The reason this keeps being done is because it creates a treadmill effect, where people who are bored or over-invested in the game get to keep feeling like they’re accomplishing something even if it’s at the expense of preexisting content getting reworked / replaced and preexisting achievements (such as best-in-slot gear for a build) being invalidated.
Replayability and shared experiences, things we can experience once and continue to appreciate afterwards as a community, are being sacrificed to spread smaller amounts of content (if not the same content, with some changes) across a longer period of continuous engagement, so players keep clicking longer for less development effort.
We’ve been pointing this out for at least a decade and the unfortunate thing is, there’s minimal signs of it slowing down. I shudder to think of what’s going to happen to our culture if we have another generation of kids grow up without a high quality full priced game (or really anything else, like a movie or a sport) in their lives they enjoy broadly enough to come together and form cross-cultural-boundary friendships about. A handful of games may have saved the millennials from that outcome, but it’s starting to look like society is going to fail to provide that to the people that came after them. I spend a lot of time thinking about and wishing I could fix that.
Sadly, I think the major issue is “greed”. When you have games like Fortnite Battle Royale, which is a F2P PUBG Clone made to help fund their B2P product, “Fortnite: Save The World” (which was waaaay more fun than the Battle Royale version imo) that rake in money from whales like no tomorrow you end up with companies trying to chase that dragon because it’s far more profitable to pump out 15 cheap games and hoping one hits the jackpot than it is to handcraft a fantastic game in the same time frame and hope it does decently well. This is how we end up with Dauntless, Exoprimal, and Torchlight 3 which flop when they could have been amazing instead of more Grim Dawns, early Halo, or early Assassin’s Creed
Why try when you can make bank off whales who don’t care for anything but good cosmetics and a semi-decent gameplay loop?
Edit: and I suppose it’s also why we have Indie devs with passion projects that blow AAA Cash Grabs out of the water. I also want to clarify that I don’t think LE is a cash grab as EHG has spent a ton of time and effort to try and improve the game after what many would consider a flopped launch (mainly I feel it came out of EA too early).
The only window that gets adverts is the shop which i think is reasonable & I can’t remember adverts on starting the game outside of the sales & I don’t think they’re too egregious.
And the most successful arpg of all time (at that point) & it’s not like they were delivering content for it.
I spoke in general terms there, which comes off a bit odd I realize in hindsight since I used not a season pass as an example but the kirac’s pass from PoE.
As for the shop being presented… it always depends on ‘how’. There’s a clear variance presented in the gaming sector.
We have utterly atrocious ones like Fallout 76 where you open the game and click away 2 windows before even reaching the main menu solely telling you about stuff to buy.
And on the other side we have PoE which solely puts a reminder about a sale regularly on your screen, in simple text, non-intrusive as it’s in the same space as reminders about server shutdowns and similar. ‘Oh hey, you know, that stuff is a bit cheaper, have a look! Fine if not.’ and it’s gone again.
And a server system already in place before it even came out, albeit minimally set up. Without having massive amounts of money. Blizzard back then was starting to become large but wasn’t yet a monolith. It was a loved company. Inside it was a bit of a mess - and still is, but different - but nonetheless a loved company at the exterior.
I actually have zero issues with the Kirac Pass. It gives a bunch of useful in-game stuff for everyone, it only gives MTX if you buy it. I definitely don’t feel like I’m missing out on it and have never felt the urge to buy it.
Seasonal challenges, on the other hand, do trigger my gamer OCD and make me feel like I have to grind to get them (and would still trigger it even if they gave me nothing). Which wouldn’t be so bad if some weren’t simply ridiculous no-lifer ones.
There will always be games like BG3 or Elden Ring.
But I do understand what you mean. After all, for quite some years now, the easiest way to generate profit is to spit out a few mobile P2W clones. They’re easy to make, they’re all identical, and some get popular enough to make up for the ones that fail.
But I sincerely believe that we’ll always still get good games like those.
I don’t even think that is the issue in many games. For example, I don’t think GGG evolved their model out of greed in the sense that they just want to squeeze the money out of players. I believe they just saw this as a way to increase revenue, which would allow them to increase their team and deliver more quality content.
And we do have to admit that content in PoE does tend to always be quality content, even if their decisions on what goes core and in what dilluted manner is sometimes infuriating.
So I believe that Blizzard’s major issue with D4 was greed. Not from the dev team, but the higher-ups. But I don’t believe GGG’s was pure greed.
Yes, but not only was D2 by itself a huge success with millions of copies sold (which gave them a huge money boost and would be enough to support servers for an extended period), it also didn’t have any competition (Titan Quest and Grim Dawn were still years away) and Blizzard also had other games that were very profitable at the time.
Not only did it have the ongoing phenomenon that was Starcraft, it also had successful Warcraft games before D2 that were still profitable, but especially Warcraft III that came out in between LoD and WoW and was very successful. In fact, one might argue that without the success of Warcraft III there would probably not be a WoW to begin with, even if they’re different genres.
