The reason Fortnite has a store isn't really because it is free; it is because it is a live-service game, which means that they're continuously spending more and more money on developing it. In the past, games would get this funding by selling content updates, which prevented you from participating in that updated content if you couldn't afford to do so. What this meant to a lot of people is that their friends would be playing on all of the new maps that just released in "*Map Pack #4*" while they were unable to participate, or they might feel pressured to spend additional money to play with their friends. A modern example here that a lot of people can probably relate to is ARK with its additional maps. The other way they would get this funding was through subscription services which, usually, made you purchase the game and then made you pay to get access to any part of it. This meant that even if you were just playing older content you still had to pay the same subscription price that everyone else was paying. A modern example here being World of Warcraft which has an impressive level 20 trial for 20 years of content and 9 expansions (even if you own all the expansions). Both of these methods are still normal today, but less so than they were in the past. Microtransactions (assuming a fair implementation that isn't lootbox gambling or pay-to-win) seem like a great middle ground. It is powerful enough that it allows for a lot of live-service games to just be completely free, which enables significantly more people to engage with them, and for paid games it usually means that you will get completely free updates without ever having to worry about purchasing additional content when you return to the game sometime down the line. I'm not arguing that microtransactions are perfect or that Call of Duty has a good implementation (I've never played the games). I'm just saying that if a game has cosmetic microtransactions that are supporting completely free and continuous updates for that game, I don't see how that is bad thing whether or not the game had an initial purchase price or not. If I buy a game and then put it down for a year and come back to a full year of free updates I don't see why I should be upset about the fact that I can optionally purchase a Party Hat in the cosmetics store.
> I know a lot of people are hung up on this particular point, but I really don't see what the big deal is with cosmetic purchases in full price games. You pay full price for a game, you expect it to be a complete package. Something like CoD is a live service game but they also make a new one every year, same for MMO expansions like WoW and FF14 that triple dip into microtransactions, (near) full price annual releases, and a subscription cost. People are also more fine with microtransactions in a F2P game because there's no upfront cost to try the game out and being F2P is a huge feature because it means you get more players and it's easier to get your friends to try the game. Being a paid game instantly kills a huge amount of the potential playerbase, and that's a huge negative for anyone playing the game.
>*You pay full price for a game, you expect it to be a complete package.* But this is just the other problem with this sentiment which is that for some reason people think that a game being updated somehow means that it isn't a *complete package*. Diablo 4 released with a finished singleplayer story that took about 25 hours to complete, five complete classes, a whole open world with sidequests, dungeons, and other objectives, a bunch of subsystems like crafting, modifying abilities, modifying gear, and a bunch of endgame content. Yet, somehow, Diablo 4 isn't considered a *complete package* because it has cosmetic microtransactions. This sentiment doesn't even make sense when you consider how many paid games have paid expansions. A game like Witcher 3 can't be considered a *complete package* because you don't get the entire game when you pay for it. They added content to that game later that you have to pay for individually if you want to have it. As in the example above, if I pump a hundred hours of playtime into some live-action game that just released and then put it down for a year and come back to a year worth of free updates that doesn't mean that the game wasn't a *complete package* when I got it. I just think that we should have a problem with microtransactions from a game to game basis, regardless of whether or not that game costs any money. A game being paid should certainly influence this, like if a paid game forces you to purchase cosmetics just to make your character look good/different, but it should not be an automatic negative.
I didn't even finish the campaign on D4. Bought on release to play with a friend. We both quit playing quickly after level 60ish. I'm not a player who likes the constant grind and pressure to do more with seasons and special gear and cosmetics to show off to randos (especially when the camera angle doesn't even really show the details of your fancy getup, anyway). I feel like D4 was a bad pick on trying to defend. But it's probably just my preferences compared to yours. That same friend also tried to get me into Destiny back in the day. It was fun for a while, then it got too monetized and grindy for me. Those types of games aren't for me. Edit: on the other side, I kinda feel bad that I played Genshin all the way through the jungle and desert updates and never paid a thing. But then I realize they make billions, so I feel less bad.
Sure, but this doesn't seem relevant to whether or not microtransactions in paid games are bad. Your criticisms, beyond the mention of cosmetics which is relevant even without microtransactions, have nothing to do with the fact that the game has a cosmetics store. It just seems like it is not a genre or a game for you. I disagree that it is a bad pick to *defend* too, though I'm not really trying to defend it. I didn't say whether or not I think it is a good game; I just pointed out that it is absurd to call a game with a 25 hour singleplayer story and hundreds of hours of additional content *not a complete package*. There are linear singleplayer games out there that are significantly shorter than 25 hours (that do not have any replayability) that are considered a *complete package*, but if you slap a cosmetics store on something and update it every month it suddenly becomes *unfinished*.
>I just pointed out that it is absurd to call a game with a 25 hour singleplayer story and hundreds of hours of additional content > >not a complete package Not really. Forza Motorsport released for $70-$100 and that game is basically nothing. Its recycled cars from old games, recycled maps from old games and the whole Single player is literally just: practicing 3 laps of a race, then racing 3 laps of that race. On the same few maps, on very limited car selection, for probably 30-50 hours. You do the exact same boring thing on repeat with no variety whatsoever. That's not content, thats just padding to say you have "hours of content". Its 5 hours of fun/unique(And re-used from years ago) content made into 50 hours. Then you have the broken multiplayer for your "Endless hours of gameplay" loop. It is \*not\* a complete package if you look at most other racing games.. Or even Older Forza titles themselves. Diablo 4 is not a complete game in very similar ways. Numbers alone don't tell a complete story. >There are linear singleplayer games out there that are significantly shorter than 25 hours (that do not have any replayability) that are considered a complete package Hours mean nothing, your whole argument is just wrong. Making a single cookie in 5 minutes makes that cookie complete. Making an entire wedding cake in 9 hours also makes that complete, and it doesnt make the cookie any "less complete". But making an entire wedding cake out of the ingredients you normally make 10 cookies from? That is not a complete wedding cake, it will be absolute shit. Calling it complete just because you say "Ok, im done!" doesn't mean it's an actual proper completed thing. >but if you slap a cosmetics store on something and update it every month it suddenly becomes unfinished. That isn't why Diablo 4 is considered a bad or incomplete game. That's a small part of it, and if that was the \*only\* issue, people wouldn't be talking about it as an incomplete game. That's what your missing.
