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I have accepted as a matter of course that AAA turds like Diablo IV (which I will probably buy) are gonna have battlepasses and in-game shops but if I see that poo poo in an indie game I am out. Don't know why it fills me with comparatively so much revulsion, but it does, so there.
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May 23, 2023 15:50
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yeah, i'm fine with the way deep rock galactic does poo poo because their 'battlepass' system is mostly just a means for them to add in new content and give you a focused way to earn the new crop of cosmetic stuff, but a fundamental part of it is that once a season is over and a new one is implemented they put all the stuff from the old season in the general cosmetic pool to be gotten from just playing the game normally. there's no option to even pay money for anything related to it, you just get stuff by playing the game normally. the only extra, paid thing they have is just packs of cosmetic skin stuff that are very explicitly ways to dress up your idiot dwarves and have no impact otherwise. and even then you don't have to engage in a gameplay grind to get them, you're just paying for skins. like, the devs of a game fundamentally don't have to put in paid battlepass stuff. there is nothing making them do that other than a desire for more money. there are so many ways to implement the earning of new cosmetic stuff that don't involve 'pay for the privilege of grinding out new hats'. there is no situation where it's a good thing and ideally that cancer will die out at some point, if possible.
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May 23, 2023 16:00
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goferchan posted:I have accepted as a matter of course that AAA turds like Diablo IV (which I will probably buy) are gonna have battlepasses and in-game shops but if I see that poo poo in an indie game I am out. Don't know why it fills me with comparatively so much revulsion, but it does, so there.
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May 23, 2023 16:05
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Deakul posted:The fact that they implemented this bullshit into an unfinished early access title tells me exactly where their priorities are though. There are numerous indie early access titles that have optional buy in supporter packs with trivial cosmetic bullshit in them. The vaunted Deep Rock Galactic released a 15 dollar cosmetic supporter pack two entire years before it actually left early access. You buy into this stuff if you want to kick the devs some extra money for a game you enjoy and you otherwise completely ignore it because it's some hats. The moment they add classes or items or bosses or any other gameplay unlocks to it, I'm with you, but I absolutely do not give a poo poo that they're charging six whole dollars for like 4 cosmetic outfits, some accessories and emojis, and enough currency to buy the next three battlepasses they put out. It simply doesn't matter or reflect on the game's quality in any meaningful way beyond some weird chimpanzee rage when people see the word "battlepass". If they had released the exact same content in the exact same time frame for the exact same price but called it "supporter packs" I seriously doubt anyone would give a poo poo. goferchan posted:I have accepted as a matter of course that AAA turds like Diablo IV (which I will probably buy) are gonna have battlepasses and in-game shops but if I see that poo poo in an indie game I am out. Don't know why it fills me with comparatively so much revulsion, but it does, so there. 
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May 23, 2023 16:11
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That's because the indie scene was once a haven from that kind of capitalism. Also that battlepasses and the like are the mark of live service games, and no matter what the developer says about them or how popular they are at any given time, they have a shelf life.
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May 23, 2023 16:11
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Kanos posted:There are numerous indie early access titles that have optional buy in supporter packs with trivial cosmetic bullshit in them. The vaunted Deep Rock Galactic released a 15 dollar cosmetic supporter pack two entire years before it actually left early access. You buy into this stuff if you want to kick the devs some extra money for a game you enjoy and you otherwise completely ignore it because it's some hats. Several people have already pointed out that the way Inkbound does it and the way DRG does it is not the same. Inkbound developers have actively spent effort making their system worse just because it will make them more money.
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May 23, 2023 16:14
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does the battlepass have a time limit on it where the content will be unobtainable after it expires? as in there’s already FOMO on a title that’s already in early access, which is supposed to be a “help test the game and give feedback for development while it is explicitly not finished” thing and not whatever this destiny bullshit is
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May 23, 2023 16:17
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Jack Trades posted:Several people have already pointed out that the way Inkbound does it and the way DRG does it is not the same. There is absolutely nothing that is stopping them from letting you get old battlepass stuff once it rotates out, completely removing the "FOMO" problem. There's a couple of games I can think of that let you choose any battlepass in the game's history to complete when you buy a battlepass - so, say, if you wanted the season 1 stuff during season 3 you could just do the S1 pass instead. They could also add it to the store directly or release supporter packs with the previous battlepass content included. Owl Inspector posted:does the battlepass have a time limit on it where the content will be unobtainable after it expires? as in there’s already FOMO on a title that’s already in early access, which is supposed to be a “help test the game and give feedback for development while it is explicitly not finished” thing and not whatever this destiny bullshit is This is very much a "the game is a complete product that we could have sold as a 1.0 and peaced out but we're releasing it as early access because there's a ton of stuff we want to add to it over time" scenario.
