Whales are the idiots who keep the Madden games alive.
this post was submitted on 28 Oct 2024
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Good to see that Dark Legacy Comics is still not funny after all these years
A joke so old it has grandkids.
Disgraceful behavior...
Right my Sims? looks to how horribly her game is glitching up due to owning more expansions than Maxis ever intended for Sims 4 to actually have
But for real, the idea of an MMO still requiring a monthly fee in 2024 is ridiculous.
in 1998 when it was a new concept and a lot of money had to go into maintaining the sheer volume of people using servers at a time when the internet couldn't handle more than 20 Star Trek fanboys at once without using up all the bandwith, sure. I could see that.
But in 2024 where even small Indie studios can afford regular free content updates and still make a profit from word of mouth game sales? Yeaaah no.
I'm confused, is this a serious take? How they make their money leads to how the game is designed and who for. If it's advertising it's shit. If it's microtransactions it becomes about min-maxing annoyance for most gamers while attracting whales, gambling and is shit. Monthly subscriptions is a model that needs loyalty and should attract people who want to "live" in an permanent virtual game world.
Ideally I'd want a global "entertainment subscription" non-profit that is funding projects for the players benefits and is somewhat crowd-controlled like a socialist bank.
I remember the first big MMORPG that was on the internet: Ultima Online. I wanted to play it back in the day, but I couldn't because I was far too young to have my own credit card to pay (and my dad was quite firmly not going to pay) and in the very late 90s, at least where I lived, the internet was still a pay-as-you-play affair, meaning every second you spent was logged and charged on your next phone bill. Sometime around 2000 or very early 2001 the internet got some plans by the company that had us pay a single fixed fee, so I could remain online as long as I wanted without worrying about a skyrocketting bill.
MMO still requiring a monthly fee in 2024 is ridiculous.
May I point you to Call of Duty on consoles? They are Massive Multiplayer Online (MMO) that needs a monthly subscription (Xbox Live, which owns Cal of Duty, or PS Plus).
Online gaming has more people paying for an online subscription today than ever before (Nintendo Online included). While the companies being paid for it have changed, monthly online gaming subscriptions are here to stay and have only gotten larger.
Uhhh, when did call of duty transition from lobby queuing to MMO?
That's ok this is a LIVE SERVICE GAME. Definitely not the same as an MMO. Definitely.
Also I bought that Brutosaur and a friggin love it. Best QOL feature in the game. I don't even play WoW more than a few times a month.
I now have all services in the game mobile in some way or another: bank, transmog, mail and auction
What makes a MMO different from a live service? Both have characters, levels, character progression exp based on killing enemies and doing X actions/quests, and have new content added as time goes on.
From how I see it, it's just a different name to just avoid being called a MMO.
I used to be an avid Plants Vs. Zombies player and I won the Jade League No. 1 spot and earned almost every plant that could be earned and I did it without paying a single dime in real life money. I eventually quit because after you finish the main game and win the Jade League (even once) there really isn't much else for you to do, and when you grind up your plants' exp to the level I got them the games become a sinch.
At this time I'd like to shill for Warframe.
The game is free. The battlepasses are free. The lootboxes are free. The ways you open those lootboxes are also free. The premium currency is a tradable item, so it is 100% viable to get it and buy premium shit without ever spending real money. Digital Extremes (the devs) once accidentally created a gambling machine (for pet cosmetics), and upon discovering what they did, removed it from the game and refunded everyone who spent money on it.
Warframe is the one game that I've spent more money on than any other game, I'm not biased, you're biased.
EDIT: I'm glad that people around here like warframe.
DE absolutely rules. In an era of constant enshittification, it's so nice to have a dev that is actively, constantly working to improve the player experience. From consistent bug fixes and engine optimizations, to little additions like reworks of old frames and new ways to interact with old content, to the massive story expansions like Whispers in the Walls and the upcoming 1999, it's just a great time to be a Warframe player.
remember when coptering was a thing and instead of just patching that bug they implemented a whole new movement system which includes bullet jumping? yeah, another dev would have just patched it out and give a middle finger to everyone who grew accustomed to that level of mobility.
I love warframe, but having to level every piece of gear up fills my brain with anxiety for some reason so I can't play it much. The combat loop is pure happy chemical.
there's so much that you can focus mostly on just gear you're interested in. mastering %100 of everything is just not a thing that is reasonable unless you want to sink all of your time forever. It also gets easier to start leveling new gear as you progress.
I come back every year or so and play for a month or two each time, still haven't spent money on it (but starting to think I should, to support the devs)
Just past week restarted the game and I love finding random Tenno in these comments. Hadn't played for a year or more and it's still going strong with exciting new content free for everyone to play. If you're bored of the loot-n-shoot part you can go fishing, decorating, trading, horseriding and whatever else is in the game.
