Lmfao $300+?!
What's funny about this stuff, is Apex Legends developers more than likely gets paid to include this cross promotional material in their game, then they turn around and sell it to players. Really this is all just an ad, and if you pay for an ad you're an idiot.
The big price tag is part of the ad! That's how you get mentioned and people speak about it.
Some idiots will also buy it, so there's that, too.
I actually don't care if a free to play game has cosmetics you can buy. They need to make some money some how. As long as you don't get a real advantage by paying money.
I also don't mind being able to purchase cosmetic, non-gameplay affecting items. But I have always felt the prices are wack as fuck, even back when Horse Armor dropped. A skin should not be more than $1, IMO. Especially skins that are nothing more than a color swap.
Or you could mod the game, you know.
I'm not paying so I can see the skin. I'm paying so everyone else can see how cool I look. If it's single player, I would never pay for a skin. At the prices they charge, I don't buy them in MP either. But I might if they were $1 or less.
Exactly, and that's what opponents to cosmetics don't seem to understand. These serve the same function as fashion in clothing.
I am not opposed to cosmetics.
I am opposed to having to pay more real world money for content that already exists in the game, for everyone, that has no other way of accessing it.
You could, for example, have a cosmetic system that works something like the character creation spore:
Design a bunch of modular elements that can be assembled together in many ways, though bounded by various constraints so they would not break gameplay.
An even simpler version would be ok you unlocked this style of say pants, and it has various ways it can be hemmed or rolles up or dyed or have accessories mounted to it, and there are accompanying in game mechanics for being able to do all that.
Honestly PayDay 2 has a fantastic system for its Masks: Some masks you can only get via certain in game achievements, others from luck of the draw (but its not a paid for loot box). Then the game has other similar ways to handle how you get the items to be able to customize your masks.
PayDay 2 does not have microtransactions.
It does have DLC. This is a far better funding and development model than MTX.
Finally, if your sense of fashion in the real world is that you have to pay more to look good, then you have no real sense of fashion beyond signalling 'Look At Me I Am Cool Because I Bought Expensive Thing'.
That is not a sense of fashion, that is just flaunting your wealth in am ostentatious, crude and immature manner.
Whats funny about this is /people still play games with microtransactions at all/.
It's complicated.
The game itself can be extremely good, well made, and fun. You can choose not to participate in the MTX stuff.
Kinda wonder what would happen if such a game came out, was insanely popular, but literally nobody bought any MTX in it ever. Obviously a FTP game would just die, but would they take the hint if it was a $60-70 AAA game that also included BS MTX systems?
It's not like MTX is popular. They specifically go after the small percentage of players that get addicted and spend their life savings on that shit.
I game with people who just cannot help themselves and must buy everything. One guy spent nearly a thousand on Overwatch before he was able to walk away.
I just don't even tempt these guys anymore, I only ever play games that don't abuse them. We've enjoyed plenty of Factorio, Valheim, Avorion, Volcanoids, Deep Rock Galactic, etc.. I had to stop playing Vermintide/Darktide with them along with a few others, which has honestly pissed me off.
Now they're all eyeing Helldivers 2 and I'm spooked that the game is going to be MTX hell and we can't touch it, because I've enjoyed a lot of Arrowhead's previous stuff.
This is a perfect example of my above reply to another user:
Multiplayer games with a certain blend of either competitive play, or cooperative play that lends itself to competition amongst the cooperative players as to who is carrying the team vs who is getting the whole team wipe, these kinds of games /are known and understood by game developers/ to cause a toxic social dynamic amongst many of its players that escalates into basically an extremely expensive fashion competition.
This can also be accomplished by basically nailing some niche art style, by being a very popular established brand, or by simply using cartoony graphics and appealing to basically children with poor impulse control.
Its not complicated at all.
Microtransactions are well known to be an extremely effective psychological manipulation technique that is both highly effective against basically a certain market demographic/psychological profile of players (whales), and also when combined with the social dynamics of a certain set of games with certain attributes (which are also designed and targeted through market research and psychological profiling) create an atmosphere of peer pressure that is known to be effective on basically bullying many other players into at least some MTX.
It is a highly predatory and ethically repulsive practice that is done with precision and intent.
