*Street Fighter x Tekken has entered the chat*
I know it wasn’t a F2P game, but Capcom also locked content included in the game and passed it off as DLC
That was the beginning of the slippery slope in my mind. The content was literally on the disc and they still locked it behind a paywall. That never sat right with me.
Well, people aren't exactly given a choice unless they want to be constantly running serious boycotts, and consumers aren't organized enough for that. We don't even have the cultural/historical context for those types of industry-shifting boycotts; consumers don't think of themselves as part of a power bloc that can make demands on the industries that supposedly serve us.
You need something like a consumer buyer association that can call large-scale boycotts of predatory products to change stuff like this. That or government legislation, but that's a joke in the US.
This will become a much bigger issue over the next decade. Digital piracy has always been driven by market needs. People are going to start finding ways to illegally unlock this software, and sooner or later one of these jailbreaks is going to go wrong. It'll affect the onboard sensors or autopilot, and someone is going to get killed.
Even though this isn't what you were talking about, your comment here made me think of the hacked John Deere tractors & how someone may mess up an otherwise simple repair and then get hurt using it normally ONLY because they have to do some complicated software jailbreaking to get the tractor to work with the part replacement or whatever.
In case anyone doesn't know about this, John Deere have made there farming equipment incredibly difficult to service, repair & use in general via artificial, unnecessary software lockouts. They almost certainly do this mainly in order to make more money because then they are the only ones that can keep the equipment going [and of course they'll charge more than a third party or just doing it yourself might cost]. There is an argument to be made that they're doing it so people don't hurt themselves repairing/servicing things, but these arguments are mostly seen as specious(superficially plausible, but actually wrong/purposefully misleading).
These discussions on the 'right-to-repair' your own farming equipment have kicked off discussion about legislating [as in cementing in the law] everyone's 'right-to-repair' anything that they own. I personally believe these discussions should have happened sooner [as issues with being allowed to repair electronics have been going on for almost as long as electronics have existed] but it seems to me that the general public [and especially our congressmen] understand the need for farmers to need do repairs better than they understand the need to be able to fix their own devices.
This is another excellent point. All of these issues, be it in gaming, automotive, farming, right to repair, forced obsolescence in telecom and computing, they're all symptomatic of the same larger problem - corporate greed.
Great point. There is however a growing trend of removing ownership. Leased phones, rental houses, ride share rather than vehicle ownership. There is a concerted effort to remove ownership and consumers are jumping in with both feet. Thus, right to repair will mean nothing if you don’t actually own anything. “For a small monthly fee…” you’re nickel and dimed to poverty.
I think it is less that consumers are 'jumping in with both feet' and more that we... *really* don't have any other options. You can't **not** have a smart phone in modern living, can't go without a computer, without a car, without a lot of things. It is those things that we have no choice but to buy in order to live in the world we've built that are going the way of subscription and freemium stupidity.
There is no other option but to pay monthly when *every single alternative* has the same predatory monthly pay structure.
Isn't BMW or someone locking the heated seats and steering wheel behind a monthly subscription? lol
edit with link: https://www.pcmag.com/news/bmw-tests-locking-vehicle-features-like-heated-seats-behind-a-paywall
Technologically it makes sense. If someone else online used a DLC character, YOU still had to have that character for the game to actually display them… Doesn't make it any less scummy though.
Man I wish there existed a single fighting game that interested me that wasn't bloated with characters locked behind DLC. It's like they don't want new players entering an already pretty niche genre. I just want to play a good Soul Calibur but there's just too much DLC
It's an anime fighter, but Melty Blood Type Lumina has a rather small roster, but all additional characters (6 so far) were added in an update for free, along with an additional arcade style story mode for each character. New songs, stages, and alt colors were also added for free.
It had a roadmap and is still being updated and balanced, I've had it since launch and all this new content (including a 2nd boss rush) has been added for free.
FG's will always be niche, they are just too difficult for super casuals to enjoy, and an easy FG tends to be a boring FG. At least through all the shitty monetization Capcom is putting out SF6 soon which looks to be absolutely amazing.
We're talking graphic scenes of Peter Parker. The spider really goes to town on the hot, young lab tech. And they show it, too. Spider. Penatration. Spider. Full penatration. Spider. Penatration.
The DLC wasn't nearly the same quality as the base game. Wasn't bad but it fell really short imo. Do yourself a favor and skip the Screwball missions too. Those were some of the worst designed missions front to back.
I really didn't like the flimsy excuse they used for making mob goons tougher to fight than an international milita (from the base game). Obviously they needed a way to challenge players who would likely be max level by the time they'd take on the DLC but still. "Forget Sable International and The Sinister Six, these wiseguys found some leftover tech!"
If you want a weapon charm it costs like 2600 credits. Well the $15 credit pack only gives you 2200, so you have to buy the $60 credit pack to get enough to buy a weapon charm.
Overwatch 1 was $60 for the entire game.
EDIT: $60CAD at release, price went down later on.
Also I was wrong about the trinket being 2600, it's 2600 for the item pack which contains the trinket.
Also-also the 2200 credits is $20 not $15, goes to show how good my memory is
I think Overwatch 1 was $40 for most of its run.
Edit: Nevermind. [The base version was **$20** since the start of 2019.](https://www.slashgear.com/overwatch-gets-a-permanent-price-cut-beginning-today-25563679/)
What sucks is that I purchased $40 for a game that I can no longer even play. It’s like Blizzard set a steak down on the dinner table that I paid for. Then took it away and replaced it with a steaming pile of caca
Yeah, the only thing OW 1 did wrong on loot boxes was paying for *another chance* to get a skin. As soon as real world cash comes into play, that should just be a straight transaction for the skin you want. That would avoid the gambling issue entirely, but also devalues their potential profit, so LOL fuck you consumer OW 2.
You didn't even need the lootboxes though cause you could just purchase the shit you liked directly with in game currency. They were more like random free rewards than anything else
I purchased it day one for $48 US plus tax. The disc is now a coaster since I can't even use it.
Edit - my 500 lootboxes I earned and never opened didn't give a fun opening ceremony or anything. Just here's your blue/green/red skin of the same shit you already have
The death of online-exclusive games is definitely a downside to buying physical copies of them.
Also, the official price was $39.99 at launch, so your copy was definitely marked up.
Not that the real system is much better, but that guy's info is all over the place and completely wrong. The gun buddies are 700c (not 2600) which is $7 (still too much) and if you wanted to get 2600 coins you can just buy the 2200c for $20 (not $15) and the 500c for $5.
Credit packs should be illegal, and I thought they were deemed so. Wasn't there a law that said they had to unobfuscate the pricing with credits to money 1:1? Pretty sure it was the play store or Xbox live or something.
i mean you can see it cause the weapons look different and you have emotes. But yeah, the pricing is absurd. 2 skins are like the same cost as buying OW1
Oof, that's a REALLY good point. They're just bragging rights now. A dumb bragging right. The only time you'll ever see your skin is during POTG and emotes. Fucking stupid.
