overwatch does it well

csgo does too imo, except the betting drama stuff.

The stuff you buy don't affect gameplay

Lootboxes are still a terrible idea that benefits no one but the developers/publishers

Yes

better than LoL or the shooter example of sterling

I don't know if Destiny 2 has any non-cosmetic lootboxes

steppy pants example is good.

Huh. Planets want me to bribe them before I can land on them now.

hm, he's going after overwatch now. IMO it's a better implementation than some.

It's a full price game

eh

everything you can get is cosmetic.

In a full price game

and you can and do earn crates for free.

see

he's now talking about how LoL is a great example of F2P

xd

literally every LoL player I know IRL either bought RPs or constantly plays on a lolcafe

@Avery What's a lolcafe?

But either way, microtransactions in a full priced game is a shitty thing to support.

internet cafe / cybercafe, partnered with riot. All heroes are unlocked when you're logging in from them.

turkey only I think

you also earn extra stuff

Okay. So your specific experience with LoL doesn't match his.

I haven't played LoL in years, but you don't hear much about them doing shitty things with microtransactions.

@Avery Nah, those cafes exist in plenty of places in the East.

I googled and only turkish page popped up, hence my assumption

In fact, the amount of benefits that cybercafes get from these games is problematic for a lot of devs.

Like hacking/scripting is much more problematic issue in the East than in the West because of cybercafes.

I know Overwatch had such a bad korean cheating problem that they now force cafe users to sign in with a battle.net account

or something like that

In the West, you just ban out a person's account and they either have to spend the full price to get another account or they just don't play.

But in the East, they can just go back to the cybercafe and get another account like nothing happened.

idk if cybercafes hold a big place in west tbh

They don't.

in less developed parts of turkey there's a ton of them

in more progressive parts we have ps-cafes instead. Pretty much everyone only plays pes and fifa, ugh.

They're a big thing in South Korea and China.

Yeah

COOL SOMEBODY ELSE IS HAVING THE SAME ISSUE I'M HAVING \o/

As far as microtransactions go, it's a weird debate. On the one hand, yeah a full-priced game like Overwatch maybe shouldn't have microtransactions. On the other hand, you're expecting a full dev team with constant updates and new content, be it cosmetic like skins or gameplay-related like maps and gamemodes, to sustain itself off only game purchases.

@Unionhawk They probably found the solution and left a comment that just says "Fixed it."

On the other other hand, Diablo III kinda does that I guess. Maybe. Sorta.

@SaintWacko No as in something is broken in our dev branch and I didn't do it

Eh, not really.

@Unionhawk Ahhh, that's better then

Also, I'm going to be getting a Garmin Vivoactive 3 soon and I am super excited

@Yuuki Which they do, for AAA games, handily.

Although I will miss my Pebble :(

@Frank Oh, For Honor is still a thing? I wasn't aware.

And Battlefield? You do realize they release a new one every year or so, right? That's basically an annual subscription model hidden behind a marketing scheme.

@Yuuki D3 shows that it can be done

> The game ranked 7th worldwide in digital sales of console games during February 2017, according to SuperData Research's digital sales report, selling over 700,000 digital copies for all three platforms.

though the recent necro thing made me not so happy

@Avery Oh, I wasn't aware that the Necromancer is free.

Yeah how dare a full price game etc etc

@Yuuki They're cannibalizing their own sales.

But they wouldn't keep making them if they weren't profitable.

@Frank And we're in September and it's dead.

Dead, Jim.

@SaintWacko pebble is great.

@Avery I love my pebble time

I do too

@Yuuki Dead as in servers are down?

But the servers are shutting down at the end of the year :(

Or dead as in nobody plays?

At the end of the year, both.

Currently the latter.

But yes, both.

@SaintWacko Gadgetbridge is a great project and it's getting constantly updated and doesn't rely on pebble servers

So, it made enough money to keep itself going for a year.

I'm not seeing the problem with expecting them to keep the game up to date for that timeframe.