So it’s not like they were lacking money to support things. In fact, one of the reasons why Blizzard was so beloved at the time was because they wouldn’t hesitate to delay a game release for a year or two in order to get it right. And they did that because of the success of previous games and the financial cushion they provided.
It was only after the huge success of WoW that they changed. After all, they did spend 6 years with only WoW before starting to release new games.
So we can safely say that the massive success of WoW was what changed Blizzard from a company that loved making good games to a company that loved making money.
It’s time-based and the rewards get phased out after.
I’m against any timed buy-able rewards and majorly against timed rewards in general. I understand the existence of competition related rewards which are unique but otherwise I’m against em.
As long as they’re not in-game advantages, then I never really cared about it. Which is why I never bothered with twitch drops (didn’t even have a twitch account until last year).
Then again, I do have a completionist complex with things like achievements and challenges, but I never had one for MTX or skins or whatever. The only reason I even have them in PoE and LE is because I like those games and wanted to support them.
If a game has a bunch of achievements, I will try to complete them all (within reason), but if they have a bunch of unlockable skins you can unlock by doing stuff in the game, I will likely skip them unless they’re really easy and close by. (If a game has an achievement to collect all skins, then I’m screwed ).
no fomo. no asspirational content. no zoomy content. no “race against timers” content.
its come full circle where i’ve come to dislike the direction newer games have taken that i learn to enjoy older games.
theres a lot of QoL missing from older games but on another hand, not feeling like i need to follow any guide and just do my own thing is just so liberating.
i m playing the game instead of feeling that the game is playing me
I simply play Cycles because of LE being balanced with beginners (like myself) in mind. So once a new Cycle starts and I make a new build, I can spec passive points and craft affixes how I see fit and still get to endgame with barely any need to respec.
This means that LE encourages experimentation, and often rewards it.
Compare this to PoE where if you go in completely blind and don’t at least get advice from others (if not a full build guide), you’re likely to get stuck in Act 1 or 2 and have to respec (which at least got much easier to do after the Settlers league).
Which is more then fine! The game is made exactly to allow players which can’t handle the difficulty range of PoE to play, that’s what it’s meant to be after all!
Then my counter-question there though:
How often have you killed Aberroth? Or… how realistic do you think reaching Aberroth even is for you?
It’s still definitely better in that aspect then PoE, don’t get me wrong there… but it does the job nonetheless bad with Lagon, with the jump to empowered monoliths and with the positioning of Aberroth power-wise… not to start speaking about the nonsense that Uberroth is, which is harder to beat then any PoE boss ever was comparatively.
Right now I play the D4 season. It’s so bad, stupid, uninspirered and generic the game I took a breake from looks already fresh again and I’m motivated to go back to it.
In LE I play new seasons if there is nothing else to do and I play as long as I have fun with it. Sometimes this leads to me stopping at lvl 20, 50, 80 or whatever. I just play it as long as I have a good time and I use it to play different toons to change up the pace.
Even in the EA phase I erased all my toons when you had to delete them from the regestry to get rid of them and start new. I just like to “restart” from time to time to get a fresh taste.
It’s not going to be easy. I struggle with one echo in my first mono where all the mobs are hyper fast and swarm you (though I can beat most of the others on first try).
It’s going to be a long road to Abby and some respecs would probably be needed.
LE does so much that poe doesnt.
i really love the fact that newer players can get VERY FAR without hyper optimizing.
you can get further if you follow a build. you can farm up your own gear and craft you own gear too.
to me among all modern d-likes, LE is the closest to what i deem perfection. it is not there yet but it is the closest.
that is indeed the first time i’ve seen anyone asking for that. i’ve been on many d-like forums for ages and this is the first time i’m hearing this lol.
congrats! thats something entirely new that i’ve never heard before.
but on the flipside, whats the difference between what you want vs legacy players being able to access seasonal content?
also, what you’re asking for will require the player base to be split into 3. legacy, seasonal with resets and seasonal with inheritance.
the people who play seasonal with resets would feel those who play with inheritance have an unfair advantage so they wont play it.
legacy players might not see the difference between sticking to legacy but having access to seasonal content.
the one playing with inheritance might be a smaller number. and all they’ve effectively done is split the playerbase and affected player trade economy.
There, still, is no seasonal content at the moment.
No, as has been said, many times possibly in this thread as well, they’re thinking about it & may go down the seasonal route. I’m not sure if you’re a native speaker or not, but may is different to will. It appears that a lot of people seem to have difficulty with the difference, so you’re in good company at least.
Gotcha, I tend to play SSF with only sharing currency or crafting mats in ARPGs so as long as there’s no difference between legacy and cycle, I’ll play Legacy. If I want to start fresh (because trying a build from lv 1 is more fun than just respeccing imo) I’ll just make a new character as I’ve always done lol
).