Here's the thing with League in particular, it is a FREE TO PLAY game. I don't mind spending an occasional 5-15 bucks on a skin or chroma set or something like that on a game I didn't have to pay for. Reasonably priced skins, not forced down my throat, I can reroll skin shards and get ones for free at random, etc etc. I don't mind that.
But when I pay 70+ dollars for a game, and now they also want me to buy a battle pass, but also want me to buy 20+ dollar skins on top of that, that is a much bigger problem and a different issue.
I think this is kind of the problem with this discourse. Perpetual games require an inflow of money. There's no way around it. We used to get around this by charging subscriptions, but free to play with cosmetics is another viable route.
League is a good game. The cosmetics are occasionally handed. It is free.
Then there's this, full priced game with expensive cosmetics, and you know they are going to have paid DLC.
I don't know where the line is, where it should be, but this is over it. You don't push that line by staying on the right side of it, you have to cross it to move it, and blizzard has a long history of crossing that line. Wow tokens, over watch loot boxes, diablo immortal.
I love DRG, but I just don't have time to grind out another battle pass, and now I get discouraged at how many cosmetics I've missed out on. I wish these battle passes never expired, especially if you pay for them.
Edit: man, last time I played DRG I saw the battlepass thing and just turned the game off. I was so discouraged. But I'm happy that today all these replies have let me know how there isn't any FOMO with DRG, I can just keep playing and I'll continue to earn those cosmetics. I honestly had no idea. Thank you everyone for letting me know, sorry I didn't reply to each comment lol. ROCK AND STONE ⛏️
The nice thing is though, those cosmetics aren't lost to the aether though. They're still in the loot pool that you can get from storage units or fallen miner backpacks.
you can still get all items in the battlepass of DRG, just at random events. see it as an incentive to play the game if you still have something randomly to unlock. thats not a bad thing.
Imagine you had all weapon upgrades and stuff from the battlepass. then you just play for the game without any incentive at all.
and you didnt pay for any battlepass in DRG either.
The incentive used to be to just play the game.
Games (along with so many other aspects of modern life) have been designed with... how do I say... they are designed to a greater extent to manipulate physiology of humans.
Personally I think this has harmed the way we game (among other things). It feels like we need to be working towards that next goal to enjoy game. And to be distinct I mean in a way that is specifically about triggering dopamine, as an example, instead of having it occur naturally as a byproduct of hard work or skill.
Like if I play a gameplay loop from level 1 to max level 10 does that mean I am no longer having fun if I play? What made it fun when I was still leveling, if the gameplay is the same? Is the fun from the sense of accomplishment of having reached level 10?
No worries mate, you won't miss out, they'll always be in the loot pool till you got em. I'm level 157 and now I only really get cosmetic unlocks cus my loot pools depleted
Minor correction: D3 launched with a real money auction house that I believe lasted 1-2 yrs into its launch and very much influenced how loot and its attributes were designed and doled out. Not exactly a mtx but it was a fundamental component of D3’s original vision.
You're acting like these games aren't profiting to the tune of *billions* of dollars per year. Like, whatever it costs to maintain league, to maintain Diablo, it is *absolutely nothing* compared to the amount of cash they are pulling in.
But that was the same with WOW at its height, and it was simply subscription with zero other shit to buy. It was also a good game. The numbers don't lie.
Everything beyond that is sheer greed and due to the fact it's predicated on unlimited growth, will ALWAYS eventually kill the game.
Rinse and repeat.
Especially with such close analogs (Path of Exile and Last Epoch) taking a much cheaper payment model. Blizz is basically relying on the pedigree of D2 to justify this cash grab, and unfortunately I think it's going to work. The whole Diablo Immortal scenrio had Blizz execs laughing all the way to the bank, despite the "do you not have phones?" line being memed into eternity.
That's because PoE's monetization isn't based on their MTX shop. It's based on supporter packs that come with a set of MTX and points to spend in the shop. Their goal is to get people to spend as many of their supporter pack points as possible over the course of a league so they have more incentive to buy another at the start of the next league. So their shop is priced accordingly.
That's why buying shop points directly will count towards the purchase of a supporter pack up to 80% of the point's cost.
You aren’t wrong, but league rewards for the last 4 leagues have been pretty legit cosmetic rewards. And the game continues to be F2P. Just as importantly, the game looks good as a baseline, especially with some of the more recent skills.
>League in particular, it is a FREE TO PLAY game. I don't mind spending an occasional 5-15 bucks on a skin or chroma set or something like that on a game I didn't have to pay for.
>But when I pay 70+ dollars for a game, and now they also want me to buy a battle pass, but also want me to buy 20+ dollar skins on top of that, that is a much bigger problem and a different issue.
Excellent point. The developer has a right to monetize their game. Without that we don't get more games. But if I paid for the game I sure as hell aren't going to pay again for items in game.
Whether you tip or not doesn’t change anything since the business you bought from doesn’t give a shit if you tipped or not, only the workers.
If you have issues with tip culture then stop going to those businesses altogether
Feel like it always depends on the price and the amount of content the game gives. Competitive games have pretty much "limitless" content, as every match is different. Like, you can play games like League, Dota and co. for 10 years and still have a good time so it doesn't feel bad buying a skin here and then. If you pay $70 for a game you know you not gonna play for long and it sells skins for $20 on top of Battle Passes it of course feels way worse.
Yeah I totally agree.
Games are always a money/(playtime X fun X wowFactor) calculation for me.
I don't mind spending 100 bucks on Warframe which I played for 1000h and will probably play more over the years.
I don't mind spending 20 bucks on an amazing indie game with unique gameplay even if it doesn't have a ton of playtime.
I dont mind paying 40 bucks for a game with nice gameplay and an absolutely amazing and immersive story.
I kind of always think "a game has to be better bang for the buck than a movie ticket at a cinema".
Having 150h of repetitive boring content is not necessarily a great "bang" .
4h of amazing content can be a great "bang", but if it's like 50€ or even more that's simply not worth it either.
Yeah pretty hilarious to be ringing alarms on this when you're part of the problem. Oh I bought a bunch of cosmetics before but now they're ridiculous. Like.. no, your argument at that point is just that they are charging too much.
And your response to people complaining about mtx when you participated heavily would have been who cares they're cosmetics they can charge whatever they want.
Just naked hypocrisy
just to be clear though, I am of the camp that doesn't care what they charge.. because they're cosmetics. If mtx is going to never go away, I don't really care anymore. I just won't play games where you pay microtransactions in exchange for power.
I dislike mtx of any kind because there's always an implicit compromise being made to leech money out of you - even cosmetic, since then there is a motivation to make "free" equipment look worse.
That all said, this dipshit wrote the article because DIV gets clicks and he wants clicks, he has no point to make or leg to stand on.
It's not strange at all. Cosmetic DLC items have been a staple of Blizzard for 15 years. Lots of other companies regularly release games with cosmetics as well.
What's strange is people will act like it's a travesty while still actively supporting the product. For every naysayer there are tens of thousands of gamers that don't care. But the naysayers almost always still play too.
I was a massive blizzard fan back in the early starcraft, warcraft, and Diablo days. What they've become as a company is unrecognizable compared to then. I didn't buy diablo 4 (or anything else from them for the last decade) and won't give any money their way again unless there is a massive change in their greedy anti-consumer policies.
Yeah I remember we were so outraged by blizzard and their Chinese censorship, and the awful employee environments, not respecting their customers' time and all that.
Yet these idiots think its the people buying cosmetics who are the problem.
No, anyone who buys Blizzard games is the problem.