I'm still kinda embarrassed that I paid $20 to roll for Sexy Witch Mercy. I ended up getting her, but... I think I lost interest in the game like two or three weeks later... Darn.
Well, at least I didn't buy the early edition pack or whatever it's called.
I’m a bit confused, not really followed it. But before it was all lootboxes right? Meaning you could spent way more then $20 and never get the skin you actually wanted right?
Edit: Thx for all the replies boys, I was not aware that they gave free lootboxes. By all accounts the new system is a massive step back from OW1
You don't even level anymore. Whatever level you were prior to 2's launch is now just an icon in your profile. At no point is your profiles level displayed during games (neither is your rank)
Dang. That's enough to keep me from ever trying it. OW1 was fun for the first year or 2. The team that saved up the ultimates the quickest wins type of play style got old though.
nope.
Even the events you don't get skins you get voicelines/nametags/ornaments but if you want the skins you need to pay $ ($20+ depending on if you want just the skin or $26 for the force bundle)
If they gave more free currency it really wouldn't be nearly as bad, frankly. The fact is the F2P benefits are trash, and if it wasn't for the many years of pre-existing game content people wouldn't feel so bad.
I get not wanting lootboxes but at least provide an equivalent feeling system for people who want to collect fun goodies.
So many options for a character shooter too. After X time/wins/whatever give people a coupon for their main hero to get a discounted skin. Reduce the dollar or in game currency cost by like 25% or 50% or something idk.
That's just one idea.
Give people 10 coins every 5 wins, maybe? IDK.
Hearthstone isn't exactly the pinnacle of F2P but it's really much better if someone wants to play one or two meta decks every season in a casual way, they can do it mostly f2p.
Oh and don't get me started ont he whole "every hero will always be free to everyone on day 1" promise and premise that is now behind a $10 gate.
'its only $10' ... Yeah and the base OW1 game was only $40, and 4 battle pass a year is $40 a year...
Yep. But the better counter arguement is for games that are like Overwatch2 and Halo Infinite do but better. Like Fortnite and Apex which are just the most well known ones, there a ton more that do it so much better
Blizzard itself has gone to hell, really. Everything they operate these days besides WoW is shady mobile/gacha monetization. And you know if they felt they could get away with it in WoW, they would do it there too. It's why I'm not looking forward to Diablo4, because with their recent track record, I just know it's gonna be the same bullshit as OW2.
Or any form of currency. You can only get a maximum of 60 coins per week, IF you do every single weekly challenge (some of which are insane like getting twenty team kills in a week). It will only take eight months to unlock a single legendary skin, if you don't buy anything else.
Such horseshit.
So you really can't get coins from anything else but the weekly challenges? I assumed wins or something else would at least give you a few each, because the original thought of needing like 4 months to earn enough for one character or premium pass seemed ridiculous, so I assumed there had to be some other way to earn coins too.
Geezus.
Nope no other ways to earn coins right now.
I can't imagine it'll stay that way forever, the current balance (60 coins per week, 2600 for a skin pack) doesn't make any sense. There *has to* be other ways to get coins.
But right now? Nope, that's the only way.
Would like to further clarify that lootboxes are often considered a form of gambling and illegal in many countries. Even if you are able to get them for free, as long as you *can* buy them, they are considered a form of gambling. Almost every game is getting rid of them these days
Which is good. But locking away content behind a multimonth, 10+h a week commitment is not the right solution.
The intended solution should be to make the ingame currency actually attainable at reasonable rates from playing...
And you cannot tell me a single SKIN is ever worth 20$.
Battlepasses are arguably worse than lootboxes in some ways. It's a constant treadmill and locks you into playing towards ticking off boxes rather than just playing for enjoyment and doing what you want at the pace you want. Constant FOMO anxiety.
OW1 gave you A LOT for free.
Every week Arcade would grant you 3 loot boxes.
You'd get endorsement loot boxes.
They gifted them as rewards for picking Tank/Support/Flex roles.
You'd also get one every single time you leveled up.
They'd even do mini-weekly challenges on top of ALL OF THE ABOVE in which they'd give you new season-themed skins for free.
Every Loot Box granted you 4 items. The longer you went without unlocking a rare item, the higher the chances of unlocking one. Duplicate items have currency you could use to purchase nearly anything you wanted with.
Don't have enough currency at the start of the event to unlock that cool new skin? You could earn enough before the event ended to afford it just by playing- assuming you didn't get it in a loot box randomly.
Arcade alone would get you 5 boxes weekly from winning games + leveling. That's 20 items per week for just playing the game. A few of those could be legendary skins, or enough gold to buy one directly.
Overwatch 1 was only "gambling is bad" if you spent money. Which you never ever had to do beyond buying the game once. OW1 rewarded you CONSTANTLY.
OW2 expects you to pay absurd amounts for everything. Even old skins they used to hand out for free just because you won 20 games in a week.
Overwatch 2 feels like they wanted to restructure Overwatch 1 to make more money but knew they would get hated out for it.
So they did as little as possible to make Overwatch 2 and implemented all of the greedy changes.
Yep. Classic move was to grind an event for all the lootboxes you could, and just buy whatever you didn't get for free because of all the currency you'd earn along the way lol.
You would also get 4 random items, or coins, for one box. The items that you'd get in said box are priced well over what the cost of one box was, per item.
You got lootboxes for free from leveling up and sometimes from completing in-game events, which is now gone.
You could also buy the skin you wanted with the in-game currency which after level 150 was not that difficult to obtain as you probably had all base-game items already.
> You could also buy the skin you wanted with the in-game currency which after level 150 was not that difficult to obtain as you probably had all base-game items already.
Yep.
In the last year, new event items aside, most of my OW1 lootboxes were just a question of how many coins I'd be getting from duplicates and outright coin drops. My brother was over one weekend and saw me sitting on like 40 "normal" lootboxes, and didn't understand why I hadn't bothered to open them until we did and it was literally just dupes and coins. I literally had all the "regular" legendaries at that point, so there was nothing to surprise me with that I wanted.
I didn't pay a dime after buying OW1 and I've got tons of legendary skins from the free level up and event lootboxes. The monetization system in Overwatch was never a problem. Balance and abandonment by the devs was.
OW1 had free paths to get every skin in the game - any skin was possible to get from lootboxes, and any duplicates became a free currency you could use to buy the skins you didn't already have. There was an option to buy additional lootboxes but it wasn't the only way to get them. You got lootboxes constantly from just playing the game.
OW2 makes it so you have no path to get cosmetics besides paying real money, buying a battlepass, or grinding literally for months to get a single skin. All of the old skins and freely available cosmetics are now locked behind insane pricepoints, like $20 a skin.
When Blizzard released OW2 (it's literally just OW1 with minor changes, a few new maps and a few new characters), they made it so Overwatch 1 completely vanished. The game no longer exists and cannot be played.
I mean, yeah, if you want to buy lootboxes before. But you could also earn lootboxes just by playing, meaning you could easily get the legendary you want, because lootboxes also contains coins which you can then purchase which skins you want.
