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# ? Nov 27, 2018 01:59 |
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# ? Jun 5, 2024 07:14 |
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What character is that? Is that Bwonsamdi cape?
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# ? Nov 27, 2018 02:03 |
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That's Weed Lord Leoric.
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# ? Nov 27, 2018 02:33 |
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I said come in! posted:Blizzard is pretty intent on being greedy with their free to play games. Hearthstone, and Heroes compared to other games in their genres, are not at all generous in giving you content to enjoy. As the saying goes, the most expensive games are free to play, and Blizzard takes that to an extreme. No? HotS is cheaper than most other Mobas and you can get skins and heroes via chests.
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# ? Nov 27, 2018 04:01 |
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Ragnaros needs a Treant skin where his Lava Wave looks like this: https://i.imgur.com/99NOoT8.mp4
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# ? Nov 27, 2018 04:16 |
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Lawlicaust posted:No? HotS is cheaper than most other Mobas and you can get skins and heroes via chests. HotS is the only moba I play. How expensive/cheap are others? All I know is that Dota 2 is free, and you can immediately play any hero.
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# ? Nov 27, 2018 05:54 |
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Machai posted:do go on Elobuddy. Was addicted to League, started cheating, got banned, broke away and gained a healthier relationship to video games and my computer.
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# ? Nov 27, 2018 05:54 |
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unpronounceable posted:HotS is the only moba I play. How expensive/cheap are others? All I know is that Dota 2 is free, and you can immediately play any hero. The thing about Dota 2 is that you should, under no circumstances, immediately play like 95% of the heroes. All HotS needs is to bring back those bundles. They even got a good reason to now with the recategorisation of the heroes. Just have like 10 hero packs - Healers/Supports, Damage, Tank/Bruiser, Mixed Bag for like 10-15 each or free with a new account. I’d also up the drop rate of the older heroes in lootboxes
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# ? Nov 27, 2018 05:56 |
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Lawlicaust posted:No? HotS is cheaper than most other Mobas and you can get skins and heroes via chests. LeL sucks rear end but that's because Riot have always been shameless, Smite lets you buy every character now and future for $30 and even runs sales on that bundle, Dota 2 every character is free from the moment you start. HotS absolutely does not have a good model, on it's own or in comparison to most, hero prices drastically need to come down when more than half the cast are sitting in the highest price point.
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# ? Nov 27, 2018 09:52 |
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A quick google seems to indicate that LoL champs at their highest cost the equivalent of 7.50 USD, which is the same as HotS, so HotS definitely isn't cheaper. Also, according to the wiki entry that I read, LoL drops its funbucks prices on champs faster than HotS, so fewer heroes sit at max price (gold/point wise) I guess? Basically it said that they are at max points for 1 week, then drop to the next tier, and when they drop, another hero in that tier drops to the tier below that, which HotS definitely does not do.
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# ? Nov 27, 2018 15:32 |
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I desperately wish HoTs would do a 'just unlock all the heroes' package like smite. They have a ton of other unlockables and cosmetics and crap with a decent sales model; they don't also need to ream people on heroes. God I wish smite didn't suck rear end in every other way.
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# ? Nov 27, 2018 15:41 |
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fool_of_sound posted:I desperately wish HoTs would do a 'just unlock all the heroes' package like smite. They have a ton of other unlockables and cosmetics and crap with a decent sales model; they don't also need to ream people on heroes. That would be neat, but it would also mean that they would need to actually regularly pump out skins and mounts and announcers (and maps I guess) which they are clearly not interested in doing. And if the rumors are true at Blizz pay now being super lovely*, maybe that's warranted. *Activision allegedly eliminated some kind of profit share program that essentially cut most of their pay. ToastyPotato fucked around with this message at 16:24 on Nov 27, 2018 |
# ? Nov 27, 2018 15:51 |
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The company hasnt released anything substantial in 2 and a half years and every game of theirs feels neglected, not sure wtf is going on over there.