Well, the problem comes when you want your game to last longer than a year.

we're trying to get the notification colors added (in the same way pebble app handles it, they were all red outside pre-set apps before), will probably be pulled later today

There's also rebble etc.

though rebble is much less active

@Avery Yeah, I thought about going over to that, but there's no more hardware support and no more Pebbles are being made, so I decided I'd just bite the bullet and get it over with

The Vivoactive 3 is the first smartwatch made that can compete with Pebble

@SaintWacko makes sense. I'll probably use pebble for the foreseeable future until it breaks or something, and then make the switch to something else

The only thing it's missing is a microphone, but come January the Pebble will be missing that too

or maybe just buy a p2 idk

@Yuuki I can see a point for less funded studios needing microtransactions; they don't have nearly the revenue of the giant publishers.

For AAA games, though, that initial sales burn makes them enough to employ a maintenance team for years.

inb4 "Riot is a small indie company" meme

eh

So I'll lose the microphone either way, but this way I'm gaining a bigger, higher res screen, GPS, NFC pay, really nice HR sensor

@Frank But everyone wants more than a maintenance team.

It's not enough to keep your game playable. People want new content, people want immediate game balance for the PvP games, people want better stuff. For free.

@Yuuki And that's what planning for long term costs is for.

I was interested in the Fitbit Ionic when it was first announced, but while I maybe could have accepted the not-always-on screen, the non-actionable notifications killed it for me

Pebble has spoiled me

Multiplayer is something every publisher and their aunt wants in a game now, tacked on or not.

@SaintWacko yesss

The cost of doing so is literally this; server maintenance, balancing, and content patching.

If you don't want the additional costs, don't add multiplayer.

I'm just looking at best alternatives like they're so expensive or huge or can't even compete with pebble

literally the games that are in question here are multiplayer first

I heard good stuff about vivoactives though

Overwatch is a multiplayer game, it didn't tack on multiplayer

@Unionhawk Yeah, so this is the cost of doing business.

Yeah. Microtransactions are the cost of doing business.

It goes both ways.

No. Buying the freaking game is your cost of entry.

They can "my way or the highway" just as much as you can.

Microtransactions on top of that are exploitative.

One could argue that demanding a F2P game (LoL) not have microtransactions or any revenue model is just as exploitative of the game maker.

No you see microtransactions are ok if and only if a game is free to play

@Yuuki You could. I'd say it's rather unreasonable.

@Avery Yeah, the Vivoactive 3 is more expensive, but fortunately I know someone who works for Garmin so I can get it 40% off :D

nice!

Some cost for your entertainment is okay; I don't have an issue with that.

It's the double dipping that makes me really leery.

That's the line and not whether or not in game purchases affect multiplayer gameplay

Choose one business model. One that can respect your players time and money, and not one that tries to nickel and dime your playerbase for maximum greed.

So if Overwatch was F2P, literally nobody would be angry?

You can literally ignore the purchase lootbox page forever

boom

congratulations you're not exploited now

What about nickel and diming your playerbase for maximum "not going into bankruptcy and then no game forever"?

@Yuuki ...probably not? I dunno. I don't play it. But gamers are an unreasonable bunch.

@Yuuki C'mon. It's Blizzard.

That argument doesn't fly.

@Frank We're talking about both Blizzard and Riot.

For all that "Riot Games" implies that they're plural, they only have the one game.

@Yuuki I don't see what LoL is doing as exploiting their players.

I fail to see how purchasing cosmetic boxes is exploitation at all

I do see what Blizzard is doing with Overwatch as at least a little skeezy.

Who is mad about what here? I want to better understand who is wrong

@Unionhawk You're allowing underage users to essentially gamble.

@Sterno I'm personally mad that I'm currently still living in a hotel.

I

I mean

That's pretty weak

@Frank does have a point y'know.

it's kinda like gambling

Question, are we also mad at CS:GO?

yes

Lootboxes are inherently random, and are themselves exploiting those with addictive personalities.

Buying Pokemon cards is gambling

Checkmate

@Avery For the same reason? Because I'm mad at CS:GO for multiple reasons.

@Yuuki well I'm mad at it for a ton of reasons

I'm mad at @Unionhawk for preordering shadow of war.

@Arperum Yeah

TCGs are all gambling.

Same tbh

But on the other hand

@Sterno That's a good point, and I don't have a good rebuttal to that at all.

I will not apologize

You win, @Sterno.

@Unionhawk You're also mad at yourself for doing that?

Heck, every game being $60 is gambling. What if my $60 game lootbox gives me a terrible game?

EVERYBODY STAR THIS

MARK THE DAY ON YOUR CALENDAR

@Yuuki Hopefully you can refund it before you play two hours.

