Same. I was a GM/low T500 player in OW1 and OW2. I had been playing since season 1. I probably have put in 3000ish hours into Overwatch. The cosmetics and battle pass were disappointing, and when they said that PvE was dead I lost all faith.
Overwatch was something special when it released, and I truly loved it. The game’s still fun, but the magic is gone. Now it’s just another FPS game.
P.S. if you liked Overwatch consider giving The Finals a try :) that game feels special in the same way that Overwatch did for me at least.
Overwatch was awesome because even if you sucked at FPS, Mercy let you play FPS games with your friends. If you had great game sense and positioning, you could move pretty high up the ranks as well.
I still play it with my son sometimes, although he’s now shockingly good at fps, and it’s a lot of chaotic fun. I wouldn’t want to play ranked though. Oof.
I lost 60,000 credits when OW2 came out. Blizzard "informed" customers that they needed to spend them or lose them with an e-mail that probably got sent right to spam so I never saw it. I had Battle.NET running in the background and it never tried to inform it directly.
Of course I hadn't played for a while at that point which is part of the reason I never noticed.
I'm pretty sure everyone forgot why OW2 was even announced or released. Remember when they banned a player for anti-china comments? And they got huge backlash at Blizzard, but China is like their main market? So that SAME DAY, they announced OW2, which at that time had no plans of being released. Which is why the game ended up just being copy/pasted maps and models.
They also, like, released an animated trailer about 2 months later at Blizzcon. Those particular trailers *don't* take 2 months to create, and the announced '2' part was suppose to be an *actually well designed* PvE-mode. Sometime during development they just gave up on PvE and added monetisation instead and canned the actual sequel part, that's why OW2 sucks balls.
However, the early announcement *was* to cover up the player-ban, so it's not like I'm defending them. Just pointing out facts.
I’m fairly sure at this point that corporate leadership never had any serious intent to release the PVE, and literally just wanted to do a re-release to get away with microtransactions that they explicitly promised fans and developers would not be in the first game.
I didn't even like OW1's model. Loot boxes were only $1 and you got four items, but if you got duplicates they gave you a pittance of in-game currency instead. Compare to TF2 where crate keys were $2.50 (or you could trade for keys), you got one item, but if it was a duplicate you could potentially craft or trade it for something you actually wanted.
I suppose the two models didn't have a clear better one. But I think Valve's ecosystem really set a bar for how to do inventory management (trading, selling, etc) and gamers need to hold companies accountable when they don't meet that bar.
Edit: Forgot OW1 DID give you free crates. But there was always FOMO for some limited time crates or items and if you wanted them you might have to play A LOT or shell out.
Personally, I dislike Valve's TF2/CS crates more. Mostly since you can get your inventory filled up with them and they're dead weight unless you get a key that's worth real money; No way to open them for free. In OW1, you could pay for loot boxes, but you could also get free ones. I don't at all like paid loot boxes, but free ones are perfectly okay with me.
Neither of them are great though, but both are still better than what was done with OW2.
You can sell CS2 crates and build up a steam wallet balance though. Plus being able to sell skins makes it so everything you get is worth something, just depends how much it's worth.
True, TF2 crates were always 3 cents though. So when discussing them I always focus on the key cost since it's never really a problem to grab as many crates as you need from the market, at least back when I was doing TF2.
I never did a lot of CS:GO/CS2 so I can't speak to that.
Ah yeah I wasn't familiar with the TF2 side. CS cases aren't worth a lot but typically selling 3-4 would give you enough to get a key if you wanted to open one.
The game's getting better updates than it ever has though, so I wouldn't say that about it's future.
Launch was rough and losing PvE sucks, but it's doing great and they're really turning it around.
Or he did it for his family, but then got sent back overseas to join them again in poverty when his contract was up since they weren't actually planning on hiring anyone. Gotta love those work visas
Nah it's just forking over the price of a new game at this point.
Charging 70-90$ for the game
Then coming out with a shit FOMO season pass
And here's our shop with skins and skin bundles for between 25 and 40$
AND THERE ARE CLOWNS WHO PAY FOR THIS SHIT
World of Tanks and World of Warships have always been like this. You can waste your life doing the impossibly slow grind up the different tech trees, or you can drop $30-$50 on a single tank/ship. And the real "collectors" will have literally hundreds of dollars worth of ships or tanks in their garages. Like, hey, guys, you don't actually *own* any of that you know? Never understood it.
But both those games are free to play and fun up to about tier 6, when the real grind begins.
Also as an older gamer I would point out that many many of us cried foul and warned about what a slippery slope that horse armor was going to create. Don't do it, we said. But much like warning people against pre-ordering, there are always those ones that just don't care.
I preordered the collectors edition of Oblivion, and the cheeky buggers still wanted £2.50 extra
I pirated the DLC, and didn't end up using the armour for very long. Shadowmere didn't like wearing armour as it clashed with his blood red eyes
Horse armor wasn't anything great, but no one ever seems to complain about the wizard tower. Idk if people just didn't buy that one, or if people liked it. I definitely thought it was a great house and quest line, but probably not better than some of the stuff available as mods.
At that point in time it was better then most mod houses, but it was still too limited in scope and actual gameplay features to be very interesting to most people. DLC from that time was mostly played by people who would get them for free years later as a part of rereleased collections or now Game Pass.
Edit:
Here is the list of all official plugins:
https://elderscrolls.fandom.com/wiki/Official_Plug-ins_(Oblivion)
Fighter Stronghold was the best, if all the houses were up to that level of quality they would've been thought of more favorably. At the end of the day they were basically just cheats you paid for that were somewhat integrated into the world.
I definitely bought all 3 of them when they came out, but I definitely can't remember the 3rd
I feel like it was some kind of hunters lodge or something
Oh man I missed the Wizard tower. Mine bugged out where physics stopped working so as a kid I built all kinds of awesome 3d structures inside by dropping items. I could still stand on things but they'd never fall so I had a cabbage spiral staircase in the center of the room
Iirc paintbrushes floated and you could stand on them. My brother made a spiral staircase with them to the top of the central tower in the capital...which I think you would just clip through and fall to your death in the middle of you tried to jump onto the top of it.
There was already a mod that was better and it added horse combat. Not to even mention it was free. I was baffled when people actually bought horse armor.