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May 23, 2023 16:18
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Y'know, these indie devs should consider either a) not making a multiplayer focused game that needs server upkeep and constant development costs via MTX or b) get day jobs like the rest of us to support costs.
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May 23, 2023 16:18
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Kanos posted:There is absolutely nothing that is stopping them from letting you get old battlepass stuff once it rotates out, completely removing the "FOMO" problem. There's a couple of games I can think of that let you choose any battlepass in the game's history to complete when you buy a battlepass - so, say, if you wanted the season 1 stuff during season 3 you could just do the S1 pass instead. They could also add it to the store directly or release supporter packs with the previous battlepass content included. There was nothing that was stopping them from not doing a battlepass in the first place yet they chose to do it anyway. What makes you think they will decide otherwise? Deakul posted:Y'know, these indie devs should consider either a) not making a multiplayer focused game that needs server upkeep and constant development costs via MTX or b) get day jobs like the rest of us to support costs. If DRG developers manage it without stooping down to that level then everyone else has no excuses.
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May 23, 2023 16:21
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Kanos posted:This is very much a "the game is a complete product that we could have sold as a 1.0 and peaced out but we're releasing it as early access because there's a ton of stuff we want to add to it over time" scenario. The cognitive dissonance here, from you, the devs, whatever I don't know... sure is something. I have never been more glad to have stopped buying EA titles, christ. The entire terminology is rotten.
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May 23, 2023 16:24
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Jack Trades posted:There was nothing that was stopping them from not doing a battlepass in the first place yet they chose to do it anyway. What makes you think they will decide otherwise? Possibly the giant public outcry and repeated requests I've seen for that exact feature? You're framing the Monster Train developers - who have an established track record of lovingly supporting their games with high quality patches and content - as some kind of horrible greedy goblins who are rubbing their hands together and counting their gold pieces while pondering more plans as to how to extract one more dime from the idiot consumer. They clearly wanted to do a supporter pack thing, and since they're planning to release their content patches in seasons with ladder rankings and different mutators per season and such, they decided to also release their paid cosmetics in the seasonal battlepass model. If this was some nobody shovelware dev team I'd be a lot more cynical about it but they have an extremely solid track record on their side. Serephina posted:The cognitive dissonance here, from you, the devs, whatever I don't know... sure is something. I have never been more glad to have stopped buying EA titles, christ. The entire terminology is rotten. Early Access became a meaningless term that needs to be evaluated on a game to game basis like five years ago. You have timeless classics like Deep Rock with years of love and polish in them that remain in "Early Access" for years after anyone else would consider them finished products, and you have lovely pump and dump garbage fires that use Early Access as a cover for making GBS threads out a broken mess. It's been like that forever.
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May 23, 2023 16:27
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Kanos posted:There is absolutely nothing that is stopping them from letting you get old battlepass stuff once it rotates out, completely removing the "FOMO" problem. There's a couple of games I can think of that let you choose any battlepass in the game's history to complete when you buy a battlepass - so, say, if you wanted the season 1 stuff during season 3 you could just do the S1 pass instead. They could also add it to the store directly or release supporter packs with the previous battlepass content included. You can just release a game as 1.0 if it’s actually finished and keep updating it afterward lol, it cannot be overstated how bad the optics are to combine EA with a reward model deeply associated with FOMO
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May 23, 2023 16:32
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Imagine defending day one season passes/cash shops with any sincerity at all.
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May 23, 2023 16:33
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Owl Inspector posted:You can just release a game as 1.0 if it’s actually finished and keep updating it afterward lol, it cannot be overstated how bad the optics are to combine EA with a reward model deeply associated with FOMO The optics are definitely terrible and I imagine the response is probably making them freak out, because the reaction to the battlepass is pretty much sucking 100% of the air out of the room about any discussion of the game itself pretty much everywhere.