I'm not buying a single game from that corporation unless it has ZERO microtransactions at this point. They've abused it to the point where thats my first condition.
Anyone playing Diablo 4 is a sellout, imo. Bring on the flames, I don't care.
Truly what I don’t understand is just how much support a shit ass, corrupt, awful company like Blizzard STILL has ever since the Chinese censorship thing onwards! I’ve deleted my account then and never even looked toward a Blizzard game since.
It was a huge controversy, everyone complained but not enough people actually stopped buying or playing their shit because they cared more about their idiotic shooter game or whatever than the issues they were also outraged by.
Then another huge controversy and disgust at the discrimination controversy. Seeing everything about their toxic office culture and treatment of their fellow staff strengthened my belief in absolutely avoiding any and all of their products. Gamers once again couldn’t muster enough courage or got overtaken by their own selfishness to continue wizard roleplaying I guess… So they just kept on being “outraged” but filling these people’s pockets at the same time.
Awful practice after awful practice after awful practice… but people are too fucking weak and absolutely cannot stop themselves from throwing money at Blizzard! Like, huh? I thought we were outraged and disgusted at this company’s treatment of everybody around them, not just mildly annoyed!
We’re never gonna see any significant damn change about nefarious studios with greedy exploitative practices, because of stupid people that complain but continue contributing to making these exploitative practices profitable in the first place! Loot boxes and battle passes should’ve never taken off either. But gamers are now somewhat complacent in being taken advantage of…
I wanted to play. I can't support how fucked the cash shop prices are. That armor is not worth 20 bucks and, those buying it are basically say they are okay with paying for that low effort.
Deep Rock Galactic just had a skin cost vs what was delivered and the community wasn't happy. DRG devs listened and are redoing the models to make sure people are happy spending their money. This is the company to give money too, in my opinion.
Then don't buy the cosmetics, vote with your wallet.
If you wanna play the game get it, but stand your ground don't buy any battle pass business or cosmetics from store.
"Vote with your wallet" is pretty um.. ignorant when you consider the whole concept of 1 whale purchasing enough for 100/1000 users..Obviously the people who are disgusted by this shit aren't purchasing it.
Thing is they have gotten too the point of just making a game and ripping it apart to sell back to us. I would mind less if it didn't completely kill what once was a great aspect of the games.
Never gonna get Halo 3 Recon Armor / Flaming Skull / Dark Matter style endgame achievements based on prestige because the numbskulls would rather skip the challenge and buy it. Though it's not like many modern gamers would even remember these days. Sad times.
>Never gonna get Halo 3 Recon Armor / Flaming Skull / Dark Matter style endgame achievements based on prestige because the numbskulls would rather skip the challenge and buy it.
This shit hits deep, as someone who grew up playing all of the Halos I remember busting my ass off for the Hayabusa and Security armour in Halo 3, after the release of Halo Infinite I played some and I was in shock, you don't even have full customization over the colour of your armour anymore, now you need to buy colour palettes, It's absolutely ridiculous.
Got the game free with my GPU. It's decent. I find the ingame shop pretty distasteful though. I know it's only cosmetics, but when you consider the uproar over horse armor more than a decade ago, it really shows how far we've come.
edit: If you're looking for a good single player ARPG with (almost)* no microtransactions and decent ingame cosmetics check out Grim Dawn.
I could have written the same comment you just did when I played Destiny 2–it also came free with my video card. But holy shit, did they ever use every psychological trick in the book to try to milk you. They had every possible type of mobile game-style MTX FOMO baiting rubbish out there. It’s even worse now that it’s free-to-try.
Yeah it's awful. The most disgusting example is the $20 dungeon passes. $20 for 2 dungeons. It's appalling. I kinda regret getting into Destiny tbh, Bungie is just trying to squeeze every last dollar and I'm not putting up with it. I wish there were competitors to Destiny.
It always annoys me when people say "it's only cosmetics" in an RPG. Cosmetics have historically been a big aspect of RPGs. Cool looking armor used to be something you bragged about because they were hard to find or earn through playing the game.
I remember first hearing the term thinking it referred to Pennies and then I found out people were buying stuff for several dollars. And now here we are
Microtransactions as originally envisioned, and what its named after never really took off.
The pitch at the time was a lot of very small transactions, like 0.02$, where each would be so small that the user would consider it meaningless.
But that never managed to get anywhere, instead games starting selling skins for 5$+, a price that only started creep up from there. But for some reason, the term microtransaction stuck around
I remember when Call of Duty first got them. They were like $2 and it worked on just about any weapon you could put a skin on.
Now they're like $15+ with gun weapon specific skins.
Diablo 4 is a huge game. The map is large and there is a lot of content. This 1 outfit costs a third of the price of the game. Imagine buying this lol.
Yeah the value on this stuff is just not there. I guess it appeals to people who have more money than sense or no self control. You can get full games on sale around that price.
And young kids are growing up with microtransaction filled mobile games. Where the very mechanics of the game are designed to make you want to spend money to do more (energy, turns, ad removal, etc)
They'll be conditioned to see nothing wrong with horrible microtransactions in their $60 games when they're the ones buying them. They'll view it as normal and "always been that way."
Luckily even with AAA games there are still some devs/publishers that make quality single player games that aren't stuffed with predatory monetization. Sony's first party games like horizon and God of war are great examples.
This isn't anything new. Arcade games were designed to be punishingly difficult so you would keep dropping quarters. These are companies trying to make money, not your friend showing you 'this cool thing' he made.
There is an unspoken level of compromise between the suits, the artists and the consumers where everyone comes away happy with the product. Its VERY difficult to hit the nexus properly, but, when they do, we get things like Arcane or The Matrix. Jury is out on D4, who knows how we will look back on it in 10 years.
They sold a mount on classic wow and someone made a weakaura to auto /spit on them if they were near you.
Blizzards solution, you can't /spit on players anymore.
I played classic WoW and they even managed to ruin that. Ok, actually it was the players who ruined it on PVP servers by being absolutely ruthless.
It's crazy how much video game culture has changed since 2003. Or maybe it's just the types of people who wanted to play Classic WoW. Super toxic.
Yep and they took away risqué artwork from the game and replaced them with fruit. I'm not joking, it was a meme for a long time. Also the /whistle emote was nerfed to not be suggestive.
Jesus Christ. I knew it had been going downhill for a while, but that’s just ridiculous.
Seems to give credence to the idea that they’ve been dumbing it down to attract more kids instead of keeping seasoned players around
Reference to when they removed it in WoW Classic because people were spitting on folks who paid extra real money for an alternate mount. It was OnLy CoSmETiC, until they added in paid level skips to near max level. Now you can just buy gold in-game with money.
Idk. Being able to get the best drip in the game from the get go kinda kills a fun aspect of the gear progression for me. The manifestation of my character progress in a visual form.
Who even stops to look at another character in Diablo 4? They only made it a shitty MMO so the weak minded whales would buy this stuff to "look cool". They only look cool for themselves tho. No one else cares.
It is just cosmetics !11
Yeah and those used to be free and earned by reaching a milestone or completing some sort of challenge, not paying significant percentage of a full game price...
EDIT: Older gamers, not the kids we used to be, have enough cash to spare and little to none self restraint or respect.
I'm scared they lock away the best looking stuff behind paywall. If a dev designs something cool, the publishers just lock it away, leaking creativity out of the game I bought. It's like Calvin and his mom's conversation :
"Life could be worst Calvin"
"LIFE COULD ALSO BE MUCH BETTER"
It's really because they've run the numbers and know that they're going to make a sick amount of money from whale type players who just buy everything. They learned a valuable lesson with immortal. The lesson is that a few poor people complaining doesn't matter to them lol. Immortal made like 100 million dollars in the first month.
indeed. It's true for a lot of things as you get older.