(apex just introduced some of the most predatory monetisation in an event possibly ever, but please, more threads about how expensive skins in a free to play game are just horrible)
Except the smoke is literally 99% for Overwatch.
As the person said, there are far more egregious examples but you won't hear shit about them and in fact have people making excuses for them in this very thread.
It's so funny to me, for the entire first year of OW2 like half of the "upcoming content" on the content roadmap were literally things they removed from OW1. It's pathetic.
That pack includes real merchandise tbf, and poe has one of the least predatory mxt systems. (The stash tabs being premium is a bit questionable, they are pretty damn useful) Plus that game is f2p.
Not saying 500 is an okay price or anything. It's just pretty clearly for people that want to support the game.
While the packs themselves *are* insanely expensive, it's worth noting that they include as much of the premium currency as you'd get if you just bought the currency itself-- it's less "these skins cost $500" and more the age-old tactic of giving a bit of extra currency when you make a large purchase, like you'd see in 99% of freemium mobile games.
The gaming "community" typically only actively complains about an issue when it's something they like or used to like.
Dead or Alive 5 has over $1,000 of DLC skins and DoA 6 has over $2500 of DLC skins, but practically no one ever marches around proclaiming that as a representative example of problem with the gaming industry because the heavy sexual connotations of the series makes the games a meme that has never been taken seriously, not even by the FGC.
I genuinely don't understand the obsession some people have with skins. I guess I'm just old and out of touch with the youths, but I cannot fathom spending >$10 on a skin. Doesn't even compute to me.
I used to spend money on skins, not a ton but still. Yet now I feel the same as you because now I would never even though I’m making more money than before. Really what saved me was League of Legends when they started giving out tons of skins just for playing the game essentially. Idk if the system is still the same as back then but I have so many expensive skins that I didn’t pay for. Now if I can’t get a skin for free I just don’t lol
Yes cause "csgo skins ate even more expensive" like yes csgo knives are expensive but you can sell m and trade them and are worth the price you paid for (probably). Valorant you can't get your money back, 35 dollars for a knife is cheaper but selling it isnt possible.
People need to seriously stop buying overpriced dlc. Lets send a message that they can’t charge such ridiculous prices. Vote with your wallet.
I refuse to get battle passes too. Maybe its a tough hill to die on. But I see no point in buying digital item for online only games. Once servers go down I wont have anything anymore. Long live offline games. When the day comes that we wont have new offline games anymore I’ll finally work thru my old game lists from past 10 years that i havent played. Lol
The problem isn't even the whales, it's the people who literally don't know any better because they aren't connected in any way to the community or industry.
For everyone one of us on reddit who knows that Bobby Kotick is a monstrous excuse for a person who is responsible for every bad decision ATVI made in the last 20 years, there are probably 1,000 more people in the world who don't even know that Bobby Kotick exists.
-----
The guy that we hear on the open mic in a CoD lobby who plays the game while blasting Metallica while a baby is crying in the background? That guy buys CoD every year; he doesn't know or care what the circumstances of the creation of it is, nor does he care about battlepasses or DLC skins replacing launch content.
It's not a simple issue. Voting with your wallet doesn't do what people think it does. They don't buy stuff, but lots of other people do. Some people buy lots of things, and for high prices
But they can only keep those players if there's a decent player base and healthy community.
You're not likely to get people to buy expensive skins in games where only a handful of people are playing. It can still happen, lots of old games have super dedicated players. But not at the level they'd need for something like this to stay worthwhile.
So it really just comes back to "if you're having fun, and don't want to buy stuff, don't buy it. If you're not having fun, don't play"
Which seems like it should be straight forward. But man the number of steam reviews I read that say shit like "I played this game for 100 hours expecting it to get fun, and it never did. Waste of money" like fuck man it must have been doing something for you to keep you invested for 100h. Like surely you got your $60 worth at that point. League of legends is bad for that kind of stuff, people will play hours every night and talk about how much they hate the game. Like no one is forcing you to play usually. I had this guy join my gaming group once, and literally all he did was get super mad and say how much he hated the game every time. No one was forcing him, hell we didn't even really want him there but he'd never leave. We would make suggestions like "well take a brake, play something else" and he never did. I assume he's still miserable to this day
Yeah that's the idea behind "capitalism is egalitarian because you can vote w/ your dollar" but there's a reason democratic systems don't let you earn additional votes.
I think this is horseshit, but people who like it will buy it and the MircosoftActiBlizz line will go up and then people like you and I get to go fuck ourselves.
I'll do you one better: people need to just stop buying games that are completely saturated with microtransactions, regardless of whether they're cosmetic or p2w, and regardless of how overpriced they are.
For single player games, this is bullshit. For games that absolutely need to be multiplayer and have to pay for server time, I'm fine with paying for a monthly subscription.
I have friends that play with others in Valorant or LoL and it’s very common for those people to have accounts where they have dropped $1000 or more on fucking virtual fashion. AAA games cost $60-70 and these F2P games earn 10x as much profit on these dumb shits who can’t stop themselves.
I’ve felt the same way about the multiplayer since release.
It’s fun to hop on, but once the initial wow factor of the movement and mechs wears off, I don’t really find the actual gameplay all that engaging. At least not in the same way I do for games like CS, Siege, OW, Val, and even Apex. But then I wait long enough and try it again and the wow factor returns for a few hours lol.
But the Campaign makes up for with some really freaking good level design.
Team Fortress 2 is still alive despite the years of bot infestation and abandonment by Valve. It’s really just one of the games of all time and solidified its position in pop culture/meme history. You can see TF2’s character models and maps everywhere as well as its sound effects (Engineer’s nope, various Heavy lines like pow, pootis dispenser, etc.)
im right now just like u, i have not found the next game that gives me that early overwatch vibes. Like someone said titanfall 2 kinda have some vibes to it if u havent tried it, also recommend the highly hated anthem, but if u get it cheap, is not bad for a try if u havent already
Along with the one who priced in game items more expensive than real life keychains?
https://preview.redd.it/ndkzgdnxdhsc1.jpeg?width=1170&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=1aff381668a873f1f2dde7a14cb55b5ca93afc03
Kinda like the “alleged” (settled without admitting any wrongdoing for 50 million dollars) workplace conditions…
https://preview.redd.it/jxz6okfkwisc1.jpeg?width=627&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=ba095cf98a1a14d59fd713744811dcc7c3ef18eb
Those cost the free currency, not really sure who the fuck would spend the premium currency on those.
https://preview.redd.it/qiftfz5jyisc1.png?width=801&format=png&auto=webp&s=9078e32a08192913e3df6694c3084f37c391ebf6
Yep, many people complained, but all they had to do was prime a few. And part of the problem here is that they can afford to piss off tons of people, as now, all you need are a few whales. So now, games are targeted towards the few whales while the mass have to accept it.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IHZru-6M8BY&list=LL
Streamers are also an issue often times, while possibly covered by "whales." They just buy tens of thousands of dollars of digital extras to provide information and content to their viewers. They totes aren't addicted to games with a lot of disposable income or possibly poor business acumen.
