The cost of gaming.

[Brother Belial]

Ok folks, looks like some people here need a reality check.

TLDR. Yes having to buy things in a game with real money sucks, but game development isn't free. no matter what you think.

lets get to the bottom of it fast shall we?
This is a live service game. there for for development to continue the developers need money, Sony is not going to give them any more.

So outside of direct game sales, the only way AH can make money is through the sale of War Bonds and items in the Super Store. Now the money generated from this has to cover several things.

1. staff pay.
This is to pay everyone who works there from cleaners and security, to the people actually working on the game. so even if there are 100 people working on the game, there's probably at least 10 more doing non game development jobs like reception work, etc.

2. development costs.
Like most companies AH probably "rents" all their hardware, and may very well have to out source some elements of game design if they don't have the "talent" in house.

3. Over heads.
Building rent, utility bills etc.

If you are enjoying the game and have played it for any length of time, you've probably had great value out of that initial £35 you paid. I know with all the 500+ hours I've spent playing it would out I've paid 0.07p per hour of play time. so if i want to buy something and it's going to cost me £15.99 and allow them to give me another 500 hours that's a great deal in my book.

We also have to acknowledge that there items are not mandatory. You are not getting locked out of content by not buying them. You can also get Super credits for free, i know it';s not a "fun" thing to do, but that's the whole point, they don't want farming SC to be fun, they want you spending money, they can't make a game for free. The can not pull money out of thin air.

Lets look at the actual gear.

The gun is a side grade of the default liberator. The only upgrade it has is the mag size.
For having that mage size change, damage is the same, the recoil is worse, and it's lost the scope. In my opinion you lose a lot of utility for a bigger mag.

The armour seems decent. 50% damage reduction from "element damage" is a nice one to have, but as of yet there's not a planet that requires more than one element damage type, so you'd be better off going with the 75% damage reduction armours than 50%. but that's just my opinion. They will probably add this armour type in to a war bond, or the shop with more "generic" hell divers armour.

While I'll agree the prices are and the steep side, the rifle should probably have been up in for 200SC giving how much of a side grade it is, and in reality a re-skin worse version of a liberator I don't really understand the problem people have with it, yes it's expensive, but it's never going to be a Meta weapon. The people who do buy it will probably never use it past the first few games they use it, because they can.

A good example of this is the Knight SMG. you can only get it with the deluxe edition, but it's is just as good as the slandered SMG. and I've not seen it used past the first few months of the games release. I honestly don't think anyone is using it now, or the deluxe armour.

[Silly frog]

Yeah, the progression is slow if unpaid, fast if paid. It would be nice to have things for free, but being able to get everything EVENTUALLY is a hell of a lot better than what other games do…

[Khloros]

You wrote a wall of text for being wrong.

The game cost around 100m to make, at the high end.
HD 2 sold to close to 12m copies

They made all their cost back, and then some, and even more then that.
This was greed, nothing more.

[Brother Belial]

Originally posted by Silly frog:

Yeah, the progression is slow if unpaid, fast if paid. It would be nice to have things for free, but being able to get everything EVENTUALLY is a hell of a lot better than what other games do…

Yeah isn't that the truth. It's like some games charging £200 for a skin that's impossible to get unless you actually spend money, or are extremely "lucky" and get it as a "random" drop.

In my personal opinion, AH are probably one of if not the most fair developers in terms of monetisation of a live service game I've seen in my 20+ years of PC gaming.

[Shane]

Originally posted by Khloros:

You wrote a wall of text for being wrong.

The game cost around 100m to make, at the high end.
HD 2 sold to close to 12m copies

They made all their cost back, and then some, and even more then that.
This was greed, nothing more.

come back when you realise how things work

[Hero Unit]

What I find so fascinating about these threads is that I can make two rational acknowledgements:

Originally posted by Acknowledgement #1:

1. A corporation by design will do everything it can to maximize its profits which includes using every technique it can to exploit their customers to obtain money from them.

