Boycott Pay to Win Games

Uh, no. That’s not what that means. In the scenario you’re describing, Blizzard could make money and be in the green with regards to Deontologic Ethical duty if they did what will make more than enough money, which is to sell the whole game, sans MTX and P2W scams, at a fixed price.

What they’ve done is opt to make all the money through MTX/P2W/Live Service bunko, and that is not ethical.

Collander doesn’t have a point, and they’re not right about, well, anything.

Actually, I can not. I am missing two key pieces of information.

  1. How many legendary gems on average drop on average in a 10 legendary crest elder rift?
  2. Are all legendary gem drops equally weighted relative to legendary gem type? I am not talking about the star ranking.

I can do the calculation that all legendary gem types drop at equal frequency but I would not put it past Blizzard that these drops are weighted so that “more useful” gem types drop less frequently. I still would need an approximate value for #1.

Edit. The answer for #1 seems to be 1 legendary crest =1 legendary gem

Those are different approaches to define if things are ethical or not. Thats the discussion u do before u make regulations at a political lvl. Most of the times both are used and even in some cases the populations moral thoughts are considered. However since there are no regulations and the society allows it that means its not breaking ethical standards currently. So its not unethical in the eyes of the society. However there are ppl who would find it morally wrong.

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There’s different types of ethics though. So there is a point to be had alongside a debate, reasonable minds can definitely differ.

I don’t agree with Blizzard’s decision at all though and while you do have a point, one of the cons of deontological ethics is actually: “The disagreement of the principles involved in the decision”.

Would love to hear some honest debates from some greater minds on this. Would actually keep me up all night listening to it.

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Not really. Regulations does not have to relate to ethics. Something can be completely ethical, and yet be regulated. Something can be completely unethical, and not be regulated.

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I think that I have a decent estimate based on these assumptions.

  1. The cash equivalent of a legendary crest is $2.50
  2. One legendary crest results in one legendary gem drop at the end of the elder rift.
  3. The odds of a 5 star gem is 1 in 2000.
  4. Each legendary gem is weighted equally.
  5. There are 16 legendary gems so the odds of a getting a bloodstar gem is 1 in 16.

Therefore, the odds of not getting at least one 5 star bloodstar gem per each kegendary crest is = 1 - (1/32,000)

The odds of not getting at least one 5 star bloodstar gem = [1-(1/32,000)]^n where n is the number of legendary crests used.

So, there is a 10% chance that one would not get a single 5 star blood star gem after 73,681 legendary crest purchased = $184,202.50

So I also calculated the odds of Quin69 luck. He did not get any 5 star legendary gems at all (the odds per legendary crest of that happening is 1999/2000. He spent $10.3K. One would expect to spend that amount of money and ~13%of the time to get no 5 star legendary gem. So his luck was bad but still expected ~13% of the time.

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My brain hurts now. :brain:

My wallet also hurts… :money_with_wings:

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So, a new completely lethal designer drug is ethical to sell according you if it has not yet been deemed illegal? Sounds about right…

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When one’s logic is perplexing to me, this is the gif that goes through my head.

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when used properly logic can be a scalpel beneficial and helpful sadly though most people have no understanding of it and wield it like a chainsaw

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The problem is that logic does not work when someone ignores facts and lacks analytical reasoning.

Why Facts Don’t Change Our Minds (jamesclear.com)

You know that it is an uphill climb when they say that they are entitled to their opinion.

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Unfortunately, this has been proven in the past years, even if 5% of the overall consumer base stays and keeps throwing money into the p2w, yields more profit. Thus losing players and getting bad reviews may get them bad reputation but their products generate more money. Now the fact that mobile game market currently is worth more than PC and console game market together, Blizzard might even turns its focus into developing mobile games in place of PC/console, if DI proves to be a money maker, which it probably will, even despite the ongoing outrage. Eventualy they will move their labour capacity towards making more money, and there’s more money in mobile games. Blizzard is clearly not interested in making revolutionary games with innovative content as it used to two decades ago. Blizzard is constantly abusing microtransactions and predatory nature in its games and reskins existing titles in paradox. The only seemingly new title with new content right now is D4 which is in development, everything else in the past years has been a reskin/remake they done (with microtransactions).

RIP Blizzard North

Remember when latency didn’t have any influence on gameplay whatsoever and affordable high speed internet was world wide from the start?

Neither do I.

How about hardware advantages. Remember when people with more expensive computers didn’t have a smoother and easier experience?

To be fair, I understand what your gripe is.

However you can’t expect a free to play game to be without some form of monetization.

