EA response is typical

Michel Henzel

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And that's another 10k downvotes in less then half an hour. Guess one has to keep that reputation as worst company going.
Personally, I would not mind micro transactions if they, you know, were actually micro. At this point I think we really need to come up with a new term, or just change it to macro.
 

thepyrethatburns

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Squilookle said:
ObsidianJones said:
Ok, I ask you all this.

Would you all be ok that everything that's developed from now on goes to a paid and free to play business model?


Just let me pay $60 upfront for a fully packaged game. It's not that hard to comprehend. In fact prior to around 2002, everybody got that.
Obsidian's question was an incorrect one. Let me phrase it correctly using Squilookie's year as the base point.

Would you pay $83.62 (which is $60 adjusted for inflation) for a Playstation 2/Xbox 1/N64 game?
 

bjj hero

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Why is all of this on EA? Titanfall2 was mostly praised for its progression system and that was published by EA.

How much of the blame lands on Dice's shoulders? Knowing there would be lootbox/microtransactions they went for no custom charecter stuff? What are we left to buy but charecters when there are no cosmetics to get?

You cannot tell me war paint/battle damage/markings/tinted visors wouldnt be cool on storm troopers. Anyone remember Republic Commando? Equally, who wouldnt want to pimp their Tie-Fighter? Think of the rims...
 
Sep 24, 2008
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Squilookle said:
ObsidianJones said:
Ok, I ask you all this.

Would you all be ok that everything that's developed from now on goes to a paid and free to play business model?

Let's take a game. Tekken 8. There's two models. a 60 dollar experience and free to play. Sothat if you buy the full 60 dollar experience, every dlc and item is always available to you through massive amounts of grinding and/or luck, and you can only play with others who paid for the 60 dollar experience. But there is NEVER a time that you can buy one single item. If you want to be able to buy, you have to just start with the free to play client and not have your progress be able to be transfered over (If you have the 60 dollar version, you'll still have all your saved data, but you can just never use it in free to play_

Free to play has randomized characters you can play with for a season, you earn no experience and you can only buy new items/characters/stages/dlc, and you can only play with free to play players.

That way, Game developers would save face with gamers, and still be able to get their whales.
Just let me pay $60 upfront for a fully packaged game. It's not that hard to comprehend. In fact prior to around 2002, everybody got that.
The truth is that Microtransactions make companies a grip of money. And given the fact that companies are in business to make money, they are here to stay. So we need to think up ways that you and I can get our complete experience spending our 60 dollars for games.

thepyrethatburns said:
Obsidian's question was an incorrect one. Let me phrase it correctly using Squilookie's year as the base point.

Would you pay $83.62 (which is $60 adjusted for inflation) for a Playstation 2/Xbox 1/N64 game?
How is my question incorrect if I'm asking something from my own curiosity? The dollar amount isn't the important part. I'm asking if the general public would be ok if each new game would come in a retail/free to play fashion.

One could choose buy a game full price and would get all the upcoming dlc for free but it would have to be ground out, or one could get the free to play option of the same game with a changing roster of characters per season, meaning you would have to buy a character if you always wanted it available, no experience and every dlc, item and map could never be earned, just bought.

And that the paid players would never meet the free to play players. So if the Paid players got killed by the super awesome mega weapon, they would know that the person who killed them earned it through grinding and wouldn't be as upset.
 

Gergar12_v1legacy

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EA knows what they are doing. They have lowered the hero costs AND lowered the REWARDS.

http://www.gameinformer.com/b/news/archive/2017/11/13/wheres-our-star-wars-battlefront-ii-review.aspx

And whatever you do. DON'T preorder.
 

Zontar

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Gergar12 said:
And whatever you do. DON'T preorder.
Here's something I'm still trying to figure out: why do people still pre-order shit in 2017? We're well past the point there's a chance the game in question will be sold out the day of release, and I've yet to see a pro-order bonus that was actually worth it.
 

thepyrethatburns

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Ezekiel said:
thepyrethatburns said:
Squilookle said:
ObsidianJones said:
Ok, I ask you all this.

Would you all be ok that everything that's developed from now on goes to a paid and free to play business model?


Just let me pay $60 upfront for a fully packaged game. It's not that hard to comprehend. In fact prior to around 2002, everybody got that.
Obsidian's question was an incorrect one. Let me phrase it correctly using Squilookie's year as the base point.

