If you have a more fair way to monetize games that doesn't impact gameplay, I'm sure the industry would love to hear it.
Like, I spend on skins sometimes too because I like them. But that doesn't mean I'm spending hundreds in skins in a game every year, I'll nab a few I like each year and call it a day. It's really not terribly difficult to set a "gaming budget" and limit your spending in F2P games while still picking stuff up.
Haven't seen kids bullied in school over Fortnite, haven't been in school in ages. But that's pretty basic "school" stuff, if not Fortnite skins it'd be something else.
And actually yeah, EA is making loads of cash off single player games. Jedi: Fallen Order was a massive hit for them, and their struggles with Anthem caused them to pivot DA4 from a live-service game to an offline single player game.
Not at all. Going F2P dramatically expands the playerbase (games often see 100-1000% increases in active, concurrent, registered players etc.) which brings in both a lot more players improving the health of the game, and being able to both turn existing paying players into bigger spenders while picking up new big spenders, plus some additional smaller spenders on the side, usually helps their financials. I've worked on games that have done the transition and it's not like they're simply monetizing the existing playerbase more...well except for maybe CoH.
Not "expect", but they cater to whales on the monetization front to a certain extent, much moreso in mobile where whales may legitimately help steer development. That's literally the nature of the F2P business model: A small crop of wealthy players dropping huge loads of cash largely subsidizing all the free players who don't spend a penny over years and years of playing. And that's a
fantastic fuckin deal for free players, they're getting oodles of free content because wealthier folks are paying for it.
It's a mutually beneficial arrangement, yo. F2P players aren't "out" anything for playing a F2P games for years without spending a penny.
"Trick" isn't remotely accurate, but leverage "FOMO" is very accurate. But it's not something unique to gaming or F2P (seen the McRib? how about the limited time deals with WoW subs and cash shop cosmetics?), and sales are like...a standard thing across every business and generally pretty good for consumers.
Again, this seems to be more, "People lack self control!" rather than, "The game is exploitative!" since I genuinely can't think of any truly exploitative major F2P games on PC/console, which is what we're talking about with a Riot MMO.
Ok, so your spending is determined by how quickly you want to progress some aspects of the game. How dreadful that they'd incentivize spending some money! But that you can progress for free, albeit at a slower rate, is pretty rad. If you're "serious" about a F2P game I'd expect one to be willing to drop some cash on it as one would a B2P/P2P game, that's how they all kinda work, but for casual players who don't care as much about quick progression it doesn't much matter. I fit into the latter category (though don't play Genshin), and have no problems dropping cash in F2P games I'm more into.
Not really, it's more to follow ye-olden Xbox Live model of tokens where you would
always have tokens left over as there was no way to buy a "clean" amount of tokens. Those leftover tokens remain there, tempting you to buy some more to use them. PoE does that to a point, though their point system is pretty much 10:1, so 10 points = 1 dollar, so that 240 point armor is $24. Easy peasy.
It appears it was
$200 for the whole pack, which is 4 legendary ships and a TON of other stuff. STO is actually one of the more aggressively monetized games from what I know. I hope more games don't follow this model, but it's a game I casually play on the side from time to time and enjoy all the same.
Yes, these are the whales I'm talking about. Many have the lifetime sub, so ongoing subs isn't a way to monetize them and they need to work on other offerings. As much as lifetime subs are great for players, they're a disaster for revenue generation.
If someone "NEEDS TO HAVE EVERYTHING!", sure. But for someone playing normally, probably not. They may want a few skins a year depending on their budget, but that's entirely up to them to decide. Riot, or any company, having additional MTX options for bigger spenders doesn't mean they expect everyone to buy that shit.
Just like Blizzard selling mounts and pets and whatnot doesn't mean that they expect everyone to buy that shit on top of the sub, either.