No Wave fucked around with this message at 16:00 on Nov 27, 2018 |
# ? Nov 27, 2018 15:57 |
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Corporate politics
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# ? Nov 27, 2018 16:05 |
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Well the rumors are that Activision is most certainly not happy with the current output from Blizzard and that they want them to start cutting costs, which makes sense I guess because if you are spending a ton of money on development and then not releasing anything, that can be problematic. On the one hand, sure, doing just that lead to Overwatch, which is one of their biggest hits ever, on the other hand, pretty much nothing else is making OW money for them. They apparently cancelled development of a D3 expansion to work on D4 at the behest of execs, and then proceeded to spend two years working on it only to cancel it and then start from scratch. This kind of stuff wouldn't be an issue if something like, say, a f2p MOBA, were around to puff up their earnings, but no one plays those kinds of games so investing in that market would be a waste.
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# ? Nov 27, 2018 16:28 |
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There are two core issues:
A tertiary issue is that the community has been losing faith in Blizzard beyond the standard "bitchy grog doesn't like new thing" turnover. Originally the whining over the Activision Boogeyman was seen as disgruntled fans blowing smoke, but lately Blizzard's missteps and the departure of high-level people (even though it was for easily confirmable unrelated reasons) has given the complaint more credibility, which is affecting morale.
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# ? Nov 27, 2018 16:59 |
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Kith posted:There are two core issues: Was the profit share thing ever confirmed by a legit source? Because that is kind of hosed up if true.
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# ? Nov 27, 2018 17:04 |
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Kith posted:There are two core issues: Also I think more and more people are starting to turn on lootboxes as a thing in Blizzard's game. Where before I think a good amount of players were like "it's just cosmetic it's fine" I think more and more people are changing their mind on them being okay just because they're cosmetic. I've definitely changed my mind on them in both Overwatch and HOTS (though HOTS at least is technically a free to play game as his Hearthstone). And I think in general people are getting sick of being nickle and dimed by Blizzard in all their games. WoW has a shop with mounts and pets, their services are all RIDICULOUSLY expensive, Overwatch has lootboxes, HOTS has lootboxes and boosts and every character costs money, Hearthstone is a card game (I can't speak to Diablo or Starcraft). BfA and its lovely dev responses are pissing off a lot of WoW players in a way the devs never have before. The Diablo fiasco at Blizzcon pissed off Blizzard fans who don't even PLAY Diablo. It's like I said in the one WoW thread, Blizzard does not have the good will of its fans that it once had.
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# ? Nov 27, 2018 17:05 |
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D3 originally had a real money auction house for items in which Blizzard took a cut. They removed it and also didn't add any other monetization schemes into the game outside of Asia, where you can buy cosmetic wings and poo poo. Immortal was like the worst timed, worst planned announcement in the history of video games I think. It is certainly in the running at least. WoW is ridiculously overpriced in general at this point. $15 a month sub is more than Netflix, and you still gotta pay $40 just for the expansion. And then there is the laughable service prices, which are all like $25 IIRC for things like character transfers and poo poo. I literally only stopped playing WoW because it cost too much to be worth it.
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# ? Nov 27, 2018 17:16 |
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I don't see how goodwill matters if you don't release anything. My take - the company's gotten totally messed up because they're now a large company that requires consensus and meetings to do anything but they don't have a template for success the way other large studios do. So every project is very risky and very expensive and with a meetings about meetings culture on top of it they just can't get anything done. They can't just release A Game because they don't have a formula they can follow, even a very broad one the way Cyberpunk and RDR2 are open world RPGs by companies that have delivered on open world RPGs. RTS and Diablo style games just aren't going to see the same guaranteed interest so they're stuck trying to do something they haven't fone before, which is not where you want to ever be as a big company.
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# ? Nov 27, 2018 17:20 |
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ToastyPotato posted:Was the profit share thing ever confirmed by a legit source? Because that is kind of hosed up if true. Rather than regurgitate second-hand information and run the risk of loving it up, I'll direct your attention to this guy's video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SrKDgDlbsS8 He seems to have all of the angles covered pretty well (probably because people reached out to him to provide specific information whereas everything I know is just people bitching about work while we play games together) Macaluso posted:And I think in general people are getting sick of being nickle and dimed by Blizzard in all their games. That's what I meant by missteps. Kith fucked around with this message at 17:31 on Nov 27, 2018 |
# ? Nov 27, 2018 17:28 |
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Reddit is flipping out about lack of HGC confirmation of roster changes - just reddit being reddit as usual?
