Will it ever end?

Nevakonaza

Nevakonaza

Nevakonaza

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7 Jan 2009
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6,689
Absolutely hate the way gaming is going these days.

1.Greed - Games company's charging full whack £35-40+ for "Early access" games that never seem to come out of early access/Alpha and remain unfinished.

2.Overpriced DLC..call of duty i look at you,£39.99 for the base game then an additional £34.99 for season pass that is essentially just new maps and weapons that REALLY,Should have been in the game to start with or given as free..they already make a fortune.

3. micro transactions - i fully understand Micro transaction for Free to play games,But Look at H1Z1,The game is not free,and never will be (i could see this from day 1 it was so obvious) yet people are fine with paying a few bob here and there to unlock the skins,creates etc..why,It should have been in the game to start with!

So my question is,Will this type of shoddy business model continue,and why do you guys continue to support it.
 
Nevakonaza said:
Absolutely hate the way gaming is going these days.

1.Greed - Games company's charging full whack £35-40+ for "Early access" games that never seem to come out of early access/Alpha and remain unfinished.

2.Overpriced DLC..call of duty i look at you,£39.99 for the base game then an additional £34.99 for season pass that is essentially just new maps and weapons that REALLY,Should have been in the game to start with or given as free..they already make a fortune.

3. micro transactions - i fully understand Micro transaction for Free to play games,But Look at H1Z1,The game is not free,and never will be (i could see this from day 1 it was so obvious) yet people are fine with paying a few bob here and there to unlock the skins,creates etc..why,It should have been in the game to start with!

So my question is,Will this type of shoddy business model continue,and why do you guys continue to support it.
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Have you noticed the season pass for fallout 4, currently 25 quid but going into 40 after March.:eek:
 
It won't end until people stop supporting it.

Early access is the one that boggles my mind the most. It's not like the games industry didn't already suffer from a long history of pushing games out early, half-baked and buggy. Now they've made a marketing feature out of it and suckers fall for it.

It's slightly different for crowd-funded games as they often feel an obligation to get something playable out there as soon as they can to reward the [im]patient investors. But when major established studios do it there's no excuse, it's just paid beta (and often alpha) testing. Even if they botch the release they still have the punters' money, usually ahead of negative reviews (and anything else can be brushed aside with the argument it's still in alpha/beta).

The whole micro transactions thing is a blight on the industry too. Often players end up throwing more money at a game via micro transactions than they would if there was a box price. Of course, that's entirely the intention.

I guess this was all inevitable when gaming went mainstream. I miss the days when gaming was deeply uncool :)
 
I've a mixed feeling on early access as some games have had a genuinely good and productive early access/beta program sadly often its just greed though.

What I miss the most is the modding potential which has partly been locked down to push DLC :(
 
What bugs me is micro transactions that are more than £1 or at a push £2. In star trek online a ship is about £15 or £20. Not very micro is it?
 
Won't somebody think of the children?


Unfortunately it's not going to end whilst people buy it. Supply/demand etc
I don't like it either but what can you do. It's clearly the future....wwwooooOOoooOoo
 
1) Unfortunately, for as long as there are human beings, there will always be greed. Someone somewhere in the industry is going to just be in it for the money, usually the higher ups. They care only for profit and not much is going to change that unless they see a drop in their precious profit

2) And this is where I look at how forgiving people are of companies like Nintendo and beloved IP like Smash Bros. Star Wars Battlefront: full priced game with season pass priced the same as the base game... people are up in arms. Smash Bros: Total price of DLC (no season pass) far exceeds the price of the base game... people defend it and say it's fine.

Thing is, DLC can be done right look at games like Witcher 3. Heck, Nintendo themselves have done some good DLC, like they have on Mario Kart 8. £11 for content equal to a quarter of the base game? Sure thing, I'll buy it. But Smash Bros... ~£5 for a single character on just one platform? As much as I want some of those DLC characters, I won't be buying any of that DLC.

3) Cheaper games like CS:GO, when it's just cosmetic skins the microtransactions are okay. It's also fine in free to play games, cos how else are they going to keep the game going? But microtransactions in a full priced AAA game? Poppyc**k. And once again, the dumb folks try to defend some of these games. Halo 5 for one, a lot of folks gave others a hard time, claiming things like it allows the DLC to be free. No excuses. And the argument that people won't buy it or they won't have to buy it... H5 MTs made millions around the launch of the game. I.e. people were buying these MTs.

