Loud voices on the internet keep saying, year after year, that a cosmetic has no value if it’s bought for real money. It’s only got value if you “work hard” to obtain it.
I just wanted to post this little explanation to solve this mystery once and hopefully for all:
Cosmetics are visuals. Visuals have value based on how they look. That’s why they’re called visuals or cosmetics. There is aesthetic value.
People buy cosmetics because they want their character to look pleasant. It improves their visual enjoyment of the game, it keeps them enjoying and therefore playing the game.
Hopefully this resolves the ongoing controversy. Thank you.
PS. For people obsessed with bragging about their achievements, there are other ways to express how magnificent you are. Gatekeeping important game visuals behind no-life obsessions isn’t the best idea. Come up with something else - frame / nameplate portraits, pets, footstep effects, slightly changed spell animations - something that has nothing to do with the primary character appearance.
i totally get you, i personally dont care about how anyone gets something in game, i only care about how i personally play. But what those people are talking about is about the effort involved in attaining those cosmetic rewrads, not the rewards themselves. “something that is given has no value”, you tend to cherish something alot more if you put some effort to attain it rather than instantly get it because you shelled out some $$$. But again, i’m with you, i dont hold value on other people’s opinion on how i play a video game.
I’m not saying best cosmetics should only be available with real money. It should be an option, and not for $65, lol. $5 per full armor set sounds fine. But also for people that don’t have the money it should be possible to grind. Everybody’s happy.
If you can buy some cosmetic but also grind it in game, that’s the solution. People that don’t feel value without putting in hard work can put in hard work. I’d rather pay $5 to $10 and continue enjoying the game I want to play it, not the way “achievements” force me to.
100% agree. They should be both in game shop and grindable.
Loud yes, but they are a minority. Sales have proven them wrong time and time again. Look at the latest controversy involving Palworld, small minority of angry people, and yet the game is a top seller on Steam. Granted the player numbers may be down, but you can’t deny it’s made a lot of money already.
I mean that’s nice and all but the vocal minority doesn’t care.
First of all you have to convince people they are wrong and you are right. The worst thing you can do in any conversation is tell someone they are wrong and then try to convince them why your opinions/facts are correct. They will immediately go on the defensive. This is just human nature, very few are willing to be open minded, and are typically set in their ways after their mid 20’s.
You aren’t the first person to offer a counter argument against others who feel differently and you won’t be the last. Good luck trying to convince people though.
Ehh what do you mean, I thought I just did. Applying logical reasoning to the real world facts. There is even a special word for it - “aesthetic pleasure”. You look at something and it gives you a good feeling. A pretty car, pretty clothes, pretty house, etc. The existence of aesthetic pleasure is a fact. And that’s what a human being gets when looking at visuals. This doesn’t apply to all people - some people say “we don’t care about how anything looks at all”. But I’m not mentioning them, because if they don’t care about how something looks, then they’re completely outside of this discussion, it doesn’t apply to them at all.
I remember the old MMORPG days. WoW was one of the first games to create an in-game cash shop.
I used to create so many hate posts about them, but all of the responses were the same: “Chill out, n00b. They are cosmetics. It doesn’t do anything for the character.”
This is a live service game, which means all the cosmetics are leased and not owned. On top of that the terms of service technically prohibit sale or account transfer so you couldn’t even transfer this lease if you wanted to in a sale. Which means…like most things, the value of what you rent is zero at the end of the lease. (If not during it as well).
BUT! That doesn’t mean you can’t enjoy a little ‘Sin’ (literally the cosmetic name) or have fun while on the lease.
You’re preaching to the choir for the most part and alienating yourself from those outside of said choir. As I said before good luck trying to convince people, but for some reason I just don’t see your ‘revelation’ post stopping all the posts complaining about the price of the latest cosmetic. Again, many people before you have given the same or similar arguments, and many after you will give the same as well.
Really best thing for you to do is to mute those threads. You won’t convince them otherwise and in all honesty there’s no point in trying. You’re more than welcome to try of course, but I just don’t see you succeeding. Good luck though.
Actually I’ll pass on any and all cosmetics If I can’t earn them via playing…And yes I’ve gotten several toons toons to lvl 60-82 and so far the gameplay has been so I think I’ll play some other games watching & waiting to see if they ever fix this pile maybe they will maybe they won’t I ain’t holding my breath
Say, you play a couple of weeks each season. Say, 60 hours per season. Season is what, 3 months? 240 hours a year. Say D4 keeps you playing for 3 years. How much do you value improved aesthetic pleasure for 720 hours? To each their own. I value aesthetics very much, I can’t stand visually poor games no matter the gameplay. So for me it’s a choice between “do I play this game at all or not”, so I’m willing to pay extra for extra eye candy. Others might not care, but like said, if they don’t care about aesthetics, they’re in the wrong discussion.
WoW was the first Blizzard game, it wasn’t the first video game though. “The first microtransaction sold by a major publisher was in 2006 when Bethesda sold horse armor in The Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion for $2.50”
Now this was just cosmetics mind you, the first game to offer microtransactions where you could pay real money for virtual items was Achaea, Dreams of Divine back in 1997, yes it was free to play. A rather famous Korean studio known as Nexon took the idea further with a game called QuizQuiz, a free to play game that offered even more microtransactions and it’s just ballooned from there.
To be honest, I’m not writing this to convince those people. I’m more hoping that Blizz reads this, because those loud voices can often drown us regular folk.
Oh, boy. Did I buy those tokens and train my skills? Yes I did.
Oh the people who worry about pricing cosmetics at Blizzard are oblivious to the vocal minority complaining about it. They don’t care. Their only job is to make the company more money, opinions be damned regardless, and if people are willing to pay those prices even better.
You’ll soon come to realize not a lot from these forums is conveyed to anyone of import over at Blizzard. People keep trying though, Lilith bless their hearts.
Objectively speaking, we’ve received exp changes, a training dummy, and minor tweaks to various things. Now more are coming as they’ve said but everything else has been their own ideas of what to add to the game with very little input from the player base being taken into account.
All of our suggestions for obvious QoL found in various iterations of the ARPG genre seem to have just gone over their head during production, which isn’t surprising given the history.
Now mind you a lot of the problems within the game now that people are complaining about were voiced during their betas. I was personally in the end-game beta which was a closed beta. We started at level 1, and had to grind our way up. General consensus of those who reached max level was “is this it?” Myself included. I made a very lengthy 8 page review of the game at the time, which I have no doubt was ignored, but hey they asked for opinions so I gave it.
Very little has changed since that beta, and it’s kind of sad honestly. Class balance is always going to be tweaked in games like these so those don’t really count every season. We just need more meat and potatoes, and decent side dishes to compliment them.
That’s not totally fair. D4 devs made D4 more like D2 than D3 is some aspects. For example, they removed my favourite Wizard class from the game and replaced it with this lame Sorcerer that I just can’t stand - all spells are boring. But D2 fans are happy, they demanded Wizard to be removed (“we don’t want lasers”), they praised D2 sorcerer fantasy. So yeah, they are listening. Unfortunately, in my case.
Now I’m playing Last Epoch that has Disintegrate even though visually the game is mediocre. And Disintegrate is amazing.
The mistake D4 devs made is listening to D2 fans, because D2 fans still aren’t playing D4 (surprise - they’re playing D2R) but D3 fans are also mad.
so I think I’ll play some other games watching & waiting to see if they ever fix this pile 
maybe they will maybe they won’t I ain’t holding my breath 