Star Wars Battlefront II

Rafterman said:

It doesn't bother you that any time a new skin is dropped in Overwatch people go nuts and spend tons of money to buy an outfit? It's no less predatory, it's just aimed at a different gamer. I never cared enough to buy any skin I didn't earn through playing, but to some people the way their characters looks is more important than 5% extra damage or an upgraded weapon in another game. Fashion Souls is a thing for a reason. Blizzard is just exploiting people that aren't you, so it's ok. Fuck, I'd love to have a buch of skins that I haven't managed to get,

That's what I'm talking about, you're not going to get two gamers, with different priorities on what in their games is important, to agree, much less gamers as a whole. I mentioned SoW before. Some people think streching out the last act and hiding the true ending behind that slog so that people will open their wallets is ok. To me, that's every bit as egregious as anything in BF2 because the story in a singleplayer game is important to me.

The ideal solution who have been to nip this shit in the bud before it got traction, but we're way past that, and the fact that people pick and choose which games they care have predatory practices and which ones they'll be upset about justs means that it's probably not going anywhere.

Click to expand...

not particularly. and you said it that no two gamers are going to agree and you're right. but that's because games are fundamentally art and art is subjective.

i think a game like overwatch is on the acceptable side of the gray area. blizzard doesn't need extra money to keep their servers running. and they've shown they can still support their products years after release with games like diablo. but with overwatch, they clearly get more support and a big reason is the bottom line. diablo and starcraft isn't really bringing in any consumer dollars. e-sports can bring in some money for them, i'd guess, but not regular consumer money. so any CEO worth his salt isn't going to pull money from one department to feed another unless it's in it's infancy.

Overwatch will continue to be supported as long as their cosmetics keep them in the black. it's as simple as that.

i don't have a problem at all with cosmetics as long as they are well done. a palette swap is cheap and should be free. anything that takes the developr less than an hour of work should be free.

Rafterman said:

Now you're just being stupid. You can literally switch out Overwatch and Battlefront in your post and it holds the same weight.

Click to expand...

Are you retarded? Legitimate question

Overwatch doesn't make you grind for heroes or multiplayer advantages

Rafterman said:

Overwatch is a full priced game.

Click to expand...

Overwatch has been $40 since launch. Try again

Man, this type of assfuckery just puts things in perspective. I'm sorry for any complaints I made against SoE/Verant/Blizzard, etc over the years. I realize now just how bad a gaming company can really fuck their customers over, and I feel like I was given a loving, tender touch in comparison by previous companies compared to what EA is doing to their customers now.

Noodleface said:

Are you retarded? Legitimate question

Overwatch doesn't make you grind for heroes or multiplayer advantages

Click to expand...

Now your moving goalposts. You said skins are easily grinded and that they are an incentive to keep playing.

You can literally have a have a maxed out character in BF2 in a week. And you can have half of the six locked heroes in your first fucking day.

How long would it take to unlock all of those easily grinded skins in Overwatch? Forever is the correct answer.

Blizzard makes more off of loot boxes than they do from box sales. It's every bit the predatory practice, as witnessed by the mass amount of people buying boxes because earning them all is a slow, random process.

Noodleface said:

Overwatch has been $40 since launch. Try again

Click to expand...

Overwatch is on multiple consoles, and was a full priced game, genius.

Rafterman said:

Now your moving goalposts. You said skins are easily grinded and that they are an incentive to keep playing.

You can literally have a have a maxed out character in BF2 in a week. And you can have half of the six locked heroes in your first fucking day.

How long would it take to unlock all of those easily grinded skins in Overwatch? Forever is the correct answer.

Blizzard makes more off of loot boxes than they do from box sales. It's every bit the predatory practice, as witnessed by the mass amount of people buying boxes because earning them all is a slow, random process.



Overwatch is on multiple consoles, and was a full priced game, genius.

Click to expand...

We're arguing different points here. Overwatch is all cosmetic. ALL COSMETIC. Heroes are free. Maps are free.

Well agree to disagree on overwatch, it was $40 for PC for the base game but consoles only had a $60 version.

