LogFAQs > #967806761

ultra_magnus13 posted...

If they are cosmetics, then it's fine. It's a way to show when, and how long you have been playing.

This, but even then it's really only okay if the cosmetics aren't particularly interesting and really just amount to "I was here." Anythingm more than a cool commemorative sort of thing means you're effectively punishing people for not buying the game sooner, and that's just scummy and manipulative.

Also, this should perhaps go without saying, but limited-time purchases are awful. This only applies to stuff that's included for free.

Straughan posted...

Whats dumb is in old mmos, some of the raid bosses had drops that never dropped and respawned in contested zones after 7 days. Like.. it's a fucking video game dude. You programmed it and spent all this time on it and like 5% of users saw it. And yet it took +/- a weeks worth for wages for your entire staff to make. Please, stop.

Nothing contested should be that rare. Everything should be instanced. If you wanna make rare shit, let people earn it via account-wide achievements like swtor. Make people earn shit, not be there at a certain time and be lucky.

It's all about exploiting FOMO: If you limit the opportunities people have to access some content, people are going to be more likely to keep playing to avoid missing those opportunities. There's a delicate balance to strike between encouraging people to get on board to avoid missing any more exclusive timed content and making people feel discouraged that they've already missed out on so much, but generally speaking you can get more people playing by including missable content than you give up. For games with a subscription fee (namely the MMO's of yore), that translates directly to more revenue. For anything with microtransactions or other recurring monetization, that means people stay engaged for longer and you have more opportunities to convince them to spend money.

SKARDAVNELNATE posted...

Then they use that as an excuse for why games are expensive to make, and need to be a live service, and sell season passes to make up the cost.

Nah, they pretty much never outright blame any specific design or development decision for the alleged increasing costs. That's too easy to quantify and disprove. They're more vague about it, relying on people's broad understanding of inflation to get them to accept that games must be more expensive to make now (never mind that they haven't increased developer salaries by enough to keep up with inflation, and those make up the bulk of the unavoidable costs of game development). In truth, most of the inflated costs come from marketing, which generally does pay off just in simple sales revenue and all the monetization is just icing on the cake. By and large, game companies have seen their revenues grow significantly faster than their costs have, but of course they leave that part out when they try to get the public on board with increasing MSRP.