the dlc/microtransaction/lootbox fuckfest is the greatest thing to happen to gaming

If you think Overwatch made lootboxes popular than you're to young for this argument/debate.

CSGO, LotR:Online, TF2, Battlefield 4, Gears of War, Mass Effect 3. There's a list of games that had people arguing the argument that you claim Overwatch popularized. For Christ Sake Mass Effect 3's multiplayer was Pay to Win to the extreme...
Theres a difference between existing first and popularizing something.
 

Yung Dramps

awesome gaming
FYI Battlefront 2 has just garnered the most down voted lost in reddit history.
I saw it. Pretty damn hilarious if I do say so myself. It's also reassuring to know that people are starting to see through EA/Activision's BS.

Another thing I would like to talk about is whales. People always say "boycotting doesn't matter because whales will spend money anyway". Yeah, I refuse to believe whales spend so much money that even if hundreds of thousands refund/don't buy the game, the company still makes billions. That's simply impossible, especially considering whales often make up such a small percentage of microtransaction ridden games' communities.

The way I see it is that so many people are going to get pissed off and boycott these companies that the stupid children and whales won't be enough anymore. And if they are, I could see a rift forming where greedy AAA and indies/AA/the few AAA devs that care about their fanbases basically become two entirely seperate industries with entirely seperate communities. AAA is already on its way to becoming a bubble, so why not?
 
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tcr

sage of six tabs
is a Tutor Alumnusis a Team Rater Alumnusis a Smogon Discord Contributor Alumnusis a Tiering Contributor Alumnusis a Contributor Alumnus
the thing is, people aren't seeing through anything EA is doing. What EA is doing isn't just scummy business practices. They routinely toe and cross the line, pushing consumers to see what they can and can't get away with. A solid example of this is what occured during the ORIGINAL battlefront (not original original but the one made by EA). A 60$ game that on release had 4 maps with extra maps purchasable as 50$ content, a broken multiplayer that encouraged spawncamping the little hero tokens so you could become the jedi / sith, no singleplayer at all, extremely repetitive and bland experiences, etc. When public backlash happened for it, they decided to "fix" it by releasing some maps for free and balancing the multiplayer slightly, yet they still rely on "daily missions" in the same sense as most horrid mobile games (in an attempt to keep you coming back for more and give you some hollow sense of accomplishment and progress).

That all sounds good right? They release a game half finished and when people complain about how shitty it is on release they go back and fix it. Wrong. They adjusted the game until no one gave a shit anymore (that is, they release these games directly alongside the hype buildup of the new star wars movie, battlefront was released exactly one month before the force awakens, battlefront 2 was released about one month before the last jedi is coming out) and then abandoned it to start on their new frankenstein creation. They just said they would be doing a reddit ama, have decided after communal backlash they were tweaking the credits system (downgrading it by 75% lmao so putting it literally back to what it was in the beta when everyone thought the credit / hero system was fine), and even tehn theyre only tweaking the top heroes, ie darth vader and luke instead of finetuning the entire fucking system, and still the main issues of the game have been ignored (lootboxes, pay to win features).

EA is simply the worst company to ever grace the video game scene. Their sleazy immoral business practices capitalize on the impatience in gamers and the whales that naturally form in any gaming community. This would absolutely fine and I would have no issue with lootboxes or optional dlc and whatnot if they finished the game they were making first making it a complete adventure; instead, they pump out half baked games, reskin some of their most popular franchises (seriously, battelfront just feels like battlefield with star wars cosmetics and effects), and release these DLC that should have been in the game to begin with in the form of season passes ranging anything from 25-50$.

