It's better than selling actual items of power, so I wouldn't sabre-rattle about it too much, if I were backers.
This is true but they're also not completely harmless. Selling cosmetics does a few things that can negatively impact a game:
The financial incentive to sell it instead of letting players earn it tends to lower the quantity and quality of those sort of items that can be earned in parallel to the cash shop offerings.
That same incentive prompts developers to overdo the quantity of available skins since they are so easy to develop and sell and they go to progressively more and more ridiculous extremes with those skins that are quite often incongruous with the rest of the game's setting and lore.
By the same token it creates a disincentive to work on core game play since that core takes a lot more work and effort for lower returns compared to the easy to do skins.
It also attracts a different type of player to the games that go heavily down this route. It attracts the "Sims Online" and "Second Life" crowd that obsesses about collecting all those different outfits as their primary reason for being there. That crowd quickly becomes the most valued customer since the developer's metrics will show they're willing to spend much more than the ones who are there to quest and kill. They become overt time, the primary development target reinforcing points 1-3 above in a vicious cycle
It does, but again, good luck getting players to amount an offensive against cosmetics like we saw against EA with lootbox progression. You saw just how atrocious that had to be to even garner a response worth noting by EA/Disney (literal "you fire 20% faster, your starship is 20% more manueverable" etc.). Apathy will win the day here.
I don't enjoy buying cosmetics, so I don't do it. But, considering how cheap and easy it is to crank them out, from a business perspecrive, you'd gotta be outta your damn mind to skip it.
I don't know about mounting offensives but I do know that dismissing their impact on the game on the usual basis that "it's just cosmetics" misses a large part of what it does to games that go heavily down this easy money route.
It's not like there aren't any examples of sub-only MMOs we can look at and compare their clear game development focus vs. the ones that go heavily into "got be out of your damn mind to skip it" land. IDK but WOW seemed to be doing just fine last I looked despite being apparently nuts to leave all that other extra money behind.
WoW sells mounts and pets. They aren't just taking subs.
EDIT- and they aren't priced cheap. Mounts can cost as much as $25 a pop, pets up to $10 a pop.
You're right but WoW is a game we can actually play.
It's better than selling actual items of power, so I wouldn't sabre-rattle about it too much, if I were backers.
Yeah... this argument keeps popping up and this mindset is why they keep getting away with these things. The upper bar is moved upwards in small increments and we keep saying "well, it's still slightly better than cancer", until it's literally cancer, and then they back off a nanometer and we feel like we won somehow. Then it restarts with the lower bar permanently moved forward to a point we are now used to and accept as the norm. And this will keep happening until our beloved hobby becomes an unrecognizable mess in the likes of the gambling industry. That's where the top investors want to go, and they are most likely not gamers with a passion for the art.
Cosmetic items are an important part of a game and they should be tied to achievements and deeds accomplished in the game, not wallets, in my opinion.
The only cosmetic item that i could fully accept being sold in a game is something like a mount with 100% of the winnings going to charity. That's the only way you could ride a cash-shop mount with some pride, because buying it had meaning, and you replaced personal effort with a contribution to making the world a better place.
This is exactly how I feel. Your description was spot on, thanks for that.
The problem is that no matter what your idea of what should or should not be bought for cash the market keeps generating demand for them, and nobody can tell someone else how to spend their money so it's quite a waste of time/effort to try and "do something about it"
It's better than selling actual items of power, so I wouldn't sabre-rattle about it too much, if I were backers.
Yeah... this argument keeps popping up and this mindset is why they keep getting away with these things. The upper bar is moved upwards in small increments and we keep saying "well, it's still slightly better than cancer", until it's literally cancer, and then they back off a nanometer and we feel like we won somehow. Then it restarts with the lower bar permanently moved forward to a point we are now used to and accept as the norm. And this will keep happening until our beloved hobby becomes an unrecognizable mess in the likes of the gambling industry. That's where the top investors want to go, and they are most likely not gamers with a passion for the art.
Cosmetic items are an important part of a game and they should be tied to achievements and deeds accomplished in the game, not wallets, in my opinion.