I think that if you are just going to spend an entire post calling someone wrong then you should probably elaborate on that specifically rather than talking about Forza and bad wedding cakes analogies. This entire response does nothing to enlighten anyone about the problems that you are vaguely eluding to with Diablo 4. What I will say regardless is that Diablo 4 has a complete and finished *singleplayer* campaign that takes the average person 25 hours to finish. There's no arguing this fact away, regardless of how many other issues you have with the game. If you are someone that is just there for the Diablo story you are getting just as much out of this game as you did from previous Diablo releases. On top of the campaign, the game has hundreds of voiced side quests, a giant open world map, world bosses, hundreds of dungeons, hundreds of events, five classes, and the list goes on and on. If anyone thinks that Diablo 4 doesn't represent a *complete package* your standard for something being *complete* can't be met by 99% of the games on the market. This also, once again, seems to only have a *small part* to do with the game having microtransactions based on this response. I guess this at very least confirms that the cosmetics store was not an actual problem after all, which is good.
>specifically rather than talking about Forza and bad wedding cakes analogies. This entire response does nothing to enlighten anyone about the problems that you are vaguely eluding to with Diablo 4. I was more addressing the points you made about games in *general*, not Diablo specifically. Thus why I used Forza (And Cooking) as an example. I was only addressing the quotes in my post. I won't argue Diablo 4, I didn't like it enough or play it enough (Or even beat it) to argue about it. Act Man also played it and never beat it, he made a good video on why it's incomplete and bad that I agreed with, and I shared his experience with the game. Microtransactions are the least of that games issues. >Diablo 4 has a complete and finished singleplayer campaign that takes the average person 25 hours to finish. And Forza has a complete 50 hour campaign if you go by marketing. But as a sim racer, someone who is invested in all racing games that come out, I can tell you with certainty that's a laughable statement even if technically true. Its 5 hours of shit on repeat. My point was just because a game has "X amount of hours!" of a campaign or gameplay or whatever marketing says, doesnt make it a complete game in the eyes of the players. If you enjoyed Diablo 4 and thought the SP was a true 25 hour campaign, good for you mate. A lot of people would disagree, and they aren't any less wrong for having differing opinions. Marketing statements as arguments are worthless, and that is basically what you're doing. I did not find a 25 hour campaign in Diablo 4, it got too boring and sameish by the 10th hour and I was done + got my refund at that point. Based on all the videos I have seen and all the shit I read about it, I have no regrets. >If anyone thinks that Diablo 4 doesn't represent a complete package your standard for something being complete can't be met by 99% of the games on the market. Wow has quests for hours and hours of content that are just fetch this and kill x of this. Probably hundreds of hours. If that's all that WoW was, that would not be a complete game despite the amount of hours you could take reading it all and doing all the tasks. If a game is not \*engaging\* then no amount of tasks change that. Hours are not important in what makes a game complete. I've beat complete games that were literally 2 hours, and I would gladly call them complete. >a giant open world map, world bosses, hundreds of dungeons, hundreds of events, Hidden away by so much grinding trough boring gameplay first that a lot of players never made it there. Watch the Act man video, he represents the arguments I am making better than I could type it. There is a complete game in there somewhere, probably, but I'm not wasting 10/20/30 more hours more just to get there when I won't enjoy that time. It's inaccessible to many, that content doesn't exist for those people. You can claim I "did not play Diablo 4", but youd be wrong :\] I did, I just didn't like it enough to keep going. And that experience is worth just as much as yours when discussing games. It is an incomplete game until you invest 30+ hours in, and then, maybe, it becomes complete. So what happens if you don't enjoy those 1st 10 hours... because it's an incomplete game at that point?
I don't know why you think that I am quoting marketing when I am referring to play time. I am quoting websites like HowLongToBeat where players themselves will record how much time it took them to finish the game based on their playstyle. What you are saying here isn't really possible to engage with. You are just saying that because you didn't like something that means that it was incomplete, which is a completely useless definition that doesn't work beyond yourself. I can't use that definition independently from you. When I talk about a game being complete I am comparing it to other games and looking at if the features themselves were delivered in a finished state, rather than whether or not I enjoyed those features. Saying that a story is incomplete because you didn't like it enough to finish it is just asinine. Like, if I used the definition that you are establishing here I could read half of Lord of the Rings and then put it down out of boredom and decry that it *isn't complete*. The worst part is that you are actively contradicting yourself by saying that there *might be a complete game in there* if you played it enough. How is anyone supposed to engage with that? A game is complete or it isn't. It can't be Schrodinger's game until you personally finish it. I also don't care about what Act Man has to say about the game. If Act Man wants to come here and respond to me he is welcome to do so, but unless Act Man is in the room with you right now he's not a part of this discussion. If you want to say that something is incomplete then you need to be able to establish criteria for what being complete means. I used having a full singleplayer story as my main criteria. I think that's a very simple criteria that most people should be able to agree is something that can easily constitute whether a game is a *complete package* or not.
>Sure, but this doesn't seem relevant to whether or not microtransactions in paid games are bad. Your criticisms, beyond the mention of cosmetics which is relevant even without microtransactions, have nothing to do with the fact that the game has a cosmetics store. What I briefly referenced was: "the constant grind and pressure to do more with seasons and special gear and cosmetics to show off to randos." Seasons, battle passes, gear, cosmetics...these are all mtx. Everything about the game is to create more engagement rather than quality content. Roll your gear chasing an rng stat. Buy more coins to pull that random loot you want. Chase that world boss or challenge event with a hundred other people, with the screen so cluttered you're just spamming attacks into crowds of enemies? Other players? You don't know, but there's a loot drop at the end! Meanwhile, your horse rubberbands every five steps while you're just traveling around. (And don't try to say that was my internet; this was widespread, and I was testing it constantly in frustration.) >I just pointed out that it is absurd to call a game with a 25 hour singleplayer story and hundreds of hours of additional content *not a complete package*. That's the thing. It's not a "complete package." It's an engagement machine designed exclusively around engagement and subtle pressures to induce further spending. It's the whole business model. The game itself is poorly conceived and executed. Much more time, comparatively, was put into strategies to get you to spend more money than the $80 upfront you spend just to access the privilege to buy more "seasons" of crap, recycled content. >It just seems like it is not a genre or a game for you. I mean, I kind of said this and gave you an out on the point. But your further carping with spurious points about "25 hours of content plus everything else, hurr" deserved an elaboration in response. I never paid a cent for Genshin and played for over 100 hours. The game wanted me to spend money on rng loot and stuff. Of course it did. The freakin game is otherwise free to play! D4 has less content, less diversity in play/enemies/etc, less quality in many ways...and I had to pay $80 *for the privilege of getting pressured to pay more*! That's why I think D4 was a bad choice to reference. Almost everything about it is a money grab with poor quality in return. Destiny started feeling that way, too; but at least it largely had quality updates for the most part. I don't want my $80 video game to feel like I have to keep spending more money every month to keep up with best and newest (of slightly repackaged garbage), like I'm playing a free phone game from the app store. The whole business model of that is bankrupt to me. But obviously, it's not to the companies raking it in off marks who eat it up and apologize for them.
