Blizzard: willfully engage in a business model that manipulates players into constantly looking for the next thing, and structures their games around that model to drive sales of microtransaction
Blizzard’s Player Base: fills with people responding to that manipulation
Blizzard:
Players have no patience
/Looks at Baldur’s Gate 3 sales
Uh huh.
I’m ruining friendships by doing this, but idc. If a game is “Free to Play” but features a bunch of “Optional purchases.” That’s an immediate NO from me.
So many times this cycle has gone “Free to Play” but the game is only meaningfully playable and fun if you invest ??? money into it.
That’s a NO, and a BIG no.
Sometimes they switheroo on us, fucking fallguys, rocket league…
How a paid for game can just switch over like this is beyond me. Bonus points if they drop support for an OS as well like rocket league.
Honestly its fine(its not) just give me a full refund
How is Fall Guys only meaningful if you pay? You can literally only buy cosmetics, which I guess could be upsetting if you’re into fashion
I wasn’t really talking about that part
I avoid F2P games like the plague now. Even if it was paid before. It’s just not ever worth it. Even if it’s not predatory now, the only way they can make money is through season passes, P2W mechanics, or ads/data selling. All unsustainable imo.
Only exception is Counter Strike. Went F2P but there are no P2W mechanics unless you count agent skins.
If all it takes to ruin a friendship is not playing a game with someone then I would reevaluate whether they were actually my friends and not just casual acquaintances.
That’s called pay to win. Obvs free to play has to make money somehow, reputable companies accomplish this through cosmetics, etc. a bad actor here is Blizzard, who are selling skins for $20, battle passes for $10 , and they used to be free in OW 1 which many people paid for.
This of their own making. That keep using FOMO and then get angry that people start to expect that feeling.
Share holders decide one-time payment games don’t make enough money
CEO transfers their major IPs to a “pay as you go” service promising a steady stream of new content to be worth it
Degrades or drops older games that players still enjoy to force the new games-as-a-service model
Players expect new content that was promised in exchange for the seasonal payments they now make
Surprised Pikachu face
Yes, Blizzard, when you expect people to pay continuously, they expect something for their money continuously.
Did you imagine they were happy just to hand it over out of love and kindness for your profits?
Was anyone even asking for diablo to be a live game? Saying as politely as I can, we ran the same D2 campaign for YEARS and there was enough variety in just characters and play styles to keep us busy.
The bit of D3 I played seemed to come down to finding a cheese build, whirlwinding through increasingly large enemy hordes, and collecting a golden trinket at the end, one you’d never use because it didn’t match the meta.
Now the only people left playing want to “zone out” and mindlessly tear through blizz content faster than they can pump it out, blizzard did this to themselves.
Fuck you blizz… fuck you activi… fuck off microsoft!
Almost feels like a little response to the anger from players about the 3 day early access for the new wow expansion.
I mean… that is the live service beast.
He’s confusing his customers and shareholders.
What? Don’t you have phones?
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Nah, I just wanna play Overwatch, why’d they have to kill it?
Right there with you. I don’t enjoy OW2 as a heals & tank specialist. I have a pet theory that they should have bifurcated the tanks in OW1 into two different required classes and kept 6v6.
Looking forward to this, just in time for summer:
“Only $79 for early access to Overwatch Classic!”
The delicious irony is they went 5v5 because that’s what most esports games are. Now OWL is dead and so is their game.
🎶 It’s like Rein on your wedding day . . . 🎶
Blizzard have no shame. They want a lot of money for the game, more money for subscribtion and even more money for cosmetics in the store.
No… I just want to buy the game, and occasional expansions.
I don’t want everything to be monetized.
Buy game + expansions + recurring battle pass + cosmetic shops +++.
I feel like games should limit their monetization to 2 methods, and not utilize FOMO like a battle-pass does. Any cash shops should be designed to be accessible to players not wanting to spend real money (either a game system to handle in-game currency exchange, or have players work it out by allowing players to directly trade in-game currency for either cash shop currency, or cash shop items directly - ensuring there are worthwhile things to purchase both with in-game currency as well, so cash-shop players are encouraged to participate).
Guild Wars 2 I feel does a good job of it. Occasional expansions to purchase, no sub, a cosmetic+convenience shop, but everything in it, can be purchased by converting earned in-game currency into cash-shop currency.
