Oh Blizzard, how you have fallen (Diablo Immortal).

[Guyviroth]

Every WoW expansion!

MMOs aside, c'mon, you know there are B2P games with DLC and other continuing purchases. Don't make us go drag a list off Steam or something.

Fair enough, that point is conceded. However, that wasn't the point of my original post. The point of it was about games being balanced in a way in which progress is gated behind high walls that either takes forever to get over, or you can pay to get over it.

To the point of DLC and expansions, those are specifically to access additional content that wasnt in the game at launch, not to get to content that's already there (unless you're 2010 era Capcom with their disk-locked content), so it's a noncomparison in any case.

Subscriptions are also another point of debate, which I can admit is hit and miss. Is the sub worth the service? Am I getting enough bang for my buck? For me personally, for WoW at least, it is. I can play the entire game, all of its content, without feeling like I'm being stonewalled every two days like I do with most mobile games. The only thing stopping me from playing those higher endgame modes (mythic raiding, 20+ keys) is my own lack of skill and lack of desire. I can't pay money to improve that.

So, again, my point is how most mobile games are balanced and designed around "encouraging" you to pay to progress. It's no longer about who has the most skill, but about who has the most money.

[Ghost of Cow]

Subscriptions are also another point of debate, which I can admit is hit and miss. Is the sub worth the service? Am I getting enough bang for my buck? For me personally, for WoW at least, it is. I can play the entire game, all of its content, without feeling like I'm being stonewalled every two days like I do with most mobile games. The only thing stopping me from playing those higher endgame modes (mythic raiding, 20+ keys) is my own lack of skill and lack of desire. I can't pay money to improve that.

So, again, my point is how most mobile games are balanced and designed around "encouraging" you to pay to progress. It's no longer about who has the most skill, but about who has the most money.

MMOs are definitely designed to prolong the playing process by way of grinds, time-gating, long time sinks, sunk cost fallacies, and so on.

F2P games are designed to get you to spend in similar ways - not exactly, but similar.

Personally, I do like that F2P games basically let me set my own price but I also dislike how nagging they can feel. On the other hand, WoW doesn't directly nag me all the time - but then it doesn't have to because they're just reaching in and taking the money anyway.

[Tojara]

There's only two ways to get unbound gems at the moment, one is to buy eternal legendary crests and the other is to craft them. You're pretty limited in how many you can craft because of stop gaps in the system preventing you from grinding. Legendary crests which are strung out through a few of the battle pass systems and F2P systems don't award you with unbound legendary gems. So the youtube video that people are referencing are half wrong, but I still think eternal legendary crests are a pretty sneaky mechanism.

Whether you think some of the MTX is too predatory or not is your decision. I haven't spent a dime. What I do think is particularly unfair in an ARPG are soft caps and/or hard caps strung out throughout the game to impede progress. ARPGs historically are about grinding and preventing you from doing this very activity is sort of stupid IMO. It would be like if Diablo 2 told you that you can only run each act boss 10x a day before drop rates were diminished pushing you towards something else, or hard capped to where they just no longer drop loot.

I think if they went about removing all of the caps in the game (soft and hard caps), and perhaps being a bit less stingy of legendary crests you would cease to see so much complaining.

[Jerot]

This isn't the full picture but for reference, pick a gem you want right now. Your cooldowns are done for the week, you aren't crafting or finding it today. The only way to get more is to buy crests. Lets be generous and assume the value you get for your money is the best rate at $99.99 for 7200 gems.

If your desired gem is 1-star, it will cost an average of $42.01 in crests to drop one (75.4% for 1-star, 1/14 gems)
2-Star: $101.53
?/5-Star: $311.99
3/5-Star: $1,559.91
4/5-Star:$7,799.54
5/5-Star: $31,198.13

"Mercifully", you can upgrade the star rank if you have a lower star version of your gem and a higher star gem to feed it, so the base cost per tier would be

3-Star: $246.89
4-Star: $1234.45
5-Star: $4937.78

Just getting enough duplicates to max out 1 gem at 5-stars will cost you $22,774.64

Every free gem you earn from monthly legendary crests or from the 1-5 craft for 22 FA runes will "earn" you ~$2.23 off this price. Just look at the value you get per month and look at how each tiers price progresses per gem. The F2P source are way too slow compared to paying.

[Elim Garak]

This isn't the full picture but for reference, pick a gem you want right now. Your cooldowns are done for the week, you aren't crafting or finding it today. The only way to get more is to buy crests. Lets be generous and assume the value you get for your money is the best rate at $99.99 for 7200 gems.

If your desired gem is 1-star, it will cost an average of $42.01 in crests to drop one
2-Star: $101.53
?/5-Star: $311.99
3/5-Star: $1,559.91
4/5-Star:$7,799.54
5/5-Star: $31,198.13

"Mercifully", you can upgrade the star rank if you have a lower star version of your gem and a higher star gem to feed it, so the base cost per tier would be

3-Star: $246.89
4-Star: $1234.45
5-Star: $4937.78

Just getting enough duplicates to max out 1 gem at 5-stars will cost you $22,774.64

Every free gem you earn from monthly legendary crests or from the 1-5 craft for 22 FA runes will "earn" you ~$2.23 off this price.

