Some people actually don't care if there are cashshops

General
1

I’m not suggesting this game will have a cashshop, but I am drawing a parallel between 2 types of players.

Some people don’t like PvP in an RPG game…

Nowadays, pay to win is more popular than ever, and there’s a lot of debate about it. I’m surprised how many people defend it. At least, many will say, it doesn’t bother them… They reason that they won’t use it; the cash shop has no effect on their experience. I think it doesn’t bother them because they aren’t competitive! They don’t see the problem with other people using it, because when those people do, it doesn’t affect them.

I think a lot of players hate PvP so much, they don’t want it to exist even for other players! They want to grind though the PvE content and keep getting updates with new items to collect. Nihilists, ‘after me, the flood’ mentality. They don’t really care about a timeless game that has items worth collecting and trading with competitive endgame. Because of this, cashshop is even helpful to their cause, because cashshop takes out competitive nature of game, especially PvP.

That’s it, I bet if you polled people who are mostly impartial to microtransactions, they often have distain for PvP.

2

EHG stated multiple times already, that they will not implement any pay to progress, pay for convenience or pay to win in their MTX store.

While this is certainly a very interesting discussion in the greater scheme of things across all kinds of video games, this is also something were opinions of the community might or might not matter as much.

If the devs want to make a game without any of this and stick to their vision of a fair game, that gives everybody equal chances regardless of real money they put into it, that is something that definitely got more uncommon theses days, but not every dev is a capitalist, that only cares for the :moneybag: :moneybag: :moneybag: :moneybag: :moneybag:

While there are a lot of people who might not even care about it, these type of things are still very polarizing and often times will give the game a lot of negative publicity and some clickbait headlines within gaming journalism.

But in the end its more about what the devs want to have in their game.

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3

There won’t be PVP in LE so you don’t have to bother about cash shops.

4

First of all PvP was planned for LE and as far as I know is still planned, but was just lowered in priority.

But even PvE games can still be very competetive and any pay to progress, pay for convenience or pay to win elements can still affect people, even if they don’t directly utilize them.

EHG always planned for LE to have some kind of MTX (Cash Shop)

5

I’m confused, what is the main point(s) the OP is trying to make?

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It seemed like some heavy-handed attempt to link anti-pvp sentiment to people who want Pay2Win in the game. As a way to discredit any opposition to pvp…I’m assuming?

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That’s certainly how I took it, especially given the other thread this person posted recently and the way they reacted to the responses it got. PvP enthusiasts, in my experience, aren’t particularly interested in the fact that they are a minority and have a tendency to be derisive about anyone that doesn’t share their enthusiasm.

To wit:

In which the implication is that players who don’t compete with other players over whose made up numbers are bigger are “less than”.

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For me it is this simple:

  • Buy power (Items, Perks, XP booster) = worst!
    I don’t like that and this is a gamebreaking feature for me that drives me away from this kind of games.

  • Buy convenience (stash, fast travel, boosting mana/hp refill mechanics,…) = bad!
    I don’t like it, but if the game is good enough, the fun while playing the game can outweigh this for me.

  • Buy cosmetics = ok!
    As long as it is not overused like you look like crap even with high tier gear until you buy cosmetics, I’m ok with it. It is purely optional with no impact on gameplay.

Nothing of this has anything to do with PvP. My opinion doesn’t change whether a game has PvP or PvE only.

To be precise: A game developer that implements PvP in a game with buy to power features won’t ever have me as a customer. These 2 features are 100% incompatible and only show the predatory sentiment of the devs.

So I made my research before my purchase of LE and knew that they plan to implement PvP and a cash shop with cosmetics only.

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9

Absolutely mirrors my approach/opinion.

I also have no issue with a cosmetic cash shop. It’ll be a nice way for me to throw some more support money at EHG in the future with kind of a “well done & thanks” approach.

The moment a game get’s P2W, I am out of there. Been there, done that, never again. Also, having experienced the second method, the “convenience cash store” at our cousins and wasted tons of £$£ there, that would also be an “I’m Out” for me. That second method, while appearing initially to be a convenience, quickly becomes almost compulsory in nature. Been there, done that, also never again.

So, as long as things stay the way they have been promised, I will quite probably buy some shiny, weird looking clothing/weapon skins and be happy having my own “uniforms”. I’ll also be happy with those useless shiny avatars knowing I have given some entirely voluntary “thanks money” for a game I am enjoying.

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I do believe an overwhelming majority don’t care at all. There can be things for sale, or not, most people don’t mind because it doesn’t make any kind of difference to them.
The problem is, the tiny minority bothered by that is: 1. very vocal, and includes a lot of influential streamers. 2. “hardcore” competitive players, who are the most likely to drop a lot of money on a game.
So, even if in terms of numbers they would be neglectible, they cannot possibly be ignored by developpers.