You say 'you can choose not to' which is fine from a theoretical perspective of basically a libertarian economist, where you assume that all human beings only make rational decisions that would benefit them and do not have human emotions, desires, you know, psychology.
The fact is there are now many documented cases of people having their lives literally ruined by spending too much money on these things. And I mean documented as in journalism on more extreme, individual cases as well as more comprehensive scientific studies.
Further, many MTX games are also obviously marketed at children with cartoony graphics and other marketing amd stylistic techniques that are, again, market researched to understand their viability in appealing to the demographics that will be most likely to make irresponsible spending decisions.
You claim that MTX is not popular and this basically baffles me as MTX is astoundingly popular in mobile phone games and there have been many popular games in the last few years that have featured MTX.
Case in point to your hypothetical example of a AAA 60 or 70 dollar game with MTX would be the buggy catastrophic mess that was/is Fallout 76.
So there is your answer: Video Gamers in general are highly susceptible to brand loyalty, and will often, very often pay for broken unfinished games, even with MTX, if those games have a sufficiently popular brand.
Only legislation will stop this.
If we allow this to continue, there will be nothing else.
I can't even respect people defending this, when the glorified fake hats cost orders of magnitude more than a whole-ass game. Five bucks for all of what's new would still be exploitation built on psychological manipulation constantly steering people toward throwing more real money at content that's already visibly on their computer. When it's hundreds of actual dollars, for one stupid thing, how do you not see the wider problem?
This doesn't exist in a vacuum. This is what the entire game is for. It only exists as bait on this hook.
when the glorified fake hats cost orders of magnitude more than a whole-ass game.
This is the exact reason I never bought anything when TF2 introduced this garbage to gaming. The hats, which were the most desirable cosmetics, were (and probably still are) more than it would cost to have the same exact hat made IRL.
I don't know where they come up with the prices for this crap. Even the first micro DLC to come about, Horse Armor for Oblivion, was extremely expensive given the content (2 different models and skins with no actual gameplay value for $5).
I don't really get why this matters that much? If they want to charge ridiculous amounts for stupid cosmetic shit, users don't have to buy it. I've put a couple hundred hours into Apex and Fortnite and have literally spent $0. Best investment I've ever made.
Congratulations on resisting manufactured discontent and weaponized frustration. Even if they never crack you, personally - they'll get a lot of people, and take them for as much as they're worth. Some for thousands upon thousands of dollars. For hats.
The entire industry is becoming infected by this business model. It is the dominant strategy. It's in full-price, major-franchise, single-player games. It's in subscription MMOs. All dismissive excuses have been proven wrong. It's naked greed, on top of whatever money they can already charge. And in pursuit of that, these products are made objectively less enjoyable. They openly employ fear and impatience to provoke irrational decisions. Your enjoyment without paying them is a bug to be fixed.
At this point they must consider you an NPC. A generic inconstant target for paying users to feel superior to. That feeling is the only reason you can throw money at this crap. The entire experience has been engineered to maximize how much better you feel, every time you fork over more money - moderated only by keeping you addicted so you never just leave. The longer they have you padding their servers, the more they can harass you with limited-time offers for shiny nonsense.
Why is that tolerable?
This has become half the industry, by revenue. What part of that is not a horrifying warning of things gone wrong? It's not like the billions in revenue have been great for anyone doing the work, what with investment-drunk publishers slashing studios apart. Turns out when you forecast unlimited revenue, there's no such thing as enough.
You could say society has always been like that, and we as a society have decided it's fine. Advertising as an industry is inherently manipulative, they want to convince you to buy their products, and they'll use whatever strategies they think will work best.
It's the exact same with the video game industry, they've just realized that "in store" advertising works really well. Yes, it's manipulative, but people wouldn't keep buying it if there wasn't a payoff. I think buying digital items is incredibly stupid, but I also think buying trendy clothes and whatnot is also incredibly stupid.
If you think of cosmetics in the same sense as trendy clothes, it makes a lot more sense. It serves the same sense of vanity, and that vanity will always exist regardless of the laws you set. That demand exists whether you like it or not, and that demand will be satisfied as long as there's demand for it.