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May 23, 2023 16:34
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there is literally no way to make it look good because, again, there are so many ways to monetize certain things and have it not be some poisonous poo poo that has no reason to be in there. no amount of arguing about them being good devs or whatever is going to ever change that, because we already know of the myriad of better means to add in paid content and the devs of the game could have just. done any of those. instead of this.
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May 23, 2023 16:37
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Johnny Joestar posted:there is literally no way to make it look good because, again, there are so many ways to monetize certain things and have it not be some poisonous poo poo that has no reason to be in there. no amount of arguing about them being good devs or whatever is going to ever change that, because we already know of the myriad of better means to add in paid content and the devs of the game could have just. done any of those. instead of this. I can agree with this. Like I alluded to earlier, they probably should have just released the exact same content as a supporter pack.
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May 23, 2023 16:39
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Deakul posted:Imagine defending day one season passes/cash shops with any sincerity at all. some people will die on absolutely any hill to defend their favorite toys
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May 23, 2023 16:41
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I'm only OK with battlepasses in mobile games where I've already been trained to tap on my phone for 10 minutes a day even without the existence of the battlepass, probably because I can easily multitask while doing it. For some reason, the thought of logging into a "real" game on a PC and doing dailies feels so much worse, and like a second job. But if it's all cosmetics, then I don't really care, other than it is definitely a bad look to introduce paid GaaS monetization into an EA title.
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May 23, 2023 16:42
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Battlepasses leverage fomo to encourage daily play. I've come to the conclusion I'm not the market for that as knowing that I have to commit to playing drains my will to do so.
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May 23, 2023 16:46
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Jack Trades posted:If DRG developers manage it without stooping down to that level then everyone else has no excuses. This is like saying "if people who won the lottery can dick around all day without having to work for a living, then the rest of us have no excuses". DRG is able to do the less-aggressive monetization precisely because they're already so popular. 90+% of indie games do not make any money. It's no surprise that indies are trying to find ways to improve their odds. To be clear: I'm not trying to defend aggressive monetization in games, or saying that people are wrong to not like them. I don't like them either. I'm just saying that you can't draw sweeping conclusions from cherry-picked data points.
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May 23, 2023 16:47
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Indies have been price-locked to  -  on Steam for the last two decades. Think of season passes as adjusting for inflation.
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May 23, 2023 16:48
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Indie devs deserve money. A battle pass means they want to try to support their game post dev and make money doing it. It really doesn't seem that bad? Try to shed yourself of the Gamer koolaid
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May 23, 2023 16:51
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Donnerberg posted:Indies have been price-locked to I'd rather they just raise the price by 10 dollars. Pladdicus posted:Indie devs deserve money. A battle pass means they want to try to support their game post dev and make money doing it. It really doesn't seem that bad? Try to shed yourself of the Gamer koolaid There are less scummy ways of achieving the same thing.
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May 23, 2023 16:51
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Deakul posted:The fact that they implemented this bullshit into an unfinished early access title tells me exactly where their priorities are though. Making rent and paying their employees? Lmao
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May 23, 2023 16:51
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Donnerberg posted:Indies have been price-locked to Darkest dungeon 2 just released for $40
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May 23, 2023 16:53
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Pladdicus posted:Making rent and paying their employees? Lmao Deakul posted:Y'know, these indie devs should consider either a) not making a multiplayer focused game that needs server upkeep and constant development costs via MTX or b) get day jobs like the rest of us to support costs. Indie game development really isn't full time job material or even a money making venture, I'm always absolutely shocked to hear about these dudes that drop out of school and quit their jobs to pursue game development and then proceed to make a post mortem a year or two later saying how big of a mistake it was.
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May 23, 2023 16:56
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Pladdicus posted:Making rent and paying their employees? Lmao You sound like the type of person that would be aggressively defending landlords online.
