I’ve completely stopped playing MMOs, but there is a difference when it’s an online service. What I consider absurd are the publishers and developers who close down their MMOs when they still have players who have invested and will invest money into it, without even considering selling it off. I’m looking at you, NCSoft. Almost happened to Spiral Knights, and because it didn’t, it’s still going. It’s like they think that people playing them are players that would otherwise playing their new MMOs, when the reality is they avoid those publishers that don’t respect their persistence and investment.
There’s also a lot of MMO’s with no subscription and plenty of whaling. But cosmetics are cosmetics, there’s people that can legitimately complain about a $90 dollar mount if it gives an unfair advantage when they would otherwise not mind paying for just cosmetics. But there are people who don’t mind unfair advantages in certain games either, as long as they have a F2P model and the devs have a good rep.
Nowadays, what drives me off is the feeling of never getting the full experience, having to constantly feel that way to avoid getting caught in predatory addiction loops they implement, and just being able to buy a full, self-contained experience for what would otherwise be two months of subscription in an MMO.
The difference mostly is that the old games were games built first and microtransactions second. Slowly creeping up the invasive methods. Which is acceptable for most people.
However new games have a fully fledged out microtransaction system and shop and the whole game is built around maximising profits. Just like mobile games are.
It is rare that when you put the money first you will produce a game that is fun. And definitely not possible to make a good one.
The Past “We made this game, and if you like it and want to support further development, we have these small DLC bundles, some skins or what not… Nothing fancy, but we wanna work on new maps to keep the game alive. There’s no obligation, the maps will be provided free of charge, we’re just happy the playerbase is so enthused”
Now “We’ve made a new venue for buying skins, the marketing people call it a game? Look whatever, oh and while some of these skins look unremarkable, remember they’re only available for a limited time and those will cost 30% more than normal, but if you don’t buy it you’ll regret it forever when we take it away, either forever or until the GOTY edition.”
(Seriously: Ban FOMO)
Seriously it has gotten to the point where games are so content bare that people are talking about the DLC before the main game’s out.
Mortal Kombat 1 made that mistake so hard it had to start giving skins away to try to goad me into playing it again. Great story, terrible gameplay… weirdly the opposite of Mortal Kombat 11… (Maybe it’ll help if your big DLC expansion wasn’t 2 characters that are literally just genderflipped recolors… How weird is that Cyrax and Sektor are female now. I mean, normally that’s fine whatever, but in the context that Liu Kang created this universe to be his ideal, did he just have a Rule 63 kink for Cyber Ninjas or something? Or did turning the Transhumanists into Transgenders seem like too hilarious a pun for him?)
I have the strangest hunch that if a large MMO or game with lootboxes decided to make every item available via unlocks for free but make them all immediately buyable now, they’d have a nice business model. The player isn’t buying exclusivity or an advantage, they’re buying convenience.
Warframe heard that
Are the whales the ones complaining? Because the whole concept of a whale is that they are the exception. The vast majority of players pay only the minimum amount or slightly more, but the whales dump so much money in that they are still worth more to the devs than the other 99% of players combined.
It’s the same as how most airlines operate. The first and business class sections make up the majority of the profit, even though they are just a small fraction of the passengers.
You know who look like whales? Problem spenders who spend far beyond their means, and are preyed upon by predatory business practices that use psychological manipulation to encourage people to spend as much as as they can. Like, I’ve literally watched video game developer conference talks where a dev explains in great detail and depth on how to hijack human psychology to milk every last dollar they can. Whales stopped being “those who can afford to spend” a long time ago.
I’ve seen whales complain. Maybe not whales, but people who pay for skins and random bullshit
I started boycotting all paid digital subscription services when World of Warcraft came out.
So to me; you’re the problem. Anyone who isn’t boycotting all paid digital subscription services is the problem.
Weird take but more power to you my friend
Wtf are you talking about? The user you’re responding to is just clarifying the term “whale”.
If you ignore what else they say:
The vast majority of players pay only the minimum amount or slightly more,
Of course they’re making this claim because that’s what they do. Listen: BOYCOTT BOYCOTT BOYCOTT - stop funding things you don’t want to see in this world. Stop funding things you don’t want to reward.
If you do reward these actions (such as new subscription model services), or you’re justifying them in online commentary (as the comment I replied to was, as you are) then you have no right to complain about them - because they were funded by you.
It’s like paying the minimum on a Kickstarter for killing kittens, then commenting “Yes, but it’s really the whales funding it”.
