RP servers are where it’s at in any MMO, in my opinion. Never was one for the blind grind/min-maxing, etc.

Not necessarily because of this type of service, but because it can exist in the first place. People can be really creative like this in MMO’s if you let them express that creativity.

I can understand your perspective completely, but I don’t think it’s the right way to look at this at all. “It’s just cosmetics” is the gate-way drug they used to get to this pay-to-win mess in the first place, and your way of looking at it places trust in the publisher (and developer, honestly) that I just don’t have.

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We’re mixing popularizing and originating, FTP and retail games, that’s not really what I’m pointing to. The concept isn’t new to me, I understand what Gatcha games are. What I’m saying is, there’s a difference between being popular and having loot boxes, and popularizing and normalizing the idea of loot boxes by…

I respectfully disagree. While loot boxes have been around, after the blowout success of Overwatch they started showing up more and more, to me it very clearly was the catalyst. That’s my read on it, but it’s not an unreasonable one. I’m not saying other games haven’t had loot boxes and may have even be popular, but…

I think we mostly agree. I’m not saying all games should be $100 dollars as they are now, but if they do want to make these huge blockbusters then $100 seems like a fair price. I’d mostly buy one of those a year or something and then just buy indies and other more reasonably-budgeted games.

Pioneering something and popularizing it are two different things. And I didn’t say it wasn’t cosmetic-only, just that they showed you can make bank based on the business model. They were the first high-profile retail game to show you can pull it off in a $60 dollar game, for better or worse (I’d argue worse).

Titanfall…

Right, forget extra money for goodies just charge me upfront for a complete, well-designed game. If it’s good they keep me as a customer for future releases. Down with loot boxes, down with half-a-dozen different “editions” that cut up the content in arbitrary ways, screw all that noise. All it does is shift the…

Well, I think in the case of Titanfall and Battlefield it might have been that they were just before this loot-box trend, before Overwatch showed everyone that you can make big bank AND get away with having that sort of microtransaction-based gatcha economy in a $60 game.

EA just pushed a little too hard with…

Good thing the review specifically states that the “best” cards are not able to be found in loot boxes but have to be crafted.

That being said, your multiplayer rank only determines what you can craft, not what you can use. So while you can’t get the absolute best card from a loot box you can get the *2nd* best card…

I’m firmly in the “just charge me $100 for a full-featured AAA game then” if it’s simply a matter of making up development costs.

I have a hard time giving EA the benefit of the doubt though. I’m more inclined to believe that’s just an excuse and they really just want to nickel-and-dime as much as they can get away…

I get you’re trying to keep people from “armchair developing”, but I think you might be missing the overall criticism of the game. You’re essentially asking “what would you have to give up to get rid of loot boxes” when loot boxes are inherently something that’s added on top of a game and most would agree that the…

It’s not always the publisher’s fault, but when one publisher owns so many developers and we’re seeing the same things in all of their games dragging them down (plus EA’s habit of just buying, chewing up and closing developers) it’s hard to give EA the benefit of the doubt.

I get that people are disappointed about the iOS exclusivity, but I feel like a lot of the talk of “we need a real game from them” and “is this really what they’ve been working on?” comes from the stigma related to mobile gaming more-so than the actual quality of the game being shown.

I mean, exclusivity aside this…

It’s true. Hellblade was one of my favorite games of this year, and it wasn’t a AAA game. That being said, it’d be a shame if we stop seeing AAA games like Deadspace and Arkham Asylum and other really good high-budget experiences from the last decade(i. I don’t want the AAA industry to go the way of the mobile…

I think they’d get through it; rougher initial blowback that people will still normalize over time, instead of slowly turning it into the mobile marketplace that gets normalized and leads to sales being tied to psychological tricks instead of good gameplay, story, innovation, etc.

Righto, I completely agree. I’m mostly speaking against completely dismissing concerns on the basis of corporations just being corporations.

Part of “caring” for me is indeed airing my criticisms, to the end that I hope I can convince more people to vote against these things with their wallets. I’m not going to force…

I suppose, but honestly that’s what they’re counting on. I just tell myself there are plenty of games both in my backlog and coming out without loot boxes, and I generally don’t miss the ones that do.

Battlefront II is a tough hit, but I still got South Park and Nier Automata and The Evil Within 2 and Monster Hunter…

On the face of it you’re completely right, but at a certain point I think scale and context comes into play. There’s a world of difference in the direct effect of a small child using their cuteness to sell me mediocre lemonade and a huge company attempting to nickel-and-dime their entire customer base to the greatest…

I get where you’re coming from, but if we care about entertainment at all I think it’s normal to have an opinion on consumer habits and such when it comes to games. Obviously we don’t need to care about any of this, as a commenter pointed out in another thread at the end of the day this is just a “first-world hobby”…

I understand all of that. It’s why almost all advertising and the various crappiness of unchecked capitalism puts me off so much and why in a perfect world, we would regulate the heck out of the advertising and pseudo-gambling like loot boxes and keep profit motive and popularity firmly seated in product and service…