Is pay-to-cosmetics anti-consumer?

on a technical level, charging for cosmetics is fair play there, you can pick and choose the ones you want to get and if reasonably price i don't feel inclined to complain

but if more cosmetics are being put out than real content then it becomes bullshit

Depends far too heavily on the game in question to really give any concrete answer but as general practice no I don't think a cosmetics shop is inherently anti-consumer. Anti-consumer would be making cosmetics both ludicrously expensive and advantageous to have ie cosmetics have exclusive effects or bonuses. Hell, Team Fortress 2 as an example, you can get everything in the game totally free with enough time and effort due to trading, trade websites, and an occasional hat in the drop system; most people I know actively laugh at anybody who buys cosmetics from the TF2 shop for real money.

Acceptable in both since it's a digital haberdashery and that doesn't change regardless of the game's entry payment, as long as it's just a cosmetic shop.

I fucking care that developers feel that they can get away with selling me things that were once unlockable through gameplay to add value to the product I purchased.
I'm angrier still that they CAN get away with it because faggot modern gamers accept it.

Okay then.

A lot of people here decided to boycott Onechanbara because of its numerous costumes being sold independently. People like porbably.
That and Overwatch seems to get a lot of negative feedback because of its progression system where you can buy costumes and shit.

So I became curious.

also reminder that the cosmetic boxes in over watch are free with every level up and opening them is a gamble of dupes anyway so while paying for more IS fucking retarded it doesn't keep non-payers from getting good shit

If it's cosmetics I don't care. Is it anti consumer? Sure I guess but it's not a big deal. It would be preferred to be able to get them without paying.

Consider this: If the game skimps on content so it can sell it to you later, it's gonna have less base content.
Therefore, either the price for the base game should be smaller or the devs are overcharging you.

Let's say you have a 60$ game that has 10 costumes. The devs then decide to remove 5 costumes and sell it to you as DLC for 20$. If the price of the game is now 40$, you'll be paying the full 60$ for the entire thing, the only thing that changes is that those not interested in those 5 costumes save their money.

However, if the game is still at 60$, you'll be playing that price for a game with only 5 costumes, which ain't a very good price. And the full package is 80$ which is just too expensive for a game with only 10 costumes.

These are all bogus numbers, but you get the idea. Judge the base game by the base price and the base content, DLC is completely apart. That is judged by summing it all up and seeing how it compares, both in price and content to equally priced games.

Overwatch might not be the best example here, though. You can spend time instead of cash to get all the cosmetics, it's about giving people the choice between which one they want to spend to get the cosmetics.

here's the facts

around level 30 ranks, it takes the same amount of xp per level (2200?) to get a lot crate with 4 random pieces of cosmetics or in game cash so it doesn't force you into a constant uphill to get cosmetics

BUT the game has a bunch of useless cosmetics to bloat your loot crates like in game sprays you'll never fucking use to try to incline the player to BUY fucking loot crate

Looks are optional and don't affect the gameplay. I don't see the harm in it. Especially in Overwatch's case since you can get it all for free as long as you invest enough time in it anyway.

The only way I'd see selling cosmetics as DLC as scummy would be if the amount of non-DLC looks would be

I think it depends on whether or not cosmetic differences can be considered to affect gameplay or not. For example, costumes which make your character blend in with the environment in a multiplayer game is definitely not acceptable.

There was an instance in Black Desert I think, where they had a DLC costume that hid your level from opposing players. That was a pretty big shitstorm.

He is angry because his user-experience changed for the worse. He is angry because he is expected to pay extra for something that was included in the base price before.

But having your character look good does affect gameplay and your enjoyment of the game. Designing characters to be deliberately bland to coerce you into surrendering additional shekels so your character can look good and thus further your enjoyment of the game is no different from locking existing content out as paid on-disk DLC.

Except you also get the same bloat when you buy them anyway. It doesn't solve that at all, you can easily invest 50$ in lootcrates and get nothing but sprays and voice lines.

that's true, which makes it particularly foolish to invest in loot crates

i'm actually playing the game because god help me i enjoy it, but i think the loot might be rigged to a certain extent since i saved in game cash from crates to buy a "rare" skin and i feel like the quality of my crates and the amount of income from my crates has dropped since i did that

Depends
Not really unless its dirt cheap and optional
Probably the only form of pay that avoids cancer in the FTP genre

Would this be okay?

Nigger that sounds like the most hardcore pay-to-win shit I've ever heard.
Kill yourself.

You are contradicting yourself. How does your brain function ?

I figure it's more like pay-to-skip-gameplay-and-then-lose-all-your-stuff-because-gear-doesn't-beat-skill.

...

I meant that there are no items that actually require real cash to get. Did you notice the part about getting ingame money from missions with no cooldown?

Why don't they just have it as an unlockable only?
What justification is there in charging money for imaginary nothings that used to be free?
I don't see "giving players the freedom to negatively impact the industry" as a positive thing.

That's retarded on several levels.
If you can buy ingame cash with real cash, that means you can inject money and devalue currency inside the game as long as you're willing to put cash in it. This means anyone that doesn't buy currency is doubly fucked by anyone buying it.

It's also fucking stupid to give advantages you can buy and lose to people that didn't bought them. You're just telling people "You really shouldn't have bought that!".
Either you can easily defend it with what you bought making this point entirely redundant but only paying customers get a real chance in the world, or you don't and you're better off grinding free shit in game and killing everyone that bought shit with actual money.

This also means there's a very rational hatred between paying players and free players, since the latter are gonna try to get whatever the first has, and since they have literally nothing to lose, the system is already gimped for them.

I don't know if it's anti anything but it surely makes the game feel cheap and compromised if every 20 minutes you are hit with a shekel heckle

I certainly won't pay a cent for a game with microtransactions no matter how many or how little.

wtf happened to my thumbnail is this what we get for trusting an admin who isn't even a cripple fucking leg-walkers

You pay cash to get ingame currency. With it you buy weapons others have to farm.

