Blatent lying aside, is the gacha greed really necessary?

[Grizzybehr]

Yes, we know, companies exist to make money. XD is no different in that regard. But do you know what company still exists, still releases new content, and still makes money WITHOUT all the P2W garbage you're trying to destroy your game with, AND is also F2P?

You guessed it, GGG with PoE! Stash tabs aside, no P2W present! The model clearly works as they've been around for a decade. You've clearly taken huge inspiration from PoE, its a shame you didnt take to heart its most important factor.

I ask again, why the need for gacha BS?

You have mentioned many times having to find that balance between mobile and PC players wants in regards to mtx. It's not rocket science, you want to continue to bend the mobile players over and take as much money from them as possible because for some reason it's can't be on mobile unless it beats our wallets to death while trying to mitigate the reverb from non mobile players that haven't been brainwashed.

I'm fine with deterministic purchases, I'd buy the traits, stash space and BP because I know what I'm getting, but your greedy gacha based BS can burn in a fire.

[Elveone]

The only way to have a successful non-pay-to-win free-to-play game is for it to be hugely popular to begin with - to catch on a trend that is currently very popular or to have a large popular company preferably with a huge IP behind it. Torchlight is a relatively small IP and XD while huge is actually pretty much unknown in the west.

PoE caught a trend. Fortnite caught a trend and had a huge company behind it. DOTA2 has a huge IP and a huge very popular company behind it. Those games are the exceptions and not the norm. Yeah, it is crappy but it is also reality. Gigantic was fairly monetized, played great and was closed in a few months.

[Grizzybehr]

Do you honestly think arpgs were bigger back in 2013 than now? With PoE bringing in it's highest concurrent player numbers EVER for its current season (short lived because of dumb gameplay additions this season but not the point) and D4 releasing in an assumed 5ish months with mega yet very cautiously optimistic hype?

Back when PoE released D3 had already been out for over a year. The only 3 worth mentioned before than was D2 and in fact torchlight 1 AND 2 for being super solid games. There was no trend happening. GGG was some small indie company. The IP was non-existent, and they themselves were completely unknown as it was their first game. PoE literally disproves every one of your counter arguments. There is no "oh but..." to be made here. They released a solid game as their primary goal. Surprise surprise, it's non-predatory mtx made them money and it's still going strong because of it.

Making a good game isn't hard. You just make a good game that puts players first. Not dollar signs.
Making a good game while simultaneously trying to extort as much money from the players as one possibly can IS hard. People are dumb, but they ain't stupid.

XD, address the issues we have with the pet gacha system. It's the biggest offender and the issue you conveniently didn't bring up in the "hey look we took your feeback into account" post. I know you're drooling over that cool $100mil that Immortals gems brought in, but DO BETTER. Give Infinite a chance to be known as something more than the joke it will be.

[Elveone]

Good god, you are so wrong. Diablo 3 launched in May 2012 and was hugely disappointing. It built up the need for the genre but did not deliver and that is why Torchlight 2, Grim Dawn and Path of Exile were so big. Torchlight 2 was not a live service game though and it did fizzle in time. Same thing for Grim Dawn although they kept the fire going for a little while longer with expansions.

Path of Exile was life service and it never fizzled. That is why it is so popular. Diablo 3 fixed most of its problems with Reaper of Souls in March 2014 but by that time Path of Exile had released its open beta(January 2013) and release version(October 2013) and had effectively filled the niche that the disappointing Diablo 3 launch had opened. Path of Exile got so huge so quickly that it killed Diablo 3's second expansion that was in production for years. It is the reason that the best selling game of the most famous aRPG franchise went on life support.

Currently the genre is just as big as back then but there is that big game that has filled the need for the genre for a large margin of its audience. And it's sequel is in production. And another giant game in the genre is coming next year. And another smaller but very hugely hyped one has been in early access for years and is releasing pretty soon. And also the audience is brutal because there are so many good games available and heavily hyped games in production. If you think Infinite is going to achieve any financial success without its heavy monetization then you are a fool. FFS - Marvel Heroes the kind of monetization you are talking about, had a huge IP behind it and it was pretty good in terms of gameplay when it got closed. Again - not saying that that kind of monetization is good for the customers, just pointing out what the reality of the situation is.

[Asnyi]

So much talk, reality is they LIED about no p2w features, this is how the majority will know Torchlight infinite, we wont accept this kind of BS. (I wont...)

[ReservoirShugo]

Another Asmongold subscriber I am guessing as this information is weeks out of date

the gacha of pact spirits NO LONGER EXISTS! ffs does no one know how to use the interwebz anymore and find information for themselves?

[Elveone]

Originally posted by ReservoirShugo:

Another Asmongold subscriber I am guessing as this information is weeks out of date

the gacha of pact spirits NO LONGER EXISTS! ffs does no one know how to use the interwebz anymore and find information for themselves?

You should probably provide a source for that statement because as of 19th of September the pact spirit system obtained through gacha was still in effect and that is the last info there seems to be about it from an official dev channel in English.

[Grandork]

Originally posted by Elveone:

Originally posted by ReservoirShugo:

Another Asmongold subscriber I am guessing as this information is weeks out of date

the gacha of pact spirits NO LONGER EXISTS! ffs does no one know how to use the interwebz anymore and find information for themselves?

You should probably provide a source for that statement because as of 19th of September the pact spirit system obtained through gacha was still in effect and that is the last info there seems to be about it from an official dev channel in English.

