56 réponses à ce sujet

[Guanxii]

RNG Store/Microtransactions Debate: Paying customers deserve better

 

If you expect people to spend actual money (on top of a $60 game) on virtual items in micro-transaction packs in a routine fashion and en-mass you’re going to have to remove the element of chance on these drop rates for paying customers imo, because otherwise there really is literally no point or advantage to paying for any of these packs, whatsoever. These packs may be optional but the value for money is abysmal. BioWare can do better. Why even treat your ‘premium customers’ in this way, it defies logic?

 

Paying a premium to remove the element of risk on Arsenal packs for example to guarantee ultra-rare weapon upgrades makes sense because you would be paying for something tangible. Paying a premium to incur the same likely risk of adding further to my cryo ammo mountain range, not so much. Incurring risk and hours of grind should be the necessary consequence of taking your chances on free packs…. Expecting paying customers to incur these risks is just unfair.

 

The present caps on consumables are absolutely outrageous under the present system which greatly disincentives anyone with sense from parting with real money because the me3 system is seemingly designed to waste your time and money and it only gets exponentially worse as you progress in terms of value for money/time expressed in terms of mountains of excess consumables which you could never live to use. The only answer it seems to me is to either greatly reduce these caps on consumables or at least give the user some recourse to sell back unwanted consumables, even for pennies on the dollar in terms of credit rebate. Under these circumstances I would be much more willing to occasionally spend real money on these items but I honestly think the pricing structure is wrong as well.

 

How do you think BioWare/EA could offer better value for money in terms of store payments?

[Nonoru]

I think the shop would gain from allowing you to buy one particular item but for a very expensive cost. However, since you're sure to get the what you want, people will be more willing to stick with the MP and perhaps have more fun with it. It's kind of a pain to want to play with friends but can't because you didn't get the proper gear (even after spending hours upon hours gaining money) for that extra difficulty. Or simply can't play a character because you had a specific build in mind which needs one specific weapon. 

[MissOuJ]

Because you're not paying for gear. Just like in any other FtP, you're paying for time.

[SolNebula]

I'm not much of an MP player but I agree if I pay real money for a pack then I want a guaranteed ultra-rare drop. It's something of good sense some people don't have the time to grind things. IMO Battlefield does it good. You purchase those shortcut packs at a hefty price and are ready to go. I'm more than willing to add 40 bucks on the top of the main game for all MP weapons and characters. I won't though spend a single penny in a RNG store. My opinion.

[Queen Skadi]

RNG Store/Microtransactions Debate: Paying customers deserve better

 

If you expect people to spend actual money (on top of a $60 game) on virtual items in micro-transaction packs in a routine fashion and en-mass you’re going to have to remove the element of chance on these drop rates imo, because otherwise there really is literally no point or advantage to paying for any of these packs, whatsoever. These packs may be optional but the value for money is abysmal. BioWare can do better. Why even treat your ‘premium customers’ in this way, it defies logic?

 

Because you will take it and come back on your hands and knees begging for more! If nobody bought the things then I doubt EA would even bother with the multiplayer component. It is kind of depressing that these systems have become commonplace in a lot of AAA titles, the sort of design that is not about creating an enjoyable experience for the player (which is the essence of what games should be) but in fact are meant to do the exact opposite in order to encourage players to spend even more money to alleviate the tedium, it is even more depressing that people actually buy into this crap as they farm for hours hoping for that elusive drop that never comes, I mean if you aren't enjoying the experience and are willing to pay money to get it over and done with what is the point of playing in the first place?

[Former_Fiend]

I'll agree that the RNG needs serious recalculation. I never spent any serious amount of money in ME3 MP because I knew how bad the results were and didn't see it as worthy use of my dollar. 

 

Even BioWare acknowledged the absurdity of it in the Citadel dlc. 

[Indigenous]

How do you think BioWare/EA could offer better value for money in terms of store payments?

I agree with your idea that you should pay for something specific, e.g a gun, armour etc. However, I don't believe paying customers deserve better. Micro-transactions are optional.

 

I personally would never pay for the possibility of getting something I want.

[RoboticWater]

I agree with your idea that you should pay for something specific, e.g a gun, armour etc. However, I don't believe paying customers deserve better. Micro-transactions are optional.

 

I personally would never pay for the possibility of getting something I want.

Wouldn't that effectively be a pay to win model? RNG might be annoying, but it eliminates the possibility of players immediately paying for the OP classes/weapons.

 

It also mitigates the anger some fans might have when those classes/weapons get nerfed.

[DaemionMoadrin]

If the next MP becomes pay-to-win, then I won't play it.

[Kappa Neko]

Because you will take it and come back on your hands and knees begging for more! If nobody bought the things then I doubt EA would even bother with the multiplayer component. It is kind of depressing that these systems have become commonplace in a lot of AAA titles, the sort of design that is not about creating an enjoyable experience for the player (which is the essence of what games should be) but in fact are meant to do the exact opposite in order to encourage players to spend even more money to alleviate the tedium, it is even more depressing that people actually buy into this crap as they farm for hours hoping for that elusive drop that never comes, I mean if you aren't enjoying the experience and are willing to pay money to get it over and done with what is the point of playing in the first place?