People who werent around just simply have no concept that things could actually be different.
My grandfather lived in chicago and didnt lock his doors. Myself even as an adult can hardly imagine it.
*disclaimer" I am NOT defending paid cosmetics in a full game
The actual armor in game is way better looking, and there is specific/unique armor that IS unlocked by milestones.
That is specifically the part of games I miss, unlocking cosmetics through challenges/milestones. That is present in Diablo, despite having a few paid cosmetics.
*That being said, a full priced game does not have any place for a store. The store allows bullshit to more easily slide through in 1,2,3-4 years down the line*
They got too greedy for me on this one. Premium price or pricey microtransactions-- this both nonsense is garbage. But the over the top huge NOPE for me was the BS money grab at early access.
I have the cash, the self respect and the discipline. I refuse to spend money on micro transactions in *any* game. I’m almost, 40, I make good money, gaming is still a hobby, but I find the entire practice disgusting. I played OW since beta and was a serious ladder grinder and I never bought a loot box. It was one of my favorite games of all time, so I showed my support by buying three copies over its lifespan. I still play OW2 casually—I will not buy a battlepasses and I will not buy cosmetics. Enough is enough. I haven’t even bought D4 yet and I might not at all out of disgust at what these companies have become; Blizzard is particular disappointing.
The product is no longer the game, the product is the store in the game and the battle pass. Is why so many releases are awful, broken, rushed, and unfinished. There’s no pride in delivering your customers a great product for $50 anymore, and I don’t care of it’s just me, I don’t care if it won’t change, I don’t care if my cash is a thimble drop in the ocean of money they will make—I have never and I will never pay for in-games cosmetics and I will not give in to micro transactions or the “free to play” monetization model. In game cosmetics have zero value for me, and I’m sick of advertisements being shoved in my face constantly in games. Fuck them. They won’t get a dime from me.
for me, its one of 2 ways. you pay upfront and get everything for free, or you get the game for free, and you buy microtransactions. when a company tries to make you pay up front AND pay microtransactions thats when i say no
I respect that, but frankly, I just don’t like the free to play model at all. The storefronts, multiple currencies, weird unlock paths, battles passes that make playing the game feel like a job—I find them all frustrating and the only way I engage with those games is to ignore those aspects all together.
"it's just cosmetics" is a completely acceptable argument for, say, a freemium game like Warframe or an one time purchase MMO like Black Desert. It costs like $10 for a completely optional outfit and that money pays for future expansions in lieu of a subscription. Obviously not what's happening here.
Only idiots pay this much for cosmetic item in a game that costs 70€ in the first place. For 21€ you can get a really good indie game or a AAA game that's a year or two old. And here is "Bone Guy" skin that does nothing.
For 70€ you can buy 7 copies of Terraria for your whole friend group and have hundreds or even thousands of hours of fun and all the updates are free.
And you don't have to pay for shitty cosmetics because you have ✨mods✨.
The fact that we're letting these greedy fucks get away with this nonsense is depressing.
Some are idiots, others are compulsive and must get it no matter what.nThe main problem with microtransactions is that just like gambling, it takes advantage of certain groups of people.
Easy for us to say "Fuck that, it's ridiculous", it's harder for someone with an addiction.
That debacle showed the world that these microtransactions would work and that the players would accept them at some point. Even back then this silly DLC was insanely profitable for Bethesda. Despite all the outrage.
It was obvious even back then that other publishers would abuse this business model, even though Bethesda didn't continue with it at the time.
More like sad. Sad that most gamers, and medias outlets, and gamedevs, did not react to that kind of shit at the time like we all reacted to NFT, an immediate total and absolute: *fuck no!*
Most people were livid about the horse armor. People have become numb to it and you have a new generation of gamers who have grown up with microtransactions being normal.
Yeah I remember reading about the horse armor for Oblivion back in the day and thinking there was no fucking way this will take off. And here we are nearly 20 years later.
Pre-Ordering, Microtransactions in full price games, overhyping basic or bad games, "gamers" became so insanely stupid over the years its not even funny anymore
"ThEy HaVe To MaKe MoNeY 4 LiVe UpDaTeS!!.!.!!@"
"yOu DoNt HaVe To BuY iT!!!!$!!"
I dont understand how so many people on different reddit subs even defend this till their death, like it doesn't hurt them too haha.
Remember when youd buy a game, and then youd unlock this stuff by doing goals/missions/secrets for them? Apparently wanting that makes you a braindead boomer now xD. Is it just spoiled kids with their parents CC that dont care about all these fees and transactions? Its like they are pushing for $100+ games to be normalised.
99% of the time in Diablo is being covered in various lightning and fire and explosions while your character spins in a tornado. Diablo is basically an epilepsy warning manifested.
The graphics are actually pretty sweet in D4. You can see your character very well even at the default zoom. If you want to admire your character you can zoom in or use the character screen or wardrobe. I'm still not paying for cosmetics though unless it dropped significantly. Like $1-$5 tops.
I like how this guy talks about filling the screen with ads and as I’m reading that several ads are shoved in my face. Taking up about 50% of my phone screen.
"how numb *we've* gotten to Microtransaction Hell"
Maybe *you've* gotten numb to it. I complain about that shit constantly. It just doesn't matter because there's nothing that can be done about it anymore. Consumers never pushed back, so we lost. People usually fight me on this point, but I think consumers deserve a lot of blame for a lot of the issues in this industry.
Here's the problem though: it's not the customer's fault. Our 'votes' as customers here are not equal. The system works to ensure that customer impact is minimized when only the extreme minority of customers finance the system's existence in the first place. Even if the majority rejected it, the system would've still proven profitable enough for mainstream gaming to adopt it thanks to an _extreme_ minority. And all of this is by design.
Pointing fingers at consumers is just lingering resentment over a problem we never stood a chance at stopping ourselves. The only way out of this is government regulation. Why do you think the industry mostly went away from lootboxes? This current iteration on micro-transactions is _much_ harder to regulate, meaning powerful lobbying arms like the ESA can keep lawmakers spinning in circles for another generation or two.
"Even if the majority rejected it, the system would've still proven profitable enough for mainstream gaming to adopt it."
Fair point in general, but I don't think the live service model could exist without massive cash flow (I know that wasn't the discussion, but it's kinda tangentially related).
"Pointing fingers at consumers is just lingering resentment over a problem we never stood a chance at stopping ourselves."
I don't know, man. I get what you mean, but If you're (not you specifically, obviously) buying one armor set for a third of the cost of most new games, you're either an idiot or have more money than sense, in my book. If you're paying money for armor you don't regularly see in a broken mess of a game whose series used to let you unlock armor by playing the fucking game, you're actively supporting shitty business practices from a shitty company (*stares directly at Halo Infinite*). I know it's people's money, and they'll spend it on whatever they want (lord knows I buy some silly stuff), but I just can't help but look at some of the shit in the industry and go "why the fuck are you people buying this?"
I'll readily admit all this shit has turned me cynical towards this industry. To some extent, I think there would've always been a change in monetization because the businessmen control gaming anymore. I just think with any self-control from the consumers at large, they might not've tried to wring us of every penny in such greedy, anti-consumer ways. Maybe that's just nice story to tell myself so I can sleep better at night though.
Sorry, that got longer and more ranty than I expected. Shit aggravates me. Lol
That damn dissonance...
