With Release of "Cutting Edge" We May Finally Deduce the Real Business Model

[Majorita]

So in short the idea is this.

Get players to pay like $60 AUD up front or whatever for the game, add on a mysterious 'battle pass' type DLC that gets you the first premium DLC for $35 AUD. Then ask for $15 worth of super credits for each subsequent battle pass, well it's been about a month since release, and I doubt they'll do one a month, but let's say $15 a month from their entire playerbase.

Players are strongly incentivized to spend money just to keep up because they'll throw everything in there and at least one item will appeal. Why are there weapons and boosters in these bundles? 'Increases time between encounters'? Are you serious? This is like one of the things the dev team seems to be in the process of trying to BALANCE right now. Are we being prompted to spend money just on that because oh look it might be really good?

Even THEN it is not pay to 'have' the items. It's pay to have the chance to earn the items, if you play enough, and by that I mean, a LOT.

There's also an additional Super Credits store, which again is tied to real money, that acts as a sink.

Why is the game monetized so aggressively like this in the first place? Honestly, I'm severely turned off right now, even though they say like oh well you get to keep the battle pass forever it's not time limited...! You know what IS limited? MY time is limited, and I'm not gonna dedicate all my life to this one game just so I can keep up with the battle pass, and most normal casual players will probably just eat the cost since I bet you they're not keeping up with it either.

And I bet you, it might not be this one, it might be given that booster, but there's going to be future battle passes, where you basically 'have' to buy them to keep up. There's going to be meta or just really useful items in them.

This is exactly what I expected when I first looked at this game, it's just a live support treadmill game. And I'm kind of saddened because I wanted it to be more than that.

[PestbotLIVE]

You can grind pretty easy and you dont get a "chance" for the weapons, you get them, outright, and the warbonds last forever

[Majorita]

This game actually compares fairly unfavorably to Deep Rock Galactic, I agree.

Deep Rock and Helldivers both cost a flat fee, the difference is...

Deep Rock has you straight up pay real money, for some cosmetics which provide no alterations to gameplay.

Helldivers has, the premium warbonds that you have to buy with super credits which you THEN have to play the game to earn in the first place, super credits to buy not cosmetics, but armor that changes gameplay, it also has a deluxe edition and it's set up to try and score repeated microtransactions from players in future.

I think if you want to talk about games being 'generous' you should probably point to DRG instead and say "why is Helldivers not like that".

[Soji]

Originally posted by Pyronymer:

Originally posted by Dreepa:

750 super credits in the main warbond
300 in the extra warbonds.
10-50 in the missions.

Subract all warbond SC. That's an up front one time bait.

It is designed to fool people into thinking SC is easy to earn, until it isn't.

You get your taste for free, and once you are addicted you eventually hit the pay wall once that easy one time hit runs out. This is STANDARD practice in exploitative microtransaction mobile games.

They have already explicitly stated future warbonds may not contain any SC, so even the extra warbond SC doesn't get to count, but even if it did, It is functionally only an arbitrary discount in an arbitrary war bond price, and isn't enough of a discount on its own.

Also it is not an upfront discount, but actually a partial refund, which in a premium currency system means you have to buy to reach that 1000SC mark, you do not get to count the SC in the warbond until the NEXT warbond.

So basically. You need to reach 1000c with mission SC alone. Because eventually thats what you will need to do. The pricing is planned that way, and the patching is planned to keep your rate of play that way.

Oh and 10-50 SC per mission? That's a rate promoted by apologists. Most honest players note the rate tends to be much lower.

I had always thought that number I see all the time but my average experience was I'd get maybe 10 sc per session. Granted i wasn't farming but I would clear the maps and barely find any of the places SC can even spawn and when i did it would either be reqs or medals mostly. Or just a break action shotgun or something similar. Always thought that number was exaggerated or people farming.

[Aldain]

Originally posted by Speed Malus:

Its like Warframe, Pay to Rush, only in this games case, you save an Hour or two at most instead of several days like in Warframe. Not to mention the Premium currency in HD2 is even easier to get than in WF, and that is an achievement.

Well honestly I hate trading in Warframe so I don't think it's that easy personally speaking.

...I have a lot of bad memories in Warframe trading though so I might be a bit biased in that regard.

Either way yeah HD2 is definitely easier and better, mainly because you can get it while also playing the main game modes (with one or two mission types being exceptions) and I say that as a big fan of Warframe.

