tegan

I Had a Random Thought (About Video Games)

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Nah, Morrowind has better pacing with your one contact turning out to be your new employer and telling you to get a cover story by joining some guilds or getting some minor renown/notoriety. And then the 10 hours of running around and politic-ing it up as your end game.

 

Not having played Morrowind, I will concede that Oblivion is number 2.

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The main quest's opening in Morrowind is really low key in comparison to later. In both Obliv and Skyrim you get gigantic walls of flame within 10-20 minutes of starting the game. Morrowind has you fill out some forms, get transportation to another city, find a guy there. You can also, instead of doing side content, just talk to him again and he'll send you off to do a favour for a guy in town. The favour is finding a tiny bronze tinted box in a gigantic dwemer ruin filled with bronze tinted stuff. It's in the first room, the ruins themselves stretch out many floors below. Then more talking again. No end of the world is starting, no flames.

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The main quest's opening in Morrowind is really low key in comparison to later. In both Obliv and Skyrim you get gigantic walls of flame within 10-20 minutes of starting the game. Morrowind has you fill out some forms, get transportation to another city, find a guy there. You can also, instead of doing side content, just talk to him again and he'll send you off to do a favour for a guy in town. The favour is finding a tiny bronze tinted box in a gigantic dwemer ruin filled with bronze tinted stuff. It's in the first room, the ruins themselves stretch out many floors below. Then more talking again. No end of the world is starting, no flames.

The fifth house cultists don't show up until you have progressed a decent amount into the story IIRC. It takes a while for you to even find out what the threat is.

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Why do gamers seem to have such an antagonism towards paying money for F2P games?  I get it when they are using abusive/manipulative/P2W systems, makes sense.  Having gotten into Warframe recently, there's a ton of antagonism in it's community towards paying for things (which otherwise seems really good), with most advice being not to buy Plat, just play. Even though as a system it's very friendly towards players who don't want to spend money.  All content is available to everyone.  Platinum (the currency you can pay cash for) is tradeable between players, so people can sell rare items they don't want/need to get Plat to buy things that are just a lot easier to buy than grind for.  

We spent $25 a piece once we knew we liked it, and it's been great.  Got us a nice variety of starting gear to give us some more diversity in our loadouts, got a nice boost to stockpile some credits/experience/crafting mats.  

Is it because it feels like the system can be gamed, so the system must be gamed?  Why wouldn't you want to pay to support the dev/game you really enjoy?

It's just a very weird attitude to me.

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Why do gamers seem to have such an antagonism towards paying money for F2P games?  I get it when they are using abusive/manipulative/P2W systems, makes sense.  Having gotten into Warframe recently, there's a ton of antagonism in it's community towards paying for things (which otherwise seems really good), with most advice being not to buy Plat, just play. Even though as a system it's very friendly towards players who don't want to spend money.  All content is available to everyone.  Platinum (the currency you can pay cash for) is tradeable between players, so people can sell rare items they don't want/need to get Plat to buy things that are just a lot easier to buy than grind for.  

We spent $25 a piece once we knew we liked it, and it's been great.  Got us a nice variety of starting gear to give us some more diversity in our loadouts, got a nice boost to stockpile some credits/experience/crafting mats.  

Is it because it feels like the system can be gamed, so the system must be gamed?  Why wouldn't you want to pay to support the dev/game you really enjoy?

It's just a very weird attitude to me.

 

Even in games without P2W they often tilt the progression so you hit a point where its a choice between a super long slog or buying stuff. Free to Play mechanics just encourage some bad game systems.

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For one thing I think the idea of microtransactions has been tainted by the bad actors. Also I think the lack of ceiling on dollars spent makes people distrustful. The developers are incentivized to get as much out of the consumer as possible and even if everything is totally on the level, there's a perception that people are going to be manipulated to spend and spend and spend. It makes for a bad environment and can make people hostile towards the whole thing. A single upfront payment comes across as more honest.

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I think a lot of "gamers" like to tout the "honest" approach as the way that F2P games need to be made, when in reality doing that just means that a developer caps their maximum revenue per user at a low number and still only sees a miniscule percentage of players converting to spending players. Realistically, every successful F2P games has purchases that may not be "honest" in the sense you want, but are absolutely honest in the value of what they're selling. You're not going to trick people in to buying something. 

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For one thing I think the idea of microtransactions has been tainted by the bad actors. Also I think the lack of ceiling on dollars spent makes people distrustful.