Would you pay $83.62 (which is $60 adjusted for inflation) for a Playstation 2/Xbox 1/N64 game?
Lol, inflation.


It's not about breaking even, it's about making more money. They didn't NEED to do it.
So, looking at cost of goods sold, I guess that must mean that Activision is releasing the same amount of games and spending less on the COGS. Let's take a look at Activision's release list.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Activision_video_games

In 2010, Activision released 18 titles and 54 versions across multiple platforms.
In 2016, Activision released 2 games and 9 versions across multiple platforms.

Hum, it doesn't look like COGS went down by 8/9 or even 5/6. Failure 101 is blindly taking a Youtube video at it's word without looking at the numbers that make up those costs.

There's quite a few failures in this video that only work because he's preaching to a choir that not only don't have degrees in finance but also haven't worked in both finance and IT. I give him points for including Ubisoft's balance sheet but take those points away when you see that he is trying to present his case in a vacuum. In fairness, there are a few comments under the video that point out other failings in the video but, by and large, he is preaching to a choir who WANT to believe that it's all about the profits that those mean ol' game companies extort from them.

Ezekiel said:
Also, most of us didn't ask for photorealistic graphics that are ridiculously expensive. Photorealism doesn't make BF2 any less boring.
HAHAHA....no.

This is a common counterargument that is consistently proven false by sales figures. This is even funnier because this is the Escapist, home of Yahtzee videos which consistently made fun of Nintendo's graphical limitations and found a very receptive audience for that sort of repetitive humor. Gamers flock to the better graphics. If they weren't, the game companies would happily cut corners on an aspect of the game that is costing them money But, despite their protestations, when push comes to shove, gamers will race for the prettier game. Saying otherwise is a lie on par with the average tweet that Donald Trump makes.
 

thepyrethatburns

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ObsidianJones said:
thepyrethatburns said:
Obsidian's question was an incorrect one. Let me phrase it correctly using Squilookie's year as the base point.

Would you pay $83.62 (which is $60 adjusted for inflation) for a Playstation 2/Xbox 1/N64 game?
How is my question incorrect if I'm asking something from my own curiosity? The dollar amount isn't the important part. I'm asking if the general public would be ok if each new game would come in a retail/free to play fashion.
The question is incorrect because it creates a false choice. And, yes, the dollar amount is very important. The amount of people who would pay $60 for a full game is less than the amount who would pay 83.62 for a 2002 game to say nothing of what people would pay for what a 2017 game actually costs.

Hell, if you think price isn't important, why stop at 60? Why not ask how many people would buy the full game at 50 or 40? Price point is important in these conversations. It's like how I wasn't willing to pay $60 for Sacred 3 when it came out but I was willing to download it and play it when it was free on Games for Gold. In order to ask the correct question and get a meaningful answer, you have to pose the correct conditions for your question.
 
Sep 24, 2008
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thepyrethatburns said:
ObsidianJones said:
thepyrethatburns said:
Obsidian's question was an incorrect one. Let me phrase it correctly using Squilookie's year as the base point.

Would you pay $83.62 (which is $60 adjusted for inflation) for a Playstation 2/Xbox 1/N64 game?
How is my question incorrect if I'm asking something from my own curiosity? The dollar amount isn't the important part. I'm asking if the general public would be ok if each new game would come in a retail/free to play fashion.
The question is incorrect because it creates a false choice. And, yes, the dollar amount is very important. The amount of people who would pay $60 for a full game is less than the amount who would pay 83.62 for a 2002 game to say nothing of what people would pay for what a 2017 game actually costs.

Hell, if you think price isn't important, why stop at 60? Why not ask how many people would buy the full game at 50 or 40? Price point is important in these conversations. It's like how I wasn't willing to pay $60 for Sacred 3 when it came out but I was willing to download it and play it when it was free on Games for Gold. In order to ask the correct question and get a meaningful answer, you have to pose the correct conditions for your question.
Before I answer anything else (I'll just copy and paste this later), I need to understand how it would be a false choice.

I'm presenting a hypothetical scenario here. That's the essence of the question.

The Paid Game of the game.
-If there's an multiplayer component, it can only be played with other people who bought the same Paid Game as well. No cross play with Free-To-Play gamers.
-All of the DLC content will be uploaded into the paid game, but will be earned with massive grinding.
-Set price from the start.

Free-to-play version of the game
-If there's a multiplayer component, free to players can only play with other free to players.
-Rotating set of characters you can play with, and the only way to secure them is by paying for the characters you want.
-No experience, so you have to pay for dlc, new items, new characters, etc.

