I’m just posting here to look at my badges.
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Only for secondary characters, your first doesn’t get to join.
So the answer is ‘no’, this mechanic doesn’t exist for a first-time player until Act 9.
Not an expert on this game, as I not heard of it. But at first glance, It looks like it has pay to win, similar to lost ark. Lost Ark suffered the same fate.
Pay to win here is the key thing that makes it not work. There is a difference between front loading a game, and providing strong player power, and selling said power behind MTX.
The way I proposed it, is make a good game, with front loaded mechanics, that make people have fun, and they will spend. This is different to… pay or make no progress. If diablo immortal never had what felt like mandatory pay to win, the game would have been a large success in my opinion.
Why I prefer boxed price as an option, with bonus emotes, dances, taunts, cosmetics as supplementary. Or better yet, just full subscription without any pay to win. Apple arcade kind of does this already.
So… what we have now? 
It goes actively counter to ‘money counts most’ as the argumentation above. Since player numbers don’t count directly but only revenue gained per player in that case, meaning that retention rates themselves are not aligned with income, whale behavior would be.
Subscription has fallen out of favor for a reason with the change on the job market overall. Upon reaching a specific age the time to invest into games generally goes downwards. Job-related, family time, responsibilities. This means you get less value for the same money as someone who is jobless for example.
This system has always had the issue of people not buying into it when they’re unsure if they can ‘profit’ from it, hence get the money’s worth out of it. Got a job where time-wise you never know when it becomes busy or not? Maybe not use a subscription… might just sit around and gather dust after all. Only got an hour a week? Doesn’t seem like a good deal to pay for example… 15 dollar/euros for 4,33 hours of game-time every month.
That’s why MTX and overall vanity has taken over this spot as time progressed, people paying for what they think they want to have, being more good looking, showcasing their alignment with the game more openly or simply having their character look especially nice since they want to have that during the time they engage with the game.
I think OP is incorrect, in that the game should not be watered down for “casual” gamers at the expense of the more entrenched LE fans. The game can only exist because of the current fanbase, everything must be done with the fans responce in mind. Also “casual” gamers are not ARPG players.
The ARPG audience exist within the more nerdy sphere of gamers, due to its tendency towards complex systems. It should come as not surprise that “casual” gamers do not play a lot of ARPGs, mostly focusing on simpler games like mario.
For LE to become “casual” it would have to strip away the very complex systems that make it unique and fun. The same complex systems that exist to attract the ARPG crowd.
Instead of focusing on “casual” players they should focus on attracting ARPG players, as they are the ones that will actually come, and if you make a good enough game it may break out into mainstream - but no game ever entered into mainstream coming from a niche genre without first being one of the very best within that genre.
Too many things have TRIED to appeal to the mythical “wider market” and found themselves to appeal to nobody,.
This is not to say there cannot be easier early/mid game content or QoL changes, because such things can appeal to both LE fans and to ARPG players if you do it right.
Very Casual players are less likely to spend additional money on the game after the box price. Casual players are less likely to play the game longer than the campaign on each Cycle. Those aren’t the people who are going to be bringing in money for the developers. The people who sit here day after day farming Echoes and killing the same bosses over and over again bc they like the gameplay are more likely to be spending extra money on cosmetics bc they spend much more of their time on the game than the Casual player. Idk why you think the casuals are so important to the devs making money and by extention keeping the game alive and profitable. After the box price, a “Casual” profits EHG very little.
You just want the game to hand you win screens and free dopamine. There are games for that. It isn’t this one.
Money is most important. Correct. Its the only thing that matters to the company. Companies dont care about the fun. Not sure what catch 22 you think i said here
Incorrect. The study mentions that whales have not grown. Lost ark is meant to milk whales not the average player. You needed to drop close to 30K to compete. Games that have mild pay to win, and are fun like genshin dont have this problem.
A lot of people forget they subscribed… hey its unethical but can you say i am wrong?
The notion that LE isn’t already extremely casual player friendly and/or is catering primarily to “hardcore” players is so cockamamie that it could alert us to the rising of the sun each morning.
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Big companies don’t. Indie companies do. LE started as a handful of programmers that wanted to make a game that is fun. And they still maintain that philosophy.
Besides, it’s been shown that the most fun games (whatever that means, since it’s a personal preference) tend to make the most money in the long run.
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I’m pretty certain LE originally was build as a passion project and continues to be one. Where the money lets the developers continue to build what is a passion project. Do the developers need money to continue their livelihoods and provide for themselves and their families? Of course. But that doesn’t mean that the one and only thing the developers care about is the money. They can also care about the fun while caring about making sure they can put food on the table at home.
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Giving the comment of ‘mild pay 2 win’ and ‘genshin’ together… which by design is a gatcha game is impossible to sustain as an argument.
Only at first sight. It’s not a correct statement.
Businesses exist for 3 reason.
Money, stability, trust.
Money is the end result.
Stability is the long-term versus short-term prospect a company has.
Trust is what’s needed for a customer to come back after the initial sales.
If you lack trust in your company then people will walk away, nobody likes to be treated like crap. It’s a prime example as to why a myriad of companies fail nowadays. Their public perception becoming bad, that causes loss of revenue, loss of trust which relates directly into the shareholders which pull back as the company isn’t upholding what they promise.