How is that not an advantage ?

The only upside is that br and russian gangs will be running around raping anyone who does it.
So your forums will be whinier than a kindgergarden.

no
yes
yes
remember, goy, its a business not a fucking charity.

There was an "evil game design" challenge where 3 F2P monetisation designers were challenged to figure out how a F2P minecraft would work. One of the ideas was to force all of the players to play on the same server in a large landmass. You could build whatever you wanted on the land you could secure. When you logged off, your character would still be present in the game world, so people could kill you while you were logged off. This meant that you had to dig yourself into a nice little hole or secure yourself in a building, perhaps guarded by traps. Alternatively you could pay to make yourself immaterial for a certain amount of time. In addition, you could pay money to designate certain areas to be indestructible for a certain amount of time.

They figured out how to monetise griefing.

That's a good point. My intent was to keep the sandbox from stagnating (due to nobody being able to lose anything meaningful) and ensuring a revenue stream without a monthly fee (I really like the buy-to-play-and-nothing-else model, but I'm pretty sure an MMO with actual consequences would be pretty fucking niche).

Fucking what? Either gear is a significant factor in numerical effectiveness (x% more damage, y% less damage taken) in which case gear does beat skill, or it does absolutely nothing and has no reason to exist.

Actually, didn't Minecraft have that service where you pay a monthly to host a private server? Something like that might keep my idea afloat, provided I can get it past the design document stage.

I meant that player skill was more important than gear. Knowledge of the combat area, quick thinking, good aim, that sort of shit.

That sort of thing is what I meant.

depends
depends, usually no
depends, usually yes

If developers are making cosmetics instead of content, then it becomes unacceptable.

No, cosmetics do not count as content. You don't interact with them in any way other than looking at them.

But we can't ever know if a dev is actively doing this, unless they flat out state it, so cosmetics usually fall into that "who cares" category.

I don't like DLC, and I don't like microtransactions in a game I have already paid for.
It seems very petty, almost as if the developer is trying to actively nickel and dime you, even after you've given them money.
It's essentially a panhandler asking you for more money, even after you've given him 20$.
However, I do like cosmetic microtransactions in f2p games, since it allows me to essentially play a free game, with usually free content updates that come out because some dickhead bought a hat, gun skin, or underwear from the devs.

If f2p with optional cosmetics is done correctly, I am happy. If it is done poorly (see EVOLVE), I am unhappy.

tl;dr
depends
no
yes

i don't care, fuck you. i just bought the game and the first thing you do is to ask me for more money by trying to sell me a bunch of stuff i would get for free in a good game

But that's asymmetrical. In a head to head confrontation with equally skilled players, the one with the armor would win, which means gear beats skill.

Why do so many people care?

The way I see it is that cosmetics are ok as long as they are priced fairly. A buck is not a fair price for a single costume. The only time I would consider it worthwhile is if it is a licensed costume like the crossover DOA costumes since things like royalties, licenses, etc, can add up.

Otherwise you should get AT LEAST 4 costumes for a dollar

Inherently no.
But cosmetics interfere with glance value. The amount of times I've been hit by mirana arrows because it's not the regular skin is uncanny. One of the vengeful spirit's weapons looks like phantom assassin's weapon. And then cosmetics were one of the biggest factors that killed TF2 for me.

Cosmetics are content and it is locked even through I paid for the game 60$.
So why people buy them? They aren't buffs but they affect game.
Game is better when it awards me some costume for achievement and I want to dress my characters in a way I want.

I guess they are fine in f2p as I don't want to make a game that cannot profit or is p2w.

Just go full EVE-online with it.
But:
I am not trusting any MMO that doesn't have subscriptions.

I want to look fancy because the time I wasted on minecraft ingrained the sense of style into my mind.

I get that that was your point. Power in an MMO is fairly static since it comes from the stats items give you and considering how rare they are and how much time people have to put in raids, devs never take items away from players (usually)

A much better aproach is to abolish the Epic Legendary items and just have regular shit and improved shit. You can have guns\weapons breaking or being stolen with no problem since replacing them doesn't mean grinding\farming for 2 months that way.

However you gotta think about the implications of the model you implement, namely how the value of the currency changes. A proper module should keep in mind the amount of players and how much money you want per-capita so prices have a meaning based on them (if it's 100 gold per capita and a sword costs 50, that's half the average players' fortune).
I seriously recommend studing systems so you can figure out a mathematical way to make the amount of money converge to a specific value based in amount of players with the use of goldsinks.

Another thing to consider is that having the entire progression tied to items sucks and is lazy. It rewards lone wolfing, not making a community. What you need is a way to make industry that requires several players working together, the more the better. A single player can make copper swords, 2-3 can make Iron Swords, 4-5 can make Steel ones and so on.
Usually by making some building and recruiting workers so theres an incentive to sedentarism and it doesn't require the players themselves to do the boring parts. If the work load increases but so do the players, they see the same amount of work for a bigger benefit just for having people nearby.

After that, you just need a dynamic difficulty for the world. Invasions that storm whatever settlement players make base on amount of players and accumulated wealth, for instance. Having PvE doing this part means it can auto-balance in a fair way very easily and keep players busy so they aren't forced to PvP in order to have fun, harassing smaller groups.

This is exactly the shit every single f2p game markets to make you still try it and end up cannon fodder for more experienced players who also pay for extras.

If players are equally skilled the buying player has the advantage.

And worst of all:
People who buy gear in these games tend to play a lot more of the game, to justify their purchase and have more fun.
By playing more they get better.

The end result is some elites with bought gear farming free to play players.

What you suggest is the default model for pay2win games. And it sucks dicks.

