Okay, as funny as it is, I don’t think the people who are complaining are the ones who are actually purchasing. I am pretty sure that the people who are the majority spenders are not even aware of the hatred on the internet for microtransactions, or even if they are aware, they do not see it as worthwhile concern.
It is easy to get lost in the noise, as many things on internet, everything becomes an echo chamber. But in reality there are a lot of people who thinks it is justified. That somebody is asking for money to deliver a product or a service and they don’t care how the equation of "what is worth what " is derived.
For them, its just inflation or expense to cover the cost (basically they take publishers counterpoint at face value, can’t blame them honestly), and since it has become the norm, they have given up on taking a moral stance om this and following through
What the fuck did I just watch?
And where can I get more?
the guy’s yt channel? https://www.youtube.com/@shapiro127/videos
although I wanted to go with my misrembered futurama quote “There aren’t anymore. and there never will be anymore”
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rGeUfYusTf4&t=19s
but I remembered the quote wrong
Whales are the idiots who keep the Madden games alive.
I used to be an avid Plants Vs. Zombies player and I won the Jade League No. 1 spot and earned almost every plant that could be earned and I did it without paying a single dime in real life money. I eventually quit because after you finish the main game and win the Jade League (even once) there really isn’t much else for you to do, and when you grind up your plants’ exp to the level I got them the games become a sinch.
Good to see that Dark Legacy Comics is still not funny after all these years
A joke so old it has grandkids.
Disgraceful behavior…
Right my Sims? looks to how horribly her game is glitching up due to owning more expansions than Maxis ever intended for Sims 4 to actually have
But for real, the idea of an MMO still requiring a monthly fee in 2024 is ridiculous.
in 1998 when it was a new concept and a lot of money had to go into maintaining the sheer volume of people using servers at a time when the internet couldn’t handle more than 20 Star Trek fanboys at once without using up all the bandwith, sure. I could see that.
But in 2024 where even small Indie studios can afford regular free content updates and still make a profit from word of mouth game sales? Yeaaah no.
I’m confused, is this a serious take? How they make their money leads to how the game is designed and who for. If it’s advertising it’s shit. If it’s microtransactions it becomes about min-maxing annoyance for most gamers while attracting whales, gambling and is shit. Monthly subscriptions is a model that needs loyalty and should attract people who want to “live” in an permanent virtual game world.
Ideally I’d want a global “entertainment subscription” non-profit that is funding projects for the players benefits and is somewhat crowd-controlled like a socialist bank.
MMO still requiring a monthly fee in 2024 is ridiculous.
May I point you to Call of Duty on consoles? They are Massive Multiplayer Online (MMO) that needs a monthly subscription (Xbox Live, which owns Cal of Duty, or PS Plus).
Online gaming has more people paying for an online subscription today than ever before (Nintendo Online included). While the companies being paid for it have changed, monthly online gaming subscriptions are here to stay and have only gotten larger.
Uhhh, when did call of duty transition from lobby queuing to MMO?
Lobby queuing for has always been a thing in MMOs.
Dude that isn’t remotely the same thing as a lobby queue style game lol
Words mean things and cod isn’t an MMO
That’s ok this is a LIVE SERVICE GAME. Definitely not the same as an MMO. Definitely.
Also I bought that Brutosaur and a friggin love it. Best QOL feature in the game. I don’t even play WoW more than a few times a month.
I now have all services in the game mobile in some way or another: bank, transmog, mail and auction
What makes a MMO different from a live service? Both have characters, levels, character progression exp based on killing enemies and doing X actions/quests, and have new content added as time goes on.
From how I see it, it’s just a different name to just avoid being called a MMO.
I remember the first big MMORPG that was on the internet: Ultima Online. I wanted to play it back in the day, but I couldn’t because I was far too young to have my own credit card to pay (and my dad was quite firmly not going to pay) and in the very late 90s, at least where I lived, the internet was still a pay-as-you-play affair, meaning every second you spent was logged and charged on your next phone bill. Sometime around 2000 or very early 2001 the internet got some plans by the company that had us pay a single fixed fee, so I could remain online as long as I wanted without worrying about a skyrocketting bill.