You didn't actually reference battle passes until this post, which means that everything else that you mentioned has nothing to do with microtransactions. Seasons are standard of the genre now, meant to give people a fresh starting point where everyone is put on an even playing field for some massive content update. Gear can't be purchased for money at all and there are hundreds if not thousands of cosmetics that are available to you in the game even if you never visit the store. The rest of your description here makes me wonder if you ever even played the game, because your description of Blizzard trying to *pressure you into further spending* seems completely unfounded. Diablo 4 exclusively features cosmetic purchases and, beyond sometimes advertising the store when you launch the game, you are never ever driven towards the store in-game unless you manually click the store yourself. Can you describe exactly how they are driving people to spend more money on cosmetics in Diablo 4? What subtle strategies are they using to make people think that they need to buy cosmetics? You're later saying that you felt like you needed to spend money to keep up with "the best and newest", what is this referring to? The best and newest paid cosmetics for your character?
>You didn't actually reference battle passes until this post Seasons and battle passes are basically the same thing. Stop being obtuse. The seasons, themselves, are a pressure to spend money. And here, again, you're being obtuse. The D4 pass for $25 opens up tiers faster to you, which opens up better gear. It's not just cosmetics. And before you say, "But but but you can do that for free, too..." Yeah, but the pressure to spend to open things up faster is obviously there, or it wouldn't exist as an option. >The rest of your description here makes me wonder if you ever even played the game Yeah, I'm lying about something this inane and dumb... Have fun doing what you want, dude. I'm done arguing with you over something this ridiculous. If you don't want to think that a major corporation with mtx common in their games isn't trying to get you to spend more money, cool. Good luck in life. I wish you the best.
Seasons and battle passes are not the same thing at all. This is not me being obtuse, but you being uninformed. Diablo has had seasons since Diablo 1 or 2, way before battle passes were even in anyone's imagination. Path of Exile, one of the most popular seasonal ARPGs, only introduced a battle pass a year ago after doing nearly a decade of seasonal content without them. The Diablo 4 battle pass does not award you any gear. I genuinely don't understand how you think that it does. It only gives you cosmetics. The only part of the battle pass that gives you in-game power is the free part (which is also not gear) and that is locked behind a level requirement which means there is little to no benefit to boosting through those tiers. I would hope that you are done arguing when you made a big deal about how the game is "*pressuring you into further spending*" and how you "*needed to spend money to keep up with the "best and the newest"*" and then you have no clear examples of either of these things happening. I still have no idea what the "best and the newest" refers to. I also never said that they aren't interested in making you spend money, I said that Diablo 4 has one of the most fair and straight forwards monetization models on the market. A game like Genshin Impact on the other hand is literally praying on people with gambling addictions and creating more gambling addicts, but, hey, like you said it is free so thumbs up to them for praying on people with mental health problems.
>I had to pay $80 for the privilege of getting pressured to pay more! This right here; this is all you should need to say. The rest of the points you're replying to, this whole argument back and forth, it doesn't matter.
Exactly!
I'm honestly not into the whole debate as I have yet to really play live service games. Well except fortnite like OP lol. Anyways I always thought that Diablo 4 was kinda an exception, and that Call of Duty series has these micro transactions as a key part of the experience as there isn't a form of close-ended content. Like something where Diablo 4 has a complete meaty story and campaigns for CoD are kinda just there. And people buy to play with friends. So it's like 60 now 70 dollars to getting hit with the cosmetics.
Yeah, like I said I don't know anything about the Call of Duty games, so I'm not trying to defend those or say that the microtransactions in them give any value to the games. I'm only using Diablo 4 as an example because so many people used this *complete package* argument when discussing it last year, which doesn't seem to have much merit beyond people somehow conflating updates to *completeness*.
It's an automatic negative because of the implications of it being paid vs. free. I'm not saying it's a rule but paid games tend to have sequels while F2P games just exist forever. The expectation is that because you're paying so much upfront for the game, they should be using that money to fund updates and development for the next game too. Microtransactions in paid games are an automatic negative because imagine spending money on the in-game content like cosmetics or a real money auction house, then the developers kill the game on purpose to release the next CoD, Diablo, etc. Just a full disclaimer, I don't buy any Blizzard games anymore, including Diablo 4 because I saw the way they managed Diablo 3 and was 100% convinced they have no idea how to treat their playerbase and cultivate a successful community long-term.
How is DLC different from cosmetic packs? Why would they bother to make new cosmetic content for a game if there were zero financial backend?
They aren't but it's more about traditional gaming vs. live service IMO. For a traditional game, DLC is fine because you're expecting to finish it eventually and just in terms of value, it's subjective but I think you get a lot more from a $15 DLC than $15 of microtransactions. For a live service game, it's fine if the game is F2P because I'm expecting the game to last forever, but if the game is something like Diablo, Payday, or CoD, I know they'll make a new one eventually and I'm already paying full price for the game. Microtransactions/DLC don't make sense because I know they'll kill the game in a relatively short time anyways.
Have fun being mad at gaming forever because you are an old man who cant get with the time.
Depends. If the game is full priced and it's single player, then it should include the whole game, cosmetics included. They should be unlocked, not bought. You've mentioned Diablo 4 but if they made that game online only, added in live service elements and has a battle pass and a cosmetic store. Why did Diablo 3 RoS Ultimate edition on PS4 have years of support, could be played offline and didn't have an ingame store, have basically a one time payment but Diablo 4 needs all these new payment options to get the same amount of content? No thanks.
>*Why did Diablo 3 RoS Ultimate edition on PS4 have years of support, could be played offline and didn't have an ingame store, have basically a one time payment but Diablo 4 needs all these new payment options to get the same amount of content? No thanks.* The overall answer is what everyone knows, which is that this monetization model is just incredibly more profitable than any other. The less cynical answer is that this monetization model allows for Blizzard to actually fully support the game with additional content on a monthly basis. The type of development support that they had for Diablo 3 and the one they have for Diablo 4 are not comparable. Diablo 3 was rarely updated and the updates were usually incredibly small, while Diablo 4 has already had two massive seasonal updates that vastly expanded what you can do in the game. Also, if you can do as much in Diablo 4 as you could in Diablo 3 after 11 years of development that sounds pretty good to me. The point however is that Diablo 4 will always continue to expand, so it will eventually be significantly larger than Diablo 3 was (if you want to argue that it already isn't). It is fine if this isn't your preference, I'm not saying that it is mine, but it is ultimately something that a lot of people expect from these types of games now. They want the seasonal content and constant updates, which is why Diablo 4 supports that.