The only cosmetic item that i could fully accept being sold in a game is something like a mount with 100% of the winnings going to charity. That's the only way you could ride a cash-shop mount with some pride, because buying it had meaning, and you replaced personal effort with a contribution to making the world a better place.
This is exactly how I feel. Your description was spot on, thanks for that.
The problem is that no matter what your idea of what should or should not be bought for cash the market keeps generating demand for them, and nobody can tell someone else how to spend their money so it's quite a waste of time/effort to try and "do something about it"
As much as I loathe to admit it (not because it's you Kaji, but because of the implications of the point), Kaji's right. This is the landscape now.
It's better than selling actual items of power, so I wouldn't sabre-rattle about it too much, if I were backers.
This is true but they're also not completely harmless. Selling cosmetics does a few things that can negatively impact a game:
The financial incentive to sell it instead of letting players earn it tends to lower the quantity and quality of those sort of items that can be earned in parallel to the cash shop offerings.
That same incentive prompts developers to overdo the quantity of available skins since they are so easy to develop and sell and they go to progressively more and more ridiculous extremes with those skins that are quite often incongruous with the rest of the game's setting and lore.
By the same token it creates a disincentive to work on core game play since that core takes a lot more work and effort for lower returns compared to the easy to do skins.
It also attracts a different type of player to the games that go heavily down this route. It attracts the "Sims Online" and "Second Life" crowd that obsesses about collecting all those different outfits as their primary reason for being there. That crowd quickly becomes the most valued customer since the developer's metrics will show they're willing to spend much more than the ones who are there to quest and kill. They become overt time, the primary development target reinforcing points 1-3 above in a vicious cycle
It does, but again, good luck getting players to amount an offensive against cosmetics like we saw against EA with lootbox progression. You saw just how atrocious that had to be to even garner a response worth noting by EA/Disney (literal "you fire 20% faster, your starship is 20% more manueverable" etc.). Apathy will win the day here.
I don't enjoy buying cosmetics, so I don't do it. But, considering how cheap and easy it is to crank them out, from a business perspecrive, you'd gotta be outta your damn mind to skip it.
I don't know about mounting offensives but I do know that dismissing their impact on the game on the usual basis that "it's just cosmetics" misses a large part of what it does to games that go heavily down this easy money route.
It's not like there aren't any examples of sub-only MMOs we can look at and compare their clear game development focus vs. the ones that go heavily into "got be out of your damn mind to skip it" land. IDK but WOW seemed to be doing just fine last I looked despite being apparently nuts to leave all that other extra money behind.
WoW sells mounts and pets. They aren't just taking subs.
EDIT- and they aren't priced cheap. Mounts can cost as much as $25 a pop, pets up to $10 a pop.
They do but relatively speaking, they are a tiny portion of development focus... like they should be.
"Social media gives legions of idiots the right to speak when they once only spoke at a bar after a glass of wine, without harming the community ... but now they have the same right to speak as a Nobel Prize winner. It's the invasion of the idiots”
― Umberto Eco
“Microtransactions? In a single player role-playing game? Are you nuts?” ― CD PROJEKT RED
It's better than selling actual items of power, so I wouldn't sabre-rattle about it too much, if I were backers.
This is true but they're also not completely harmless. Selling cosmetics does a few things that can negatively impact a game:
The financial incentive to sell it instead of letting players earn it tends to lower the quantity and quality of those sort of items that can be earned in parallel to the cash shop offerings.
That same incentive prompts developers to overdo the quantity of available skins since they are so easy to develop and sell and they go to progressively more and more ridiculous extremes with those skins that are quite often incongruous with the rest of the game's setting and lore.
By the same token it creates a disincentive to work on core game play since that core takes a lot more work and effort for lower returns compared to the easy to do skins.
It also attracts a different type of player to the games that go heavily down this route. It attracts the "Sims Online" and "Second Life" crowd that obsesses about collecting all those different outfits as their primary reason for being there. That crowd quickly becomes the most valued customer since the developer's metrics will show they're willing to spend much more than the ones who are there to quest and kill. They become overt time, the primary development target reinforcing points 1-3 above in a vicious cycle
It does, but again, good luck getting players to amount an offensive against cosmetics like we saw against EA with lootbox progression. You saw just how atrocious that had to be to even garner a response worth noting by EA/Disney (literal "you fire 20% faster, your starship is 20% more manueverable" etc.). Apathy will win the day here.
