Hot on the heels of a backlash against Diablo 4 portal reskins that cost the same as Palworld comes a new microtransaction horror: a horse bundle that costs more than Diablo 4 itself.
I would like to see a law that simply states anything purchasable in a game, must be able to be earned in the game with a reasonable level of effort compared to the sale value of the item. Whales would still whale, but fish could hunt down the stuff they want.
The simplest formula would be the dollar value divided by the fed min wage. So a $35 item would be about 5 hours. So it must take the average player 5 hours to obtain it, or less.
Or maybe we just need to stop buying shit that’s just thinly veiled skinner boxes, and play games because they are fun again, not to get the best/coolest/most brag-worthy stuff in-game.
Corkysnog’s suggestion would make it actually brag-worthy. Just being rich in real life doesn’t necessarily require effort. I’m way more impressed by a full endgame set in Diablo II.
I could see developers slowly shifting their models so that they actually star planning out more free only items that take ridiculous amounts of time to achieve, purely for the rarity. Because then you just open a trading shop and take a cut of each sale. Stratify the items and make them excessively rare and you make money on the f2p to whale economy.
That sounds like the Diablo 3 auction house. It was very unpopular and they eventually shut it down. It broke the core game loop by replacing “kill monsters for cool stuff” with “do anything to get gold, and hit fantasy eBay” or, for people with less self control, “hit fantasy eBay with your wallet in hand”
Oh I don’t see the need to loop in game currency to it. Just have a regular shop. Anything that is purchasable is going to sell for less, and everything else, well that depends. Yeah, it’s not ideal, ideally I would want everything to be free/tied to in game currency that you can’t purchase.
Still describing the Diablo 3 in-game real money auction house. People just gathered the quickest-to-gather saleable thing over and over, sold it en masse for real money. Little money × many transactions = lotsa money. Then they bought the good stuff.
Became a gold farm simulator, as full stacks of gold were saleable. If they had blocked gold sales (can’t remember if they did do so eventually), it would’ve just moved to X relatively-common legendary item.
It would never happen. Because then they’ll lawyer up to fight “what does reasonable mean”.
And I predict that they’d say well if a whale is going to pay for it, they would imply that the assumption is that that person works 40 hours a week thus does not have time to play. Does a reasonable amount of time to play the game to earn something is then a full-time job.
Which is absolutely absurd. But the name of shareholder profits that’s exactly where they’ll go.
I would like to see a law that simply states anything purchasable in a game, must be able to be earned in the game with a reasonable level of effort compared to the sale value of the item. Whales would still whale, but fish could hunt down the stuff they want.
The simplest formula would be the dollar value divided by the fed min wage. So a $35 item would be about 5 hours. So it must take the average player 5 hours to obtain it, or less.
Or maybe we just need to stop buying shit that’s just thinly veiled skinner boxes, and play games because they are fun again, not to get the best/coolest/most brag-worthy stuff in-game.
Corkysnog’s suggestion would make it actually brag-worthy. Just being rich in real life doesn’t necessarily require effort. I’m way more impressed by a full endgame set in Diablo II.
I could see developers slowly shifting their models so that they actually star planning out more free only items that take ridiculous amounts of time to achieve, purely for the rarity. Because then you just open a trading shop and take a cut of each sale. Stratify the items and make them excessively rare and you make money on the f2p to whale economy.
That sounds like the Diablo 3 auction house. It was very unpopular and they eventually shut it down. It broke the core game loop by replacing “kill monsters for cool stuff” with “do anything to get gold, and hit fantasy eBay” or, for people with less self control, “hit fantasy eBay with your wallet in hand”
Oh I don’t see the need to loop in game currency to it. Just have a regular shop. Anything that is purchasable is going to sell for less, and everything else, well that depends. Yeah, it’s not ideal, ideally I would want everything to be free/tied to in game currency that you can’t purchase.
Still describing the Diablo 3 in-game real money auction house. People just gathered the quickest-to-gather saleable thing over and over, sold it en masse for real money. Little money × many transactions = lotsa money. Then they bought the good stuff.
Became a gold farm simulator, as full stacks of gold were saleable. If they had blocked gold sales (can’t remember if they did do so eventually), it would’ve just moved to X relatively-common legendary item.
It would never happen. Because then they’ll lawyer up to fight “what does reasonable mean”.
And I predict that they’d say well if a whale is going to pay for it, they would imply that the assumption is that that person works 40 hours a week thus does not have time to play. Does a reasonable amount of time to play the game to earn something is then a full-time job.
Which is absolutely absurd. But the name of shareholder profits that’s exactly where they’ll go.