Sucks to agree with you, but yes. There WILL be gacha. They just made it so Traits/Heroes will be tied to Battlepass and can be bought. They also increased the amount of slots for the trade house for F2P.

Those were the changes to MTX.

[Jean]

There's a number of abusive and outright devious tricks that f2p use to make bank but few of them work quite as well as turning outright to gambling. Is it necessary for the devs to make a ton of money? No. It's necessary for them to make an insane amount of money.

Worst case scenario the game flops after a month, it's not a huge IP after all, but that month alone will guarantee the game turn a good profit.

[Grandork]

Originally posted by Jean:

There's a number of abusive and outright devious tricks that f2p use to make bank but few of them work quite as well as turning outright to gambling. Is it necessary for the devs to make a ton of money? No. It's necessary for them to make an insane amount of money.

Worst case scenario the game flops after a month, it's not a huge IP after all, but that month alone will guarantee the game turn a good profit.

Has a F2P player... Just don't spend money? Even games that aren't considered predatory like Genshin Impact have the so called "gambling".

[Zouls]

Originally posted by Grandork:

Originally posted by Jean:

There's a number of abusive and outright devious tricks that f2p use to make bank but few of them work quite as well as turning outright to gambling. Is it necessary for the devs to make a ton of money? No. It's necessary for them to make an insane amount of money.

Worst case scenario the game flops after a month, it's not a huge IP after all, but that month alone will guarantee the game turn a good profit.

Has a F2P player... Just don't spend money? Even games that aren't considered predatory like Genshin Impact have the so called "gambling".

genshin impact was considered predatory with abysmal droprates at launch, they consider every f2p game predatory.

[Elveone]

Originally posted by Zouls:

Originally posted by Grandork:

Has a F2P player... Just don't spend money? Even games that aren't considered predatory like Genshin Impact have the so called "gambling".

genshin impact was considered predatory with abysmal droprates at launch, they consider every f2p game predatory.

Oh, please, they consider cosmetic only non-gacha micro-transactions with box price predatory.

[Jean]

Originally posted by Zouls:

genshin impact was considered predatory with abysmal droprates at launch, they consider every f2p game predatory.

I'm not sure who's "they" but in general yes most f2p are pretty predatory, particularly on mobile. It's entirely possible for f2p games to be open about the real cost of the content of their game it's just relatively rare. In this case it contain several layers of deliberately designed obfuscation methods as is the standard.

There is exactly 0% of the people who defend this who know what the cost of unlocking all of this game's content will be. In another time, another age, everyone would have rightly seen this as a red flag. Times have changed.

No real concern of mine for original IPs either beside in passing where it might fit the subject of a discussion but I kinda wanted a torchlight game and it's still technically possible to save this one.

[Grizzybehr]

From a financial, 'we care about the $ more than the player experience' standpoint, gacha is mega effective because it's gambling and that can be an actual issue for people. From a player standpoint it's just a bad design decision that doesn't have your best interest in mind.

Originally posted by Zouls:

genshin impact was considered predatory with abysmal droprates at launch, they consider every f2p game predatory.

Genshin was mega predatory with it's ~1% rates. Has that been changed or still just as garbage as ever? People usually consider F2P games predatory because being F2P means the company designed something in the game to give the player a BAD EXPERIENCE, to entice spending, to overcome said bad experience faster. The range these designs manifest vary greatly. Transparent purchase cosmetic only options being the least egregious, battlepasses, not the best but at least you know what you'll get if you play, all the way to gambling systems like gacha. If a person had to blindly guess which side a company took in F2P monetization on release of a new game, picking the one that gives you the worst experience is right 98% of the time. It's no surprise people instantly flinch when a game is announced to be F2P.

Originally posted by Elveone:

Oh, please, they consider cosmetic only non-gacha micro-transactions with box price predatory.

That wouldn't be a random gamble purchase then. So no, that's not predatory. As long as you know exactly what you're getting with your $, a company can charge whatever they want for their assets. More power to em. As it stands D4 is doing exactly that. Box price, cosmetics, battle pass. No random BS. Sounds good to me.

Also people need to stop simping a literal company. They don't care about you now, they won't care about you later, and it's super cringe seeing people stick up for systems that are literally designed to siphon as much money as possible out of the playerbase. Why would anyone actually interested in playing this game not want it to be the best possible experience that it could be for everyone?

[Elveone]

Originally posted by Grizzybehr:

Originally posted by Elveone:

Oh, please, they consider cosmetic only non-gacha micro-transactions with box price predatory.

That wouldn't be a random gamble purchase then. So no, that's not predatory. As long as you know exactly what you're getting with your $, a company can charge whatever they want for their assets. More power to em. As it stands D4 is doing exactly that. Box price, cosmetics, battle pass. No random BS. Sounds good to me.

No ♥♥♥♥, Sherlock...

[Jean]

Originally posted by Grizzybehr:

Originally posted by Elveone:

Oh, please, they consider cosmetic only non-gacha micro-transactions with box price predatory.

That wouldn't be a random gamble purchase then. So no, that's not predatory. As long as you know exactly what you're getting with your $, a company can charge whatever they want for their assets. More power to em.

Spent thousands for cosmetics (or for literally nothing in return to support game devs) and it's all I could to to play devil's advocate and say that FOMO in some cases can be a problem, which can be a totally valid argument in degrees depending on context. I'm not sure that's the sort of subtile gray area argumenting that was being elicited by the person your responding to.