So much this!

 

It was designed like that on purpose. EA would be stupid to let people just buy all their weapons and be done with the whole thing after two weeks. The only reason people play such repetitive crap (for the record: I did too for a while) is this stupid urge to own all weapons and shi*t. Plus, the competitive aspect. It's really not meant to be enjoyable. Like any addiction, it's about keeping people in agony. The more miserable people are, the more they actually play. And the more they pay, hoping it will end their suffering or at least make it less awful.

Just one more pack because I NEED that one weapon... and so it goes for weeks and months...

 

It always seemed to me that all the "professional" ME3MP players treated it like a job. They FORCED themselves to keep playing just to max out their manifest! So that they can finally be free of this madness. It's self-torture! It's absolutely pathetic and defeats the purpose of games being fun. Because MP is not like a game for children. It's not about fun at all. About relaxing. It's for adults who don't know what else to do with their time/lives. No healthy person would spend each day in multiplayer for months or even years. It's perfectly fine to have some fun with a bunch of friends for a while. But that isn't what online gaming is designed for.

 

More and more developers or their publishers have come to realize that there is nothing easier than selling drugs to addicts. It's the cheapest gaming experience ever.

I mean, correct me if I'm wrong, but weren't all the MP maps from the singleplayer?

EA made a lot of money with the MP, it was probably a lot cheaper than the SP, but tons more profitable. Lots of multiplayer addicts bought the game for the MP alone when it was cheaper. So you can be sure ME:A will focus heavily on that again. And that's VERY bad for everyone who actually wants a good story.

 

So glad DAMP was a failure. That means there is a chance they might actually try to make DA4 a good game... unless they decide to just drop the whole franchise because it cannot be milked like all the shooter MP addicts...

[Xaijin]

RNG Store/Microtransactions Debate: Paying customers deserve better

 

If you expect people to spend actual money (on top of a $60 game) on virtual items in micro-transaction packs in a routine fashion and en-mass you’re going to have to remove the element of chance on these drop rates imo, because otherwise there really is literally no point or advantage to paying for any of these packs, whatsoever. These packs may be optional but the value for money is abysmal. BioWare can do better. Why even treat your ‘premium customers’ in this way, it defies logic?

 

Paying a premium to remove the element of risk on Arsenal packs for example to guarantee ultra-rare weapon upgrades makes sense because you would be paying for something tangible. Paying a premium to incur the same likely risk of adding further to my cryo ammo mountain range, not so much. Incurring risk and hours of grind should be the necessary consequence of taking your chances on free packs…. Expecting paying customers to incur these risks is just unfair.

 

The present caps on consumables are absolutely outrageous under the present system which greatly disincentives anyone with sense from parting with real money because the me3 system is seemingly designed to waste your time and money and it only gets exponentially worse as you progress in terms of value for money/time expressed in terms of mountains of excess consumables which you could never live to use. The only answer it seems to me is to either greatly reduce these caps on consumables or at least give the user some recourse to sell back unwanted consumables, even for pennies on the dollar in terms of credit rebate. Under these circumstances I would be much more willing to occasionally spend real money on these items but I honestly think the pricing structure is wrong as well.

 

How do you think BioWare/EA could offer better value for money in terms of store payments?

 

 

 

How COULD they offer better value?

 

By giving better percentages and offering "guided" events and packs with guaranteed drops. How are they going to offer them? The same way they are now.

 

That genie is never going back in the bottle, and you are not a person to the average BioWare staffer. At best you are an offhand remark in an email or on Twitter, and at usual throughput you are a value in the "current player base" field of an excel report, nothing more.

 

ME3 showed rather unilaterally what BW thinks of their customers and it is just that; customers, and their financial endeavors will reflect that 100% for their benefit, not yours. The system was so successful, it's now the de rigueur EA model, a polite thread on the forum isn't going to do anything to sway that. MP pay-through is the one major reason ME3 made any clean net profit at all, thanks to the farce of an endgame, and it's rather unlikely any major shift ot that paradigm will occur, because it's starkly cealr that people will pay through the literal nose for a chance at the skinner box, and if enough people do it, it's not considered punitive in the least, simply "how things are done".

 

Warframe is a great example of punitive endeavoring, and whilst the forums are chock full OMG RNG IS DEVIL WHYYYYYYYYY, DE has not altered the policy and inch since the game launched, because there are whales whom dutifully spend 200 bux every month for Prime Gear like clockwork, and this game is unlikely to be any different.

[SolNebula]

Wouldn't that effectively be a pay to win model? RNG might be annoying, but it eliminates the possibility of players immediately paying for the OP classes/weapons.

 

It also mitigates the anger some fans might have when those classes/weapons get nerfed.

 

Then who in his sanity of mind would pay for the possibility of getting something? I certainly wouldn't. Have you ever purchased MP packs with real cash? What value there is in that? No wonder those MP DLCs are free.....how many people would pay for MP DLCs and maps as it is in Battlefield? RNG eliminates any value in spending real money for me. Guess people don't rationalize their spending for the value they get in return. I never pay for possibility but only for certainty,

[Aezint]

I am very opposed to paying for things that you could already unlock because not only are you needlessly giving them more money, but you are also promoting that the pay-to-win model is working.  I suppose that if you did shell out for more, you should get more, but because you paid more is a problem in itself.  If anyone keeps up that model, I would rather stop playing it all together, and hopefully I wouldn't be the only one to show that this is ridiculous.

