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Haha, I should stay out of discussions I'm not closely following, since this point was already made.

 

Nvmd  :)

Haha, I wasn't berating you, just reiterating my agreement. Honestly I think CCGs are kind of dirty and gross. I like playing them but I don't like their business model at all. Yuck.

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This is garbage. This is them saying "We need to get more money out of our whales, what's the cheapest, easiest, crappiest way we can do that?" ... I'm saying that $10 for new art in that game is garbage... This is a shitty thing.

I understand that he doesn't take himself entirely seriously as he explains between the lines I mentioned and every once in a while he does state it as just how he wants to spend his money, but the language he uses in this discussion mixed in the context of a culture of entitlement and consumer-kings really turns me off. I don't have a problem with Alex, but I do find his contribution to that particular discussion repulsive.

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I also want to mention that Netrunner is different because you buy cards with their counters. I imagine that for people who are not sharing a pool of cards, it turns into pay-to-win, but my experience is sharing the bought cards and therefore having the game's balance to be maintained.

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Hearthstone has not offered paid content (that actually alters gameplay) that you cannot access through sweat equity though, right? Or am I mistaken?

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That's not a free to play game! Also, if I'm not mistaken, wasn't the multiplayer updated regardless of whether or not you had the expansion? Or am I thinking of Starcraft 2?

 

If I'm playing a competitive multiplayer game, and I see that the person I'm playing against has access to content that I can't access without paying extra, that's fucked. That is bad. There is no defending it. It also doesn't matter if it's balanced, because a) nothing in video games is perfectly balanced and B) I learn by doing, so if I can't use that content to get a feel for how it works, I'm at a disadvantage when I run into someone who is familiar with those mechanics.

 

I don't think that's true about Brood War, but it may be of Starcraft 2.

 

What difference does the free-to-play aspect make, though? Does paying for the original content make it okay to pay for more content, while not paying for the original content means no more content should ever be paid for? That seems kind of odd to me.

Vanilla Starcraft and Brood War would only match you with people playing the same game you were. I believe this was dependent on which disc you had in.

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Hearthstone has not offered paid content (that actually alters gameplay) that you cannot access through sweat equity though, right? Or am I mistaken?

 

Blizzard's free to play games have always been fairly presented, probably to their own financial detriment (tho Blizzard has the money to spend on good will which'll pay off in the long run). I think HotS is kind of pushing it with their $10 character unlocks as you need to play dozens if not hundreds of games to earn the equivalent sweat equity (but I'm a bias'd dota guy and someone can correct me if I'm wrong). 

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Who cares if it's $1000? Nobody is punished for choosing not to buy it.

I don't get the anger at Blizz selling a useless status symbol.

 

"You can always not buy it" isn't a good excuse for a bad pricing model! And it isn't anger so much as, like, as someone who has put single-digit hours into Hearthstone, I don't understand how anyone could think that this is worth that kind of money.

 

...on the other hand, that Shadow Fiend arcana was, like, 20 dollars, so it's not really without precedent, I guess.

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I've spent a ton of money on Dota 2, yeah. More than I'm comfortable admitting! But none of it (barring the weird PA arcana mini-game thing, of which I was at once both a fan and a hater) actually affected gameplay in a match proper.

 

I was under the impression the expansions actually cost real money in Hearthstone, but I've only heard from other people. Everyone seems to buy it outright. Which is fine, I will never berate someone for spending money on something if they want to spend that money. I will, however, berate the developer for all time. That said, if you can grind for it, that makes it a whole lot more tolerable for me, as a concept, although I've played League of Legends, and grinding new champs in that game takes so fucking long as to be utterly worthless. Especially when you buy a champ you think you might like from a few games in the free rotation and then a few games later you wish you'd bought someone else with your magic grindy points. And now you have to wait another few weeks before you've earned enough.

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I've spent a ton of money on Dota 2, yeah. More than I'm comfortable admitting! But none of it (barring the weird PA arcana mini-game thing, of which I was at once both a fan and a hater) actually affected gameplay in a match proper.

 

I was under the impression the expansions actually cost real money in Hearthstone, but I've only heard from other people. Everyone seems to buy it outright. Which is fine, I will never berate someone for spending money on something if they want to spend that money. I will, however, berate the developer for all time. That said, if you can grind for it, that makes it a whole lot more tolerable for me, as a concept, although I've played League of Legends, and grinding new champs in that game takes so fucking long as to be utterly worthless. Especially when you buy a champ you think you might like from a few games in the free rotation and then a few games later you wish you'd bought someone else with your magic grindy points. And now you have to wait another few weeks before you've earned enough.