Exactly all these "I work 200 hours as a single dad, just let me buy the $50 booster and $200 in skins because I'm a sad person!" Just turn the game economy towards addicted people.
You can also farm the premium currency which is awesome.
DE are great Devs and super ethical.
I watch the making of Warframe and they said they went to EA with this business model and they were laughed out the building and told they would fail....fast forward 10 years or what ever the game looks good and is relatively stable and still being updated regularly.
Saying this I would love to go back but as I left rail jack was just coming out and I fear rail jack is not even the tip of the iceberg of new changes. I've got around 4.5k in plat as well
Recent updates have been the absolute goat imo and the amount shouldnt scare you off. They have introduced a ton of systems to make particular grinds (like warframes that were released) easier to grind than pre railjack, and even grindy systems like railjack got huge makeovers to make it more friendly to get into
Not that i know of. Its been ages since i had that happen so either it exclusively happens in old levels or it got removed
Hell they recently changed collision to make you slide past obstacles rather than stop in your tracks when you run next to them, on top of every new tileset having bigger doors and larger hallways to accommodate all the weird shit thats running through them now
I heard that you can now cross platform your account. As a ps5 player does that mean I can finally enjoy the superior PC platinum system or is that still locked to your platform of origin?
Im not sure how it works exactly, but from the few times where i played on the fucking ipad i own, you can spend the platinum on your account on every platform, only tennogen gets platform locked (so buying it with plat on the console means you dont own it on the oc and vice versa) and the plat purchases had to be changed up for legal reasons to give you bonus plat on purchases with login rewards, rather than the famous "50% off" deals
But if you mainly want to migrate over or play on both you wouldnt be too hindered
Those are the user created ones right? Some percentage is going to the creators of those skins too. Most of the other skins that you can't buy directly with money can at least be obtained with tradeable premium currency.
Been cool to hate in it for like 5 years now, it's really weird imo since fortnite atleast is so big it makes sense that many use it as an example for modern gaming but overwatch being so focused seems random
Because ppl think it's cool to hate on it, for whatever reason. It's still a fantastic game that keeps me and a dozen of my online friends engaged more than any other shooter has.
Microsoft pitched it to Bethesda since Microsoft wanted to go ahead with the idea of microtransactions on Xbox. The fact that Microsoft later acquired Bethesda is separate to this.
>since Microsoft wanted to go ahead with the idea of microtransactions on Xbox
It's interesting thinking back that even then people complained about horse armor DLC, yet I don't remember anyone saying that the Halo 3 map packs should have been included with the base game.
Is it really the horse armor that started this trend? Even if that didn't exist, I still believe we would've arrived in this same microtransaction world one way or another.
But then you’d be criticizing ValvE and we can’t have that. /s
But for real TF2 had crates 6 years beforehand and then CS:Go had loot boxes a solid 3 years before Overwatch came out. But Blizzard got the flack for it even though you could just get the skins by playing the game normally which was a huge thing at the time.
Microtransactions were a thing in various online games like Maplestory, Mabinogi and DFO. I think the first game I personally recall playing with MTX was FlyFF which released a few months after Horse Armor was released.
I think Horse Armor was the first time it happened on a console game for a single player game, though.
I remember when the horse armor came out and it was pretty universally thought of as ridiculous that they would charge $2.50 for that. So ridiculous that it's still a meme almost 20 years later. Seems quaint by today's standards, but people were definitely like "can you believe this shit?"
But yeah, microtransactions were probably inevitable.
Just don’t pay anything. The only time I spend money on a game is when it was free, and it’s a good ass game with no bullshit. Super Animal Royal has EARNED my money. If there’s too much shit on the main menu I usually pass on the game entirely.
It does when the whale audience ends up oversaturated; there's only so many big spenders out there who are willing to shell out hundreds of dollars for this shet, and unlike mobile crap whose dev costs can be measured in cans of beans, AAA games cost millions of dollars. It's flat out unsustainable, and all we need to do is be patient and wait for the market to correct itself.
Maintaining games is cheaper than devoloping and these games are still clearly raking in the cash so we'll have to see where the price proves too high and then it'll set itself right below that line.
$25 per skin is gonna make more people just main 1 character they spent all that cash on. In games where skins are $20+ I usually just buy 1 skin ever and use it the entire time. It doesn't work well for games you have to switch up characters
Gaming has gone down the drain
Then you have EA with their Ultimate Team crap and Capcom locking content behind paywalls. At least Bethesda redeemed themselves with all the free updates to Fallout 76.
Putting NG++ behind the Deluxe Edition of Infinite Wealth is practically forcing me to acquire the game through alternative means. Like now I have to on principle.
edit: if it ever gets unfixed
Referencing games from that era, I believe. Street Fighter x Tekken shipped with a good amount of characters and game-altering gems via Disc-Locked Content that would be sold as 'DLC' after. It was an uproar back then that even helped kill any competitive environment for the fighter.
They also made the True Ending to Asura's Wrath behind DLC.
Early 2010s was problematic for Capcom, to say the least.
Course... SF6 has similar BS with skins at the moment. The TMNT are $25 each. 100 bucks to get four color variants.
Anyone who said “microtransactions are comestic, it’s not that bad” allowed for them to create revenue streams built on envy.
Now we have macrotransactions.
I absolutely hate the clowns who keep parroting that shit. It's 100% a case of a slippery slope, because one thing paves way to the next and the userbase becomes increasingly numb to the absolute shitshow that is these 'micro'transactions. Let enough time pass, let it become the norm and they can turn the handle on the vise even further with even more egregious forms of it.