I don't enjoy buying cosmetics, so I don't do it. But, considering how cheap and easy it is to crank them out, from a business perspecrive, you'd gotta be outta your damn mind to skip it.
I don't know about mounting offensives but I do know that dismissing their impact on the game on the usual basis that "it's just cosmetics" misses a large part of what it does to games that go heavily down this easy money route.
It's not like there aren't any examples of sub-only MMOs we can look at and compare their clear game development focus vs. the ones that go heavily into "got be out of your damn mind to skip it" land. IDK but WOW seemed to be doing just fine last I looked despite being apparently nuts to leave all that other extra money behind.
WoW sells mounts and pets. They aren't just taking subs.
EDIT- and they aren't priced cheap. Mounts can cost as much as $25 a pop, pets up to $10 a pop.
They do but relatively speaking, they are a tiny portion of development focus... like they should be.
I don't disagree at all. However, I would counter that when your subs are in the millions, it's not hard to keep the focus off of nickel and diming your customers.
I think this is the model these game SHOULD use. Think of it like this....
1. Make DLC free 2. Remove the "gambling" (I think that's a moronic thing to call it, but w/e) element to loot boxes 3. Sell skins, that give zero play advantages and are merely cosmetic
Everyone wins. The DLC keeps flowing for free. The people who want to spend money can do so and get EXACTLY what they want, and no one is P2W. This is the best possible MMO pay model I can think of. It removes the need to hobble your players or nickle and dime them (I'm looking at YOU SWTOR.....god damned "pay for extra action bars" bull-ish) to force them into paying a monthly fee. And as Fortnite has CLEARLY shown, it can be more profitable than a sub fee or selling your game in the first place (they made $300 million.....last month alone).
It's better than selling actual items of power, so I wouldn't sabre-rattle about it too much, if I were backers.
This is true but they're also not completely harmless. Selling cosmetics does a few things that can negatively impact a game:
The financial incentive to sell it instead of letting players earn it tends to lower the quantity and quality of those sort of items that can be earned in parallel to the cash shop offerings.
That same incentive prompts developers to overdo the quantity of available skins since they are so easy to develop and sell and they go to progressively more and more ridiculous extremes with those skins that are quite often incongruous with the rest of the game's setting and lore.
By the same token it creates a disincentive to work on core game play since that core takes a lot more work and effort for lower returns compared to the easy to do skins.
It also attracts a different type of player to the games that go heavily down this route. It attracts the "Sims Online" and "Second Life" crowd that obsesses about collecting all those different outfits as their primary reason for being there. That crowd quickly becomes the most valued customer since the developer's metrics will show they're willing to spend much more than the ones who are there to quest and kill. They become overt time, the primary development target reinforcing points 1-3 above in a vicious cycle
It does, but again, good luck getting players to amount an offensive against cosmetics like we saw against EA with lootbox progression. You saw just how atrocious that had to be to even garner a response worth noting by EA/Disney (literal "you fire 20% faster, your starship is 20% more manueverable" etc.). Apathy will win the day here.
I don't enjoy buying cosmetics, so I don't do it. But, considering how cheap and easy it is to crank them out, from a business perspecrive, you'd gotta be outta your damn mind to skip it.
I don't know about mounting offensives but I do know that dismissing their impact on the game on the usual basis that "it's just cosmetics" misses a large part of what it does to games that go heavily down this easy money route.
It's not like there aren't any examples of sub-only MMOs we can look at and compare their clear game development focus vs. the ones that go heavily into "got be out of your damn mind to skip it" land. IDK but WOW seemed to be doing just fine last I looked despite being apparently nuts to leave all that other extra money behind.
I look at the amount of people in Path of Exile I see running about with costumes or spell effects they bought from the cash shop and it works. People buy it.
A company like Grinding Gears Games do develop their game diligently. Of course that may not be the case in every other game but a game that is free to play has to make money. I cannot vouch for the fact that they do not spend more time on the cash shop items but perhaps companies can employ another team for that and not stinge on the resources that are already stretched thin.
