Ist Oxygen Not Included turning into another "play weekly to get rewards" game?

[schnappkatze]

Today's update made me a little sad.

Timed Blueprint Drops!
This update introduces weekly blueprint drops that unlock at randomized time intervals during gameplay. We're starting with 3 individual items per week and you should get everything within 6 hours—these numbers will likely be adjusted in the future. You can check the drop counter on the Klei Rewards page to see how many you have left! Don't forget to redeem your Klei Rewards crate while you're there.

Do I understand it correctly that ONI joins the rank of games which try to manipulate players with FOMO tactics to play their game? I mean, the game is fun, I like playing the game, I don't need a weekly nudge to play it so I don't miss on anything. I'd rather have it that Klei trusts its own game's quality, that the players will keep playing it because it is fun instead of dabbling in psychological tactics like so many others. I don't like it when a game demands to be played regularly if I don't want to miss some stuff.

I know this is not the end of the world, it is just cosmetics, it is no big deal if you miss a weekly thing, yada yada. But I do find it completely unnecessary and a pretty weird direction to go for a game like this.

Don't get me wrong: I love ONI, and I want to keep loving it. So please let this be a small misstep in a curious direction and don't go any further into all these, to be frank, just annoying tactics to get me to play. Again: The game is good, quite fantastic actually, I don't need external motivation to start it.

[Power and Wealth]

Its just cosmetics to generate and maintain interest, Ill play the devils advocate and mention the dev team needs to get paid and pay the leasing on their buildings as well, only way to do that is game sales along with the DLC so if we eventually get some paid cosmetics I would not mind seeing the option. Game development is not free, its actually pretty damn expensive.

[schnappkatze]

I agree that they still need to pay the bills if they want to keep developing the game. Most games do this by releasing DLC or other games. I don't mind paying for additional content, I don't expect free updates on a finished game. I also wouldn't mind tooo much if they release paid cosmetic packs - I wouldn't buy them, but it is simply content that people are free to pay money for.

What annoys me, and what the reason for my post ist, is the incorporation of these psychological FOMO tactics. Sounds sinister a little tinfoily, but is simply a strategy that many modern games do to keep people playing their game, to give people an external reason to just play a little because if not the don't get the reward. Instead of just, I don't know, trust that people know for themselves which game they will play and not dangle a carrot of "you will get what is in my mistery box if you play today" in front of the players.

What I find weird is that it doesn't fit the game at all. Economically it makes sense to make sure that players play your game as often as they can if you sell microtransactions or other extra stuff in your game. More playtime -> more moments in which the player might buy something. This isn't the case here, it makes no (financial) difference to Klei if people play their game 50 hours or 5000 hours. So why go this "weekly reward" route?

To stress: Klei is not the devil for doing this and this move, on its own, is not a big deal. My concern is rather the direction this is taking, since they surely didn't do this change on a whim and rather have some long term plan.

[Ozzey_Lee]

I didn't care one bit with the way it's implemented now. What I imagined it was going to be was something that appeared as a constant reminder that you don't have cosmetics.

Basically anytime you try to build something it would show you what you could have. This would bloat the UI a lot along with making things annoying to navigate.

What it seems they are doing instead is making it very small and more or less not noticeable if you don't care. I don't really care nor intend to use any of the cosmetics unless I get something that looks really nice but I don't mind the way it is now because there isn't a new overlay called cosmetics. It's out of the way and lets me play the game exactly the same.

They made it work well with DST and they are showing that they can do it with ONI now. Nothing intrudes on gameplay, nothing blocks large amounts of the screen with prices.

If you don't want to use any skins the worst it seems is you get a blue pod icon in the top left hand corner neatly placed next to the speedup buttons and a new main menu tab. That's a lot better than any game I've seen that has payed cosmetics.

[View The Phenom]

I'm sure there will be a mod that removes the UI button at some point.

In the mean time, just ignore it.

[Laserak]

Yep, another FOMO pile of crap that I'll have to uninstall and forget. Sucks.

[schnappkatze]

Originally posted by Ozzey_Lee:

I didn't care one bit with the way it's implemented now. What I imagined it was going to be was something that appeared as a constant reminder that you don't have cosmetics.

Basically anytime you try to build something it would show you what you could have. This would bloat the UI a lot along with making things annoying to navigate.

What it seems they are doing instead is making it very small and more or less not noticeable if you don't care. I don't really care nor intend to use any of the cosmetics unless I get something that looks really nice but I don't mind the way it is now because there isn't a new overlay called cosmetics. It's out of the way and lets me play the game exactly the same.