Oh and it definitely had an effect on our games, where resources are spent, what can be earned in-game through just playing it and the overall reward structure.
So you'd have to be a monumental moron to downplay it.
No the people who allow them to raise the price are the people buying. If no one bought those pointless things they would have stopped. But doesn't matter the price, losers keep buying pixels.
People still fail to realize this.
This isn't food, or utilities or rent etc. this is entertainment, this is a hobby. You don't like the price, don't buy it, vote with your wallet. It's all optional.
I love hockey but the food, drink and games have gotten so freaking expensive that I don't go watch them live anymore. I also find new video games far too expensive so what do i do? I don't play the game until its on sale.
No one is forcing you to buy a $25 skin, and the only reason they exist is because some people are more than willing to pay for that.
I know we all shit on overpriced MTX but this shit sells.
Vote with your wallet?
That's been done and AAA GaaS makes bank if successful.
Fortnite is a defacto money printing machine.
Sadly many young games have grown up normalizing shitty practices like this. They now expect microtransactions, battle passes, a dozen of different currencies or "gems" that each one buys slightly different things but there's always one who can buy the others but that one "gem" costs real money... in every game, specially multiplayer ones
I remember when Halo 4 had an armor pack for around $3 or something for 3 complete armor sets that you could mix and match. $1 per armor set, certainly wasn't bad for the price.
Something like that was more than reasonable, but now they want $25 for a single skin 💀 So 3 skins costs more than a complete $70 game. These devs are absolutely wild.
This isn't even the tip of the iceberg. Team fortress 2 has single pice cosmetics that cost over 100€ and apex had an heirloom that could cost up to 360$ to unlock.
See, this is why I'm happy I never got invested in having the latest games or tech. There's plenty of fantastic experiences from just 10 years ago, let alone before, so I have no need to pay attention to the shet coming from the AAA market these days. I am completely insulated from the bullshit of the gaming industry.
“When I came to you with those calculations, we thought we might start a chain reaction that would destroy the world.”
“What of it?”
“I believe we did.”
"Overwatch 2 is like watching your once beloved child become a drug addicted criminal with no future." -a steam review for overwatch 2
I can’t think of a better way to put it
I quit before 2 was even announced and… sometime please help that poor game.
There's no helping it now. All it can hope for is a quick death.. which it won't get
OW1 died so OW2 could die too.
OW1 was murdered so OW2 could have a cocaine induced stroke.
The release of overwatch 2 helped cure me of my overwatch addiction. I truly am grateful!
Same. I was a GM/low T500 player in OW1 and OW2. I had been playing since season 1. I probably have put in 3000ish hours into Overwatch. The cosmetics and battle pass were disappointing, and when they said that PvE was dead I lost all faith. Overwatch was something special when it released, and I truly loved it. The game’s still fun, but the magic is gone. Now it’s just another FPS game. P.S. if you liked Overwatch consider giving The Finals a try :) that game feels special in the same way that Overwatch did for me at least.
Overwatch was awesome because even if you sucked at FPS, Mercy let you play FPS games with your friends. If you had great game sense and positioning, you could move pretty high up the ranks as well.
I still play it with my son sometimes, although he’s now shockingly good at fps, and it’s a lot of chaotic fun. I wouldn’t want to play ranked though. Oof.
100% recommend the finals coming from ex overwatch/valorant player. Gameplay is actually fun, even when you lose its still fun
I lost 60,000 credits when OW2 came out. Blizzard "informed" customers that they needed to spend them or lose them with an e-mail that probably got sent right to spam so I never saw it. I had Battle.NET running in the background and it never tried to inform it directly. Of course I hadn't played for a while at that point which is part of the reason I never noticed.
As someone who no lifed overwatch 1 back in its peak of 2016-17 I agree
"Your kid may have salvation, but O2 was fucked from the beginning." - Tod Nowward (Not Todd Howard)
"Your kid may have skyrim" - Todd Howard
"I heard Skyrim "just works."" - Also Todd Howard
Once heard someone describe it as “someone marionetting the corpse of a loved one in a cruel mockery of how they were in life”.
Weekend at Bastion’s
Also a great way to put it
I'm pretty sure everyone forgot why OW2 was even announced or released. Remember when they banned a player for anti-china comments? And they got huge backlash at Blizzard, but China is like their main market? So that SAME DAY, they announced OW2, which at that time had no plans of being released. Which is why the game ended up just being copy/pasted maps and models.
They also, like, released an animated trailer about 2 months later at Blizzcon. Those particular trailers *don't* take 2 months to create, and the announced '2' part was suppose to be an *actually well designed* PvE-mode. Sometime during development they just gave up on PvE and added monetisation instead and canned the actual sequel part, that's why OW2 sucks balls. However, the early announcement *was* to cover up the player-ban, so it's not like I'm defending them. Just pointing out facts.
I’m fairly sure at this point that corporate leadership never had any serious intent to release the PVE, and literally just wanted to do a re-release to get away with microtransactions that they explicitly promised fans and developers would not be in the first game.
I didn't even like OW1's model. Loot boxes were only $1 and you got four items, but if you got duplicates they gave you a pittance of in-game currency instead. Compare to TF2 where crate keys were $2.50 (or you could trade for keys), you got one item, but if it was a duplicate you could potentially craft or trade it for something you actually wanted. I suppose the two models didn't have a clear better one. But I think Valve's ecosystem really set a bar for how to do inventory management (trading, selling, etc) and gamers need to hold companies accountable when they don't meet that bar. Edit: Forgot OW1 DID give you free crates. But there was always FOMO for some limited time crates or items and if you wanted them you might have to play A LOT or shell out.
Personally, I dislike Valve's TF2/CS crates more. Mostly since you can get your inventory filled up with them and they're dead weight unless you get a key that's worth real money; No way to open them for free. In OW1, you could pay for loot boxes, but you could also get free ones. I don't at all like paid loot boxes, but free ones are perfectly okay with me. Neither of them are great though, but both are still better than what was done with OW2.
You can sell CS2 crates and build up a steam wallet balance though. Plus being able to sell skins makes it so everything you get is worth something, just depends how much it's worth.
True, TF2 crates were always 3 cents though. So when discussing them I always focus on the key cost since it's never really a problem to grab as many crates as you need from the market, at least back when I was doing TF2. I never did a lot of CS:GO/CS2 so I can't speak to that.
