cycle rewards ala PoE. I have been gone a long time so I am not sure if this has been discussed, but surely it can only help with retention which by virtue will lead to a few more mtx sales.
I dont know how to word it right, but when there is something on the line people keep coming back. I learned this in PoE half a decade ago when all milestone mtx were ugly as hell but regardless, there were a hell of a lot of people 40/40 league after league. Its hard to say if these same people would 40/40 without FOMO being there, but it sure as hell helped.
Just an idea from an mtx enjoyer and weta connoisseur
It has, and it’s a hot one. Lots of people for, lots of people against.
This is one thread I remember got quite heated from both sides (within reason).
Yup, this was when I wasnt around at all, thank you DJ. Coming up clutch today! Before reading, I am trying to think of possible cons. Besides the fomo I mentioned, guess I will just have to read.
GGG makes sure you dont enjoy life if you want all the seasonal mtx, thats the one thing EHG can do better at.
I don’t think we’ll get anything cycle-exclusive (including MTX rewards) until 1.5, at least. Devs have posted the Last Epoch Roadmap about a month ago and it’s all core stuff they want to add to legacy as well.
After that they might start doing some cycle exclusive stuff, even if Mike says on his streams that they don’t really know yet what it will be. Probably cycle-exclusive uniques to start with.
Cycle exclusive uniques play off the same psychological traps that the mtx would, but to what degree, who knows.
What I do know from playing PoE 9 years is that is indeed true, if you are new to the genre keep these uniques and whisper them sweet nothings occasionally, one day a single over done piece of gear can potentially fund every build you ever wanted to try until the end of time!
It seems I have hella reading to do, I hate it but at least I know EHG has stayed true to what they always have been since alpha. 1.0 seems just the beginning, which is great. I thought it was all over back when they almost gave up on trade and decided on gifting as their pre guild solution, but these guys good.
Oh god, no. It’s a hassle already as it is with random people attacking me for whatever reason, usually simply because I like the game.
I’m usually around a lot of the time because I’m a programmer, I work from home and I have 4 monitors. One of the monitors always has the browser which I usually leave in the forums tab, so I get notified and can reply often.
I’m usually also around because I actually love LE. Other than the occasional foray into GD and the much more occasional one into D2 (usually PD2) for nostalgia sake, LE has become my favorite ARPG. The devs’ vision for the game align very well with my preferences.
There are a few things I don’t like/agree with them, but they’re not really important to my enjoyment of the game.
I’ve said before that EHG could drop LE as is and never touch it again and I would still play it for years to come.
To be fair, that was a lot due to player pressure. Also to be fair, they did listen to feedback. They keep an open line of communication with the players which is great (less so since launch due to the flooding of more negative people here).
And, to be even more fair, they didn’t have to provide an alternative for people that don’t want to trade, but they went above and beyond with CoF, even if it needs some tweaking at times.
My 2 cents, FOMO is used to exploit the psychologically vulnerable. Lots of folks ruin their lives to play games in an unhealthy way because of tactics exactly like that.
In addition, putting very limited development efforts into something which will then be unavailable to future players means they’re walking into a fundamentally less well developed product if and when they play.
Combine the two and in my eyes the practice is scummy and values addiction and exploitation over the development of a quality product, and as such it’s not a practice I would ever support.
DRG does it right in that the seasonal cosmetics are unlocked through a battle pass like system (which is not a paid for system it’s just a base component of the game), and after the season is over when they rotate out they’re added to the pool of random cosmetic rewards from loot drops in levels. Thus if you want to get them specifically, you can control that by unlocking them during the season. If you miss them, you have a wider and ever growing pool of options waiting for you when you do come back. In short they don’t punish you for not being able to or choosing not to play, the game continually grows and gains options for all players, yet there’s still a reward for those who do play.
Unless you’re talking about PoE’s MTX rewards, which are exclusive to that league and can’t be bought again, stuff that gets introduced into a league (assuming it makes to core) is later available for everyone. Case in point: Heist league introduced alternate quality gems and everyone that started playing after that also has access to them.
And in the case of MTX, well, they’re MTX, they have no relevance to gameplay, so who cares?