If skill is the factor that needs to be equalized for the armor guy to win, then skill > gear. If the gear were equalized, the more skilled player would stomp his ass even harder, so again, skill > gear. This isn't a difficult concept.

You're not only arguing in circles, but you clearly don't know the first thing about competitive game balance. Instead of running your mouth about shit you don't understand, and using the ridiculous non-arguments that P2W faggots make to justify them blowing their shekels for an in-game advantage, why don't you put on your big boy pants and study some fucking proper game design?

If skill > gear, then gear is irrelevant. If I buy a shiny piece of armor for 10$ and that doesn't give me any better odds than a free counterpart in game, I might as well get the free one and use skill alone to win fights against those that payed.

What's more, if I'm skilled enough to beat people with better gear, I can beat them, take the gear and use it without having payed a single cent. It's incentivizing people to never buy anything as it's a waste of time and money.

You assume paying players are worse players than f2p players.
Which is absolutely wrong. Usually paying players are those more invested into the game and thus play more and perform better.

Then you put paid advantages on top of that and you see them top all ladderboards.

Okay.

Let's say skill alone will let you be a maximum of 100% effective at playing the game.
Now the f2p gear will let you be 20% MORE effective at playing the game.
A very skilled player will be 120% more effective with f2p gear.
But the $10 shotgun or armor or whatever the fuck will let you be 60% more effective at playing the game. 160% in total for a very skilled player.

So in every scenario, the f2p player will lose, unless there is a skill difference of 40% between the players.

A 60% skilled player that bought the $10 microtransaction will go even with a 100% skilled f2p player.

A 80% skilled player that bought the $10 microtransaction will ALWAYS be better than a 100% skilled f2p player, despite being an inferior player.

That's when gear > skill, and that's what microtransactions that affect game stats do.

Either your microtransaction gear does absolutely nothing to alter game stats, or you are giving buying players an unfair advantage.

An interesting example of this are browser-based MMOS like Travian or OGame.
You can see a score table for them with all the players and you can easily notice a very distinc difference about the 9th player. The first 9 have a shitload of points with some little differences between them. Beneath those, everyone else is arranged by a neat pyramid but the 10th player has at most 1/3 of the points the 9th has. And it's the only divide this big in the entire scoretable between two consecutive spots.

Those first 9 players invested money AND time and are on top of the table. Everyone else invested no money and is arranged more or less by how much time they invested as well.

Now you tell people that if 5-6 lower players group up, they can gang up on one of the top 9 and get whatever advantage that landed him on that spot, the target is less likely to buy those advantages as it makes him a target.

The setting isn't generic fantasy, it's a semi-modern world with comic book SCIENCE! but no capeshit. The players are mercenaries exploring and colonizing a dangerous continent for the more civilized parts of the world. I don't know how fun it would be for players if they had to spend a lot of time making and maintaining items, but I'll look into it.

The only Epic/Legendary items would be alien artifacts that could be reverse engineered and then mass produced like in X-Com.

Character progression has an unlock tree with only a minor impact on gameplay (things like reduced recovery time, faster reloading, etc.) because I still want player skill to be the most significant factor in combat.

The continent you're on is basically pulp adventure land. Monsters, prehistoric beasts, lost tribes of magic using cannibals, etc., and they all want to kill the shit out of you. I was wondering about dynamic migrations of huge monsters or native raids to keep things unpredictable.

I wasn't trying to justify spending cash at this point, just trying to show what I meant by skill versus gear. As it is, I'm dropping the cash angle entirely, so chill.

And if your microtransation gear does nothing, there's no reason to buy it. It doesn't sell and you make no money with it, making the entire system redundant.

No
Yes
Yes

Skins are the best example of dlc outside story DLC (like GTA4's). They do nothing other than make you feel pretty, they accomplish nothing outside of stroking your e-peen, and they generally cost a low enough amount that people aren't smart enough to realize they've spent way too much money on them until its too late.
See also: Hat Fortress 2.

As long as your skins don't make any changes to the game, there's nothing to really bitch about.

almost anything besides cosmetics is heading into p2w in my books. i'm fine with cash shop exclusive cosmetics (i buy them ocassionally too).
i fully expect actiblizz to make overwatch p2w at some point though, and i also expect players to lap it up and try to defend it.

but what if you want to look cool. i'd use tf2 hats as an example but some of them do alter stats.

But you cannot ignore the fact that top players are never solo players, but always in guilds or groups. Large ones at that.
Especially in browser based slow "strategy" games.

Releasing on launch any bonus content you have to buy, when you have already paid with money for the game, is anti-consumer and I don't care how cosmetic it is or not.

Milking your game with tons of DLCs like Europa Universalis does where each DLC adds a small mechanic is disgusting. Release only "expansions" with tons of new things or don't release anything at all.

Yes
No
Maybe

I don't know; can you repeat the question?

No. They're just cosmetic.

So long as they base skins are okay, then yes.

Sure, it's okay. It's just cosmetic.

Depends on how its done. The lootcrate system like in Overwatch is fucking retarded and is anti-consumer no matter how you look at it. Where if you want something specific, you dont even have the option to actually buy it but you must gamble it.

Absolutely not. We already payed money for the damn game. This is nothing but nickle and dimming your audience.

However in this case, yes. There's nothing wrong selling cosmetics in a free to play game as in this model, the cosmetics more of a luxury whereas in retail is conning you.

That is such a sorry ass excuse. For one, it does affect your enjoyment of the game itself and 2nd, its about principle. Remember when EA tried to sell fucking bullets and ingame "resources" in a few of their games? This is about as shitty as that when you try to sell cosmetics in a already retailed game.

Okay, so how about this?

Hats in TF2 don't alter stats anymore. They were changed precisely because of this and their stats were passed on to weapons that are free to adquire.