Don't take this as me saying I approve of the practice (I actively avoid those games on principle), just that I don't think it should be outlawed. I do think we need policy here, but I should be limited to banning loot boxes, unless there's a secondary market, in which case it should be regulated as gambling. There's also an argument for treating F2P games as using F2P players as advertising, and thus banning it for minors unless there's express, documented parental approval (unlikely to happen at scale). The second one is a bit trickier because social media companies have the same business model, and I'm not a fan of giving personal information to SM companies, so there should also be a way to separate that approval from actual identities (i.e. a digital token signed by your state/country authorities that verifies your age and relationship to the minor; should be automated).
I believe there will always be a market for games that respect your time though since there's going to be a very real limit to how many of these there can be at a given time, so at a certain point, building traditional games has more value.
Ah yes, that exemplary industry with no need for regulation: advertising.
Banning specific mechanics will never solve anything. It's all tiny variations on the same abuse. You recognize it's bad enough to become illegal, but think chasing existing forms that feel especially bad will make you any less manipulated. All that's going to accomplish is a focus on smoother needles for more efficient wallet siphons.
The existence of non-abusive games is utterly irrelevant to the problems of escalating and spreading abuse. When I point out this is infecting everything, objections that go 'well only nearly everything' are wildly missing the point. I don't fucking care if that's still a game that doesn't do this, when I condemn a multi-billion-dollar industry for practices you know include criminally abusive exploitation. All I am telling you is that "include" is insufficient.
Yes, it’s manipulative, but people wouldn’t keep buying it if there wasn’t a payoff.
"It makes money so it can't be wrong."
you know include criminally abusive exploitation
I never said this. I never said any of it is or should be illegal, except loot boxes (only illegal because they should be classified as "gambling" and regulated as such) and maybe minors playing F2P games supported by cosmetics (smells like child labor since showing off to F2P players is the main attraction).
I merely said I don't like it, not that it is or should be illegal. I don't have to make everything that I don't like illegal, only things that actually have victims, and someone choosing to buy something stupid doesn't make them a victim unless they were defrauded in how that thing was presented (i.e. false advertising). You're not a victim if something bad happens to you, you're only a victim if you didn't consent.
"Except loot boxes" is you-saying-that. You're even suggesting a partial ban on cosmetics, unbidden. Thanks? Nice to know you understand it's awful, and why it's awful. Not sure why you think it becomes okay when the targets are adults.
Consent means nothing if it's manufactured. Which these systems obviously do, through utterly shameless manipulation, in an environment made-up by the people taking your money. All appearance of value is contrived. The fact you get the worthless geegaw you were cajoled into believing is worth fifty actual dollars doesn't matter. The process is the problem.
“Except loot boxes” is you-saying-that
That's a special case because it's gambling. That's not a comment about MTX in general or addictiveness, but that specific form because it's based on chance and there's no way to recoup your "investment." Anything that's purchased based on chance should have a secondary market to exchange things you don't want.
Adults are capable of consent, so they should be free to make their own decisions.
Consent means nothing if it's manufactured.
I disagree. People should be absolutely free to attempt to manufacture consent, and people should be absolutely free to oppose it. I hold that to be a fundamental freedom, because a restriction of that means you're letting someone else decide what's best for you. Nobody has that authority other than the individual themselves.
I make my own decision to avoid such nonsense, but I think it's unjust to forcibly restrict someone else from making a stupid choice, provided they are capable of consent. There are certainly limitations here (e.g. should be illegal to coerce someone under the influence of drugs/alcohol), but those all must reach some standard of foreknowledge.
If there's a law here, it should be refunds if the person was not of sound mind when they made the purchase, so perhaps a mandatory 36-hour window for returns if the user presents reasonable evidence that they were impaired (i.e. if the purchase was made at an irregular time, or the person can show evidence of being under the influence), and if the purchase was of an abnormal amount (i.e. spent hundreds instead of the usual <$10).
I laugh at stuff like this. Mainly because people actually buy this dumb shit.
Fucking respawn. They were the chosen ones. They were supposed to save us from the micro transactions, not join them.
I wouldn't call these "micro" anymore lol.
Micro content; macro price.
Not to say I'm not disappointed with respawn, but they handed over Apex development/maintenance to another studio in 2020
The only person I knew that really loved and still loves Apex to this day is the one crypto-bro I was unfortunate enough to have to deal with.
I only started playing apex when the new season started because ea doesn't want to let me plat titanfall 2 anymore.
The game is honestly really fun. But holy shit, people should really stop spending money on it.
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