Not if you’re all funding it too. That still counts as funding it! STOP LYING TO YOURSELF!
You’re raging against a discussion on nomenclature and blaming anyone that responds to you for your off-topic crusade. Maybe take a moment think about that.
Subscription fees for frequently updated MMOs aren’t unreasonable. I refuse to pay them, but I don’t begrudge their existence. MTX on top of that are another matter - that shit should only exist in F2P MMOs.
In FFXIV, most multi people mounts are paid for, but they did have an event where they have one that can hold 4 people. There is a paid mount that holds 8 people, and it’s a whale. It’s the most expensive mount at just $42. There is no reason you should want to carry 8 people because everyone should have a mount.
Some people mentioned there are some additional features locked behind the specific mount this comic is lambasting. Something about AH and mailbox. I haven’t played WoW so not sure how much of an advantage that is, but the closest FFXIV analogue imo is the extra retainers.
You only have 2 by default and pay an additional $2 a month for any extra. They allow you to basically bot farm some items every 30m to an hour(depends on how below your retainers level the target is) as well as more storage and selling capacity. Nothing is explicitly gated by it, but those who spend the money have a higher capability to earn in game money and/or have greater convenience if they use it properly.
For those of us who have had extra retainers for years, it’s cost us way more than $90, but it’s not a single huge purchase so can definitely seem like less in your head if you don’t take that one small step of reasoning.
The whales wouldn’t complain about this one anyways. When this mount was available in-game on the auction house it was probably around 5x the price in USD assuming you bought wow tokens.
You’re right. The definition of a whale includes that he has enough money to not complain about any price at all.
Except complaining is his kink… Then he gets double the satisfaction from his payments.
Whales aren’t people who can afford whatever, so they spend whatever. Whales are people invested enough that the perceived value added is more than the money it costs. Most whales, therefore, are regular people who are addicted to the game rather than moneybags who could easily afford it. So yeah, it does smell of victim blaming. We should be calling out the bad business practice, rather than calling out those being victimized by the bad business practice.
“price gouge me harder, Daddy!”
buys shit
violently orgasms
Or the whale is German, because complaining is a national past time.
A whale doesn’t need enough money not to complain. The tactics used to attract whales are meant to build or take advantage of addictions. When I was drinking I would regularly complain about the cost of alcohol yet still spend much more than I could afford on it
I think it’s mostly the parents of whales who are complaining.
…
This can only read as hypocrisy when you portray “everyone who plays video games” as a single character
“I can’t afford this”
*pull out credit card*
Oh man I haven’t thought about dark legacy comics in so many years
It has stayed funny this whole time. WoW provides a lot of fresh material, even if you’re not playing.
Most people who vote with their wallets have long since stopped playing.
I vote with my wallet by buying indie games or old discounted single player AAA games. This also means I can game on a crappy machine. Being a retrogamer also helps. I literally have more games to play than time to live.
I want to see them come out with a literal flying whale mount for $999 and see who buys it.
I’m sure that would cause a significant portion of the playerbase to react with angry and hurtful messages. Then poor Blizzard would have no choice but to wipe their tears with their massive new pile of hundred dollar bills.
NOW I CAN SEE THE WHALES
LOOMING OUT OF THE DARK
gratuitous whale chords https://youtu.be/eg_OyqkITSE?t=269
In ESO that would be lore-accurate
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Man I want to get clean, but you don’t understand they have three more states coming out on American Truck Simulator and I am desperate to travel to them in game.
I mean it’s an awesome game and truly don’t feel I wasted the money. Except now maybe I have. I have checked the game is not available outside of Steam. You can’t buy a physical copy and not have it tied to online. If they decided to not support it or go out business I will lose everything.
Yeah need rethink playing that game.
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I thought I was immune until I got sucked into some game where you battle with teams of players you collect and fight other players. There was some element of sending your titans to mine resources as well, but I forget the name of the game, but spent over $500 in it.
I literally uninstall any game that has gems, emeralds, coins that can be bought to speed things up.
I put 5 dollars into the clash of clans card game, realized they could very easily have had me for more, turned off the game, uninstalled, and never looked back (I don’t think I even used the currency I had purchased).
It was a good moment of realization, glad I got out for 5 dollars.
They could’ve made so much more with all the permissions I’d given them XD
Dark legacy comics has been my only source for wow.