 

These are two things that I think make "gut sense", but we can look back and see the animosity towards microtransactions (even completely optional cosmetic ones) from the very beginning.  There are also plenty of other examples where there's no strict ceiling on what people pay for a game (MMOs, dedicated servers for some games, ridiculously priced Collector's editions).  For each of those examples, the people paying for those things are still often paying more than most of the people who buy stuff in ethical F2P games (I know there are a few whales for each game that go nuts, but let's be honest, the typical player isn't actually worried about protecting a theoretical whale they will never meet). 

 

Even in games without P2W they often tilt the progression so you hit a point where its a choice between a super long slog or buying stuff. Free to Play mechanics just encourage some bad game systems.

 

I have fairly limited experiences with these F2P games, but I do know the point you're talking about that they hit.  But, the question then becomes, does the amount you have to pay to get through that barrier cost more than you would have been willing to pay for the game outright?  I'm using Warframe as an example here because it's what I'm playing now, but paying $25 will pretty much push you through all the slog gates I know of without making them feel grindier than many paid games are.  $25 for a polished, fun 3rd person, RPG-light shooter seems very reasonable.  I would suspect in many of these games, $25 would often be enough to push through the slog. 

 

And I'm not even necessarily convinced about the bad design systems.  Binding of Isaac: Rebirth with it's expansion now looks like it probably takes upwards of 200 hours for an average player to unlock everything, and it's not like that is a huge game.  I think unreasonable expectations on player time are common across many, many games both within pre-paid and F2P.  And yet, we tend to see them as a criticism of design more commonly leveled against F2P. 

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I think a lot of "gamers" like to tout the "honest" approach as the way that F2P games need to be made, when in reality doing that just means that a developer caps their maximum revenue per user at a low number and still only sees a miniscule percentage of players converting to spending players. Realistically, every successful F2P games has purchases that may not be "honest" in the sense you want, but are absolutely honest in the value of what they're selling. You're not going to trick people in to buying something. 

 

I am deeply wary of any business model that strongly rewards unwise or excessive spending decisions by players. Saying that people should be able to resist cleaves a bit too closely in my mind to nineteenth-century arguments about addictive drugs not needing to be made illegal because addiction is a function of poor morality and such people will find some way to destroy themselves regardless.

 

It's one thing if, as Bjorn says, there's just a certain amount of cash that's necessary to buy the player past intentional grinds, but the vast majority of games don't seem to be like that. Some, like Loot & Legends from the Card Hunter people, have timed bonuses to item drops that encourage binging on the game and paying more money to extend the timer. Some, like World of Tanks formerly, have golden ammo that is qualitatively better in every way than regular ammo. Allowing players to buy an unlimited item or effect that improves their experience while degrading others' experiences is... Yeah, there are abuses to be had and it's incredibly hard for developers to know if they're abusing players because capitalism is so shitty as a system that exploitation is inevitable to some extent.

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I think a lot of "gamers" like to tout the "honest" approach as the way that F2P games need to be made, when in reality doing that just means that a developer caps their maximum revenue per user at a low number and still only sees a miniscule percentage of players converting to spending players. Realistically, every successful F2P games has purchases that may not be "honest" in the sense you want, but are absolutely honest in the value of what they're selling. You're not going to trick people in to buying something. 

 

What I was saying is that I doubt they'd ever see F2P as honest no matter how it was executed. It's a perception of being manipulated that makes people uneasy.

 

 These are two things that I think make "gut sense", but we can look back and see the animosity towards microtransactions (even completely optional cosmetic ones) from the very beginning.

 

You're right, but then I'd say people being hostile about this sort of business practice isn't actually new either. Being "nickle and dimed" isn't exactly a new expression.

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You're right, but then I'd say people being hostile about this sort of business practice isn't actually new either. Being "nickle and dimed" isn't exactly a new expression.

 

Totally true!  Also, "there's no such thing as a free lunch."

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I think it's the same attitude that sees me with 450 health potions at the end of a game.

 

Don't do it until you have to...

 

whoops you never have to. Anyone that does so is wrong, I didn't!

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The simulated camera-shake during the cut-scenes of 2013's Tomb Raider is irritating.

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I like the way Path of Exile structured their F2P store. You can buy skins which offer no bonus other than looking rad but now the Devs are offering skins in competitive events and timed (weeks/months long) challenges.

There is one thing every player is going to want to buy from the store though and that's stash tab space. In a Diablo 2 style Rpg that relies on trading things of relative value instead of gold, you're going to want more space for your booty eventually. You can't really not engage in trading unless you want to shorten your character's lifespan/effectiveness considerably. But I don't think you need more than the default .. Four? Stash tabs until you've been playing for several months. When you do buy more tabs you're paying ~NZD$20 for enough credits to buy 6 stash tabs with some creds left over. Every month or so stash tabs are discounted by about %20 so it doesn't hurt too hard. Still I'd rather they had the price around $15 because 20 still feels like a huge buy.