I for one am not nor will I buy an EA, Activision, or Ubisoft, or any other company that still uses sleazy marketing tactics and cash grabbing schemes, or releases under-developed and unfinished games only to release exclusive content and dlc if you happen to preorder their games. The best games I have played this year have been by indie companies, probably the best game I played this year and in the past couple years was Hollow Knight, a game made by Team Cherry, a developing studio that consists of 3 men and a composer that continues to release fully fleshed out and free DLC and updates / bug fixes to their game. The only hope I ahve for the gaming industry lest they totally end up like Hollywood (sequel after sequel after sequel, movies that rely on "oohs and ahhs" special effects, uninspired and bland franchises and unsuccessful solo movies) is indie devs. I can only hope that EA doesn't swallow them up like they bought out like Respawn (Titanfall), DICE, Bioware, Maxis (Sims), BlackBox Games (Need for Speed).
 
if one of the main competitors for your game (League) also adopts your system (albeit a bit edited for the worse), I'd say you have a pretty big sway on the market
 

Yung Dramps

awesome gaming
the thing is, people aren't seeing through anything EA is doing. What EA is doing isn't just scummy business practices. They routinely toe and cross the line, pushing consumers to see what they can and can't get away with. A solid example of this is what occured during the ORIGINAL battlefront (not original original but the one made by EA). A 60$ game that on release had 4 maps with extra maps purchasable as 50$ content, a broken multiplayer that encouraged spawncamping the little hero tokens so you could become the jedi / sith, no singleplayer at all, extremely repetitive and bland experiences, etc. When public backlash happened for it, they decided to "fix" it by releasing some maps for free and balancing the multiplayer slightly, yet they still rely on "daily missions" in the same sense as most horrid mobile games (in an attempt to keep you coming back for more and give you some hollow sense of accomplishment and progress).

That all sounds good right? They release a game half finished and when people complain about how shitty it is on release they go back and fix it. Wrong. They adjusted the game until no one gave a shit anymore (that is, they release these games directly alongside the hype buildup of the new star wars movie, battlefront was released exactly one month before the force awakens, battlefront 2 was released about one month before the last jedi is coming out) and then abandoned it to start on their new frankenstein creation. They just said they would be doing a reddit ama, have decided after communal backlash they were tweaking the credits system (downgrading it by 75% lmao so putting it literally back to what it was in the beta when everyone thought the credit / hero system was fine), and even tehn theyre only tweaking the top heroes, ie darth vader and luke instead of finetuning the entire fucking system, and still the main issues of the game have been ignored (lootboxes, pay to win features).

EA is simply the worst company to ever grace the video game scene. Their sleazy immoral business practices capitalize on the impatience in gamers and the whales that naturally form in any gaming community. This would absolutely fine and I would have no issue with lootboxes or optional dlc and whatnot if they finished the game they were making first making it a complete adventure; instead, they pump out half baked games, reskin some of their most popular franchises (seriously, battelfront just feels like battlefield with star wars cosmetics and effects), and release these DLC that should have been in the game to begin with in the form of season passes ranging anything from 25-50$.

I for one am not nor will I buy an EA, Activision, or Ubisoft, or any other company that still uses sleazy marketing tactics and cash grabbing schemes, or releases under-developed and unfinished games only to release exclusive content and dlc if you happen to preorder their games. The best games I have played this year have been by indie companies, probably the best game I played this year and in the past couple years was Hollow Knight, a game made by Team Cherry, a developing studio that consists of 3 men and a composer that continues to release fully fleshed out and free DLC and updates / bug fixes to their game. The only hope I ahve for the gaming industry lest they totally end up like Hollywood (sequel after sequel after sequel, movies that rely on "oohs and ahhs" special effects, uninspired and bland franchises and unsuccessful solo movies) is indie devs. I can only hope that EA doesn't swallow them up like they bought out like Respawn (Titanfall), DICE, Bioware, Maxis (Sims), BlackBox Games (Need for Speed).
Let's assume someone tries to burn down a forest by striking a match against a branch of one, tiny sapling, and lighting it. You wait a bit, and then one day later, you see the sapling has just finished burning, and the tree next to it has just caught fire. Therefore, you say to yourself "The forest will never burn down because there are too many trees."