Most people who vote with their wallets have long since stopped playing.
I vote with my wallet by buying indie games or old discounted single player AAA games. This also means I can game on a crappy machine. Being a retrogamer also helps. I literally have more games to play than time to live.
Yeah where’s Ahab when we need him?
…
I’m so glad I got clean
I thought I was immune until I got sucked into some game where you battle with teams of players you collect and fight other players. There was some element of sending your titans to mine resources as well, but I forget the name of the game, but spent over $500 in it.
I literally uninstall any game that has gems, emeralds, coins that can be bought to speed things up.
Man I want to get clean, but you don’t understand they have three more states coming out on American Truck Simulator and I am desperate to travel to them in game.
I mean it’s an awesome game and truly don’t feel I wasted the money. Except now maybe I have. I have checked the game is not available outside of Steam. You can’t buy a physical copy and not have it tied to online. If they decided to not support it or go out business I will lose everything.
Yeah need rethink playing that game.
I do understand. I used to stay up playing WoW until sunrise. I used to have an in-game alarm set at 2 AM IRL to remind me to go to bed. I ground dailies until I hated them.
From one gamer to another: get out while you can. For one thing, I missed out on a LOT of good games because I was playing WoW. And the expansions are always a tease; the entire xpac and all of your work is going to be useless the very instant the next one drops. More than anything, I didn’t like who I was when I played WoW.
I quit something like 5 or 6 years ago I think (sometime during the disaster that was Battle for Azeroth) and boy am I glad I did. Sometimes I miss Azeroth, but that is a relationship that will drain your very soul. Gotta do one more daily. One more dungeon. One more raid. Then I’ll have enough widgets to buy the gizmo! And honestly, I was never even that good. Pretty much everything in my life has improved since I quit WoW. Not all of it was because of crippling gaming addiction, of course, but it made every aspect of my life more difficult.
All of the above applies to Elite: Dangerous as well. If you are at the point where you are rethinking your relationship with a game, its long past time to stop playing.
Dark legacy comics has been my only source for wow.
I played when they “re released” classic, just before they bent over backwards to please China (that was a big reason I stopped, the other was classic wasn’t classic, there was so much jank in it that had clearly not been qc’d), now I read about the adventures of the dlcomics cast and that’s more than enough for me.
The entire reason people wanted to play classic was because of the jank.
Nah, there were things like floating sign posts, and enemies in places they shouldn’t have been.
It was absolutely not the game that was released 22 years ago. Also they said they didn’t re-tune the enemies, but everything was easier, so maybe it wasn’t re-tuned, but it was differently tuned
Maybe you’re just a better player then you were as a teen
Bwahaha, would love if that was the case. Maybe I was more aggressive as a teen? Maybe I pushed harder into areas where I was under leveled? Except I know that isn’t the case because I’m much more impatient as a gamer the days. I know that food and water were much more important to have on hand because of how frequently you’d need to rest between mobs I remember reaching the next tier of food and being relieved that I didn’t have to wait the entire 20 seconds, sometimes more if I needed 2 rounds of water to fill my mana bar, on the re-release there was barely any down time when grinding the lower levels.
I’m often one to question people’s rose tinted glasses, and I’m not upset for anyone to question my memory, but the"classic" release was made (not saying intentionally) easier than the original release (as a day 1 release player, through cataclysm)
I want to see them come out with a literal flying whale mount for $999 and see who buys it.
I’m sure that would cause a significant portion of the playerbase to react with angry and hurtful messages. Then poor Blizzard would have no choice but to wipe their tears with their massive new pile of hundred dollar bills.
