RANDOM VIDEO GAME NEWS

[Lexx]

 

Rockstar updated RDO yesterday. The changelog for that 800mb update is huge:

 

General improvements to fix game stability, save data and to address exploits.

 

Oh and apparently instead of fixing the mission reward design, they simply nerfed it all again... I don't know wtf they are doing. Do they want nobody to play the game anymore in a week?

I think, the stock bubble is slowly starting to burst after the price hijack which started with the introduction of Overwatch lootboxes, and sharholders are cashing out their 1 year, 1 and half year investments, and all the AAA companies are starting to panick because almost every single of them has lost 25 - 50% of value over the course of last 6 months, and they probably think, that fleecing the whales even more drastically, will bring them back their lost value.

Thing is, RDO doesn't even have microtransactions available right now. The gold currency is there, but the shop is still closed. So I really don't know what exactly they are trying to do... right now they just alienate the playerbase.

 

I can already see that the lobbies aren't getting full anymore, so there's a definite drop in active players about 2 weeks since the start.

[Malcador]

https://news.blizzard.com/en-us/blizzard/22833558/heroes-of-the-storm-news

 

 

Over the past several years, the work of evaluating our development processes and making hard decisions has led to new games and other products that we’re proud of. We now have more live games and unannounced projects than at any point in the company’s history. We’re also at a point where we need to take some of our talented developers and bring their skills to other projects. As a result, we’ve made the difficult decision to shift some developers from Heroes of the Storm to other teams, and we’re excited to see the passion, knowledge, and experience that they’ll bring to those projects. This isn’t the first time we’ve had to make tough choices like this. Games like Diablo II, World of Warcraft, StarCraft II, Overwatch, and more would not exist had we not made similar decisions in the past.

 

HoTS in maintenance mode, pretty much. 

 

Wonder what hysterics this will lead to.

[Lexx]

RDO gold store just went live. 55 gold bars cost you 20 euro. One of the high level "cool" coats costs 40 gold bars if you want to unlock it before reaching lvl 60something. So you pay about 15€ for one clothing item.. in one color. If you want another color, you pay again.

 

This is crazy expensive.

Edited December 14, 2018 by Lexx

[Chilloutman]

RDO gold store just went live. 55 gold bars cost you 20 euro. One of the high level "cool" coats costs 40 gold bars if you want to unlock it before reaching lvl 60something. So you pay about 15€ for one clothing item.. in one color. If you want another color, you pay again.

 

This is crazy expensive.

 

Greed is strong

[Lexx]

I mean, everyone expected this stuff to be expensive, but a coat... and it's just the beginning. Just imagine how expensive future items will be.

 

Suddenly GTAV online plane(s) for €75 don't seem so unreal anymore.

Edited December 14, 2018 by Lexx

[Malcador]

It is glorious to see.

[Fenixp]

Right? Rockstar found their monetization model, so now they're gonna run it 'till there's a single dime left in their consumers. I mean, Lexx, you think it'll kill the MP player-base - I think the opposite. GTA Online was one of those games which was capable of snatching a massive player base of people who are not core gamers. People like that don't tend to actually know what kind of monetization's standard in games - so they'll either ignore it, or spend cash. And Rockstar'll get rich.

 

It's exploitative af, but I'm not gonna lie - I sure would like to be on the receiving end of just a tiny share of that cash.

Edited December 14, 2018 by Fenixp

[Lexx]

Yeah. I'm not even against microtransactions, especially if they are only visual items. Hell, I'd buy some myself, did in the past, will do it in the future. But this... it's exactly the reason why they have put the fishing rod behind rank 14 and the binoculars behind rank 20... If you just start out with the game and realize that playing for a week will barely get you to rank 10, you'll just pay for it. They put these items at unreasonable ranks so you are inclined to just swipe the credit card. This is what I find so disgusting about it.

Edited December 14, 2018 by Lexx

[Chilloutman]

well its story of all MMO/online games, its grind

[Malcador]

well its story of all MMO/online games, its grind

 

Seems like coercive grind is the issue rather than just grind.

[Katphood]

I never understood the appeal to GTA Online and I didn't even bother with RDO. That's because I am a scholar, if I wanna play online games, I'll simply play COD: Black Ops 1 on my PS3.

 

In all seriousness, it is still fun and it still works.

[Hurlshort]

Of course, both GTA and RDR offer fantastic single player campaigns that don't cost extra and have a tremendous amount of content.

[Gfted1]

*mind blown*

 

If playing for UP TO 10-14 days is too onerous of a grind for stuff, and supposedly players dont want everything unlocked at install, so whats the Goldilocks zone for full unlock? Anything above 1 hour but below 7 days?

[Hurlshort]

I'm sure there is a sweet spot, but that is never going to be the focus of a company. They want to find the sweet spot that gets people to pay them, and rightly so, they aren't in it for charity. That's why I've always preferred subscription models. I pay a flat rate and the company still has to cater to my interests as a customer moving forward. Sadly that model is in decline.

