3 ms·

>Nobody bats an eye if someone spends $80 on the latest console, but everyone is sharpening their pitchforks if they spend a similar amount in mobile game IAPs.

• theshrike79 4y ago
  (meant to type "latest console _game_" there) People usually have two commodities, time and money. When you're young, you have virtually endless amounts of time. You can just sit down and grind a game to get better at it and get better equipment. When you're older, you don't have as much time, but you have money. Then (in my opinion) you should be able to use money to get on par with the people who have spent all the time gaming you spent at work and with your family. Of course there are games where you just need to "git gud", because it's all your own reflexes and knowledge, in-game items and boosts don't matter that much if at all. If people using money to offset time used bothers you, you can play any of these games. This is why people selling MMO accounts is a thing. People with money want to enjoy endgame content with friends who have unlimited time.
  • robswc 4y ago
    >When you're older, you don't have as much time, but you have money. Then (in my opinion) you should be able to use money to get on par with the people who have spent all the time gaming you spent at work and with your family. I suppose. I feel at that point, its more a chore than a game tho, lol. I don't play those games, exactly for this reason. I feel the reasoning "offsets time" is honestly just a coping/irrational justification. Imagine paying to skip to the good part of the book or movie. Makes 0 sense. So you have to buy the game and then pay to skip parts of it? That sounds like a system designed to extract extra money from people, not a game... >This is why people selling MMO accounts is a thing. People with money want to enjoy endgame content with friends who have unlimited time. This is a bit more justifiable, as long as the game isn't designed around the idea of creating the very situation... I say this as someone that almost failed out of college because of spending too much time on an MMO (talk about no time _or_ money, lol) I'd suggest the friend group just play a different game entirely. MMOs are big commitments... same as any other hobby you could get deep into though. I don't think its good for a group of friends to constantly be throwing time or money at something just so they can stay "at the same level." *edit* Just want to add to the idea of regulation and casualties. I wouldn't fault a father for spending a little extra to "catch up" with his son so they can play together or something. I can't think of a situation off the top of my head but in that instance, I wouldn't say that's "bad" or "predatory." Everyone's situation is unique. So these comments are more directed to those mobile "games" that involve sinking time or money into them to "advance."
    • theshrike79 4y ago
      > So you have to buy the game and then pay to skip parts of it? Games need to be designed for both groups to be successful. They need to satisfy the people who pre-order the game and are sitting there with controller in hand hopped up on Monster the second the game launches. Then they'll play a 100 hours straight and complain there wasn't enough content because they finished it in 5 days (...of 20 hour/day playing, but they're not sharing that bit on the forums). Games also need to be fun for the people who don't have a 100 hours to invest in a game, but still want to experience it. This is why games have Achievements that are nigh-impossible. They're for the first group. Nobody in their right mind would attempt some of them unless they're sitting on a literal mountain of free time and nothing else to do. Some games (like a bunch of Assassin's Creed games nowadays) allow the second group (money, no time) to buy better equipment with actual money for the single player game. They can still experience the plot of the game and have some challenge, but don't need to spend hours fine tuning their dodge reflexes for that one boss they got stuck on.
      • dns_snek 4y ago
        > Some games (like a bunch of Assassin's Creed games nowadays) allow the second group (money, no time) to buy better equipment with actual money for the single player game. They can still experience the plot of the game and have some challenge, but don't need to spend hours fine tuning their dodge reflexes for that one boss they got stuck on. Let's call spade a spade. This is a convenient rationalization to justify adding elements of unnecessary grind to with intent to get people to spend more money on a game they already paid for. Games used to (and to a degree, still do) have difficulty selectors and cheat codes to accommodate different types of players. Publishers of AAA games like the ones you mention (Assassin's Creed) monetize this because of greed.
        • nottorp 4y ago
          > Games used to (and to a degree, still do) have difficulty selectors I finished Resident Evil: Village recently. On the "Casual" difficulty. First RE that has that. Every boss went down in a couple shots and I was swimming in the supposedly scarce ammo at the end. Somehow they forgot to charge me extra for this.
  • philippejara 4y ago
    > When you're older, you don't have as much time, but you have money. Then (in my opinion) you should be able to use money to get on par with the people who have spent all the time gaming you spent at work and with your family. the problem with this is that you assume "all the time gaming" is a bad and nonfun thing, at that point you're essentially paying the developer to not play the game. Sure those situations do exist, but they are design flaws* that should be fixed. Accepting a quick way to get thru them gives the developers incentive to not fix them but to actually make them more prevalent, and this has been happening in games more and more, just look at overwatch 2 and the hero unlocking speed as an example on a huge AAA game. >This is why people selling MMO accounts is a thing. People with money want to enjoy endgame content with friends who have unlimited time. This could be argued as a reason for selling currency, but for selling accounts I harshly disagree. The vast majority of people that buy accounts in MMOs do it to get "stolen valor" such as buying gladiator/rank 1 accounts in WoW or exclusive items/mounts/etc. The endgame activities most take part in takes orders of magnitude more time to progress in than the lead up to it nowadays, makes no sense to buy an account to skip it if you're genuinely time constrained. I could see that being a relevant case back in Ultima Online days for setting up a new PK character but that's not really a thing today in any big capacity. *: some exceptions exist to make balancing passes I suppose, just to not speak in absolutes