I am giving a company money and I have no way to discern what that money goes to. You could say the same for the initial price…but I think “it goes to development costs” is a reasonable, general thing to think, whatever it may actually be.
I have no expectations me buying cosmetics will make the game better. It just gives money to the company, that I hope/assume goes, at least in part, to development cost.
And yea it sucks the earn able cosmetics aren’t very nice.
They did 15 patches last year and I’m expecting the same amount this year, but with more content in each one since the “we need to fix out game” phase is over now. Of that happens, I’ll be happy about giving them another 20 dollars next year. That’ll be 2 dollars a month for most likely 300-400 hours of more gameplay😎
Yea I heard great things about that game! I never played it since I’m a graphics wh*re and having ps2 graphics is a hard “no” from me! I need help🤪
I have no idea about costs and stuff but I wonder if development costs are just more for FatShark vs DRG company? Development costs could include investors, better employee pay, work/life balance, etc.
I guess what I’m trying to get at is I would expect FS to base prices on what they need to operate. I also don’t expect them to base the price on the “value” of the cosmetics, because all the cosmetics are literally worthless. You will never be able to sell them to someone else, thus they are worth nothing.
Having said that, I do hope their quality and complexity continue to get better!
The shop is objectively FOMO. You can’t say its not FOMO by comparing it to something that isn’t a product and that you won’t miss out on anything if you don’t play a certain mission.
“It goes to development costs” is not quite how it works. Development budget isn’t some variable number that is going up and down based on how much money the game makes that then determines how much work goes into content. Staff are on a salary so your funds don’t make a different to how much they get, and budgets for supporting content - and even what that content will likely involve - will have been largely planned in advance, not just “How much have we got to make new content with? Dunno!” where they make it up as they go.
Again, people in charge are not going to be going “You guys made so much money from MTX, lets give the players even more and better free stuff”, it’s “You made lots on MTX, make more of those”.
DRG definitely isn’t “ps2 graphics” though, those looked much lower quality! It’s just an art style that doesn’t focus on ultra high detail.
Obviously costs for something like this are more than DRG, but even with that it doesn’t justify the bad things they’ve done with the MTX here. The prices and the way things are done in this definitely are not based on what they “need”, it’s greed instead.
I think I understand where you’re coming from and I don’t out right disagree with you.
Do I think the shop is FOMO? No, I have never felt that about the shop, but I can see why someone would think that. I’m just saying maybe FatShark isnt company ran by evil vampires who just want our money. There might be more to it. FOMO could definitely be a part of their strategy but I am very skeptical it was the only piece to the puzzle.
As for development costs, I would expect them to have an idea of how much MTX they will sell in a given year and then base the cost of those MTX on that. So while I know that development costs aren’t fluctuating like that, they are a business and definitely have a plan involving initial price and MTX price. As you said, the employees have set salaries. I would argue everything in that business is “set” in that there is a budget for x,y, and z that needs to be recouped with either initial sales or MTX sales. FatShark would be very bad at business if they didn’t think long and hard about how to survive as a business (not saying they are or aren’t bad at business, just that I think it’s reasonable they did what I think they did). In other words, everything is set in a budget as to expenses and expected revenue.
What I’m trying to get at, is they are a business who is trying to either break even or be profitable. Every business does that. Could we pay a lot less for basically anything you want to give an example of? Yea we definitely could, but businesses exist to make money. They hire artists and developers to make the product so their business can be successful. You know what I mean? It sucks, but that’s how our world works it seems
It outright is FOMO, objectively. It’s timed items that rotate every few weeks with them shownig up again maybe months later maybe never, and is it that way to make you go “Better buy it now or i’ll miss out!”. That is what FOMO is.
