Welp... I WAS gonna give this game a go. Between going with a WoT-esque progression system and their sheister dealings (what happened to tzeench,) I'll now back away and spend my money elsewhere.
QFT - I just really wish companies would stop this shit. In only makes sense and works if there's a reason for a power/technology disparity (prewar Tanks vs Cold War Tanks - as an example). And even then it's annoying.
I hate to be "that guy", but those systems make money. As long as people keep spending money on them, developers and publishers will keep making them. There's clearly a market for these games.
The problem now is that they weren't up front with it at the start and will now have lots of backlash because of it. People spent money because they were advertised one thing and are now being given something else. Can give star citizen as a example of this but they are expanding the game not regressing to a lower quality. If you expand on the idea with a quality product people will throw more money, but if you go the opposite direction be expecting to get a lot of hate after money was originally given.
it's a market built on frustration, the entire business model is a horrible play on human competition, the idea being that people will find the game enjoyable enough, but realize that in order to compete, they either have to grind away to reach the upper tiers and thereby not get regularly stomped, or they -can- throw money at the company... skipping some of the more time consuming steps in order to enjoy the game more fully. I suppose this is fine, obviously some people not only like it, but are often willing to funnel their money into it, however... most of the games built on this model are FTP right off the bat. Their pricetag wasn't terribly steep, but it's still a pricetag. Add that on top of the fact that it wasn't originally designed advertised or sold on this model and... you've got a steaming pile of something unpleasant beginning to provide it's own fetid parfum to the mix.
If people keep paying for these games, then to be blunt I have no sympathy for them when companies keep making them. If the public as a whole wants games with fiar business models, they need to, oh I don't know, maybe stop giving money to the bad ones? Not really talking about dreadnought in particular here. Changing models half way through is shitty, but they wouldn't have done it if the customers hadn't proven that there's money to be made in being shitty.
Oh I know they make money, but I can't help but feel they're a dying model in the long run, it feels ok when you start but play enough of these games they seriously start hindering the enjoyment. There are also plenty of companies making money on F2P without this progression, I had hoped people had moved on to more enjoyable models by now.
This sounds like a chicken or the egg argument as to who is to blame and I don't subscribe to that logic. It's not just the consumers, it's the devs too, but they are still different circumstances. How do you break the cycle? Someone has to stand up and say, "we're not going to do this shit anymore". Consumers have no authority to go to; there is no singular voice of guidance. But developers do have a voice. Someone on that dev team purposefully chose to run with another generic bullshit F2P model. They have no one to blame but themselves. A developer needs to pay the bills, yes, but they also need to be brave enough to try new things. It's the only reason Nintendo is still relevant today. Be bold or be forgotten. In Dreadnought's case, it seems the devs have chosen the latter.
The consumers have their wallets. That's the real power in this case. Video games are a luxury item. There are a ton of choices out there, and none of them is a life nessecity. I haven't been keeping up with dreadnought, but it sounds like they had a good system in place before deciding to take the easy way out. I hate to say it, but the best thing for consumers is for them, World of Tanks, and other asshole publishers to lose all their customers and go under. Maybe then we can go back to a subscription model (which is fair - paying for server upkeep) or a pay once model. The entire free to play business model encourages this type of shenanigan.
Warframe is FTP and fair, problem being that in order for that model to work, your game actually has to deliver -good- content periodically, not just slap together a new ship with generic weapons and call it the mk 3 that you can only get with whatever currency the game uses for pay and has a slight edge against others of the same type. While I personally agree the subscription model is a generally 'more' fair model, it still has it's issues, and until someone comes up with a subscription model that you pay for actual in game play time, not monthly or whatever else, regardless of how frequently you play the game, people are still going to fall for the FTP trap, because you don't -have- to pay them to play the game. Maybe if someone decided to make a reverse subscription system it'd be more fair, you pay for the month after you've played in it, and your account is effectively suspended until you do, (which of course you could pay in advance as well, otherwise that'd get annoying quick) Of course, even if you could pay by the hour there'd be people who'd complain about it, I mean, who among us hasn't ever stood around in a game for hours doing literally nothing? Crafting would become a virtual deadzone, most people wouldn't want to waste the time etc... games are meant to be time wasters, it becomes slightly less enjoyable you realize exactly what the cost of that time is. (though, my personal scale is about $1 an hour if I'm enjoying the game.)