[Tale]

Won't it depend on what the stuff is? And what stuff is available on the way to "full unlock?" If a game requires 100 hours just to unlock horse armor, there's an issue there. Mostly a "whyyyyyy?" And that continues to be true even if the game has satisfactory customization and progression without a grind. When it doesn't, then we've got other issues.

 

The goldilocks zone is "does what is unlocked justify the cost to achieve?" A new color scheme for your armor that costs as much in RMTs as an entire expansion for a different game usually does not fit that bill. And if the playtime required to unlock it for free is comparable to the length to play through an entire other game to the point of boredom, that better be some super sweet loot.

[Gfted1]

The goldilocks zone is "does what is unlocked justify the cost to achieve?"

Wont it depend on the individual? We can extrapolate from Lexx post that he will have to play 10 days to unlock a fishing pole and 14 days for the binoculars. But maybe players just blast through the game in one sitting and then uninstall.

[Malcador]

I never understood the appeal to GTA Online 

 

You get to interact with the worst of humanity.

[Oner]

 

I never understood the appeal to GTA Online 

 

You get to interact with the worst of humanity.

And the game encourages you to shoot them!

...Right?

[Lexx]

I'm never sure if Gfted1 is somewhat low-key trolling or not. How can anyone defend 15€ for a piece of clothing (buggy, by the way, the coat has polygon weight issues)? I mean, it's not like we (or I in this case) rally against micro-transactions completely.. like I've said a couple times already, if it's reasonable content, then I gladly spend money on it. Make it a set of clothes for 15€ and I'm fine with it again. Or some new playable content.. then I'm fine with it as well. Heck, people fire against Star Citizen for it's incredible pricey ships, but at least these ships have some simulation element- lots of buttons to press, various different features to play with (transportation, combat, mining, etc). You can't say that about a 15€ coat. At this point I'd argue that 15€ aren't exactly "micro"payments. It's the price of a normal games DLC that gives you 2 to 5 hours of playtime.

 

Maybe Gfted1 is actually a R* shareholder? That could explain some things. Really wish I would be a R* shareholder as well, tbh.

 

PS: I don't care if people spend real money on unlocking items from a higher rank. That's not the point..

Edited December 14, 2018 by Lexx

[Gfted1]

Im not trolling, nor defending the cost, nor bemoaning the reward. And now you're shifting the goalposts from items that have in-game function to purely vanity items. Anyway, my point was that those lengths of time that you provided didn't really seems that unreasonable to me to unlock stuff but clearly is a gigantic issue for others. 7, 10, 14 days is nothing to me so that's why I asked whats the preferred passage of time before the game just bust open for you?

[ShadySands]

Maybe the trend of increasing grinds and MTX aren't just them seeing what they can get away with but also a means of training the customer to accept more grind and MTX

Edited December 14, 2018 by ShadySands

[Mamoulian War]

14 days for a fishing pole is ****. I have finished Star Ocean Last Ocean platinum trophy in 750 hours, which is 31,25 days worth of playtime, and it had monstrosities trophies like 66993 killing blows and many many more... And in that time, I have finished everything, what that game had to offer, including the most rare weapons and most difficult superbosses. And that game is touted as one of the most grindiest JRPGs ever made when you want to get 100% done...

Edited December 14, 2018 by Mamoulian War

[Lexx]

Im not trolling, nor defending the cost, nor bemoaning the reward. And now you're shifting the goalposts from items that have in-game function to purely vanity items. Anyway, my point was that those lengths of time that you provided didn't really seems that unreasonable to me to unlock stuff but clearly is a gigantic issue for others. 7, 10, 14 days is nothing to me so that's why I asked whats the preferred passage of time before the game just bust open for you?

 

I didn't just play this game for 2 weeks, I no-lifed it to the max.

 

I can't give you a "it would have been perfect if the grind would only last for 5 days to get item X"-answer, but I can tell you that fishing is something you do quite early in the story mode. I'd go as far as calling it a basic feature of the game. In online on the other hand, you have to jump through many hoops to get to this in the first place. It's also one of the first rather reasonable ways to make at least some money... knowing this, it becomes clear why it's a rank 14 item. Want to make some better money ingame? Then spend some gold for a fishing rod to get it sooner!

 

Also my point for bringing up Star Citizen was that these pure vanity items cost more money than your generic games DLC or a vehicle addon in a simulation game. That's just nuts.

Edited December 14, 2018 by Lexx

[Mamoulian War]

Maybe the trend of increasing grinds and MTX aren't just them seeing what they can get away with but also a means of training the customer to accept more grind and MTX

 

It was posted here somewhere before, but you hit the nail on the head...

 

[Gfted1]

Heh, had to look mtx up. Theres probably a lot of truth to the "conditioning" angle.