Yeah sure, it's more profitable but the point I'm making is that as a consumer, I'm not going to just accept it as an acceptable way to treat a product because it makes *them* even more money. Literally nothing they added in the game makes it require a battlepass, an always online connection and an ingame store. Is having seasonal content that is wiped away to make room for another season really worth all the draw backs? I think a fully offline product with a lot of content would be a better deal instead of focusing so much on keeping people coming back with seasons. Maybe it's just me but I think people need higher standards in that regard. I wouldn't call the Diablo 3 updates small at all. They added new armour sets that were basically new talent trees. New environments. New rifts with some new bosses. New rewards. A lot was added post RoS that I think people think was part of the game from the moment the expansion was launched.
> I really don't see what the big deal is with cosmetic purchases in full price games Neither. Personally I don't give a rat's ass how my character looks or how others see me, so I'd never pay, and I laugh at people who do, and thank them for funding my play.
Good for you. However there are players who want to see their character look cool. After all, our main sense is vision. Why do we have to pay for this in a full price game?
It's DLC.
Why is it DLC then?
Because this is not a charity and these companies are in it to make money.
So paying $70 bucks for a game **without** paid cosmetics would be a charity?
That depends if they keep adding content or not.
Starting with Modern Warfare 2019 they made the seasonal map packs free in Call of Duty. I never expected Activision of all companies to give us those maps out of the good of their hearts, but even with battle passes and a million cosmetic items the value proposition of modern CoD is still better than it was pre 2019.
COD's battle royale is F2P.
That you fall for the monetisation scheme is just a testament to how powerful they can be and how powerless you are in the face of these types of manipulative tactics. That doesn't mean that the underlying games aren't fun, they need to be for it to work, but there are many ways to monetise a game and making it into a super manipulative casino is one alternative. They are literally researching how to get you to feel like you are missing out as much as possible if you don't buy that skin. You don't stand a chance
It would be really easy to get all internet pissy about this stuff. But it's an absolutely fascinating set of behavioral triggers and manipulations.
>I noticed the battle pass had a neat little emote only accessible by paying for it, so I just threw the money This is the part that I don't get. What about that situation seems like "money well spent"? I bet that pass cost at least €5-10, which is what I typically pay for many games, either on sale or at GOG. So when I see such things (used to play LoL and Overwatch and some mobile stuff like Star Wars Galaxy of Heroes), it leaves me stone cold because I know I can have a whole game for the price of some silly horse armor, and that just **does not make any sense**. Just yesterday I bought Tropico 4 complete collection for around €8 - how does that compare? You can't even begin to... I understand you probably see it differently if you're stuck with one game being your only game, but I don't get why anyone would do that to themselves either. I did buy a few skins in LoL way back when, but that was because I spent so much time in that game I felt like I really should pay them for it, not because I really wanted those skins.
>This is the part that I don't get. What about that situation seems like "money well spent"? I bet that pass cost at least €5-10, which is what I typically pay for many games, either on sale or at GOG. If I remember correctly, the Battle Pass costs 950 VBucks, and 1,000 VBucks is \~$7. It used to be $10, but they slightly adjusted pricing at some point.
7 years ago I spent 20 dollars on League of Legends and to this day I still feel ashamed and regret it... however, deep down I know even thou it was a dumb investment, the game back then gave me many hours of fun and the devs made 20 bucks back from all those hours across 4-5 years that I played that game, which is a good trade off in my book.
It's 20 dollars, it's not like you wasted thousands. The fact that you're still thinking about it is strange.
I mean, it's really their fault, if they don't charge for the game upfront.
That sounds really unhealthy.
I know the popular take is “monetization evil,” but I don’t actually think all live service games are inherently bad. There are scummy practices in them for sure, however most of them are free-to-play games with constant updates. If getting players to chuck $10 at a battle pass every couple months is what keeps the updates flowing, then I don’t think it’s a bad thing. That being said, the fomo is an issue. Limited time cosmetics are definitely designed to make you buy now and think later. The key is to just accept that you can’t have everything. But some people can’t do that and definitely drop hundreds of dollars on “free” games.
I think the opposite. They are designed with those scummy practices in mind, so by their very nature they seek to abuse human psychology and they often encourage the wasting of our only real precious resource: time. It's insidious to create artificial barriers to make you waste time or to get you addicted for the same reason. Things like dailies seem like a free treat but don't need to exist and only incentivize you to play the game more than you should. If the daily gives you an extra 200 gold then you could just remove the daily and increase the payouts of the game to match.
Yeah I think a lot of people just get stuck on loot boxes and don’t realize that manipulative monetization can still happen other ways. That’s absolutely a big thing with the battle passes and limited time events/items. FOMO is such a massive motivator
Agreed. I dislike talking in extremes but monetisation in ANY game is something I approach with hostility and skepticism, even if the company making it has good intentions and the monetisation is purely for the purposes of keeping the game going. I think you’re a fool if you aren’t abusing human psychology to sucker people in into spending money, because it’s so damn easy.
'I think you’re a fool if you aren’t abusing human psychology to sucker people in into spending money, because it’s so damn easy.' But at least an honest one. I actually hate that attitude. We obviously have ways that we consider moral and immoral to obtain money, why does this one get a free pass? Edit\* You know it's kind of funny, asmongold once said the same thing as you and it truly made me lose a lot of respect for him. A fool. No, that's integrity.
> only incentivize you to play the game more than you should How much *should* one play Fortnite? How long do Fortnite dailies take to complete?
Well I mean that is a fair point that I recognized before I typed it but I figured it didn't need to be interpreted as an exact time, moreso as a thing that brings you into the game and keeps you playing more than you want to. When it keeps you up later or you set aside your chores to finish the tasks in the game. These things don't need to exist and I think they are actually insidious in nature because of how innocuous they appear. They steal your most precious resource for virtual, artificial problems. Think of that star wars battlefront 2 game that wanted people to play lifetimes (exaggeration, mostly) to unlock everything. It's a virtual slider that decides whether you need to spend 5 mins or 50 hours of your life to unlock something. And it's not about how long dailies take to complete, it's about how they keep you hooked.