You as a player have to understand that and accept the consequences of playing for free.
Something to note is that even skins aren't THAT cheap to produce (otherwise you'd see MMORPGs pumping them out a lot faster than they already are). Each of these skins represents some technical debt that will have to be repaid once it comes time to making sure they mesh well with the final version of the art style, environment, and animations. Sure, it's not as expensive to program and add in as a bunch of promised space ships, but it's still something the company's going to have to spend a not-insignificant amount of resources producing.
It's a PvP game so maybe their core pvp demographic only cares about earning power items through game play. That won't hold my interest for long.
I like playing games for those cosmetics and achievements. I loved my EQ2 house because it was filled with stuff I earned through adventures in the game. I had a cosmetic armour set I earned through the Void event. I also had some cash shop stuff, but that was filler to the main achievements and rewards.
Now we've turned all those neat things into cash shop purchases. That's fine if you only care about "playing to crush" and "P2W" and who has an unfair advantage. I don't care about those things that much so if MMOs are going that route then I'm probably done.
Why is WoW different? It's not and when I finally get through the mountains of transmog I can do through my sub and I have to go to the cash shop then I'll lose interest and move on.
The thing about my old MMOs is that I'm already invested. I've put up with so much for so long I'm in until the end. I'm not connected with new MMOs like that. All of them almost sound interesting, but all of them (including this game that I backed) have tons of baggage hanging all over them. That's not very interesting.
I feel the same, though for different reasons. I just let my WoW sub run out, and I'm ambivalent about renewing for BfA until I see reviews. The only other MMORPG I'm looking at currently is trying FOnline, because I didn't realize it was a thing and I wanna try it to see how it presents the world for an online RPG.
The trend just doesn't fit my interest. I'll stay up til 3AM playing a MOBA like HOTS not because I love MOBAs that much per se, but because I have 2-3 folks on my friends list that join up and we have a good time. It's the interaction with enjoyable folks that will entice me to dive into one's game hardcore and stick around, not some story-line that's (quite frankly) half-baked compared to, say, The Last of Us; not some "action combat system" that will never be as fun as merely swinging a sword at Captain Bernard in KCD, not some dull edge graphics that will always lag behind games like Destiny, and certainly not some battleground instance that will always feel like a cheap knockoff of the now-budding MOBA genre.
Yet, those are the tenets largely being pursued by MMORPGs today. Consequently, I play other genres because they simply do all those things better. Devs have completely forgotten what makes the genre unique, and that's why they've started relying on piecemeal marketing of things like cosmetics to try and stay afloat in the current market. They offer nothing that cannot be provided in a much better form elsewhere anymore. Hell, Zenimax has pretty much forgotten Cyrodiil even exists. Blizzard has turned leveling and endgame into what amounts to lobby-based small-group RPG. All have decided it's more important for everyone to be everything than it is to create an environment conducive to massive multiplayer to the point that many are literally going, "Meh, might as well throw Destiny and FO76 in there with them these days. Why the fuck not?"
It's better than selling actual items of power, so I wouldn't sabre-rattle about it too much, if I were backers.
This is true but they're also not completely harmless. Selling cosmetics does a few things that can negatively impact a game:
The financial incentive to sell it instead of letting players earn it tends to lower the quantity and quality of those sort of items that can be earned in parallel to the cash shop offerings.
That same incentive prompts developers to overdo the quantity of available skins since they are so easy to develop and sell and they go to progressively more and more ridiculous extremes with those skins that are quite often incongruous with the rest of the game's setting and lore.
By the same token it creates a disincentive to work on core game play since that core takes a lot more work and effort for lower returns compared to the easy to do skins.
It also attracts a different type of player to the games that go heavily down this route. It attracts the "Sims Online" and "Second Life" crowd that obsesses about collecting all those different outfits as their primary reason for being there. That crowd quickly becomes the most valued customer since the developer's metrics will show they're willing to spend much more than the ones who are there to quest and kill. They become overt time, the primary development target reinforcing points 1-3 above in a vicious cycle
It does, but again, good luck getting players to amount an offensive against cosmetics like we saw against EA with lootbox progression. You saw just how atrocious that had to be to even garner a response worth noting by EA/Disney (literal "you fire 20% faster, your starship is 20% more manueverable" etc.). Apathy will win the day here.