Overwatch is also a multiplayer title only, its designed to last for a very long time if successful. Battlefront II will be superseded by Battlefront III, and an entire new crate system. Battlefront/battlefield are not designed to last. The games that have justification are the ones that need to host high performance international server farms. Rocket League, Dota, Overwatch, LoL, Street Fighter / MvC. These games are E-sports, Battlefield is not. If cosmetic dollars are invested to continually upgrading the game, maintaining good latency server farms where ever you live in the world, and persistence for years so that matchmaking stays solvent (because its the most important feature). If you really believe that Battlefront or games like it are equivalent to those I listed, then not to worry. But this is the salient point to me about the difference.

I do not mind of some Dota nut spends 2000 dollars on cosmetics/TI in a year. To me that's very comparable to a die hard sports fan spending the same amount on Jersey's, team swag, and game day costs. To not see battlefront, or games that your 7 year old might play incessantly with their friends infested with crates, is a bad idea.

Noodleface said:

Overwatch has been $40 since launch. Try again

Click to expand...

overwatch being full price, half price or 99% off doesn't matter, it's all the same. personally i'm okay with overwatch's system, but it did take me some time to warm up to it's free-to-play mentality behind an initial box price.

If these dumbfuckers want to make money they need to bring back modding support, sell it for 30 bucks and let people keep their games alive for decades.

ARMA II was the top fucking seller for a full year on Steam due to DayZ and that game was like 7 years old at the time. Build games with dept that are meant to last and your players will keep selling your games for you.

Kiroy said:

Alright here we go so not a 'full price' game.

Click to expand...

It was full price for the origins edition which I believe was just a bunch of skins

Wasn't the console edition the origins editions?

Either way I'll bow out. Enjoy your shit game whoever is playing it. I'll enjoy overwatch for the next several years

Just to emphasize how bad the whole microtransaction / loot box dynamics are, we are talking about a major release $60. Game development costs have gone down over the years, not up. You have more developers and publishers doing a lot more for a lot less compared to even 3-4 years ago. Big game companies do not need to have loot boxes or day-1 microtransactions to stay afloat. The only driving force behind those decisions is moremoremore moneymoneymoneymoneymoney, not necessity. It's insult on top of injury.

Note that I don't object to paying money for content down the road. The expansions for Stellaris are by and large worth my money. I have bought RP in League because that's a goddamn F2P game and that's their business model, and even then I have stopped because I think they are money hatting a bit too hard more recently. Overwatch loot boxes are a bit unfun to me but it's purely cosmetic and there's a way to buy specific ones you desperately want so still not outright evil, plus they actually are putting out gameplay content for free as a result so hey.

No, my point is that the tendency that started years ago of day-1 extra DLC for stupid shit that was actually already in the game has slippery-sloped into an actual wide-ranging problem. Slippery slope is supposed to be a fallacy but gaming execs have managed to make it real, so that's some kind of achievement I guess. We're not even at worst-case scenarios yet but they are pushing more absurd bullshit at increasingly fast rates down consumer throats.

Noodleface said:

We're arguing different points here. Overwatch is all cosmetic. ALL COSMETIC. Heroes are free. Maps are free.

Well agree to disagree on overwatch, it was $40 for PC for the base game but consoles only had a $60 version.

Click to expand...

Overwatch slows the progression of leveling to the point that people regularly buy crates to avoid the slog. And even then pack so much useless shit into lootboxes that people feel the need to buy more. Things like sprays weren't put in there for the good of the game, they were put in to take up drop spots and make the good shit less common. I don't even want to think about how much they make on boxes during one of their holiday events.

It's literally preying on a particular kind of gamer. It's not only devious as fuck, but it's fucking genius. Not only do they milk people left and right, but they get applauded for it. Doesn't effect me, who gives a fuck, right? But it does effect others. I personally know people who've dropped more cash on Overwatch than any game they've ever played. Just because it isn't aimed at the same type of gamer as a lootbox in BF 2 or SoW is aimed at doesn't make it any less predatory.

Anyway, this basically proves my point. What's acceptable to you won't be to the next person and vice versa. Until people are like "fuck this" across the board it won't go anywhere.

Kiroy said:

Alright here we go so not a 'full price' game.

Click to expand...

$60 on consoles.

I wish there was an option just to buy the skins in Overwatch outright instead of playing the lootbox lotto. I've played the game so much that I can get anything they release without having to pay anything so the system is more than fair I feel. I really think they are losing out on money by just not offering the skins for $30-40 during the events especially for people with secondary accounts.