That's only if you want it LIKE NAO, which is a fair price. Consider it a soft cap.

[Jerot]

That's only if you want it LIKE NAO, which is a fair price. Consider it a soft cap.

Fair price?

At 3 rolls per month OF DAILY PLAY, it'll take 61 years for an average free player to find any 5-star gem. 15 years for a 4-star. 3 years for a 3-star... And there will be people who play that long and don't get it because RNG.

Or spend multiple thousands of dollars.

FAIR PRICE?

And if they decide to boost the rates later, they basically give a massive middle finger to everyone who paid into this garbage system. They can't change it or it will scare away whales. This isn't artifact power where changing a number doesn't really matter because everyone is moving up equally.

[Verdugo]

Fair price?

At 3 rolls per month OF DAILY PLAY, it'll take 61 years for a free player to find any 5-star gem. 15 years for a 4-star. 3 years for a 3-star...

Or spend multiple thousands of dollars.

FAIR PRICE?

Dont bother, his brain is fully replaced by Q-shit. There is nothing resembling human there anymore.

[Elim Garak]

Fair price?

At 3 rolls per month OF DAILY PLAY, it'll take 61 years for an average free player to find any 5-star gem. 15 years for a 4-star. 3 years for a 3-star... And there will be people who play that long and don't get it because RNG.

Or spend multiple thousands of dollars.

FAIR PRICE?

If you want it RIGHT NOW? You have to pay the EXTRA.

Tell me which part of the deal is not fair.

[Guyviroth]

MMOs are definitely designed to prolong the playing process by way of grinds, time-gating, long time sinks, sunk cost fallacies, and so on.

F2P games are designed to get you to spend in similar ways - not exactly, but similar.

Personally, I do like that F2P games basically let me set my own price but I also dislike how nagging they can feel. On the other hand, WoW doesn't directly nag me all the time - but then it doesn't have to because they're just reaching in and taking the money anyway.

Indeed, which is why I believe sub-based models are dependent on whether one feels that the overall content is worth the money. Yes, they are designed to prolong the experience, but not in a way in which you feel like you've hit a brick wall (at least, not for myself). I didn't get an upgrade from the raid? No worries, I'll do some M+ keys and see what I can get there. I can always get some form of upgrade from PvP as well. And if I'm not looking for upgrades, I can do something else. Go collect a mount or two, or go back and farm some transmogs I might be missing, or go do dailies for some extra gold etc. For me, the game gives me plenty to do.

But to put things into comparison, using one of those five-a-side "RPG" games like Raid: Shadow Legends: In WoW, I pay $10 a month to get everything WoW has to offer with the only drawback being "I'm fully geared in HC loot." Something like Raid, or another one like it which I enjoy called Magnum Quest, will smack you in the face multiple times against broke-ass teams that are OP to fuck and synergize incredibly well. Multiple times I have been stuck on a single fight for weeks at a time because my units weren't high enough. But, oh look, there's this sale on where you can pay £5 to get this really good unit (some OP as fuck orc guy, can't remember the name). You can also buy it multiple times to get him to Legendary status, so that £5 can quickly turn into, I believe, £40. Yup, near enough the same price as a AAA game, for a single character unlock... until the next brick wall. Or until that character becomes worthless because the game now has even better top-tier characters and the campaign is now balanced around having those characters.

And yes, the same thing can be said for gear in MMOs. It could be, if gear was the only factor. It isn't. WoW involves skill, as much as we like to meme about how WoW is now a snorefest in terms of difficulty for the most part. I also don't have Blizz waving a carrot over my face every ten minutes reminding me I can buy the best gear ever if I fork over £19 for a chance of it in a lootbox.

But again, for me, it's about balance and how egregious the monetization is. If you want to know about how fucking egregious some games can be, go download Dragon City Mobile and play it for two weeks. I will also apologize in advance for anyone unfortunate enough to do so.

[MoanaLisa]

It's no longer about who has the most skill, but about who has the most money.

More people are willing to pay than are highly skilled. That's not even arguable. Therefore, there should be no confusion that games for certain types of markets are designed this way. Frankly, it's substituting one elite ("the skilled") for another ("the disposable income person"). Video games, with a very few exceptions, haven't been about "who has the most skill" in a couple of decades.

[Elim Garak]

More people are willing to pay than are highly skilled. That's not even arguable. Frankly, it's substituting one elite ("the skilled") for another ("the disposable income person"). Video games, with a very few exceptions, haven't been about "who has the most skill" in a couple of decades.

If you think about it it is still about skill. because whales get to the top of the leaderboards and have to compete with each other. So if it's PvP - it's ALL about skill at their level.

Games with gear are always a mix of skill and gear. Whether you can buy gear or not.

[Cracked]

If you think about it it is still about skill. because whales get to the top of the leaderboards and have to compete with each other. So if it's PvP - it's ALL about skill at their level.

Games with gear are always a mix of skill and gear. Whether you can buy gear or not.

"Once you spend $20k+ it's all about skill".

How can you even argue this with a straight face.

