Jim Sterling (The Jimquisition)

It probably also explains the obsession people have with Nintendo "dying" every year.

I'm curious more about what this says in regards to cryptocurrencies than microtransactions, given it's sort of in a special spot where the latter is concerned (as opposed to just being a more conventional, and expected, thing along the lines of "hey you can preorder some loot boxes.") Think it'd spawn any discussions over in the Bitcoin thread?

...come to think of it, though, what'd happen if everyone in the triple ayyyyye industry started treating their premium currencies as authentic alternative currencies? What kind of crazy issues would that cause?

edited 8th Nov '17 12:17:58 PM by NesClassic

And just because the game industry can't just have one instance of being complete cocknuts per day...

edited 8th Nov '17 1:59:20 PM by MapleSamurai

My first thought:

• What's Guild Wars 2?

My second thought:

• Wait, wasn't it that really old MMORPG that...

My third thought:

• How is it still alive?

The same way World of Warcraft is.

A small and dedicated playerbase can keep a game going.

World of Warcraft is alive the same way the Roman Empire was "alive" once it ran out of counquereable land. The decay is there and everybody has internal low-key panic looming over them, but it's considered polite not to state the inevitable quite yet.

The mountains upon mountains of goodwill from once being the first is not applicable to Guild Wars 2, something that was obscure as heck even back then. I would admire GW 2 for staying around and even updating for so long in the world of collective customer attention span being so short they might as well add "the Hedgehog" to it...

If the game didn't, you know, do what it just did.

edited 8th Nov '17 3:33:56 PM by Luminosity

To put this in perspective: despite Final Fantasy XIV still around and doing pretty good, XI - the original FF MMO (and the first MMO I played) - is still kept running. (And still with a subscription model, to boot!)

edited 8th Nov '17 3:45:49 PM by TotemicHero

Speaking as a player.

Guild Wars 2 might not be Wo W tier but it's still among the top 5 mmorpgs out there for player numbers. It gets weekly balance/bugfix updates and mini episodic expansions every 3-4 months between major releases, and opts for a pay-once model and supports itself by selling cosmetic items in a cash shop. The recent expansion released was very well received and their episodic system means existing players can get pseudo-expansions for free just by playing through them when they release.

tldr on the new lootbox bullshittery- Players are pissed. Like, pissed enough where guilds of players are banding together and overloading maps to the crashing point in protest. Forums are being swamped with complaints.

Usually the game sold things like said skins for about the equivalent $5-10 dollars for a set. You can also exchange in-game gold to premium currency for a fairly modest rate compared to other games. To curb this the new non-lootbox skins are $25+, almost the cost of the newest expansion itself.

edited 8th Nov '17 9:11:02 PM by carbon-mantis

25 Bucks for a Skin?

Lul wut?

Who the hell do they expect to buy this stuff?

This always bugged me. How do these people who actually buy this stuff get so much disposable income to waste on this nonsense. Before it was the excuse of "stole the parent's credit card" but now gamers either ARE parents or just in general adults with their own money.

And yet, in this economy, they're throwing it left and right like holy shit. Actual gambling addicts at least go broke at some point. This is bizarre.

If you're rich or have no sense of money, price is never an issue with them

This.

These things are meant for "Whales"; the people with so much disposable wealth that they can pour thousands or even tens of thousands of dollars into a single Free-to-Play game without batting an eye.

Also it’s not totally insane if you keep the numbers at a certain level, many people buy 3-4 $60 games in a year, with that amount of money you could instead buy one $20 game, 4 $15 expansions to a game you already own blow $100 on stuff for a free to play game and still come out ahead.

I blew around £40 on a free to play game this year, but that’s a reasonable chunk of my gaming spending for the year.

@Tobais

And that's probably why the game industry is diving headfirst into this nonsense. We bitch and kick and protest all we can about these shady as fuck practices, but with the whales pouring so much money into these things, why should the publishers stop? I am betting that the whales themselves probably don't even understand why non whales are upset at all the added costs in gaming.

Well, Titanfall had a good run.