I don't enjoy buying cosmetics, so I don't do it. But, considering how cheap and easy it is to crank them out, from a business perspecrive, you'd gotta be outta your damn mind to skip it.
I don't know about mounting offensives but I do know that dismissing their impact on the game on the usual basis that "it's just cosmetics" misses a large part of what it does to games that go heavily down this easy money route.
It's not like there aren't any examples of sub-only MMOs we can look at and compare their clear game development focus vs. the ones that go heavily into "got be out of your damn mind to skip it" land. IDK but WOW seemed to be doing just fine last I looked despite being apparently nuts to leave all that other extra money behind.
WoW sells mounts and pets. They aren't just taking subs.
EDIT- and they aren't priced cheap. Mounts can cost as much as $25 a pop, pets up to $10 a pop.
They do but relatively speaking, they are a tiny portion of development focus... like they should be.
I'd loved to see their micro sells numbers, I bet a lot of WoW's players buy those accessories. A lot of collectors out there. That's not counting the boosts and physical merchandise.
"We all do the best we can based on life experience, point of view, and our ability to believe in ourselves." - Naropa "We don't see things as they are, we see them as we are." SR Covey
In a recent reddit post players addressed concerns regarding the sale of skins. Here is an image of the skins.
The poster commented:
The constant coverage of skins have not made me more excited about the game if anything it makes me more cautious and less excited, consider also if people are looking into the game fresh and just about every new video that comes out is constantly talking about monthly skin sales in a day that many companies use monetization how it impacts potential new people.
Read the full reddit thread folks, this quote was in regards to content creators for Ashes focusing only on covering the new packs, not Intrepid only releasing information about their cash shop.
People can not like the idea of a cosmetic cash shop all they want, but the truth is a game of this magnitude takes money to develop and sustain.
Now, people are going to say "but I'm paying a monthly subscription....I should have access to all the content"
Ok, fair enough, however, think about the big time/big name games and I'm only going to use two: World of Warcraft and Final Fantasy XIV. Both of these games have a box cost, and a subscription, and a optional cash shop.
Now, the thing is in these games the box cost offsets the development cost (you know those millions of dollars it takes to build the game and expansions). The monthly sub covers the cost of servers, utilities, staff, marketing, GMs, etc.
The optional cash shop, as long as no power items are ever sold, I have no problems with cash shops. Who cares if someone wants to buy some optional stuff.
People who want there to be no cash shops, no subs, no anything need to have a reality check. If you go to a movie theater can you just be like "Yo, let me see the movie for free?" No you can't. You don't walk into a McDonalds or a even better steakhouse and say "Let me eat for free"
Why is it gamers cant' see that to get games of any quality they need to be willing to pay for them.
I don't get it, why are people concerned about buyable fluff and cosmetics?
I thought that are what people want in a cash shop, you know no p2w items just fluff, or am I missing something here?
"The skin economy" creates a bedrock for gambling. There are unofficial sites that trade cosmetics and once a random element is brought in to what you can get costume wise you are gambling.
Back in Old School MMOs we had none of these problems, items were bound to account. But today every dodgy business practice that pops up gets copied by nearly every new MMO out there. That is what happens when you have a cash shop, you open up a Pandora's box of bad practice. It is only the good will of the game developers and the savviness of players that stops every MMO having a skin economy.
I don't get it, why are people concerned about buyable fluff and cosmetics?
I thought that are what people want in a cash shop, you know no p2w items just fluff, or am I missing something here?
"The skin economy" creates a bedrock for gambling. There are unofficial sites that trade cosmetics and once a random element is brought in to what you can get costume wise you are gambling.
Back in Old School MMOs we had none of these problems, items were bound to account. But today every dodgy business practice that pops up gets copied by nearly every new MMO out there. That is what happens when you have a cash shop, you open up a Pandora's box of bad practice. It is only the good will of the game developers and the savviness of players that stops every MMO having a skin economy.
Can of worms known as greed. I see people always mentioning wow when it comes to premium mmorpgs with cash shops but never ffxiv. If they did, they'd notice Blizzard is quite "generous" in comparison.