Looking cool is an entirely different aspect. That's cosmetic changes and up to you. But if the game keeps shoving cosmetic shit to buy and showing you tons of players that bought tons of crap, than it's a shit game.

And they work together because they invested money in it. They have every interest in defending their investment. However if they can work together, so can the free players, with the difference being that paying players organizing a group of 5 players are just as effective as a group of 15 regular players.

The lootcrate in Overwatch lets you pick between spending money or time to get the same thing: loot crates. It gives the option to the player on what to invest according to what he as in surplus. It's the most consumer-friendly method possible for micro-transactions, as you can skip grinding or skip buying.

Kill yourself, faggot

...

Low monthly is an interesting idea. You gotta consider why a player would think the game is worth that price but if it's clearly to support the server and the game's actually good they don't mind. Especially since it keeps BR's out.

I'm assuming the idea here is to give you the option of playing with different builds without having to make different accounts.
You do run the risk of players using a slot as a mule to hold onto precious stuff, as well as the complete oposite following your idea that players can be killed when offline. That'd mean having to secure 5 characters in a single account or even more. You gotta think about that.

The sharecode seems like a really nice idea, but you're gonna have the problem with a single player botting his ways with 5 characters, claiming they are "buddies" and it's just a single person farming shit.
Some anti-idle mechanic or something similar could solve it, since otherwise it's a pretty great idea.

Looking at your idea, it seems the focus is on cooperation, not so much the PvP. This makes sense if the idea is exploration and colonization of the continent with PvP for competition.

I dunno how you're developing your game but having facilities that players can build together and maintain means more memorable locations and battles as well as freeing gear from the players into the world. You can remove gear from them just by dropping a meteor on a lab, for instance or in case of PvP and someone blowing their facilities.

The thing with PvP is that if it's the only serious adversity players face, it will devolve into PvP the whole time with bigger factions attacking only smaller ones for battles they know they can win.
Adding roaming monsters and PvE invasions keeps players on their toes and even helps to get them to try diplomacy.

And it doesnt help that the ingame currency is almost nonexistent as the crates are flooded with a lot of useless shit and it gets harder/longer to level up.

Even League of Legend's cosmetic/lootcrate model is miles better than overwatch and thats a free game.

Saying it's allowable doesn't mean the same as saying it's okay. It's not as black and white as that.

Reddit, please.

Stop. Don't use that word, it's incorrect. You pay, you get shit. Gambling would be opening the box and MAYBE it has something but most likely it doesn't.
Also, complain about the fags that demanded a progression system in the game for some reason.
There's a cap at a certain level (I forgot which) after which it's always the same XP. And repeats do give you currency based on rarity so sprays and the like are usefull in long term.

No it's not and you clearly play neither of the games to actually spout this. LoL has their cancerous rune system that gives you ingame advantages for buying runes. The resource you spend to buy runes is the same resource you spend to buy heroes. And the time it takes to buy a new hero is the same it takes to fill a book with runes for him which is also the time it takes for another hero to be released. You either keep buying the new heroes with no runes pages for them (and re-using doesn't work when all need specific pages) or you can't buy them fast enough.

What's more, Overwatch gives you all heroes with the base game, the only thing that matters for the gameplay. LoL has heroes locked and gameplay advantages you have to grind for and Skins are Buy only, you can't even grind for them unlike in Overwatch.

Allowable is a synonym for acceptable, you faggot. You find jews wringing you out acceptable.

Players getting killed when offline wasn't my idea, actually. That was a different user. The character slots are mostly just for the share codes, so maybe I should just make it so you get one slot and four codes you can give to anyone else. No initial purchase for this method, so your buddies can just get the game straight off the site and CTRL+V to get started.

Keeping botters away is a tough issue, to be sure. Checking IPs (and keeping a proxy blacklist) would probably avoid most of the issue.

The world is heavily skewed to PVE, but many of the missions you can take are counter-op: two opposing factions fight a proxy battle with player-controlled mercs for something they both want. PVP action would probably mainly happen during these missions, but would always be possible, and there'd be friendly fire too, so you need to learn some trigger discipline. Diplomacy would always be an option.

Base building was going to be pretty basic: placing prefabs with some personalization. You could build a base anywhere with stable ground, though.

He's your reply.

That doesn't mean that all the definitions for okay and allowed are exactly identical. And then there's the matter of context.

No, like I said it's not as black and white as that. If someone were to offer a fancy looking costume in a game for a buck maximum I think it's okay especially if they're not charging a subscription fee. A buck and sixty bucks aren't the same amount.

...

Refer to

Betting something of a value on the possibility of recieving something of lesser or greater value is still gambling fuckwit.

>I SAID HERE'S MY OPINION
Fine, be a noisy faggot if you want. No skin off my teeth.

Oh no!

I have never paid for cosmetic DLC or activated any that come with games I have brought in my entire life.

God it must be painful for you. Being that thick, retarded and stubborn to not accept that personally not approving of something means it has to be banned, and that the extremes of something are the only contributing factors to its discussion, that money or items don't have a uniform value from person to person, as well throwing out your opinion then acting like a child when someone has a different opinion.

I'm embarrassed for you, user. This comment is Your Parents Simulator, I'm convinced.

That's nice user.

The only example I can recall of players being killed when Offline was HellMOO.
But in that game, most items can be easily achieved with minimal grind if you have the skills for them. And your character fights with some rudimentary AI when attacked and you buy nice houses with security on them to protect your shit.

Remenber that this means people sharing the same modem can't play together wish can scuk for them. Happens often to me, that's why I'm mentioning it. It should not be the first or the last metric.

This means server events you make or a system that generates them at some regular interval.
This is actually quite neat. I don't think there has been many games that tried something like this but it has a lot of potential. However, you gotta remenber to balance things and avoid snowballing. If one side gets the mission, he should be rewarded but the other side now has an harder time fighting the next mission.
Having multiple factions helps to solve this and varying the place where the event is happening, placing it closer to factions that are doing worse helps as well.