Of course they’re trying to make money. But there are ways to do it that feel fair and reasonable to customers/players, and ways that aren’t. When they’ve decided to have their MTX system at launch outnumber and be better looking than the game side of things at launch, their own currency to obfuscate the price, that currency comes in increments where you just have to buy more than you need and always have some left over, prices keep going up, weapons and charms removed from bundles, selling lazy recolours (for more than last time, even), a FOMO store with everything timed and you have no idea when or if they’ll return, there has been practically nothing for the earnable side for a year and what is there is primarily recolours of the same few things, they’re selling items that are in the game visible on NPCs so have been there all along just as part of the game, and many of the cosmetics have had pretty bad quality issues, then I’d definitely say they “just want our money”. I don’t know how someone can claim that sort of thing doesn’t feel very greedy and show a “doesn’t matter how we do it, we’ve got to make all the profit” desire. That’s far beyond what would be a reasonable, considerate way to do it.
“I don’t think the definition of FOMO is FOMO”
Amazing
Just because it runs at fatshark speed (a month and a half to cycle something out) doesn’t make it not fomo.
Part of My point is there is an interpretation of what is objective and what you think they mean.
Yes, they rotate stuff through and it seems like they don’t put too much effort into the cosmetics (kinda feels mean to say but I think that’s reasonable). That is objective for sure. WHY they do it is not possible for us to be objective about. We just don’t know. You can speculate they are greedy and want to exploit fOMO. I can speculate it’s because they think the shop looks better like that since if we were able to buy everything anytime we want, we might notice there is hardly anything there and that looks bad. Like it’s a design choice. You know what I mean? I think the answer is probably somewhere in between and more complicated than we give them credit for.
I guess I just try to give people the benefit of the doubt, as opposed to being outraged and negative, which isn’t healthy for our mentality.
Does FS seem to not put much effort into cosmetics and seem like they struggle to get a game going? Yeaaaaa probably?
Does FS have outrageous prices for their cosmetics? I mean they seem comparable to other games I’ve played so it must be an industry “standard” to fund development this way. So I’d say probably not?
Do I think they are some mouth breathing, evil, incompetent corporation many people seem to imply on forums? Nope, not at all. They make one of my most favorite franchises. I’ll throw them 30-40 dollars a year and they can give me horrible cosmetics or nothing at all. I just want them to keep adding content and creative ideas.
Well of course when you write something dumb, it sounds dumb.
I’m just saying you guys need to calm down. The actual developers , who have feelings, probably read the condescending remarks you guys make and feel bad about their work. If you really like a cosmetic then buy it to support development. You have like 2-3 weeks to buy it. Who knows, maybe they don’t want all the cosmetics up at once for some server issue or something. God knows they aren’t the best at technical stuff
It is objectively something that takes advantage of FOMO. Do you not know what FOMO is? Having a store that revolves around items that are put on for a time limited basis that will rotate with those items to return at some unknown point in the future, or maybe never, is not some innocent move they made for design reasons without realizing the consequences. You’re suggesting they either accidentally or unintentionally just decided to sell their MTX in a way that revolves entirely around a well known exploitative tactic of having timed items and a constantly rotating store to make it harder to get what you want and therefore take advantage of peoples inherant weakness of “Better buy it now, because it’ll be gone, and i don’t know when it’ll show up again…or it might not!” to squeeze out a little extra money. “Woops we implemented a FOMO store but it was just a simple mistake we made with good intentions, honest!” We weren’t trying to use those common psychological manipulation tactic that just coincidentally happens to be part of our store, trust us!" Just utterly absurd.
I totally understand giving them the benefit of the doubt. But when there’s that many things which feel greedy and scummy, then maybe it’s just being greedy and scummy. It’s not just the lack of earnable cosmetics. It’s not just the prices. It’s all of it. You have to take it all into account at once…and if you can see all that list of bad ways its done and somehow still think there’s good intention behind it all and no greed, then
They charged money for their game. Up front. It wasn’t even (and still isn’t) feature-complete; especially not to the satisfaction of the community.
