We both know that legitimizing the RMT system increased the number of gold buyers and normalized the process

Really? Where is your data to back that up? Games like old school RuneScape and World of Warcraft still have people who buy gold and get banned for it all the time. You’re also conveniently disregarding lots of the benefits of this system. People can now earn currency fully in game to pay for their subscription. Completely for free, and other players are making a choice the purchase the tokens. There’s virtually no pressure in game whatsoever in World of Warcraft that prompts you to purchase them. There’s no pop-ups, no advertisements for tokens at all. This is the least predatory form of microtransaction I have ever seen. Compare this to Destiny, in which you are constantly given currency for free to use in the eververse, and repeatedly going there back and forth being flashed with bullshit items that you’ll never have enough currency to afford.

Also sounds like you haven’t played in a while.

No, I’m a current member of World of Warcraft.

The addition of real currency to gold trading creates an even more direct pipeline from one’s wallet to in-game gear dice rolls. Guilds selling raid gear is even more common now, and with crafting orders, a whale can spend to reroll secondary stats on crafted gear.

It has literally always been like this. Where have you been? People were selling power leveling runs through stockades back when the game first started. They were selling BOE gear for gold, and that gold was obtained with a credit card through gold selling websites. The introduction of wow tokens just changed the recipient of the money from Gold farmers to Blizzard entertainment. I assure you that most people who are active players of the game are not buying tons of gear with gold that has been obtained through their credit card, and even if they were, it doesn’t affect you at all. The guilds that sell runs through challenging content, they have always been doing that, since the very beginning. I remember back in burning crusade people spamming chat that they would carry you through black temple near the end of the expansion. So there’s not like some new shift towards that. It’s always happens like that. The only thing that has shifted is that now, more than ever, you can play the game on your own and get your own gear. The introduction of solo delves has made it possible to gear up your character completely on your own without any additional help from others

With the way Warcraft is throwing currencies at players now, it’s clear Blizzard has taken more than a few cues from how gacha and other live-service outfits are doing things these days. Plenty of opportunities for ruinous, addictive behavior.

I fully agree with this and they have been ignoring player feedback about it for a while now, it’s completely bullshit how many stupid currencies we have and it almost feels like they are AI generating the game design at this point. Like they are going to chat GPT and asking, “what’s a good way to create an addictive loop of currencies for players?” Because some of them are in your bags, some of them are in the currency pane, some of them are bind on character, bind on account, some of them can be traded and some can’t. It’s utter insanity. Truly ass game design. This is the first time they finally made a shift back to using a single currency for PVE though, the flight stones and valor stones. Kind of like marks of valor back in wrath.

It’s funny that you mentioned Genshin because it’s probably one of the most predatory of all. Star rail isn’t really that bad, has much more generous pity. The new game that Hoyo just put out, however, zenless, is fucking terrifyingly predatory. They removed the pity reset or modified it entirely to make it even more disheartening and impossible for a regular players because they weren’t spending enough. In Genshin, your pity will not reset If you get a lower rank character, for the higher rank that you’re trying to get. In zenless, If you get a higher rank character, it will entirely reset your pity on everything. Lower rank and higher rank. This is designed so that if you’re trying to get a lower rank character specifically, to make it even more impossible. Add to that the fact that you get some sort of pity currency that can be used in several ways, all of them that look like some store or shop for you to spend money on. It’s crazy, these games are more elaborate than an actual casino where you just pull lever and spin something. Star rail even has slot machines in the divergent universe! It gives you three free spins, you can get negative effects, very rarely you’ll actually get something from the slot machine. That affects your entire gameplay experience for the rest of the divergent universe encounter.

In terms of kids versus adults, I would say that the distinction between them became much less clear after COVID, since some kids didn’t even get to finish high school in person. They went right into the adult world and started doing online learning. It was as if two entire years of their childhood was stripped from them and those learning experiences taken from them. Plus, hitting the age of 18 doesn’t magically make you wiser, or less susceptible to a bunch of things that can completely destroy your life. Like, that’s not how it works. It’s not like you turn 18 and magically you go “oh okay now I’m an adult, now I can mess up my life entirely, people are allowed to prey on me now since I’m no longer a kid anymore!” Young people are still so inexperienced in life and don’t understand that every decision that they make teaches them how the rest of their life is going to go. You spend 3 years playing these gachas, Now you’re much more likely to play another one that comes out like wuthering waves. Completely reset the cycle and start gambling again on something brand new.

From a completely humanitarian perspective, I think there should be strict limitations on what kind of predatory tactics you can include in these games for that reason alone. If you have such heavy monetization gambling, shouldn’t be considered a game anymore. Should literally have the word gambling in it. Just because these companies desire infinite amounts of money does not mean they should be able to muck up society and mess people up psychologically in my opinion

I agree with you, to an extent. I would say it’s a lot more complicated than that with World of Warcraft, which is an MMO, and does not revolve on gambling except in the aspect of random number generated loot. This is probably the majority of looter shooters out there today as well and a large number of other games. Pure chance in just the loot and rewards. Personally, World of Warcraft did not affect me adversely, because I have very strong self-control, and was able to develop very strict limitations for my own personal life which was important in college.