My stance is that I won't buy a full-priced game with micro-transactions at all. I didn't buy my copy of MGS5 (I refunded my pre-order before it launched), since I got it free with my graphics card. Unfortunately due to the way that game was designed and sold, the reviews of the game couldn't pick up on the nonsense. They added the true grind (weapons that take literally days worth of in-game played time to develop, can be done faster with MTs) and more MT purchases in post-launch patches, after all the reviews had come out and all the grindy content designed to try and make people buy MTs was all late-game.

The simple fact is that as long as games like this sell, they'll just keep on coming. If people buy over-priced DLC, season-passes and micro-transactions, companies will just want to add them to even more games. The only thing we can do is speak with our wallets. Don't buy overpriced DLC, don't buy full-priced games that feature micro-transactions and just don't buy badly priced games. The annoying thing is, pricing is objective. For one person a multiplayer only game might be more than worth £40, but for another that's too much.

Of course a new game that has joined the list of ****-ups is Street Fighter 5. It's an early-access game made by a major publisher within a major franchise.
 
My mate bought Black ops 3 for £45 when it released on PS4, paid £35 for season pass and they still offer 'COD points' with a cost of up to £89.99! Madness!
 
What they charge for MMO early head starts always boggles me. I listen to a lot of podcasts, and even the target audience knows they're being fleeced.

They actually do look at it as 25/30 pounds a day to go early.

Don't get me wrong I know why, the games industry creates the monster with it's marketing. To hear a level of awareness though, and the lack of resistance and will power within people, might just say some level of outside regulation might be in order.
 
Cern said:
It won't end until people stop supporting it.

Early access is the one that boggles my mind the most. It's not like the games industry didn't already suffer from a long history of pushing games out early, half-baked and buggy. Now they've made a marketing feature out of it and suckers fall for it.

It's slightly different for crowd-funded games as they often feel an obligation to get something playable out there as soon as they can to reward the [im]patient investors. But when major established studios do it there's no excuse, it's just paid beta (and often alpha) testing. Even if they botch the release they still have the punters' money, usually ahead of negative reviews (and anything else can be brushed aside with the argument it's still in alpha/beta).

The whole micro transactions thing is a blight on the industry too. Often players end up throwing more money at a game via micro transactions than they would if there was a box price. Of course, that's entirely the intention.

I guess this was all inevitable when gaming went mainstream. I miss the days when gaming was deeply uncool :)
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This a 100%
 
It's hilarious that on the same forum we can have this thread, while also having people launch into an assault on you calling you entitled and all sorts for wanting to pay less than RRP for games if possible.

The pricing structure in the gaming market suck. But crying about it on a forum isn't going to change it. So either pack your stuff up and get out of the kitchen, or live with it.

If you don't think a game is worth what they charge for it, don't buy it. Simple.
 
thats progress for you.
wpid-img_3264.jpg
 
I remember when DLC first started showing its sorry face on the consoles. PC gamers just laughed at the concept saying we get patches with free updates and plenty of mod support for the community. Now look. DLC is now considered normal with a spike in the initial cost of the game (Not to mention paying for extra content that already comes with the game that you've already paid for!). We are now expected to pay for an unfinished product to test, with no guarantee that the game will be finished.

Sturm said:
thats progress for you.
[IM]http://donthatethegeek.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/04/wpid-img_3264.jpg[/IMG]
Click to expand...

Ha, sad but true.
 
It will only end when demand does, simples.

Gaming for some people now is more than a hobby, its a way of life, an integral part of their existence, something as fundamental to them as work or food.
Much of the time price is irrelevant because the gaming need must be fulfilled at any cost, the DLC must be had, the game will be incomplete without the pre-order bonus of different colour socks, their lives wont be worth living knowing others have expansion packs that they don't.

Games companies know this, actively feed it and now positively rely on it for their revenue streams.
 
The amount of 'must have' DLC is pretty minimal so just don't buy it. Or just wait until you can pick the lot up off Steam 18 months later for minimal cost. So many great games available for peanuts now that still hold up. Great time to be a PC gamer IMO if you don't have to have everything right away.
 
Early access is 50/50. A lot of games wouldn't get made without fans funding it as publishers generally won't try anything risky. It does annoy when already successful companies use it as a free way to develop a game.

DLC has been around for years whether it's right or wrong. A lot of expansion packs were trash back in the day.

Microtransacrions should be removed. Cosmetic only isn't so bad but anything else is awful.

Gaming is generally cheap. Hours played per pound spent outweighs a lot of hobbies.

Sadly we have many who want everything for £10 ignoring all the costs in game development and kick up a fuss if a game is £30+
 
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