[SpottedHare]

This is much the same as the Destiny DLC, yes you can just wait and the DLC will eventuality get added for free. But unless your brain has rotted away from eating shoe polish you know the system is built and intended around getting you to make that extra purchases.

[Kuree]

I bought the base game and earned 1,000 SC to purchase the Steel Veteran DLC for free. I then used the SC earned from Steel Veteran, missions and spent around $7 to purchase Cutting Edge.

I find the monetisation to be perfectly acceptable and wallet-friendly. I've come from games where a single cosmetic is $22 to $35 US.

[CloversDrop]

Originally posted by Tigerhawk71:

I didn't read your post and I don't really need to:

"This is easily free if you've played the game even a little bit" is not really a business model.

If it's not a business model why put the warbonds behind a super credit paywall at all?

[CloversDrop]

Originally posted by Kuree:

I bought the base game and earned 1,000 SC to purchase the Steel Veteran DLC for free. I then used the SC earned from Steel Veteran, missions and spent around $7 to purchase Cutting Edge.

I find the monetisation to be perfectly acceptable and wallet-friendly. I've come from games where a single cosmetic is $22 to $35 US.

A thief is still a thief regardless of how much he nicks off you

[Dr. Yetiphilia]

It's telling that a paid game has weapons behind these passes, even if you can earn the credits at a snail's pace (which many free games also let you do, btw).

[Aldain]

Originally posted by Cloverdrop:

Originally posted by Tigerhawk71:

I didn't read your post and I don't really need to:

"This is easily free if you've played the game even a little bit" is not really a business model.

If it's not a business model why put the warbonds behind a super credit paywall at all?

Well for one, if they weren't buyable and only farmable it would be an engagement tool, make sure people keep playing and justify the server costs.

Adding in the ability to buy them despite the ability to farm them more exists for the impatient or people who have enough money to burn in that case.

Seems pretty simple to me, and much better than HD1's myriad DLCs that couldn't be farmed if memory serves.

[сноцетте]

"This is exactly what I expected when I first looked at this game, it's just a live support treadmill game. And I'm kind of saddened because I wanted it to be more than that."
Are you a dinosaure ? Middle aged man ? It's obviously a Game As A Service. Why would you even play the game after unlocking everything if it's not a Live Game.

And means some sort of monetization duh.

You will stop playing.. Ok and what after this ? You will go buy the next bs solo game like idk Far Cry 10, play 25h and find another soulless AAA to "play" ?

Helldiver is a unique multiplayer game; with everything unique. No other game like is was made for a decade. And you will stop cause you need to support the cause with few bucks ?

[Silverlight]

Originally posted by Kuree:

I bought the base game and earned 1,000 SC to purchase the Steel Veteran DLC for free. I then used the SC earned from Steel Veteran, missions and spent around $7 to purchase Cutting Edge.

I find the monetisation to be perfectly acceptable and wallet-friendly. I've come from games where a single cosmetic is $22 to $35 US.

Yep. I've made comments about this exact situation.

The currency is free, but the majority of the player base will end up spending around 5 dollars on every warbond.

I almost did too, but decide to exploit farm instead. The front load credits ran out just in time for Cutting Edge

Cutting edge doesn't have much currency in it either.

[Stygian Ikazuchi]

Originally posted by Pyronymer:

Originally posted by Shiroe (cortana):

Not really.
Most games doesnt even offer free farming of "premium" currency....
They could remove that if you want and it sounds like you do...

Some do some don't what they ALL do is offer easy up front early rewards then slowly squeeze off the flow of those rewards dropping a few pay wall hurdles as they go.

Standard.

Practice.

Mobile game.

This isn't a mobile game. You are being a child about this. They have not done anything to indicate they're "squeezing the flow of those rewards". Just shut up.

[The Jeff]

The real grind has always been Medals. Unless they start selling Medals I don't even see the point in buying SC. By the time you have enough Medals to buy all the stuff you should have enough SC for the next warbond. I only bought the base game and was able to buy the first premium warbond, spent like 800 SC on premium armor, and am only 100 SC away from buying the new warbond. And I still need around 1,000 more medals to fill out the first two warbonds.

If you've only been playing Extermination or just rushing objectives I don't know what to tell you....that's your own fault.

[Anticitizen 1]

I bought both premium warbonds with SC I found in the map and unlocked in the warbonds so the entire premise of this thread is null and void.

It will take you less than 30 hours of playtime to find 1,000 SC in the game. This is about the best way possible to implement a live service model.