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May 23, 2023 16:56
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Pladdicus posted:Indie devs deserve money. A battle pass means they want to try to support their game post dev and make money doing it. It really doesn't seem that bad? Try to shed yourself of the Gamer koolaid I think a better idea would be to release a game that isn't half-finished and/or a broken mess, spend a little time patching any serious bugs that are revealed by suddenly have a huge number of people playing, and then start work on a new game. The people who don't want to be nickel-and-dimed to death, especially by an early access game, aren't the ones drinking the kool-aid
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May 23, 2023 16:57
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People have been trained to expect PC games to receive nearly constant post-release support for a period of months or years, and if a game doesn't receive that it's perceived as a dead or abandoned project even if it's feature complete, which can seriously hurt you from a PR and visibility perspective. It's even worse now than it was a couple years in the past, because Steam sees so many new releases that if you aren't one of the few who lucks into a megahit it's incredibly easy to just drop off the radar completely if you're not constantly pushing your game. I remember when the Terraria dev stopped development on the game - which was, at that point, years old and had had multiple game-doubling content patches - because he had just had a child and wanted to focus on it, and tons of people treated it like he had personally betrayed them.
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May 23, 2023 17:02
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Ok, but is the game fun? This is the roguelike thread, you're looking at it the wrong way. A battlepass is just economic metaprogression.
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May 23, 2023 17:03
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Drone Incognito posted:Ok, but is the game fun? The game is extremely fun and is easily the best attempt at making a multiplayer turn based roguelike I've ever played. It's not perfect by any means but the foundation is fantastic.
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May 23, 2023 17:04
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This Inkbound situation specifically feels like a cart before the horse thing. There is no way they are gonna rake it in with a day 1 battlepass with these kind of player numbers. Its definitely rough out there for indies but trying to force in AAA game monetization in your lil roguelite just looks sad
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May 23, 2023 17:05
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Kanos posted:People have been trained to expect PC games to receive nearly constant post-release support for a period of months or years, and if a game doesn't receive that it's perceived as a dead or abandoned project even if it's feature complete, which can seriously hurt you from a PR and visibility perspective. Yep, it's complete bullshit.
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May 23, 2023 17:05
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I think the always online is more egregious to me. That means no mods, and I can't even play it on the go with my steam deck. I loved Monster Train enough to buy inkbound sight unseen, but yeah, putting that poo poo in a paid EA game is going to get you some well-deserved criticism. Lucky for me, the aesthetic doesn't do anything for me, so that $20 is probably the only thing shinyshoe is going to get out of me for inkbound. DrManiac fucked around with this message at 17:09 on May 23, 2023 |
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May 23, 2023 17:06
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MMF Freeway posted:This Inkbound situation specifically feels like a cart before the horse thing. There is no way they are gonna rake it in with a day 1 battlepass with these kind of player numbers. Its definitely rough out there for indies but trying to force in AAA game monetization in your lil roguelite just looks sad Agree with this too. And counter to what Pladdicus said, there are some indi devs who don't deserve money, and these folks do not
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May 23, 2023 17:07
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I spent my career working in marketing and I avoid games with FOMO-driven battlepasses because it's a scummy manipulative marketing strategy designed to play with an audience's emotions in order to open up their wallets and I won't support developers who do that (though I agree DRG has a good system for it). It's not really worth discussing though because people either already feel that way about it, or they'll let cognitive dissonance get in the way of understanding why that's a problem because they believe marketing "doesn't work" on them.
deep dish peat moss fucked around with this message at 17:13 on May 23, 2023 |
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May 23, 2023 17:07
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Owl Inspector posted:Darkest dungeon 2 just released for $40
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May 23, 2023 17:22
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Loddfafnir posted:If you want something simple, you can play with pugilism only. It is a bit overtuned right now, and I won a cycle 12 run with only it. Adding some powers that give you a buff on hit will make it even stronger. Thank you!
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May 23, 2023 17:37
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deep dish peat moss posted:I spent my career working in marketing and I avoid games with FOMO-driven battlepasses because it's a scummy manipulative marketing strategy designed to play with an audience's emotions in order to open up their wallets and I won't support developers who do that (though I agree DRG has a good system for it). It's not really worth discussing though because people either already feel that way about it, or they'll let cognitive dissonance get in the way of understanding why that's a problem because they believe marketing "doesn't work" on them. I mean true in that you're unlikely to change anyone's mind about whether it is acceptable practice, but one side of the argument is objectively correct so it's still a worthwhile + sometimes entertaining endeavor to publicly shame this poo poo. If you try to get daily engagement via FOMO your game is trash and you are trash and you should feel bad about it. It is never OK to stoop to Blizzard's level.
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May 23, 2023 17:44
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