Sounds silly, right? Of course the forest will burn eventually. But this is the mistake that not just greedy publishers, but gamers are making too. They see that people still buy in to the bullshit and EA/Activision make millions off of idiots, and both parties think "There are too many idiots buying into the DLC/Microtransaction bs. Things will only get worse (better if you're a publisher)." But what the publishers fail to realize is that maybe they are boosting their profits in the short term, but when it comes to the future, they're building long term resentment. People say that the anti-microtransaction people are a minority. But that minority, from what I've seen, is growing, and it's growing fast. The reason the reddit swbf2 dislike fiasco gives me hope is because it shows that the "smart gamers" are growing in numbers. The average AAA game, sells what, 1-2 million copies? This comment received nearly 500k dislikes. Now, let's assume a fifth of these people decide to boycott future products/return the game. That's anywhere from 5-10% of sales gone. If you know anything about business, then you know that isn't a loss to take lightly.

But what about the whales that keep buying this stuff? Refer to my previous comment. Basically, as more people become fed up with the crap and move on, EA/Activision will simply be unable to sustain themselves with just whales. And if the whales don't have any scrubs to beat up, they too will start to flock away.

I can totally see why someone looks at these disgusting publisher conglomerates and worries about the future of gaming. But in my eyes, EA, Activision and the WB are paving the way for their own demise. The fact that this is even a CONTROVERSY is proof that people aren't gonna blindly accept it like you think. My suggestion is to sit back, enjoy your indies, and wait until the AAA industry becomes a huge bubble and collapses.
 

Yung Dramps

awesome gaming
ITT: People Stating the Obvious while also attempting to sound like Philosophers
It seems like there are some particularly hopeless people who haven't realized this and think gaming is ruined forever. I wanna raise their spirits a bit.
 
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Tera Melos

Banned deucer.
at least people agree with me
Considering that EVERYONE IN THIS THREAD agrees with each other, I don't see the point of your reply.

You can agree with people and debate a topic without trying to sound pretentious and so-sure of everything. We're talking about spending IRL money on Video Games. There's no huge morale debate here, this type of marketing has been in rotation since entertainment/media became a major source of profit.

We could have this same argument about Femme products VS Male products. The argument being Unit Prices, Mark Up Prices, Quality, Volume of Product, ect. Male products typically tend to be much higher quality than products designed/targeted at women, who have to pay more for less quality. It's how smaller markets work. Who's out there making Leg Razors? Who's out here making home waxing kits? You mentioned yourself that the AAA Developers are the bad guys. They're not. You don't see Blizzard or Naughty Dog or Insomnia or Bandai Namco, you don't see them selling you absurd micro-transactions. Meanwhile, let's take a loot at Bioware, a company that came from nothing and ended up milking a SINGLE person for 15,000$ in Mass Effect Micro-Transactions. (source http://www.eurogamer.net/articles/2017-10-23-manveer-heir-bioware-mass-effect-ea-monetisation )

This entire thread is redundant since no one in their right mind is going to defend 10-30$ Micro-Transactions for content we were shown in trailers AND given access to in the Beta.
 
Wow at that Battlefront thing. I don't play it, I never intended to, I didn't even know there was a second game, but I've read what happened and EA's actions disgust me.

It shows how little they care about player experience and more about fake longevity when it comes to unlock things "unless you pay".

EA was at a "questionable" level when it came to Pay-2-win things, but this puts them right into Gameloft level, thinking that farming like a slave to get something is worth the effort.
 
Considering that EVERYONE IN THIS THREAD agrees with each other, I don't see the point of your reply.

You can agree with people and debate a topic without trying to sound pretentious and so-sure of everything. We're talking about spending IRL money on Video Games. There's no huge morale debate here, this type of marketing has been in rotation since entertainment/media became a major source of profit.