They had the gall to launch in a fundamentally incomplete state while having a fully-functional cash shop accessible direct from the character select menu. Add to this that DIGITAL cosmetic pricing’s insanely high and, per the industry standard when a game company is trying to screw you, they obscure their costs behind bogus premium currencies.
Don’t really care about their feelings.
Granted, I don’t wish them ill nor do I expect them to crunch or do anything harmful to their well-being, I expect them to do their job and do it well.
The cosmetics present in the game are mediocre at best, and if we’re being less-than-charitable, a novice with access to the same tools could probably learn to copy/paste meshes together as well as they have in many instances.
The real rub of it is I am one of those idiots who is very susceptible to this kinda crap. I bought several Aquila packs naively thinking “oh, this’ll help them, but also this skin is kinda cool win/win”… I wish I’d known about the fact that they had instated a refund option for cosmetics because there are a number which I’d have gladly done so after having the opportunity to properly view the item (do bear in mind that the “view on character” option didn’t exist, it was just the garbage mannequin at the time)…
I can only say this - dam, you play really really shaity games if that’s the “standard” for you. I think you should stand back (seriously, I mean it in good will) and check if you are not the one being exploited and just cope with “everyone do that” mentality.
Becasue I play tons of games (I am no-lifer) and man, no game have shait like that.
PS. POE can charge as much as they want - game is free to play with frequent updates, good communications with community and great gameplay and POE2 is shaping to be absolute F2P hit (but no pre-orders, dont’ be idiots kids!) and I can give them money for cosmetics… and their cosmetics don’t clip like crazy…
I honestly don’t think to much about the prices. I can buy 20 dollar pixels or a cheeseburger in Michigan. I’m reasonable with my purchases.
As someone who has played PoE since the private beta, has 1k+ in purchases, and several “supporter titles” I can tell you it is free to download. If you think you can play PoE as one of your main game for free then I got news for ya! You NEED stash tabs, of which I would guess I have $100+ of. Great game and I don’t regret a penny spent since I’ve put in at least 3k hours. POE 2 looks dope!
I’m just saying I think that’s where I learned the sentiment “I love your game so here is some money. I’ll take whatever stupid cosmetics you want to give me”
POE had horrible microtransactiosn for the 4-5 years tbh. It being isometric definitely made it so it was no big deal…but 30 dollars for a flaming skull helmet isn’t too far off from what FS is doing (I also bought that haha I need help)
It’s great that you want to support a game you enjoy, that’s totally understandable, but i think you have to consider that you’re not just supporting “the game” when you buy MTX, you’re supporting the creation of more MTX and all that entails, even the bad stuff - and with Darktide, you can’t really say the MTX haven’t had a negative effect on the game, just look at the earnable cosmetics and it’s obvious they approach has been detrimental, and that’s even without all the other negative things like the random price inceases and taking away things from bundles and all that I mentioned.
No problem with wanting to support a game but it’s not just as simple as that and you should consider if the same level of respect and fairness that you want to show is being shown to players as well, and the implemenation here really feels like its not with just how they’ve decided to go for things that try and squeeze out more money no matter what.
If we got a decent amount of earnable cosmetics often and if there was some way to earn Aquilas then that would be different.
Yea I get what you guys are saying. I respect your position! Hopefully you guys boycotting the MtX will lead to better ones or better practices by FS
I don’t feel disrespected by them I guess. As long as they aren’t selling power or any advantage (that is really what made GGG respectable) then I guess my attitude is “if it works then cool, if it doesn’t then they’ll go out of business”
In other words, I wouldn’t care if they sold a gold armor set for 200 dollars. Someone might buy it but not me. As long as at least part of that money is going towards development, then I think I’m ok with it. It’s be great if FS grew as a studio and stuff.
Im honestly hoping for some kind of battle pass 2-3 times a year that has earnable cosmetics. Probably be a good way to make money but give people agency in what they want or the amount they want.
20 dollars for a battlepass with maybe 20-30 different cosmetics would be cool! Hopefully that’s in the pipeline since this being a live service game kinda implies that