Meanwhile, in Star Trek Online…
I’ve completely stopped playing MMOs, but there is a difference when it’s an online service. What I consider absurd are the publishers and developers who close down their MMOs when they still have players who have invested and will invest money into it, without even considering selling it off. I’m looking at you, NCSoft. Almost happened to Spiral Knights, and because it didn’t, it’s still going. It’s like they think that people playing them are players that would otherwise playing their new MMOs, when the reality is they avoid those that don’t respect the persistence and investment.
There’s also of MMO’s with no subscription and plenty of whaling. But cosmetics are cosmetics, there’s people that can legitimately complain about a $90 dollar mount if it gives an unfair advantage while paying for cosmetics. But there are people who don’t mind unfair advantages in certain games either as long as they have a F2P model. Nowadays, what drives me off is the feeling of never getting the full experience, having to constantly feel that way to avoid getting caught in predatory addiction loops they implement, and just being able to buy a full, self-contained experience for two months of subscription.
The difference mostly is that the old games were games built first and microtransactions second. Slowly creeping up the invasive methods. Which is acceptable for most people.
However new games have a fully fledged out microtransaction system and shop and the whole game is built around maximising profits. Just like mobile games are.
It is rare that when you put the money first you will produce a game that is fun. And definitely not possible to make a good one.
The Past “We made this game, and if you like it and want to support further development, we have these small DLC bundles, some skins or what not… Nothing fancy, but we wanna work on new maps to keep the game alive. There’s no obligation, the maps will be provided free of charge, we’re just happy the playerbase is so enthused”
Now “We’ve made a new venue for buying skins, the marketing people call it a game? Look whatever, oh and while some of these skins look unremarkable, remember they’re only available for a limited time and those will cost 30% more than normal, but if you don’t buy it you’ll regret it forever when we take it away, either forever or until the GOTY edition.”
(Seriously: Ban FOMO)
Seriously it has gotten to the point where games are so content bare that people are talking about the DLC before the main game’s out.
Mortal Kombat 1 made that mistake so hard it had to start giving skins away to try to goad me into playing it again. Great story, terrible gameplay… weirdly the opposite of Mortal Kombat 11… (Maybe it’ll help if your big DLC expansion wasn’t 2 characters that are literally just genderflipped recolors… How weird is that Cyrax and Sektor are female now. I mean, normally that’s fine whatever, but in the context that Liu Kang created this universe to be his ideal, did he just have a Rule 63 kink for Cyber Ninjas or something? Or did turning the Transhumanists into Transgenders seem like too hilarious a pun for him?)
I have the strangest hunch that if a large MMO or game with lootboxes decided to make every item available via unlocks for free but make them all immediately buyable now, they’d have a nice business model. The player isn’t buying exclusivity or an advantage, they’re buying convenience.
Warframe heard that
Are the whales the ones complaining? Because the whole concept of a whale is that they are the exception. The vast majority of players pay only the minimum amount or slightly more, but the whales dump so much money in that they are still worth more to the devs than the other 99% of players combined.
The whales wouldn’t complain about this one anyways. When this mount was available in-game on the auction house it was probably around 5x the price in USD assuming you bought wow tokens.
You’re right. The definition of a whale includes that he has enough money to not complain about any price at all.
Except complaining is his kink… Then he gets double the satisfaction from his payments.
Or the whale is German, because complaining is a nation past time.
“price gouge me harder, Daddy!”
A whale doesn’t need enough money not to complain. The tactics used to attract whales are meant to build or take advantage of addictions. When I was drinking I would regularly complain about the cost of alcohol yet still spend much more than I could afford on it
Whales aren’t people who can afford whatever, so they spend whatever. Whales are people invested enough that the perceived value added is more than the money it costs. Most whales, therefore, are regular people who are addicted to the game rather than moneybags who could easily afford it. So yeah, it does smell of victim blaming. We should be calling out the bad business practice, rather than calling out those being victimized by the bad business practice.
buys shit
violently orgasms
I’ve seen whales complain. Maybe not whales, but people who pay for skins and random bullshit
I think it’s mostly the parents of whales who are complaining.