We could have this same argument about Femme products VS Male products. The argument being Unit Prices, Mark Up Prices, Quality, Volume of Product, ect. Male products typically tend to be much higher quality than products designed/targeted at women, who have to pay more for less quality. It's how smaller markets work. Who's out there making Leg Razors? Who's out here making home waxing kits? You mentioned yourself that the AAA Developers are the bad guys. They're not. You don't see Blizzard or Naughty Dog or Insomnia or Bandai Namco, you don't see them selling you absurd micro-transactions. Meanwhile, let's take a loot at Bioware, a company that came from nothing and ended up milking a SINGLE person for 15,000$ in Mass Effect Micro-Transactions. (source http://www.eurogamer.net/articles/2017-10-23-manveer-heir-bioware-mass-effect-ea-monetisation )

This entire thread is redundant since no one in their right mind is going to defend 10-30$ Micro-Transactions for content we were shown in trailers AND given access to in the Beta.
Painting Blizzard as "the good guys" in this instance is not exactly right when Hearthstone exists...
 

Tera Melos

Banned deucer.
Painting Blizzard as "the good guys" in this instance is not exactly right when Hearthstone exists...
Hearth Stone is a TCG. No one cries at WotC for MTGO or when they release their yearly F2P/Pay2Win MTG Steam Game. No one cries about Gwent despite, to this day, still being heavily influenced by a Pay to Win model. Also, Elder Scrolls Legends is probably the worst offender but no one complains about that. Blizzard established Hearthstone as a TCG before any other genre/pay model. If you go into it expecting everything to be free than you're pretty naive in my opinion.
 

Yung Dramps

awesome gaming
Digital card games are kind of a gray zone imo. I can understand where people get at when they say that it's like card games like Magic the Gathering and Pokemon TCG but digital. And that's also where the main issue with them lies: Since they're not actual cards, they have no physical value, and I have yet to see a single one of these games where trading is a thing.
 

Tera Melos

Banned deucer.
Digital card games are kind of a gray zone imo. I can understand where people get at when they say that it's like card games like Magic the Gathering and Pokemon TCG but digital. And that's also where the main issue with them lies: Since they're not actual cards, they have no physical value, and I have yet to see a single one of these games where trading is a thing.

See, that's where you're wrong. Blizzard fails where WotC succeeded in a digital TCG, by giving Virtual MTG cards a lesser value of the physical cards but still a IRL Value. There's a buy/sell/trade feature in MTGO that makes it incredible fair and that feature would balance out and nullify Online TCGs from the entire Microtransaction argument in my opinion.
 
Hearth Stone is a TCG. No one cries at WotC for MTGO or when they release their yearly F2P/Pay2Win MTG Steam Game. No one cries about Gwent despite, to this day, still being heavily influenced by a Pay to Win model. Also, Elder Scrolls Legends is probably the worst offender but no one complains about that. Blizzard established Hearthstone as a TCG before any other genre/pay model. If you go into it expecting everything to be free than you're pretty naive in my opinion.
Hearthstone is not a TCG, it's a CCG. In TCG games you can buy/trade for specific cards you want, which would solve a lot of the issues Hearthstone has.
 
Hearthstone (and the games that eventually copied its formula) is a weird case among CCGs as it's digital-only, unlike those of Pokemon or Magic. It can't really be compared, but in my case it's the fact it keeps the lootbox-like formula while lacking a physical version what made me not want to play it.

When it comes to lootboxes, and excusing myself for not knowing some cases, TF2 is the only game that uses them in a fairly reasonable way, because you can get the individual items in the Mann Co. store - you can even do a "trial" of a weapon for 7 days which can be extended for as long as you want, and you even get a discount during the trial period, just in case that weapon never drops.
 

Tera Melos

Banned deucer.
Fair Point, as well as credit to the argument that a game that focuses on collecting cards should not limit you to which expansions you've purchased. I always felt Heathstone was a little iffy but Blizzard handles it nicely. The Expansions are very rewarding and most people play the standard draft format anyways so there's no need to rush a collection unless you take competitive VERY serious.
 
the thing is, people aren't seeing through anything EA is doing. What EA is doing isn't just scummy business practices. They routinely toe and cross the line, pushing consumers to see what they can and can't get away with. A solid example of this is what occured during the ORIGINAL battlefront (not original original but the one made by EA). A 60$ game that on release had 4 maps with extra maps purchasable as 50$ content, a broken multiplayer that encouraged spawncamping the little hero tokens so you could become the jedi / sith, no singleplayer at all, extremely repetitive and bland experiences, etc. When public backlash happened for it, they decided to "fix" it by releasing some maps for free and balancing the multiplayer slightly, yet they still rely on "daily missions" in the same sense as most horrid mobile games (in an attempt to keep you coming back for more and give you some hollow sense of accomplishment and progress).