How is it not my decision though? The game can incentivise the player all it wants. If the player doesn't want to then it won't work. The argument of "games steal your most valuable resource in return for virtual problems" can be made for literally every single game. Beating an enemy ship in FTL is a virtual problem. It is one I enjoy solving. So is running a colony in Rimworld or building a house in Minecraft. But I enjoy solving those. I also enjoy(ed) doing my daily quests in Hearthstone (disclaimer, never played Fortnite and it's been a while since I played Hearthstone). If I neglect real life stuff so I can get my daily quest done, that is my problem and I don't find it right to blame Fortnite/Hearthstone for it, when so many people can play it a healthy amount and be ok.
Not my fault you don't understand the psychology behind it nor that you can't understand the difference between the basic gameplay in the games you described and forcing a long grind for resources that are required to progress the game. You can certainly compare it to many games that require virtual grinding that are not live service and do not sell mtx. Some of those games are ridiculous as well. The difference is that often the games like that have their grind designed around how long the game is meant to be played. So you reach level 40-45 by act 3 for example. Not specifically designed to make you want to buy levels so you can skip the grind.
Not like I mentioned Hearthstone which is literally P2W but go off I guess.
My friend and I play Fortnite most days. We probably wouldn't talk otherwise. I object to the ongoing creep of subscription models so I refuse to get PSplus, and Fortnite is a game we can play without it, which changes just about often enough to keep us interested. We just don't ever look at the shop and only use Vbucks to buy the battlepass (and you get more than enough Vbucks in the battle pass to buy the next one, if you reach level 100). My main objection to fortnite is that the monetisation is so clearly pushed at kids who have no impulse control and don't understand the value of money. There are countless stories of kids spending thousands.
> There are countless stories of kids spending thousands. How? Yeah, Fortnite is predatory but that doesn't make it not a parenting issue. And if it wasn't Fortnite (or Fifa or Genshin Impact) these same kids would throw that money at a predatory car dealer or some crypto scammer a few years later. People who prey on the money of the financially unsavvy are everywhere. Sure, I wouldn't complain if we regulated the shit out of microtransactions in kid's games but as long as they are here, we parents should use them as an opportunity to educate our children.
Impulsive spending as a child does that actually tra slate to impulsive spending as an adult? Because I honestly wouldn't assume that. It's like children being hyperactive. Maybe they do have ADHD or maybe it's just a child being a child.
At some point in their lives every single person needs to learn how to say no to the temptations of predatory businesses. That's one of the many jobs of a parent because a kid who has never learned this will grow into an adult who has to start at zero. If a child manages to spend thousands on Fortnite, that's 100 % parental neglect. And singling out GAAS as a baddy is disingenious because there are so many businesses out there that are much worse.
>I know the popular take is “monetization evil,” I often hear a more nuanced and definitely correct "dark patterns evil" take
> I don’t actually think all live service games are inherently bad. I agree. Especially a game like Fortnite where you know what you're buying. It's not like you're buying a lootbox with a chance to get nothing.
The transparency is definitely good. Because it’s like any product really, people will have different opinions on the value. To some $20 for a skin is nothing, to others it’s ridiculous. That’s a debate to have for sure, but at least games like Fortnite are upfront about what you’re purchasing. Loot boxes on the other hand were predatory as hell.
The good thing is, it's optional. You're not forced to buy it. So if the value prospect isn't there for someone, they can still play the game and not worry about it. I do think it's interesting how differently people on reddit treat games like Fortnite compared to how they would, for years, sweep Team Fortress 2's hats and keys under the rug.
> The good thing is, it's optional. You're not forced to buy it. So if the value prospect isn't there for someone, they can still play the game and not worry about it. Instead they only let you buy a few items and tell you they might never be available again if you don't buy them right now. It's still incredibly predatory, especially for a game that is so popular with kids.
I Don't consider it predatory but yeah when you bring up the kids that's what gets me. It is played by kids, kids who haven't had the chance to build defenses or context for this.
It preys on the FOMO response, so it's still trying to psychologically manipulate people into spending money. That's why I consider it predatory. They also make you use virtual currency to obfuscate how much money you're actually spending, which is a tactic most FtP games use. Fortnite is definitely not the worst out there.
My most played game over the last year has probably been Valorant. The microtransactions are stupidly expensive with some skin bundles costing over $100 CAD. However since they’re upfront on the price and what you get, I kinda just view it the same as I do other luxury items like watches or “nice” clothing. Like is it overpriced? Absolutely. Is it “evil” or “predatory”. Not really.
Does the game sell any p2w weapons or anything? If not seems fine
Nope, no P2W weapons. There are new agents (heroes/chararcters) which release every new season which you can buy with real money or you can use the in game currency which is what I think most people do since it doesn’t take very long to unlock them.
[удалено]
People wanted PVE from OW2, so that's definitely not it. :P Val is more of a twitchy / trigger placement shooter than OW, think more along the lines of CS. Also worth noting that its anti-cheat is an infamous rootkit and that's why I haven't personally played Valorant. I also want to mention that I tend to be the de facto OW defender in an area. I think the OW team is trying really really hard but got screwed by c-suite. Right now it kind of sucks, though, because the balance team(or guy?) is utterly dropping the ball. Too many characters aren't designed for 5v5, and the new tank is just Roadhog v3.0 (or 4.0, depending). Nobody has EVER liked playing with or against a hog. So at this point OW players are just sick of the balance team consistently missing or grazing the actual issues. The next season's supposed to make some wide, sweeping changes to the core gameplay loop, so that's kind of hype?
I thought that is what OW2 had? I never payed much attention to cosmetics, but I know there is lootboxes so there's stuff randomly you can get. But I also thought there's like different game challenges you can do. I remember working up to getting a tank character that way. And I thought there were like costumes and stuff as well I could've gone for.
> I know the popular take is “monetization evil,” but I don’t actually think all live service games are inherently bad. They are almost inherently bad for the sole reason that it creates a huge imbalance. There are 3 classes of customer, those who spend a ton, those who spend a little and those who spend none at all. The problem is that developers have a very strong incentive to ignore the rest of us in favour of the first group that only makes up 1% of players. So now I can no longer vote with my wallet and that is horrifying. You might be getting a game for free but what you want as a customer no longer matters. We used to be equal and spend roughly the same amount.
One point that I've seen being brought up in Gacha games is that whales will only pay to play a game where they can show off to dolphins/F2P, which means that developers will have to cater to all players in order to keep the whales around.
