So D4 is going to have a battle pass

FFXIV is MMORPG right? Well Diablo 4 is not MMO.

From the way it’s looking, it seems a lot more MMO now. It’s open world and social. If there is a sanctuary hub where people can safely hang out plus cosmetics, bank on that problem.

It is not only fine it is necessary. They need some income from MTX so they support the game better over the years.

While that is preferred option for me also it would not work because most people are not willing to pay for subscription these days… And they are right… There are so many good free to play games.

Just my personal opinion, I would much rather pay a subscription fee if they give it huge support going forward than see barbarians running around with bunny ears and rainbow swords.

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My personal opinion also. I am for any monetization model that will not sell power and that will support Diablo 4 for the longest period of time.

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If World of Warcraft is any indication, adding a subscription means you’d just be paying monthly to see barbarians running around with bunny ears and rainbow swords.

For better or worse, expect every Blizzard game to have mtx going forward regardless of if they have some other monetization thing to keep content flowing or not.

That’s what happens when you add both. Keep the cosmetic shops out. That or keep those players in their own server/zone.

As much as I would like to keep the micro-transactions out, the point is more that it’s just not gonna happen at this point. The last game Blizzard released without a cosmetic shop was Diablo 3 which is nearly a decade ago now(not counting their remasters).

WoW shows that it doesn’t even have anything to do with “fueling content development” as some people argue, as the subscription does that in WoW but they went ahead and added a cosmetic shop anyway.

The complaints of barbarians with rainbow swords means very little to Blizzard compared to the millions of dollars that micro-transactions rake in every year, and making everybody see those cosmetics is just walking advertisements.

I know it doesn’t. No matter what, they’re a company. They care about dollars and cents.

If D4 ends up being annoying in that aspect, I can always play D3 as I’m sure that’s not going anywhere soon.

Definitely the same, regardless of bunny ears and what not. Just a more sensible (for the game) business model imo.
The best is to just sell actual new content; new classes, areas, campaign chapters etc.
So if you want money as a company, make good people will pay for. Instead of some roundabout way where you sell dresses for dolls, and then people just have to hope that the good content follows.

True.

Just add a “Hide other players cosmetics” toggle in settings. So simple. Should even be required by law, as part of a package to combat predatory monetization.

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I won’t buy a full box priced game, just to have battlepass MTX in it.

I guess I’ll have all the time to reach 20k paragon…

To be fair, you are strawmanning rascalsons question by ignoring that he used the word “just” in there.
I bet you rascalison was suggesting the profit motive of those studios didnt trump the more important aspects of why, how and for whom they wanted to make good games, very much unlike how the money grabbing predatory game producing companies do it most of the time. And if you agree there is a difference and thus a second option, which I’m sure you do, the question of what product you want to spend your money on becomes relevant.

I think there should be limited pay for cosmetics in any form in a buy to play game and zero pay to win/pay for power.

If the platinum currency is something people can obtain via in-game activities or trading (with some kind of in-game market system) so that players have a gameplay path to obtain these paid cosmetics besides just buying it for real money directly, I think that would be better.

The greedier companies get the less they seem inclined to add player to player type systems like that though. They didn’t in Immortal. I’m not sure why, I expect half the remaining playerbase in WoW plays off of tokens. You’d think they’d want to integrate other games into their bnet balance system if they could.

No, I really don’t. Money is for sure the number one reason, by a huge frikkin margin. Making a good product tend to be a good start for the money to pour in, but hell, if you can get away with a sub par product most every company will do that as it means larger profit margin.

It is not necessarily cheaper to make a sub par game than a good one. Some bad games became bad because they were bloated, or in a directionless development hell with higher ups requiring the team to hunt the new shiny thing every other month.

A bad but successful product might also bring in good money here and now, but massively cost you in sales on other products you make, in the long term.

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too bad, sometimes, rarely, you get what you pay for and it’s all worth it. But then again almost all of the best mmorpg’s are now free and have dedicated private servers.

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Well it will not be just for that. It will be for all the content + battlepass.

How do you know this? I surely expect them to release paid expansions for D4 and still have you pay for the cosmetics extra.

At the very least in WoW it’s trivially easy to earn enough gold so you don’t have to pay for your subscription.

and it gives you access to Classic WoW, a far better MMO.