Ah yeah I wasn't familiar with the TF2 side. CS cases aren't worth a lot but typically selling 3-4 would give you enough to get a key if you wanted to open one.
That's hilarious 😂
The game's getting better updates than it ever has though, so I wouldn't say that about it's future. Launch was rough and losing PvE sucks, but it's doing great and they're really turning it around.
He probably didnt even get a cent raise
He did it for his family. Too bad his family fired him in few years to raise quarterly profits so CEO can get a second jet.
Or he did it for his family, but then got sent back overseas to join them again in poverty when his contract was up since they weren't actually planning on hiring anyone. Gotta love those work visas
"He" was probably some high level exec that forced the art and dev team to do it. And "he" probably got a sweet bonus for the idea.
macrotransactions
I'm very surprised I've never heard that before
Nah it's just forking over the price of a new game at this point. Charging 70-90$ for the game Then coming out with a shit FOMO season pass And here's our shop with skins and skin bundles for between 25 and 40$ AND THERE ARE CLOWNS WHO PAY FOR THIS SHIT
World of Tanks and World of Warships have always been like this. You can waste your life doing the impossibly slow grind up the different tech trees, or you can drop $30-$50 on a single tank/ship. And the real "collectors" will have literally hundreds of dollars worth of ships or tanks in their garages. Like, hey, guys, you don't actually *own* any of that you know? Never understood it. But both those games are free to play and fun up to about tier 6, when the real grind begins. Also as an older gamer I would point out that many many of us cried foul and warned about what a slippery slope that horse armor was going to create. Don't do it, we said. But much like warning people against pre-ordering, there are always those ones that just don't care.
You know what, it might be a controversial opinion, but I did not like it when they did that.
Don’t stir up the hornet’s nest with that provocative take!
I preordered the collectors edition of Oblivion, and the cheeky buggers still wanted £2.50 extra I pirated the DLC, and didn't end up using the armour for very long. Shadowmere didn't like wearing armour as it clashed with his blood red eyes
Shadowmere is a bit of a diva like that, in a good way, of course
Horse armor wasn't anything great, but no one ever seems to complain about the wizard tower. Idk if people just didn't buy that one, or if people liked it. I definitely thought it was a great house and quest line, but probably not better than some of the stuff available as mods.
At that point in time it was better then most mod houses, but it was still too limited in scope and actual gameplay features to be very interesting to most people. DLC from that time was mostly played by people who would get them for free years later as a part of rereleased collections or now Game Pass. Edit: Here is the list of all official plugins: https://elderscrolls.fandom.com/wiki/Official_Plug-ins_(Oblivion) Fighter Stronghold was the best, if all the houses were up to that level of quality they would've been thought of more favorably. At the end of the day they were basically just cheats you paid for that were somewhat integrated into the world.
I definitely bought all 3 of them when they came out, but I definitely can't remember the 3rd I feel like it was some kind of hunters lodge or something
Oh man I missed the Wizard tower. Mine bugged out where physics stopped working so as a kid I built all kinds of awesome 3d structures inside by dropping items. I could still stand on things but they'd never fall so I had a cabbage spiral staircase in the center of the room
Iirc paintbrushes floated and you could stand on them. My brother made a spiral staircase with them to the top of the central tower in the capital...which I think you would just clip through and fall to your death in the middle of you tried to jump onto the top of it.
There was already a mod that was better and it added horse combat. Not to even mention it was free. I was baffled when people actually bought horse armor.
You know, the more I learn about that horse armour guy, the more I don't care for him.
It didn’t bother me at all when he did it, since I had no idea what was happening
If you think think this is bad i got bad news for you, valorant had this 10x worse and no one bats an eye
Apex has had stupid expensive cosmetics since launch too, yeah it's f2p but still
(apex just introduced some of the most predatory monetisation in an event possibly ever, but please, more threads about how expensive skins in a free to play game are just horrible)
[удалено]
Except the smoke is literally 99% for Overwatch. As the person said, there are far more egregious examples but you won't hear shit about them and in fact have people making excuses for them in this very thread.
I think the difference is valorant started with it, overwatch made a whole new game just to bring in new forms of monetisation.
Except it's NOT a whole new game. It's a patch. A patch that added a predatory battlepass system and a '2' at the end of the name.
Don't forget they took features away
Ah, the destiny (I've heard this may have been changed recently or somewhat recently?) method.
That’s no more thank god, after forsaken it won’t happen again. Now the seasonal content? Yeah that still goes away every expansion. Big sad :(
It's so funny to me, for the entire first year of OW2 like half of the "upcoming content" on the content roadmap were literally things they removed from OW1. It's pathetic.
Sounds like CS2... both of them!
They're trying to give us the WoW treatment. Years from now they'll sell "OW Classic" back to us as a whole new experience
OW2 promised a whole new game, but ended up being just a monetization patch. The lies are why people are so mad.
Idk man. Doesn't Valorant have like $500 skins you can only buy from their store? At least with CS those prices are the market deciding
Are you saying that Valorant has $250 skins??
Skin bundles can cost upto $70
Even more, they got over$100 in some bundles
Path of exile has $500 skins
That pack includes real merchandise tbf, and poe has one of the least predatory mxt systems. (The stash tabs being premium is a bit questionable, they are pretty damn useful) Plus that game is f2p. Not saying 500 is an okay price or anything. It's just pretty clearly for people that want to support the game.
Yeah! I totally agree. I was actually wearing my exalted orb sweater today. When I saw this post, I just immediately thought "poe be like.."
While the packs themselves *are* insanely expensive, it's worth noting that they include as much of the premium currency as you'd get if you just bought the currency itself-- it's less "these skins cost $500" and more the age-old tactic of giving a bit of extra currency when you make a large purchase, like you'd see in 99% of freemium mobile games.
Because overwatch players left the game to bitch about its schemes on reddit, whereas Valorant players are in game as we speak getting their fix.
The gaming "community" typically only actively complains about an issue when it's something they like or used to like. Dead or Alive 5 has over $1,000 of DLC skins and DoA 6 has over $2500 of DLC skins, but practically no one ever marches around proclaiming that as a representative example of problem with the gaming industry because the heavy sexual connotations of the series makes the games a meme that has never been taken seriously, not even by the FGC.