It goes without saying that people will do whatever it takes to feel like a winner. Winning is after all a psychology and what more convincing than a virtual declaration that you are such? Virtually reaffirming what can be had without such is equivalent to spending money on a gym membership when calisthenics equates greater results.

If you can convince generations of people to boycott this mentality however I do believe that you deserve the Nobel peace prize.

Wouldn’t simply boycotting these games yourself and not plague yourself with premonitions of the destination (of game design) by basis of the direction (of present trendiness in such) be a more realistic and grounded goal?

You have no clue what an ethical standard is, nor the distinction between ethics and law, which have a mere passing familiarity with one another. That’s why ethics is only one class in law school, and not even in the first year (in the US). First year, one of the first things I was told, was that if we thought the law was about justice and morality, we were sadly mistaken.

The fact you think that because something is still legal makes it ethically correct, is patently ludicrous. Why do you think the courts argue about, and constantly change or throw out laws? Why do you think we repeal laws, if they represent the ethical endgame every time they’re written? Plenty of things that were legal have been outlawed, and plenty of things that were not legal have also (and should be) legalized.

It is also increasingly difficult to debate anything seriously with people who cannot be bothered to add to letters to the word “you,” and who throw out logical terms, while defecating on actual logical concepts. Enjoy the game all you want, but it IS gambling, aimed at children, and unregulated, and all your moronic analogies are fooling precisely NO ONE.

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Ethical conduct, or rather what is objectively ethical is typically defined by the masses or society as a whole.

A longer than I am interested in devoting conversation could be discussed regarding this topic.

“Morality is not a guide for legality”

Aptly put:

+1

maybe this is where he went to law school?

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It will not do any good things are changing.

That is NOT how ethics work. A deontological system of ethics or morals is simply one in which the rules are absolutes, and they are given to us, externally. Hence the prefatory root of the term “deo,” which originally meant to refer to a god. In other words, deontological ethics refer to things being ethical because we are TOLD they are. And, as the name suggests, this is only a proper approach to morality/ethics, when in fact the rules are being promulgated by a divine being. Laws, being made by other flawed humans, are a poor source of ethics for other humans. This becomes especially apparent if you truly know the reasons behind some policies and laws.

I remember, doing research for a paper on international human rights law, and discovered a memo from an attorney at the DoD under Donald Rumsfeld, who had suggested that the Bush Administration should argue in court that Guantanamo was not US jurisdiction for the purposes of habeas corpus, but, that the Administration should simultaneously argue that it was US jurisdiction for the purposes of the Alien Tort Claims Act (which allows a foreign national to sue in US federal court for claims which arise in a foreign jurisdiction and violate international law or US treaties). Moral of the story? Laws and policies are crafted and interpreted for some of the most cynical, and abhorrent reasons imaginable and are hardly a guide for ethical behavior.

Moreover, as has been pointed out, societal attitudes shift, and laws are often slow to catch up to societal shifts. Even more to the point, in the US in particular, we have a severely anti-majoritarian system, made worse through gerrymandered districts that allow, in essence, to quote a visiting British parliamentarian “the politicians to choose their voters.” 50% of the US Senate represents less than 25% of the population.

This is evident when you look at an issue like, quite timely, gun control. Over 60% of the country favors tons of restrictive measures that don’t even have a snowball’s chance in hell of making it to the floor for DEBATE, let alone passage. Laws in THIS country, at least, do not begin to reflect the ethical views of the society at large.

Again, would that even matter? If a majority believe it to be moral would that make it acceptable? A majority once believed non-whites were less fully human than whites. A majority also believed, when they founded this country, that only white males, who owned land, and were 25, should have a say in their own governance.

What makes something moral? Honestly, I wrote my thesis on the subject, and couldn’t give you a straight answer. I know what DOES NOT make something moral: being codified into law, or being believed by a lot of people.

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it wouldnt matter if you wrote it out in red crayon hed still be incapable of understanding it and his only retort would be uh uh U dumb me smart enough to know you are wrong so i win

Fair, though I should think even the dimmest would realize the error, when they follow the logical thread to its final conclusion.

If the law IS the ethical standard for humanity, wouldn’t that make lawmakers and lawyers, by extension, the human beings who, as creators and enforcers of our ethical standards, are the avatars of ethics and morality, representing the peak of human ethical and moral thought and behavior?

If you’re laughing, it’s because well, you should be…

PS: not for nothing that would mean each country and its lawmakers are ethical by default, if they adhere to their own laws, so dictators aren’t unethical, so long as they’re abiding by the laws they create.