I played when they “re released” classic, just before they bent over backwards to please China (that was a big reason I stopped, the other was classic wasn’t classic, there was so much jank in it that had clearly not been qc’d), now I read about the adventures of the dlcomics cast and that’s more than enough for me.
The entire reason people wanted to play classic was because of the jank.
Nah, there were things like floating sign posts, and enemies in places they shouldn’t have been.
It was absolutely not the game that was released 22 years ago. Also they said they didn’t re-tune the enemies, but everything was easier, so maybe it wasn’t re-tuned, but it was differently tuned
Maybe you’re just a better player then you were as a teen
Bwahaha, would love if that was the case. Maybe I was more aggressive as a teen? Maybe I pushed harder into areas where I was under leveled? Except I know that isn’t the case because I’m much more impatient as a gamer the days. I know that food and water were much more important to have on hand because of how frequently you’d need to rest between mobs I remember reaching the next tier of food and being relieved that I didn’t have to wait the entire 20 seconds, sometimes more if I needed 2 rounds of water to fill my mana bar, on the re-release there was barely any down time when grinding the lower levels.
I’m often one to question people’s rose tinted glasses, and I’m not upset for anyone to question my memory, but the"classic" release was made (not saying intentionally) easier than the original release (as a day 1 release player, through cataclysm)
Meanwhile, in Star Trek Online…
Can’t understand people who spend hundreds of dollars on virtual shit they don’t even own, just a “licence” to rent it. Like how do you spend that much with almost nothing to show for it.
Me after realizing it’s me with American Truck Simulator, buying all those DLC and truck packs.
Was going say your right how stupid, then dawned on me I have done this…😭
The truck packs maybe but most dlc is map expansions which I don’t see as equivalent
Yeah mostly what I buy when they are released, but with each new release they new job packs. That allows for new delivering.
Personally, I see a difference between paying for extra content vs paying to access content that is already a part of the game.
The question of whether it’s abusive is then dependent on the pricing of the base game and DLC, and how much content there is in each.
I’m even ok with games that are clearly designed to have DLC or released as multi episodes. As long as the base game is fine without the DLC, priced fairly based on the content, I don’t see a problem with it.
Like Paradox games, I’ve gotten some DLC in bundles and ignored others but still have a lot of hours in each title I’ve played. Though the way they show placeholders for the missing content is a bit iffy. But they’ve also integrated some DLC into the base game once they’ve decided that it’s become too essential (or too difficult to maintain balance through each variant possible).
But if it’s a game where you pay AAA prices for a skeleton of a game that then requires DLC to be purchased otherwise the game sucks, fuck that. Same with early access games that add DLC before the base game is finished (that isn’t just things like soundtracks or art that functions as tip jars without any in game effect). Those are just money grabs and there’s a good chance that they still suck even if you do spend the extra money.
It’s no different than spending thousands on travel or hundreds to watch movies at the theater. You’re paying for the experience and entertainment, not something physical.
Isn’t that literally everyone who owns digital games? All your shit on Steam is a license to use the software, you don’t actually own any of those games.
I mean, I get the point, cosmetics and such and anything virtual is not tangible in the real world but let’s not pretend we aren’t all doing that with every game we spend money on.
Having said that, the amount of money companies charge for some of this stuff is outrageous. Luckily, nobody is pointing a gun to your head forcing you to buy it!
I’m not disagreeing. But there is a difference.
Steam servers shutting down doesn’t mean you lose everything. You can backup your games and play offline. You still have the things you purchased.
MMOs shutting down and your virtual house and pet disappears, forever. Even if you spin up a instance of that MMO, your account doesn’t belong to you and you’ll have to start/recreate your character from scratch. Granted, you own the server so you could give yourself everything and be god. But then you still paid a lot of money for literally nothing.
Does paying for a ticket to go to an amusement park or the movies or whatever mean that you wasted money on nothing? Just because you don’t permanently own something doesn’t mean you paid for literally nothing. You paid for the experience. The good times you have over the years playing a game you loved.
I mean yeah, I’m sure losing everything when the servers shut down would fucking suck, but that doesn’t invalidate the time you’ve experienced up to that point.
I don’t have the money to throw at games like that, but I do understand it.
Ultimatelly it boils down to whether people have spent the money to have something or to use/enjoy something.
Which is probably why most people who disagree with selling of items, mounts, armor and so on, don’t find it problematic when what is being sold is access to game areas: the former are things (even if virtual) and people tend to treat them as something which they have, whilst the latter is just access to new experiences, like buying a ticket in a carnival to go on a Ferris Wheel, and is thus not something people tend to feel like they own it.