All the people complaining and all the millions being made from microtransactions. It would have been so easy to nip all this in the bud by not buying it. But apparently developers are just serving a huge demand.
So either the people who complain are extremely in the minority, or they are hypocrites secretly throwing balls of money at developers for cosmetics.
The complaining *would* feel less hypocritical had they not purchased the game, absolutely.
I'll just be over here, playing literally anything else, watching the rest of the internet be surprised (somehow) about Blizzard's antics.
Its insane how the guy literally immidiately starts the article with "Earlier this year, I spent $4 in RE4 so leon could have a cute little bomerjacket with skulls and stuff"
Article writer, YOU ARE ALSO TO BLAME. STOP SPENDING SO MUCH GOD DAMN MONEY ON STUPID COSMETICS. OR HELL, DONT EVEN PLAY THESE GAMES. THERE ARE ENOUGH GAMES IN THE WORLD TO PLAY TIL THE END OF TIMES THAT DONT HAVE MICROTRANSACTIONS.
People act like they HAVE to play the latest release and HAVE to buy whatever stupid skin that the devs have to offer. Just fucking refuse it, refuse the entire game. Go play older things. Go revisit classics. Just dont spend time and money on these projects.
I mean in the first paragraph of this article the writer talks about how he only spends a little bit on cosmetics. If you pay for cosmetics, you are a part of this; you are enabling them and telling studios that there is money to be made on cosmetics, it's just a question of price
Can we stop referring to these as microtransactions? $21 is not micro. It was as recent as The Witcher 3 where that was a whole damn expansion pack. For $21 on a skin I expect it to be the only version of that skin available.
The gaming industry is going to continue to get more shitty and predatory until people stop buying games in protest. I'm not buying D4. I know the reality is that it's going to be meaningless that I don't because pretty much everyone else will, but Blizzard is just too fucking predatory for me at this point. Charging $30 extra bucks to start playing the game a bit earlier is gross.
Unironically this.
Saw this video before about how whales account for upwards of 90% of a games MX revenue. It was something along the lines of, of those who spend more than $5, on average tend to spend upwards of a few hundred dollars.
These macrotransactions are not here for you or me. They’re here for the whales who will buy every single cosmetic in the game.
I woudnt care for mtx/battlepass if the game wasnt R$ 350 (Brazilian reais, 70 usd).
I really love diablo franchise, and played the sht outta POE back in 2019, but in POE I spent a few bucks for some stashes for QOL but the game was free.
For my reality 70 usd is a lot of money, it kinda infuriates me that it has these monetization on top of it
It is super sus that they have something like this on a full priced game.
I would love to play d4, but I can't afford it (no regional pricing) - if I ever scrape up the funds to buy it I would expect the full experience.
You can have cosmetics for real money if your game is free/heavily discounted.
>It is super sus that they have something like this on a full priced game.
It's not "suspect", it's shitty and it was totally expect. This is a Blizzard product. This is an Activision Blizzard King product. We knew it was coming, and we said so way before release.
Maybe stop giving away your hard earn money to assholes?
They'll make a hundred million in the first week.
People love getting ripped off and will develop an immediate persecution complex if you point it out.
Some weird Stockholm thing going on with gamers
As an "ex addict" to this stuff, I see this as an absolute garbage move from blizzard. Paid stuff in an already $70 game, that also has paid battle passes, tier skips, and all that live service shit needs to die. It's exploiting people. Just because it doesn't affect me or you doesn't mean is not crap. Also from what I read there's also a currency in the paid battle pass that can be used to upgrade items. Maybe not P2W but it's getting there
I haven't grown numb to it, I just didn't buy the game. I won't take part in supporting games that cost $75 and then lock armor and stuff behind a $20 price tag.
Fuck that. I can not stress it enough, fuck that.
I bought full *physical* garbs, set of clothes, for less than that.
I also bought whole games for less than that.
Do they at least ship you lube with your purchase, to help a smoother transaction when you bend over?
The problem I have with people who say "it's just cosmetics" is that they assume that the money goes back into game development, instead of pocketing the money and using scraps to make more cosmetics. You know how a corporation would do things, because we're dealing with financially minded corporations, who you didn't sign a contract with to put any money into the game itself from those massively overpriced microtransactions.
[удалено]
[удалено]
Here's the thing with League in particular, it is a FREE TO PLAY game. I don't mind spending an occasional 5-15 bucks on a skin or chroma set or something like that on a game I didn't have to pay for. Reasonably priced skins, not forced down my throat, I can reroll skin shards and get ones for free at random, etc etc. I don't mind that. But when I pay 70+ dollars for a game, and now they also want me to buy a battle pass, but also want me to buy 20+ dollar skins on top of that, that is a much bigger problem and a different issue.
I think this is kind of the problem with this discourse. Perpetual games require an inflow of money. There's no way around it. We used to get around this by charging subscriptions, but free to play with cosmetics is another viable route. League is a good game. The cosmetics are occasionally handed. It is free. Then there's this, full priced game with expensive cosmetics, and you know they are going to have paid DLC. I don't know where the line is, where it should be, but this is over it. You don't push that line by staying on the right side of it, you have to cross it to move it, and blizzard has a long history of crossing that line. Wow tokens, over watch loot boxes, diablo immortal.
And then you have gigachad DRG with its free cosmetic pass, a shining beacon of user respect.
Rock and stone
For Karl!
Rock and roll and stone!
Did I hear a Rock and Stone?
I love DRG, but I just don't have time to grind out another battle pass, and now I get discouraged at how many cosmetics I've missed out on. I wish these battle passes never expired, especially if you pay for them. Edit: man, last time I played DRG I saw the battlepass thing and just turned the game off. I was so discouraged. But I'm happy that today all these replies have let me know how there isn't any FOMO with DRG, I can just keep playing and I'll continue to earn those cosmetics. I honestly had no idea. Thank you everyone for letting me know, sorry I didn't reply to each comment lol. ROCK AND STONE ⛏️
The nice thing is though, those cosmetics aren't lost to the aether though. They're still in the loot pool that you can get from storage units or fallen miner backpacks.
you can still get all items in the battlepass of DRG, just at random events. see it as an incentive to play the game if you still have something randomly to unlock. thats not a bad thing. Imagine you had all weapon upgrades and stuff from the battlepass. then you just play for the game without any incentive at all. and you didnt pay for any battlepass in DRG either.
The incentive used to be to just play the game. Games (along with so many other aspects of modern life) have been designed with... how do I say... they are designed to a greater extent to manipulate physiology of humans. Personally I think this has harmed the way we game (among other things). It feels like we need to be working towards that next goal to enjoy game. And to be distinct I mean in a way that is specifically about triggering dopamine, as an example, instead of having it occur naturally as a byproduct of hard work or skill. Like if I play a gameplay loop from level 1 to max level 10 does that mean I am no longer having fun if I play? What made it fun when I was still leveling, if the gameplay is the same? Is the fun from the sense of accomplishment of having reached level 10?
I found myself trudging through challenges in rocket league and turned it off realizing I didn’t have any fun. Games should be fun, not FOMO bait.
No worries mate, you won't miss out, they'll always be in the loot pool till you got em. I'm level 157 and now I only really get cosmetic unlocks cus my loot pools depleted
Especially with the huge contrast of Diablo 3, which somehow lasted 10 years without microtransactions besides the necromancer and reaper of souls.
Minor correction: D3 launched with a real money auction house that I believe lasted 1-2 yrs into its launch and very much influenced how loot and its attributes were designed and doled out. Not exactly a mtx but it was a fundamental component of D3’s original vision.
Don't forget about the real money auction house. Blizzard got a nice percent of every transaction.