Can't wait for Titanfall 3: Season Pass Platinum Recharged edition

Isn't Titanfall already a pay-to-win?

Double post because I heard League of Legends got rid of IP(points you can use to buy champions in-game, you get them for free when you play), and allowed to only buy champions with real money or blue essense, which is something you get from, guess what, lootboxes. Either by itself or by "disenchanting" shards of other things you get in lootboxes.

Now, League of Legends always had lootboxes, but because you always got IP for playing the game anyway and the game was free so it was okay.

Really disappointing. I used to call it the only game that does microtransactions well, not the case anymore...

Yeah that's really, really shitty. As someone who played League for a very long time (and doesn't anymore) there was always an uphill battle for people who wanted to get into the game without spending money since you had to play a lot of games to get enough IP to buy many of the champions and runes you needed to stand a competitive chance, but unlike many games it was at least possible to get everything if you played long enough.

See, if that's true, there's a crucial difference between the old and the new.

The old system gave you IP for playing against bots. Playing against bots is easy(though Medium bots can be challenging for badly coordinated teams, as the AI can kinda do basic player stuff), quick, and can get you any champion you want after some time. I only had Ashe on the start, but this allowed me to get Annie, Garen, Kayle, Teemo(don't judge), Soraka, Cho'Gath, and Miss Fortune without spending a single real dollar. With this, I got a nice champion pool to train me against people and give me options if something I like was taken.

The new system would force me, and any new player in my situation, to play against people, because games against bots don't drop Hextech Lootboxes where the essences are(unless they changed that). Play against people. With a starting champion like Garen or Ashe and weekly champions only. That would be AIDS. Actual AIDS. I weep for the new people, I seriously do.

edited 10th Nov '17 1:06:03 PM by Luminosity

Odd, I would have expected the internet to blow up on this then. I have heard literally nothing about it.

Because what the previous posters are saying is only half true.

Riot basically combined two resources (removed IP and rolled it into Blue Essence) that were already doing the same thing, getting you new champions, but did so in different ways. They then removed the IP reward from games, but also removed the level 30 cap and made levelling infinite so you can keep getting levels and now levelling up grants you a loot box that has champion shards, which you can then break down to get Blue Essence or use in a few other ways.

So basically you still do the same thing, play the game, and get the rewards roughly at the same rate though rather than getting points after each game you get them after a bunch of games and finally earning a level up. What shards you get from boxes is RNG, so you get varied amounts of BE too, though on average it should even out and the delta isn't massive. All in all, the accumulation of free resources is notably slower but not catastrophically so. Probably. We don't have the exact numbers yet. Or we the numbers we have are conflicting ones.

The change really wasn't great in many respects. It removed a simple and straightforward system of steady rewards in favor of a complex, opaque one with vague rewards and long waits between those rewards. It seems they're hoping that folk get tired of waiting in the intervals and just pony up cash, but it's not blatantly so. Also they supposedly increased rewards for new people and sped up new player levelling.

People aren't in love with it in general. Then again, Riot has a lot of good faith stockpiled with the player base from good F2P practices in the past, they released the change with a massive in game update that changed how the game itself plays that in itself is pretty positively received, they also removed one of the biggest free currency sinks in the game, runes (though there are a few sinks left still that are pretty expensive) and finally the system is so opaque and hard to get a firm grasp on that people don't know what to think. So that tempers reactions and everyone is pulling in different directions.

But yeah, my impression is that even if it's not screwing people over now, there's really no reason to make the system so complex unless you're trying to pull something in the margins.

edited 10th Nov '17 3:22:35 PM by GabrieltheThird

Back on the A Net mount skin thing, apparently the company released an un-apology that boiled down to "sorry you feel that way, nothings changing".

Take with some salt since it can't be confirmed, but despite the backlash against them, a GM in game I and several others chatted with claims that they're one of the most profitable items they've ever sold, with whales jumping on the chance to drop $175-ish dollars to grab all of them.

edited 11th Nov '17 7:59:34 AM by carbon-mantis