battlepasses are actually more sneaky. Under the guise of telling you what you buy they essentially sell you a bundle but then don’t even give it to you, you have to grind them with dailies.
They look cheap, but then you realize there’s like 3-4 worthwhile items tops and the rest is trash no one cares about.
They turn the game into a job, since they basically tell you “if you don’t play X amount you’re gonna lose money”
NO SHUT UP THINK OF THE STARVING DEVS! THEY NEED $20 SKINS BECAUSE OTHERWISE THEY WON’T BE ABLE TO AFFORD RENT, AND WILL BE HOMELESS!
Someone was literally talking about how devs needed money to feed their families. Well over 120k/ year base starting pay. Blizz devs are absolutely slumming it. The sad part is that they weren’t joking. What a joke…
funny because amidst record sales blizzard laid off A LOT of people.
plus most devs get paid hourly, so they already were paid. At best they get hired again
But unlike lootboxes, there’s not really an element of chance. So while I won’t buy the battlepass, at least they’re transparent in what you get. You will get that mythic Genji skin or whatever if you put in the time (not that you should have to). You might not get it in the first fifty lootboxes or whatever.
see, that’s the trick. By “not having a chance element” they got away with even more underhanded psychological tricks
I think it’s far more likely that this is a website making wild, inflammatory claims based on nothing more than what would drive clicks up than the actual truth.
Seriously even if you go way over the estimated player base in 2021, that would mean each and every player averaged spending 80 USD that year.
No way.
I’ve also seen people blame inflation for it, too. But in reality, we all know that OW1 made loads of money. Everything launching with OW2 all the way up until seasons 8+ of the BP? Already funded. “NUH UH, WHERE’S YOUR SOURCE?” Multiple interviews/streams, the fact that OW2 isn’t even out yet and they’re currently working on that content means that surprise surprise, they were getting funding from OW1. This is purely just greed on blizzard’s part, launching in to an existing, already saturated market with zero new innovations/changes that make it worth playing. Instead i’s just a short term cash grab, with the hopes and intentions that PvE in 2023 will bring back players and retain them. But by the time PvE is released, it’ll be too late, and they’ll have announced a PvE only battlepass + locked talents and maps behind the bp, etc.
They are not sneaky, it’s right in plain sight. A usual, don’t like the deal, don’t take it.
As for layoffs during sales, they were also losing money in other areas. For a AAA company, they are actually doing pretty badly right now.
Judging from the backlash, and given that we don’t know the amount of lootbox sales, I’m not sure they did. I know that I’m not buying and grinding out that pass and this forum is full of people saying similar stuff. It could be that the lootbox system is more underhanded and sneaky because it appears more fair, while in reality having just as many unpleasant consequences.
Of course, I can’t say for sure because as it turns out, we don’t know the numbers. All I know is that I don’t like or trust either model of monetization.
Lootboxes are predatory for sure, by nature.
But Blizzard allowed people to bypass them with very low effort.
Also they were purely cosmetic.
So while it’s predatory, it was so optional that no one cared about them.
The problem with OW2, is that the predatory practices are mandatory now. You have no escape from them.
You can’t just pay a yearly $40 fee to get an old school complete experience without shenanigans.
It’s going to depend just how awful it is to unlock new characters. If they dumped the terrible idea of hero unlocks then it’d be same old, same old.
they know that and hated it. biggest reason for this change… they are banking everyone who had that collection motiff spend tons of money as whales. it will happen too which is the crazy thing. now its up to each of us if our collection days are over since $$ pricey
It’s predatory in terms of it being “gambling”….you’re not buying something outright……but I think we are faaaaaaaaaaaar from the type predation people are typically referring to when it comes to f2p style predation we are seeing now
Especially when you consider how unimpactful it is on the game and how unnecessary it is to even buy lootboxes given that you can just play the game and get them for free every time you level
Nowadays you got like 10 different systems put in place that are geared towards making it feel like you HAVE to pay or you get nothing
Honestly wouldn’t surprise me if they scrapped PVE. I said it at the start of this mess kind of facetiously, but it becomes more and more clear that it could be a reality. Blizzard scrapped entire games in the past, scrapping iwhat essentially amounts to a game mode won’t be any skin off their back.
You keep repeating this, they won’t. Blizz even responded directly to you on this. They are around year from release, its not getting canceled, stop with the FUD.
The annoying bit was opening the damn things.
If this is true, than it’s possible that OW 2 will screw the pooch.
I don’t get why everyone hates lootboxes, especially OW lootboxes. They were cosmetic only. You didn’t get special weapons or abilities. There was absolutely no affect on gameplay.
Someone posted something on the internet for clicks? WHAT! NEVER!!
Some indolent European academics contrived a “metastudy” to say they created gambling addiction, yet failed to show any increase in actual gambling addiction. But Bureaucrats loved the idea to grandstand on them as a “think about the children” action.
Blizzard responded directly to me? What are you even saying right now? Where did blizzard say anything directly to me? Are you saying they haven’t scrapped entire games before?