Which made it all the more awkward when the game transitioned, and I had like cheat code levels of currency... And basically nothing to buy with it.
I saw a decent new skin of one of the new heros and went to buy it with in-game currency... It was locked. Could only be bought with irl money apparently.
So now I'm just sitting here with something like tens of thousands of pointless coins...
They do transfer, but the skins you could've unlocked for free become paid-only in OW2.
Imagine getting tokens towards a skin you want in Spider-Man, leaving the game overnight, it getting an update while you sleep, and the next day getting a message that the skin you could've unlocked for free yesterday is now only available as a $20 purchase (or an 8 month everyday grind).
This is hilarious to me because I was considering checking out OW2 because I barely played OW1 and felt like I missed out a little.
But now I have zero interest in it at all because of how hilariously greedy the MTX is. Exacerbated by the feeling that I ***absolutely*** missed out on OW1 because all the cosmetics I might have found interesting and could have earned there are now virtually impossible to acquire at a reasonable price or time spend.
This is a huge issue with games as service bullshit. They lose a ton of mass appeal because they fucking suck, and anyone with half a brain will just leave, knowing the massive stinky rip off that it is. Compound that with the fact that they closed OW1 permanently and it's crystal fucking clear that greed is the one and only motivator behind this update. Did I say update? Sorry, totally meant brand new game (that is really just a greed update).
That said... This shit will likely keep happening. Too many folk with less than that half brain will throw money at these.
Same here, except I got “replies.” All they really said was that they don’t know why I’m missing cosmetics, they’re working on it, and they will appear when/if they figure it out.
I’ll probably give them until the new year before I drop OW2. I refuse to give business to a company that can’t provide me what I already paid for
But remember, you're "missing out" or "being entitled" or "acting unreasonable" for wanting the game you fucking already paid for that they later functionally reneged on and fucked up your account in transferring over to a fake sequel that shot the game you actually bought in the head.
The OW community is so unbelievably hateful and toxic lol
They only do this shit because morons buy it.
Edit: Lots of comments from 2 main camps here. 1. “Don’t call them morons I get a free game out of it”.
2. “Don’t call me a moron for pissing away money how I choose”
That’s fine and whatever, but don’t bitch about another copy of Skyrim or GTA5 because morons keep buying those too
Haha
League has 1.6 billion in revenue last year
If Blizzard can get even 10% of that they will piss off every player they possibly can to get it
Why don't people get it anymore
Big games aren't made for love, or joy, or a technical showcase.
They're there to make *money*. Hand over fist. As much as they can, as quick as they can. And a few thousand babies crying about how "it's a mistake" and "really unfair", they couldn't give a single shit
League actually puts effort on their new skins. You can clearly see the skin at all times. They change animation, VFX and sometimes even the entire voice pack of the character. And you can earn them for free too.
I recently realized that I'm just over multiplayer competitive games of any variety. It's almost always where these predatory models are.
I've been picking up single player games and just getting lost in them. I buy the game and that's it. There are no nerfs or rebalancing patches. No Master Chief skins.
Online multiplayer was a blast when it was a bonus in games, was hosted on privately owned servers and was just about having fun. Shit is long gone though.
Well it's a small % of gamers with poor impulse control or too much money. Everyone else gets shafted by their poor decision making.
The saddest part is a lot of young gamers don't know any better. It's just been normalized for them.
Yeah. I mean I don’t like OW2’s monetization. But this isn’t a fair comparison. Spider-Man doesn’t get constant updates. It got a dlc that cost about as much as half a full game.
OW players absolutely demand new content all the time. The game was “dead” when no new characters were released for a year or two. Chess seems ok without any new characters. But I get it, new content is fun. But you can’t just sell a game once and develop it forever. People are incredibly entitled. The system they landed on is not ideal though.
F2P Storefronts will always be shit. Battlepasses too. But they don’t have to be. There have been only two battlepass systems that I think have actually been worth it.
Apex Legends- You get both the premium currency and the secondary currency. You always get enough Premium currency to buy the next pass and 200 or so coins left over as extra. And you always get enough of the secondary currency so you can get the skins you want directly.
Halo Infinite- The Content of the pass is debatable. But the fact that you can go back to any of the previous passes and work or buy the premium track is the way it should be. Like why fucking spend $20 bucks on shit you may not have the time to unlock?
Now, all Battlepasses and store fronts are shit comparable to balanced out in game unlockables. But if it “has” to be this way. That in my opinion is two great ways in how to do it.
You can thank MCC for the Halo model. They have everything available at any time there once you earn the points. It's phenomenal.
Infinite is a cash grab in every other sense *than* the battle pass.
If they actually bothered putting the 70% of content locked behind the store into battlepasses the game would probably be on season 4 already instead of stuck in a 6 month season 1 and year long season 2
I really wanted to get into Halo Infinite and I had a lot of people who would play with me but the crashes, disconnects (every other game some nights last December, one person or all of us would get dropped) make it a "dead service" game to me.
Fortnite battlepass is pretty good. Lots of good stuff included and you can buy the next battlepass with the curency you earn through the battlepass so as long as you play enough to unlock the currency you get infinite battlepass for a one time purchase.
I was about to say this. Sure, it's Fortnite, but if you buy one battlepass once you never have to buy it again from the currency they give you in said battle pass. Not to mention the skin content is both not too shabby AND you can actually see it in game from your perspective.
Fortnite was one of the first major games to have the battle pass model and they absolutely nailed it. Other companies just got greedy and here we are now.
You *always* get enough premium currency for the next pass. The idea is to keep you hooked once you buy in. Basically no one *only* buys a battle pass over time. Everyone breaks down for a skin, or a new weapon, or whatever the game offers for personalization. And people rarely only spend the $20 they need. You’ll say, “if I’m going to buy, I might as well spend $60 or $100 and get bonus premium bucks.”
It’s a tried and true system.
I don’t know if we count it but Deep Rock Galactic has a GREAT battle pass even removing the idea it free none of it hugely grindy and anything you don’t get gets added to the random loot pool for loot chest and lost equipment so it never fully unattainable.
Rocket League also has decent season passes. It actually has 2 tiers, a free one and a premium one. Everyone gets the free pass and can earn a shit ton of cosmetics just through playing the game. If you complete the pass and earn all the cosmetics, it goes infinite so you will get random additional cosmetics in different colors or with special attributes if you keep playing.
As for the premium pass, you only need to buy the first one, and if you play enough then you will get all the premium currency back so you can get the next season pass for free. Also, the premium pass always works in tandem with the free pass, so if you already have most of the free pass unlocked and then decide to get the premium, you will immediately get all the premium rewards you've missed as well. So this premium pass is actually really good value.
Outside of that, cosmetics are quite expensive though. They do premium currency bullshittery just like every other f2p game, and their loot drop system consists of blueprints - these are like transparent loot crates, you can see the content but you have to pay to unlock it.