But I think there’s something you’re definitely missing. Sure, while World of Warcraft can be blamed by some people flunking out of college or high school due to its addictive and fun nature, Have you considered the fact that the world we live in is simply so boring that they don’t want to pay attention to those things? Over a 20-year time span since I have graduated, high school and college has not evolved. It’s the same boring ass mess that it was when I went to school. Unnecessary classes, study only for the test and never use that information ever again, very rarely are their projects and when there are, they are silly group projects in which two out of the four members of your group are lazy and don’t want to do a damn thing. You also are faced with constant demoralizing facts thrown at you from the media and the outside world that your college degree won’t help you get a job, you won’t see any student loan relief, the wealthy elites are in positions of power and rising faster in companies than you ever will be… Reality is so disappointing. So I can understand why these people have trouble paying attention in school and want to turn to stuff like World of Warcraft, theme park MMO that has so much fun and enjoyment in it

But when we’re talking about a gacha, This feels so much more insidious. Every aspect of the entire game, not just the loot, is gambling, and you’re gambling with real money. Not your time. In World of Warcraft you don’t get a drop, oh well, try again next time. You still paid $15 for that entire month, so you can try as many times as you want on as many characters as you want. But when you pay 50 bucks for Genshin impact and you get nothing, you know what that money goes towards? Absolutely nothing. You lose that money forever. Now you are mentally afflicted with that, and you’re already considering whether or not you should pay another 50 bucks to try and get it again with the gamblers fallacy in the back of your mind that if I pay another $50 I’m already $50 in, so I have a much better chance of getting it now. It’s sickening

Black mirror is getting closer everyday

I worked at GameStop a long, long time ago. Lots of old console games that couldn’t be sold went right to the landfill. Xbox 360 for example. So many niche small games that no one wanted even when marked down to a dollar each. We’re talking tens of thousands of them just in one small city alone. I’ve also been to a lot of thrift and antique specialty stores in my area, and there are so many plastic case games there people are trying to get rid of. Hundreds of them. No one wants them anymore. Eventually all this plastic is just going to be thrown into a landfill. Those who actually keep this stuff long-term, maybe they don’t have a lot of games or they have the space for it. But consumerism is a major issue across the world that we are struggling to keep up with.

People that buy this want the cards, keychains, and (especially) the exclusive in-game items.

Yeah, but at that rate, why not just launch a store then and sell those items? Blizzard has their own store. Plenty of franchises do. It’s so weird to see a disc version of a free game. Can you imagine if fortnite did that? I don’t remember if they ever had a disc version of their game, but if they did launch one today, people would be scratching their heads

This isn’t a collectors edition though? It’s not even a steelbook. The word collector isn’t even used in the marketing. It’s just a physical release of a free to play game.

The Lemmy user base is so out of touch with the average consumer.

This is probably true. I don’t know many people who aren’t super heavy into tech, I’ve had a gaming PC half my life, but I do have a couple friends who don’t even have a laptop, PC, computer, or anything. They just have a phone. I don’t know how they get by.

Huh, interesting. For “research purposes”, does one find a “good” one of these games? 🤔 Like, are there ones with decent story or actual gameplay? I was honestly surprised by how well the rendering and textures were in this game, but it was created entirely in unreal.

What LMAO That one’s even worse! How do you find this stuff?! 🙀

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Yea… I kind of went into this one blind. When someone gives you a gift, you don’t go and look up a bunch of reviews on it and stuff. You open the present and start figuring it out yourself. So uhh yeah 😅 I did that… To myself kinda

Thanks for the awesome response. What do you recommend as an alternative? Valorant? TF2?

It’s a decent game but a terrible one if you are comparing it to the original Overwatch.

I’m just genuinely curious why/how it’s still getting updates and people are playing it with the way it’s talked about, they make it sound like the worst game ever

Seems like most live service games these days are built off of addiction or gambling. For example, gacha gaming is becoming more popular everyday, with their rolls and gambling loops. You can see this in games like Genshin impact. Kind of makes me miss the old days where we had games like battlefield and Call of Duty old school style, just running around playing something that we enjoy for fun.

I feel as if the “lack of clear path forward” is a bit over an overreaction from the community.

I don’t think it’s an overreaction considering the fact that they have been building up to the end of this story for about a decade now, it was the grand finale of everything in the entire game’s overarching dialogue, and frankly, no one even considered what would come after that other than the release of Destiny 3 if there even would be one

Bungie is still announcing plans at the same rate they used to

This is just the first time the players haven’t known the 3 year plan in a long time.

Now all we have are leaks from some twitter accounts and the title of the next year of content.

You’re contradicting yourself. You’re saying that they are still announcing things at the rate that they used to, but players don’t know what’s going on, and all we have are leaks from Twitter accounts. How does that make any logical sense? We have no idea what’s going on, but we also know exactly what’s coming, but we also don’t because it’s just leaks and rumors… ummm

I wouldn’t hold your breath on it. That mod collection has been in development for many years now. They keep pushing the release date forward, and even when it is released, it’s still built off of the really old Skyrim game engine. People who want a remake, not a remaster, want a game that has the same capabilities but with a newer game engine. It really does matter, because it affects what is possible to do in the game. You can’t just use the old outdated game engine and upscale the graphics. It’s simply will not be possible and will be sluggish, slow as hell. Look at Starfield. Utter failure because many people expected it to have a new game engine. The one it has now is just not up to par

Chat is non-existent in World of Warcraft anymore. You can get banned or muted for basically anything now because people have a right click report button and often abuse it for no reason. I was completely banned from the game for an entire week for this exact same username that I have here, someone reported me and said my name was inappropriate. I’ve had it for 15 years, and was randomly deemed to be not allowed anymore, so banned. Also had guild members that I was very close with through discord banned for a week for simply making a joke or saying the word fuck.

Monkey see, monkey do