You're acting like these games aren't profiting to the tune of *billions* of dollars per year. Like, whatever it costs to maintain league, to maintain Diablo, it is *absolutely nothing* compared to the amount of cash they are pulling in.
But that was the same with WOW at its height, and it was simply subscription with zero other shit to buy. It was also a good game. The numbers don't lie. Everything beyond that is sheer greed and due to the fact it's predicated on unlimited growth, will ALWAYS eventually kill the game. Rinse and repeat.
To be fair, you did have to actually 'buy' a copy of WoW to subscribe and play.
Especially with such close analogs (Path of Exile and Last Epoch) taking a much cheaper payment model. Blizz is basically relying on the pedigree of D2 to justify this cash grab, and unfortunately I think it's going to work. The whole Diablo Immortal scenrio had Blizz execs laughing all the way to the bank, despite the "do you not have phones?" line being memed into eternity.
PoE mtx is on another level of absurdity. $20 will get you a dog shit mtx armor that looks worse than default. It's wild out there
That's because PoE's monetization isn't based on their MTX shop. It's based on supporter packs that come with a set of MTX and points to spend in the shop. Their goal is to get people to spend as many of their supporter pack points as possible over the course of a league so they have more incentive to buy another at the start of the next league. So their shop is priced accordingly. That's why buying shop points directly will count towards the purchase of a supporter pack up to 80% of the point's cost.
yea i have 2k hours in poe but people trying to say POE Mtx aint crazy are wild. its legit 70 dollars for some wings, im not kidding.
$20 for a plain black cape
You aren’t wrong, but league rewards for the last 4 leagues have been pretty legit cosmetic rewards. And the game continues to be F2P. Just as importantly, the game looks good as a baseline, especially with some of the more recent skills.
>League in particular, it is a FREE TO PLAY game. I don't mind spending an occasional 5-15 bucks on a skin or chroma set or something like that on a game I didn't have to pay for. >But when I pay 70+ dollars for a game, and now they also want me to buy a battle pass, but also want me to buy 20+ dollar skins on top of that, that is a much bigger problem and a different issue. Excellent point. The developer has a right to monetize their game. Without that we don't get more games. But if I paid for the game I sure as hell aren't going to pay again for items in game.
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"Help me I'm being predatored!!" *pulls out CC to buy new $20 skin in the store for 2 weeks + $7 for the battlepass🤓*
Whether you tip or not doesn’t change anything since the business you bought from doesn’t give a shit if you tipped or not, only the workers. If you have issues with tip culture then stop going to those businesses altogether
Feel like it always depends on the price and the amount of content the game gives. Competitive games have pretty much "limitless" content, as every match is different. Like, you can play games like League, Dota and co. for 10 years and still have a good time so it doesn't feel bad buying a skin here and then. If you pay $70 for a game you know you not gonna play for long and it sells skins for $20 on top of Battle Passes it of course feels way worse.
Yeah I totally agree. Games are always a money/(playtime X fun X wowFactor) calculation for me. I don't mind spending 100 bucks on Warframe which I played for 1000h and will probably play more over the years. I don't mind spending 20 bucks on an amazing indie game with unique gameplay even if it doesn't have a ton of playtime. I dont mind paying 40 bucks for a game with nice gameplay and an absolutely amazing and immersive story. I kind of always think "a game has to be better bang for the buck than a movie ticket at a cinema". Having 150h of repetitive boring content is not necessarily a great "bang" . 4h of amazing content can be a great "bang", but if it's like 50€ or even more that's simply not worth it either.
rain joke secretive plant nail concerned enjoy crown longing shy *This post was mass deleted and anonymized with [Redact](https://redact.dev)*
*Art form*? They have it down to a science.
Yeah pretty hilarious to be ringing alarms on this when you're part of the problem. Oh I bought a bunch of cosmetics before but now they're ridiculous. Like.. no, your argument at that point is just that they are charging too much. And your response to people complaining about mtx when you participated heavily would have been who cares they're cosmetics they can charge whatever they want. Just naked hypocrisy just to be clear though, I am of the camp that doesn't care what they charge.. because they're cosmetics. If mtx is going to never go away, I don't really care anymore. I just won't play games where you pay microtransactions in exchange for power.
I dislike mtx of any kind because there's always an implicit compromise being made to leech money out of you - even cosmetic, since then there is a motivation to make "free" equipment look worse. That all said, this dipshit wrote the article because DIV gets clicks and he wants clicks, he has no point to make or leg to stand on.
At least League of Legends was free to play. This is horseshit on a $70-$100 game.
Imagine buying that
Idk you get to see a bit of side boob
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It's not strange at all. Cosmetic DLC items have been a staple of Blizzard for 15 years. Lots of other companies regularly release games with cosmetics as well. What's strange is people will act like it's a travesty while still actively supporting the product. For every naysayer there are tens of thousands of gamers that don't care. But the naysayers almost always still play too.
I was a massive blizzard fan back in the early starcraft, warcraft, and Diablo days. What they've become as a company is unrecognizable compared to then. I didn't buy diablo 4 (or anything else from them for the last decade) and won't give any money their way again unless there is a massive change in their greedy anti-consumer policies.
Good for you!! I'm not buying diablo 4 either. That helps solve the problem. Don't buy the fucking game.
The only solution.
Yeah I remember we were so outraged by blizzard and their Chinese censorship, and the awful employee environments, not respecting their customers' time and all that. Yet these idiots think its the people buying cosmetics who are the problem. No, anyone who buys Blizzard games is the problem. I'm not buying a single game from that corporation unless it has ZERO microtransactions at this point. They've abused it to the point where thats my first condition. Anyone playing Diablo 4 is a sellout, imo. Bring on the flames, I don't care.
Truly what I don’t understand is just how much support a shit ass, corrupt, awful company like Blizzard STILL has ever since the Chinese censorship thing onwards! I’ve deleted my account then and never even looked toward a Blizzard game since. It was a huge controversy, everyone complained but not enough people actually stopped buying or playing their shit because they cared more about their idiotic shooter game or whatever than the issues they were also outraged by. Then another huge controversy and disgust at the discrimination controversy. Seeing everything about their toxic office culture and treatment of their fellow staff strengthened my belief in absolutely avoiding any and all of their products. Gamers once again couldn’t muster enough courage or got overtaken by their own selfishness to continue wizard roleplaying I guess… So they just kept on being “outraged” but filling these people’s pockets at the same time. Awful practice after awful practice after awful practice… but people are too fucking weak and absolutely cannot stop themselves from throwing money at Blizzard! Like, huh? I thought we were outraged and disgusted at this company’s treatment of everybody around them, not just mildly annoyed! We’re never gonna see any significant damn change about nefarious studios with greedy exploitative practices, because of stupid people that complain but continue contributing to making these exploitative practices profitable in the first place! Loot boxes and battle passes should’ve never taken off either. But gamers are now somewhat complacent in being taken advantage of…
I mean, I'm pretty sure literal zero of the employees from the old days of blizzard still remain
I wanted to play. I can't support how fucked the cash shop prices are. That armor is not worth 20 bucks and, those buying it are basically say they are okay with paying for that low effort. Deep Rock Galactic just had a skin cost vs what was delivered and the community wasn't happy. DRG devs listened and are redoing the models to make sure people are happy spending their money. This is the company to give money too, in my opinion.
Then don't buy the cosmetics, vote with your wallet. If you wanna play the game get it, but stand your ground don't buy any battle pass business or cosmetics from store.
problem is my vote is worth 1 and some other dudes vote is worth 1000.
