Inflation has even hit horse armor apparently
this post was submitted on 15 Feb 2024
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Wow, thats Macro-transaction
Of course, a mount like this would have been part of an achievement or an in-game event. Now its just "open your wallets"
I would like to see a law that simply states anything purchasable in a game, must be able to be earned in the game with a reasonable level of effort compared to the sale value of the item. Whales would still whale, but fish could hunt down the stuff they want.
The simplest formula would be the dollar value divided by the fed min wage. So a $35 item would be about 5 hours. So it must take the average player 5 hours to obtain it, or less.
Or maybe we just need to stop buying shit that’s just thinly veiled skinner boxes, and play games because they are fun again, not to get the best/coolest/most brag-worthy stuff in-game.
Corkyskog's suggestion would make it actually brag-worthy. Just being rich in real life doesn't necessarily require effort. I'm way more impressed by a full endgame set in Diablo II.
I could see developers slowly shifting their models so that they actually star planning out more free only items that take ridiculous amounts of time to achieve, purely for the rarity. Because then you just open a trading shop and take a cut of each sale. Stratify the items and make them excessively rare and you make money on the f2p to whale economy.
That sounds like the Diablo 3 auction house. It was very unpopular and they eventually shut it down. It broke the core game loop by replacing "kill monsters for cool stuff" with "do anything to get gold, and hit fantasy eBay" or, for people with less self control, "hit fantasy eBay with your wallet in hand"
Oh I don't see the need to loop in game currency to it. Just have a regular shop. Anything that is purchasable is going to sell for less, and everything else, well that depends. Yeah, it's not ideal, ideally I would want everything to be free/tied to in game currency that you can't purchase.
Still describing the Diablo 3 in-game real money auction house. People just gathered the quickest-to-gather saleable thing over and over, sold it en masse for real money. Little money × many transactions = lotsa money. Then they bought the good stuff.
Became a gold farm simulator, as full stacks of gold were saleable. If they had blocked gold sales (can't remember if they did do so eventually), it would've just moved to X relatively-common legendary item.
It would never happen. Because then they'll lawyer up to fight "what does reasonable mean".
And I predict that they'd say well if a whale is going to pay for it, they would imply that the assumption is that that person works 40 hours a week thus does not have time to play. Does a reasonable amount of time to play the game to earn something is then a full-time job.
Which is absolutely absurd. But the name of shareholder profits that's exactly where they'll go.
They're winding the game down and trying to milk the whales as much as possible before they stop supporting it
There's like at least one xpac coming down that will somewhat revitalize the game, support won't end tomorrow.
This is just blizz squeezing for more money, like every other game with an MTX shop.
Wait. D4 is already winding down? Didn't it launch last year?
It'll get an influx of players next month with the GamePass release. How long that lasts is ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
Well, it's hard to say. Player count still exists, but appears to be trending down. This is likely due to the season model they're going for. Blizzard isn't very forthcoming with numbers, so everyone's looking towards this 3rd party for numbers https://activeplayer.io/diablo-4/
There IS a way to get this out of games, but it won’t happen. People would actually need to NOT purchase things from companies that display this behaviour, the games included.
You'd like to think that, but the entire industry is currently collapsing in upon itself because they've spent so long doubling and tripling down on things that nobody was buying already. They won't even think twice about driving beloved studios off a cliff in the pursuit of their corporate wet dreams.
I wish I could not buy something twice.
Systemic problems need systemic solutions.
They didn't get me this time
I remember when $2 for the color blue was bad…
Whats that, whippersnapper?
Horse Armor....?
WHAT YEAR IS IT?!
at least horse armor wasnt more expensive than oblivion, it was only $2.50
It's almost nostalgic. But shitty.
Phew, I’m so glad I switched to 3d-printing/war-gaming. That is absurd.
What sucks is this will likely sell “well” too. I have a buddy of mine that is a “whale” and he eats this shit up
What's the craziest they bought that you know of?
I can’t put my finger on a number, but for example every time a new Magic the Gathering Arena Set comes out he buys packs until he has a play set of nearly every rare. I wouldn’t be surprised if it was more than five figures annually.
At least Magic cards are physical goods.
Edit: But apparently, MtG Arena is digital.
You sweet summer child. He means MtG Arena, the online version. They are not physical goods.
?!
Wtf, then.
Spending entire monthly savings on Eve online
In 2024 that’s weapons grade retarded.
I have a friend that drops hundreds on Apex Legends every time there is a "Collection Event" which means "Obtain all 20 of these items and get a special item that you can't get again very easily."
It would be outrageous if the game were performing well, and yet people keep dropping it as they insist on fracking up each “season”.
I've seen guns in Mech Arena cost over $100. I shit you not.
I, admittedly, don't play Diablo 4. But I know they have "seasons." Is there new content released with each season that you don't have to pay for? If so, I would thank microtransactions for that and the people who pay so you get new content without paying.
The season is a battle pass. The paid tier is all cosmetic, but the prices on the shop are so ridiculous. This game should have been free to play. But Blizzard is so greedy now, even with WoW Classic fueling their traditional subscription cash cow more than it has been for a while. It's sad to see the decline of this once-awesome company.
I bought D4 recently when it went on sale, and it is pretty fun, but I would not recommend paying full price.
The season is a battle pass.
I'm not sure what this means, as I suspect it means different things for each game. However, a quick look at the way Diablo 4, it does look like they add content with the pass, and I don't see anything about having to purchase it, but I could be wrong. But if I was getting a constant stream of content for free and the only penalty is that I couldn't get some meaningless cosmetic item, I would be happy not furious.
Also, I don't recommend paying full price for any* game because they all go on sale eventually. I just drop any game I want into my wish list and then when it eventually drops under 20 bucks on steam, I buy it.
- I will happily pay full price for indy games. And I also don't always follow this rule, like I did just buy BG3 for full price.
Battle pass means you play the game to earn rewards on a track of levels. There are two tracks, free and premium. Everyone gets the free. If you want the premium track as well, you must purchase the premium battle pass, which in D4 I think is $25.
And the free adds content too?
Ok, but this is a stupid example. This is something you buy for the 7000 platinum and get the horse for free.
The horse looks like shit though and you shouldn't buy that much platinum.
And 7000 platinum is worth how much in irl currency? It's not mental gymnastics, you know?
Not sure what you mean?
You said you spend the 7000 platinum and it comes for free. It's an abstraction layer above buying it for 7000 platinum. Platinum can be bought for real life currency. So, it's just another abstraction layer above just spending money to get the in-game item.
If you can't wrap your head around this, you're either oblivious to the world ,or a troll
No this is you spend $65 and you get 7000 platinum plus the horse. So it's basically a discount on platinum. Implying this is $65 for a horse is misleading.
Otherwise you're right, the platinum is a manipulation to make people feel like they are not spending money.
Oh, my bad then. My fault for only reading headlines