Originally posted by Acknowledgement #2:

2. A customer should do everything they can to demand the best possible product from a corporation. The customer should understand the corporation's desire to exploit them and thus they should return the favor in kind by attempting to exploit the corporation for the best product possible at the lowest price possible.

The first acknowledgement is perfectly acceptable to make. People understand this intuitively, and they don't think it's good or bad, it's just a natural reality, and I agree with that. It makes sense a corporation seeks to maximize their own interests.

However when I make the second acknowledgement, people lose their minds. They will leap in front of a moving bus to protect the corporation and denigrate the customer.
"A peasant should never backtalk a king!"
"Your demands are wicked! Leave the corporation alone!"

Why is it that people can intuitively understand the first acknowledgment but they lose their minds at the second?

---------------
OP, since you're one of Arrowhead's loyal defenders who defends them for free, free as in unpaid, unpaid as in you are providing labor for them without compensation - could you elaborate on why acknowledgement 2 drives you mad?

[Dundo]

Originally posted by Brother Belial:

Yeah isn't that the truth. It's like some games charging £200 for a skin that's impossible to get unless you actually spend money, or are extremely "lucky" and get it as a "random" drop.

In my personal opinion, AH are probably one of if not the most fair developers in terms of monetisation of a live service game I've seen in my 20+ years of PC gaming.

lol?

Even Division had a fairer model for monetization than HD2, not to mention actual standouts like DRG.

What are you on about? There's a good reason why they gave away the 2nd page for free, even they realized they bit off more than they chew. You've been brainwashed.

You paid at the very least $40 or more like I did with the Super Citizen Edition and then possibly paid more for Warbonds which had less and less content one after another to support the development of the game only for the devs to start treating the monetization like a F2P title? lol?

get outta here.

[Qau'lthir]

OPs post reads like the biggest cope in the universe.

[Khloros]

Originally posted by Qau'lthir:

OPs post reads like the biggest cope in the universe.

Because it is. AH made beyond even their wildest dreams numbers in sales and profit from this. They were able to cover the production cost and any hopes had dreams they had of profits.

If AH really wanted money, they could have put this as some sort of exclusive warbond that you could only buy for real money. and it would have only gotten a few grumbles.

[Elvi]

Well, reality check no. 2: It doesn't matter whether you are right or wrong here, no matter how hard you defend for a corporation, this particular sempai will never notice you, so might as well not do it.

[Brother Belial]

Originally posted by Khloros:

You wrote a wall of text for being wrong.

The game cost around 100m to make, at the high end.
HD 2 sold to close to 12m copies

They made all their cost back, and then some, and even more then that.
This was greed, nothing more.

I see you don't know how game development works.

Here let me explain.
A game costs money to make, say 100 million. backer will give a developer the 100 million, in exchange for that money back and a percentage of the profits over the cost. so lets way the game made 400 million in sales. 100 million of that is wiped out right away. so that leaved 300 million. now the backers will want their percentages. now depending on what each backer put in will determine how much they get back out. and if they have options for future pay outs at each sales mile stone. So that could be another 100 million gone. so that leaves 200 million you say.

Now that money has to be spent on the running costs now the game has launched. it has to pay staff to continue to work on the game, servers, advertising, promotions other overheads like the building rent, utility bills, work station rent and other studio projects, in AH case it's a move to UE5 as the engine they used to make HD2 is now dead and unsupported. Money runs out fast, really fast especially when you need a "rainy day fund" because sh*t brakes, and in a business you can't slow down if someone brakes you need it replaced fast.

That's why they have the "cash shop" and war bonds, they need money coming in, the sales money is not going to last forever regardless of how much it is. Ask someone who runs a business how long they profits last, most will probably tell you, not long at all.

[Brother Belial]

Originally posted by Dundo:

Originally posted by Brother Belial:

Yeah isn't that the truth. It's like some games charging £200 for a skin that's impossible to get unless you actually spend money, or are extremely "lucky" and get it as a "random" drop.

In my personal opinion, AH are probably one of if not the most fair developers in terms of monetisation of a live service game I've seen in my 20+ years of PC gaming.

lol?