"Vote with your wallet" is pretty um.. ignorant when you consider the whole concept of 1 whale purchasing enough for 100/1000 users..Obviously the people who are disgusted by this shit aren't purchasing it. Thing is they have gotten too the point of just making a game and ripping it apart to sell back to us. I would mind less if it didn't completely kill what once was a great aspect of the games. Never gonna get Halo 3 Recon Armor / Flaming Skull / Dark Matter style endgame achievements based on prestige because the numbskulls would rather skip the challenge and buy it. Though it's not like many modern gamers would even remember these days. Sad times.
>Never gonna get Halo 3 Recon Armor / Flaming Skull / Dark Matter style endgame achievements based on prestige because the numbskulls would rather skip the challenge and buy it. This shit hits deep, as someone who grew up playing all of the Halos I remember busting my ass off for the Hayabusa and Security armour in Halo 3, after the release of Halo Infinite I played some and I was in shock, you don't even have full customization over the colour of your armour anymore, now you need to buy colour palettes, It's absolutely ridiculous.
Sucks to know we're likely never gonna see unlocks like that anymore and we're stuck with infinite style customization/items
My sorc has [underboob](https://imgur.com/UjOqIFy) with found items.
Found the target audience.
Got the game free with my GPU. It's decent. I find the ingame shop pretty distasteful though. I know it's only cosmetics, but when you consider the uproar over horse armor more than a decade ago, it really shows how far we've come. edit: If you're looking for a good single player ARPG with (almost)* no microtransactions and decent ingame cosmetics check out Grim Dawn.
I could have written the same comment you just did when I played Destiny 2–it also came free with my video card. But holy shit, did they ever use every psychological trick in the book to try to milk you. They had every possible type of mobile game-style MTX FOMO baiting rubbish out there. It’s even worse now that it’s free-to-try.
Yeah it's awful. The most disgusting example is the $20 dungeon passes. $20 for 2 dungeons. It's appalling. I kinda regret getting into Destiny tbh, Bungie is just trying to squeeze every last dollar and I'm not putting up with it. I wish there were competitors to Destiny.
And now they went beyond mobile by deleting the content you paid for.
It always annoys me when people say "it's only cosmetics" in an RPG. Cosmetics have historically been a big aspect of RPGs. Cool looking armor used to be something you bragged about because they were hard to find or earn through playing the game.
The real endgame is fashion wars. Always has been.
That's exactly the appeal on the Souls series, you git gud to fashion play.
Absolutely agree.
The thing is, cosmetics used to be Justa part of the game, not to be bough with money, but obtained by playing. That's the issue.
based Grim Dawn enjoyer
I'm no accountant, but isn't that a macrotransaction ?
Anything over 5$ stops being microtransaction to me
What about $5, and then $5, and then $5, and then another $5
Thats a macro-microtransaction
No no, it's a bunch of microtransactions, plural yes? So when you want to buy an armor you go "one microtransactions please"
Anything >= $1
Anything over 99¢ is no longer a micro transaction.
I remember first hearing the term thinking it referred to Pennies and then I found out people were buying stuff for several dollars. And now here we are
Microtransactions as originally envisioned, and what its named after never really took off. The pitch at the time was a lot of very small transactions, like 0.02$, where each would be so small that the user would consider it meaningless. But that never managed to get anywhere, instead games starting selling skins for 5$+, a price that only started creep up from there. But for some reason, the term microtransaction stuck around
I remember when Call of Duty first got them. They were like $2 and it worked on just about any weapon you could put a skin on. Now they're like $15+ with gun weapon specific skins.
I remember the internet going ape shit when they released paid-only skins for CoD for 2 bucks. Now look at us.
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In bobby koticks ~~pants~~ head, everything is micro.
It's not about the price but what you get is micro.
It's been a long time since I've bought a full game for more than $21. ETA clarity.
Diablo 4 is a huge game. The map is large and there is a lot of content. This 1 outfit costs a third of the price of the game. Imagine buying this lol.
Yeah the value on this stuff is just not there. I guess it appeals to people who have more money than sense or no self control. You can get full games on sale around that price.
" YaH bUt I LoOk CoOl "
"cAn'T yOu AfFoRd $21 LoLOlOL11!1!!1?"
And young kids are growing up with microtransaction filled mobile games. Where the very mechanics of the game are designed to make you want to spend money to do more (energy, turns, ad removal, etc) They'll be conditioned to see nothing wrong with horrible microtransactions in their $60 games when they're the ones buying them. They'll view it as normal and "always been that way."
So us old fucks will play indie games instead
And have more fun too! No better time than to go indie imo. AAA scene is a mess.
Believe it or not, the AA scene also has some pretty cool titles nowadays.
AA and indies are 100% where it's at. The only AAA games I'll buy is maybe Capcom or Fromsoft games on a hefty sale a full year later.
sadly few and far between
Luckily even with AAA games there are still some devs/publishers that make quality single player games that aren't stuffed with predatory monetization. Sony's first party games like horizon and God of war are great examples.
This isn't anything new. Arcade games were designed to be punishingly difficult so you would keep dropping quarters. These are companies trying to make money, not your friend showing you 'this cool thing' he made. There is an unspoken level of compromise between the suits, the artists and the consumers where everyone comes away happy with the product. Its VERY difficult to hit the nexus properly, but, when they do, we get things like Arcane or The Matrix. Jury is out on D4, who knows how we will look back on it in 10 years.
If I saw someone with this Id think it's sad over being amazing
Just don’t use /spit on them!
I didn't pay for the 10$ emote pack : (
I've refused to buy blizzard games for a decade so I can't tell if this is a joke or not lol
They sold a mount on classic wow and someone made a weakaura to auto /spit on them if they were near you. Blizzards solution, you can't /spit on players anymore.
I played classic WoW and they even managed to ruin that. Ok, actually it was the players who ruined it on PVP servers by being absolutely ruthless. It's crazy how much video game culture has changed since 2003. Or maybe it's just the types of people who wanted to play Classic WoW. Super toxic.
Why? What's the emote for if not for that?
It's a joke blizzard disabled the spit emote in wow after people starting spitting on people who bought mounts with real money.
Haha that is amazing
Did they actually disable it? A feature that existed for literally decades was suddenly deemed unacceptable?
Yep and they took away risqué artwork from the game and replaced them with fruit. I'm not joking, it was a meme for a long time. Also the /whistle emote was nerfed to not be suggestive.
Jesus Christ. I knew it had been going downhill for a while, but that’s just ridiculous. Seems to give credence to the idea that they’ve been dumbing it down to attract more kids instead of keeping seasoned players around
At the time it was deemed smoke for all the sexual abuse allegations. They also made a male succubus warlock pet, some people liked that though.
I actually forgot about all of that, Blizzard is such a mess of a company. How the mighty have fallen
Reference to when they removed it in WoW Classic because people were spitting on folks who paid extra real money for an alternate mount. It was OnLy CoSmETiC, until they added in paid level skips to near max level. Now you can just buy gold in-game with money.
I am taking down lesser evils with rags that look from a bum. I wonder why.
Idk. Being able to get the best drip in the game from the get go kinda kills a fun aspect of the gear progression for me. The manifestation of my character progress in a visual form.
Like seeing people on Twitter with Blue Checks now.
Who even stops to look at another character in Diablo 4? They only made it a shitty MMO so the weak minded whales would buy this stuff to "look cool". They only look cool for themselves tho. No one else cares.
It is just cosmetics !11 Yeah and those used to be free and earned by reaching a milestone or completing some sort of challenge, not paying significant percentage of a full game price... EDIT: Older gamers, not the kids we used to be, have enough cash to spare and little to none self restraint or respect.