That all sounds good right? They release a game half finished and when people complain about how shitty it is on release they go back and fix it. Wrong. They adjusted the game until no one gave a shit anymore (that is, they release these games directly alongside the hype buildup of the new star wars movie, battlefront was released exactly one month before the force awakens, battlefront 2 was released about one month before the last jedi is coming out) and then abandoned it to start on their new frankenstein creation. They just said they would be doing a reddit ama, have decided after communal backlash they were tweaking the credits system (downgrading it by 75% lmao so putting it literally back to what it was in the beta when everyone thought the credit / hero system was fine), and even tehn theyre only tweaking the top heroes, ie darth vader and luke instead of finetuning the entire fucking system, and still the main issues of the game have been ignored (lootboxes, pay to win features).

EA is simply the worst company to ever grace the video game scene. Their sleazy immoral business practices capitalize on the impatience in gamers and the whales that naturally form in any gaming community. This would absolutely fine and I would have no issue with lootboxes or optional dlc and whatnot if they finished the game they were making first making it a complete adventure; instead, they pump out half baked games, reskin some of their most popular franchises (seriously, battelfront just feels like battlefield with star wars cosmetics and effects), and release these DLC that should have been in the game to begin with in the form of season passes ranging anything from 25-50$.

I for one am not nor will I buy an EA, Activision, or Ubisoft, or any other company that still uses sleazy marketing tactics and cash grabbing schemes, or releases under-developed and unfinished games only to release exclusive content and dlc if you happen to preorder their games. The best games I have played this year have been by indie companies, probably the best game I played this year and in the past couple years was Hollow Knight, a game made by Team Cherry, a developing studio that consists of 3 men and a composer that continues to release fully fleshed out and free DLC and updates / bug fixes to their game. The only hope I ahve for the gaming industry lest they totally end up like Hollywood (sequel after sequel after sequel, movies that rely on "oohs and ahhs" special effects, uninspired and bland franchises and unsuccessful solo movies) is indie devs. I can only hope that EA doesn't swallow them up like they bought out like Respawn (Titanfall), DICE, Bioware, Maxis (Sims), BlackBox Games (Need for Speed).
A friend of mine plays PUB G and tells me we have the same problem there, they are only interested in selling cosmetic loot boxes when the game has multiple severely broken glitches that they seemingly have no interest in fixing.
 
Hearthstone (and the games that eventually copied its formula) is a weird case among CCGs as it's digital-only, unlike those of Pokemon or Magic. It can't really be compared, but in my case it's the fact it keeps the lootbox-like formula while lacking a physical version what made me not want to play it.

When it comes to lootboxes, and excusing myself for not knowing some cases, TF2 is the only game that uses them in a fairly reasonable way, because you can get the individual items in the Mann Co. store - you can even do a "trial" of a weapon for 7 days which can be extended for as long as you want, and you even get a discount during the trial period, just in case that weapon never drops.
Buying weapons from the store is a noobtrap though. You can get any weapon in exchange for any 2 weapons from thousands and thousands of traders.
 

earl

(EVIOLITE COMPATIBLE)
is a Community Contributor
Buying weapons from the store is a noobtrap though. You can get any weapon in exchange for any 2 weapons from thousands and thousands of traders.
The weapons are also absurdly overpriced for being virtually worthless (as you cannot market them, and even you could it would be definitely below a dollar for each) compared to stranges, unusuals, etc. which can at least be resold and therefore hold real value.
 

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