I find it sad that I often don't need to use potions and other trinkets to make it in a Video game. It feels like in most games you don't need to reach further than your health or mana pots + one or two cures to win unless you're playing on hard.

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The simulated camera-shake during the cut-scenes of 2013's Tomb Raider is irritating.

 

I remember a lot of simulated camera stuff in that game irritating me, like rain beading into droplets on the camera when it's pointed up.

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I've never liked shaky camera-man in movies either. I first noticed it in Dancer in the Dark and I was like "Use a TRIPOD!"

The Tomb Raider shaky camera is way worse though, I think the changes in velocity are unpleasantly frequent and uncurved.

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Has anyone played Valdis Story or Apotheon? In the market for a new 'vania, but not sure which of these to get (or maybe Odallus??)

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I really liked Apotheon, but I get all giddy over ancient greek/roman things, so I was able to look past all its weaknesses. It's not really a Metroidvania, it's more like a 2D action game that has optional backtracking to get optional weapons/powerups. 

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A friend of mine really liked Valdis Story, but I'm there for the exploration, not the combat, and Valdis Story's kinda combat-heavy while the map design is a little boring.

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I'm hoping Slain! ends up being good but I don't get to find out until December. It kinda looks like if Dethklok made a 'vania game.

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Why do gamers seem to have such an antagonism towards paying money for F2P games?  I get it when they are using abusive/manipulative/P2W systems, makes sense.  Having gotten into Warframe recently, there's a ton of antagonism in it's community towards paying for things (which otherwise seems really good), with most advice being not to buy Plat, just play. Even though as a system it's very friendly towards players who don't want to spend money.  All content is available to everyone.  Platinum (the currency you can pay cash for) is tradeable between players, so people can sell rare items they don't want/need to get Plat to buy things that are just a lot easier to buy than grind for.  

We spent $25 a piece once we knew we liked it, and it's been great.  Got us a nice variety of starting gear to give us some more diversity in our loadouts, got a nice boost to stockpile some credits/experience/crafting mats.  

Is it because it feels like the system can be gamed, so the system must be gamed?  Why wouldn't you want to pay to support the dev/game you really enjoy?

It's just a very weird attitude to me.

 

I played bit of Warframe myself (80 ~ 100 hours ish?) and I gladly forked over about $80 for skins and stuff because I had a great time and some of the unique skins were pretty cool.  On the other hand $90 spent on Hearthstone's arena mode left me with utter disdain towards that game's pay system.  Spent like $12 on Dragon's Nest or something.

 

But on larger point yes the hostility/suspicion towards F2P games are often expressed very poorly, and is clearly not very good indication for market-wide 'vibe' since i F2P games are such a huge bulk of this industry.

 

There was this really good gamasutra article I read by Ramin Shokrizade on how 'whales don't live in desert' drastically changed my opinion on F2P games.  There he basically explained how whales actually take at least a month of regular play before spending money on anything which meant that you can't have whales for bad games... it was a great read.

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I have spent a lot of money in Dota 2. None of it is on content that would otherwise be blocked from me, besides some minigames/extra goals (i.e., "do this and you get some extra drops") that I otherwise wouldn't see, but are ultimately completely unimportant (and often I don't even like them, they just come as a side bonus to what I'm really paying for).

 

I have problem doing so, in no small part because none of the actual game content is locked behind the money. It's all completely cosmetic. And it's great!*

 

Even so, there are people who describe it as exploitative, and that baffles me to no end. The whole game is there already. I like the game, so I spend money on the game. I've been called an idiot no small amount of times. I've been called weak-minded, etc. Whatever, dude, at least I'm enjoying my life instead of wasting my time insulting you for not being into exactly what I'm into.

 

*I actually don't even have a real problem with the more traditional F2P model (i.e., Actual Game Content being locked behind a paywall, unless you play enough to unlock it), provided I actually can attain everything in a timely manner. League of Legends, for example, is an awful model, unless you've been playing since the beginning. No person coming in now will be able to reasonably obtain all the characters, and having all the characters available in a game like that is extremely important!

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League of Legends, for example, is an awful model, unless you've been playing since the beginning. No person coming in now will be able to reasonably obtain all the characters, and having all the characters available in a game like that is extremely important!

 

Jesus, I had forgotten that LOL made you pay to unlock each champion. Do they sell some kind of "unlock all" package, or do you really have to buy all one hundred twenty-seven champions at, what is it, $5 or $10 each?

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There are bundles, but yeah, either that, or you play a bunch of games to slowly earn the points to unlock a single one.

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