I genuinely don't understand the obsession some people have with skins. I guess I'm just old and out of touch with the youths, but I cannot fathom spending >$10 on a skin. Doesn't even compute to me.
I used to spend money on skins, not a ton but still. Yet now I feel the same as you because now I would never even though I’m making more money than before. Really what saved me was League of Legends when they started giving out tons of skins just for playing the game essentially. Idk if the system is still the same as back then but I have so many expensive skins that I didn’t pay for. Now if I can’t get a skin for free I just don’t lol
This is how I am with OW1/2. I have a dozen legendary skins for every hero. Why in the world would I pay $25 for 1 more? Do they think I'm high?
apex legends(EA is the publisher): hold my beer upcoming eXclUsiVe cosmetic would cost ~~like $700~~ around $300* e: price
the problem is Overwatch used to have a good system but now its absolute shit.
Yes cause "csgo skins ate even more expensive" like yes csgo knives are expensive but you can sell m and trade them and are worth the price you paid for (probably). Valorant you can't get your money back, 35 dollars for a knife is cheaper but selling it isnt possible.
People need to seriously stop buying overpriced dlc. Lets send a message that they can’t charge such ridiculous prices. Vote with your wallet. I refuse to get battle passes too. Maybe its a tough hill to die on. But I see no point in buying digital item for online only games. Once servers go down I wont have anything anymore. Long live offline games. When the day comes that we wont have new offline games anymore I’ll finally work thru my old game lists from past 10 years that i havent played. Lol
Vote with your wallet doesn't work when the whales get so many more votes.
The problem isn't even the whales, it's the people who literally don't know any better because they aren't connected in any way to the community or industry. For everyone one of us on reddit who knows that Bobby Kotick is a monstrous excuse for a person who is responsible for every bad decision ATVI made in the last 20 years, there are probably 1,000 more people in the world who don't even know that Bobby Kotick exists. ----- The guy that we hear on the open mic in a CoD lobby who plays the game while blasting Metallica while a baby is crying in the background? That guy buys CoD every year; he doesn't know or care what the circumstances of the creation of it is, nor does he care about battlepasses or DLC skins replacing launch content.
This is the problem. Same story but replace it with anything, like politics for example. The average person just isn’t informed
"Democracy basically means: government by the people, of the people, for the people. But the people are retarded"
It's not a simple issue. Voting with your wallet doesn't do what people think it does. They don't buy stuff, but lots of other people do. Some people buy lots of things, and for high prices But they can only keep those players if there's a decent player base and healthy community. You're not likely to get people to buy expensive skins in games where only a handful of people are playing. It can still happen, lots of old games have super dedicated players. But not at the level they'd need for something like this to stay worthwhile. So it really just comes back to "if you're having fun, and don't want to buy stuff, don't buy it. If you're not having fun, don't play" Which seems like it should be straight forward. But man the number of steam reviews I read that say shit like "I played this game for 100 hours expecting it to get fun, and it never did. Waste of money" like fuck man it must have been doing something for you to keep you invested for 100h. Like surely you got your $60 worth at that point. League of legends is bad for that kind of stuff, people will play hours every night and talk about how much they hate the game. Like no one is forcing you to play usually. I had this guy join my gaming group once, and literally all he did was get super mad and say how much he hated the game every time. No one was forcing him, hell we didn't even really want him there but he'd never leave. We would make suggestions like "well take a brake, play something else" and he never did. I assume he's still miserable to this day
Yeah that's the idea behind "capitalism is egalitarian because you can vote w/ your dollar" but there's a reason democratic systems don't let you earn additional votes. I think this is horseshit, but people who like it will buy it and the MircosoftActiBlizz line will go up and then people like you and I get to go fuck ourselves.
I'm doing my part by being too poor to afford any of this bullshit.
>When the day comes that we wont have new offline games anymore Sounds like an opportunity for an indie dev to sweep a market with no competitors.
I'll do you one better: people need to just stop buying games that are completely saturated with microtransactions, regardless of whether they're cosmetic or p2w, and regardless of how overpriced they are. For single player games, this is bullshit. For games that absolutely need to be multiplayer and have to pay for server time, I'm fine with paying for a monthly subscription.
I have friends that play with others in Valorant or LoL and it’s very common for those people to have accounts where they have dropped $1000 or more on fucking virtual fashion. AAA games cost $60-70 and these F2P games earn 10x as much profit on these dumb shits who can’t stop themselves.
The majority of people that buy this aren’t reading Reddit threads. They’re using mommy’s credit card.
Fuck Overwatch
*Fuck Blizzard. They created a wonderful game, then proceeded to continuously nerf it to oblivion.
"NERF THIS!!!" "ok"
I love how they balanced the first game around the esport pros, whose take up like 0,2% of the playerbase
What happened to Overwatch's e-sports scene, anyways? (This was rhetorical, if it wasn't clear)
Yeah I’m so over it. Time to find a new game.
Been searching for 5 years, didn't find any, i love overwatch, but fuck overwatch.
I'm thriving on the remains of Titanfall 2
I replay TF2 campaign every once in a while but tbh the multiplayer is fun for like 5 hours a month, i don't know why it just isn't the same.
I’ve felt the same way about the multiplayer since release. It’s fun to hop on, but once the initial wow factor of the movement and mechs wears off, I don’t really find the actual gameplay all that engaging. At least not in the same way I do for games like CS, Siege, OW, Val, and even Apex. But then I wait long enough and try it again and the wow factor returns for a few hours lol. But the Campaign makes up for with some really freaking good level design.
As much as I love Titanfall 2, multiplayer is an absolute sweatfest. Either you’re sweating or you’re getting stomped
Team Fortress 2 is still alive despite the years of bot infestation and abandonment by Valve. It’s really just one of the games of all time and solidified its position in pop culture/meme history. You can see TF2’s character models and maps everywhere as well as its sound effects (Engineer’s nope, various Heavy lines like pow, pootis dispenser, etc.)
i’m glad that after 8 years of overwatch, TF2 was still there for me to come back to
You could come play Destiny 2 and be miserable there instead.
When it works Paladins, but sadly 90% of the time it doesn't.
im right now just like u, i have not found the next game that gives me that early overwatch vibes. Like someone said titanfall 2 kinda have some vibes to it if u havent tried it, also recommend the highly hated anthem, but if u get it cheap, is not bad for a try if u havent already
Gigantic has a rerelease soon, maybe that's your type, got overshadowed since it came out close to overwatch if I remember correctly
> Time to find a new game. That game is Helldivers 2
That is my main interaction with the franchise these days, yes.