It’s the same as how most airlines operate. The first and business class sections make up the majority of the profit, even though they are just a small fraction of the passengers.
You know who look like whales? Problem spenders who spend far beyond their means, and are preyed upon by predatory business practices that use psychological manipulation to encourage people to spend as much as as they can. Like, I’ve literally watched video game developer conference talks where a dev explains in great detail and depth on how to hijack human psychology to milk every last dollar they can. Whales stopped being “those who can afford to spend” a long time ago.
In FFXIV, most multi people mounts are paid for, but they did have an event where they have one that can hold 4 people. There is a paid mount that holds 8 people, and it’s a whale. It’s the most expensive mount at just $42. There is no reason you should want to carry 8 people because everyone should have a mount.
Some people mentioned there are some additional features locked behind the specific mount this comic is lambasting. Something about AH and mailbox. I haven’t played WoW so not sure how much of an advantage that is, but the closest FFXIV analogue imo is the extra retainers.
You only have 2 by default and pay an additional $2 a month for any extra. They allow you to basically bot farm some items every 30m to an hour(depends on how below your retainers level the target is) as well as more storage and selling capacity. Nothing is explicitly gated by it, but those who spend the money have a higher capability to earn in game money and/or have greater convenience if they use it properly.
For those of us who have had extra retainers for years, it’s cost us way more than $90, but it’s not a single huge purchase so can definitely seem like less in your head if you don’t take that one small step of reasoning.
I started boycotting all paid digital subscription services when World of Warcraft came out.
So to me; you’re the problem. Anyone who isn’t boycotting all paid digital subscription services is the problem.
Weird take but more power to you my friend
Subscription fees for frequently updated MMOs aren’t unreasonable. I refuse to pay them, but I don’t begrudge their existence. MTX on top of that are another matter - that shit should only exist in F2P MMOs.
Wtf are you talking about? The user you’re responding to is just clarifying the term “whale”.
If you ignore what else they say:
The vast majority of players pay only the minimum amount or slightly more,
Of course they’re making this claim because that’s what they do. Listen: BOYCOTT BOYCOTT BOYCOTT - stop funding things you don’t want to see in this world. Stop funding things you don’t want to reward.
If you do reward these actions (such as new subscription model services), or you’re justifying them in online commentary (as the comment I replied to was, as you are) then you have no right to complain about them - because they were funded by you.
It’s like paying the minimum on a Kickstarter for killing kittens, then commenting “Yes, but it’s really the whales funding it”.
Not if you’re all funding it too. That still counts as funding it! STOP LYING TO YOURSELF!
You’re raging against a discussion on nomenclature and blaming anyone that responds to you for your off-topic crusade. Maybe take a moment think about that.
I’m so happy I don’t give a fuck about looking cool or having nice effects in a game.
The only one I ever spend more bucks than I had to is Path of Exile. And the supporter packs give you your whole worth of money spend as premium currency plus you get the usual skins, emotes and tracking tools.
I totally feel that I’m okay with buying functional stuff like inventory space if the system itself feels fair.
In 10 years and around 5000h (only game I play except tarkov for a while) in I spend 122€ so a mount for 90 bucks seems crazy.
The only time I have ever paid for any kind of MTX was for Tribes: Ascend. I bought the cheapest amount of paid for currency (which was $5) just for the permanent VIP status it conferred, which doubled your XP gain to unlock weapons and shit (back before they completely restructured the game and that wasn’t necessary anymore).
I think I ended up using the currency it gave me to buy one of the original Tribes 2 voice sets because it had the most annoying, ear-splitting version of the “Shazbot!” line and I would spam the shit outta it.
Never again. Even if I like the game, like I did with Ascend. I especially won’t do it with anything Hi-Rez makes.
People who think that way are dumb
But when I sometimes think that way it’s cool
Logic