They made it work well with DST and they are showing that they can do it with ONI now. Nothing intrudes on gameplay, nothing blocks large amounts of the screen with prices.

If you don't want to use any skins the worst it seems is you get a blue pod icon in the top left hand corner neatly placed next to the speedup buttons and a new main menu tab. That's a lot better than any game I've seen that has payed cosmetics.

Oh, I didn't know that this was in DST, too. I reckon this stuff makes more sense in multiplayer games.

Yeah of course, it is rather easy to ignore, I am just
a) a little concerned that they will go further in that direction,
b) find it a weird direction to take a game like ONI to
and c) just in general tired of games doing the "play or you miss XY" tactics to nudge players to play.

[Xuhybrid]

As long as you can mod all the drops in, i don't care.

[Ozzey_Lee]

@schnappkatze I was also concerned to hear about the adding of skins to this game especially it being single player. For the most part I still am. I am under the belief that skins in a single player game will eventually prioritize skins more than the game itself. The moment I would call it quits is if the quality of the added items after this change begin to decline in quantity to promote skins in some way.

I did appreciate the way they implemented it into DST, all of the skins they added can be gotten for free through gameplay as well as the characters and in much less than some mobas and other games like to pretend. They managed to drop the steam market price of many of the $40 and $30 skins giving them away for gameplay instead. Looking at the DST market you can see every drop in price with each rework they did, at least for the expensive skins.

While skeptical of the plan they had and wanting to outright move on to something else once I saw the announcement months ago their handling of this game and the previous game they've done the same to give a small amount of trust they wont ruin it.

I can't predict the future but DST also has had limited skins long before Tencent or anything, generally you got them through not in game means. The only FOMO things I saw from DST was years ago from an in game event they did for 2 years only allowing skins tied to the event to be crafted during the event, later that was removed and now the skins are craftable whenever. The only other examples would be subscribing to the news letter and watching the Dev streams they do occasionally also not through playing the game.

I would say they earned a bit of trust from me but that wont translate to everyone. I would see what the end result is before deciding to stay but I'm still gonna judge every decision along the way if it seems awful. Things like adding skins that don't fit the games theme at all such as payable dupe animations, random clothing effects, new dupe sounds, flashy building effects and sounds, new dupes you would need to buy, etc are awful. They've done a good job not being a free-to-play moba, as long as there is that distinction between the way they handle things, they're not doing a bad job to me.

[Alucard †]

Meh you can completely opt out of the drop system in options.

So i don't mind at all.

[POWER WITHIN USER]

Have you guys ever considered playing video games because you find them fun?

[Huge Beard Guy]

Originally posted by 󠀡󠀡:

they scrapped plans for further DLC-based development because spaced out didn't sell very well

Where did you come across this info. I'd like to read it if you have a link on hand.

Never mind, I found info about it.

[Alucard †]

Originally posted by Huge Beard Guy:

Originally posted by 󠀡󠀡:

they scrapped plans for further DLC-based development because spaced out didn't sell very well

Where did you come across this info. I'd like to read it if you have a link on hand.

More info here regarding scrapping plans for making more dlcs and actual reason why:

https://forums.kleientertainment.com/forums/topic/142338-dlcupdate-news/

[Huge Beard Guy]

Originally posted by ⎛ Alucard ⎞ ✟:

Originally posted by Huge Beard Guy:

Where did you come across this info. I'd like to read it if you have a link on hand.

More info here regarding scrapping plans for making more dlcs and why:
https://forums.kleientertainment.com/forums/topic/142338-dlcupdate-news/

Ta, I just found details before you posted this.

Ta again.

[chaney]

I don't see the part about how

Originally posted by 󠀡󠀡:

they scrapped plans for further DLC-based development because spaced out didn't sell very well

[bwhitejr]

Originally posted by Archaos the Mad Bro:

Its just cosmetics to generate and maintain interest, Ill play the devils advocate and mention the dev team needs to get paid and pay the leasing on their buildings as well, only way to do that is game sales along with the DLC so if we eventually get some paid cosmetics I would not mind seeing the option. Game development is not free, its actually pretty damn expensive.

Klei is very unusual in the current game market, in that they maintain games far past where most studios would, release paid and free content, and are always working and polishing their games - I've become a big fan of them as a studio. They made a very significant decision to not do another DLC for ONI, which is lost sales, potentially, and instead chose to give us a lot of that content for free.

That they've added this new feature is no big deal. I'm not concerned.