If you're using Unity, I wish you luck. It's not particularly good for generated worlds or ones that you change in runtime, especially with lighting. But it can work as long as both the coders and the artists know what they are doing.

In any case, a base doesn't need to be very complicated. It's just a place to stockpile resources and having some furniture that produces gear. The interest of bases is to, for instance, make dozens of shotguns. If you die and respawn there, you can grab a new one and run back into the action., if you plan to make people lose their gear.

Fine, I'll just filter you if you're that insistent in creating a hugbox so no one can challenge you by refusing to partake in conversations you start. You'll be safe from horrible things like other opinions then!

People like you need to leave, reddit is more your speed.

Neat self-awareness.

What kind of weak-willed faggot do you have to be to have such little conviction in your opinions?
At least the other guy has a belief and is willing to act on it, but you're just a moderate "hurr everyone is dumb but me" faggot. Hang yourself.

Grow up.

And he's not acting on his idea he's just screaming I CAN'T HEAR YOU and trying to build an echo chamber, or at least sound proof one, around him.

Listen dipshits, back in the day you bought a games, you got all of it.
Every extra costume and color and shit were unlockables for the dedicated player as a thank you for playing the game.
Knowing that this shit has degraded so fucking far, that young ones are unable to understand something so fucking simple is truly saddening.

Good point about sharing a modem. My brother and I do this all the time for PSO, but it didn't occur to me for some reason.

There are already a shitload of factions in the design doc, but they're just names at the moment. You (or your group) have a different set of reputation stats for each faction so they are more likely to offer you job types you succeed at. I figured that physical item presence (and splitting the reward) would discourage blobbing during a mission; bring everyone with you and your base is ripe for the taking (and an enemy taking the base flag prevents your guys from respawning there)

My brother wants to do it in Unity; I want to work with Godot (they're planning a massive rendering update before the end of the year) and frankenstein a few features in from other open source engines.

You've done absolutely nothing to convince me that cosmetic DLC isn't another symptom of gaming's downhill trend. Excusing it as 'b-b-but this skin is only a dollar', evaluating it in a vacuum, is pointless because games don't just sell one skin. That kind of shit is why we end up with games that have a hundred dollars of DLC.

If they want more money, make some fucking content/expansions.

Back in the day, how much did games cost to make? How much did a company need to sell in order to make a "good profit"?
Compare to today, where games cost how many millions of dollars? Where a "profitable" game requires 7+ million sales at full price?
And when the alternative is A.) We don't get the games anymore or B.) we get the game with half the content cut out and sold back to us as DLC.
DLC costumes is fine. Its a little bit of money for a different appearance. And as long as DLC cosmetics are post-launch (or minimal at-launch) and are there to draw people back to the game, rather than offer the only option, there really isn't much reason to complain. Sure, I'd prefer my costumes to be purely unlockable, but I'd also prefer my penis to actually work and we can't all get what we want. There should still be free unlockables, in any case. Going the new Tales of route of all costumes being paid-for DLC is garbage, when all the past games had all their costumes unlockable.

An enormous percentage of AAA development budgets goes into excessive marketing, licensing, voices, asshole higher-ups throwing away everything your team made and telling you to start over, etc., with the majority of profits going to stockholders. Privately made "double A" games don't need to sell nearly as well to fund further projects.

Yes, this is correct. The budget is still massive, the games still require a large amount of return in order to be something the company is happy with.
And what's the DLC situation for those games?

There's nothing wrong with it, especially if it's unlockable in-game.
Even if it isn't, it doesn't effect gameplay so I don't see the issue. If some idiots are willing to pay for glittery guns, then by all means, give your idling art team something to do towards the end of development

This is mostly untrue. While there are a few franchises that have spent more on marketing than development most marketing budgets are smaller than development budgets, or roughly the same. While the prices are enormous, it is not an enormous percentage of the overall budget.

So don't be an idiot and don't buy.
You're NOT entitled to get everything you want.
The developers DON'T have to give you things for free. Just cause you like that armor, it should have been in game or free? Fuck you.
How the hell do you think you are to decide that?

Just because you don't like something, that doesn't mean it's anti-consumer.
Just because it's stupid, that doesn't mean it's anti-consumer.

Are 500$ perfume bottles anti-consumer?

To be fair most of game's cost could be avoided by proper planning and optimization. It costs a lot because they have a lot of money and just throw it out of the window.
The thing is that it also serves the marketing since people (mostly americans) think that the more money you throw at a thing, the better it gets.

Fucking summerfags.

Without a doubt. Team bloat is a major problem with vidya development.

...

If you never played a game where you got all the things like "cosmetics" because of the virtue of buying the game, it doesn't seem so bad.

But there was a time "skins" or things like that were rewards for doing difficult task in games (like finding something, beating something, etc). They were more badges for accomplishments. Or more often easter eggs or zany things. Sometimes even just cool (like playing as the enemy boss or something).

They also quite often had gameplay mechanics attached to them. In the spiderman game on the PS1, if you played as venom suit spiderman, he had infinite web.

So as far as "is cosmetics anti-consumer?" compared to video games up until the mid-2000's, yes they are.

But the thing is, ever since games were expected to exist in an online world, developers (from indie to AAA) have been trying to find ways to get more money from the consumer. And in doing so, they have been experimenting for a long time on what is acceptable to cut from games and charge more money for, and what isn't.

The absolute worst end of the spectrum is when games are essentially unplayable unless you pay more money. This is the nature of most eastern FTP games. You are basically gimped in every way until you hand over some cash.

I think developers are finding that players in the west are quite averse to games in which performance is related to micro-transactions in any explicit way. And depending on the form, will allow tangential gameplay relation (such as buying new characters).