I don't get it, why are people concerned about buyable fluff and cosmetics?
I thought that are what people want in a cash shop, you know no p2w items just fluff, or am I missing something here?
"The skin economy" creates a bedrock for gambling. There are unofficial sites that trade cosmetics and once a random element is brought in to what you can get costume wise you are gambling.
Back in Old School MMOs we had none of these problems, items were bound to account. But today every dodgy business practice that pops up gets copied by nearly every new MMO out there. That is what happens when you have a cash shop, you open up a Pandora's box of bad practice. It is only the good will of the game developers and the savviness of players that stops every MMO having a skin economy.
I don't get it, why are people concerned about buyable fluff and cosmetics?
I thought that are what people want in a cash shop, you know no p2w items just fluff, or am I missing something here?
"The skin economy" creates a bedrock for gambling. There are unofficial sites that trade cosmetics and once a random element is brought in to what you can get costume wise you are gambling.
Back in Old School MMOs we had none of these problems, items were bound to account. But today every dodgy business practice that pops up gets copied by nearly every new MMO out there. That is what happens when you have a cash shop, you open up a Pandora's box of bad practice. It is only the good will of the game developers and the savviness of players that stops every MMO having a skin economy.
What if the cosmetic are account bound?
Then the issue goes away and as long as it stays that way can never rear its head.
I don't get it, why are people concerned about buyable fluff and cosmetics?
I thought that are what people want in a cash shop, you know no p2w items just fluff, or am I missing something here?
"The skin economy" creates a bedrock for gambling. There are unofficial sites that trade cosmetics and once a random element is brought in to what you can get costume wise you are gambling.
Back in Old School MMOs we had none of these problems, items were bound to account. But today every dodgy business practice that pops up gets copied by nearly every new MMO out there. That is what happens when you have a cash shop, you open up a Pandora's box of bad practice. It is only the good will of the game developers and the savviness of players that stops every MMO having a skin economy.
I don't get it, why are people concerned about buyable fluff and cosmetics?
I thought that are what people want in a cash shop, you know no p2w items just fluff, or am I missing something here?
"The skin economy" creates a bedrock for gambling. There are unofficial sites that trade cosmetics and once a random element is brought in to what you can get costume wise you are gambling.
Back in Old School MMOs we had none of these problems, items were bound to account. But today every dodgy business practice that pops up gets copied by nearly every new MMO out there. That is what happens when you have a cash shop, you open up a Pandora's box of bad practice. It is only the good will of the game developers and the savviness of players that stops every MMO having a skin economy.
What if the cosmetic are account bound?
Then the issue goes away and as long as it stays that way can never rear its head.
I do think some of the older generation gamers are slightly getting entitled when it comes to cosmetics. Sure, back in the day, cosmetics were given baseline but times have changed. Most artists (associated with bigger companies/projects) are contracted so it goes based on a timeframe vs a number of things worked on. Also keep in mind that the cosmetic aspect is done almost a half year before things are even coded for the associated event/etc assuming the framework remains the same. Another thing to keep in mind is that these guys are essentially freelancers and will usually work for whoever is paying more if the contract is up or in negotiating phases. This is the sad reality of business. The only thing I personally dont like about sold cosmetics is the comparison to in game rewards. Some can be flat out better (of course subjective) but sometimes when I see an npc's outfit being sold in a cash shop, I really think to myself (that couldn't be a raid clear reward at a low percentage?). The only real solution I'd think is to make all cash shop stuff available in game at a low percentage and sellable/tradeable while the cash shop version can't be trade/sold/gifted.
I don't get it, why are people concerned about buyable fluff and cosmetics?
I thought that are what people want in a cash shop, you know no p2w items just fluff, or am I missing something here?
"The skin economy" creates a bedrock for gambling. There are unofficial sites that trade cosmetics and once a random element is brought in to what you can get costume wise you are gambling.
Back in Old School MMOs we had none of these problems, items were bound to account. But today every dodgy business practice that pops up gets copied by nearly every new MMO out there. That is what happens when you have a cash shop, you open up a Pandora's box of bad practice. It is only the good will of the game developers and the savviness of players that stops every MMO having a skin economy.