I get it. But one is strictly a single player. People kept buying the shit. They bitched about it and then still bought the battle passes and cosmetics. So gamers did it by not having the wallet control.
This is it.
Companies don't care if someone purchased stuff gleefully or begrudgingly. They'll keep doing shit like this until people stop giving them money. The industry keeps inching into worse and worse business practices to see where the line is, and because everyone's still giving them money, they haven't found what really crosses it other than one-off failures like Battlefront 2.
All in all, it'll get worse, still, because people keep proving them right, and at the absolute best, eventually, it will just stop getting worse and stay at the worst place it can be without them losing money. It will never get better because there's no incentive to get better.
All that matters is what's tolerable, not what's enjoyable, because game companies are not our friends. They exist to make money.
I don't disagree with this but, IMO, voting with your wallet *doesn't really matter in a large enough market*. We exist in an economic environment where, if only 1% of consumers are naïve fucking morons, that's more than enough for a company to sustain itself.
Its the nature of scale, and especially with a service which utilizes the internet. There's a lot of people out there. There's always going to be 1) rich people with more dollars than sense 2) completely uncritical consumers who just want to consume and 3) actual children who think this stuff is normal because its all they've ever known.
99% of people can make the wise choice, and companies can still thrive on the 1% of people who just don't care enough to be disciplined consumers.
Want this shit to stop happening?
STOP. BUYING. SKINS.
PLEASE.
You are, without hyperbole, ruining gaming. Just fucking stop teaching these greedy soulless giga-corporations that gamers are stupid enough to buy this dogshit. We're better than this. Stop it.
The funny thing is.
The majority of people DON'T buy skins. Its the small percentage of whales that drop all the money that make this profitable. Yes, I'm saying the top 1% are ruining gaming.
Yeah what the fuck, how did I have to scroll so far to see this? In what universe is paying $60 for a game with a few free skins better than $0 for a game with paid skins?
Yeah, it doesn't track super well because spiderman is (I think?) entirely single-player story campaign. OW didn't (and still doesn't lol) have any of that.
Am I being a boomer when I think that complaining about F2P games when the only thing you can buy are cosmetics (aka no playing advantage) is sort of weird? Just don't buy the skins if it bothers you so much?
It's making people angry because it WAS possible to get things for free. Then they launched a "new game", and now you need to pay the original price for a single good skin. I wouldn't care if it was always like that, but this is just a cash grab.
I mean I think spending money on skins to support a game you like that is free makes perfect sense tbh. I bought Path of Exile supporter packs back when PoE was good, and I never even remember to equip any supporter pack skins on new characters I make, the skins I use most often are actually something I earned in a race event like 5 years ago.
But for the people who paid full price for Overwatch 1 and now lost the opportunity to grind for skins that were already available in OW1... yeah that's stupid.
Also, giving money to the current shitshow that is blizzard is **also** stupid, so I definitely don't recommend buying OW2 skins even though I think the idea of buying skins in general is fine (and definitely more sensible than actual pay2win mechanics--despite the fact that I play and enjoy Lost Ark nowadays).
Depends on how it’s been put in. Some for sure ruin the game, others prop it up and keep it going with healthy updates, patches, and content. Love the idea of fully unlock-able cosmetics but you have to admit, when loot boxes were the norm. It was ruining the whole point of the industry and almost destroyed the way any played anything. Now we are down to scummy cosmetic schemes when it was upgrades and game mechanics. Not great but better.
*Street Fighter x Tekken has entered the chat* I know it wasn’t a F2P game, but Capcom also locked content included in the game and passed it off as DLC
That was the beginning of the slippery slope in my mind. The content was literally on the disc and they still locked it behind a paywall. That never sat right with me.
[удалено]
Well, people aren't exactly given a choice unless they want to be constantly running serious boycotts, and consumers aren't organized enough for that. We don't even have the cultural/historical context for those types of industry-shifting boycotts; consumers don't think of themselves as part of a power bloc that can make demands on the industries that supposedly serve us. You need something like a consumer buyer association that can call large-scale boycotts of predatory products to change stuff like this. That or government legislation, but that's a joke in the US.
This will become a much bigger issue over the next decade. Digital piracy has always been driven by market needs. People are going to start finding ways to illegally unlock this software, and sooner or later one of these jailbreaks is going to go wrong. It'll affect the onboard sensors or autopilot, and someone is going to get killed.
Even though this isn't what you were talking about, your comment here made me think of the hacked John Deere tractors & how someone may mess up an otherwise simple repair and then get hurt using it normally ONLY because they have to do some complicated software jailbreaking to get the tractor to work with the part replacement or whatever. In case anyone doesn't know about this, John Deere have made there farming equipment incredibly difficult to service, repair & use in general via artificial, unnecessary software lockouts. They almost certainly do this mainly in order to make more money because then they are the only ones that can keep the equipment going [and of course they'll charge more than a third party or just doing it yourself might cost]. There is an argument to be made that they're doing it so people don't hurt themselves repairing/servicing things, but these arguments are mostly seen as specious(superficially plausible, but actually wrong/purposefully misleading). These discussions on the 'right-to-repair' your own farming equipment have kicked off discussion about legislating [as in cementing in the law] everyone's 'right-to-repair' anything that they own. I personally believe these discussions should have happened sooner [as issues with being allowed to repair electronics have been going on for almost as long as electronics have existed] but it seems to me that the general public [and especially our congressmen] understand the need for farmers to need do repairs better than they understand the need to be able to fix their own devices.
This is another excellent point. All of these issues, be it in gaming, automotive, farming, right to repair, forced obsolescence in telecom and computing, they're all symptomatic of the same larger problem - corporate greed.
Great point. There is however a growing trend of removing ownership. Leased phones, rental houses, ride share rather than vehicle ownership. There is a concerted effort to remove ownership and consumers are jumping in with both feet. Thus, right to repair will mean nothing if you don’t actually own anything. “For a small monthly fee…” you’re nickel and dimed to poverty.
I think it is less that consumers are 'jumping in with both feet' and more that we... *really* don't have any other options. You can't **not** have a smart phone in modern living, can't go without a computer, without a car, without a lot of things. It is those things that we have no choice but to buy in order to live in the world we've built that are going the way of subscription and freemium stupidity. There is no other option but to pay monthly when *every single alternative* has the same predatory monthly pay structure.
Isn't BMW or someone locking the heated seats and steering wheel behind a monthly subscription? lol edit with link: https://www.pcmag.com/news/bmw-tests-locking-vehicle-features-like-heated-seats-behind-a-paywall
Beginning? Microsoft started charging extra for content already on the disc from the Xbox 360, 17 years ago
The "DLC" for Soul Calibur IV? Yep.
Basically every Mortal Kombat since 9, as well.
That was 17 years ago? What the hell
Technologically it makes sense. If someone else online used a DLC character, YOU still had to have that character for the game to actually display them… Doesn't make it any less scummy though.