Thus we are settling to a point where dev's recognize, so long as the gameplay is left intact, cosmetics seem to be fair game for most people. Which is why this is what you are seeing. The game is either paid for upfront or free, and then you get hammered with cosmetic options. It's stupid that we lost something which used to be a great part of video games. But all in all, it could have ended in a far worse spot.

Did I pay for the game?
If no, then it is acceptable.

If yes, then…
Does it alter gameplay with any boosts?
If yes, then it's unacceptable to a small degree.

If no, then…
Is it provided with additional content such as new levels, moves or characters?
If no, then it's very unacceptable.

If yes, then…
Is the content available day 1?
If no, then it's just regular DLC.
If yes, then it's locked content and it's Jewery of the highest standard.

It may not affect the gameplay, but it doesn't stop it from it being overpriced sleezy bullshit for something that could've been for good-will and used to incentivize actual sales, instead of nickle-and-dimming the few paying customers.

Overwatch do it because rather than making DLC content or expansion packs they sell loot boxes you can grind or pay for and all new heroes, maps and gamemodes are 100% free. I this that is a better game payment model myself

Yes
No
Kind of, if it's the only thing you can buy with real money then yes.

you know: when in the overwatch cinematic
you see in the that in the rally of robot lover there is only

who doesn t need patriarchy in the crowd but only her sex toy, i mean robot

well …

yea i know, back to Holla Forums

Can I get these cosmetics by playing the game? If yes then they're fine. If I can't then no it's not.

First you need to find the right thread.

Then fuck off to Holla Forums before even posting here.

as long as there are faggots buying this crap its acceptable
but its not really anti-consumer to me
it's the games themselves being anti-consumer

Cosmetics add nothing to the game. If you want to run around looking like "muh speciul snuflake" you can do so, but it will cost you.
Is it acceptable in retail games? No. I paid 100% of the price, and I expect 100% of the game. If you want to add a cosmetics system I want to have that too. Now go and fuck off.
Is it acceptable in free to play games?
Yes. I paid no money what so ever to play 50% of the game, and if I want to look like a massive faggot I should have to pay some money for access to the other 50%.

Please stay on Holla Forums.

What the fuck? So overwatch isnt a F2P game but they are also doing microtransaction bullshit? Fucking hell blizzard, I thought you hit rock bottom a while ago.

Depends.
No, never.
Yes it is. It's the only source of income and it doesn't affect the game as much as other methods.

When you buy a game, even if it's cheap, I expect to get everything like we used to have.
Now it's all filled with shitty microtransactions and DLCs.
Before a DLC would be a fucking expansion, not cut out content.

Overwatch is a prime example of cancer which normalfags and reddit faggots are okay with.

Cosmetic only is better than DLC whoring and putting content behind paywalls if they actually support the game post release for a long time. I would have taken that over what those swedecucks did with Payday2 even before the whole micro transaction scandal.

Just because it's a lesser evil doesn't make them good or a saint.
Just because the cancer is just taking a few fingers of you instead of your arm doesn't mean the cancer is good.

Just because there are people like you who says "Hey at least I'm not getting fucked AS hard this is okay" we have this kind of bullshit. This is unacceptable, yet you made it acceptable with the silly excuse of "the lesser evil".

So when a game comes out, if it has cancer on it, even if it's small cancer, don't support it and they will fucking learn.

This is how they always push their bullshit and why retards fall for it. It always starts small and its always "just X" or "just Y". Fucking infuriating

In some games its acceptable, in some games it is not (for example single player games where they fucked up modding to add their shitty cosmetics, as well as some special MMOs where there is a need to be able to wear certain clothes, be it for faction identification purposes or something else, but there are few of those).

However while its generally acceptable, it gives incentives to stop modding, which is stupid, and it is also hard to keep making good cosmetics that fit within the game.

As long as it doesn't get as jewish as TF2 or CSGO, they're fine.

cancer is shitty analogy in here, because post original main production content would not be made at all without DLC, better would be having a crappy arm, or no arm at all

YES
NO
YES
I would be a bit angry if they add cosmetic.

no
no
yes
pay-to-cosmetics are fine
however they should not be acceptable if you pay for the game, regardless if they are acceptable otherwise
and they are acceptable otherwise

And this is why I didn't buy Overwatch. That and it felt like I experienced most of what the game had to offer during the open beta and didn't live up to it's pricetag (especially considering the microtransaction cancer), but us don't buying cancer doesn't mean shit considering that the normalfag masses do. Overwatch is the most played game currently in the Holla Forums discord rooms I m in and there is always some fag playing it
The microtransaction and dlc pandora's boxes are open now and there is no going back, I m just waiting on the same thing happening with mods.

Depends on the price of the game.
Yeah
FUCK NO

The only time paid anything is acceptable is if the game is f2p or maybe if the game is on purpose being sold rather cheap with all the core gameplay in it but the cosmetics need to be paid for.
Here is a great example why paid costumes in games is bullshit:
Tales of Symphonia and Tales of Xillia.
Tales of Symphonia came out before this dlc shit was acceptable and thus had all the alt. costumes designed for it in the base game.
Tales of Xillia on the other hand came out after this dlc shit became acceptable and thus has ONLY 5 skins. All of the other skins had to be paid for even tho it was a full priced game.
Now tell me, what is preferable? All the skins to be released with the game or to be sold separately because retarded weeb fags will buy it no matter what?

If Tales of Symphonia was priced at 60$ while Tales of Xilia was priced at 20$ and all the DLC collected priced at 40$, then it's basically the same but people get the option of not buying cosmetics.
But if Tales of Xilia came at 60$ as well as with DLC, than the full price for the game is 60$ plus whatever the DLC costed and this is most likely way too fucking much for a single game.

Depends

No

Yes

Cheer up Mr. Arrogance, you still have your waifu….