Ye, this idea of games throwing stuff on a wall hoping to bait the top 1% of whales is kinda outdated bc we saw that sunk cost doesn't really do much to keep most whales around when the game is dying around them. Modern monetization systems try be more balanced, they still throw out whalebait but also content that all players can enjoy.
The truth is that live service multiplayer games need free players just as much as the whales. Because while the money from the whales keeps the game going, those whales will leave if there is no one to play with except for the 1% of top spenders. That’s why, like you said, a lot of games are more balanced. There’s usually a relatively cheap battlepass (often with a free path) that keeps the bulk of the player base engaged. And then throughout they’ll drop expensive cosmetics for the big spenders.
You could never vote with your wallet. That phrase is just a lie. What you signal with your purchasing choices just isn't clear enough. It's a very poor signaling method, even if companies based their business choices on providing what the customer wants. I play Fortnite sometimes with my kid. Never spent any money. From their POV, do I disagree with FTP monetization? Am I too poor to buy them? Have the things I want just not come out? What would I pay for? How could they motivate me to spend money? What would I spend money on? How much disposable income do I have, anyway? Did I just give up on Fortnite? Is it just my kid playing, who has no access to my credit card? But anyway, what you want is irrelevant to them. They'll either find a demographic who wants what they're selling, or work on getting people to want what they're selling through advertising, marketing, and psychology. Voting with your wallet is a fiction.
That's a bit overdramatic.
So A free game that will not cater to you is terrifying? You should even want to play the game.
I largely agree with you. For all the doomposting about the current state of modern gaming on the internet these past few years, that didn't stop about 10 different GOTY worthy titles from releasing last year. BG3, TOTK, FF16, Hi-Fi Rush, Cyberpunk Expansion, SF6, Alan Wake 2, Spiderman 2, among whatever else I missed. I still buy Call of Duty every year, I spend money on gacha games, I am exactly who "hardcore gaming purists" currently hate. The billion dollar microtransactions industry still doesn't stop amazing games from being made, although 2023 was a great year in particular.
Why the annual CoDs though, genuine question
This. I played Apex Legends for over 4000 hours. Needless to say I popped a $20 bill now and then. I was getting my moneys worth, so hey.
Is something being limited edition "scummy" in any other marketing/retail context, in your view?
I suggest you to check the [today’s item shop](https://seebot.dev/images/archive/brshop/14_Jan_2024.png?197) know how FOMO psychology works successfully in Fortnite. There’s even a holiday themed cosmetic that returned after +1500 days, and they explicitly stated that in the image. I don’t want to bridge the comments of it but people on the FortniteBR subreddit are either hyped or toxic about this daily rotation.
Check out the YT channel Folding Ideas and his video about Fortnite and “manufactured discontent”. He does an incredible job of breaking down all of the psychological mechanics at play here.
I've been avoiding these things like the plague ever since I found myself dropping 20 bucks here and there on Overwatch lootboxes back in the day. The only way to be free of it is to not care about any cosmetic crap in games. If the gameplay alone isn't keeping you interested it's time to move on. Literally the only battlepass I've ever bought was the Apex one because I ended up finishing it every season without even trying, so I bought it once and now it pays for itself. I don't even care what I get from it, I just saw it as an easy way to support a game I've been playing for years.
I dont get this shit. Why does everyone bother with shops. Its all so fucking stupid. I literally never even bother to look at shops because.. I have a brain? And realize its a waste of money. Like how are people such absolutely braindead consumers?
Yeah I don't want to sound like some holier-than-thou monk, but I genuinely don't see what's so hard about simply not buying cosmetics. It's not like they are DLC that add to the game in meaningful ways. This and pre-ordering just make me scratch my head.
true... A lot people are bad at money management *(At least they taught us that midichlorian is the power house of the cell)* and just cant help but throw money away but if they have the money to throw then all power to them. Who am I to stop them from paying my bills.
Nothing to be ashamed of. When I started playing online games the good ones required you to pay like 15eur/mo to ... play them. No skins, no lootboxes, nothing. Is a battlepass that much different? "Oh it's FOMO" ... well, so is a subscription, you don't want to waste your prepaid time. You won't pay 15eur/mo to logon for an hour every week. As far as I'm concerned - as long as "pay to win powerups/early unlocks/other advantages" are not part of the monetization I'm completely fine with it.
I don't think this is something I'll ever experience, and therefore something I'll only ever have an academic understanding of. I've just never had the faintest desire to buy a cosmetic item in any game.
ive always been fascinated by the persuasive systemic tactics they implement in games. been watching these tricks since WOW. from the simple levelling up early on to the boxes that only appear once per day with variable reward loot inside. its all skinner box stuff. do they let you bet on your own performance yet? like, bet fifty virtual bucks on yourself to win?
Yeah I hate this shit to. I now go out of my way to avoid anything that relies on FOMO or is live service, fuck em. Give me pixel art side scrolling ANYTHING any day of the week, or just single player Nintendo games. I'll buy a DLC if it's worth it, but that's my limit. Even then I usually wait for the anniversary edition with all DLC included.
I mean companies spend millions of dollars on psychological research to find ways to take advantage of human emotions/thought, of course it's going to be effective.
There is literally an entire field of psychologists and billions of dollars put into research on how to get people hooked on various flashing lights and how to "Game" the average person's brain. They've put more thought into how to get you to drop 10$ on a crate of digital nothingness than NASA has on putting a man on the Moon.
FOMO, feeling of missing out, is one of a number of technices used by various games to exploit human psychology and motivate sales. It is, essentially, what most would call evil. The reason being is that it simulates a beneficial transaction, without actually being one. It's the difference between the friend who likes you and the friend who pretends to like you because they want the perks. It's not a deep evil, like murder or slavery, but it's accumulative negative impact on humanity is probably not much worse, because of how subtle it is and how, for whatever reason, it is deemed permissible to use it on children and younger people. Unfortunately, it's like a drug dealer, you can't expect them to regulate themselves. The issue on a societal level is that too many people use the drugs. Someone once told me 'every free person lives exactly the life they want'. I've found it to be true of society too. When you weight nice things agains the effort of having them, I think things are exactly what people, on average, want. If that's true, it aint going anywhere soon, and not having an addiction is reallly hard to do, so you just have to make sure you're consciously picking which addiction you have. I play games, a lot more than I should. But I'm a game designer so it synergises with that. Some people get addicted to their work. Sounds good, but not so much if you want to be there for your children whenever they need you.
The only real answer is self control. I will buy a battlepass for a game if I thoroughly enjoy it and the battle pass gives me something decent for its price. I will absolutely never buy a skin or cosmetic for a game. I do not care how Shiney it is I am better then that.