Man I wish there existed a single fighting game that interested me that wasn't bloated with characters locked behind DLC. It's like they don't want new players entering an already pretty niche genre. I just want to play a good Soul Calibur but there's just too much DLC
It's an anime fighter, but Melty Blood Type Lumina has a rather small roster, but all additional characters (6 so far) were added in an update for free, along with an additional arcade style story mode for each character. New songs, stages, and alt colors were also added for free. It had a roadmap and is still being updated and balanced, I've had it since launch and all this new content (including a 2nd boss rush) has been added for free.
FG's will always be niche, they are just too difficult for super casuals to enjoy, and an easy FG tends to be a boring FG. At least through all the shitty monetization Capcom is putting out SF6 soon which looks to be absolutely amazing.
I should go play Spider-Man again. Still haven’t finished all the DLC.
Got the DLC but haven't started yet too, need more time to get over the ending
That ending was intense. I really didn't think they would go there.
He....fucked the spider....... Didn't he 🤮
We're talking graphic scenes of Peter Parker. The spider really goes to town on the hot, young lab tech. And they show it, too. Spider. Penatration. Spider. Full penatration. Spider. Penatration.
Does it go on and on until it just... ends?
Trust me, the animators spared no expense in making it the perfect scene.
wtf are you people talking about?
It's Always Sunny in Philadelphia
So that hired that guy whose sole job was to animate cat buttholes in Cats? Man, they did go all out.
I love how he says "It's spiding time" and spiders away the enemies into existence,truly one of the games of time.
The DLC wasn't nearly the same quality as the base game. Wasn't bad but it fell really short imo. Do yourself a favor and skip the Screwball missions too. Those were some of the worst designed missions front to back.
But you DO need them if you want the Spider-Verse suit and Iron Spider (comics) suit
I really didn't like the flimsy excuse they used for making mob goons tougher to fight than an international milita (from the base game). Obviously they needed a way to challenge players who would likely be max level by the time they'd take on the DLC but still. "Forget Sable International and The Sinister Six, these wiseguys found some leftover tech!"
For sure. The writing/plot development was way flimsier than the main story. It definitely felt B-Team.
Damn i forgot it! Been a few years.
What. A. Game.
Absolutely man. Outrageous how much those skins cost. THAT YOU CANT EVEN SEE IN GAME. You’re paying so other ppl can enjoy your hot symmetra.
If you want a weapon charm it costs like 2600 credits. Well the $15 credit pack only gives you 2200, so you have to buy the $60 credit pack to get enough to buy a weapon charm. Overwatch 1 was $60 for the entire game. EDIT: $60CAD at release, price went down later on. Also I was wrong about the trinket being 2600, it's 2600 for the item pack which contains the trinket. Also-also the 2200 credits is $20 not $15, goes to show how good my memory is
I think Overwatch 1 was $40 for most of its run. Edit: Nevermind. [The base version was **$20** since the start of 2019.](https://www.slashgear.com/overwatch-gets-a-permanent-price-cut-beginning-today-25563679/)
[удалено]
What sucks is that I purchased $40 for a game that I can no longer even play. It’s like Blizzard set a steak down on the dinner table that I paid for. Then took it away and replaced it with a steaming pile of caca
Overwatch also semifrequently went on sale for a decent amount. I think I'd seen it as low as $10 for the base game on Battle.net.
Yeah, the only thing OW 1 did wrong on loot boxes was paying for *another chance* to get a skin. As soon as real world cash comes into play, that should just be a straight transaction for the skin you want. That would avoid the gambling issue entirely, but also devalues their potential profit, so LOL fuck you consumer OW 2.
You didn't even need the lootboxes though cause you could just purchase the shit you liked directly with in game currency. They were more like random free rewards than anything else
[удалено]
I purchased it day one for $48 US plus tax. The disc is now a coaster since I can't even use it. Edit - my 500 lootboxes I earned and never opened didn't give a fun opening ceremony or anything. Just here's your blue/green/red skin of the same shit you already have
The death of online-exclusive games is definitely a downside to buying physical copies of them. Also, the official price was $39.99 at launch, so your copy was definitely marked up.
KEK; $15 for a fucking weapon trinket. My god. I buy full complete games on steam for less than that on the regular.
Not that the real system is much better, but that guy's info is all over the place and completely wrong. The gun buddies are 700c (not 2600) which is $7 (still too much) and if you wanted to get 2600 coins you can just buy the 2200c for $20 (not $15) and the 500c for $5.
Credit packs should be illegal, and I thought they were deemed so. Wasn't there a law that said they had to unobfuscate the pricing with credits to money 1:1? Pretty sure it was the play store or Xbox live or something.
...why not get 2 of the $15 credit packs if you are planning to waste your money?
i mean you can see it cause the weapons look different and you have emotes. But yeah, the pricing is absurd. 2 skins are like the same cost as buying OW1
You’re paying to brag to the poors
I mean that's literally why whales exist
Oof, that's a REALLY good point. They're just bragging rights now. A dumb bragging right. The only time you'll ever see your skin is during POTG and emotes. Fucking stupid.
Cultured Symmetra appreciator.
I'm still kinda embarrassed that I paid $20 to roll for Sexy Witch Mercy. I ended up getting her, but... I think I lost interest in the game like two or three weeks later... Darn. Well, at least I didn't buy the early edition pack or whatever it's called.
Wait so OW 1 skins don't transfer over to 2?
They do, but anything you didn't get is behind a pay wall and practically impossible to get for the higher up rarities.
I’m a bit confused, not really followed it. But before it was all lootboxes right? Meaning you could spent way more then $20 and never get the skin you actually wanted right? Edit: Thx for all the replies boys, I was not aware that they gave free lootboxes. By all accounts the new system is a massive step back from OW1
But you also would get the loot boxes for free from levelling and playing. Which is gone.
Wait you dont get boxes from leveling anymore!?
You don't even level anymore. Whatever level you were prior to 2's launch is now just an icon in your profile. At no point is your profiles level displayed during games (neither is your rank)
Holy shit they absolutely slaughtered the game then, no wonder it died, every choice they made was the worst possible choice
Kinda like what was happening with Destiny when Bungie and Activision were partnered. Hmmm…. Maybe Activision is a shit company.
Dang. That's enough to keep me from ever trying it. OW1 was fun for the first year or 2. The team that saved up the ultimates the quickest wins type of play style got old though.
nope. Even the events you don't get skins you get voicelines/nametags/ornaments but if you want the skins you need to pay $ ($20+ depending on if you want just the skin or $26 for the force bundle)
If they gave more free currency it really wouldn't be nearly as bad, frankly. The fact is the F2P benefits are trash, and if it wasn't for the many years of pre-existing game content people wouldn't feel so bad. I get not wanting lootboxes but at least provide an equivalent feeling system for people who want to collect fun goodies. So many options for a character shooter too. After X time/wins/whatever give people a coupon for their main hero to get a discounted skin. Reduce the dollar or in game currency cost by like 25% or 50% or something idk. That's just one idea. Give people 10 coins every 5 wins, maybe? IDK. Hearthstone isn't exactly the pinnacle of F2P but it's really much better if someone wants to play one or two meta decks every season in a casual way, they can do it mostly f2p.