I don’t think anyone “hates” PvP in the way you seem to believe. We just don’t give a crap.
Cash shop or no cash shop, high-end competition is only for “24-hours-a-day” people anyway, us common mortals wouldn’t be able to participate even if we wanted to (we don’t).
Last Epoch is actually the best example of that, with VisionGL tournaments being some kind of private playgrounds for 3-4 rich kids.
They don’t have any interest in integrating the community, only fair that most of the community doesn’t have any interest in what they are doing.
Let them have their fun, let me have mine. Again, cash shop or not is utterly irrelevant.

Good joke. :joy:

The thing is, I don’t like cosmetics… I find it more fun to see my appearance change along with the gear I find…
But when I spend time on a game I feel like giving a bit of money as a thank you.
I buy stash tabs in PoE, not because I really want more stash tabs, but because there is nothing else in the shop that I like.
Right now I am spending a lot of time on Lost Ark, and I have the same issue, there is absolutely nothing in the store I remotely feel like buying… So I still haven’t given them thank-you money. Figure Amazon can survive without my £10!
:grin:

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I would love to know what causes you to think that?

I’ve been playing games online since the dawn of the internet (yes I am ancient). At first, games were “buy it once” and people were fine with it. Then games arrived that were monthly subscription, some were fine with it but most grumbled about it but still paid when the amounts were “reasonable”. Then P2W arrived in supposedly “F2P” games but in a small sense of what was needed to “win” at end game, people then were so happy to not have to pay a monthly sub or initial fee that they put up with the small amounts to play at end game if they stuck with a game long enough to reach end game.

Then finally this new model of P2W arrived, where the game was free but P2W items would a) get you to end game in a fraction of the time playing “free” would get you, and b) keep you at end game and without them you would not be able to really play that level. Also, the amounts charged in these types of games were pretty large when compared to what it would have cost at say £8.99 per month. Now, even though PoE has stash tabs etc, it’s not quite in this model of P2W just yet. This still afaik primarily dominates the FPS genre, but make no mistake, a lot of gaming companies want it to creep over to ARPG’s.

Now on the last type which you could call true modern P2W, I have yet to see an “overwhelming majority not caring”. Any time I read reviews on new games coming out (I follow most genres, not just ARPG’s) and they contain these types of cash shops, all I read are overwhelming complaints about “gouging”, Rip off’s, etc etc. Take games made by EA for example and their cash shops, they’re hardly popular. Sure tons of people play the games, but that’s due to weak wills and shallow minds, because all they seem to do is complain about the amounts they are paying. The game companies are clever, there’s nothing in their ToS that say you HAVE to pay for these items, and sure you COULD play for free if you want to take 50x longer to do things and “die” far more often than a P2W player, and I’m not even touching the PvP advantages etc.

So, I don’t get your perspective. I think the overwhelming majority do care, but it’s only certain genres of games where the players have enough discipline to not buy into those games. There’s a subtle difference between not caring, and not having the self will to refrain from participating. In Arpg’s a lot of players tend to play on PC, and PC players seem to be more able to say “no” than console players. In sports & fps games, the majority seem to be console now, and from my experience console players seem to lack the same will to say “no”, which companies predate on.

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Because the people who comment on forums/reddit/discord/etc and chat in-game are generally a very small minority. If you take LE, there’s probably somewhere around a thousand “regular” players spiking up to 4-7k when there’s a big patch/whatever, but there’s probably only around 100-200 regular posters on the forum, which is a minority by any measure.

That said, it’s impossible to know what the rest of that majority thinks about anything specific (other than that they generally enjoy playing LE) so “most people” assume that the majority agrees with them. One can construct whatever logically sound arguements one wishes, but without going & asking them, it’s entirely possible that one is wrong & said majority is primarily made up of a bunch of mouth-breathing window-lickers that would be fine being treated like **** as long as they get their shiny baubles and bread & circuses.

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Simply the fact that these games have huge amounts of players. If cash shops were as much of a deterrent as you would think reading forums, the concerned games would be empty.
They are thriving.

I grant you that maybe it is just that they do care, but don’t have the “discipline to stop playing”. That sounds very possible.
But in that case people don’t need F2P, they need Addicts Anonymous… That’s just sad.

Of course, as Llama said, there is no way to know for sure.
And yes, I also come from a time when you just bought a game and that was it. I think that was much better, but sadly that wouldn’t work anymore nowadays.

True, and usually amplified by the fact that we naturally tend to hang out with people who share our views.
Giving us a distorted vision, because everybody we talk to DO agree with us.