 

Riot has long suffered accusations that they balance for maximum cash rather than actual game balance - new, more expensive heroes are more powerful and then once the fervor wears off they get nerfed back down. I don't know if it's true, I've never played League. It makes me thankful I play Dota, though.

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It certainly felt that way when I played, but I think that largely comes down to way I was saying earlier, with how if you can't use something for yourself, it's a lot harder to figure out how it works. So you run into this champ who you've played against like three times, but they've played AS a dozen times, and they're obviously going to have more knowledge and experience than you.

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Yeah, and not to turn this into Dota Thread 2: Electric Boogaloo but I have that problem even with games that don't monetize hero selection. Gyrocopter is one of my compendium challenge heroes and I've been on a crazy losing streak trying to get that guy to work for me, but Xboct can jump in and farm 6 slots by minute 40? How is that fair? Valve, please fix.

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Riot has long suffered accusations that they balance for maximum cash rather than actual game balance - new, more expensive heroes are more powerful and then once the fervor wears off they get nerfed back down. I don't know if it's true, I've never played League. It makes me thankful I play Dota, though.

Demonstrably untrue. At least a third of the dozen most recent champions were undertuned if anything.

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Riot has long suffered accusations that they balance for maximum cash rather than actual game balance - new, more expensive heroes are more powerful and then once the fervor wears off they get nerfed back down. I don't know if it's true, I've never played League. It makes me thankful I play Dota, though.

 

Definitely not true. There are lots of other factors that go into a 5 on 5 game, but the last Lord released had I believe the lowest sustained win rate ever since people started collecting that data. Funny enough, one of the constant balancing struggles League has is making sure some of the original 40 heroes released aren't too strong. There are pro games where the entire lineup is from pre-2011 from time to time. Riot has a vested interest in keeping the game balanced, because their competitive scene is so popular.

 

I have spent a decent amount of money on League ($80-100 probably?) and I am happy to have paid. I'm at the point now though where I'm so deeply invested in the infrastructure that if I want to get a non-cosmetic that you can get for sweat equity or cash I can just instantly get it because I've been playing so long. Actually, comparing the money I've spent to League to what I've spent on Warcraft is disgusting. Between buying the boxes and the monthly, I have spent...

 

it's a lot of money on WoW. A lot.

 

Anyway, I totally get the pushback for spending too much on what ends up being a poor cosmetic item. Some of the highest-tier League skins are like $25 bucks. That's a lot of money to throw down for no benefit other than getting eye sparkles when you see what you bought. I'm a practical man (he says after spending a grillion dollars on an MMO).

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Hearthstone has not offered paid content (that actually alters gameplay) that you cannot access through sweat equity though, right? Or am I mistaken?

 

It's pretty tough to earn enough to buy the whole single player Dungeon of Nax that awards cards that can then be used in multiplayer, but this is technically true. This is the first pack that they've announced that can't be bought with in-game currency.

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I almost hate to admit it, but Dan is kind of growing on me over the course of Jeff's mixlr drive to LA. He seems like a really fun dude to take a road trip with.

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Too bad the stupid mixlr keeps cutting out for fifteen minutes for every one minute of actual audio they manage.

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I feel like their voices are similar, but Jeff has a New York accent and affectation that's pretty easy to isolate.

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About every 10th comment on the chat stream is essentially "Wow Austin is the best I <3 him" right now. It makes me so happy to see that kind of thing.

 

It is really obvious why he's a PhD candidate with the way he expresses himself.

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Two campos and a scoop on giant bomb tonight. I feel like i truly know now what firewatch is

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Why are they not posting audio versions of these nights? They've done every year before now...

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t is really obvious why he's a PhD candidate with the way he expresses himself.

 

 

Lol.

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Why are they not posting audio versions of these nights? They've done every year before now...

They are. The first nightly show was last night, so audio should go up today.

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That's my bad - I was under the impression they'd do a Day Zero one like in years past, after the first few conferences

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They've switched from doing a Day Zero wrap-up at night to cover the press conferences to just live commenting on the press conferences as they happen.  Those don't go up as audio because they kinda rely on the video portion.

 

Also, the Day 1 podcast is up now. 

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