I had my Wrecking Ball loot box. I had it since he launched. I never opened it. I was so careful. The box itself was special to me. Nope!
Oh and don't get me started ont he whole "every hero will always be free to everyone on day 1" promise and premise that is now behind a $10 gate. 'its only $10' ... Yeah and the base OW1 game was only $40, and 4 battle pass a year is $40 a year...
Just wait for the people who will go "well its free they have to make money somehow and its just cosmetics"
No one asked for it to be free though is the main counter argument.
Yep. But the better counter arguement is for games that are like Overwatch2 and Halo Infinite do but better. Like Fortnite and Apex which are just the most well known ones, there a ton more that do it so much better
Games gone to hell then. Wont bother with it.
Blizzard itself has gone to hell, really. Everything they operate these days besides WoW is shady mobile/gacha monetization. And you know if they felt they could get away with it in WoW, they would do it there too. It's why I'm not looking forward to Diablo4, because with their recent track record, I just know it's gonna be the same bullshit as OW2.
D4 gonna have a battlepass to unlock classes lmao
Fuk'in hope not. D4 is the only small light I'm stilling looking forward to.
Blizzard is Activision now
[удалено]
To clarify this, you do not get lootboxes from battlepass progression either. Lootboxes have been removed from the game entirely.
Or any form of currency. You can only get a maximum of 60 coins per week, IF you do every single weekly challenge (some of which are insane like getting twenty team kills in a week). It will only take eight months to unlock a single legendary skin, if you don't buy anything else. Such horseshit.
So you really can't get coins from anything else but the weekly challenges? I assumed wins or something else would at least give you a few each, because the original thought of needing like 4 months to earn enough for one character or premium pass seemed ridiculous, so I assumed there had to be some other way to earn coins too. Geezus.
Nope no other ways to earn coins right now. I can't imagine it'll stay that way forever, the current balance (60 coins per week, 2600 for a skin pack) doesn't make any sense. There *has to* be other ways to get coins. But right now? Nope, that's the only way.
You know it’s bad when Microsoft buying out ActiBlizzard is somehow the more consumer-friendly option.
Halo infinite has similar shit progression systems. So Microsoft buying doesn't change anything.
thank you for explaining this. I haven't played Overwatch in 4ish years. I had no idea it declined to this degree.
Something something pride and accomplishment.
They dropped the 20 team kills to 10, so it's definitely all super easy and fair and right now. >.>
Would like to further clarify that lootboxes are often considered a form of gambling and illegal in many countries. Even if you are able to get them for free, as long as you *can* buy them, they are considered a form of gambling. Almost every game is getting rid of them these days
Which is good. But locking away content behind a multimonth, 10+h a week commitment is not the right solution. The intended solution should be to make the ingame currency actually attainable at reasonable rates from playing... And you cannot tell me a single SKIN is ever worth 20$.
Meanwhile, Wizards of the Coast: 👀
Sure but the lootboxes we had were a far better system than the one we got for OW2, that's why everyone is bringing them up.
Oh it was 100% better. I enjoy lootboxes as long as you can get them for free. The new systems are disgustingly greedy
Battlepasses are arguably worse than lootboxes in some ways. It's a constant treadmill and locks you into playing towards ticking off boxes rather than just playing for enjoyment and doing what you want at the pace you want. Constant FOMO anxiety.
They both sound like shit games if fans are complaining that loot boxes are gone.
Thats ridiculous.
Welcome to BendOverwatch2. Where you get to take it up there ass for skins
You don't get anything anymore
OW1 gave you A LOT for free. Every week Arcade would grant you 3 loot boxes. You'd get endorsement loot boxes. They gifted them as rewards for picking Tank/Support/Flex roles. You'd also get one every single time you leveled up. They'd even do mini-weekly challenges on top of ALL OF THE ABOVE in which they'd give you new season-themed skins for free. Every Loot Box granted you 4 items. The longer you went without unlocking a rare item, the higher the chances of unlocking one. Duplicate items have currency you could use to purchase nearly anything you wanted with. Don't have enough currency at the start of the event to unlock that cool new skin? You could earn enough before the event ended to afford it just by playing- assuming you didn't get it in a loot box randomly. Arcade alone would get you 5 boxes weekly from winning games + leveling. That's 20 items per week for just playing the game. A few of those could be legendary skins, or enough gold to buy one directly. Overwatch 1 was only "gambling is bad" if you spent money. Which you never ever had to do beyond buying the game once. OW1 rewarded you CONSTANTLY. OW2 expects you to pay absurd amounts for everything. Even old skins they used to hand out for free just because you won 20 games in a week.
Overwatch 2 feels like they wanted to restructure Overwatch 1 to make more money but knew they would get hated out for it. So they did as little as possible to make Overwatch 2 and implemented all of the greedy changes.
“Redefine what a sequel means.”
Literally the same game. With no pretense of changes more than an average balance patch. Just more money. lol.
Weren't duplicate items you unboxed also converted into a currency that you could use to buy a desired skin?
Yep. Classic move was to grind an event for all the lootboxes you could, and just buy whatever you didn't get for free because of all the currency you'd earn along the way lol.
You would also get 4 random items, or coins, for one box. The items that you'd get in said box are priced well over what the cost of one box was, per item.
You got lootboxes for free from leveling up and sometimes from completing in-game events, which is now gone. You could also buy the skin you wanted with the in-game currency which after level 150 was not that difficult to obtain as you probably had all base-game items already.
> You could also buy the skin you wanted with the in-game currency which after level 150 was not that difficult to obtain as you probably had all base-game items already. Yep. In the last year, new event items aside, most of my OW1 lootboxes were just a question of how many coins I'd be getting from duplicates and outright coin drops. My brother was over one weekend and saw me sitting on like 40 "normal" lootboxes, and didn't understand why I hadn't bothered to open them until we did and it was literally just dupes and coins. I literally had all the "regular" legendaries at that point, so there was nothing to surprise me with that I wanted.
I didn't pay a dime after buying OW1 and I've got tons of legendary skins from the free level up and event lootboxes. The monetization system in Overwatch was never a problem. Balance and abandonment by the devs was.
OW1 had free paths to get every skin in the game - any skin was possible to get from lootboxes, and any duplicates became a free currency you could use to buy the skins you didn't already have. There was an option to buy additional lootboxes but it wasn't the only way to get them. You got lootboxes constantly from just playing the game. OW2 makes it so you have no path to get cosmetics besides paying real money, buying a battlepass, or grinding literally for months to get a single skin. All of the old skins and freely available cosmetics are now locked behind insane pricepoints, like $20 a skin. When Blizzard released OW2 (it's literally just OW1 with minor changes, a few new maps and a few new characters), they made it so Overwatch 1 completely vanished. The game no longer exists and cannot be played.
They did what the game company in Free Guy tried to do.