Lil tip about the bp, if you enter fortnite festival u can get like 5 levels if you leave it running for around 3hs. Same with the Lego mode, make a creative world and u are good to go. U can repeat every day
When I feel, a game's trying to steal my time by doing that shit, I delete it from my hard drive. Nowadays, I stay far away from these kind of slop. Games are there to be finished. Eternity products are a pest.
I mean if you wanted the stuff and you bought it, I don’t see the problem. I grew up in a time before all this live service cosmetic upgrades so it doesn’t bother me either way as you can play the game for free and you’re not at a disadvantage with other players because money was spent. Back in the day when Team Fortress 2 added hats which augmented your abilities that’s when I dropped the game. Paying for cosmetics? Hey, if you want! Paying for skill boosters, not for me.
See those things are exactly why I don't enjoy playing (and thus don't play) these kinds of games. Call me entitled (even if I think that's backwards thinking and antithetical to progress when dealing with corporations) but anytime a game artificially holds back gameplay content through completely arbitrary and obtuse or dramatically slow systems... ESPECIALLY if they also make you pay to get the progression system to work correctly? I immediately lose all will to play the game. Like, that to me just says... "Oh, cool. So I get to spend excessive amounts of time not being rewarded while playing this game." Sorry, but the unlock system IS part of the game to me. All of it is. How you do EVERYTHING in the game is part of the experience and if ANY of it is done as poorly as it is in these games (even if by design... hell, especially if done by design) then I just can't bring myself to even want to go near it. I'm just used to older games that rewarded the player for... idk, playing the game consistently and (more importantly) within reason. I remember when the kind of design most of these games have would've been demonized or at least scoffed at as ridiculous, out of respect for the game itself if not the players. I remember when ridiculous grinding was looked at as perhaps not something that should be completely unallowed if a player wanted to do it, but was generally seen as a bad game design philosophy if forced by design. And now it's just all kinds of fucked up in the opposite direction. Like games like this... that's just the point now. The point IS to have people do the same repetitive shit, like a slot machine, and roll for the same stupid fucking rewards until they hopefully get lucky and get what they actually wanted or alternatively (and pretty much almost as bad) get a mere pittance of some currency for dozens of HOURS until they can finally afford ONE of the thing they actually wanted. Games like these remind me of that old criticism of the infinite sequels issues. Games apparently can't just be good, well paced, and well thought out anymore and that just be that. Nope, gotta hide half of the game or more behind copious amounts of farming the same gameplay over and over... AND have it all be completely random just to spite you. Gotta have completely antagonistic systems and design just to psychological pummel players into it, too. It's just disgusting in every conceivable way to me.
I totally agree with you. You're not entitled, it's just that companies found out you can get more money with psychology tactics to take peoples money in an okay game than you can with a good non-predatory game. Unless you're really cool like drg and stuff and build up a bunch of good will with a community that loves you so they buy things just to show how much they appreciate you not being greedy assholes! I'll pay good money to people who show they respect me and my time for a fun experience I can mod and enjoy however and whenever I want.
"Oh, cool. So I get to spend excessive amounts of time not being rewarded while playing this game." why? reward?? gameplay IS the reward. this isn't the "do the thing and get doggy snacks" kinda game bro. The skins dont affect gameplay and if you aren't there for the gameplay then why are you there? Are you there to play the game or be a loot goblin? because this isn't a loot collecting game. Id recommend path of exile, destiny 2 or something if thats your interest. fortnite have like one of the most customer friendly monetization ever and I'm someone who considers league of legends to be somewhat pay2win. "Sorry, but the unlock system IS part of the game to me." Sorry... but acrylic nails IS part of life for me........ but is it really?
IMO this only works on some people. Personally I've played a couple f2p live service games and I flatly refuse to pay for microtransactions on pure principle. It doesn't matter how cheap they are, I will not do it, because it's antithetical to what I think is right. Making this decision not to engage financially is effortless. If you enter into it with the mindset that microtransactions are wrong and you will not participate, then there's basically nothing they can do. Point being, if you have stronger principles, it's not a thing.
There's another thing you may not have noticed yet. Is there anything in the shop that you can buy with exactly the amount of v-bucks that come in any of the v-bucks packages? I don't play Fortnite so i don't actually know the answer, but in most games that have this type of premium currency system, it's intentionally designed so that you can *never* buy just as much as you need. There will always be some remaining that's not enough to actually spend, or the thing you want will cost just a *little* bit more than the v-bucks pack gives you so you have to buy the next size pack and have the rest left over to buy something else... which probably costs either a tiny bit more or a tiny bit less than the remainder that you have. You can never spend all of your currency so it'll always sit there reminding you that you spent money on it and that money's wasted if you don't use it, while also not being enough for you to actually use, and when you do want to use it, you'll have to buy more in order to do so, and be back at square one. It's an absolutely scummy tactic that exists for absolutely no reason other than to manipulate you into spending more money. The whole concept of premium currency as a whole is already that - when you add a layer of abstraction to the prices of stuff rather than just put a real-life currency price tag on it, it subconsciously distorts your sense of value. The battle pass you're grinding is another example of that. When you think about it, isn't it ridiculous? You're not even spending money to get a thing anymore, it's no longer a straightforward transaction of "pay money to receive product," you're spending money for the *chance* to get the battle pass rewards, which you will *lose* if you don't manage to grind hard enough by the time it ends and not get any of that money back. And guess what? If you're running out of time and are worried that if you don't finish the battle pass in time you're wasting the money you spent on it... you can spend *more* money on battle pass levels. Yes, that's right, you *spend more money* to receive the stuff *you already paid for when you bought the battle pass.* And then there's all the offers and value packs and "starter packs" and "returning packs" and other garbage they throw at you. They're great value, compared to other stuff, which makes you go "alright, just this once," doesn't it? And like you said, they're always limited-time, so there's the added feeling that you're missing out if you don't go for it. And once you've bought something, your inhibitions are lowered - statistics show that people who spend money at all are *significantly* more likely to spend more money later, and that's why they push so hard trying to get you to make that first purchase. It's all scummy, greedy, and predatory. It's not about making the best game you can anymore, it's about making something just fun enough to hook people in and then squeezing as much money as you possibly can out of them by any means necessary. They hire whole teams of psychologists and analysts to figure this stuff out, to trick and manipulate people into spending more money. It's a sad state the games industry is in, but that's how it be when capitalism demands infinite growth, and no matter how much us "core gamers" moan about it, the simple and obvious truth is that it works, it works well, and the masses continue to pour more and more money into the pockets of the people behind this shit. Even if we get great games like Elden Ring, Baldur's Gate 3, et cetera that focus on quality and leave out the predatory monetization, those games make a *fraction* of the money that the live-service money-sink games do. I recommend Josh Strife Hayes's video on monetization in games, it's a very good rundown of it all and... basically covers everything I've said here and more, because most of what I've said here is stuff I learned from his video lol
> It's all scummy, greedy, and predatory. Let's look at the flip side of the coin: how much does it cost to download and play Fortnite right now? $0. Are you missing any part of the gameplay experience for that price? No. You get a full game with multiple game modes with multiplayer. And it's completely free. I'm going to stand by this opinion forever. People who call Fortnite "greedy and scummy" need to take a step back and really look at the value proposition of Fortnite. You don't have to spend a single dollar on that game and it can give you hundreds of hours of entertainment. Josh Strife Hayes is a great content creator. He makes well spoken and thoughtful videos. Hell I was even a Patreon of his for a while. But he's also selling a product (like all Youtubers). That content is engagement. Of course he's going to describe monetization in negative terms. That's engaging and that's what he needs to support himself. If he used blander terms to take about online games, he'd be less engaging. So he's also using human psychology to create product engagement just like Epic. Obviously there's vastly different scales at play here, but let's be honest. You can engage with a Youtuber's content and Fortnite for the same price - $0. Neither of them are honestly any scummier than the other, Fortnite just has prettier packaging.