Stability is the combination of those things. A sustainable system, for example the promise of upcoming content regularly in LE. It being a game which you can’t fully ‘play out’ and similar things. A company without stability aspects is volatile, hence a high risk factor. Any new product is volatile and needs to be established first, only then you can have that stability needed for long-term prosperity.
Remove the trust and money will wane to come in unless there’s no alternative. Have no stability and a singular wrong decision can topple your business overnight. Money is the outcome derived from providing a product people want/need and treating them right. Simple as that.
Obviously you can also become a scammer and walk around sleezing your way through the world, but that’s utterly reliant on luck and can backfire completely, leaving you and your family in shambles for a lifetime.
Exactly, provide a quality product and you get quality income. Simple as that.
Minecraft, Stardew Valley, Path of Exile, Dwarf Fortress as a few examples. They’re not new, they just do stuff well which others haven’t done.
In comparison ‘AAA’ companies fail more and more because they lack to take into consideration how risk versus reward works, providing unsustainable methods often leading to entire studios being goners.
I tend to agree that for the lead 3-5 devs maybe the fun is important. For the rest of the staff, who likely have to pay for their bills, they are more concerned about milking the players to ensure they could eat. In general lead developers still are accountable to their staff, or the team will vote of no confidence them. I aint buying this, we will care more about the fun PR speak.
My focus hence is advocating for the sustainable development of this game. Hence this discussion which I think is important. Nuanced discussion
The 3-5 lead devs are the ones that make the decisions. The rest of the staff has a fixed income whether LE sells out or not. Do you not know how companies work?
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Genshin can be beaten and played comp without spending anything. It aint as much a difference as genshin is a solo game. Unlike diablo immortal, where for that example I would agree. Genshin can be played with 0 spent, albeit experience is awful
consumers may care a bit about company head’s being rude. Look at company like Ford or GM, or Tencent. No one likes them, yet they are making bank, and yall bought their game. Tencent is linked to the government of China. Yet their stock is rising every year. Bottom line is people dont care about company reputation.
I know how people tend to form social bonds. That means trying to please those around them, it is humanities worst quality and what makes me despise the human species. Case study look at Linus tech tips. How they began to sell out just to keep employees employed.
The case in point here, is that fun eventually takes the back seat. Paying 100 people can not be cheap. Fun here is irrelevant. Hence the discussion needs to exist. Make a good game, and focus on making money.
Which you would be entirely wrong about.
Think about the perspective of a worker.
Do they care about the company flourishing? Or do they care about getting food on their table? First and foremost.
I would say it’s the food-aspect. Which is stability.
If you can’t provide stability then it’s a risky endeavor to work for the company, people working there are either dumb or always have one foot outside the company. What quality will they hence be able to provide? Would they care? Likely not.
So even from a standpoint of the developers providing a long-term viable product without ‘milking’ the customers is a priority. It’s enough for them to sustain the company, a bit more to make sure it stays stable in rocky times as well. If more happens? Nice! But the moment the company becomes wonky then you have a death spiral happening by design.
So it’s the best measure to not focus on ‘maximizing revenue’ but instead provide a ‘stable functional trusted product’.
For someone who is so superior to everyone else and who knows better than everyone else, you sure do have a very skewed and narrow perception of reality.
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Maybe, maybe not. The way I see it, is you use the experience while the game is good, and jump ship. No one wants to have on their resume …, worked on the game that went bankrupt. But again, person with low empathy here. So maybe that is just me, and it clouds my entire judgement.
Yes, exactly.
Nobody wants to showcase they were working on a failed product.
Hence nobody wants to work for a company exploiting their customers… since those tend to fail sooner or later.
Also why should you trust your company to not exploit you as a worker if they’re fine to do it with their customers?
Furthermore, why should you work for them if alternatives are available when you can expect to be searching for a new job in 1-2 years again since it’s likely to fail?
If anyone intends to ‘jump ship’ from the upper management then that means a smart worker isn’t there anymore after a month, leaving before it happens. A smart worker also doesn’t go into a exploitative company in the first place because it showcases the problems right away.
It’s why the products which are passion products (hence not monetary aligned) work the best and always have done so without fail.
Who would’ve imagined that to be the case when you provide people with a product that’s solely meant to provide enjoyment. Reduce that enjoyment and you’re in for a baaaaad time by design.
A lot of people may not have a choice. I doubt the devs who work on LE are vets. A small startup cant hire experienced people. Those people may just wanta quick and successful cash grab [assuming they got profit sharing]. Or anyone who wants to dine and dash. Best way to make a lot of money is to change companies every 1 year.
That part j disagree on. 95?% of start ups fail and end up bankrupt. If i was playing stats with 0 empathy. A hjt and run makes sense no? For an average person at a company.
Depends on how its done. Going back to the original point. I think its ok to lessen the fun of 1-3% of people for the benefit of 99%. I aint the dev so thats up fo them. If they read this, they got a lot of thinking to do. As at some point in next 4 years. If they want to support game further, the discussion will rise again.
Now personally. At that point Le would be 9 years old if you consider EA. Thats a good time to wrap the game and go for early retirement. But lets ignore the demon in my head, at least for 2-3 years.