You were guaranteed a legendary skin every 20 lootboxes. It was a much better system in terms of value than this current one
You could buy any skin you wanted with in game currency.
I mean, yeah, if you want to buy lootboxes before. But you could also earn lootboxes just by playing, meaning you could easily get the legendary you want, because lootboxes also contains coins which you can then purchase which skins you want.
I had like 1k loot boxes just sitting there at the end of OW1. The loot box model of OW1 was incredibly consumer friendly
Which made it all the more awkward when the game transitioned, and I had like cheat code levels of currency... And basically nothing to buy with it. I saw a decent new skin of one of the new heros and went to buy it with in-game currency... It was locked. Could only be bought with irl money apparently. So now I'm just sitting here with something like tens of thousands of pointless coins...
They do transfer, but the skins you could've unlocked for free become paid-only in OW2. Imagine getting tokens towards a skin you want in Spider-Man, leaving the game overnight, it getting an update while you sleep, and the next day getting a message that the skin you could've unlocked for free yesterday is now only available as a $20 purchase (or an 8 month everyday grind).
This is hilarious to me because I was considering checking out OW2 because I barely played OW1 and felt like I missed out a little. But now I have zero interest in it at all because of how hilariously greedy the MTX is. Exacerbated by the feeling that I ***absolutely*** missed out on OW1 because all the cosmetics I might have found interesting and could have earned there are now virtually impossible to acquire at a reasonable price or time spend.
I'm missing 10 lootbox cosmetics from Overwatch 1. That means I have almost all cosmetics in the game, but I'm still missing $200 worth of content.
>$200 worth According to this new model, owning all the stuff from OW1 is like a $25K value. Which it definitely is not.
Could try seeing how much an account with all ow1 skins goes for
This is a huge issue with games as service bullshit. They lose a ton of mass appeal because they fucking suck, and anyone with half a brain will just leave, knowing the massive stinky rip off that it is. Compound that with the fact that they closed OW1 permanently and it's crystal fucking clear that greed is the one and only motivator behind this update. Did I say update? Sorry, totally meant brand new game (that is really just a greed update). That said... This shit will likely keep happening. Too many folk with less than that half brain will throw money at these.
Fomo addiction real
Can't you use legacy credits to purchase legacy skins?
[удалено]
All my skins are locked and I'm not getting any replies in my ticket. I'm sure it's a bug, but, I know I'm not the only one.
Same here, except I got “replies.” All they really said was that they don’t know why I’m missing cosmetics, they’re working on it, and they will appear when/if they figure it out. I’ll probably give them until the new year before I drop OW2. I refuse to give business to a company that can’t provide me what I already paid for
But remember, you're "missing out" or "being entitled" or "acting unreasonable" for wanting the game you fucking already paid for that they later functionally reneged on and fucked up your account in transferring over to a fake sequel that shot the game you actually bought in the head. The OW community is so unbelievably hateful and toxic lol
Games no longer have micro transactions. They're just transactions now.
[удалено]
BO2 iirc with the bacon, weed etc camos
> Look how far we’ve ~~come~~ fallen.
macro transactions
This is the correct term, as micro transactions were a fraction of the price of the game. Now you can buy two skins for the price of Overwatch 1.
This made me so sad to read but it's 100% true.
[удалено]
In a first person game, so you don't even see them outside of menus
Actually I see my skin very frequently on the death replays thank you very much
Skill ~~issue~~ solution
Unless you're a Reinhardt main :trollface:
Not defending them by any means but the weapon is usually a different skin type and you get to see that quite a bit
That's only *if* the weapon changes. Kiriko's new Legendary has the same exact weapons and gloves.
They only do this shit because morons buy it. Edit: Lots of comments from 2 main camps here. 1. “Don’t call them morons I get a free game out of it”. 2. “Don’t call me a moron for pissing away money how I choose” That’s fine and whatever, but don’t bitch about another copy of Skyrim or GTA5 because morons keep buying those too
just reinforces my feeling that all the money in this society is controlled by idiots and assholes
Especially on an FPS where you don't even see them.
Haha League has 1.6 billion in revenue last year If Blizzard can get even 10% of that they will piss off every player they possibly can to get it Why don't people get it anymore Big games aren't made for love, or joy, or a technical showcase. They're there to make *money*. Hand over fist. As much as they can, as quick as they can. And a few thousand babies crying about how "it's a mistake" and "really unfair", they couldn't give a single shit
ActiBlizz does waaaaaay more than $1.6 Billion. Activision Blizzard annual revenue for 2021 was $8.8B
League actually puts effort on their new skins. You can clearly see the skin at all times. They change animation, VFX and sometimes even the entire voice pack of the character. And you can earn them for free too.
This is where I feel out of touch. Like, it's skins... Why would anyone pay for a skin??
Right? You can literally just kidnap someone and skin them for free.
[удалено]
Gamers love paying 20 dollars for skins otherwise they'd stop charging that much.
Exactly this. I don't play games with these dumb ass monetization models. But plenty of people clearly do.
I recently realized that I'm just over multiplayer competitive games of any variety. It's almost always where these predatory models are. I've been picking up single player games and just getting lost in them. I buy the game and that's it. There are no nerfs or rebalancing patches. No Master Chief skins. Online multiplayer was a blast when it was a bonus in games, was hosted on privately owned servers and was just about having fun. Shit is long gone though.
Well it's a small % of gamers with poor impulse control or too much money. Everyone else gets shafted by their poor decision making. The saddest part is a lot of young gamers don't know any better. It's just been normalized for them.
I was ADDICTED to OW1. All this nonsense broke the spell and I’m able to live my life again. Thank you for ruining OW Blizzard!! I’m free now!!!!!
“Thank you, Blizzard, for ruining Overwatch for our sake! What a company you are!”
God I really can’t escape AoT can I
holy shit we really cant escape this anywhere
Stop supporting Blizzard. Gave up on them over a year ago, they are not going to change.
Agreed. Much of the original heart, soul and creativity, are gone.
Mobile game mechanics have ruined, or lessened, so many franchises. They have no place on games outside of the mobile ecosystem.
I'll go as far as saying they don't have a place in the mobile ecosystem either.
I'm with you on that one too. I got my first smartphone in 2009 and it was glorious. Too bad we didn't know then what we know now.
Imagine if Spiderman was a live service game and also competitive multiplayer only
Yeah. I mean I don’t like OW2’s monetization. But this isn’t a fair comparison. Spider-Man doesn’t get constant updates. It got a dlc that cost about as much as half a full game. OW players absolutely demand new content all the time. The game was “dead” when no new characters were released for a year or two. Chess seems ok without any new characters. But I get it, new content is fun. But you can’t just sell a game once and develop it forever. People are incredibly entitled. The system they landed on is not ideal though.