They do have relevance to gameplay though. That argument has never made sense to be because:
If they had no impact on gameplay they wouldn’t be developed, or sold, or bought. Folks have spent thousands of dollars on cosmetics; how you feel about how your character looks has a huge impact on your gameplay experience.
Their development has an opportunity cost. No matter how large or small the studio the hours invested into the development of Mtx could have gone into the development of something else. As an actively developed thing, they are the fruit of someone’s efforts and the game is made better or not by improving someone’s ability to be thrilled with how their character looks (or not).
Someone who has a half a dozen transmog options all of which are just ok because they didn’t know a game existed while 5 cycles came and went, each of which had that many additional options but which were thrown away after the fact, is playing a much worse game than someone with 30 options.
I don’t understand why so many folks pretend otherwise when the sales, behavior, and other observable metrics are clear. How you feel about how a game looks and how your character looks in it may be less important than the gameplay mechanics themselves for most people, but the idea they don’t matter at all or no one cares about them is just false.
This is a common misconception. The people that develop MTX aren’t developers that are working on game systems. Almost always they’re graphic designers. So if they weren’t making MTX, they would be working on other visual design stuff and not actually expanding monoliths, creating new masteries, etc.
The vast vast majority of people don’t buy MTX. Even if you sold them all for 1 cent, they still wouldn’t buy them. This is even more so on a game that already has a box price.
So the vast majority of people don’t care about MTX at all.
In fact, there was even a study some time ago that showed that even if you add cosmetic options for free, the majority of people don’t ever use them at all.
So MTX only matters to a small amount of the game population. And people that care about MTX can play the season for them. Or not. I personally only got MTX in PoE if I didn’t have to grind like crazy for them. I got all rewards in 2 leagues and after that I said “f*** it” and only got the ones I would get by normally playing the game.
They’re a bonus, not a mandatory thing.
Perhaps it was unclear, I wasn’t saying it’s an opportunity cost to the game systems, though one could argue that the headcount used for that developer could have instead gone to a systems developer or something. Instead what I was saying is that the person’s time could have gone towards something else other than the product they made. Whether that’s a different cosmetic, a graphical enhancement to an enemy or skill visual, or whatever else. Time Is Money as they say, and the cosmetic made is where the money was spent. So if that output is unavailable to a future player, from the perspective of that player’s gameplay experience, it’s exactly the same as if the money spent developing that cosmetic was instead simply lit on fire.
That’s the way you feel about them, because you’re not in the psychologically vulnerable group targeted by tactics like this. For those who are, mtx tactics specifically fomo and loot boxes, create neurological changes in them and feed into a cycle of addiction which results in them having financial instability, depression, and otherwise throwing their lives away. Yes, for most people the mtx doesn’t matter, but if anything that just makes it worse.
I’m not going to support a small percentage of the gaming population being brought to ruin since they’re vulnerable to the predatory tactics employed, just because I’m not personally vulnerable.
Sure, but on the other hand it’s a reason to pull players into the league as well. As an example, in PoE I never played standard, in LE I’ve never played cycle. There was never a reason to play standard in PoE because cycle had more stuff and there is never a reason for me to play cycle in LE because cycle doesn’t have anything legacy doesn’t, except fresh start (not appealing to people with less time to play) or leaderboards (only appealing to a minority of competitive players).
It’s not, as I said, there was a study not too long ago that showed this. Even free MTX being offered as part of the core game is only used by a minority.
It’s just that the cost of making them vs the enjoyment those people have is worth making them and it doesn’t affect the majority that doesn’t care.
These are 2 different things:
-loot boxes explore a gambling addiction
-MTX seasonal rewards explore gamers OCD
They target different things and affect players differently.
Much like a common practice (seen in PoE and many other games) is to have more expensive MTX. Most people will complain that they’re expensive but studies have shown that the majority of people wouldn’t buy them even if they were just 1 cent.
However, when you have a sale that cuts prices in half, like these games regularly do, then people that would never ever buy the MTX if it was always half-price now buy it because it’s “a bargain”.
This doesn’t apply only to games, it’s a common retail technique.
Lastly, just to refer to your linked article, it should be noted that the whole concept of an ARPG is set to explore gambling addiction. The whole gameplay loop is getting random drops until you hit the jackpot and get a dopamine hit.
This whole genre is already immediately appealing to people with gambling addiction.