So yeah, the problem is the preying on people’s instincts around ownership versus mere rental - in their stores these things are invariably framed as being a purchase (buy! buy! buy!), not something you are purchasing temporary access to - on things whose mere existence depends on the whims of a company and which can be taken away at any time.
Mind you, in the Age Of Enshittification this kind of scam has extended to even hardware which is powered by software that requires access to 3rd party servers.
I don’t think the issue is the word “buy”, but rather clarity on what you’re buying. Amusement parks use the word buy, but I don’t think anybody is confused that what you’re buying isn’t the whole Ferris Wheel, it’s a ticket that gives you permission to ride the Ferris Wheel. Meanwhile games tell you you’re buying a mount, when what you’re actually buying is a license that gives you access to a mount.
Yeah, the word “buy” in this is just one element of a broader pattern, and whilst per-se it isn’t sufficient to distinguish between acquiring a thing or getting access to a thing, in these cases of mounts, armor and so on being sold in games, the entire framing wording and even store structure around it tends to lead people towards concluding that the meaning of it is for “acquiring a thing” not for “getting access to a thing”, especially because in the absence of domain specific clarification (an absence I believe is entirely purposeful) people who aren’t intellectual property lawyers and fully informed of the subject matter will tend to for virtual goods use the same logic to deduce the full meaning as they would for equivalent goods in other domains, specifically physical goods.
This is why also in the physical world legislation forces some kinds of business transactions with consumers to explicitly use the words “rental” or “lease” in order to make clear the nature of the transaction but might not have any such requirements for business to business transactions because businesses are assumed to have the capability to assess the full contract.
things can only be enjoyed if you trade money for physical objects then?
Cuz my partner has gotten many many hundreds of hours of enjoyment from the few hundred bucks they have ‘wasted’ on things like Fallout76 furniture and stuff. Eventually she will stop playing and ‘lose’ all that stuff.
I personally think the many hundred hours of happy playtime is well worth it. It’s her favorite way to relax after work. We don’t have a lot of space for her to build real castles but she spends sooo much of her time enjoying building virtual ones.
How is it any different from enjoying nice food or drinks with friends?
I guess if you are enjoying the act of spending money that’s good? But like I’m not spending any extra for cosmetics, that money could be spent on having real experiences instead of some bits on a PC that you’ll lose access to within a decade. Paying for DLC and extra content is one thing, but to change the look of virtual space for real cash is insane to me! Personally I have more fun when I don’t spend stupid amounts of money, but to each their own. When the game is free to play, or close to it you can have almost the same experience as someone who decides to spend the money.
What makes something a “real” experience to you? When people buy cosmetics in the game, they’re not (generally) doing it just to own those “bits on a PC”; they’re doing it for the experience that comes with the cosmetics. Maybe their character looks pretty now and it makes them happy, maybe they can build a cool castle now and it makes them happy.
that money could be spent on having real experiences instead of some bits on a PC that you’ll lose access to within a decade
Paying for DLC and extra content is one thing, but
These two comments are contradictory. The first comment has the same issue with DLC as it does cosmetics. It sounds like you don’t really have any issue with the first comment, rather, your issue is that you don’t consider cosmetic things an experience worth spending money on. Which is fine. But you should realize that many people do find fun and enjoyment (enough that they don’t mind spending money) from things like character customization and building (among other things), which cosmetics let them do. There’s a reason the Sims is so popular.
If you read what I said that way you’d get the impression that I don’t even think its a good idea to buy games at all, but I was trying to point out there is a difference between good DLC that adds to the experience and shit like the $20, 3D audio in Black Ops 6 which is literally a ripoff, or cosmetics upgrades like yay I spent $100 and now my virtual room looks slightly better, just seems like idk pointless to me. I know people eat that shit up, but it makes no sense to me, I don’t even care enough to decorate my real life space so why waste the money on some pretty .png files?
I don’t even care enough to decorate my real life space so why waste the money on some pretty .png files?
Right, that was my entire point though. Different stokes for different folks. Also, I realize you’re being hyperbolic there, but things like that tend to be a lot more than just a png.
$20, 3D audio in Black Ops 6
Also also, no fucking way that’s real. That’s insane lol.
And my point is that I personally do not understand the mentality.
Preach. So many people are fine, in fact, better than fine, paying money for cosmetics. I think p2w games are scum but at least the player gets something from that, whether it be time saved, better gun, or whatever.