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I mean, I think it’s safe to assume that a significant portion of people who aren’t actively complaining on a forum somewhere either don’t care or don’t care enough for it to impact their gameplay. It is known that people are more likely to be vocal about negative reactions than positive ones, after all.

And, I really do think that most of the “effect” any of it has on anybody who is mad about it is entirely manufactured. It’s always about how “Paying players have an advantage over non paying players”, but the advantage is in… what? I can see how it’d allegedly matter in PvP, but it’s not just about PvP because that’s still the argument in games without it (or that have it as an afterthought). IMO, it’s just people who have an unhealthy emotional relationship with games, competing with other people in a competition that only exists in their head, making up principles about fairness and shortcuts that don’t exist anywhere else in life. Like, it’s not a secret that “gamers” (as opposed to people who just play games) are, as a subset of the population, often dysfunctional.

Meanwhile, everybody else is just playing a game they enjoy, or not playing one they don’t enjoy, with no mind whatsoever that players they’ll never encounter spent money to get the Murder Sword they did a grind for. I genuinely think that most people who play games haven’t forgotten that they’re games.

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FYI… if anyone hasnt see the storm around Diablo Immortal essentially being pay to win…

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Nah. Zizarin is a good content creator and I like him, but his ability to have a useful opinion on “pay to win” is dubious at best.

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Lol, this might be just a storm in Zizaran’s teacup (to double up on the pun, not my cup of tea).
:joy:

But it will be interesting to see what happens.
In March, more than 3 months before release, Diablo Immortal had over 30 MILLIONS pre-registered users. Probably passed 50 Millions by the time they released. This is mind-blowing numbers. Of course it is not going to please everybody in such a gigantic population sample.

I am SO going to play it when it comes to PC!
And happily ignore Zizaran’s and other streamers’ suggestions (I always do).

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@Houlala @BroncoCollider

Just posting the vid - lots of other reddit posts, videos and news articles from two bit online mags to Forbes… if any of the math behind the DI end game & p2w requirements are even 10% valid then its interesting that Blizzard has gone this route and would validate it as a money grab.

I personally dont have any opinion on this because I absolutely loathe mobile games and refuse to play them out of principal. Added to this, the pay for benefit/win I have seen examples of mean that for me, even if I were tempted by the mobile game coming to PC, there is zero chance I would ever play it.

I am honestly old school here - I would gladly pay a box price and be done with it… and if the 50 million pre-registered users was a valid number why would the revenue from a once off price not be enough for any company? Even $10 would be a crazy amount of revenue with those numbers…

Its all just greed in my opinion… and preying on people who are like frogs in a slowly boiling pot… before they realise how much of their hard earned cash they have forked over… to buy some exec a new sportscar for every day of the week.

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I agree with that 100%.
Particularly disappointing because up to now, Blizzard was mostly using more traditionnal (and in my opinion way better) business models, at least for Diablo and WoW, the two games from them I care about.
Now they are joining in the “micro-transactions” nonsense. What’s next, selling Diablo 4 in “early access” mode?

I also agree about mobile games. I would never play a rpg on mobile, even less an action one.
I feel like the mobile era has lowered gaming standards, and considerably increased the micro-transactions models (which has now spread to PC).

The one bit I disagree with, is that it won’t prevent me from playing it.
I will just enjoy the story, have fun with different classes, and see where it takes me.
If I never reach the ultimate endgame because I would have to pay, who cares? I will just quit faster. I wasn’t planning on playing just that game for an entire lifetime anyway…
To me, cash shop or not doesn’t make any kind of difference.

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For one, what game is seeing 50 million actual sold copies? A quick Googling tells me that the #1 selling game in 2021 was COD: Vanguard, and as of last month it had been outsold by Elden Ring - which has sold only 13.4 million copies and is expected to top out at 20 this year. Meanwhile, this Wikipedia page shows only 7 games in all of gaming history to have sold over 50 million copies, dropping off sharply after that.

For two, because the (almost non-existent) change in shelf prices of games over time does not reflect such things as inflation and ever increasing development costs. Here’s a good video discussing this:

(Which, if memory serves, doesn’t even factor in on-going, post-release costs such as new content, patches, servers, maintenance, and customer support which are in ever increasing demand by players.)

For three, a game that’s in development makes zero money. The costs of completing development of the game have to come from somewhere, and unless you’re talking about one-and-done studios, that “somewhere” is often “profits from previously released games”. So, it’s not unreasonable for a studio that wants to continue making games to want to bring in enough extra revenue to cover the costs of doing it in a dry period.

And finally, let’s do an illustrative rephrasing of your question here. When you break it down to its base components, what you’re really asking is: “Why would a business want more to make money when they could make less money?” And if you think about it, that’s kind of a silly question, isn’t it?

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