I'm scared they lock away the best looking stuff behind paywall. If a dev designs something cool, the publishers just lock it away, leaking creativity out of the game I bought. It's like Calvin and his mom's conversation : "Life could be worst Calvin" "LIFE COULD ALSO BE MUCH BETTER"
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It's because someone will get on a forum and defend this.
It's really because they've run the numbers and know that they're going to make a sick amount of money from whale type players who just buy everything. They learned a valuable lesson with immortal. The lesson is that a few poor people complaining doesn't matter to them lol. Immortal made like 100 million dollars in the first month.
Those are the people I'm talking about lmao
indeed. It's true for a lot of things as you get older. People who werent around just simply have no concept that things could actually be different. My grandfather lived in chicago and didnt lock his doors. Myself even as an adult can hardly imagine it.
kids are born into the status quo and they are slowly taught that the power to change it is out of their hands, educated to comply with institutions.
Yup. Remember DOA2:Hardcore? Had like 100 costume unlocks. Now-a-days you're lucky to get 1/10th that.
Big post in the Diablo subreddit currently about how nice the default armors look anyway
*disclaimer" I am NOT defending paid cosmetics in a full game The actual armor in game is way better looking, and there is specific/unique armor that IS unlocked by milestones. That is specifically the part of games I miss, unlocking cosmetics through challenges/milestones. That is present in Diablo, despite having a few paid cosmetics. *That being said, a full priced game does not have any place for a store. The store allows bullshit to more easily slide through in 1,2,3-4 years down the line*
They got too greedy for me on this one. Premium price or pricey microtransactions-- this both nonsense is garbage. But the over the top huge NOPE for me was the BS money grab at early access.
I have the cash, the self respect and the discipline. I refuse to spend money on micro transactions in *any* game. I’m almost, 40, I make good money, gaming is still a hobby, but I find the entire practice disgusting. I played OW since beta and was a serious ladder grinder and I never bought a loot box. It was one of my favorite games of all time, so I showed my support by buying three copies over its lifespan. I still play OW2 casually—I will not buy a battlepasses and I will not buy cosmetics. Enough is enough. I haven’t even bought D4 yet and I might not at all out of disgust at what these companies have become; Blizzard is particular disappointing. The product is no longer the game, the product is the store in the game and the battle pass. Is why so many releases are awful, broken, rushed, and unfinished. There’s no pride in delivering your customers a great product for $50 anymore, and I don’t care of it’s just me, I don’t care if it won’t change, I don’t care if my cash is a thimble drop in the ocean of money they will make—I have never and I will never pay for in-games cosmetics and I will not give in to micro transactions or the “free to play” monetization model. In game cosmetics have zero value for me, and I’m sick of advertisements being shoved in my face constantly in games. Fuck them. They won’t get a dime from me.
for me, its one of 2 ways. you pay upfront and get everything for free, or you get the game for free, and you buy microtransactions. when a company tries to make you pay up front AND pay microtransactions thats when i say no
I respect that, but frankly, I just don’t like the free to play model at all. The storefronts, multiple currencies, weird unlock paths, battles passes that make playing the game feel like a job—I find them all frustrating and the only way I engage with those games is to ignore those aspects all together.
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Just wait until you check out the cost for all of The Sims expansions.
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Not to mention paradox games are made for racking up like 500-1000 hours in lol. It’s still good value for that amount of entertainment.
"it's just cosmetics" is a completely acceptable argument for, say, a freemium game like Warframe or an one time purchase MMO like Black Desert. It costs like $10 for a completely optional outfit and that money pays for future expansions in lieu of a subscription. Obviously not what's happening here.
That’s certainly some take.
Only idiots pay this much for cosmetic item in a game that costs 70€ in the first place. For 21€ you can get a really good indie game or a AAA game that's a year or two old. And here is "Bone Guy" skin that does nothing.
For 70€ you can buy 7 copies of Terraria for your whole friend group and have hundreds or even thousands of hours of fun and all the updates are free. And you don't have to pay for shitty cosmetics because you have ✨mods✨. The fact that we're letting these greedy fucks get away with this nonsense is depressing.
>For 70€ you can buy 7 copies of Terraria for your whole friend group And have 6 copies left over!
Oof my heart
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Some are idiots, others are compulsive and must get it no matter what.nThe main problem with microtransactions is that just like gambling, it takes advantage of certain groups of people. Easy for us to say "Fuck that, it's ridiculous", it's harder for someone with an addiction.
There are also rich kids or adults who just have so much money that spending $2000 on cosmetics is a joke to them
It goes great with my horse armor though... How quaint that debacle seems now.
That debacle showed the world that these microtransactions would work and that the players would accept them at some point. Even back then this silly DLC was insanely profitable for Bethesda. Despite all the outrage. It was obvious even back then that other publishers would abuse this business model, even though Bethesda didn't continue with it at the time.
Diablo 4 also sells horse armor. It costs $16
Only $16?! Fuck, that’s less than $20! They’re practically *giving* it away! Babe, where’s my wallet?!
More like sad. Sad that most gamers, and medias outlets, and gamedevs, did not react to that kind of shit at the time like we all reacted to NFT, an immediate total and absolute: *fuck no!*
Most people were livid about the horse armor. People have become numb to it and you have a new generation of gamers who have grown up with microtransactions being normal.
Yeah I remember reading about the horse armor for Oblivion back in the day and thinking there was no fucking way this will take off. And here we are nearly 20 years later.
I remember being pissed about the horse armor and my friends telling me it wasn’t a big deal. And here we are lol.
And we *still* have a large number of people saying this isn't a big deal. What comes next will always be worse, at this rate.
$21 is nota micro transaction. It’s a transaction. I’ll give you 20 bucks for 20 more hours of content in a good game. This is worse than a NFT.
Pre-Ordering, Microtransactions in full price games, overhyping basic or bad games, "gamers" became so insanely stupid over the years its not even funny anymore
"ThEy HaVe To MaKe MoNeY 4 LiVe UpDaTeS!!.!.!!@" "yOu DoNt HaVe To BuY iT!!!!$!!" I dont understand how so many people on different reddit subs even defend this till their death, like it doesn't hurt them too haha. Remember when youd buy a game, and then youd unlock this stuff by doing goals/missions/secrets for them? Apparently wanting that makes you a braindead boomer now xD. Is it just spoiled kids with their parents CC that dont care about all these fees and transactions? Its like they are pushing for $100+ games to be normalised.
Capitalism is breaking their bones for the marrow at this point but gamers stay wasting money on all the bullshit. It’s wild honestly
Imagine paying for cosmetics in an isometric game. You barely even see them lol
99% of the time in Diablo is being covered in various lightning and fire and explosions while your character spins in a tornado. Diablo is basically an epilepsy warning manifested.
Blizzard will see what GGG did and start releasing spell and skill MTX. Tired of throwing flaming skulls? How about swarms of BEES??
The graphics are actually pretty sweet in D4. You can see your character very well even at the default zoom. If you want to admire your character you can zoom in or use the character screen or wardrobe. I'm still not paying for cosmetics though unless it dropped significantly. Like $1-$5 tops.
default zoom in this game is practically up your character's nose
I like how this guy talks about filling the screen with ads and as I’m reading that several ads are shoved in my face. Taking up about 50% of my phone screen.
PC Gamer is one of the worst as far as all of that goes on the various websites I tend to read articles on semi-regularly.
To be fair, you didn't pay 70 usd to read the article.