The porn is good tho
Dude is going to hell
Along with the one who priced in game items more expensive than real life keychains? https://preview.redd.it/ndkzgdnxdhsc1.jpeg?width=1170&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=1aff381668a873f1f2dde7a14cb55b5ca93afc03
That's sadly hilarious
Kinda like the “alleged” (settled without admitting any wrongdoing for 50 million dollars) workplace conditions… https://preview.redd.it/jxz6okfkwisc1.jpeg?width=627&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=ba095cf98a1a14d59fd713744811dcc7c3ef18eb
This meme is already a classic. Also, the way these stupid keychains are strapped on the characters hands is another joke by itself
Those cost the free currency, not really sure who the fuck would spend the premium currency on those. https://preview.redd.it/qiftfz5jyisc1.png?width=801&format=png&auto=webp&s=9078e32a08192913e3df6694c3084f37c391ebf6
Straight to hells boiler room
Blame the people who bought it in 2006 and are still buying this crap. ruining gaming for us all.
Yep, many people complained, but all they had to do was prime a few. And part of the problem here is that they can afford to piss off tons of people, as now, all you need are a few whales. So now, games are targeted towards the few whales while the mass have to accept it. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IHZru-6M8BY&list=LL
Streamers are also an issue often times, while possibly covered by "whales." They just buy tens of thousands of dollars of digital extras to provide information and content to their viewers. They totes aren't addicted to games with a lot of disposable income or possibly poor business acumen.
Exactly all these "I work 200 hours as a single dad, just let me buy the $50 booster and $200 in skins because I'm a sad person!" Just turn the game economy towards addicted people.
I am fine paying $1-$2 for a bunch of skins.. the fact its $100 for 4 skins is a rip-off
The higher they price them the less people they need to buy them to justify them.
25 usd for a skin is a crime . I play Warframe most skin in the game is like 3 dollar a pop in my country currency
You can also farm the premium currency which is awesome. DE are great Devs and super ethical. I watch the making of Warframe and they said they went to EA with this business model and they were laughed out the building and told they would fail....fast forward 10 years or what ever the game looks good and is relatively stable and still being updated regularly. Saying this I would love to go back but as I left rail jack was just coming out and I fear rail jack is not even the tip of the iceberg of new changes. I've got around 4.5k in plat as well
Recent updates have been the absolute goat imo and the amount shouldnt scare you off. They have introduced a ton of systems to make particular grinds (like warframes that were released) easier to grind than pre railjack, and even grindy systems like railjack got huge makeovers to make it more friendly to get into
Do you still have to disable an alarm to unlock doors every time you run a mission?
Not that i know of. Its been ages since i had that happen so either it exclusively happens in old levels or it got removed Hell they recently changed collision to make you slide past obstacles rather than stop in your tracks when you run next to them, on top of every new tileset having bigger doors and larger hallways to accommodate all the weird shit thats running through them now
I heard that you can now cross platform your account. As a ps5 player does that mean I can finally enjoy the superior PC platinum system or is that still locked to your platform of origin?
I'm glad you asked. I wanna know too. Only reason I haven't touched it in a while because I'm on PC now and don't wanna start again
Platinum and inventory is merged across accounts, only thing I can think of that doesn’t transfer off the top of my head is tennogen skins
Im not sure how it works exactly, but from the few times where i played on the fucking ipad i own, you can spend the platinum on your account on every platform, only tennogen gets platform locked (so buying it with plat on the console means you dont own it on the oc and vice versa) and the plat purchases had to be changed up for legal reasons to give you bonus plat on purchases with login rewards, rather than the famous "50% off" deals But if you mainly want to migrate over or play on both you wouldnt be too hindered
2-3 dollars is an acceptable amount for a free game. That's how it should always be.
Those are the user created ones right? Some percentage is going to the creators of those skins too. Most of the other skins that you can't buy directly with money can at least be obtained with tradeable premium currency.
Valorant casually asking €100+ for a skin bundle.
Its just a hat, what's the issue? - TF2
Why is Overwatch always the example, when games like apex valorent etc are 10x worse?
Because it's cool to hate on Overwatch. Just like how it was cool to hate on Fortnite when it came out
Been cool to hate in it for like 5 years now, it's really weird imo since fortnite atleast is so big it makes sense that many use it as an example for modern gaming but overwatch being so focused seems random
Because ppl think it's cool to hate on it, for whatever reason. It's still a fantastic game that keeps me and a dozen of my online friends engaged more than any other shooter has.
"Noo porn game it's dead haha midwatch"
"Errm actually if you look closely, they stole the idea of guns from TF2 so they are just a copy pasted game"
What Microsoft employee ? Microsoft bought Bethesda 2 years ago. In 2006 Bethesda was owned by Zenimax and had like 50 employees.
Microsoft pitched it to Bethesda since Microsoft wanted to go ahead with the idea of microtransactions on Xbox. The fact that Microsoft later acquired Bethesda is separate to this.
>since Microsoft wanted to go ahead with the idea of microtransactions on Xbox It's interesting thinking back that even then people complained about horse armor DLC, yet I don't remember anyone saying that the Halo 3 map packs should have been included with the base game.
Yeah my understanding is they basically carried out the idea with their own 1st party stuff first to use to convince others to go along with it.
Oh, didn't know that. I remember the time it came out and everyone made fun of Bethesda for it, little did we know it was only the beginning...
Is it really the horse armor that started this trend? Even if that didn't exist, I still believe we would've arrived in this same microtransaction world one way or another.
No, it was Team Fortress and fucking hats.
But then you’d be criticizing ValvE and we can’t have that. /s But for real TF2 had crates 6 years beforehand and then CS:Go had loot boxes a solid 3 years before Overwatch came out. But Blizzard got the flack for it even though you could just get the skins by playing the game normally which was a huge thing at the time.
I feel like CS:go wasen't even really all that popular until they added the loot boxes too lol
Microtransactions were a thing in various online games like Maplestory, Mabinogi and DFO. I think the first game I personally recall playing with MTX was FlyFF which released a few months after Horse Armor was released. I think Horse Armor was the first time it happened on a console game for a single player game, though.