What if the cosmetic are account bound?
Then the issue goes away and as long as it stays that way can never rear its head.
Not for me it doesn't. Not one bit.
You have lost me, if the items are account bound what is the issue?
Comments
“Microtransactions? In a single player role-playing game? Are you nuts?”
― CD PROJEKT RED
1. Make DLC free
2. Remove the "gambling" (I think that's a moronic thing to call it, but w/e) element to loot boxes
3. Sell skins, that give zero play advantages and are merely cosmetic
Everyone wins. The DLC keeps flowing for free. The people who want to spend money can do so and get EXACTLY what they want, and no one is P2W. This is the best possible MMO pay model I can think of. It removes the need to hobble your players or nickle and dime them (I'm looking at YOU SWTOR.....god damned "pay for extra action bars" bull-ish) to force them into paying a monthly fee. And as Fortnite has CLEARLY shown, it can be more profitable than a sub fee or selling your game in the first place (they made $300 million.....last month alone).
A company like Grinding Gears Games do develop their game diligently. Of course that may not be the case in every other game but a game that is free to play has to make money. I cannot vouch for the fact that they do not spend more time on the cash shop items but perhaps companies can employ another team for that and not stinge on the resources that are already stretched thin.
You as a player have to understand that and accept the consequences of playing for free.
The trend just doesn't fit my interest. I'll stay up til 3AM playing a MOBA like HOTS not because I love MOBAs that much per se, but because I have 2-3 folks on my friends list that join up and we have a good time. It's the interaction with enjoyable folks that will entice me to dive into one's game hardcore and stick around, not some story-line that's (quite frankly) half-baked compared to, say, The Last of Us; not some "action combat system" that will never be as fun as merely swinging a sword at Captain Bernard in KCD, not some dull edge graphics that will always lag behind games like Destiny, and certainly not some battleground instance that will always feel like a cheap knockoff of the now-budding MOBA genre.
Yet, those are the tenets largely being pursued by MMORPGs today. Consequently, I play other genres because they simply do all those things better. Devs have completely forgotten what makes the genre unique, and that's why they've started relying on piecemeal marketing of things like cosmetics to try and stay afloat in the current market. They offer nothing that cannot be provided in a much better form elsewhere anymore. Hell, Zenimax has pretty much forgotten Cyrodiil even exists. Blizzard has turned leveling and endgame into what amounts to lobby-based small-group RPG. All have decided it's more important for everyone to be everything than it is to create an environment conducive to massive multiplayer to the point that many are literally going, "Meh, might as well throw Destiny and FO76 in there with them these days. Why the fuck not?"
"We all do the best we can based on life experience, point of view, and our ability to believe in ourselves." - Naropa "We don't see things as they are, we see them as we are." SR Covey
MAGA
Now, people are going to say "but I'm paying a monthly subscription....I should have access to all the content"
Ok, fair enough, however, think about the big time/big name games and I'm only going to use two: World of Warcraft and Final Fantasy XIV. Both of these games have a box cost, and a subscription, and a optional cash shop.
Now, the thing is in these games the box cost offsets the development cost (you know those millions of dollars it takes to build the game and expansions). The monthly sub covers the cost of servers, utilities, staff, marketing, GMs, etc.
The optional cash shop, as long as no power items are ever sold, I have no problems with cash shops. Who cares if someone wants to buy some optional stuff.
People who want there to be no cash shops, no subs, no anything need to have a reality check. If you go to a movie theater can you just be like "Yo, let me see the movie for free?" No you can't. You don't walk into a McDonalds or a even better steakhouse and say "Let me eat for free"
Why is it gamers cant' see that to get games of any quality they need to be willing to pay for them.
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Ashes 101
Back in Old School MMOs we had none of these problems, items were bound to account. But today every dodgy business practice that pops up gets copied by nearly every new MMO out there. That is what happens when you have a cash shop, you open up a Pandora's box of bad practice. It is only the good will of the game developers and the savviness of players that stops every MMO having a skin economy.
For ashes the cosmetics are account bound.
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Ashes 101
So then what is your issue with cosmetics?
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Ashes 101