WRITE AN EPIC POEM

@Yuuki Overwatch is $40 so it's not even a full price game

also

checkmate everyone

oh hey is this new

@Frank So... which sign of the apocalypse is this?

@Avery Not very

For what it's worth, I don't disagree that "random" things you purchase are kind of sleezy. But it's sleezy I can live with. I mean, I don't think there should be laws against it or anything

@Yuuki That was more hyperbole than actually conceding.

My kids favorite thing to get when they are allowed to buy a toy are blind bags because they like the surprise

I hate it

They're like cheapass $.20 toys sold randomly for $3.

It's spelled "sleazy", IIRC.

I'LL SPELL IT ANY WAY I PLEASE

@Sterno To be fair they'd probably be $3 even in a non-random fashion

I just don't think companies should be using multiple business models in pursuit of maximum greed.

Thanks, KoL.

well, I'll be honest and say that I have an addictive, completionist, perfectionist personality. While I agree that it's a problem with me, there are developers that enable that intentionally and go as far as exploiting it.

I understand it, but I definitely do not support it.

@Unionhawk Probably more honestly

I started playing Hiveswap. Looks like it requires 0% Homestuck knowledge. Which is great.

But then they get a toy they already have and they're like "meh"

That's true

There is that

But what if a car company is also owned by a gasoline company (vice-versa or they're both held by a holding company)?

While I'm dealing with it a lot better, I know a ton of people who don't and who spend much greater amounts than what I spent

Here's another counterargument though: Overwatch probably wouldn't crank out so many new skins/icons/etc all the time without lootboxes

Then they get you for buying something full-price (the car) and then a subscription model (the fuel).

And there's no reason at all you have to buy them unless you have some tic in your brain that makes you OCD about it

They do not affect chance to win

@Yuuki There's a large difference between a consumable product and a long term use product that requires a consumable.

Per-bullet subscription FPS! Someone get Molyneux on the phone!

@Sterno not sure if I'd call it OCD, but read my last 2 messages.

@MadMAxJr 3realistic5me

So the argument seems to be "Yeah, but it's bad, so they shouldn't do it" and now the game has less skins, or they sell lootboxes and you get more stuff in your game

@Sterno I dunno, man, I'm more willing to heal certain Sombra skins than others. Namely all of them except Peppermint and I think a couple of the new ones.

The other Sombra skins are terrible as hell.

@Yuuki What? Peppermint is one of the least awful ones!

@Sterno Whoops, meant that the other way around.

@Sterno The problem is (and I've experienced this myself), the disappointment from opening a poor item doesn't motivate you to stop buying this stuff, but rather creates a nagging voice in the back of your head that the next one will

aka gambler's fallacy

Also, if you want healing as Zarya, either play base Zarya or... just play base Zarya.

I'm a completionist too but when the thing I'm trying to complete is just ridiculous I cut my losses

All of her skins are the worst.

Plus you can earn everything in OW just by playing

@Yuuki I mean summer games is pretty good

It's pretty generous really

that's what I like about OW

@Yuuki Power ranger zarya is slightly less offensive than most, but yeah

I feel like there was one other one that was less than 100% awful

Probably one of the palette swaps.

I liked blond olympic Zarya

That's what amazes me about Zarya skins actually. They screwed up the palette swaps badly too.

There's like one that's actually an okay color scheme.

Black and yellow, I think it was?

Yes

The others are garishly bad.

Oh, the Siberian one

That one was what I went with before I got summer games

@Yuuki Dawn, violet and midnight are acceptable

Definitely less awful than the goth ones

Yes

goth ones don't fit her at all

Selecting cybergoth should uninstall your game

Oh yeah, and her not-goth legendaries are the best in the game what are you talking about @Yuuki

Characters are free to express themselves however they want. D:

well yes

I wonder how much of Pharah's lore background as part Native American was intended from the beginning and how much was CYA from the Raindancer/Thunderbird debacle.

but dur hur the game shall conform to player's taste

(that's only half sarcastic)

I mean I like a character that is consistent and has an identity and everything but then again obviously some skins won't sell as well as some people like some stuff more and some people like some stuff less and that's perfectly fine

Huh. I used to have a sword-hilt umbrella now that I think about it. I have no clue where it is now.

Oh my.

Ooooh. That's making progress.