I remember when the horse armor came out and it was pretty universally thought of as ridiculous that they would charge $2.50 for that. So ridiculous that it's still a meme almost 20 years later. Seems quaint by today's standards, but people were definitely like "can you believe this shit?" But yeah, microtransactions were probably inevitable.
Blame the people buying this shit as well, there is a huge market for it.
Welcome to the new age of gaming 🤑
imo the success of fortnite also had huge impacts on the videogame industry
Just don’t pay anything. The only time I spend money on a game is when it was free, and it’s a good ass game with no bullshit. Super Animal Royal has EARNED my money. If there’s too much shit on the main menu I usually pass on the game entirely.
What the fuck is a Super Animal Royal ??
Lmao it’s a silly little 2D battle royal, it’s full of furries and cringe but damn if it’s not a fun little game.
> it’s full of furries and cringe I'm listening ... >but damn if it’s not a fun little game. and here I go buying another game...
It’s free2play, have fun.
He said it was free!
Doesn't matter if we don't buy anything when whales drop tens of thousands on this shit.
It does when the whale audience ends up oversaturated; there's only so many big spenders out there who are willing to shell out hundreds of dollars for this shet, and unlike mobile crap whose dev costs can be measured in cans of beans, AAA games cost millions of dollars. It's flat out unsustainable, and all we need to do is be patient and wait for the market to correct itself.
Maintaining games is cheaper than devoloping and these games are still clearly raking in the cash so we'll have to see where the price proves too high and then it'll set itself right below that line.
SUPER ANIMAL ROYALE IS GOATED
Tbf i don't care is skins cost money, i won't buy them anyway, would bother me if you can pay money to became op in a game without effort
$25 per skin is gonna make more people just main 1 character they spent all that cash on. In games where skins are $20+ I usually just buy 1 skin ever and use it the entire time. It doesn't work well for games you have to switch up characters
Gaming has gone down the drain Then you have EA with their Ultimate Team crap and Capcom locking content behind paywalls. At least Bethesda redeemed themselves with all the free updates to Fallout 76.
Putting NG++ behind the Deluxe Edition of Infinite Wealth is practically forcing me to acquire the game through alternative means. Like now I have to on principle. edit: if it ever gets unfixed
Don't worry, I also liked Fallout 76. It was better and did a better story than Fallout 4 did.
> Capcom locking content behind paywalls. ??? Capcom does a lot of shit, but I'll need a source for this.
Referencing games from that era, I believe. Street Fighter x Tekken shipped with a good amount of characters and game-altering gems via Disc-Locked Content that would be sold as 'DLC' after. It was an uproar back then that even helped kill any competitive environment for the fighter. They also made the True Ending to Asura's Wrath behind DLC. Early 2010s was problematic for Capcom, to say the least. Course... SF6 has similar BS with skins at the moment. The TMNT are $25 each. 100 bucks to get four color variants.
Ah I see, so Starfield just doesn't exist then. I can actually live with that.
Everyone complaining about skins etc. But I'm curious. How much does it cost blizzard for example to do a single skin? Has anyone an idea about that?
This is why even singleplayer AAA games are banning mods so they can sell you the most basic, asinine-looking skins for an obnoxious amount.
Anyone who said “microtransactions are comestic, it’s not that bad” allowed for them to create revenue streams built on envy. Now we have macrotransactions.
If you buy cosmetic skins because you are envious of other people that is 100% a “you problem”.
I absolutely hate the clowns who keep parroting that shit. It's 100% a case of a slippery slope, because one thing paves way to the next and the userbase becomes increasingly numb to the absolute shitshow that is these 'micro'transactions. Let enough time pass, let it become the norm and they can turn the handle on the vise even further with even more egregious forms of it. Oh and it definitely had an effect on our games, where resources are spent, what can be earned in-game through just playing it and the overall reward structure. So you'd have to be a monumental moron to downplay it.
No the people who allow them to raise the price are the people buying. If no one bought those pointless things they would have stopped. But doesn't matter the price, losers keep buying pixels.
People still fail to realize this. This isn't food, or utilities or rent etc. this is entertainment, this is a hobby. You don't like the price, don't buy it, vote with your wallet. It's all optional. I love hockey but the food, drink and games have gotten so freaking expensive that I don't go watch them live anymore. I also find new video games far too expensive so what do i do? I don't play the game until its on sale. No one is forcing you to buy a $25 skin, and the only reason they exist is because some people are more than willing to pay for that.
Okay. I don't play any game with $25 skins. Stop playing these fucking games.
I know we all shit on overpriced MTX but this shit sells. Vote with your wallet? That's been done and AAA GaaS makes bank if successful. Fortnite is a defacto money printing machine.
Sadly many young games have grown up normalizing shitty practices like this. They now expect microtransactions, battle passes, a dozen of different currencies or "gems" that each one buys slightly different things but there's always one who can buy the others but that one "gem" costs real money... in every game, specially multiplayer ones
I remember when Halo 4 had an armor pack for around $3 or something for 3 complete armor sets that you could mix and match. $1 per armor set, certainly wasn't bad for the price. Something like that was more than reasonable, but now they want $25 for a single skin 💀 So 3 skins costs more than a complete $70 game. These devs are absolutely wild.
$25 ?! That's 1 and a half copies of Stardew Valley or two TBOI dlcs
"Macrotransaction"
is the whale market really that much better than the affordable market???????? has anyone even tested this??
This isn't even the tip of the iceberg. Team fortress 2 has single pice cosmetics that cost over 100€ and apex had an heirloom that could cost up to 360$ to unlock.
See, this is why I'm happy I never got invested in having the latest games or tech. There's plenty of fantastic experiences from just 10 years ago, let alone before, so I have no need to pay attention to the shet coming from the AAA market these days. I am completely insulated from the bullshit of the gaming industry.
People who dismiss it as just cosmetics or saying 'you don't need cosmetics to play the game' completely miss the point of the problem.
Lextorias the GOAT
"Guys our game isn't making money. What do?" "Make it more expensive. Especially the non essential parts." "Ah. Yes. Especially those parts."
Play overwatch, nostalgia for Cowboy bebop. Actually think the skins look decent. With all that said, they can go fuck themselves for 25$ a skin
“When I came to you with those calculations, we thought we might start a chain reaction that would destroy the world.” “What of it?” “I believe we did.”