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# ? Nov 27, 2018 17:28 |
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Erdricks posted:Reddit is flipping out about lack of HGC confirmation of roster changes - just reddit being reddit as usual? I dunno, the fact that the deadlines went and passed without any comment from Blizzard is quite strange, and it sounds like most teams are not officially announcing anything because they don't want to agree to contracts that may end up being void. I have to imagine there is something going on behind the scenes otherwise it's pretty irresponsible on Blizzard's part then again, with blizzard lately
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# ? Nov 27, 2018 17:37 |
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Macaluso posted:WoW has a shop with mounts and pets, their services are all RIDICULOUSLY expensive This really bears making an example of as well. Race changing a character in WoW is 25 drat dollars, a race change in FFXIV, probably the second biggest MMO out there, costs 10. Server transfer in WoW are also 25 bucks and it's to transfer ONE character, transfers in XIV are 18 and you can transfer an entire suite of characters at once. Their prices are outrageously dumb.
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# ? Nov 27, 2018 17:47 |
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HGC always looked really expensive for something that would pull in like 10k viewers. But not having any competitive scene at all would be um... bad for the game. I'd have guessed they'd do something scaled down but announcing nothing is really bad.
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# ? Nov 27, 2018 17:48 |
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The fact that so many Korean players retired this year (or moved to different games) is pretty telling
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# ? Nov 27, 2018 17:49 |
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No Wave posted:HGC always looked really expensive for something that would pull in like 10k viewers. But not having any competitive scene at all would be um... bad for the game. I'd have guessed they'd do something scaled down but announcing nothing is really bad. Yeah. Again, it is kind of the way of things with HotS, where they blow a ton of money on things other than the game itself. They could have easily just run a more muted tournament scene (and maybe tried to piggy back it on OWL to save tons of money) but instead they blew who knows how much resources on pro-scene for a game that has taken over 3 years to get a decent matchmaker (assuming the new QM MM works whenever they finally release it.) I'm not one to defend corporate shareholder bullshit, but I could sorta empathize with the notion that Blizzard was in need of some disciplining.
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# ? Nov 27, 2018 17:58 |
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Yardbomb posted:This really bears making an example of as well. Race changing a character in WoW is 25 drat dollars, a race change in FFXIV, probably the second biggest MMO out there, costs 10. Server transfer in WoW are also 25 bucks and it's to transfer ONE character, transfers in XIV are 18 and you can transfer an entire suite of characters at once. Their prices are outrageously dumb. Those services are expensive precisely because Blizzard does not want you to use them.
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# ? Nov 28, 2018 00:32 |
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That's dumb. Don't have that option then. Wouldn't want mummy Blizzard cross with us and dock our allowance or whatever the gently caress would be appropriate for this analogy.
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# ? Nov 28, 2018 00:37 |
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Expensive microtransactions as a deterrent against whatever it is they are letting you pay for. That's a new one. If mental gymnastics were a sport, gamers would be guaranteed for the Olympics.
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# ? Nov 28, 2018 01:26 |
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Don't you have to pay to change your battlenet display name too
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# ? Nov 28, 2018 02:23 |
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Yes, you do, though I think you get a free one sometimes.
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# ? Nov 28, 2018 03:21 |
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Lawlicaust posted:No? HotS is cheaper than most other Mobas and you can get skins and heroes via chests. lol this is absolute bullshit. The chests are a total scam because Loot Chests by their very nature are gambling, but also because they are intentionally designed to almost always give you 1 or 2 duplicates. I still have hundreds of cosmetic items to unlock and still get duplicates, completely unacceptable for how much left I still have to earn.
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# ? Nov 28, 2018 03:27 |
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I wish I could see how many chests I've opened. I don't remember what the 2.0 launch gave me, but since then I must have opened dozens more, especially with these Twitch drops. Yet I am still missing the fast majority of the banners and sprays some how. Half the banners I actually use I unlocked with shards. I'm probably never getting a new hero in a box now that I have most of them, but even when I didn't, more than half the hero drops I got were dupes. I feel like half of my legendaries in general have been dupes.