I'm asking if people would be ok with this model going forward. That Battlefront 3 would have this Paid and Free-to-play model, Street Fighter 6, Starcraft 3, all games going forward. That way the whales can continue to make the companies rich while we players who just want to buy a full game from the start can do so, and the dlc will be paid for by those who will want it.

Where is the false choice? You can either pay for the whole game in this scenario, or pay for the parts you want.
 

thepyrethatburns

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ObsidianJones said:
thepyrethatburns said:
ObsidianJones said:
thepyrethatburns said:
Obsidian's question was an incorrect one. Let me phrase it correctly using Squilookie's year as the base point.

Would you pay $83.62 (which is $60 adjusted for inflation) for a Playstation 2/Xbox 1/N64 game?
How is my question incorrect if I'm asking something from my own curiosity? The dollar amount isn't the important part. I'm asking if the general public would be ok if each new game would come in a retail/free to play fashion.
The question is incorrect because it creates a false choice. And, yes, the dollar amount is very important. The amount of people who would pay $60 for a full game is less than the amount who would pay 83.62 for a 2002 game to say nothing of what people would pay for what a 2017 game actually costs.

Hell, if you think price isn't important, why stop at 60? Why not ask how many people would buy the full game at 50 or 40? Price point is important in these conversations. It's like how I wasn't willing to pay $60 for Sacred 3 when it came out but I was willing to download it and play it when it was free on Games for Gold. In order to ask the correct question and get a meaningful answer, you have to pose the correct conditions for your question.
Before I answer anything else (I'll just copy and paste this later), I need to understand how it would be a false choice.

I'm presenting a hypothetical scenario here. That's the essence of the question.

The Paid Game of the game.
-If there's an multiplayer component, it can only be played with other people who bought the same Paid Game as well. No cross play with Free-To-Play gamers.
-All of the DLC content will be uploaded into the paid game, but will be earned with massive grinding.
-Set price from the start.

Free-to-play version of the game
-If there's a multiplayer component, free to players can only play with other free to players.
-Rotating set of characters you can play with, and the only way to secure them is by paying for the characters you want.
-No experience, so you have to pay for dlc, new items, new characters, etc.

I'm asking if people would be ok with this model going forward. That Battlefront 3 would have this Paid and Free-to-play model, Street Fighter 6, Starcraft 3, all games going forward. That way the whales can continue to make the companies rich while we players who just want to buy a full game from the start can do so, and the dlc will be paid for by those who will want it.

Where is the false choice? You can either pay for the whole game in this scenario, or pay for the parts you want.
I ..... kinda flat out said that the choice of price point is what makes it a false choice.
 

Dirty Hipsters

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Adam Jensen said:
So much for the idea that microtransactions won't impact game design.
At what point did someone claim that micro transactions wouldn't impact the game design of Battlefront 2?!

The loot box based card system that they're using ALONE is enough to keep anyone who is at all serious about game balance from touching this thing with a 10 foot poll. We've known for months that the design of this game was totally borked for anyone not willing to pay out the nose for unfair advantages. I don't know why this is the thing breaking the camel's back when LITERALLY EVERYTHING about the balance of this game that we know of was awful. This is just one more thing in a long list of problems this game has with micro transactions.
 

Dirty Hipsters

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Xprimentyl said:
I?d want to say this is a textbook example of a publisher being out of touch with their consumer base, but then I consider that this is EA, and it?s woefully obvious they simply thought they could get away with pissing in the consumer base?s collective face and calling it rain. Those Reddit comments are harsh, accurate and well deserved. EA knows it has a sizeable monopoly on gaming, that?s why it insists on buying up any and everything even remotely popular so they can turn it into an ethically questionable (at best) cash vacuum and leave the consumer with little to no viable option otherwise. It?s going to take a failure of a major IP (and a BIG failure,) to convince EA they?re anything other than invincible and beyond reproach.
I'm not sure you know what a monopoly is, because EA definitely doesn't have one.

In fact, I haven't bought a single EA game since they announced Origin years ago (though I've been tempted by 2) and I've been perfectly fine with all of the TONS of other options available to me.
 

RJ 17

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Someone ran the math when the downvotes were around 300k or so, and if each of those downvotes equaled one canceled preorder, EA would lose something like 2.3 million dollars.