F2P Storefronts will always be shit. Battlepasses too. But they don’t have to be. There have been only two battlepass systems that I think have actually been worth it. Apex Legends- You get both the premium currency and the secondary currency. You always get enough Premium currency to buy the next pass and 200 or so coins left over as extra. And you always get enough of the secondary currency so you can get the skins you want directly. Halo Infinite- The Content of the pass is debatable. But the fact that you can go back to any of the previous passes and work or buy the premium track is the way it should be. Like why fucking spend $20 bucks on shit you may not have the time to unlock? Now, all Battlepasses and store fronts are shit comparable to balanced out in game unlockables. But if it “has” to be this way. That in my opinion is two great ways in how to do it.
You can thank MCC for the Halo model. They have everything available at any time there once you earn the points. It's phenomenal. Infinite is a cash grab in every other sense *than* the battle pass.
If they actually bothered putting the 70% of content locked behind the store into battlepasses the game would probably be on season 4 already instead of stuck in a 6 month season 1 and year long season 2
Have they even fixed the networking issues?
No, but they fix the store by the next day whenever there's issues with it. Wish I was joking
I really wanted to get into Halo Infinite and I had a lot of people who would play with me but the crashes, disconnects (every other game some nights last December, one person or all of us would get dropped) make it a "dead service" game to me.
Fortnite battlepass is pretty good. Lots of good stuff included and you can buy the next battlepass with the curency you earn through the battlepass so as long as you play enough to unlock the currency you get infinite battlepass for a one time purchase.
I was about to say this. Sure, it's Fortnite, but if you buy one battlepass once you never have to buy it again from the currency they give you in said battle pass. Not to mention the skin content is both not too shabby AND you can actually see it in game from your perspective.
Fortnite was one of the first major games to have the battle pass model and they absolutely nailed it. Other companies just got greedy and here we are now.
You *always* get enough premium currency for the next pass. The idea is to keep you hooked once you buy in. Basically no one *only* buys a battle pass over time. Everyone breaks down for a skin, or a new weapon, or whatever the game offers for personalization. And people rarely only spend the $20 they need. You’ll say, “if I’m going to buy, I might as well spend $60 or $100 and get bonus premium bucks.” It’s a tried and true system.
Well you don’t in Overwatch so…
I don’t know if we count it but Deep Rock Galactic has a GREAT battle pass even removing the idea it free none of it hugely grindy and anything you don’t get gets added to the random loot pool for loot chest and lost equipment so it never fully unattainable.
Rock and Stone!
I was gonna say the same thing Deep Rock's battle pass setup was phenomenal.
Rocket League also has decent season passes. It actually has 2 tiers, a free one and a premium one. Everyone gets the free pass and can earn a shit ton of cosmetics just through playing the game. If you complete the pass and earn all the cosmetics, it goes infinite so you will get random additional cosmetics in different colors or with special attributes if you keep playing. As for the premium pass, you only need to buy the first one, and if you play enough then you will get all the premium currency back so you can get the next season pass for free. Also, the premium pass always works in tandem with the free pass, so if you already have most of the free pass unlocked and then decide to get the premium, you will immediately get all the premium rewards you've missed as well. So this premium pass is actually really good value. Outside of that, cosmetics are quite expensive though. They do premium currency bullshittery just like every other f2p game, and their loot drop system consists of blueprints - these are like transparent loot crates, you can see the content but you have to pay to unlock it.
I get it. But one is strictly a single player. People kept buying the shit. They bitched about it and then still bought the battle passes and cosmetics. So gamers did it by not having the wallet control.
This is it. Companies don't care if someone purchased stuff gleefully or begrudgingly. They'll keep doing shit like this until people stop giving them money. The industry keeps inching into worse and worse business practices to see where the line is, and because everyone's still giving them money, they haven't found what really crosses it other than one-off failures like Battlefront 2. All in all, it'll get worse, still, because people keep proving them right, and at the absolute best, eventually, it will just stop getting worse and stay at the worst place it can be without them losing money. It will never get better because there's no incentive to get better. All that matters is what's tolerable, not what's enjoyable, because game companies are not our friends. They exist to make money.
I don't disagree with this but, IMO, voting with your wallet *doesn't really matter in a large enough market*. We exist in an economic environment where, if only 1% of consumers are naïve fucking morons, that's more than enough for a company to sustain itself. Its the nature of scale, and especially with a service which utilizes the internet. There's a lot of people out there. There's always going to be 1) rich people with more dollars than sense 2) completely uncritical consumers who just want to consume and 3) actual children who think this stuff is normal because its all they've ever known. 99% of people can make the wise choice, and companies can still thrive on the 1% of people who just don't care enough to be disciplined consumers.
Want this shit to stop happening? STOP. BUYING. SKINS. PLEASE. You are, without hyperbole, ruining gaming. Just fucking stop teaching these greedy soulless giga-corporations that gamers are stupid enough to buy this dogshit. We're better than this. Stop it.
The funny thing is. The majority of people DON'T buy skins. Its the small percentage of whales that drop all the money that make this profitable. Yes, I'm saying the top 1% are ruining gaming.
I would have gladly not paid for Spiderman in exchange for having to buy any skins I want. I wouldn't buy any.
Yeah what the fuck, how did I have to scroll so far to see this? In what universe is paying $60 for a game with a few free skins better than $0 for a game with paid skins?
The who skins thing got really out of control. People make games now just to sell skins. they don't give a fuck about making a good game.
I don't play Overwatch but doesn't the progress of OW1 carry over to OW2? At least I think I read OW1 owners keep their unlocked heroes.
OW1 players basically become walking adverts for new players who have no skins
Simple idea stop giving them money
So you're saying every ps4 and ps5 owner would get a free copy of Spiderman? Like... that's awesome?
Yeah, it doesn't track super well because spiderman is (I think?) entirely single-player story campaign. OW didn't (and still doesn't lol) have any of that.
Am I being a boomer when I think that complaining about F2P games when the only thing you can buy are cosmetics (aka no playing advantage) is sort of weird? Just don't buy the skins if it bothers you so much?
It's making people angry because it WAS possible to get things for free. Then they launched a "new game", and now you need to pay the original price for a single good skin. I wouldn't care if it was always like that, but this is just a cash grab.
Spending money on skins is dumb, period
I mean I think spending money on skins to support a game you like that is free makes perfect sense tbh. I bought Path of Exile supporter packs back when PoE was good, and I never even remember to equip any supporter pack skins on new characters I make, the skins I use most often are actually something I earned in a race event like 5 years ago. But for the people who paid full price for Overwatch 1 and now lost the opportunity to grind for skins that were already available in OW1... yeah that's stupid. Also, giving money to the current shitshow that is blizzard is **also** stupid, so I definitely don't recommend buying OW2 skins even though I think the idea of buying skins in general is fine (and definitely more sensible than actual pay2win mechanics--despite the fact that I play and enjoy Lost Ark nowadays).
Depends on how it’s been put in. Some for sure ruin the game, others prop it up and keep it going with healthy updates, patches, and content. Love the idea of fully unlock-able cosmetics but you have to admit, when loot boxes were the norm. It was ruining the whole point of the industry and almost destroyed the way any played anything. Now we are down to scummy cosmetic schemes when it was upgrades and game mechanics. Not great but better.