That’s you. This game is more diversified than ever on what people are doing for their enjoyment.
It having player power or not doesn’t have any correlation to being predatory or not. You have a portion of players that are very interested in collection/mogs and the trading post so there’s obvious incentive to buy the set to save tenders later when the mog shows up on the shop, and also get extra tenders.
The overpriced cost is what fuels the idea that it’s predatory. I’ll reiterate that Blizzard tried to charge classic players $35 a character clone when TBC released and the backlash was immense because players called out what Blizzard was trying to get away with.
I don’t expect you to blindly agree with me. Not sure why you think I thought you should.
My point is player power doesn’t have any correlation to whether something is predatory or not. You sound like you are primarily or entirely power driven so when you see something not related to it you have no desire to purchase. Great, doesn’t mean whatever the thing is couldn’t be classified as predatory though.
I agree players share responsibility, but at the end of the day companies are tailoring their sales practice to what they think they can get away with based on how the playerbase evolves over time and players these days tend to be willing to throw more money at games post sale of the game.
I think it’s important to discern the difference between the two though; a company is an organized group of people collaborating together to make decisions best suited for the company (ie: profit). Players are individual units who all share different opinions and beliefs and tend to clash on pretty much any topic you can think of.
And a lot players like to say things aren’t an issue because it doesn’t impact them personally and therefore put all the onus on other players for falling for the marketing ploys companies put out and since they are playing a numbers game with their base they come out the winner.
I’d say it’s a trifecta of tenders being bundled in, all items eventually are going to hit the TP (which will then cost tenders) in addition to the high price.
So if the TP and/or tenders weren’t in the bundle it’s a very straightforward transaction. Mog for money. Do you like mog? Buy mog. Don’t like mog? Don’t buy mog.
Now it’s something more like this. Don’t like mog? Yeah maybe still don’t buy mog…but kind of like mog? Well…maybe wait for it to drop on TP. But then you waste tenders on it…so maybe buy to save tenders…OH AND ALSO get free tenders. So maybe buy because it maximizes tenders usage. Maybe don’t like mog but you’re loaded (or bad with money) so buy for tenders anyways.
Ultimately the bundles they are offering hit on different rationales on why to buy it and what makes transactions predatory is injecting emotion into it.
They do a similar tactic with their expansion bundles and I did it once where I decided to get the mid level upgrade and then I rationaled the next upgrade for $20 was worth it because it had the 30 days of game time so it was really only $5. I had no intention of quitting at the time, and they got an extra $40 or whatever from me for stuff I mostly really didn’t care about. That was a learning experience for me and I don’t pre order or upgrade expacs anymore because of it.
That just depends if you can look at the extras end decide if its worth it to you.
Generally for me, they are.
I dont think its predatory to throw in extras to get you to buy something. We both get something out of it. I get extra month of game time, and some other perks. While for them, its mostly digital stuff anyways.
But I looked at the pricing and decided I am getting enough value out of it to get it.
At the same time, if someone looks at the pricing and decides they aren’t because they dont care for the extra items. Thats fair, too.
But I dont see that as predatory. Else that nearly makes everything being sold anywhere fit the vague enough definition.
Instead of dedicated whatever labor worked on these pay gated mogs towards something like finishing our heritage armor or making some other in-game earnable item as part of our $15/month…they go after more money.
Ok well by your explanation you sound like you’re essentially saying nothing is predatory because “you just have to decide if the value is worth it”. Maybe you should explain what you’d consider to be a predatory transaction because I’m not sure what would be by your logic.
I ultimately disagree that my description is vague. I clearly outlined that it’s when a transaction can be fueled by emotion more than just being a simple transaction and I think that’s concrete enough to be able to use as a benchmark. Is there gray area? Sure, I think you could lay out a bunch of scenarios where some people may put ones in predatory and others would put others, but hopefully there’d be some overlap and debate as to why.
I think it’s also important to point out I don’t think it’s necessarily a straight yes or no question. A lot of people like to say something is or isn’t rather than dissect, analyze, and compare to other similar situations. Something can be slightly predatory that’s not worth much of a debate while something can be blatantory predatory.
The classic character clone they tried to charge $35 for was a straight forward transaction yet I throw that in the blatant predatory category given how overpriced it was and it was targeted at a playerbase that had a not silent portion begging to be able to stay behind on era because they were emotionally attached their character’s progress, and didn’t want to have TBC erase it.