Though as it stands a large portion of the mechanics that make games grindy are acting as filler; they gate access to new content (which takes a lot longer to create than consume), they encourage players to stay online (keeping server population up), it exists to a point in most games just by nature that there's some build up. Ultimately every game costs money to create and to maintain, which I think is why no one does a per-hour aub; you need to keep the servers running even when barely anyone is online, you need to keep making new content... letting people only log in to spend a few hours on "what's new" every few weeks would be unsustainable. But games need to be enjoyable to play. Gating too much of the fun behind tedious or frustrating grind doesn't keep your population up or encourage people to want to give you money. Especially given the competition for the f2p market, saying that misery grind is a necessity is just silly at this point (it might have been marginally viable 6-8 years ago). Also, for any game with a substantial PvP element, PvP players will keep each other entertained to a large extent if you give them the tools. They don't need spoon-feeding of new content and gear all the time, but well thought-out and balanced items are essential. In the case of Dreadnought, I went from falling asleep excited about what I wanted to try in game the next day and debating a hero ship purchase very seriously to never wanting to log in again because they decided to grind gate and paywall all the fun to such a degree that playing was like a punishment. And since this is a 99% PvP game, building a level-locked system of imbalance isn't tolerable - I can't wander off to afk botfarm rats with my wooden sword until I can afford to dual-wield masamunes while wearing my wizard hat and pants and wearing the armor of invincibility, I just get to be shitkicked by people with no jobs to go to and mommy's credit card because they have it and I don't. Meanwhile, I've played plenty of games that do just sell some boosters and lots of cosmetic items (I don't even want to try to calculate what I've spent on Smite skins...) just because their game is fun and players want to doll up their avatars while playing that fun game. Gearbox just shot themselves in both feet, the dick and the head by killing fun, killing balance, and killing both my desire to keep playing their game and any goodwill I had to want to support them financially. Btw, any one else notice the Trident hero dreadnought went up from 1900GP (~$17) to 4000GP (~$35)?
Also I'm unable to update the client again because the college got wise to my choice of VPN and is still being a pissy little bitch about peer 2 peer.
I think this is a really fair assessment. In the medical field we have a term called "metered dosage". You usually see this with inhalers, but the best example is morphine. The idea is to hook the medication up to a device that controls how much medication the patient gets over a period of time. A patient can push a button to administer morphine whenever they feel pain, but only up to a point. After that, no more medication will be released until a set time has passed. The same seems to be happening with devs sharply controlling the "fun". To be fair, a little bit of grind is ok! Most single player quality games have some version of grind, but when done right, the difference is that the grind never feels tedious. If i had to put a number on it, I would say the amount of acceptable grind is exactly equal to the amount of interesting content to experience in the game. By comparison, I feel like most F2P games are a "test of tedium"; how long does it take you to get bored/frustrated? I feel like devs have gotten into the habit of relying heavily on "gating" content to pad their otherwise boring and shallow game. I wish more would focus on interesting game modes, modular map designs, and other ways to keep things fresh rather than forcing players down a narrow sewage pipe of the same repetitive content.
I want to clarify this statement. Obviously, consuming good content is not a "one and done" affair. With a good enough catalog of content, one could continue playing a game and never get bored with it. However, you still need to have that threshold of good content to be made to allow the game to be self-sustaining. Eve is a good example of this gone wrong. Let's be honest, out of all the effort made to add new content, how much of it can genuinely be categorized as "fun"? Maybe half? A third? Answers may very of course, but there is no denying that a large portion of Eve's new content fell completely flat and changed nothing really interesting about the game.
~~~GRINDING IS GOOD! PRODUCT LIFETIME! YARBLES!~~~ Thanks for taking the hit fellas - will skip this one in favor of other, more experienced F2P snake-oil telemarketers. It's a shame though - conceptually and gameplay wise it looked stunning.
I'm not gonna completely turn away from it. I'll keep an eye peeled in case the devs reverse course. If they come out and refuse to do it, then I'll jump ship.