Technically, things are only worth as much as someone's willing to pay for them. That's how economy works.

But if people think a game "missing" cosmetics is still worth 60$, I don't see why they shouldn't buy it.

I mean, the free market will sort this shit out.
When people see what they're paying for, they'll eventually stop, right?
We're not completely doomed, right?

You say it like it's a bad thing, user

Games also cost half as much now. I thought you were an oldfag?

Do people torrent dlc skins?

Years of indoctrination and induced stupidity to get blind or indecisive consumers that cant make up their mind about whats right or wrong.
Resulting into a easily manipulatable group of people to get exploited, that are always accepting or open to new ways of business until its too late to control or prevent the damage.
Good luck, if they ever manage to see how worthy something is at all.

If we ever manage to reverse 8+ years of this bullshit and it will be very hard, moderates in this thread are a example of how hard it will be to unfuck this industry shit up, since thats the mainstream way of thinking nowadays reflecting on the type of consumer base that feeds the industry. Not counting how creative those fuckers are at inducing people into eating shit.
lol yes, were fucked

The root of the problem is developers spending way too much money on pretty graphics and marketing among other things. Not only does this encourage the shitty business practices like "pay to win", but it also makes it much more dangerous to take risks, to try to make something unique.

Games can't focus on being just one genre anymore. For example, you can't just make a stealth game and devote most of your resources to making it a good stealth game, you have to put some action in it, you have to hammer in some RPG elements, you have to provide a method for less skilled players to cheese their way through the game. Not appealing to the lowest common denominator is a death sentence in the AAA games industry, which is why only the lower budget titles will have any kind of niche appeal.

it is fine in f2p and is jewy in paid games, but nowhere near as bad as p2w models

...

It's acceptable in free-to-play as that's a form of income it gets. You can't expect to fund a game off thin air. So i'll accept it to a point, but when you're paying more than the price of a game it gets fucking atrocious.
For example league of legend skins which costs $1,339 for all of them.

But if you're already charging a price to play your game in the first place, then you're getting greedy and deserve scorn.
Whilst Overwatch does this, and Blizzard will always be scum for doing it, the rate at which you get cosmetics is pretty constant, so it never feels like you're forced into buying a crate for what you want, which I can appreciate.
So in that case it feels more like a time saver for the lazy rich casual that shouldn't really be playing video games in the first place. Totalbiscuit

Also if there's ever a sequel with both games having purchasable cosmetics, cosmetics you've bought/earned in the original should transfer to the new game.

So my opinion is, it's acceptable, but with caveats.

Not taking into account all this shit used to be free unlockable content for just beating the game or beating it with certain challenges

Depends on the game. If the cosmetics don't effect game play then in theory there is no inherent problem. I mean I don't like it if there are pay only cosmetics or if it takes forever to get them without paying, but it's not a huge deal breaker since the game play is unaffected. I'm not really missing anything if I don't buy them and I won't.

I feel like it's kind of anti-comsumer in a lot of cases, but it doesn't have to be. If everything is available for free and just takes a time investment being able to pay to skip that time investment is fine. When it's just "you have to pay extra to have this content at all" it does feel like it's just trying to squeeze a few extra dollars out of the consumer with relatively cheap to create DLC.

I really disagree with anyone who just says yes or no to any of those questions as I think the issue is much too complicated for such simple answers.

He's angry because he's a fuckboy that gets mad when he sees other people with cosmetics he'll never have.

'Moderates' are still good goys who enable this bullshit.
It wasn't the people spending $3000 on Xbox Gold that caused P2Online to stay, it was every single fucking "moderate" being a retard.

In a single player game?

how about we keep overshit in the containment thread

whoops, forgot my sage

YES FOR FUCKS SAKE
It is not FOR the consumer if the consumer has to lose money in order to get add-ons for their product. Why is this even argued? Especially on Holla Forums?

NO
I want ownership of my games and if $60 dollars isn't enough for the full experience then actually price it right. There are thousands of games being made that have all the content in their base game and can manage to respect me as a consumer so no I will use my money there and not give it to people who will continue to nickel and dime me.

NO
I would say the free to play model is not a good model for consumers In general. It's paying for a product and throwing money at content you will never own. I would still say buying small cosmetic things in the game is unacceptable.

It's the small details that take a game from good to great.

Lost Planet 2 wouldn't be the same game if all the costumes and emotes were behind micro transactions.

CVS2 or MVC2 wouldn't be the games they were if characters were cut out for micro transactions. Sure they cut corners sprite-wise but the end result was an amazing game with tons of content.

look at Shenmue for a game with small pointless cosmetic things that make it an amazing game with labor of love put into it.

What if Yakuza put all their minigames behind micro transactions since they're pointless?

What if Silent Hill 2 locked the dog ending or SH3 locked the costume behind pre-orders or microtransactions?

look at evolve and their "just cosmetic" weapon and monster skins. Everybody complained and refused to buy it.

look at Smash 4. even though it has a ton of content from the get go the base game is still is a rip off with the excuses of adding dark pit when they were going to add ryu, cloud, and bayonetta later on.

look at SFV and how they held off characters with the promise of bringing them later on down the line (now having a delayed character. I can't wait to see what happens with Urien and Juri). look at how their is no arcade mode and the excuse is "you don't need it, be greatful you have survival! All that counts is Online." It only gets worse down the line.

Well maybe companies shouldn't have sold their souls to suits, marketing, and stupid fucking casuals so that they would have to break the bank every fucking time in order to make a damn game and come out with a profit.

This is the Industry they created that they make a product with less content than products that came before it and I'm not buying. They reap what they sow.
I can't believe this mentality is okay.