[Guyviroth]

More people are willing to pay than are highly skilled. That's not even arguable. Frankly, it's substituting one elite ("the skilled") for another ("the disposable income person"). Video games, with a very few exceptions, haven't been about "who has the most skill" in a couple of decades.

... I'm sorry, what? A couple of decades? As in since 2002? I'm almost 100% certain that money never overcame skill in them days, because the concept did not even exist. As for a few exceptions? Most competitive games have always been about skill, because most of those games never had any Pay to Win/Progress elements. To rattle off a few (or many):

Quake, Quake 2, Quake 3, Warcraft 3, Starcraft, Starcraft 2, Heroes of the Storm (RIP), Overwatch, Every single fighting game ever made (besides Street Fighter X Tekken), any sort of racing game (AFAIK), WoW Race to World First, WoW PvP (again, AFAIK), any other RTS game that I'm possibly missing, the entire game speedrun scene, and probably a whole lot more that I'm not aware of or can't remember.

But I will admit, you're right. Given the chance, people will use money to bypass skill requirement. And yes, there are more people with money than there are skill. You only need to turn your head to the right and see the massive crowd of people with WoW gold looking to get boosted through high-end keys and raid carries.

And yet the cynical side of me thinks that even those games I mentioned will soon introduce P2W mechanics somehow. The FPS genre has already done so. Fighting genre will probably find another way after how SFxT flopped hard. Wouldn't surprise me if the racing genre already has that too. Going back to my first post, I would not be surprised if in 16 years time, every single game will have, and be balanced around, MTXs. If it does, then the gaming industry will have, for me, died that day.

Oh well, at least I can always fall back on D&D and stuff.

[MoanaLisa]

If you think about it it is still about skill. because whales get to the top of the leaderboards and have to compete with each other. So if it's PvP - it's ALL about skill at their level.

Games with gear are always a mix of skill and gear. Whether you can buy gear or not.

The post was about the purpose of the design, less so about the results of the design. In an age where game budgets are now into eight- and nine-figure territory it's not surprising that the first purpose of a design is to produce revenue. The issue of skill and balance is more of an afterthought. It's a concern but it's not the primary concern.

[Roanda]

I think now is the right time to post this Blizzard ad
Blizzard created this video and it aged like milk.

Different times...different Blizzard...

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RdEKChWcqx4

[Elim Garak]

"Once you spend $20k+ it's all about skill".

How can you even argue this with a straight face.

Because it's not about skill until your reach the level cap

The post was about the purpose of the design, less so about the results of the design. In an age where game budgets are now into eight- and nine-figure territory it's not surprising that the first purpose of a design is to produce revenue. The issue of skill and balance is more of an afterthought. It's a concern but it's not the primary concern.

It's never about skill while you are leveling and gearing up.

[MoanaLisa]

... I'm sorry, what? A couple of decades? As in since 2002? I'm almost 100% certain that money never overcame skill in them days, because the concept did not even exist. As for a few exceptions? Most competitive games have always been about skill, because most of those games never had any Pay to Win/Progress elements. To rattle off a few (or many):

Quake, Quake 2, Quake 3, Warcraft 3, Starcraft, Starcraft 2, Heroes of the Storm (RIP), Overwatch, Every single fighting game ever made (besides Street Fighter X Tekken), any sort of racing game (AFAIK), WoW Race to World First, WoW PvP (again, AFAIK), any other RTS game that I'm possibly missing, the entire game speedrun scene, and probably a whole lot more that I'm not aware of or can't remember.

OK. I'll concede that I was sloppy with timelines. My apologies. That said, this is where we are now and have been for some years.

[Cracked]

OK. I'll concede that I was sloppy with timelines. My apologies. That said, this is where we are now and have been for some years.

And the whole point of this thread is people expressing the hope that "some years from now", we will be far away from it again. There's a good chance we will. There's also a good chance we won't. Maybe one day we will be able to say "remember that dogshit time in gaming when a company unironically expected people to spend 6 figures in their game?".

[Elim Garak]

And the whole point of this thread is people expressing the hope that "some years from now", we will be far away from it again. There's a good chance we will. There's also a good chance we won't. Maybe one day we will be able to say "remember that dogshit time in gaming when a company unironically expected people to spend 6 figures in their game?".

Have you played cyberpunk 2077?
That's the future. Might also watch Ready Player One.
But in real life the ending will not be a happy one. Closer to Cyberpunk 2077

[Guyviroth]

OK. I'll concede that I was sloppy with timelines. My apologies. That said, this is where we are now and have been for some years.

Ah, no apology needed. Just was caught off-guard with that.

And yup, unfortunately, we are here. I'm not sure what sort of coma I slipped in to have missed the transition, but now we're stuck with it. Does that still make it okay? For me, no, not at all.

However, I will extend an olive branch. I understand that these F2P games need revenue somewhere to maintain the costs of servers. I understand that companies need to make money to maintain other costs, to keep profits up, to appease any possible shareholders. Even MTXs for cosmetics I have no issues with, because they do not affect gameplay.

But seriously, the approximate price of a AAA title for what is essentially the CHANCE to get something worthwhile? Yeah--no, that can fuck right off.