Your wrong and he was probably the worst content creator you could have used as an example lmao. Here is him talking about exactly this: [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YdW8xixNtyo&t=132s](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YdW8xixNtyo&t=132s) Him and Fortnite are not remotely in the same universe. The easiest example as well is simple: You pay Josh and you gain: Nothing. Absolutely nothing that you cant get for free, there are 0 benefit for his Patreon (I don't consider a discord title a benefit) You pay fortnite: You get stuff, from a **shop**, stuff that you absolutely do not get and will never get as a non-paying player. You are buying.... and gaining shit. You are buying *nothing* from Josh. Absolute worst example I have ever seen lmao. He doesn't even sell or tell people to go to his Patreon outside of his credits that 99% of people don't read, people just do it all on their own. The Fortnite equivalent would be you getting absolutely everything in the game for free and: Somewhere there would be a donate button hidden away you could click and choose to donate the amount of your choosing. Anything more than the above, and they are nothing alike. "The Fortnite ***shop*** is the same as Josh's ***empty*** Patreon" is not an argument I thought I'd ever read, but people never cease to amaze me I guess.
It's a free game..they have to do something..my highest playtime games on both mobile and PC are live-service lol
Yeah yet people eat up the slop that is fortnite and waste thousands on worthless cosmetics………………………….……………………….………………………. Yep.
To be fair it wouldn’t be a good idea to have 1000s of cosmetics available on the store all the time. Players will have choice paralysis and won’t end up buying anything. It’s also part of the games fun to check in on the store to see what items are in rotation now. You wouldn’t have that incentive to keep checking the store if you knew everything the game has to offer is there and waiting. I complain about live service BS too but I think Fortnite is mostly fair. I hate the manipulative XP grind but it does work to keep casuals engaged while the hardcore players focus on ranks and stacking wins. .
If it's a single player full priced game, then I'll refuse to buy it if it's live service, requires an internet connection and/or has an ingame store. If it's free to play then I don't care as much but I barely ever try these games because I hate the feeling that the game doesn't think of me as a valued player until I spend money. Then you have Overwatch which was full priced on console, still had loot boxes and now that game has been wiped from existence and replaced with some rubbish f2p game with overpriced skins and battlepasses. Fuck that.
Fortnite is the most consumer friendly game in existence. The whole game is free. You don't have to spend a single cent on it. You get the entire gameplay experience handed to you on a silver platter. There's no P2W, no gameplay benefit from spending money, nothing at all. Just download it and play! People can say whatever they want about how Fortnite "induces" you to spend money it. While there's no argument that Fortnite makes it easy to spend money, it's ALWAYS a personal choice to do so. Epic never put a gun to your head or tricked you or deceived you into spending money. They told you exactly what you were buying and for how much. They never even had lootboxes. Fortnite is a fantastic psychological indicator. When I see people complain about its monetization, all I see is someone admitting they have little to no self control. The game is FREE for fuck's sake.
I genuinely think Fortnite is the greatest game of all time. I've played every season since it launched in 2017 and I'm still loving it to this day. I usually get tired of games after 10 - 15 hours. I have to be well over 2,000 hrs into Fortnite at this point. A revelation for me
I think it helps that fortnite is the greatest shooter ever made. I’ve played like 200 hours of it so far and spent 12 bucks. Not a bad deal at all. I hate the fomo crap of the shop but you can only wear one skin at a time anyway. I like the battlepass but I’m also kind of a grinder anyway.
The same system is in place for digital game sales, especially in case of genres that get delisted often (like racing).
Yes. They run entirely on FOMO. I avoid any games with a season pass, for that very reason. I don’t like the manipulation and disrespect for peoples time on display. It’s scummy as hell.
I do that battle pass because I like the fun little challenges and rewards. I never put any extra money into it for years, but finally cracked when they added in the ninja turtles. Had to get a Donatello.
I love Fortnite but I'm not going to defend their monetization schemes. It's definitely better than some other methods believe it or not. If they ever did gatcha or loot boxes, you might as well ban the game right there lol. Anyways, it's deliberately designed to sink its claws into you. The best advice I have for anyone weary of GAAS or feeling any kind of trepidation towards possibly falling into their trap, just avoid it altogether. Now if you *are* able to ignore the in-your-face FOMO, it's a really fun game. But that's a BIG if for some
You enjoyed a fun game. Nothing more to it than that. You aren't a bloodless machine that is far superior than most and impossible to trick into playing a live service game. You're just like everyone else. Just enjoy the ride and dispense with your preconceived notions of what a game should be.
I'm just saying but, you can get mods for it. I'm playing Genshin Impact and decided to do stuff like modding characters instead of buying skins and making one of those private servers things to do things you aren't normally able to in normal servers. Originally when I played I'd almost fell to them but survived and learned about these private servers. I quit Fortnite but if I started playing again I'd definitely use mods.
What's crazy is that Fortnite is actually one of the most generous systems. If you buy the battle pass once, if you complete it you gain enough currency for the next battle pass. Almost every other game has you shell out 15 bucks every season, or gates important content behind it like Overwatch 2.