Even Division had a fairer model for monetization than HD2, not to mention actual standouts like DRG.

What are you on about? There's a good reason why they gave away the 2nd page for free, even they realized they bit off more than they chew. You've been brainwashed.

You paid at the very least $40 or more like I did with the Super Citizen Edition and then possibly paid more for Warbonds which had less and less content one after another to support the development of the game only for the devs to start treating the monetization like a F2P title? lol?

get outta here.

Na, I've never paid for a war bond, i play enough that i organically earn 1000+ SC between war bonds.

[Murder]

what a stupid take

[SirFuzzWuzz]

The way they're monetizing is just bad. Look at a game like DRG, live service and 5 years in despite not selling anything but cosmetics, all weapons free, tons of cosmetics free. Helldivers is waaaaay more successful, it's insulting that they even use f2p style monetization with the huge success of the game.

[obsessedwithpineapples2223]

Shoe polish is a strange acquired taste.

You're saying all of this to argue past the point that any way you cut it, they took content originally intended for a permanently available warbond, chopped it up into smaller parts, and intended to sell those smaller parts for far more than the cost of a single warbond, all while putting it into a limited time rotation to cash in on FOMO.

-and in the hypothetical if it was never intended for a warbond? Well then, they were maliciously trying to price gouge on crossover items to make money off nostalgiabucks and community goodwill over the recent resurgence in players and positive feedback for the recent update.

Ignoring the central issue, then maliciously framing your defense purely around out of context portions of a larger problem and then constructing multiple strawmen while propping yourself up on a moral high ground for defending a corporation.

What kind of despicable self flagellation is this?

Let's run through the logic here.

You see that items that were originally going to
1. Be permanently available
2. Be available all at once
3. Cost less

-are then released

1. For a limited time
2. In smaller pieces
3. Cost far more

and your conclusion is

"People are just broke and they need to pay dev wages and you're just whining over $20"

Everything you say is some type of cope, deflection from the main issue, or outright nonsensical strawman borne entirely out of things nobody said nor wants.

Apparently, not wanting to have to pay more for less content over a longer period of time is a bad stance, and if you think that planned content being dissected and sold for an insane mark up is just what's necessary so the poor devs can feed their families (when in reality these are decisions by suits and anti-consumer paper pushers so they can buy more yachts), then you're either delusional or a shill.

"Oh and the items aren't even special so why do you care so much?"

This again dodges the point and props up another strawman, predicated on trying to devalue the issue by stating that "just $20 items" aren't even worth arguing over. This is something borne of a complete lack of principles. Of course, it can't be the predatory monetization that's the problem, it's all these "broke" and "whiny" people having the sheer gall to complain about something that according to the people so fervently defending the decision, "doesn't matter actually".

Why is it that I see this common pattern in which those defending these things have to
1. Ignore the central issue/point being made
2. Rely on multiple strawmen arguments and bad faith misinterpretations to even attempt to make it look like they have a valid position
3. Repeatedly resort to ad hominem and personal attacks

"But but they have to pay the bills!"

They have a massively successful live service game which I'm sure has more than well enough accomplished that. To think that making money inherently requires one to try to wring the consumer's wallet dry is simply baffling. It's the mindset of feckless shareholders who only care about seeing a number go up each quarter in their mad dash to get that sweet sweet RoI over everything else, and bean counters who only see community goodwill as another resource to cash in on.

[Koala 4peace]

Yes, let's give you the reality check you need.

A- You barely pay for workers salary; you mostly pay for higher ups and big shareholders gains.

B- You are a customer, not an NGO or a charity. Same as they aren't. They will try to get away which as much as they can, and as a customer and for the good of the market and affordable prices, you should try to gain as much as you can for as little as possible.

Seriously, stop trying to rationalise your lack of willpower and sheepness as anything else. I'm not even going to enter in whether or not Helldivers 2 does have a "fair" monetization or not, because it's irrelevant. You people break lances for Sony; no reason to believe you don't for EA, Ubisoft, Activision and the like.