this post was submitted on 12 Oct 2023
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If you care about skins you deserve to pay.
I'm tired of people defending the existence of cosmetics being purchase only. I want to be able to unlock the appearance and accessories of my characters. That's part of what a fucking game is. Can you imagine if Baldurs Gate did that?
I miss the ability to have skins being unlocked through quests/challenges. I occasionally play Apex and it feels like the skins would be more impactful if they were actually hard to get. To get a legendary skin you should have to do something legendary, not just open a box. Like imagine you see the person with the skin, unlocked from getting 20 kills on that character in a match with both teammates dead. (I understand there are skins that upgrade on kills but that's a pretty boring linear achievement). Instead it's just paint with arbitrary rarity, that requires no mastering to unlock.
It's just another in a long line of reasons why modern games, sometimes specifically AAA games are just not as good anymore. They feel soulless and paint by the number with no real satisfaction attached.
Unlockables, which were mostly cosmetic in nature, were part of the fun I had with video games & completionism. Especially when you have extensive customization options and the ability to combine / mix & match pieces together. Nowadays you pay 40 bucks for a fucking one piece outfit while everything in the game looks like shit or has other limitations. Video games lost their soul.
Forty dollars? Tell Blizzard what, when a non-canon reference skin pack priced at the same value of three months of sub to my MMO of choice can mirror the quality and constant usability of the money spent at the MMO, maybe then we'll talk about 'deserve'-- but as it stands? This is just another avaricious grasping from a flailing company, long past its prime, long past having worn out its welcome, and ready to die.
D3 and OW1 were $40 each, and they were worth the money. This is like selling overpriced crack to addicts that have no alternatives. Some people will pay, and Blizzard doesn't deserve the money.
Clearly that's a lot of them. So I agree with your stance in:
But we have to remember, these "crack users" are handing cash over to Blizzard faster than Blizzard knows what to do with it. So Blizzard is a company, they're just looking at results and thus far results are good, there are literally zero reasons they'd consider valid to change course.
Blizzard is getting the message loud and clear its users are sending to them. Do more of this. Yeah, Blizzard can sit down and go "do I want money today or do I grow the brand?" And it sucks because we know which ones of those they picked but at the same time everyone playing Blizzard's games know what they picked, it's not super secret. So...
I mean they're doing exactly what their users want, why else would they continue to, at rabid pace, dump money into the company? Overwatch isn't some unique entry that stands alone in all of gaming. People who are vested in the brand, well they know and we know that's not what Blizzard is here to do, they're not here to grow the brands. So I would argue, Blizzard does deserve the money because they're doing the exact thing their users are telling them they enjoy.
At some point we've got to put some blame on the players that contribute to Blizzard learning that this is an okay model of business. Blizzard is indeed to blame but it is NOT theirs alone. The "holy fucking shit" levels of cash Blizzard is making off of this game (or at least that they are reporting) is too large to just chalk up as a fluke.
I don't disagree that some of the responsibility lies with the players. I feel if there was more competition in this game genre that Blizzard would be forced to compete with lower cosmetic prices. For example, there's probably a market for a $500 burger joint. Maybe they make more money having 5 customers a day than a $10 burger joint. But you can't have a town filled with only $500 burgers restaurants, it wouldn't be sustainable. I guess in this case we will have to look into PoE 2 (if that's what it's called).
While normally I'd shudder to even up Paladins in regular gaming conversation with the state that's in right now... Even Paladins is better than the husk that OW2 became.
What a shit take. Yes, there's people caring about character customization. Why do they deserve to pay for that? Why not apply your logic to every other type of content? Items? Features? Maps / locations? Potions? Gotta milk you all, because you deserve it.
Yeah man, everything can just look like Dwarf Fortress, graphics mean nothing, visual variety and progression in a game add no substance or perceived enjoyment /s
Wonderful example of a strawman argument.