Paying for a skin (which is essentially what this mount is) Nahhhhh. I’ve never spent a dime on either of those, but at least the former has some value imo.
Spending $90 to look cool in a videogame is something people need to get therapy for. But they’re still playing on official WoW servers, so we already knew that. (Shoutouts to Whitemane and TurtleWow. Neither costs a cent monthly and both respect your time)
“Time Saved” is not a real thing though. This would imply there was an unavoidable need to spend that time to begin with, there isn’t.
The game is artificial, if something is time consuming it’s by design. If you’re paying to “save time” in a game, you’re being farmed for money, plain and simple. You ain’t gaining anything, you’re paying to avoid the inconvenience placed there by the people who are selling you a work around for that inconvenience. You’re getting fleeced son.
The grind to get those depends on whether the player is being farmed for money. If it feels good to play, and you unlock content at a reasonable rate, that’s just called progression, not farming. But if the task is repetitive, unfun, and designed to frustrate players into paying, that’s farming.
That’s why people shit on EA for BF2. They did the math of the grind and loot boxes, and it came out so something ridiculous, like multiple hundreds of hours to unlock stuff. I used to play R6 Siege and never spent a penny. After a week or so of playing with my friends, we’d have enough in-game currency to buy a new operator. We’d all unlock new characters and try them out. Week after week, it was fun.
Paying, imo would have ruined that experience because the gameplay is what made it fun. Forcing us to use the ops we chose rather than having a full roster to pick whatever we wanted. Felt almost like deck-building. We were progressing, not farming.
The caveat is that the new ops tended to be OP. I think the devs probably do it intentionally. This is the P2W part. People could pay day 1 and get the operator with the overtuned kit. They paid to save time, because they want to be the first to use the shiny new toy.
But again, like I said. I’ll never spend money on either, but at least that person paying is gaining something, an advantage, time saved, instant gratification, more time learning the op. The person buying a pink gun gets … a digital pink gun?
It seems we disagree on the value of things. For me at least, somebody had to be vaguely creative to create the fucking blue 20$ skin, and the value is not in the non-existent item, but in the very real aesthetic and social experience of owning that skin, a social symbol, like art in your wall. Useless by itself, but it makes you feel things and let’s you say something about yourself to strangers.
To me that is understandable. Like buying AirPods instead of cheapo earbuds just because they look cool and you want to look preppy with your friends. (Notice the extra cost is not about the sound or the function of the thing, but a out the social value, which I’d say is still value)
Monetized grind is the exact opposite. You are working to have the privilege of not paying money for the better experience that is already there. People are getting paid to make things WORSE for you, so that you pay money to avoid-displeasure rather than enjoying something new, even if it’s literally just enjoying fleeting vanity.
Paying to skip is not saving me time. They are giving me a worse quality product and then making me pay to solve the problem that they have a financial incentive to make worse. This is like thinking you’re getting a deal when phone sellers remove the cable from the box. You’re are not, you’re being given a free problem, that you can pay even more to solve.
real experiences
It just sounds like my partner and you enjoy different ‘real experiences’. I just don’t get the judgment against people who have fun alone playing games for fun with their money vs whatever ‘real experience’ it is that you value.
People buy flowers, nice food and drinks, go to amusement parks. They get nothing but memories. My partner has lots of fond memories from building castles in the game. Why is one set of experiences acceptable to spend money on but not another, to you?
Okay, as funny as it is, I don’t think the people who are complaining are the ones who are actually purchasing. I am pretty sure that the people who are the majority spenders are not even aware of the hatred on the internet for microtransactions, or even if they are aware, they do not see it as worthwhile concern.
It is easy to get lost in the noise, as many things on internet, everything becomes an echo chamber. But in reality there are a lot of people who thinks it is justified. That somebody is asking for money to deliver a product or a service and they don’t care how the equation of "what is worth what " is derived.
For them, its just inflation or expense to cover the cost (basically they take publishers counterpoint at face value, can’t blame them honestly), and since it has become the norm, they have given up on taking a moral stance om this and following through
Or you can be the etherium guy: get pissy about in game horse armor and make a vehicle for even worse scams.
What the fuck did I just watch?
And where can I get more?
the guy’s yt channel? https://www.youtube.com/@shapiro127/videos
although I wanted to go with my misrembered futurama quote “There aren’t anymore. and there never will be anymore”
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rGeUfYusTf4&t=19s
but I remembered the quote wrong
Whales are the idiots who keep the Madden games alive.