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# ? Nov 28, 2018 04:30 |
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I said come in! posted:lol this is absolute bullshit. The chests are a total scam because Loot Chests by their very nature are gambling, but also because they are intentionally designed to almost always give you 1 or 2 duplicates. I still have hundreds of cosmetic items to unlock and still get duplicates, completely unacceptable for how much left I still have to earn. On a scale of offense, HotS chests are at the very bottom (so are Overwatch’s). Many, many other games out there have chests which provide actually gameplay advantages such as addition stats or special gambling only character (every EA game). I’m totally fine with an optional, cosmetic only chest (which can rarely contain heroes) that you early relatively quickly. Loot chests that are mandatory to gain in game power are a loving cancer on gaming. In addition to the chests, you get gold quickly and there are some cheap heroes that are comparable to cheap LoL heroes. Compare both of these to Arena of Valor will take weeks to buy the cheapest heroes. The currency for heroes in both AoV and LoL is also shared with a stat enhancing rune system. Hots really isn’t bad at all. Most cosmetics and all heroes are obtainable with no real money. There are cheap hero options. There are quests and level bonuses to move things along. You don’t have to spend currency on power enhance items. Loot boxes contain no real power enhancing items. Are any loot boxes, even cosmetic only, kind of lovely? Sure. Would it be better to never earn duplicates or just earn shards directly in larger volumes to craft what you want? Yep. Are HotS or Overwatch anywhere near the worse examples of this? Not at all. There’s a great video about loot boxes that came up about this in the Diablo Immortal thread that’s relevant: https://youtu.be/PTLFNlu2N_M All the complaints about WoW services and pricing model above are spot on. It is very bad compared to its biggest competitor and most American MMOs. HotS really isn’t though. It’s average at worst and better in many ways. Most of the rest of the industry is worse and more pay to win.
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# ? Nov 28, 2018 04:39 |
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I really wouldn't care less about lootbox cosmetics if heroes were reasonably cheap and easy to unlock. Expensive cosmetics is annoying but it doesn't harm the game.
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# ? Nov 28, 2018 04:48 |
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Yeah, it's not easy to buy new heroes with gold. You get one quest each day that gives like, 300 gold, and otherwise a game of qp gives like 15-30ish gold? So a qp player makes maybe 500 gold a day if they're playing an unreasonable amount, and like 80% of heroes cost 10,000 gold, so that's 20 days of dedicating several hours to HOTS to get one hero. Not that bad if you got one of the 2.0 bundles and already own 15+ heroes, but pretty nasty if you're starting from scratch
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# ? Nov 28, 2018 05:17 |
Lol at defending loot boxes by saying they're better than the ones in Arena of Valor, a game that I'm sure you just made up. I don't even own all the characters in hots, and I'm in the mid 600s on levels I think? I played in the beta and have bought maybe 10 characters with real money
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# ? Nov 28, 2018 05:18 |
Macaluso posted:Also I think more and more people are starting to turn on lootboxes as a thing in Blizzard's game. Where before I think a good amount of players were like "it's just cosmetic it's fine" I think more and more people are changing their mind on them being okay just because they're cosmetic. I've definitely changed my mind on them in both Overwatch and HOTS (though HOTS at least is technically a free to play game as his Hearthstone). This is giving me flashbacks to https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PUPD5y0nrUc "people are stating to wake up that DLC is a messed up business!" What did the devs do to piss off people with BfA?
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# ? Nov 28, 2018 05:31 |
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# ? Jun 5, 2024 07:14 |
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Cuntellectual posted:This is giving me flashbacks to https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PUPD5y0nrUc "people are stating to wake up that DLC is a messed up business!" BfA felt extremely unfinished and began with some utterly perplexing design decisions, to the point that most are calling the upcoming patch 8.1 the real launch of the expansion. A lot of these bad design things were handwaved away by the lead dev publicly during beta, and turned out to be actually worse than people initially thought in a live environment. Basically, every new feature of the expansion at launch was pretty much a dud. Most still are. I thought they did a pretty good job of outlining exciting new content at Blizzcon, but understandably a lot of the playerbase got burnt bad Midnightghoul fucked around with this message at 05:42 on Nov 28, 2018 |
# ? Nov 28, 2018 05:39 |