Also love to look for streamers starting fresh and reliving the awe of the game through them.
100000% with you. Warframe and DE are amazing.
S Tier game
Don't look at my steam hours
EvE is similar but with a functional economy including scammers, thieves and general douchebags... And spaceships, is pretty fun but extremely addicting and technical.
The problem with Eve is that you will have to join a big group to enjoy it, and if you join one up, you are increasingly going to feel the pressure to whale if you are a normal player who isn't min-maxing the system. The game is chock full of whales.
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I miss having time to play Eve - big fleet battles were fucking epic but I can't dedicate the hours anymore.
Yes I'm aware there are ways to have quicker fun, I remember faction warfare, but that's even hard to do when you have to drop at a moments notice (kids don't pause well).
Yeah no matter what you do in it is a major investment in time.
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I've completely stopped playing MMOs, but there is a difference when it's an online service. What I consider absurd are the publishers and developers who close down their MMOs when they still have players who have invested and will invest money into it, without even considering selling it off. I'm looking at you, NCSoft. Almost happened to Spiral Knights, and because it didn't, it's still going. It's like they think that people playing them are players that would otherwise playing their new MMOs, when the reality is they avoid those publishers that don't respect their persistence and investment.
There's also a lot of MMO's with no subscription and plenty of whaling. But cosmetics are cosmetics, there's people that can legitimately complain about a $90 dollar mount if it gives an unfair advantage when they would otherwise not mind paying for just cosmetics. But there are people who don't mind unfair advantages in certain games either, as long as they have a F2P model and the devs have a good rep.
Nowadays, what drives me off is the feeling of never getting the full experience, having to constantly feel that way to avoid getting caught in predatory addiction loops they implement, and just being able to buy a full, self-contained experience for what would otherwise be two months of subscription in an MMO.
The difference mostly is that the old games were games built first and microtransactions second. Slowly creeping up the invasive methods. Which is acceptable for most people.
However new games have a fully fledged out microtransaction system and shop and the whole game is built around maximising profits. Just like mobile games are.
It is rare that when you put the money first you will produce a game that is fun. And definitely not possible to make a good one.
The Past "We made this game, and if you like it and want to support further development, we have these small DLC bundles, some skins or what not... Nothing fancy, but we wanna work on new maps to keep the game alive. There's no obligation, the maps will be provided free of charge, we're just happy the playerbase is so enthused"
Now "We've made a new venue for buying skins, the marketing people call it a game? Look whatever, oh and while some of these skins look unremarkable, remember they're only available for a limited time and those will cost 30% more than normal, but if you don't buy it you'll regret it forever when we take it away, either forever or until the GOTY edition."
(Seriously: Ban FOMO)
Seriously it has gotten to the point where games are so content bare that people are talking about the DLC before the main game's out.
Mortal Kombat 1 made that mistake so hard it had to start giving skins away to try to goad me into playing it again. Great story, terrible gameplay... weirdly the opposite of Mortal Kombat 11... (Maybe it'll help if your big DLC expansion wasn't 2 characters that are literally just genderflipped recolors.... How weird is that Cyrax and Sektor are female now. I mean, normally that's fine whatever, but in the context that Liu Kang created this universe to be his ideal, did he just have a Rule 63 kink for Cyber Ninjas or something? Or did turning the Transhumanists into Transgenders seem like too hilarious a pun for him?)
I have the strangest hunch that if a large MMO or game with lootboxes decided to make every item available via unlocks for free but make them all immediately buyable now, they'd have a nice business model. The player isn't buying exclusivity or an advantage, they're buying convenience.
Warframe heard that
Remember the Boycott for Call of Duty? And most of them were playing on Day 1.
This is so bad that it reminded me of reddit protest that I managed to forget about. xD
The worst part was how people that couldnt get off the platform called terminally online to those who could.
The biggest reason of why I struggle to get into any of the subscription-based games, because none of them are only subscription based, they charge you both for the game and the subscription afterward so you have both the price of the game plus any type of expansion packs plus the subscription cost monthly afterward and that's without including any of the microtransactions. I don't know why anyone plays them
Are the whales the ones complaining? Because the whole concept of a whale is that they are the exception. The vast majority of players pay only the minimum amount or slightly more, but the whales dump so much money in that they are still worth more to the devs than the other 99% of players combined.
The whales wouldn't complain about this one anyways. When this mount was available in-game on the auction house it was probably around 5x the price in USD assuming you bought wow tokens.
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