Do you realize you just shilled for every video game company for free? you should put this on your resume. You could make it for every PR position in any video game company you come across with this material.
As the consumer who buys the fucking game and gives their money for a living. It's my entertainment and I get to have an opinion on it. If they want to be greedy fucks I am entitled to call them out on it and not buy it. Would you rather have all companies decide for us how to think?
If I was a perfume enthusiast and it was one of the greatest perfume bottles, yes; If it wasn't then it would be anti consumer. Your comparison is as stupid as the rest of your post.
Your analogy would also imply were getting some of the greatest games ever made and that's why they are priced so high. That is not the case.

mostly
absolutely not
depends on what kind of game it is, if a big appeal of the game is the ability to make your character fashionable like PSO2 then it is not acceptable, but if its something like a first person game where you don't even see your dude like TF2 it is acceptable UNTIL the cosmetics break the art style (like TF2)

Dota 2 is the only example of a F2P game with cosmetics that doesn't have any of the above problems, but its an ASSFAGGOTS so who cares

And I'm bumping this thread because there were too may goy-happy niggers in this thread throwing their hands up in the air going LOL I DOESN'T MATTER for someone not to reply to my post with a decent reason I should think otherwise.

I mean, if you really give a shit about skins and shit sure. But if you play for the game play and not because it looks pretty, like how games are meant to be played. Then it does not matter.

I feel like the only reason people complain about games with skins is because they don't have anything else to say to put down a game.

fuck off, why do people paint pictures and appreciate them if there isn't value in the visuals of something?

Yes games are about the gameplay by definition, but what you're saying is pretty much that there is no reason for a game to have great music and if it did it wouldn't matter.

It's fine in F2P games, not in retail games people pay actual money for.

Thats honestly the one thing that really makes me not want to get Overwatch. Aside from the cost, the cosmetics don't really serve too much of a purpose. And I think Blizzard knows this, they give out a crate every level up but those eventually slow. I'd actually like to see if people start resetting their accounts later just to essentially re roll their skin drops for the first few levels. Even worse is the fact the sprays, voice lines, victory poses, and highlight intros are just padding. Preventing people from getting the skin they want if they really want to go down that rabbit hole.
I think Overwatch's characters normally offer up at least some good designs with some being more pleasant than others. And honestly a vast majority of the skins are either recolors or full redesigns which sometimes look very out of place. IE pic related as examples. Special mention goes to Zarya's Industrial skin for making her look fucking unfathomably ugly though.
I really can't really think of why they did this besides money. It could use some modifications if it wanted to be for the soley for the players, and in its current state it really is a large negative for the game considering this is more of a speed bump in the core game loop.

forgot pics

I'm saying optional skin's, and graphics don't matter. Sure it looks pretty, and sure the music may sound amazing. But a game is good based on the game play. If you say a game has ass game play but a good OST. That means the soundtrack is good, not the game.

it doesn't take more time to level up. all levels are the same amount of xp. not taking a side here, just saying.

yes
no
free to play games aren't acceptable period

And extremists, both on each side, are the ones that force this bullshit to exist.
Both the idiots that defend extreme DLC practices and buy into it, proving there's money to be made, but also the people that opose DLC in any form so much that they don't support entire companies because of that.
All you end up doing is forcing them to come up with something even scummier to make money.

Overwatch is currently receiving a lot of flak for being made by Blizzard, but when you compare the business model they went for cosmetics with pretty much any other alternative in the market, it's quite possibly the most consumer friendly practice we are gonna get.

Moderates will buy into it and not the rest of the usual crap to show that "less scummy" makes them money. Retards that buy anything will keep being retards and their opinion barely counts, but extremists that refuse to even buy the damn game just because it's not all given with retail are just saying "we don't care, you're still not getting our money" and this practice, despite being better than the TF2 or LoL model, will be seen by the market as equally atractive to customers.

Moderates are the solution, extremists only ever make things worse because they don't care about anyone's point of view but their own or just how their actions truly affect their environment.

what are you talking about?

"Moderates" have been buying into pre-orders, early access, internet subscription, DLC ridden, micro-transaction practices from the get go and it's why this industry is shit and why OP is having a conversation like this in the first place.

they're just casuals who buy into hype an marketing like the biggest whales and contribute to

Why are you only looking at AAA games and cancerous free to play games as the only metric for a consumer friendly practice. look at games in the past and look at DRM free games today that show you you're wrong and can have a better, consumer friendly options when buying products.

contribute to it too

keyword here being "past". If we're gonna compare shit that has no business being compared, I'll refer you to artificial longevity to make the game seem worth it's price or how terrible the graphics were compared to today. Which isn't a fair comparison but if we're comparing to the past, let's go all the way.

You mean indie shit or smaller projects than what you get in the AAA industry? Of course those are cheaper, they are smaller and have less content\polish\support.
But better yet, there's not as many people willing to pay the same price for them, which is why they have to be cheaper.

Moderates don't buy into any of that crap, they buy games they actually like and from companies they want to support. You're mixing casuals with moderates when casuals have nothing moderate about them.

Look at the Witcher 3 that's DRM free or Falcom that ported their games to PC DRM free. If all indie games are shit why are there factorio threads or terraria threads or Stardew Valley threads on here. You're only looking at AAA games as the only option and that is a detriment to having a better industry that treats it's consumers better.
With most AAA games today always come out with a patch because they have bugs in them and they always come out kinda barebones because they want you to buy DLC.

So since moderates aren't casuals they're this perfect sub group that kinda buys DLC, sometimes does pre-orders, occasionally does early access, only buys AAA because those are the only good kind of games and not because they eat up hype bullshit, but does a safe amount that doesn't fuck up the industry? It still sounds like the enabling apathetic bullshit that casuals have been doing that has been shitting up this industry for years.
You need to elaborate about how your moderate group isn't just idealistic bullshit to justify your need to buying cosmetic shit because 'everybody else does it".

Yes, no, and no.

He's talking cosmetics, not shit like Clash of Clans, or angry birds.