It's shit like this that makes me hope and pray for another gaming industry crash like the one in the 80's. Pretty much every major publisher has come out and admitted that they don't give a fat flying fuck about making games that people actually enjoy, their primary concern is making games that people have to continually pay for after the initial purchase...if the game turns out to be any good then that's just a happy side-effect.

So let it all crumble to the ground and burn. Sure, it means we'll get a few years of a post-apocalypse industry, but what rises from the ashes has to be better than the crap we're seeing now.

bjj hero said:
Why is all of this on EA? Titanfall2 was mostly praised for its progression system and that was published by EA.
That's because they didn't actually own any part of the Titanfall IP. Now that EA has officially bought out Respawn, they do own the Titanfall IP, which means that Titanfall 3 is sure to be a shit-show.
 

TelosSupreme

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EA games are money-grubbing garbage: Big surprise.

Too bad I can still play the original 2 Battlefront games with EVERYTHING unlocked from install. What, did they actually think games were supposed to be fun? Psh.
 

Canadamus Prime

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thepyrethatburns said:
Squilookle said:
ObsidianJones said:
Ok, I ask you all this.

Would you all be ok that everything that's developed from now on goes to a paid and free to play business model?


Just let me pay $60 upfront for a fully packaged game. It's not that hard to comprehend. In fact prior to around 2002, everybody got that.
Obsidian's question was an incorrect one. Let me phrase it correctly using Squilookie's year as the base point.

Would you pay $83.62 (which is $60 adjusted for inflation) for a Playstation 2/Xbox 1/N64 game?
No and fuck inflation.
 

Dirty Hipsters

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thepyrethatburns said:
HAHAHA....no.

This is a common counterargument that is consistently proven false by sales figures. This is even funnier because this is the Escapist, home of Yahtzee videos which consistently made fun of Nintendo's graphical limitations and found a very receptive audience for that sort of repetitive humor. Gamers flock to the better graphics. If they weren't, the game companies would happily cut corners on an aspect of the game that is costing them money But, despite their protestations, when push comes to shove, gamers will race for the prettier game. Saying otherwise is a lie on par with the average tweet that Donald Trump makes.
That's actually really not true.

What's the biggest MMO in the world? World of Warcraft.

What's the biggest MOBA? League of Legends.

What's the biggest shooter? Player Unknown's Battlegrounds.

All of these games are ugly as sin and make crap loads of money.

Graphics are an easy way to sell a game, it's easy to market and easy to make a game stand out in consumer's minds. That's why developers and publishers focus on that, because it's easy to show pretty pictures in advertisements, and it's really hard to convey mechanical depth or the feel of a game through a 30 second TV spot. The games that get really big and have a long lifespan though? They're aren't always the prettiest games.

Remember, Counter Strike has been around since basically the dawn of time and still makes money despite extremely simple graphics and ugly clunky animations. Hell, people would probably still play 1.6 if Source and Global Offensive never came out.
 

thepyrethatburns

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Dirty Hipsters said:
That's actually really not true.

What's the biggest MMO in the world? World of Warcraft.

What's the biggest MOBA? League of Legends.

What's the biggest shooter? Player Unknown's Battlegrounds.

All of these games are ugly as sin and make crap loads of money.

Graphics are an easy way to sell a game, it's easy to market and easy to make a game stand out in consumer's minds. That's why developers and publishers focus on that, because it's easy to show pretty pictures in advertisements, and it's really hard to convey mechanical depth or the feel of a game through a 30 second TV spot. The games that get really big and have a long lifespan though? They're aren't always the prettiest games.

Remember, Counter Strike has been around since basically the dawn of time and still makes money despite extremely simple graphics and ugly clunky animations. Hell, people would probably still play 1.6 if Source and Global Offensive never came out.
Yes, people have loyalty to the games once they get into them but that doesn't change whether or not they initially flocked to it because of it's graphics. I have had two MMOs that I actually stuck with. Auto Assault and SWTOR (still on SWTOR). SWTOR can hardly be called a graphical powerhouse these days but I stuck with it. I still play Unreal Tournament and I still play on my original NES. None of that actually counters whether or not they were pretty when they came out.

In the case of WoW, that actually strengthens my point. Was WoW better looking than Everquest when it came out? (Not the trailers obviously as Blizzard makes really good trailers but the game itself) Yes.
 

Canadamus Prime

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@thepyrethatburns why are you so determined to defend the shitty business practices of dipshit corporations that don't give 2 shits about you?