[Panda]

I don't mind things you can pay for in multiplayer as long as you can reasonably play the multiplayer without buying anything. Almost all multiplayers I have been involved with include optional micro-transitions so it' nothing new.

[Red Panda]

Wasn't there that one guy who spent 2000 American on RNG packs?

 

 

People like that are saints and all, funding the MP DLC.

[Indigenous]

Wouldn't that effectively be a pay to win model? RNG might be annoying, but it eliminates the possibility of players immediately paying for the OP classes/weapons.

 

It also mitigates the anger some fans might have when those classes/weapons get nerfed.

No, I don't think so. 'Pay to win' only really applies to multiplayer games that are player vs player and free to play, or at least your negative view towards this model does. An OP weapon, that can only be purchased through micro transactions, generally gives a player - if everything else is equal - an advantage in combat. This would be annoying in pvp, but unless it kills 50 bots at once I doubt it would matter in co-op.

[DaemionMoadrin]

No, I don't think so. 'Pay to win' only really applies to multiplayer games that are player vs player and free to play, or at least your negative view towards this model does. An OP weapon, that can only be purchased through micro transactions, generally gives a player - if everything else is equal - an advantage in combat. This would be annoying in pvp, but unless it kills 50 bots at once I doubt it would matter in co-op.

 

Not the point... you can't ever sell actual content. Some fluff like outfits, pets and other irrelevant content is okay but weapons? Gear? That's pay-to-win. Doesn't matter if it's PvP or PvE, it still gives players with money an advantage.

[Indigenous]

Not the point... you can't ever sell actual content. Some fluff like outfits, pets and other irrelevant content is okay but weapons? Gear? That's pay-to-win. Doesn't matter if it's PvP or PvE, it still gives players with money an advantage.

What do you mean 'not the point'? You said what I said...

[Former_Fiend]

 

I mean, correct me if I'm wrong, but weren't all the MP maps from the singleplayer?

 

 

They weren't all from the single player, no. All of the maps available at release did feature in single player, but I think that was less a matter of "let's take this map from SP and put it in MP" and more the other way around to fill in some quick side missions.

 

Later packs introduced maps that never feature in single player at all.

[Suron]

wrong.  doing this would actually hurt sales.  this has been proven.  there's literally TONS of games out there with this kind of model and they have had analysts run the numbers and whatnot.

 

I don't like it either and would love to be able to just buy what I want and not worry about the RNG packs.  But fact is these gamble packs make a killing and make them a ton more money than what you're suggesting.  On one hand people can do what they want with their disposable income, but on the other hand I still find it stupid to do so in the amount some do so.  There are those that spend HUNDREDS a month on these things.

 

You want to lobby for being able to buy what you want w/o RNG packs, cool I'm with you.  But, no offense, don't kid yourself by saying it'd be better for BioWare/EA that way (money wise)

[Robbiesan]

I'll agree that the RNG needs serious recalculation. I never spent any serious amount of money in ME3 MP because I knew how bad the results were and didn't see it as worthy use of my dollar. 

 

Even BioWare acknowledged the absurdity of it in the Citadel dlc. 

 

This.  After hearing from players who dropped real money on packs only to receive the same level of randomness just made me not bother.

[LinksOcarina]

I'll agree that the RNG needs serious recalculation. I never spent any serious amount of money in ME3 MP because I knew how bad the results were and didn't see it as worthy use of my dollar. 

 

Even BioWare acknowledged the absurdity of it in the Citadel dlc. 

 

It's weird. I got a bunch of powerful weapons and gear and what not without ever spending a dime in that store.

 

And this was mostly without super rare guns for a long time. It did not impede my enjoyment or my success-rate in multiplayer. Hell I took down Reaper forces on Gold difficulty as a Turian once by myself, in the round before the pickup with a team...literally a half-hour of guerrilla tactics against two Banshees when everyone else was dead.

 

I got a message later from one of the randoms, he said "Rambo ain't got **** on you"

 

So yeah, I don't see the appeal for spending money unless it becomes that impulse buy you grow accustomed to. I think the fact that it is random is better, actually. Reminds you why you would pay real money for something that is based more on time and luck than anything else. 

[DaemionMoadrin]

What do you mean 'not the point'? You said what I said...

 

You said pay-to-win only really applies in PvP, I disagreed.

[DaemionMoadrin]

 

The last one... RNG fun.

[Malanek]

They don't want to turn it into a pay to win game so it is a tricky balancing act. I think they could afford to be a bit more generous with what you get. I bought $10 of packs with each expansion in ME3MPer just to support the game. What you actually got for it was negligible.

 

And in a way there was PvP in ME3MPer. Not directly but it was competitive because of the scoreboard. You could even 1v1 people to see who would win, in the same game based on points or soloing for the best time.