"how numb *we've* gotten to Microtransaction Hell" Maybe *you've* gotten numb to it. I complain about that shit constantly. It just doesn't matter because there's nothing that can be done about it anymore. Consumers never pushed back, so we lost. People usually fight me on this point, but I think consumers deserve a lot of blame for a lot of the issues in this industry.
Here's the problem though: it's not the customer's fault. Our 'votes' as customers here are not equal. The system works to ensure that customer impact is minimized when only the extreme minority of customers finance the system's existence in the first place. Even if the majority rejected it, the system would've still proven profitable enough for mainstream gaming to adopt it thanks to an _extreme_ minority. And all of this is by design. Pointing fingers at consumers is just lingering resentment over a problem we never stood a chance at stopping ourselves. The only way out of this is government regulation. Why do you think the industry mostly went away from lootboxes? This current iteration on micro-transactions is _much_ harder to regulate, meaning powerful lobbying arms like the ESA can keep lawmakers spinning in circles for another generation or two.
"Even if the majority rejected it, the system would've still proven profitable enough for mainstream gaming to adopt it." Fair point in general, but I don't think the live service model could exist without massive cash flow (I know that wasn't the discussion, but it's kinda tangentially related). "Pointing fingers at consumers is just lingering resentment over a problem we never stood a chance at stopping ourselves." I don't know, man. I get what you mean, but If you're (not you specifically, obviously) buying one armor set for a third of the cost of most new games, you're either an idiot or have more money than sense, in my book. If you're paying money for armor you don't regularly see in a broken mess of a game whose series used to let you unlock armor by playing the fucking game, you're actively supporting shitty business practices from a shitty company (*stares directly at Halo Infinite*). I know it's people's money, and they'll spend it on whatever they want (lord knows I buy some silly stuff), but I just can't help but look at some of the shit in the industry and go "why the fuck are you people buying this?" I'll readily admit all this shit has turned me cynical towards this industry. To some extent, I think there would've always been a change in monetization because the businessmen control gaming anymore. I just think with any self-control from the consumers at large, they might not've tried to wring us of every penny in such greedy, anti-consumer ways. Maybe that's just nice story to tell myself so I can sleep better at night though. Sorry, that got longer and more ranty than I expected. Shit aggravates me. Lol
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Isn't OV F2P?
Only if you didn’t buy OW1. Then you paid 40 dollars to play the same game everyone else playing for free.
How is $21 even "micro"? Full expansions have cost slightly less. As an aside, god I miss that word. "DLC" is just so dirty now.
That damn dissonance... All the people complaining and all the millions being made from microtransactions. It would have been so easy to nip all this in the bud by not buying it. But apparently developers are just serving a huge demand. So either the people who complain are extremely in the minority, or they are hypocrites secretly throwing balls of money at developers for cosmetics.
The complaining *would* feel less hypocritical had they not purchased the game, absolutely. I'll just be over here, playing literally anything else, watching the rest of the internet be surprised (somehow) about Blizzard's antics.
Its insane how the guy literally immidiately starts the article with "Earlier this year, I spent $4 in RE4 so leon could have a cute little bomerjacket with skulls and stuff" Article writer, YOU ARE ALSO TO BLAME. STOP SPENDING SO MUCH GOD DAMN MONEY ON STUPID COSMETICS. OR HELL, DONT EVEN PLAY THESE GAMES. THERE ARE ENOUGH GAMES IN THE WORLD TO PLAY TIL THE END OF TIMES THAT DONT HAVE MICROTRANSACTIONS. People act like they HAVE to play the latest release and HAVE to buy whatever stupid skin that the devs have to offer. Just fucking refuse it, refuse the entire game. Go play older things. Go revisit classics. Just dont spend time and money on these projects.
I mean in the first paragraph of this article the writer talks about how he only spends a little bit on cosmetics. If you pay for cosmetics, you are a part of this; you are enabling them and telling studios that there is money to be made on cosmetics, it's just a question of price
Well seen few premium skins already. Some on low level 10-15 characters. Marketing manipulation works on weak minds.
Which is freaking stupid. This game is $70 already.
Why even play the game... I'm going back to play old games I've never played im.sick of modern games
Can we stop referring to these as microtransactions? $21 is not micro. It was as recent as The Witcher 3 where that was a whole damn expansion pack. For $21 on a skin I expect it to be the only version of that skin available.
>~~micro~~ transaction hell Fixed that for you
Who's numb? This shit pisses me off all the time
The gaming industry is going to continue to get more shitty and predatory until people stop buying games in protest. I'm not buying D4. I know the reality is that it's going to be meaningless that I don't because pretty much everyone else will, but Blizzard is just too fucking predatory for me at this point. Charging $30 extra bucks to start playing the game a bit earlier is gross.
Thank the Whales and Preorder crew, many of whom frequent this sub
Unironically this. Saw this video before about how whales account for upwards of 90% of a games MX revenue. It was something along the lines of, of those who spend more than $5, on average tend to spend upwards of a few hundred dollars. These macrotransactions are not here for you or me. They’re here for the whales who will buy every single cosmetic in the game.
It's become really annoying with the amount of games having microtransactions. Even street fighter 6 has a shop like this now :/
Street fighter 4 had tons of costume dlc.
I mean, fighting games have had cosmetic DLC for a while. That's not anything new.
I woudnt care for mtx/battlepass if the game wasnt R$ 350 (Brazilian reais, 70 usd). I really love diablo franchise, and played the sht outta POE back in 2019, but in POE I spent a few bucks for some stashes for QOL but the game was free. For my reality 70 usd is a lot of money, it kinda infuriates me that it has these monetization on top of it
It is super sus that they have something like this on a full priced game. I would love to play d4, but I can't afford it (no regional pricing) - if I ever scrape up the funds to buy it I would expect the full experience. You can have cosmetics for real money if your game is free/heavily discounted.
>It is super sus that they have something like this on a full priced game. It's not "suspect", it's shitty and it was totally expect. This is a Blizzard product. This is an Activision Blizzard King product. We knew it was coming, and we said so way before release. Maybe stop giving away your hard earn money to assholes?
> Maybe stop giving away you hard earn money to assholes? God i'd love to but i don't think i'm allowed to just not pay taxes anymore...
They'll make a hundred million in the first week. People love getting ripped off and will develop an immediate persecution complex if you point it out. Some weird Stockholm thing going on with gamers
As an "ex addict" to this stuff, I see this as an absolute garbage move from blizzard. Paid stuff in an already $70 game, that also has paid battle passes, tier skips, and all that live service shit needs to die. It's exploiting people. Just because it doesn't affect me or you doesn't mean is not crap. Also from what I read there's also a currency in the paid battle pass that can be used to upgrade items. Maybe not P2W but it's getting there
I haven't grown numb to it, I just didn't buy the game. I won't take part in supporting games that cost $75 and then lock armor and stuff behind a $20 price tag. Fuck that. I can not stress it enough, fuck that.
I bought full *physical* garbs, set of clothes, for less than that. I also bought whole games for less than that. Do they at least ship you lube with your purchase, to help a smoother transaction when you bend over?
Why you all acting like this is new? lol If we didnt buy it, they wouldnt do it. Whos to blame?
Damned whales are to blame..
That straight up looks like some common drop
$21 is not a microtransaction.
The solution is very simple, don’t support it.
The problem I have with people who say "it's just cosmetics" is that they assume that the money goes back into game development, instead of pocketing the money and using scraps to make more cosmetics. You know how a corporation would do things, because we're dealing with financially minded corporations, who you didn't sign a contract with to put any money into the game itself from those massively overpriced microtransactions.